[#] Neopets: The Darkest Faerie (Sony, PlayStation 2, 2005)

How did they fuck up a slam dunk like a Neopets platformer?

Caby has a saying that it wouldn't be a Neopets game without some jank, and that is apt for Neopets: The Darkest Faerie. A cutesy 3D platformer set in Neopia kinda sounds like the perfect game to me, and Faerie certainly makes a good first impression. You don the potato sack of Tor, a yellow Lupe (wolf Neopet) farmboy off to become a knight in the nearby castles of Meridell right as an evil spirit returns to plunge the land into darkness. Tor teams up with an Acara (who are like horned cat creatures) named Roberta to restore order to Neopia and save the queen of faeries, Fyora, from the Darkest one's clutches. Fine enough setup!

The game builds at a leisurely pace, as Tor is tasked with running back and forth between the farm and Meridell to get all his knight paperwork in order and save his sister from a spooky cave. Truth be told, this is actually the best part of the game. Tor's an athletic fellow, and while the combat and platforming aren't amazing, the mechanics pair nicely with the cute, bright graphics and whimsical, frolicking tone of the game. (Roberta's magic, on the other hand, kinda sucks, but the parts where you're forced to play as her are thankfully few.) There's plenty of random, colorful mooks of every Neopets species to talk to, even lorebooks to read, and the mote system for bestowing your gear with elemental power is neat, if thoroughly underutilized.

Where things fall apart is shortly after Tor's knight training concludes. The developers were going for a huge, sprawling open world, but between the sorely lacking map system and absent any sort of fast travel, completing your Morrowind-style quest journal in the right order gets old quick. I got as far as curing a sick village of a miasmus before I completely lost interest in another half hour of running around to progress, especially as the monsters in the open world nibble at your ass on the way. Deeply padded and occasionally rather glitchy, The Darkest Faerie is my go-to example of "I'd rather look at the fanart than actually play it".