Review: FAIRY TAIL Is More Fun Than It Should Be

Koei Tecmo recently dropped Fairy Tail on Nintendo Switch, PC, and PS4. They were kind enough to send me a PC code, and I’ll admit, I’m shocked at how much I’m enjoying it. In case you missed it, the game’s story kicks off at the end of the Tenrou Island arc and goes from there with the tutorial having you defeat Hades.

Now, partly because I’m not done with the anime yet, I have not finished the game’s story for fear of spoilers. However, it’s a quick way to get a refresher if you need it. None of the story elements that I’ve encountered go very deep, but they are sufficient. Fairy Tail fans, even the casual ones like myself will be able to relive some fun moments as well as enjoy new moments from doing side quests and the like. For instance, there’s a whole quest about lost packages, and Erza freaks out because one of them is some underwear she ordered. If you’re familiar with the show, you’ll know this is exactly the kind of humor to expect.

The gameplay features you going around as members of Fairy Tail participating in the storyline from the anime while also having quests that allow you to raise your Guild Rank. After getting back from the seven year seal, Fairy Tail ends up at the bottom of the food chain, but you can help people and raise that Rank right back up. You’ll also be able to help improve the Guild Hall with a laboratory to create lacrima, a shop run by Lisanna, and of course, the request board to improve the missions you can go on. There are also story missions that focus on one or two characters and can be quite fun. Erza has one where she can never get a dessert from a popular new shop, and so it’s up to you to get it for her.

The game’s combat system is turn-based and isn’t very engaging if you ask me. Yes, you have to manage your HP and MP, but a lot of the time you’re just grinding anyways and doing mindless battles against a couple of low-level generic monsters, so it’s just pick the Spell that hits the most enemies and away you go. When you go against bigger enemies, there is more strategy needed and those fights are definitely more interesting.

Unfortunately, while the combat may feel lackluster, it’s not the worst thing about the game. In my opinion, the animation is horrendous. The characters all feel stiff and emotionless, which is a real shame since they are so incredibly dynamic in the show. Even the less dynamic characters have more emotion than what this game has you believe. The movement’s stiffness makes the characters feel a lot slower than normal. Another problem is that the animations feel dull and stiff, but the voice acting has some emotion in it which creates a real disconnect to me. Also, I’m pretty sure the artists have no idea how boobs work.

Going back to the voices, I’m really disappointed that there is only Japanese audio. I don’t know why this decision was made, maybe to cut costs or because the COVID-19 pandemic is preventing recordings of other languages, but it’s a poor one in my opinion. While it’s true the show is from Japan and many fans watch it in Japanese with subtitles, there are a lot of fans that watch it in their own languages. I watch the dub version myself and was sad that I couldn’t go through and hear the voices I’m familiar with.

Another aspect of the game that bummed me out was the small character pool. There are only 16 playable characters for you to enjoy. This is out of a much, much larger cast. For example, why can’t I play as Cana!? I’ve heard some talk that there’s some DLC on the way that will bring four more characters like Levy and Elfman into the PC world, but I was really hoping for a bigger PC cast.

So, the game has less than perfect animation, gameplay that should get stale fairly quickly, no audio outside of Japanese, and a small cast. None of these are great marks. However, for some reason I keep coming back to Fairy Tail. I do not know why. By all means, I should’ve dropped the game by now. However, there is something about it that keeps pulling me back and makes me want to progress. I want to help Fairy Tail improve its Guild Rank. Somehow, Koei Tecmo has taken a less than stellar game and still made it enjoyable.