Far After is an action platformer with RPG elements published by Bitmap Soft and created by Brent Lattery, also known as SuitNtie. The game follows two friends from a remote village deep within a forest who have recently come of age and received their magical powers. They begin to explore the forest beyond their village and learn of the monsters that lurk there.
The game features platforming elements with action combat along with a menu of spells to utilize. The pixel art has a lot of charm and detail but animations leave a lot to be desired. The game’s cutscenes are full-screen, anime-inspired pieces that offer a lot of expression and insight into how the developer sees the characters. While there is a rather large cast, there isn’t much overall development of these characters including the main protagonists. The story boils down to fetch quests that reward the player with new spells or a damage upgrade to their weapon. While there is a variety of spells including damage dealing, status effects, and healing, the damage upgrade rewards don’t feel impactful. There are stats and a leveling system that do seem to help increase power and help you defeat foes faster. It feels as though it was added for the sake of calling the game an RPG. You get notified that your strength was increased on level up and you also gain a little bit more health and mana but the system isn’t fleshed out and is lacking an enormous amount of depth.
The fetch quests eventually lead up to an event where two strong antagonists come across the forest and are led to the village by the naive friend of the player character. This leads to the village being destroyed, the player saving one of the townspeople by bringing them to the healing pool, unlocking a magical teleportation system, and then the game just ends. That’s right, as soon as the player character announces his plan to learn better magic and beat the antagonists who destroyed the village the game ends. While I was surprised, I can’t say I was disappointed, as the overall experience wasn’t enjoyable.
The combat is confusing and unintuitive. You, as the player, attack in real-time with a slash attack, or you can open a menu to select spells. The monsters don’t have any attack animations and seem to attack on a timer, every x seconds. You’ll know you’ve been hit when you hear a specific sound effect and your health goes down by one but other than that there is no other feedback to the player that they are even being attacked. I found myself mainly using the main slash attack, which gives you mana on hit, and then spamming the first spell you get simply because it’s at the top of the list of spells, allowing you to easily spam it, and seemed to be the most damage per second. The combat is engaging but only because you are trying to spam buttons to combo out the monsters before you ever take damage.
The monsters are spread out among various platforms that you have to jump and climb your way to. There are also a few specific platforming exclusive areas where you are rewarded with an orb you can give to an NPC in town to increase your health. These platforming areas are rather basic but do offer a nice challenge and mostly consist of long precise jumps and hopping from vine to vine to progress. The jump feels natural and although the climbing can be a bit finicky it does add to the experience in a positive way.
I ran into my fair share of glitches including one where my character sprite completely disappeared. I was able to consistently reproduce this by just walking into the forest and running into the player character’s friend’s sprite. I would then be invisible while walking right or left for the rest of the time in that particular area. Jumping would temporarily reveal my character but I would have to leave the area and come back to fix this.
Bitmap Soft labels the game as a three-and-a-half-hour experience. I managed to get to the abrupt ending somewhere between forty minutes and an hour. As of writing, Bitmap Soft is the only way to purchase the game and it comes in a few different formats. There is the digital edition which gives you a copy of the ROM file, this is the edition I purchased, and it cost me $13.16. They also offer a physical cartridge which comes with a box, cartridge, manual, and sticker sheet; This goes for £45 or around $57. At the time of writing the base physical edition is not in stock. Finally, they offer a limited edition collector’s package which includes the physical edition, a coin, a themed memory stick with a copy of the ROM, a poster, art cards, and an art book. All of this can be had for £140 or $176. This is outrageous. There is almost no value brought to the consumer and in my opinion, the game should never have been brought to a physical release. I truly wonder if anyone at Bitmap Soft played through this game. A more likely case is they saw an opportunity to make sales solely based on the quality of the game’s art and cutscenes.
Conclusion
Far After was supposed to be a character-driven Platformer/ARPG hybrid but has failed to deliver this experience. The pixel art is great, especially within the game’s cutscenes but it is the only redeeming aspect. There is almost no value to give to the consumer here, and it is egregious when you’re paying between $13 to $176. I can’t recommend this game to anyone, even the most die-hard Game Boy fans.
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