Review: Fairy Tail 2 (Nintendo Switch)
One of the first things I point out in my reviews of franchise-based games is whether you need to know the source material to play. With FAIRY TAIL 2, that’ll likely be the case. This JRPG from Gust and KOEI TECMO is unapologetically aimed squarely at fans of the anime and manga…and maybe the game deserves some credit for that.
Of course, FAIRY TAIL 2 is also the sequel to 2020’s FAIRY TAIL, making it even more confusing for those hopping in at this point. That’s not to say newcomers can’t overcome the confusion to have fun with the game, just that the developers don’t spend too much time up front catching you up on things…and maybe the game deserves some credit for that.
FAIRY TAIL 2 centers around the original story’s climax: the Alvarez Empire Arc. This means a whole series worth of characters are made available at the very beginning. They get quick introductions, and you can always speak to them to learn a bit more. The actual plot, however, is more interested in shoving you into combat. The first major battles come quickly, forcing you to take in a lot of individual character abilities right away. It was quite some time before I felt I was really working with an optimized party.
UI support is hit-or-miss on providing assistance. During battle, you’re told whether your assignable attacks will hit an enemy’s weakness. Great. When in the character setup screens, however, you’re forced to just know what the various element icons mean. Not great. This can make the gameplay a bit more difficult than it needs to be simply because you haven’t equipped a party member to the best of his/her abilities. I would randomly swap characters into battles just hoping to see the weakness icon.
Combat itself, however, is pretty easy to grasp. The gimmick is that you mostly use standard and magic attacks to chain together combos that will whittle away at the enemies’ break gauge. Once you’ve broken that down, you can exploit their weaknesses or unleash link attacks for major damage.
It’s quite simple when fighting just one or two enemies (bosses excluded, of course), but can be tricky when going up against a half dozen or more. There’s plenty of time between battles, however, to recover and optimize for the next attack…no random encounters.
You control just one character in combat, with two others being well-handled by AI. You can swap them around at any point, and also pull in from your reserves. This becomes a key strategic element, as some characters are better at depleting the enemies’ break gauge, some can be called in to heal your fighters, etc. Getting to know who’s best at what and upgrading their skills accordingly really makes FAIRY TAIL 2 more to play. Because the story continually shuffles who’s available to you, however, you won’t fall into settling on just one group.
As you acquire and utilize more characters, you’ll get access to many different skills. These can be assigned to the X, A, and B buttons, with additional skills being accessed via the same buttons while holding down R. More powerful skills require more Action Gauge points to use, so you can’t rely on them at all times. There’s also a cooldown after chaining your combat moves, leaving you vulnerable to enemy attacks (Atelier Ryza fans will feel quite comfortable here). You can guard, but I found it quite difficult to tell exactly when to do that during the chaos of battle. The whole system is pretty slick, but I relied more on just mashing my way through combat than on a mastery of well-timed attacks and proper character configuration. If that sounds boring to you, be sure to try one of the game’s higher difficulty levels.
These battles take place across a wide open landscape that’s slowly opened up as you progress. Barriers block access until you have the right character or ability to clear them, walls are initially too high jump, that kind of thing. The game map does a great job of highlighting which areas can be accessed, but it’s not readily available when moving, and it’s slow to pull up when you want to see it.
Speaking of slow, FAIRY TAIL 2 relies heavily on the Fairy Tail Diary stories told around campfires to provide character exposition. These can be kind of long, but often quite comical or endearing. I’m not sure if they’re more suited to fans of the anime or those of us who just don’t know who’s who, but I found them to be a nice respite when pushing towards a location goal.
And honestly, I’d rather these conversations come via standalone segments than as text snippets displayed while exploring, making them too easy to just ignore.
Visually, FAIRY TAIL 2 has that modern cartoony look we’ve seen in a lot of JRPGs as of late. I dig it, as it allows the diverse characters to really stand out and keeps the combat lively and easy to follow. The overall design is very bright and happy, which suits the story and the characters. Melodrama? Sure, there’s some, but don’t expect anything too heavy here. The story, combat, and visuals are all quite breezy.
In this particular instance, that’s a strength and a weakness. FAIRY TAIL 2 is easy to pick up and play. It’s not a long game as JRPGs go (albeit with plenty of DLC to extend the fun…and character wardrobes), and it’s also not entirely satisfying; I worked through it without ever really feeling fully involved. That likely wouldn’t be the case if I knew more about the Kingdom of Fiore before joining the Guild, so I feel more comfortable recommending this game mainly to FAIRY TAIL fans. To anyone else, just view it as a lark and you may still be cool with it.
