Fairy Tail Review: This One Goes Out To The Fans

When it comes to anime video game adaptations, very few seem to crossover into the mainstream. Dragon Ball FighterZ set the fighting game community on fire and quickly shot into general popularity, but that was an outlier in the gaming world. For the most part, anime titles take the form of substandard brawlers or drawn-out gacha mobile games.

That's what made the prospect of a Fairy Tail RPG developed by Gust Co. LTD so appealing. While not necessarily the most well-known Shonen series, Fairy Tail has a pretty devoted fanbase that has been dying for a proper video game. Gust previously worked on Atelier Ryza, which is typically seen as a quality series. What could possibly go wrong?

A lot of things, as a matter of fact. At the same time, a lot of things are also really good here. It's hard to judge Fairy Tail as an outsider, but I safely say that this one is strictly for the fans.

Go Big, Or Go Home

The opening moments of Fairy Tail thrust you directly into battle with little to no explanations. After an arduous journey on the Tenrou Islands, the Fairy Tail guild is doing battle with Hades in an attempt to stop the dragon Acnologia from destroying the planet. While they are able to thwart the immediate threat, the dragon gains the upper hand and practically kills them. Using magic, the team quickly transfers itself seven years into the future and that's where the game, proper, begins.

It's a bit much to take in and does nothing to catch those unfamiliar up to speed. The same can be said for the rest of the story, which covers the "Grand Magic Games," "Tartaros," and "Avatar" arcs. Those will likely be familiar to fans (and are considered some of the best in the anime), but the lack of build-up and character development does a lot to undo any charm the characters might have.

What also doesn't help is that Fairy Tail is shockingly low budget. It was likely a given that an RPG based on a cult favorite wouldn't be ultra-high quality, but this almost comes off like a mid-generation PS3 game at times -a fact not helped by the abundance of random slowdown and low-quality textures.

Cutscenes will change form, going from fully voiced FMVs to static images, and the in-game cutscenes often don't have character models for plot crucial characters. The game even shifts to the main character Lucy narrating at random before going back to normal. It's a hastened mess of a story that didn't leave a great impression on me. Fairy Tail might be a solid anime, but the game does nothing to make me interested in it.

Sparks Of Inspiration

At least in terms of gameplay, things fare a lot better. Taking the form of a rather standard JRPG, Fairy Tail is a strictly turn-based affair that goes pretty lenient on the difficulty scaling. By the mid-point, you'll likely be so overleveled that you can utilize the game's auto command function to finish every battle without thought. If you don't opt for that, the combat system at least has an interesting hook.

Battles will take place on a 3x3 grid where enemies can be placed apart from one other. Your characters have access to attacks that strike in different patterns, such as T or Z shapes. Some attacks will even move enemies up and down or right and left. With this, you can strategically move them around to then strike a bunch at once. It's a great concept that gets let down by how repetitive the core gameplay loop is and how easy everything becomes.

RPGs will always have a bit of a problem with power creep (a phenomenon in games where updates or new abilities render older ones pointless), but even on its hard difficulty setting, Fairy Tail is just far too easy. I won't knock anyone for wanting to simply experience the story, but there's little reason to dig into the various abilities present.

Characters can transform into different forms and even deal buffs and debuffs, but I was routinely 10-15 levels higher than boss characters by the sixth episode. I possibly did a few too many side quests, but then some nice quality-of-life features make it fairly easy to accomplish them.

Bring It All On

The main hook for Fairy Tail is that you’ll be rebuilding your guild - a plot taken straight from the anime - so in between main missions, you can take jobs that payout money and experience. Graciously, the game lets you fast travel everywhere and even to specific spots in major towns. With this, you'll quickly pull up the map, warp to where you need to be, set the game to auto-battle (which even features an animation skip option), then warp back once you're finished. You can knock out about 15 side quests in roughly 10 minutes.

They're nothing to write home about, consisting almost entirely of "Kill X amount of Y" with the occasional character-related story. It's never really interesting to watch the after cutscenes since the animations are so low quality and the stories rather generic. There are even some "citizen requests" you can partake of, but those are the definition of filler content.

Apart from that, various systems let you bond your characters together by using them in parties, but it's just a bunch of wrinkles that don't add up to anything unique. Sure, your magic attacks will cost less mana and you'll do more damage, but I was able to combo up an attack that dealt 113,000 damage 14 hours in without worrying too much. That wipes out pretty much every enemy in the game with a single move.

I don't want to be so harsh on Fairy Tail, because it's not a bad game. The ideas are all solid and this is a good choice for a JRPG with its magic-based characters. This is honestly more a case of rushed execution. Given some more time and a proper budget, Gust could have created the definitive Fairy Tail game that would have appealed to more than just the already converted.

As it stands, this one is strictly for the diehards and those with a tolerance for rather repetitive side content.