Enchanted Folk and the School of Wizardry
Magic?
You have the option to confirm or deny, and it doesn't seem to matter which you choose, but it's all rather unpleasant nonetheless. The steady stream of advice about making friends doesn't help. The message seems to be that it's acceptable for everyone to be horrible to each other, and if people slag you off it's your fault, and you should remedy the situation by sucking up to them. Is that really a great message to send the primary demographic for this game?
Who cares? There are fish to catch and mushrooms to pick and dragonflies to net! Yes, there's endless fun to be had, assuming your idea of fun is doing the same collecting tasks over and over and over again. Even though you've already done virtually identical tasks over and over and over again in Animal Crossing.
Enchanted Folk's big distinction is that there's also that School of Wizardry to attend. Here you can take classes, i.e. tutorials, about how to cast magic spells and perform incantations. The whole process is rather slow and dull. To complete a class you must first talk to the teacher outside, then wait for your character to walk in the room. The teacher will use the blackboard to convey a tiny piece of information, then ask you an obvious question about it. Your classmates then congratulate you on your answer.
To take the next class, you must exit the room and go through every step of the whole rigmarole again. It's painfully slow, especially when the entirety of what you've just learned could be summarised in a single line of in-game text. Plus, the spells and incantations are useful, but it takes ages to get to the point where you can use them properly and they don't add a great deal to the gameplay.
Other magical nonsense includes something called Mystery Time, which you activate by walking through a special door. During Mystery Time the sky turns pink, strange flora and fauna appear and lessons are cancelled. You can take part in extra-curricular activities instead, like trying to catch nocturnal insects, but really it's all just more of the same.
Which just about sums it up. If you adored Animal Crossing, you'll find plenty to enjoy in Enchanted Folk - the gameplay is virtually identical and the visuals are just as cute and cheery. However, the game doesn't have quite the same charm and congeniality. In fact it's downright nasty at times, what with all the rumour-mongering and trash-talking; if that's the sort of thing you're after, you might as well stick to the internet.
If you're not a fan of the genre, Enchanted Folk won't win you over. The pace is slow, the tasks are repetitive, there's too much text and there are too many loading screens. The gameworld, though pretty, is pretty small. Plus, there's nothing original or innovative here. Enchanted Folk is to Animal Crossing what the first Saints Row was to GTA; it's a competent, entertaining knock-off, but it's still a knock-off.