Fiora Arc

[url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/38888018-United-Critics/] Please follow [b]United Critics[/b] for quality reviews[/url] [h2]Fiora Arc Review[/h2] [h1]Note[/h1] For some reason, the game also launches VR every time I open it, although it’s played without it. (Maybe you can use it for looking around with a headset, but that isn’t mentioned anywhere I can see) [h1]About the game[/h1] Fiora Arc is a game, where you play as a character named B, where you have to manage and protect the island you fly to at the beginning of the game. On it, you will build your own sort of flower colony, where you have to build, plant flowers, use them for leveling, and fight back against attackers as you live out B’s story. [h1]Story[/h1] Assessing the story is a bit difficult, to say the least. You play as a sort of computer, vending machine-looking character where the game begins with you flying through the sky with your friend, racing to reach the island where you live. After landing you have a ”race” with your friend on who can collect the most and best-looking, even “legendary” flowers. Afterward, you find and plant the flowers in the house and leave it, you are pulled into the sky with the rest of the world where you have a sort of flashback/dream sequence leading into a grim-looking vision or memory. With those done you are thrown into a fight against a shadow-drawing-looking thing, where your character encourages itself to fight as long as you can. The game’s story does seem to have some deeper, possibly psychological meaning, but for most of us, we are left to wonder what all the drawings we are shown in the later half of the game mean. [h1]Gameplay[/h1] The gameplay at the start consists of flying through the sky racing your friend to an island in the distance accompanied by beautiful music. Afterwards you can collect flowers, but you don’t really achieve anything with that, as the point is to find the “legendary” flower found at the island’s peak. That part took me a while to find as it’s a bit miss-leading, as where you find the flower is at the edge of the island. The enemy you fight during the last part of the game is also a bit confusing, as all you see are numbers on the screen, a shadowy figure and pillars trying to squash you without explaining what you are supposed to do. (You need to collect flowers and than click when near the creature when it has a glowing orb) After the fight you are greeted with a game complete screen, but you can play it a bit more, collecting flowers and leveling up your stats, but there isn’t much to do beyond that. The game is very short and can take only around 30-60 minutes once you know what you are supposed to do. [h1]Visuals[/h1] The game has a simple, yet charming graphical design that fits really well and doesn’t look amazing, but the ground and grass can look a bit weird sometimes. (one game instant it’s fine, the next one it isn’t) [h1]Music[/h1] The opening song when you begin the playthrough is beautiful, but if you let it play out there isn’t any more music to accompany you until you reach the island. When walking around the island, the music isn’t as good as the song played at the start, and how you like it is completely up to personal preference. There are a few different tracks that repeat, but sometimes there are long pauses in between, leaving you with up to over a minute of silence. [h1]Pros and Cons[/h1] [h2]Pros[/h2] [list] [*] Not amazing, but fitting and charming graphics, [*] Good accompanying music, [*] An intriguing story if it we got more or it, [/list] [h2]Cons[/h2] [list] [*] Long silent pauses between music, [*] Slow movement even when sprinting, [*] Unclear on what exactly you are supposed to do or how, [*] Kite can sometimes bug in several ways, (sometimes it’s invisible, but interactable, other times it’s the opposite, and in one instance the usual subtitles didn’t show up when using it) [*] Messy and sometimes unresponsive controls [/list] [h1]Conclusion[/h1] The game is short, but the early part of the game is also sweet but gets weirder once you leave the house. I think the game would be a lot greater with either a sequel or an update where the gameplay and story get expanded further so we can actually discover what is going on with our character. It's free, so it’s definitely worth getting checked out. Rating: 5/10 Would love to see more, and the review can be changed if the game gets more content.