FAIRY TAIL
Two shakes of a fairy’s tail
Many anime games act as a portal to the original animation’s world, allowing newcomers and series fans alike to be able to enjoy and understand their stories in a fresh way, but if you don’t have a firm understanding of Fairy Tail before playing you’re going to be more lost than the members of the titular guild are at the start of this game – and they’ve just woken up from a seven-year slumber.
The decision to begin the in-game action several arcs into Fairy Tail’s story1 is an odd one that ensures only die-hard fans will be able to keep up (and they may be upset that they’ll never play through the entire series like you can with other anime games). But, they will relish the opportunity to play as their favourite characters, who’ve been brought to life in a way that respects the anime. 2 Being able to explore Magnolia and Crocus is a joy at first, but quickly you come to feel they’re barren, not lived-in.
The turn-based combat is Gust at its best, and watching skills evolving into stronger versions, rather than characters learning new moves and making old ones irrelevant, is a nice way to show the characters growing in strength that feels right out of the anime. Mechanically it’s punching above its weight and is more magically charged than some bigger JRPGs, but it’s let down outside combat by stiff animations that feel a generation old, actions rarely feeling like they match up in conversations. Plus, multiple tedious side-quests to level up your guild bottleneck story progression. We love the characters and combat, and it feels like a beloved PS3 game we missed out on, but in 2020 the magic wanes. Mitchell Lineham