Fe Review

For any­one unaware, Fe is an indie title recent­ly released from EA Orig­i­nals, and devel­oped by the Swedish stu­dio, Zoink. EA Orig­i­nals is pro­gram that’s sup­posed to bring unique and mem­o­rable game expe­ri­ences from the best indie studios. 

Story

In Fe, you play as what I can only describe as a oth­er­world­ly fox, which sings its way through the for­est. For­eign crea­tures (mon­sters or what­ev­er you want to call them) appear to be tak­ing over the land. They cap­ture inno­cent ani­mals and send them through a por­tal to an unknown loca­tion. In the begin­ning, the entire sto­ry is a mys­tery, which isn’t only unlocked through cutscenes, but through a cou­ple of col­lec­tables through­out the game. 

The only ele­ment of the sto­ry that was quite an annoy­ance was the anti-cli­mat­ic end­ing, which seemed to be rather cliche to me. 

Gameplay

Sur­pris­ing­ly, Fe has well-round­ed plat­former mechan­ics. If you are rel­a­tive­ly decent at this type of game, it’s extreme­ly easy to get a hang of the con­trols and zip around the for­est. Although there is no dou­ble jump (like many oth­er plat­form­ers), there are plen­ty of ways to tra­verse each area. Among them is a glide mechan­ic, which def­i­nite­ly assists you while maneu­ver­ing around. The skill to climb trees is just as impor­tant as the glide, both work in tan­dem and great­ly com­ple­ment each oth­er. You can also adjust you cam­era when mak­ing a long or com­pli­cat­ed jump, so you’re less like­ly to miss your target. 

Singing is rather inter­est­ing, as your bot­tom right trig­ger allows for how strong your vocals will be. Light­ly press­ing down on the trig­ger gives you a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent sound then when you go full throt­tle. There are many types of for­est crea­tures and objects you can inter­act with, sim­ply by singing to each ones spe­cif­ic tune. 

There is no actu­al com­bat, but there are ene­mies and they can catch you. To avoid being set back to a pri­or posi­tion, your best bet is the hide in taller grass so you don’t draw atten­tion and sneak by. If an ene­my does spot you, it will attempt to encase you in some black muck. It’s pos­si­ble to escape the spit­ting gaze by run­ning to the near­est tall grass. 

Skills and Abilities

To unlock skills in Fe, you must col­lect these pur­ple crys­tals that are locat­ed around the entire map. The first skill you will receive allows you to climb trees. As men­tioned above, it’s a rather impor­tant skill. There is one skill you can only acquire by find­ing anoth­er fox crea­ture and learn from it, but the major­i­ty of them are learned when acquir­ing crystals. 

Abil­i­ties in Fe are cinched in with the dif­fer­ent types of songs you can play. Each song is taught to you by oth­er crea­tures that habi­tat the for­est, after you help them accom­plish one goal or anoth­er. There are a total of 6 songs you can obtain, each giv­ing you anoth­er abil­i­ty to use to get to items and move through the map easier. 

Graphics

When first start­ing Fe, I was trans­fixed by the crazy col­ors of the open­ing area. How­ev­er, after play­ing for sev­er­al hours it felt mud­died up with each sec­tions col­ors blend­ing togeth­er. There also seems to be a con­stant fog that’s rolling through every environment. 

When look­ing at objects that are not the sky, the art style is rather appeal­ing, and every object/creature seems to have defined lines. It makes for a nice crisp look­ing forest.

There’s also no way to adjust your bright­ness, because the game does­n’t offer it. Also, Fe is sup­posed to run at 30 FPS, but even on a PS4 Pro it has frame drop when com­ing into areas with a lot of water and “fog”.

The Map

Fe’s map is prob­a­bly the most frus­trat­ing map I’ve had to deal with in a long time. There are 9 dif­fer­ent sec­tions to the map, which you can only view by open­ing the World Map. The prob­lem is you can’t zoom in to see exact­ly where you want to go next. Same goes for the Open World Map, which you can’t move at all to see the entire sec­tion you are in. It’s rather odd this would be part of a game that has such a vast space to roam through. 

Bottom Line

Fe has a rather inter­est­ing expe­ri­ence to offer, and is sim­i­lar to oth­er plat­form­ers (like Jour­ney and Unrav­el), but does still have an appeal. It’s got a rather mys­te­ri­ous sto­ry, with great plat­form mechan­ics. It also becomes extreme­ly fun to play once beat­ing the sto­ry, allow you to trav­el the map to your hearts con­tent with­out ene­mies in your way. Although you can fin­ish the sto­ry in a lit­tle over four hours, it stills has plen­ty to offer for it’s $20 price tag.