While Fe starts off easy enough, it quickly degenerates into punishing platforming sequences with little room for error, something you don’t quite expect out of the game. That annoyance even extends to the platforming bits.
Sometimes, even finding the correct route forward, even with the game’s guidance, can get tricky. You can get the animals you’ve helped to assist later on, but being led by the nose in a game that’s supposedly about exploration doesn’t jive all that well with me. It doesn’t help that the areas all look way too similar, either. The mini-map is unintuitive and finding your bearings is a massive pain. Despite the semi-open maps that beg to be explored, Fe tries to make that exploration as unfriendly as possible. The lack of gameplay diversity honestly gets a bit annoying.Īnd annoyance seems to be a recurring theme for the game. Failure simply means you’ll have to repeat it till you get it right. To sing, you’ll need to depress the R2 button to match the animal’s pitch. Don’t get me wrong, singing is a unique and cool way to interact, but it gets boring when all you ever do is the same set of actions again and again. Sadly, that tease is never fully realized as further abilities turn out to be generic platforming moves, like the above-mentioned gliding to creating plaforms or getting jump boosts from flowers.įe quickly runs out of steam with its routine. Climbing trees like a hyperactive chipmunk is great and an exciting tease for the abilities to come. The first few moments is charming, fun even, as we slink around the forest to sing to all these weird creatures. Sadly, the other encounters are nowhere as fun or innovative as this. Instead of simply pressing a button, you’ll need to scamper up and around the creature like something ripped straight out of Shadow of the Colossus. One of the best parts of Fe happens early on, when you’re trying to learn the language of the alien deer-things. As you can guess, learning a new skill lets you access the next area, before the whole process repeats once again You start off with the ability to climb trees, rapidly progressing to gliding and other useful abilities. Fe is a platformer and, to progress, you need to sing to animals that can bestow specials skills. Maybe the gameplay will turn things around. Rather than hooking me in, it left me grasping for straws in the dark, to the point where I just stopped caring. I appreciate the art and how Fe tries to be different, but this felt like a game that was trying too hard. Add the anti-climactic ending and you can see why I’m not exactly enamored. I barely knew more by the end of the game than at the start, which is to say, not much. I’m all for a complex plot, but when a game tries its hardest to make the unknown even more obscure, I’m out. Their abstract nature and sheer numbers practically begs you to spend an insane amount of time deciphering what they’re trying to say, time I had no interest in spending. There are glyphs and hidden flashback sequences that supposedly tell the tale of the Silent Ones, but I couldn’t make heads nor tails of it even after encountering a few. As it stands, I found the whole thing to be a slog 20 minutes in, once I realized the whole game was going to be non-verbal. I don’t need somebody to spell out the plot but some basic background exposition would have done wonders to keep me interested. Honestly, while some will enjoy Fe’s non-verbal storytelling, I simply found it annoying. Here we’re also forced to sneak around instead of confronting them head-on, trying to find some other way of screwing those creatures over. Later, we catch them attacking and kidnapping one of our deer-like friends. Get caught and you’re immediately blasted to smithereens. Your first encounter with the Silent Ones happens near the beginning, where it’s quickly made obvious just who the stronger ones are. All I know is that there are these black, creepy cyclops creatures (that weirdly reminds me of Dormammu’s Mindless Ones from Doctor Strange) called the Silent Ones who are trapping the animals that Fe needs. There’s no dialogue to clue us in on the plot. Oh and, most important of all, it sings a weirdly enthralling song.Īs Fe, you’re supposed to sing to other forest animals and plants to gain new abilities to progress. It climbs trees, walks on two legs, and glides like a flying fox.
I don’t know if the titular character is an animal, an alien, a demon, or something in-between, but Fe alternates between creeping me out with its looks and charming me with its voice.
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