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Boy, Fragile Dreams: Farewell Ruins of the Moon just sounds Japanese, doesn’t it? I think if you add “Farewell Ruins of the Moon” to any title, it’ll sound Japanese. Tron Legacy: Farewell Ruins of the Moon, Avatar: Farewell Ruins of the Moon, The Big Lebowski: Farewell Ruins of the Moon. See?
Likewise, Fragile Dreams: Farewell Ruins of the Moon embraces its Japanese origins throughout every aspect of the game, as evidenced by this opening song:
Beyond that, although English dialogue was recorded, you’re afforded the option to play the game in its native Japanese with English subtitles. I prefer to go this route, as I always like to keep games as close to their origin as possible. However, the English actors are good, so no worries if you’d rather not read your way through a game.
Shadows of Days Past Yearn for Light
Your characters in the game are quite young – early teens? – and they’re very innocent, trapped in a world they’re trying to make sense of while searching for someone or something to accompany them along the way. Are they on Earth? I suppose it’s irrelevant. All that matters is that some sort of apocalypse has wiped out nearly all life. Among the survivors are the young boy Seto, who begins the game by burying his recently deceased grandfather. At least, we think that’s who it is. Seto didn’t even know his name.
Alone, inspired only by a letter left by the told man, Seto embarks on a journey to find other survivors. He comes across a waif named Ren, who touches Seto both literally and figuratively. He’s moved, but she flees, and Seto becomes obsessed with finding her again. Is she at that red tower always looming in the distance? Regardless, that becomes Seto’s destination.
If this sounds boring, then stop reading right now. Fragile Dreams never really picks up. Rather, it sells itself with atmosphere. The graphics are haunting, creating a beautiful but lonely and often creepy world. Set in places such as malls and amusement parks, you can sense that these areas were once alive with activity. But all that remains is emptiness and the ghosts of those who died here.
I Hold on to the Delicate Shimmer
This presents both of the major problems with Fragile Dreams.
First, you have to fight these ghosts and the combat is clunky. Because of the inability to lock on to a target, you have to position yourself perfectly for attack. Doing so, you often block from view the enemy you’re attacking, so you can’t tell how far away it is or whether it’s charging. Worse, your health status is not displayed on screen, so you can’t tell when you’re about to die. This often leads to either dying when you’re loaded with health packs or to wasting health packs when you don’t need them.
The second problem is the back-and-forth required to fight your way through. Dead enemies often drop objects but you’re severely limited in how much you can carry (think of the Resident Evil briefcase). If an enemy drops an object that you can’t carry, you have to run all the way back to a fire which also serve as your save points, a shop, and the place where you can manage your inventory and identify mysterious objects. If you drop off some objects and head back to where you just were, you’ll find the object gone but the enemies have respawned.
Although there are numerous save game points to help with this, the amount of back and forth (as well as the fighting you must do along the way) gets very tedious.
Ever-Shifting, Ever-Changing Light and Shadow
As the enemies get tougher, so will you. Seto levels up as he gains experience but, as far as I can tell, the only reason this light RPG element is included is because gamers like to see numbers appear above their character’s head. Your weapons get tougher, too, but you’ll need to carry a couple because they break. You can continue to use a broken weapon but it won’t be very effective. So, if you carry multiple weapons and health packs, that leaves little room to store found objects along the way. Back to the fire you go.
And this is too bad because it drags to a crawl the already slow but surprisingly effective and touching story in Fragile Dreams. I guess the benefit of having a young protagonist is that he’s allowed to cry when moved to do so, and you feel bad for the kid.
He’s alone and, well, fragile in this beautiful but hostile world, and that makes you care for him. Not so if he were a cocky Vin Diesel type armed to the teeth with grenades and shotguns. Seto kills ghost dogs and ghost legs and smiley-face jellyfish with a butterfly net. Take that, Hollywood!
One other problem worth mentioning is that the controls aren’t implemented as well as they should have been. As with Calling and Silent Hill, you move Seto with the Nunchuck and control his flashlight with the WiiMote. The flashlight and animations, however, are quite jerky. Not nearly as fluid as I’ve now grown used to. The flashlight effect isn’t as nice, either, with the light randomly disappearing or shining off objects in unnatural ways.
Just What Awaits Us Beyond Them?
Whether this is worth the hassle comes down to how much you’ll allow yourself to get involved in the story. There’s no arguing that that Fragile Dreams: Farewell Ruins of the Moon is one of the more attractively designed games available for the Wii, both with graphics and audio (my children loved the song performed by Aoi Teshima, video embedded above and my daughter became as obsessed as Seto in finding the girl who sang it). But is this enough?
For me, the drive to discover new locations—coupled with the desire to give this kid some lasting happiness—kept me going when combat/control frustration would’ve otherwise set in.
This will sound dorky, so I apologize for that, but looking back at the game it really does sort of feel like a dream. It’s one I recall fondly, but only because the generally pleasurable experience makes it easy to forget the bad parts.
Site [Fragile Dreams: Farewell Ruins of the Moon]
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