You might want to skip FRACTALS OF DESTINY for its poor and low-effort take on the action RPG genre.
Now and then, some action-filled games appear on consoles and PCs to make up for some enjoyable experiences for gamers who really want to feel like they are dominating the world. The recent release of Dragon’s Dogma 2, for example, had a very rough start, but its gameplay was to just ease the boycott by the players. At that time, people were just baffled about the paid DLC in a single-player disclosure, but it toned down once people realized the gameplay was evening out the whole ordeal.
While making an action RPG game, you might want to just take a step back, remember the basic steps on what makes an action game thoroughly enjoyable, and then prolifically execute these ideas. When you think about it, sure, it sounds rather a heavy task to set an immaculate story with those elements, but, I didn’t expect FRACTALS OF DESTINY to fail in such a way that would just make me say “This isn’t really worth it.” in the first 30 minutes of gameplay.
“Maybe it is too early to say something.”, I said to myself. But as I kept going forward, the reasons to have FRACTALS OF DESTINY in my library got lower and lower. I am not shaming developers for their efforts, by the way, I liked the whole aspect of a powerful warrior being commander despite the evil showing up once again. But the execution is so terrible that made me not want to take the game for granted.
For starters, the story takes place in another universe, around year 6xxx where we control a hybrid between a human and another race. This humanlike person still bears a resemblance to a fully grown, adult woman, so I couldn’t see the inclusion of the mixed race. All I know is that developers have tried to make her representable with outstriking curves. You know what I mean, the over-the-top buttocks and clothing that is mostly questionable in most of our minds.
This is not terrible per se, as the gaming world is going between how women should and should not be represented in video games, though FRACTALS OF DESTINY’s case feels like a last-ditch effort to make the game favorable. It is almost as if they were trying to reach an audience that would be diving in just for that element. I am pretty sure those people who have seen the artwork and decided to get the game will refund in an hour thanks to its confusing and off-putting gameplay.
The first cutscene you encounter is rather bland with a voice-over talking about the previous events that happened in the Earth and the universe. Once the actual cutscene starts, you can sense the emptiness in the character’s movements, as well as the voice acting. It just screams being put together in a rush or without any care. The gameplay provides the same quality as the production, being a mess that cannot be seen as a solid contender for an enjoyable experience.
The usual WASD movement is here, but in order to attack your enemies, you must use your mouse buttons. Someone might say this is the most reasonable aspect of the game, however, the game does not support controller inputs, so you are destined to approach FRACTALS OF DESTINY with a problematic way of playing action games.
On top of that, the camera is terrible to control, therefore your attacks are always either missing or going in the complete opposite direction. There is no lock onto enemies like you would see in an action RPG game, so you have to guess where to aim with your mouse inputs.
From this point, you wouldn’t expect it to get worse, but oh boy, it just kept on giving. So, there is a block button, meaning there is no way to evade incoming attacks either unless you frame-perfectly decide to press the dodge button, which does not work 95 percent of the time.
What you are supposed to do is dash to your enemies in Combat Mode, which is iffy at its best, and then have the starter attack. What ends up happening is you get blasted with the first attack of your enemies because they apparently move faster than you are- both in turning circles and attack patterns. In short, combat is played with a roll of dice, whether you’ll hit your enemy first or not is a total gamble.
The clanky move sets and gameplay leak further into the UI and level design too. One of the first quests you are being tasked with is to retrieve 4 pieces of medkit for a wounded soldier. Entering the giant building, you only have two rooms to scavenge through and everything is so far away from the core design that medi-kits are just round black and red spheres that it was easy to miss. Everything I encountered, just made me silently say “No, that’s not how it should be…”
UI itself is a mess of its own, as it feels like it was created in a rush with very basic fonts and colored background. Not to mention, you have to press the ESC key to reach the information tab, the menu where you build up your character’s abilities or unlock new move sets.
One of the most recent games I reviewed, Outcast – A New Beginning, had a similar approach to the action RPG genre where you could make your character stronger as you progressed through. But Outcast made it so simple by having fast menus and a slick design on the UI. Compared to Outcast, FRACTALS OF DESTINY’s UI seems like some beginner developers forgot to take UI Design 101.
Furthermore, along with the clunkiness of the UI, the menus are hard to navigate through thanks to the developer’s insanely “good” idea of fusing the main menu with a character information menu. So whenever you need to close the game or go back to the main menu, you have to wait for Zevra to open her PDA, then click the leave button, and then the game gets you back to the main menu- unskippable intro movies included! Talking about cutscenes, let me briefly talk about how they are terribly implemented.
You can NEVER skip cutscenes, so if you fail a mission or boot up the game back up, you are going to watch the cutscenes you already did before. It is more irritating when developers bound skip to the next dialogue button to the same button where you close the dialog, so you always see the first line of text, and while the next one is loading up, you close the dialog box, missing on the very well-done “creative” writing.
Alright, the mechanics are bad, and the UI is terrible, what about the presentation? Well, the graphics could pass the degree of being acceptable, funnily enough, the most detail happens to be on our protagonist. The rest, like the environment and other character models, seem to be put together in a rushed state, some of them even having models that always clip through for absolutely no reason.
Furthermore, another element that irritated the heck out of me was the lack of care in the voice acting. FRACTALS OF DESTINY is not sure when to voice a character or not, as most of the cutscenes are amateurishly voice-acted, meanwhile the in-game cutscenes are just silent with text that looks like it was written by a teenager.
No punctuation, basic words, and words that do not convey the exact feeling the characters give. Some of the dialogue seemed very off too. Our protagonist is a commander of a squad, why is she suddenly interested in taking a risk and retrieving an item for a foot soldier? As I said, FRACTALS OF DESTINY does not make any sense in terms of story or narration at any given time.
Okay, we get that the design and gameplay are terrible, is there anything that we can salvage out of the FRACTALS OF DESTINY? Well, if you really want to stare at buttocks at any given time, sure, FRACTALS OF DESTINY has some of the desires you have covered for you.
Other than that, I seriously could not come up with a reason why you should exactly grab FRACTALS OF DESTINY. I can guess that developers are trying to reach a certain audience but since their gameplay delivery is so weak, I honestly can expect a quick refund from people who purchase the game, try it for an hour, and realize it is not so worth it.
FRACTALS OF DESTINY just promises quite a lot of action-adventure elements to be delivered at you but ultimately fails to do so by trying to execute itself very amateurishly. Some of the aspects are just too cheaply made, and it is quite sad to see a developer trying their best to draw people in by designing a lewd character.
In my understanding, they are trying to approach the industry with what Bayonetta did, but in Bayonetta, you could see the quality gameplay alongside a well-built, sarcastic femme fatale that deserves the main role. I seriously cannot suggest FRACTALS OF DESTINY, if you really, really desperate to dive into games with hypersexualized females as the protagonists, look no further than Bayonetta, or the upcoming Stellar Blade– hell, even Haydee is better. Just keep FRACTALS OF DESTINY out of your reach as much as possible.
