Well, it’s finally happened. The Alvarez Empire led by Emperor Zeref is here and they’re looking to expand their empire with the help of their twelve elites. Fairy Tail 2 has players take on the role of the Fairy Tail guild as they play through the final chapter of the Alvarez Empire Arc followed by an original story that can only be experienced in the game, called ‘Key to the Unknown.’ It’s very cool that this long-running series gets an original story shown off in a video game release but while playing it I kept wondering, as someone whose only experience with Fairy Tail was playing the first game, if this game was for me.
Fairy Tail 2
Developer: Gust
Price: $60
Platforms: PS5 (reviewed), Nintendo Switch, and PC
MonsterVine was provided with a PlayStation 5 code for review
Fairy Tail 2 pulls you into action with the Fairy Tail guild fighting off against Ajeel Raml. As his sandstorm picks up and traps the guild members of Fairy Tail, Makarov has to intervene and save everyone. At the guild, Magnolia Town was evacuated as Emperor Zeref’s forces invaded the Kingdom of Fiore. A lot is going on and though I was doing my best to keep up, it comes at you fast. As the story goes on, it really just seems like the chapters are set up in the same way. You begin the chapter somewhere and make your way through a winding open world area to the waypoint where you enter into a long boss battle.
Boss battles are often split into two fights as, like in many anime boss fights, the boss gets beaten once before they awaken their true power or make some quip about no longer playing and then the “true” battle begins. In an anime or manga, this can be fun, there’s usually some significant downtime, milling about with the other characters, fun sub-plots, etc… Fairy Tail 2 wants you to sit by the campfire and read the Fairy Tail diaries. Episodes that boil down to Visual Novel sections, usually just two or several characters talking to each other. There are a lot of these diaries that unlock throughout the game but appear to be entirely skippable.
The combat system has been changed from a turn-based system to more of an ATB system. When your character’s turn comes up you can string together normal attacks to collect SP and use the SP to unleash more powerful attacks. Bosses will charge up super attacks with a specific attack type weakness that needs to be exploited. If dealt enough damage with the specific attack type (fists, weapon, etc…) the super attack will be canceled and you’ll be able to get some free hits in. Overall though, the fights are pretty boring. You just wail on an enemy for a while looking to chip away at their break gauge. Once it’s down, you get a round of attacks or two in, dealing significantly more damage, and then the break gauge fills back up.
Along with these changes comes the Fairy Rank, another set of bars to fill up. Increasing your Fairy Rank by dealing damage or breaking enemies increases the amount of SP you can bank before you unleash abilities. Likewise, you’re able to use Extreme Magic, allowing you to summon support characters to assist in battle. Fairy Rank gives you something to strive for during those long boss battles allowing the player to unleash bigger and better abilities throughout the fight. Provided you’ve learned new skills through the Origin Tree which is a skill tree split up into Spirit, Skills, and Strength. The nice thing about the Origin Tree is you can stick it on auto and it’ll auto-unlock skills for you.
There are items you can buy to help out in battle by either dealing a type of damage you might not have available or healing your party. There are Plue scattered around every region for you to collect and, when collected, fill out a stamp card to give you items. The open world is full of resource nodes, treasure chests, and landmarks to visit. Magic pools are geyser-lookin’ things full of enemies that, on clearing out, reward the player with permanent stat boosts and items. Paths are blocked and, with the right guild members, can be broken through and opened permanently. There are hordes of enemies on the overworld. This world is simply teeming with enemies and, given that Fairy Tail is currently at war with another nation, that makes sense. Get ready for tons of baddies, they’re all over the damn place.
If I sound lukewarm on Fairy Tail 2, it’s because I am. I don’t think the changes made to the combat system are bad, and I understand that the pacing, being a little too fast for me, makes sense within the context of the story. However, considering it’s been four years since I last engaged with Fairy Tail, I was completely lost. There was absolutely no recap on what had happened in the previous game, nothing to set this game up, you’re just thrown right in. I was hoping the diary entries would assist on that front and, to some extent they did, but it just wasn’t enough. I was lost from the get go and the narrative did nothing to help me catch up.
Likewise, there are a lot of small things that made Fairy Tail 2 a frustrating experience. You can unlock multiple Origin Tree nodes at the same time but for every one you want to unlock, you have to hold the X button and wait for the animation to unlock. After the animation shows the node unlocked, despite there being a description of the node on the right side of the screen, a new overlay shows up to tell you what you’ve just unlocked. Draining an enemy’s break gauge triggers a Link Attack which puts an overlay on the screen with your two party members, requiring you to choose which party member you want to link with. Some of these Link Attacks do things like cure your party member’s ailments or heal the party, but the Link Attack overlay blocks much of the health bar, specifically, the area where you’d see if your party is suffering from ailments.
There were several boss fights where performance was suffering significantly because so much was going on. I understand the need to mimic the source material and, I’m sure, fans will love some of these scenes. But the performance suffered was absolutely jarring and as a result, I managed to mess up a few combos because of the delay. Several times I’d open up the map only to have the cursor off-screen. When this happens, I’d have to hold the joystick in the opposite direction until the cursor came back on the screen, and then, the cursor wouldn’t go far enough in the opposite direction. I’d open up the map and not be able to interact with an entire half of the screen because of this.
Fairy Tail 2 is a sequel that stumbles
Fairy Tail 2 looks about as great as an anime game can look but with the gameplay, it was death by a thousand cuts. No one thing Fairy Tail 2 does is bad, but there are a bunch of little things that really ruined the experience for me. I really liked the first game and I feel like my review reflects that, but the experience I had with Fairy Tail 2 was not a good one. Maybe a little more time testing and a refresher on the story would have changed how I felt about Fairy Tail 2, but as it stands, I didn’t have a great time with this one.
The Final Word
Fairy Tail 2 throws you right into the action of the final chapter of the Alvarez Empire Arc but does little to help out anyone who might be unfamiliar with the series outside of the games. Along with several bugs, performance issues, and strange UI decisions, unless you’re a fan of the series, Fairy Tail 2 can be skipped.
MonsterVine Rating: 2.5 out of 5 – Mediocre
