Video Game / Faraway Story

Faraway Story is an action RPG made by Fantasy Factory in Wolf RPG Editor and translated by vgperson.The story follows pharmacist-in-training Pia as she departs from her home town, determined to cure a disease striking the nearby town of Port Fina. Upon arrival, she can't help but notice a giant landmass floating in the sky above the town: the Faraway Continent. To her surprise, the townspeople think little of the continent, though many rumors exist about what might be there. And what begins with Pia running her little item shop on the hill ends up as a story spanning many faraway places and times...

Between story scenes, you fight through both randomized and predetermined dungeons using a variety of weapons and magic. You can also gather and create many items via alchemy, improving your skills to get better items for yourself, or to sell at your own shop.

Note: The game is complete in a sense, but has an extensive "post-game" planned.One entire scenario, Part 1, is fully playable (and approximately 25 hours long).However, a second (of theoretically comparable length) is still in the works, and does promise a true conclusion to the story.Version 0.75.25 contains five chapters of the Part 2 scenario. It could be a long time before Part 2 is fully complete.

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Faraway Story contains examples of:

• Action Girl: All the female party members can beat up monsters with their weapon or with magic.
• The Ageless: Gods seem to live forever in this story. Celestials form a subversion: since they have mixed god and human blood, they live impossibly long, but do have limited life spans
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • During the stealth portion of the game, being caught by the same guard too many times will cause that guard to disappear in later attempts.
  • In version 0.75 and higher, the level eating NPC now has an option to restore the party to their highest attained level, which saves the trouble of regrinding levels.
• Anti-Villain: The thieves from Erance's slums only steal in order to feed themselves and their kids, which is why Remi lets them off with a warning. Remi herself also counts as this trope, since her goal of using the Philosopher's Stone to create a happy world puts her at odds with the party, who don't want past wars over the stones to repeat.
• Aristocrats Are Evil:
  • According to Silmina's experience, the mage aristocrats had some really shady practices, like culling her newborn brother for not being born with strong enough magic genes.
  • The political system in Erance allows them to invoke Screw the Rules, I Make Them!, which allowed an aristocrat to sentence Erena to death over a minor lie. Luckily, not all aristocrats are examples of this trope, as shown when Remi works behind the scenes to overturn the order.
• Artificial Stupidity: Downplayed, since allies are usually smart enough to use situational abilities like Karnel's balance break related skill. Just don't expect allies to understand the concept of dodging and hitboxes when they're faced with powerful but telegraphed AOE attacks.
• Bittersweet Ending: In the "Ultimate Pharmacist" ending, Ellevark dies as a result of either exhausting his life force during his duel with Pia or by dying due to completing his mission as a Celestial. In order to carry on his legacy, Pia becomes strong enough to the point of beating the Midage Unit and is implied to avoid awakening the Dark Lord.
• Brutal Bonus Level: While there are several optional dungeons in this game, most of them are on par with the story dungeons in the same chapter in which they're unlocked. This doesn't apply to the Forbidden Mine dungeon, which has enemies that are from levels 70-80, which is far above the latest story dungeon. At the bottom is the Manticore boss, which is the strongest boss in the current version of the game. The dungeon is less brutal in the current update due to the raised level cap, but it's still significantly harder than later story dungeons due to the golems' high BLO stat.
• Can't Drop the Hero: Averted. In Part 2, other characters can have the leadership role if they complete a difficult solo dungeon first, which require the player to familiarize themselves with the characters' movesets. This makes it possible to assemble a party without the main character.
• Changing Clothes Is a Free Action: The skill and item shortcut slots can be mapped to a slot in the weapon inventory, allowing the player to switch equipment with whatever is currently in that inventory slot.
• The Chessmaster: Someone is manipulating the plot to match the "Faraway Story" book in order to revive the Dark Lord. They are very meticulous about making sure real events match the book, to the point of killing Remi so she can fulfill the role of the princess. Even in the second loop, they're making sure Ellevark can't significantly deviate from the book.
