From: tehkao@ocf.berkeley.edu (Teh Kao Yang)
Newsgroups: rec.games.video
Subject: Review of Fhey Area (Mega-CD)
Date: 25 Jul 92 07:49:25 GMT
Organization: U.C. Berkeley Open Computing Facility
NNTP-Posting-Host: tsunami.berkeley.edu

Before reading my reviews, please know that I have a very limited 
knowledge of Japanese. I rely on my knowledge of Chinese characters and
trial and error to play the games. Luckily, this works for most of the
simpler RPGs and adventure games. So I can't really make any comments
on the storylines or plots of the games.

Fhey Area is the first RPG for the Mega-CD. It was released in Febuary
by Wolfteam, who also did Sol-Feace and Earnest Evans for Mega-CD. 

The game uses an overhead perspective similar to that of the Phantasy Star
series. You start off with one character, and as you progress in your 
adventure others join your party, and you eventually have 4 in your party.
The game also plays very similar to the PS series.  As you walk around the
map you will run into monsters. There are multi-level dungeons and towns
that you can explore. 

The main attraction of Fhey Area is how combat takes place. During a fight
there are two windows displayed. One shows the pictures of the monster's
actions, the other shows pictures of your characters' attacks. As each
character does his or her attack, the window shows a picture of the action,
like swinging your sword, casting a spell, or a monster taking a swipe at
you, etc. The effects of spells are also dramatically displayed; like a
fireball engulfing a monster or a freeze spell encasing it in ice. There
are different realistic sound effects for each spell, and these are played
off the CD. However this turns out to be a rather annoying feature since
it does take about a second for the Mega-CD to access the sound effect so
if you cast a lot of spells, combat is slowed down. Another unique thing
about the combat system is that each character has 4 or 5 different types
of attacks; like a simple slash, a thrust, a kick, etc. And of course there
are different graphics for each attack.

The map of the world is rather small considering it's a CD game. The game is
also only about as long as a cartridge game; I finished it in about 2 weeks
of playing. 

The other highlight of the game is the CD music, of course. There are about
15 different BGMs and they all sound fantastic. The BGM of the first town
is especially catchy. However there aren't any songs with vocals. There is
an opening cinema sequence in the beginning of the game. The intro has rather
jerky animation and is a few mintues long. Nothing really awesome.

Well, after playing this game, I feel that it's a good first effort at a 
Mega-CD RPG by Wolfteam. There aren't really any great features in the game
that take advantage of the Mega-CD's capabilities aside from the CD music
and sound effects.  However there are enough nice graphics to keep the game
interesting and the fights are fun to watch. A problem with the game is that
there is just too much fighting; you usually have to fight after walking 
around for just a bit.

Here's how I would rate this game by Mega-CD standards:

Graphics: 6 (Nice graphics during combat; jerky animation)
Sound: 8 (Good BGMs and sound effects; no vocals though)
Gameplay: 6 (Keeps your interest but too short for a CD game)
Overall: 6


-Teh Kao
Newsgroups: rec.games.video,ne.wanted