Fairy Tail 2
Review
Made for fans
by JackCarter
reviewed on PC
Anime enthusiast
As an unabashed anime enthusiast and video game enjoyer, I know that mixing them together usually doesn't end with the best results. For every Dragon Ball FighterZ there is a dozen or so titles that line the bargain bins at your local game store. It's no secret that if you want a good anime game it usually has to start as a game first and then become an anime, like Scarlet Nexus, and not the other way around. Although I mentioned that I'm an anime enthusiast, i have actually never been interested in Fairy Tail. You would probably expect me to come away from Fairy Tail 2, the newest video game in the series, as a little less than impressed. Well then you'd be as surprised as I was to learn that I enjoyed my time in the world of Earth-land.
The first thing that I noticed upon my playthrough is that it reminded me of the Atelier series, and that's pretty understandable considering they're both made by Gust and published by Koei Tecmo. Combat in both games feel very similar, and that's not a detriment. Most battles are quick and over within seconds, with the real meat being found in the boss fights. You won't find an ocean of depth within the combat, but what you will find is a fun and just strategic enough system to defeat your enemies. Bosses are weak to elements, and switching out your party mid-fight to a character of that element will net you some nice bonuses when in battle. You have a set of skills to use that all require different amounts of action points to use, and the game relies on you using these skills to chain and combo them together to greater effect. Fairy Tail 2 doesn't reinvent the wheel when it comes to JRPG combat, but what it does do is is give you a fast and fluid combat system to work with. It's somewhere between traditional turn based and and an immediate action system. Like most if not all Shonen anime, the first time you beat a boss doesn't mean the battles over, as said boss gains even more power to come at you a second time. I woefully wasn't prepared for this for the first boss and barely managed to beat him, which actually made it feel more cinematic.
Open World Environment
Fairy Tail 2 is made around its open world style environment, but unfortunately I found it lacklustre. The world is populated with groups of enemies going about their daily activities until you enter their field of view, and once the battle is over you move onto the next. Every once in a while you'll find a treasure chest. Rinse and repeat until you fight the bigger bad guy. It feels very last generation, or two generations ago, and that also extends to the side quests. It typically boils down to go here and do the thing, the end. Yes, I know what you're thinking, you can boil down any game to "Go here and do the thing!" Yes, you are absolutely correct, but a lot of games put more effort into their "fetch quests." Both World of Warcraft and Witcher 3 have quests where you need to kill x amount of things for someone. The reason Witcher 3 feels (arguably) less like a fetch quest is because of character and environmental storytelling. The world feels lived in and the quest giver feels like a real person. I think that this, however, comes down to time and budget. A lot of times a game of an existing property, especially one that's not in its heyday (sorry Fairy Tail fans, but I swear this isn't a knock against the series), tend to have both a fixed budget and due date. Knowing this, and going back and trying out the first Fairy Tail game from Gust, they've made (again, arguably) vast improvements in their latest outing.
Lastly, as someone who knows relatively nothing about Fairy Tail, this game didn't make it any better. This is definitely made for fans of the series, and if for some reason you decide to jump in at the sequel game, you'll probably be a bit confused as to what is going on. You can say the same thing about jumping into any sequel without viewing the first, but most sequels do work on giving audiences a status quo to begin with. It'd be like starting Terminator 2 when the T-800 is shooting all the cop cars with the Gatling gun. How did we get here, why are we here, and who are these people? The game never really gave me that chance.
All that being said, if you're a fan of Fairy Tail, well, you probably already bought the game. If you're not, then I doubt this game will persuade you, but if you're at all curious, and don't mind being thrown in at the tail (see what I did there?) end of the story, then I think theres a lot of fun to be had in the world of Earth-Land.
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7.5
fun score
Pros
Combat is quick and provides a lot of fun, The art direction looks (mostly) great, boss fights were pretty epic
Cons
Lacklustre environments, boring quests, confusing for new players