• Crutch Character:
  • This is played straight with Marinet in the beginning of the story, who joins at a higher level and can use cookies to heal Pia.
  • Ellevark defies this and refuses to contribute much in battle or let other characters join until Pia can best them in Duel Boss battles, since he wants her to train properly instead of relying too much on stronger allies. He'll break this rule to help in the Final Boss battle, since there's simply too much at stake. By then, the party should be around his level anyways.
• Crystal Prison: The location of Marinet's real body
• Defeat Means Playable: Downplayed. Thanks to Ellevark's rules, Pia must defeat her friends in a Duel Boss fight (or Dual Boss in Mimi's case) before she can recruit them as allies, but they'll still be AI-controlled except in specific story events. Averted in Ellevark's case, since his optional defeat in Part 1 isn't canon and therefore Pia can't fully recruit him. In Part 2, it's possible to do missions to fully unlock them as controllable characters, but these don't involve fighting them.
• Developer's Foresight:
  • If you try to refight the Baby Dragon through the Past Archive, it'll be replaced by a weak enemy instead to prevent you from farming Dragon Scale and Dragon Claw.
  • If you try to use the Projection Mirror inside Gran's house, he'll call you out on needlessly using it.
  • If you get to the point in the story where Marinet leaves the party, the dialogue of certain optional missions will change to exclude her.
• Difficulty Levels: This game has Normal, Hard, and Ultimate difficulties, which affects the frequency of enemies/traps and the attack patterns of bosses. The difficulty can be changed in non-combat areas, including recovery rooms in dungeons. Additionally, beating certain bosses on higher difficulties will result in a medal on their Monster File entry.
• Discard and Draw: There are special items that can change a character's element graph, but all opposing element levels have to add up to 6, meaning one would have to give up proficiency in one element to increase the level of another.
• Duel Boss:
  • Every party member except for Mimi and Remi will serve as this to Pia because she's not allowed to recruit anyone she can't defeat.
  • In Part 2, Ellevark is the only playable character at first and has to fight the Giant Amoeba alone.
• Elemental Powers: There are ten different elements in the game, and each party member has an affinity for one in particular, though they can branch out to others. Characters are also unable to use spells that they don't have the elemental level for unless they use a Sorcerer's Crystone or a Power Crystone to change their element graph.
  • Making a Splash: Pia. Though with her Hyper Special, Pia is capable of using all six 'standard' elements at their full power. (The only other character shown capable of this feat is Necrovia.)
  • Shock and Awe: Marinet.
  • Casting a Shadow: Karnel.
  • Playing with Fire: Erena.
  • An Ice Person: Mimi. Also, Silmina, although her innate element is revealed to be fire.
  • Dishing Out Dirt: Remi.
  • Healing Hands: Ellevark, whose innate element is 'Life'.
  • Blow You Away: Crowa (presumably, he is never a party member).
  • Light 'em Up: This is Karlo's innate element, as seen during the brief combat-free period in which he's playable. The 0.75 update introduces Stella, who has a limited selection of light elemental support skills.
  • Power of the Void: presumably the Ruin element. Interestingly, this one deals more damage when the target has no status ailments whatsoever, since being perfectly healthy is considered an opposing status.
• Fission Mailed: After clearing Chapter 5, Ellevark will open a path connecting Mimi's house with his own. However, he can only keep the path open for five seconds, which means Pia, Karnel, and Erena have to hurry to his Erance house to remove Necrovia's seal. Failure to get there in time will result in a game over screen, but the game will immediately dump you back to Mimi's house with the justification that your previous failure was just Pia's imagination. The dialogue for this will also change depending on how you failed.
• Floating Continent: The Faraway Continent is able to float due to the Philosopher's Stone vast power.
• Furo Scene: Chapter 8 shows us a funny scene with Mimi, Erena, Marinet and Pia taking a bath at Fraxinus and Frixis' place. When Erena attempts to have a girls' talk, they realize none of them have boobs, hence Erena groping Pia for having the biggest ones.
