Fairy Tail 2 Review – Saving the World and Not Much Else

Despite some of its shortcomings, such as the excessive amount of busywork for quests, guild development, and other mechanics that dragged the experience down, the first proper adaptation of Fairy Tail in JRPG form developed by Gust managed to be rather successful, mostly thanks to the faithful rendition of the charming characters created by Hiro Mashima. Still, no one expected the game to receive a sequel, so its announcement earlier this year came as a complete surprise.

Adapting the Alvarez Arc, the seventeenth and final story arc of the main series, Fairy Tail 2 also attempts to address the most glaring issues of its predecessor by reducing the amount of busywork and introducing a new combat system that combines turn-based and real-time elements to feel more involving and engaging. In some ways, the changes are quite welcome and make for a snappier experience, but not every drastic change has been for the best.

As mentioned above, Fairy Tail 2 adapts the Alvarez Arc in its entirety, starting from the Fairy Tail guild's fight against Ajeel of Spriggan 12 until the final confrontation against Acnologia. To improve the narration in JRPG format, some events are moved around while others are unsurprisingly glossed over or removed altogether, but the story is exactly the same as the manga and anime at its heart, so fans of the series should expect some of its most important moments to be present in all of their glory.

Adapting the final story arc in a very long story, Fairy Tail 2 doesn't waste any time introducing characters as if they were appearing for the first time. Natsu, Lucy, Erza, Gray, and every other member of the guild is a well-established character at this point, and they are only further developed if the story calls for it in some way. While this was expected, it makes the game not particularly well suited to newcomers, as right from the first few minutes, a barrage of concepts, terms, and locations are thrown at the player, with only the Terminology, which allows players to learn more about certain highlighted terms without having to go through menus, and Glossary features to help them. While these features work well for the most part, there was no way they could provide the same level of engagement or information as actually experiencing the events they summarize, and, as such, they cannot solve an issue that was essentially unsolvable, everything considered.

Even though newcomers to Fairy Tail will inevitably feel lost among all these references to past events and concepts they should already be familiar with at this point in the story, the Fairy Tail 2 story still manages to be engaging, thanks not only to a very fast pace which has events moving rather quickly, and the incredibly charming characters that Hiro Mashima created. While not every member of the guild has their time to shine, those that do are instantly likable, even if the player previously did not know anything about them. At the very least, Fairy Tail 2 does a very good job of getting players interested in Fairy Tail, and it wouldn't surprise me if anybody who didn't know about the series before started reading the manga or watching the anime after experiencing the game.

After completing the main campaign, Fairy Tail 2 continues with a new journey, Key to the Unknown, which comprises four additional chapters. Compared to the main campaign, the story of the extra campaign, an original tale written in collaboration with series' creator Hiro Mashima, is more lighthearted, but it's still rather enjoyable, providing some hilarious interactions between the vast majority of characters that appeared in the main campaign. At the end of the story, Key to the Unknown also somewhat ties back with the main campaign, so it is definitely worth playing for all Fairy Tails fans. The four chapters are also not particularly long and take two hours tops to play through, so it's not a major time investment, as is the entirety of the game.

A single playthrough of the main campaign and the extra chapters at Balanced difficulty took me around 15 hours and might have taken me even less if I didn't spend some time exploring maps to gather crystals to unlock nodes on the Magic Origin skill trees, three for each character which include passive and active combat skills, stats improvements and more. By all accounts, Fairy Tail 2 is undoubtedly a very short game, especially for a JRPG, but at least the brief playtime allowed for tight pacing that is a breath of fresh air in the genre, considering how many modern games are just padded with filler to extend the playtime.

While Fairy Tail 2 mostly succeeds with its portrayal of story and characters (which shouldn't have been surprising for anyone with some familiarity with the source material), the gameplay is another story. It's not bad by any means, but it's extremely basic and essentially centered on combat. Unlike its predecessor, which twisted features and mechanics from the Atelier series that did make the experience a little more varied even when adding too much busywork that got in the way of enjoyment, Fairy Tail 2 goes the opposite way. All the fluff is gone, and all we are left with is the straightforward exploration of some open-ish fields filled with enemies, items that can be exchanged to "purchase" consumables and Lacrima, special accessories that provide a variety of beneficial effects, and treasure chests. At the beginning of the game, some areas are closed off and will only become explorable later on with some abilities unlocked via story progression, but other than this, traversal and explorations are as basic as they get and pretty unexciting.

