"Good, if you like this sort of game..."

When I first heard about Fairyland, I thought ''Oh great, another MMORPG!'' so I looked in to it. I saw it was targeteted to a much younger audience, due to the graphics, mostly, but I still decided to give it a shot.

All I could say was... ''Meh''.

General (4/10): Basically, you can either choose to be a Human, with balanced stats, an Elf, with higher magic skills, or a Dwarf, with higher attack skills. Every race has 2 Male forms, and 2 female forms. Then when you hit level 10, you can become either one of 3 warrior classes, one of 3 Journeyman classes, or one of 4 Diviner Classes. Warriors include Swordsmen, Blademen and Axemen. Journeymen include Martial Artists, Beastmasters and Traders, and Diviners include Priests, Magicians, Acolytes of Light and Acolytes of Darkness. Somewhat basic

Gameplay (4/10): For the most part, it's a turn-based MMORPG with random battles. You can level up with other people, but you have to be in the same party. Only the leader of the party can move around, so you basically do nothing until a fight, kill all the enemies, then repeat.

Battles are fought in a turn-based fasion. You can either attack, defend, use an item, use a spell, do something with your pet, or run away. Pretty straight-forward.

You usually have a pet, which helps you fight in battles, and steals your experience. You can put it in your weapon or armor to change its element.

All in all, the gameplay is new for an MMORPG, but it gets kind of old after a while, especially in a party. Good while it lasts, though.

Sound (2/10): In my opinion, the sound in this game failed. The music is very short, repetitive, and almost all of it is ripped off of Secret of Mana and Seiken Densetsu 3. The sounds aren't too great either. The reason this didn't get a 1 is because you can replace the files with your own music or sounds.

Graphics (3/10): The game was targetted to younger audiences, but the graphics are still under average. Not much to say here. 90% of the pets are just recolors of the other pets, and even then, the color palette in this game is very small and most of the colors look somewhat similar.

Replayability (1/10): Even though it's an MMORPG, you can usually play it for about a week at the very most before you get sick of it. There are over 100 quests which will keep you occupied, which usually involve talking to one NPC, then going and talking to another, and getting a reward.

Other stuff (2/10): The most noticable differences were th ejob system and the pet system. Using a Beastmaster, one of the 10 classes in the game, you could catch pets with capsules (Pretty original concept if I do say so myself), and you can either keep them for yourself to fight for you, or give them to other people for a price. As for the job system, all you need are a few items in your inventory for the job you're doing, then go AFK, then come back a few hours later and you'll have a high job level and a bunch of valuable items. A little boring.

Overall (3/10): Fairyland isn't a bad game. It's one of those games that's fun for about a week, then after that it gets somewhat tedious and boring, unless you really like the turn-based and random-battle type of game. Give it a try anyway, you might like it...

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 03/13/04