  Marinet: At times like these, shouldn't we talk about something else than muscles?
  Erena: Then what should we talk about?
  Marinet: Well, if we’re so focused on our bodies, how about breasts?
  Erena: ... Denied.
  Marinet: Why is that?
  Erena: Take a look around you and all should become clear.
  Marinet: ... Yeah. My bad.
  Erena: Why did you say that right after looking at mine, you brat?!
• Guide Dangit: Finding the optional Death miniboss can be difficult due to how rarely it shows up and how nothing seems to indicate it exists. The only saving grace is that it's not Permanently Missable Content.
• Happily Adopted: After Ellevark's mother 'returned to earth', the still young Ellevark was picked up and raised by a human archeologist named Multinus, who treasured him like his own son.
• Hate Sink: The unnamed Armonican priest is devoid of the sympathetic and entertaining qualities found in the game's other villains, and is instead characterized by his hatred and paranoia of non-Armonicans. He claims to be a pious clergyman, yet he displays his hypocrisy by ignoring Gran's teachings of generosity, as shown when he both refuses to help a dying outsider and threatens to punish Stella for helping. He gets worse when he frames Ellevark for trespassing on Armonica Cathedral's roof and orders his soldiers to shoot both Ellevark and Stella with poison arrows, killing Stella and traumatizing Ellevark into fearing interactions with humans. Eventually, his deplorable actions cause one of his subordinates to poison him as a form of karma.
• Hostage Situation: The Midage Sorcery Unit finally manages to make Ellevark show them the path to Faraway Continent by taking Erena's mother hostage. Remi is not pleased.
• Hyperactive Metabolism: Played mostly straight. Food items heal party members instantly, however, there is a limit to how much one character can eat in a day.
• Idiot Ball: Erena declines the party's offer to use the dimensional passageway to escape to the Faraway Continent, under the rationale that doing so will put the party in danger and possibly expose the pathway to the government. Instead, she attempts to flee past Erance Fortress, which is guarded by the very people who want to execute her. This culminates in Silmina nearly capturing her, which forces the party to hastily attempt to take her to the continent, causing the Midage Unit to discover their passageway anyways. Though thanks to the presence of the mastermind, Failure Is the Only Option.
• "Instant Death" Radius:
  • Arc Desperado and Black Hole deal massive damage to anyone within a certain radius of the caster.
  • The Manticore inverts this a move that deals massive fire damage to the whole screen except for a small radius around it. Unfortunately, it also likes to follow this up with a straight example of this trope.
• Interface Spoiler: The credits list the names of various characters, including Stella, who will be a party member in future updates.
• Knight of Cerebus:
  • The Midage Unit is far more powerful than the party and two of them are very malicious towards the party, which is scarier than dealing with the non-sentient Port Fever and Valgido. Their goal of obtaining the Philosopher's Stone could potentially start a world war, regardless of their leader's good intentions.
  • The currently unknown Big Bad manages to be a Hero Killer by summoning a skeleton army to kill Remi and summoning the Demon Lord to wipe out the continent Pia was on.
• Laughably Evil: The Midage Unit may be the Knight of Cerebus to the party, but they're not immune to having comedic moments when off duty.
• Limit Break: During their Hyper Special, a character can unleash a powerful Finisher in exchange for ending the Hyper Special effects immediately.
• Long-Lost Relative: Silmina reveals that she and Erena share the same father. She despises Erena and the Scarlotus Luna family, which is also why she uses Ice magic instead of her family's trademark Fire powers, though she'll use Fire magic during her boss battle. An easily missed diary in the castle reveals that Silmina also had a little brother, who was immediately culled for lacking magic potential.
• Mutually Exclusive Magic: Downplayed. It's possible to learn spells of opposing elements, but each character has an element graph that dictates what element levels they can use. For the six main elements, Light, and Dark, opposing element levels must add up to six. For Life and Ruin, some characters have no levels in either while others have a total of six levels across both.
