When the first Fairy Tail game released back in 2020, I reviewed it and while I enjoyed parts, I disliked others and with 4 years between them, I came into the sequel hoping for a lot of improvements. I had played the game for a preview earlier in the year, so I knew some of what I should expect. Were those expectations exceeded, or did I see all I had to back then?

While the first game gave players a little freedom to run around and undertake missions, just like the Fairy Tail crew did in the earlier manga and anime, Fairy Tail 2 is more of a grand adventure. The developers have stated that this adventure follows the Alvarez Arc of the manga and anime, but it does skip over a fair bit of it, namely the reformation of the guild and the disappearance of the sixth master. However, if you already know that, then you will be able to hit the ground running in your fight against the Spriggan-12 and the Alvarez Empire. Now if you have read/watched the story before, there won’t be any surprises here, but even still I won’t spoil anything. What I will say though is that if the story is new for you, then you had best find a Wiki or something to get caught up, as the game just powers through the story without any sort of delay, even when difficult decisions need to be made.

An example of this is with Natsu, he has to make a decision that impacts his future. Now in the manga and anime, that decision is ummed and ahh’d about for a while, given the outcomes possible based on the decisions he could make, it makes sense. Here though, he is told he has to make a decision, the camera cuts to his face and then the same person who said not 4 seconds before about making that decision states, “I can see you have already made it”. Now I get that they need to keep a decent pace going on, but there is a difference between a decent pace and cutting out tension building moments. I wish I could say that this was the only time something like this happened, but there are more of those moments throughout the game. You could argue that they are doing that because fans know the story, but the counterpoint to that is that fans know the story. They know when a character has to face terrible choices and while the outcome might be known, having them take all over 3 seconds to make a decision, or get over some tragic moment feels utterly stupid.

What makes this funnier is that the gameplay is the exact opposite of the story, if the story is all about speed, the gameplay is all about sticking in place. Now I don’t mean you don’t move, because they made some amazing changes there, more on that in a minute, but rather the fights themselves are the problem. It was something I clocked in my preview and I was hoping it was because it was an early fight and I was not levelled enough, but nope all major fights in this game are battles of attrition rather than skill. So what do I mean by that, honestly I spent more time just attacking and then watching something on the phone or YouTube, as the fights were so drawn out. There is a lot that goes into the fights, more on that in a moment as well, but the issue is that your characters can never seem to do a lot of damage, but if they do its only for phase one of the fight and then you have more phases to go. There was one fight that I flew through the first phase and I thought yes, I am finally getting stronger, only for them to power up and the second phase took forever to get through, it was just crazy.

Now the actual combat encounters, be they against soldiers, beasts or the big fights have a lot of complexity going on, which I really liked. The first game had a grid based system, with attacks being executed in certain directions and the latter part of that is here, but now there is more action in the game. So apart from the tortuously slow fights, why did I actually like the combat, it comes down to the levels involved. Each character has multiple attacks that they can do, but the only one that doesn’t cost any extra power. Each hit you land on an enemy fills up the SP bar at the bottom of the screen and once you have enough sections filled, you can execute a larger more powerful attack. Each of these attacks have different power requirements, the more damage it can do, the more it costs. Each attack though has a different impact on your foe, some take health from them, some chip away at their guard and some do both at once. You can just spam health stealing attacks, but it will take forever, so breaking their guard is your best bet at winning a fight. Just know that once an enemy starts to power up a powerful attack of their own, your guard breaking attacks stop doing that and instead attempt to disrupt the new attack, so be aware of that. Once you break their guard, they will remained stunned for a little while and the result will be an open season on dishing out as many attacks as you can.

Thankfully, once you break an enemies guard, you will be able to unleash a Unison Raid attack, where you and another member of your battlefield party combine attacks. Now if you have Grey team up with Juvia, they will unleash an insanely powerful combo attack, but if you have Grey team up with Natsu, they will still do damage, just not as much. When you take out one section of an enemies guard bar, you can call in for a Link attack, where someone does another attack, without spending any of their SP. If you thought that was all you had to consider, then think again as each enemy has things they are resistant too and things they are weak against, which means there is a lot for you to worry about. If you take Natsu into a fight with someone who also uses fire magic, then his attacks will do damage, but nowhere near what Juvia’s attacks would. When you get a Link attack or Unison Raid going as well, you need to consider who has the elemental advantage, in order to do the most damage you can. This doesn’t even consider the various support characters that come into fights or the extreme magic that you can use, to your favour.

