Faery Tale Adventure review - Sega Megadrive

Once upon a time, when everyone was happy and commuting had yet to be invented, there was a clever young lad called Julian who lived with his two brothers in the land of Holm. Life for them and their countrymen was peaceful until, just when it looked like things couldn't get any better, bad fortune struck the land.

Crops failed and Holm was invaded by hordes of ugly monsters from the Seventh Level of Hell. Back in Julian's home town, the town elders decided that only a magical talisman could save the land from the invaders - but the talisman had been stolen! Julian, being the bravest and most handsome young fellah-me-lad in the neighbourhood, volunteered to set out to recover the item and free his land from menace. And his brothers vowed that if Julian couldn't find it, they would take up their swords and complete the quest.

This adventure game casts the player as Julian (and if he dies in the quest, as his brothers) as he travels through the land, fighting monsters and seeking treasure on the road to the talisman. Folks he meets on the way provide information and, if Julian has enough money, the chance to pick up weapons, provisions and spells so that he stands a chance of surviving longer than ten minutes!

What the Mean Machines staff thought

I've been changing my poor opinion of console RPGs recently because of games like Sword of Vermillion and King's Bounty. This is a large step in the wrong direction though. It's graphical style is very similar to SOV, but the gameplay is much more limited. There are loads of things to do and the land is huge but I didn't find the overall situation particularly enthralling - in fact it didn't interest me at all. So the whole game left me uninvolved and rather bored, and although this is technically great game I just can't recommend it personally. Try Might and Magic II if you fancy a Megadrive RPG or adventure this month. I think that's a lot more challenging.

As I recall, the Amiga version of this created quite a stir a few years back, but how standards have changed since then! If you're played Sword of Vermillion you'll know how good a Megadrive role-playing game can be, and Faery Tale Adventure isn't half as much fun to play. The scenery graphics aren't bad, although they're a bit too jolly to create any atmosphere of imminent danger, but the tiny character sprites mince around looking appalingly weedy. Graphical discrepancies wouldn't be so bad if there was enough gameplay to keep you distracted, but there isn't, and you're never given a firm idea about what you should do next. Talking to the characters is pretty pointless because they rarely have anything informative to say and the combat section is, frankly, feeble. If you want a really good RPG spend the £40 on Sword of Vermillion, which is a much better game all round.