• My Rules Are Not Your Rules:
  • During the optional fight against Ellevark, he'll use spells (mainly Ruin elemental) that surpass his element levels. He'll also cast much faster than when he's in the party.
  • To a lesser extent, he has a passive, "My Secret Skill", where he'll have the ability to use skills he doesn't have, but only as an AI party member, making him an instance where this trope works in favor of the player. Of course, this usually doesn't come into play due to his Sink or Swim Mentor methods to train Pia until the 2nd Crowa fight where he can help for real.
  • Similarly, Silmina has mastery over Fire and Ice, even though this shouldn't be possible according to elemental graph rules. Though it can be explained by her strong magic genes.
• Mysterious Past: We know next to nothing about Marinet, where she came from and how she ended up in a doll's body. Nor does the person herself know this. Until the end of Part 1, where we find out that she's a Celestial who was assigned to guard the Philosopher's Stone. In Ragnarok, her body got sealed inside the Philosopher's stone by the Gods of Destruction and her soul got sealed into a doll. We still don't know how exactly and why it happened, though.
• No Body Left Behind: When Ellevark's mother said that it was "her time to return to earth", all he found left of her was a pile of Time Sand. Even worse, at the very end this is revealed to be Ellevark's fate if Pia beats him.
• Only One Name: In this world, it's rare for commoners to have last names.
• Permanently Missable Content:
  • Missions from Part 1 won't be available in Part 2.
  • Doing the final mission of Part 1 during Chapter 8 is required to get an extra copy of Ell's staff while doing it during Chapter 9 will cause the player to miss the staff.
  • During Part 2's castle infiltration, it's possible to miss the Super-Heavy Piano item.
  • Several entries in the Files can be missed, including unique boss only skills if you manage to beat the boss before they can use it.
• Purple Is Powerful: Played for Laughs with Windmill Gramps EX, who is like the other Windmill Gramps but with purple skin and a better selection of items.
• Quest Giver: Pia's allies will occasionally give her missions to recruit party members and learn about game mechanics. When Ellevark starts Chapter 12 alone, he gives himself a tutorial quest and goes on to explain mystery recipe mechanics to himself and the player. He notes how lonely and sad this sounds.
• Really 700 Years Old: Ellevark and all other Celestials are much older than they appear due to being descendants of gods.
• Relationship Values: After Part 2 Chapter 4, Ellevark will gain access to the Girl Graph, where increasing the affection of one female party member will lower the affection of the member of the opposite element.
• Revive Kills Zombie: Life spells can be used to damage undead enemies. In fact, they're the only enemies that can be targeted with such spells, though non-standard Life spells like Resurrection won't target them.
• Schmuck Bait:
  • A few dungeons have switches surrounded by skeletons or in an empty room, with nothing forcing the player to activate them. The one in the Sage's Cave actually does have a great reward though.
  • During the timed segment to make it back to Erance, there's a blue chest in the hallway to distract you. Opening it after the segment will net you the game over music sheet.
• Serious Business: Everyone except for Mimi and Pia become extremely gung-ho when it comes to deciding on the rules for alchemy and forging. Ellevark and Erena are determined to ensure that the rules don't make things too easy for Pia while Karnel wants to freely practice his beloved alchemy. As a result, they treat the meeting like an intense battle of wits.
  Ellevark: Well then...It's time to announce the ORDERS!!
  Karnel: Come!!
  Erena: Prepare yourself!!
  Pia: Why is everybody so hyped up over adding some orders?!
• She Knows About Timed Hits: Parodied. During the mission for explaining Balance Points, Pia can say that she already knows about this mechanic causing Ellevark to spin around while declaring the mission done. Then he'll give the explanation and tutorial for real.
• Shout-Out: The monster book entry for Koocoo claims that it has no affiliation with Yuichi from the Wolf RPG Editor sample game.
• Stationary Boss: Valgido, Tower Golem, and Swamp Turtle cannot move at all. In the second Valgido fight, its flunkies are also stuck to the ground.