Right, outside of combat there is still a lot going on, first things first the world is amazing, all the variants of it. Running from Magnolia to Hargeon can be done without a single load screen in the way, something the first game had lots of. That is the same for other parts of the world as well, you can run from one side of the map to the other and not see a single load screen, it really feels like a grand adventure because of it. Scattered about the world though are plenty of beasts and soldiers to fight, so it is not all smooth sailing, or running in this case. Also about the world are plenty of things to discover, like treasure chests and supplies lying about the place. Those supplies can be used to craft Lacrima, that you can assign to members of your party for buffs in battle. You can also use them and the various other resources you find to create potions and other items you can use in battle and in some battles you will need to. One thing that I loved doing in each map was finding Plue, a Nikora that Lucy has a contract with, however here Plue got hit with magic from Gemini and has split into dozens and dozens of versions. As you find them, and some of them are hidden quite well, you will be rewarded with resources and they are usually good ones, so it is worth doing. The final thing to know about the map is that each section of the map contains a world boss, these are giant foes that take a lot to defeat, btu if you do, your map will be updated to show all Plue locations, all treasure chest locations and more, so it is worth the fight.

So that is the gameplay, there is a lot to like about it and some not to, but perhaps the one area I wanted to see a big improvement on was the games presentation and did they deliver. The first game looked good, and this game looks better, you can see more detail in the characters and again the open world really helps. One of the major improvements is that all the characters actually speak now, rather than just displaying text on the screen. In the first game each character might grunt or groan and then text would appear showing what they were saying, now though they speak full sentences and it is not just in cutscenes, the entire game is fully voiced and it is incredible. Now I have only ever seen the anime in Japanese, so I have no idea what the English voices sound like, so the game only offering Japanese voices here is perfect for me and as it’s the same cast from the anime, they sound just as they are meant to. The campfire scenes, where you can watch stories with various characters, is perhaps the best example of this, select any from the list and just enjoy.

Visually the game looks the same, but a lot of that comes down to the art style that Hiro Mashima established with the original manga. That is not to say that there is not a visual improvement, because there is, but the underlying look is the same. One area the game got a nice bump is with the effects, now when you have Natsu unleash a powerful fire attack and the screen is filled with his attack, the game doesn’t buckle, which is nice. There is one complaint I have about the visuals and its with the animations for the characters, don’t get me wrong they all look nice and move correctly. There was a moment where I was controlling Wendy and I was just slowly walking into Hargeon and she did he actual walk from the anime, it was a nice touch. No the issue with the animations is that they don’t do anything complex, sure characters might fall down, or show surprise in their face, but that is it. I can’t begin to count the number of times I would see someone ‘rush’ in to punch someone else, only for the game to either cut to the punch having hit or fade to white and then show the reaction. Once or twice I could understand for impact, but it happens all the time in cutscenes and it is a pain, it is made even more annoying by the fact that there are some proper cutscenes where it feels fully animated.

I said before that the characters are all fully voiced now and when I say all, I mean all. That is the members of Fairy Tail that appear in the game, the 10 playable characters, the Exceed, the support characters and members of Sabertooth, Mermaid Heel, Blue Pegasus and of course the Alverez army and its Spriggan-12. With the auto-play on in conversations, there were times I put the controller down just to watch and it felt like I was watching the show, it looked right and sounded right. But there is a downside here, well two and one is going to be annoying more than the other. The lesser of the two is that sometimes the conversations your characters have when running around the world will restart a bit, which means you will hear Natsu or Gajeel proclaiming their desire for a fight often. The most annoying aspect is that when you trigger an attack, the character shouts out the name each and every time and I know they do in the show, but in the show it doesn’t take them forever to fight someone. By the time the ‘fight’ against Brandish was complete, I was sick and tired of hearing “Lucy Kick” I made sure to leave her out of my party for a while.

Fairy Tail 2 is a great improvement over the first game, with there being a lot of moments where it feels like you are just watching an episode of the anime. The problem is that there are some weird choices here that give it a black mark, like having fights be so drawn out they become frustrating rather than fun. While the addition of the full voice cast is incredible, it does mean repetition of a number of lines and combine that with drawn out fights and you will get annoyed quickly. Perhaps the most egregious aspect though is just how little they do to welcome in new players, if you have no idea who anyone is or why the story is starting here, then you are out of luck. Yes, the game does have a glossary that you can access when an important name is mentioned, but those facts are just the tip of a very large Fairy Tail iceberg. If you are new to Fairy Tail, I would caution you coming in here, as it drops you in deep for story, but the rich combat system and large open world more than make up for it. Fans of Fairy Tail are going to find a fantastic game here, issues notwithstanding and while there are some familiar beats, the new story and the campfire moments are delightful. This is one of the best manga adaptations I have encountered in a long time, but it is one that is really for the fans more than anyone else.