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Are you ready to start your adventure as a faerie? Then let’s get into my Deracine review!
Story:
“The Faerie wakes up in an orphanage and learns from a mysterious voice that they must acquire a red ring on their hand that stores life energy, and a blue ring on their left that manipulates time. The Faerie then meets a girl named Yuliya, who requests that the Faerie convince the orphanage’s other children that the Faerie exists. The Faerie manipulates artifacts and objects to convince the other children.
Once the inhabitants of the orphanage are convinced, the Headmaster makes a request of the Faerie. Holding out a golden wand, he asks the Faerie to use his remaining time to prevent the incident that wounded Rozsa’s leg. The Faerie does so, fixing Rozsa’s leg in the present. Happy to have a friendly Faerie at their boarding school, the children begin working on various ways to honor the being. This culminates in a concert in which the Faerie brings Nils’ pet mouse back from the dead in order to repair the music box in the music hall.
Afterward, the Faerie learns that it has actually been talking to a ghost of Yuliya, and the other children, now inspired by the Faerie’s ability to bring back the dead, have made a plan to bring back Yuliya. Yuliya’s ghost informs the Faerie that the children have wandered into the forest in search of something large enough to revive Yuliya, and pleads for the Faerie to save them. The Faerie follows the children’s trail and discovers that it is too late to prevent an evil faerie from sucking their life energy.
Lorinc survives and decides to sacrifice himself so the Faerie can go back and prevent their doomed excursion. The Faerie travels in time, attempting to dissuade the children from entering the forest, but finds them unconvinced. The Faerie travels further back to revive Yuliya, discovering the body of another caretaker, Margareta, who committed suicide after her daughter Alexis died. Taking the red ring from Margareta’s corpse, the Faerie places it on Yuliya’s. This quickly goes poorly as she transforms into an evil faerie herself, stealing the life force of the children and Headmaster. A remorseful Yuliya allows the Faerie to use the life force she has accumulated for the Faerie to travel to the night of Yuliya’s death.
The Faerie learns the Headmaster and Margareta were scholars from the city of Rohn studying faeries, but the city burned down and evil faeries stole life force through the land. The Headmaster and Margareta set up the orphanage to continue their experiment. Concluding that humans with regrets will become evil, and that a newborn is the perfect candidate, they attempted to turn Alexis into a faerie, resulting in her death. The Faerie realizes that it is the faerie version of Alexis, summoned when Yuliya stole the Headmaster’s golden wand and wished to see Alexis again, inadvertently trading her own life force.
Ultimately, history will prove to repeat itself unless the Faerie decides to return Yuliya’s life to her instead of taking the ring for itself. Yuliya comes to the realization of how special her own life is, and resolves to live her life to the fullest. However, this means the Faerie sacrifices its own ability to interact with the world, slowly fading away into nothing. Yuliya lives happily with her friends and the Headmaster.”
Although the ending (or near the end anyway) took me by surprise, unknowing that we had actually taken Yuliya’s life to give birth to our own, I was unaware of most of what was talked about above. Perhaps the information about why the boarding school happened, and the experiments were somewhere within the walls of the school, I completely missed them on two different play throughs.
Controls:
These are pretty simple. You use the Move controllers as your hands, picking up objects or moving them. As for actually moving, the game uses teleportation to get around. Although this can really disappoint me in some games, this one uses it well, and I still see no reason for any type of normal movement. Turning directions is the simple snap movements, but these also work fine for what is needed.
Gameplay:
Time is frozen as you hop about, moving my teleportation and touching certain objects with the help of your Move controllers. Your main focus is helping the children, and keeping an eye on them.
There’s a time or two where you need to reverse time or manipulate objects to further the story, such as reviving a dead flower or so. Other times, you’ll be playing tricks on the other kids to prove you’re real. The gameplay all ties into the story, so a majority of what you do has to do with the story itself.
Soundtrack:
This has one of the most relaxing soundtracks I’ve ever heard in a game. It is very memorable, and regardless of my first time beating this game being some time ago, it stuck with me ever since.
Graphics:
I wasn’t sure what I expected when I went into this game, as it was my first VR game, but I was definitely in awe. Looking back, and comparing to other games around that time, 2018, I believe the graphics could have been a tad better, but I personally felt like they fit the bill of the game, and were beautiful all the same. Granted, when I say this, the world is frozen a majority of the time, which makes a big difference.
Scores:
Story: 6/10
Controls: 7/10
Gameplay: 7/10
Music: 10/10
Graphics: 8/10
Replayability: 5/10
Overall:
7
Final Words
Despite its flaws, the game is a wonderful experience that I do believe is worth seeing for yourself at least once. Although this may turn some people away, and that’s okay since the game is probably about 6-8 hours (this depends on your exploration of the grounds) long in my experience. I believe if it is obtainable for cheap, $10-12, then it’s worth going for.
Thank you for reading my Deracine review.
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