• Super Mode: Strong enough characters have their own unique Hyper Special that temporarily grants them an effect, such as how Pia gets doubled magic power and the ability to ignore Element Tree restrictions.
• Take Your Time: Despite the in-game clock system, there's no limit to how much you time you use except for a few events, like the Magic Pillar segment.
• There Are No Coincidences: The party realizes that most of the incidents they encountered are very unnatural. Port Fever spreads way too much for disease that kills its hosts in a short amount of time and Valgido isn't even growing in its natural habitat. They speculate that someone is causing these incidents to happen, especially when Erena tells them of the shady informant who told her to go to the castle.
• Timed Mission:
  • In order to re-open the dimensional passageway permanently, Pia has to get through the passageway in five seconds before it closes. Unfortunately, Ellevark left a bunch of banana peels on the floor.
  • Some of Pia's training missions are in timed mini-dungeons. While it's easy to get from start to finish in time, Ellevark also places Claim Tickets behind optional puzzles to force the player to budget their time wisely.
  • Marinet and Karnel's leadership exams are short and contain fairly weak obstacles, but are timed so that there's little room for error. Averted for Erena and Mimi's leadership exams because Ellevark considers them too long and difficult for a time limit.
• Town with a Dark Secret: Northyne manages to survive in harsh conditions because of the sacrifice of a summoner from Mimi's family every three years. Mimi is the only member of her family left, and her time is coming...
• Villain Forgot to Level Grind:
  • Zigzagged with Crowa, who is first encountered as a Hopeless Boss Fight. As the Final Boss, he uses the power of the Philosopher Stone to revive twice for a total of 240000 HP, uses wind spells, summons four elemental crystals as backup, and has slightly higher offensive stats in his final phase. However, his Finisher is less powerful, his defensive stats are lower, and his agility is lower.
  • Averted with many of the boss rematches in Part 2, such as Valgido. They'll all be around Ellevark's expected level to ensure he can't curbstomp them.
• What the Hell, Player?: If the player discards or sells the Dragon Khakkhara that Mimi gave to Ellevark at the end of Part 1, Ellevark will indirectly berate the player for their careless actions. Fortunately, Mimi in Part 2 starts with her own copy, though this means the player won't be able to combine the two staves.
• Worf Had the Flu:
  • Erena is weakened by Northyne's snowy environment during her Duel Boss battle. After the battle, the party even lampshades how much of an advantage Pia has, though Erena accepts her loss and fully joins anyway.
  • Remi gets killed by an army of skeletons because she was already worn out from fighting Pia, Erena, and the dragon without rest. Though considering the lack of skeletons in the room that Pia found her in, she most likely returned the favor.
  • Valgido was weakened by Ellevark before he got paralyzed from the poison, allowing Pia an Karnel to finish it off. In Part 2, Ellevark, Marinet, and Karnel have to fight it at full power.
• World's Strongest Man: King Gollmo of Erance was once considered near-godlike, but old age caught up to him. As a result, he had to split his power into four and pass it down to the four members of the Midage Sorcery Unit. To put into perspective how strong he is, each member of the unit is at least as strong as Ellevark.
• You Can't Fight Fate: Played straight in Part 1, when the Dark Lord is resurrected. Ellevark does not take this well and turns back time, hoping to subvert this. As of Chapter 13, he doesn't seem to be succeeding in deviating from "Faraway Dream."
  • Averted if Pia manages to beat Ellevark before the final battle. In that case, when Crowa, Silmina and Necrovia show up, Pia, as the unpredictable factor in the story, single-handedly beats them all and becomes renown throughout the world as the ultimate alchemist.
• Your Princess Is in Another Castle!: The end of Part 1: the party has destroyed the Philosopher's Stone to prevent its use and while there are still some unanswered questions, the world seems to have been saved, cue The Reveal of the prophetic book and the resurrection of a Dark Lord which destroys an entire continent, which happens to be the one Pia was on. Ellevark then rewinds time, starting Part 2.