Hey, F.U!... no, wait, don't tell my mom! Geez, I just wanted to talk to you about Fantasy University, the RPG that you play alone or with a friend and parodies roughly everything under the sun. You start off as a new student at the prestigious titular university full of bright-eyed optimism and the desire to lay a beat-down on something. But will you become just another face in the crowd of demented students? Or are you destined for something greater?... well... duh. Nobody wants to play a game about someone who does mostly okay in most of their classes and occasionally has to write their parents for money after all.
The game comes with character classes, but they aren't what you might be expecting. Cheermongers can psyche themselves up with energetic buffs or heal during combat, for example, while Mathemagicians can use the awesome power of, uh, math to blow things up when they're not being taped inside garbage cans by the school jocks. As in most MMORPGs, you'll want to keep an eye on your health and ability power (necessary to stay alive and use special skills, respectively) but F.U. also wants you to keep track of how many Adventures you have. You spend one Adventure to perform most actions, like fighting, and they gradually replenish over time. Once you run out, you'll need to wait a while before you can play again.
While there's a heavy push to get you to play with your friends via the in-game BFF system, which lets other players help you out in a fight or during specific quests, F.U. can still be played completely solitary for the most part. There are a few optional side-quests that require a friend of a specific class to complete, but the amount of single-player content more than makes up for it. You'll travel all over the weird and wonderful world in your quest to do stuff. What kind of stuff? Well, there's something strange happening at the festival in Bacon Acres, and the burg of Pleasanton is dealing with a rather unfortunate infestation. On the campus itself you'll find suspicious (but familiar!) faces, a rather unorthodox approach to Home Economics, a dreamy (and steamy) doctor, and a lot more.
Analysis: While the way adventures are doled out means F.U. is the sort of game you play in coffee-break spurts rather than for hours at a time, this was definitely a title I was always happy to come back to because there's always something new and weird to see. There's no question that F.U. nails its presentation in more ways than just quirky artwork either; everything about the package fits the theme, from the to the cheery "Good Job!" encouragement stickers the pop up when you successfully pulverise some unfortunate foe. Whether you find the majority of the content funny is probably going to depend on how well versed you are in pop culture; there are parodies within parodies, combining to make some sort of weird Mecha Parody, on everything from Gordon Ramsay to Scrubs to Zoolander and more.
Anyone who has ever played Kingdom of Loathing or Legend of the Green Dragon will be familiar with this style of gameplay, though F.U. definitely borrows more from the former both in mechanics and overall tone. A few of the quest structures even remind me a little of K.O.L., in particular one where you're forced to pick a side between warring factions (only here it's fruit farmers rather than fraternities). Still, I wouldn't exactly call F.U. a clone, since to me that implies something that's virtually indistinguishable from its source material. There's no denying the inspiration, but F.U. manages to do enough with its stellar presentation and writing that it never really feels boring or too familiar.
Fantasy University is still a work in progress, however, and what's great about this is that the developers have shown a willingness to listen to players and incorporate suggestions into the game itself. During the time I was writing this, in fact, the servers went down for a few hours only to reemerge after several large balance changes had been made that largely struck down most of my complaints, which kind of took the wind out of my sails a little because I do so love to complain. Some annoyances remain; only being able to sell one type of item at a time makes lightening your inventory tedious, especially since you're never asked whether you want all the junk you get for winning fights, and navigation still feels cumbersome with a lot of clicking around sub-menus to get where you want to go.
But I'm okay with that, because, as mentioned, the game is still growing and evolving. While it's not something you might necessarily foresee completely dominating the social RPG genre, if you enjoy those types of games at all Fantasy University is definitely one you should consider adding to your roster. It's strange, it's funny, it's extremely well written and looks very nice to boot. It hardly revolutionizes the genre, but instead just concentrates on providing something that's a lot of fun to play and explore in. There's a ton of content to keep you busy, and for genre fans there's every reason in the world to at least check it out. Just make sure you steer clear of the janitor; I heard someone put a penny in a door once, and you don't even want to know what happened to that guy.
Update: This game is no longer available to play. Previously tagged as: adventure, browser, dhtml, free, game, linux, mac, multiplayer, parody, rating-r, rpg, simutronicscorp, singleplayer, windows
The game looks like it would be cute, but it loads way too slowly to keep my attention.
It seems I need a Kongregate account in order to play. Is that right?
This game is made by Simutronics who also made Gemstone 3 the old immensely popular AOL MUD. Nice to see they are still kicking after all these years.
You can play on Facebook instead of Kongregate. FB seems like a better format for a game that requires you to have lots of friends anyway.
http://apps.facebook.com/fantasyuniversity
Hate Kongregate layout. I have an account and try it out and as much as I like the Mythbuster and Pokemon jokes it not worth the Kongregate layout and the click-20-times-just-to-attack-once issue.
