Fairy Tail - Review
There have been quite a number of anime and manga series over the years that have breached the cultural zeitgeist and found a home amongst the masses and Fairy Tail is one of the more recent ones. The last big game the series was released back in 2011 for the DS, so it has been a while, but none of the games left Japan, so this is the first entry in the West and the first in a while, so the question is, was the wait worth it?
It has to be said right from the start, that if you have never read the original manga, or seen the anime adaptation, you are going to be lost on the story here. The games story takes place at the end of the fourth season of the anime, or roughly 100 episodes in and because it takes place there, there is no introduction to anyone, you are thrown in the deep end, so to speak. The upside to where it starts is that the story keeps the seven-year gap, and when you start to meet other characters the game does provide a little context for them. In terms of the story itself, it follows the manga/anime pretty closely, so anyone who has read or seen it before, will understand what is happening and that is the game’s biggest problems.
Outside of the main storyline, the other stories that are told are pretty basic, usually a single mission and you are done, the ones that focus more on characters might take a few missions to complete, but the only reason to do them is to boost levels, more on that later. There is nothing too original to be discovered, the main story is that from the source and while there is nothing wrong with that, the additional content feels out of place. The other problem with the story and the characters, is that if you have no idea who anyone is, the game does not explain it, there is no previously on Fairy Tail, now hidden in one of the menu, there is a glossary and such, so you can learn terms and other things, but it is not explained and I only found it by chance.
The gameplay on offer is broken down into two distinct parts, RPG combat and boring system management and sadly, there is a lot more of the latter than there is the former. Outside of system management, you can explore the world, as you discover new locations and enter into fights and more on that in a bit. The exploration is basic, each location is a finite size and really offers nothing new between visits, with the enemies located within staying the same, only levelling up slightly as you do. There are some blocked off areas, but as long as you are strong enough, you can bust them open whenever you choose to, but they don’t open up to new and expansive locations, usually a shortcut to another part of the location, or a treasure.
When you enter into combat, either between the creatures of the world, or enemy wizards, it is the same each time, but it has an interesting twist to basic RPG combat. Each attack, regardless of who you are with at the time, will impact a number squares, as the grid in which enemies stand upon is a 3x3 grid. Some attacks will remain locked to a single space, others might be two wide, or take up six, it varies and as enemies will be placed randomly onto the grid, you have to ensure your attacks can hit the most each time. Each attack requires the use of Magic Power of MP and the more powerful the attack, the more MP required, pretty basic stuff, but each attack and especially as you level them up, can also have perks attached to them. Some of them will knock enemies back a row, or give a chance to burn or freeze enemies, or the nice one, put you in a position to counter attacks.
Combat options grow, the more that you level up and as some of the attacks you have, level up with you, they can deal more damage, so rather than getting a massive list of attacks, you have a good number of attacks that stay with you. One thing that does get annoying, very quickly, is the animations, not so much for characters like Natsu or Grey, but Erza and Lucy have long animations to play out and while the first few times seeing Lucy summon a celestial spirit is fine, eventually you get bored of it. Thankfully, the game does allow for his, pressing the right stick down removes the animations, letting things play out at a much faster pace, you can also enable auto-battles, by pressing the left stick, if you really want them to play out without your input. The problem with the battles though is that they are very frequent and quickly lose all sense of fun, regardless of the options you have for animations on or off, they grow tiresome and it never goes away. Sure, fighting new wizards are fine, but there is still a sense of repetition and it is the bad kind, which for a game that takes around 20 hours to beat, is not a crowning achievement.
Repetition is also something you will have to deal with when it comes to managing things, be it upgrading the facilities, remodelling the facilities, upgrading lacrima and more, there is a lot to do and you will do it a lot. Each part of the Fairy Tail guild hall can have upgrades applied, but they are restricted to the chapters you are on, so you can only proceed so far at any given time. Outside of the guild hall, you can upgrade your characters, not the levels, that happens from battles, but ranks, you can also upgrade your friendship with characters by completing missions or having chats with them and finally, you have to attempt to restore the status of Fairy Tail in the overall guild ranking, which requires you to complete side missions, which you will do anyway and then random other events. The sheer number of tasks available, outside of the main story is insane, but none of them feel too thought out and like the main missions, they quickly wear out their welcome.
One area that looks decent is the visuals, at least when it comes to the main characters, each looks just like they do in their source material, meaning that costumes, hair and expressions are all authentic. While you can unlock additional costumes for characters, they are not something you would not find the characters wearing, which helps keep them connected to the world. When characters speak, with either words or just text on screen, there are pictures of the characters shown in the bottom corner and while nice, the only way you can discern any sort of emotion from them, is from a small little space where an exclamation point or anger symbol might be shown. This is something that should have been done differently, but also highlights the extent of the problems with the visuals, the main characters are ok, everything else is cheap.
What I mean by cheap is that they have done the barest amount of work possible, in order to provide visuals that match the source and while you can stop moving and it does look like it comes from the anime, any more than a glance and the illusion is ruined. When you enter new areas, the enemies you fight in it are the same, each and every time, they never change, the animations of the enemies is always the same, enter a new area and repeat. The same happens when you are in towns, there are maybe a half dozen NPC models and they repeat often, in one viewpoint, I had 5 of the same model and that felt standard. The same issues appear when you are doing attacks in battles, each time select one, it is the same animation, from the same angle and like I said earlier, turning off the animations makes the battles speed up and is something I am loathed to turn off.
On the audio side, things are mixed again, the voice work is great, the cast from the anime have returned to voice the characters and they sound just as they do in the show. Those who have watched the show in English will be sad to learn that there is only Japanese audio provided, which for me was not a problem, except when it was. By that I mean the major cutscenes, all the side conversations and such, all have text on screen, the problem is all the chatter when wandering around, the words spoken when ending fights or basically any other time, are all audio, no words. This would not be a problem if the game offered subtitles, but it does not, which means, you miss out on most of the games conversational audio, a big letdown.
The games score though is solid, if predictable, there are some key audio tracks that feel like they are pulled right from the anime, a lot of the tracks are loops and if you find a piece you like, you can head into the games collection menu and play them again and again, though they will stop when you change to a new area. None of the music is to inventive, but what is here is nice and fits the game.
Fairy Tail is a good game, just marred by cheap decisions that ultimate make it hard to enjoy. The combat system has a great foundation, being required to choose what attack, which includes where it attacks, what is stronger than the enemies and all the rest is great but given that you can get stuck in fight after fight for hours, quickly loses its fun. The presentation look good, though the cheapness and repetition stand out and drag things down, the exception are the main characters, they all look and sound great, I just wish there were subtitles.
The Score
7.0
Review code provided by Koei Tecmo
The Pros
+Has a fun and unique combat system that can take a bit to fully understand
+The main characters all look exactly like they do in their source material
The Cons
+There is a cheapness to the visuals, exacerbated by repeating character models
+Combat is fun, but the repetition of it and the various sub-sytems drag things down
