Ara Fell: Enhanced Edition (Switch)

An archer heroine... not that common

Ara Fell is a game I just picked up because it looked nice, a 16-bit looking rpg. It's about the girl Lita who finds a ring while falling into a ruin in the world of Ara Fell. Ara Fell is some floating islands in the sky due to the magic of the sunstone that the goddess gave the elves. The ring is Dian's Ring, the elven hero of old and it curses all humans to stone. Apparently the elves was losing a battle against the vampires and came up with the idea to turn themselves into stone and all other living creatures to starve the vampires and then uncurse themselves. Took them 2 000 years so playing the long game.

On this journey you have the help of the sorceress Seri Kesu, the bard Doren and the warrior Adrian, Lita's friend and companion in the adventure that found her finding the ring. You gather these 6 artifacts of power in order to uncurse the elves so that they can bring forth the sunstone so that Ara Fell won't fall out of the sky and into the abyss. Against them stands Baramon, the first vampire that intends to kill all elves and use the power of the sunstone to become a god. Took me 20 hours and I believe I 100 % it (besides grinding to level 99 or whatever the level cap is). 

Short and sweet. Having an archer girl instead of sword wielding boy was kinda interesting. She is also apparently rather short so a large portion of the dialog is short jokes on her expense. Adrian is the childhood friend that have a crush on her, Doren is a wandering bard that is in actuality an elf that fled the last battle since he didn't believe in the method to gamble all life for the chance of success. Seri is just described as the most powerful sorceress in the land. Graphics are nice and every major character have a portrait and the main once even different expressions as they react to certain event in the story (the portraits remind me of the portraits of Heroine's Quest), the music is really beautiful and the gameplay is fun in the beginning, but in the end turned rather repetitive. 

Some negatives is that the ending boss is a bit weird, I brought it down to 1 HP, but he wouldn't die. The trick is at that point you are supposed to be defeated to trigger a cutscene that ends the life of the big bad, and to do that he uses a powerful attack that should one hit kill all characters... except that I used Adrian's reflect spell that withstand that attack. A bit poorly designed since I had to check up so it wasn't a glitch or special trick to finish of the boss (except dying) since I didn't want to redo the battle if I was wrong. Turned out to be by design. Which is really weird since that means I actually lost the last battle. Which probably explain why the sunstone is destroyed and Ara Fell plunges to the Abyss. The epilog shows the survivors gather at a new village trying to fend for themselves in this new world. A short distractions that is enjoyable for most of the journey.