The game also only features a couple of towns, including Magnolia, where the Fairy Tail guild resides, but they essentially function as the open fields, and no dungeons whatsoever. Considering the story it tells, it's not surprising to see the gameplay be so constrained by it, but it's still a little disappointing, as the lack of anything meaningful to do outside of following the story, completing some boring fetch quests, collecting Plue clones scattered all over, experiencing Character Episodes at campfires, and fighting enemies, makes the entire experience rather linear and one-dimensional.

With the experience centered around fighting enemies, the combat system, at least, does not disappoint, being one of the best features of Fairy Tail 2. Doing away with a traditional turn-based system, Gust went with a very interesting system that gives players more agency during both offense and defense. Controlling one character in a party of up to three characters, it is possible to use regular attacks to fill up an SP bar, which can be spent to use a variety of special skills that target single or multiple enemies, buff, debuff, or heal party members. Using skills also increases the Fairy Rank, and every time it does, not only does the maximum amount of SP that can be stored increase, but it also becomes possible to use more powerful Extreme Magic attacks. Using skills appropriately, it is also possible to Break enemies by depleting another gauge and unleashing Link Attacks with other uncontrolled party members, which grant some beneficial effects, and Assault Raids against enemies that have more than a single Break bar, which deal a lot of damage and grant even more beneficial effects.

Add the ability to guard against attacks at almost any time, elemental weakness and resistances, Support characters whose attacks are triggered by fulfilling certain conditions, Awakening mode, which increases the power of characters and lets them unleash even more powerful skills, and the ability to switch between all ten playable characters on the fly, and you get a rather dynamic combat system where changing characters constantly is the way to go. In many ways, the Fairy Tail 2 combat system feels like a more turn-based variant of the combat system of the Final Fantasy VII Remake trilogy, so if you have mastered Remake and Rebirth's combat mechanics, you will probably feel right at home in the game.

From a visual and technical standpoint, Fairy Tail 2 also delivers, for the most part. While locations are not particularly well detailed, sporting average lighting, designs, and texture work, the cel-shaded character models are a joy to look at. With great animation work to boot, seeing characters in action in both cutscenes and combat feels like watching an episode of the show. The generally undemanding visuals, which are not surprising at all since the game is also releasing on Nintendo Switch, mean that most PC players shouldn't have trouble running the game at high resolution, quality setting and framerate.

The machine used for the test (i7-13700F CPU, RTX 4080 GPU, 32 GB RAM) had no trouble running the game at native 4K resolution, and the settings in the screenshots below at 100+ FPS most of the time. During a benchmark session held in the Clover region running around and fighting enemies, the game ran at an average of 128 FPS, 65 FPS 1% Low, with no noticeable stuttering, although there were times during my playthrough where I experienced some minor performance hiccups which didn't impact the experience in any way. Those who cannot run the game decently on their machines at high native resolution can also enable the Intel XeSS upscaler, which is, quite surprisingly, the only upscaler supported by the game at launch.

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From its announcement, Fairy Tail 2 clearly looked like a labor of love crafted for fans already enamored with Natsu, Lucy, Erza, Gray, and the rest of the guild, and in this regard, Gust delivered an enjoyable, albeit one-dimensional, experience. However, the game's short length and lack of meaningful side activities limit its appeal, making it hard to justify the full price for those unfamiliar with Hiro Mashima's charming characters and their adventures.

PC version tested. Review code provided by the publisher.

7.0

WCCFTECH RATING

Fairy Tail 2

Adapting the final explosive story arc of the original story, Fairy Tail 2 is a game that goes straight to the point, featuring charming characters and a well-crafted combat system that makes fighting the forces of the Alvarez Empire incredibly fun. The lack of any involving side activity, lackluster world design and very short length, however, limit the appeal of the experience only to fans of Hiro Mashima's works, as there simply isn't enough for those who are already in love with Fairy Tail to justify a purchase.

Pros

• Engaging story
• Charming characters
• Well-crafted combat system
• Great-looking cel-shaded character models

Cons

• Very short length
• Straightforward traversal and exploration
• General lack of content

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