It could just be my god awful computer though but I also personally hate the tiny "upgrade" buttons on EVERYTHING. Bed, armor, weapon, vault, inv, pet thingy, etc, etc, etc...It got old fast...I would donate to KoL before "upgrading" something that should have been free to began with.
I may would have play as a F2Per but if the game lack a real site and be forced to use Kongregate as a host then that a good enough excuse to not to play for me at least.
Seem better then KoL until you remember how free and fast KoL is.
I didn't know it was also a facebook game...Still I personally stay away from those games. At least that answer the question why every freaking thing have a upgrade button right beside of it which ironically the reason why I hate facebook games.
For a facebook game it good in that case...For a flash casual game go with KoL.
This looks like an interesting game, might be something fun to do for an afternoon. :) Although, there are lots of clicks and not-so-fast loading times...
Loading times...so...slow...
The game itself looks charming though. I like the art style.
@ICXCIX
You don't need to pay real money to upgrade your items. Hero coins are gained every time you level up (admittedly not many at first, but the rate seems to increase as your level does). Also, you start the game with 50 hero coins for buying various things. So, although you can get more hero coins by paying real money, it isn't necessary.
I agree that the loading times are way too slow, though. Probably because it uses HTML instead of flash or some language designed for use with games.
All I get when I click the link is a blank white screen. (Mac OSX, Firefox)
i can't even get kongregate to let me register! is there any other site that has this game?
You don't have to use the Kong layout actually, though you need to "sign in" using that or Facebook.
Similar to KoL, its all done by links, and as long as you are signed in to it, you can just open up a separate tab to fantasyuniversity.net and play from there.
However, yes, there is still quite a bit of "loading" from screen to screen, more than you'd expect from a mostly text based game.
As for BFFs, they are almost essential if only to increase your inv size and reduce the cooldown from 15 to 10 min. However, you can just add random people shown on the BFF screen and you're good to go.
One major annoyance (besides the selling system already mentioned) is the distinct lack of trading system. Though you can mail items to other people, there is a limit to the number of mails you can send per day. You also cannot trade or even attach multiple items in one mail.
Some info about which class to choose from:
All classes are viable, though some do things better than others. Stats are mostly just interchanged between classes besides dur, though the different skills make playing each one very different.
Dodgebrawlers, and Slackninjas have skills than boost the attack of your weapon. Both are rather more sturdy than the other classes, and are avg in terms of skill point usage. Math throws SP for huge boom booms. They have the highest damage per turn, but use a LOT of sp to pull it off. Emo and Cheers use debuffs and buffs respectively to boost there damage. They are somewhat slower and weaker than the others due to needing set up time, but are among the most efficient sp users. Emos can be almost considered a tank with their att debuffs and reliance on damage over time.
Currently, the level cap is 14 and you'll be able to finish the quests by 12-13. Still, with all its refs and parodies, it should keep you chuckling for quite a while.
Where to sell loot?
Did anyone notice that the intials are FU? xD
Lovee this game. XD Quite entertaining, and I'm not afraid to come back thinking I'll be so completely absorbed that I'll do nothing else. Hilarious as well. :D
Only thing is I need to learn how to manage my space better since I can't get Hero Points to buy more room with, without actually PURCHASING them with real money. :/
Anyways, fun all in all. :D
This game reminds me way too much of a ripoff of Kingdom of Loathing (not a complete ripoff, just in the general concept) with blatant cultural references, and not nearly as funny as KoL.
@VBlast
KoL was a rip-off of L.O.R.D. (reincarnated as L.O.G.D?), and it was a parody of other DnD text, turned based strategy games. Generally speaking, this game has enough (older) brothers and sisters to be called a genre.
The loading between turns is very slow, and I posted a few problems (or complaints) a few days ago w/o a reply so far. Still, I'm having fun so far and would generally recommend the game.
I would just like to say that I personally do not find the loading too slow, mostly at first during the tutorial but otherwise it is quite managable. And my computer and internet connection is ... not the best.
I really enjoy this game, 50 Adventure Points tend to leave me and my friends hanging, I wish it was around 100, that would probably make me content though.
Also, I believe playing on Facebook does not provide you free Hero Points per round. I would suggest you play on Kongregate, load up the game and click home(bottom of the page) in another window, then you won't be in the restrictive layout of the site(simply close the kong tab, it won't affect your game). This works best for me. :)
I do however, like KoL's completely free system and I dearly hope F.U does not abuse their Hero Shop. :(
This link just goes to Kongretate list of games to play. I searched the web, and I found a site that said that F.U. officially closed its doors in April 2012. No mirror sites? =(
That's a shame. It really makes me sad when people decide to remove games from the internet. I've updated the review and removed the tags so it won't show up in our tag listings anymore. Thanks for the note.
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