Fairy Tail comes to PS4, PC and Nintendo Switch with a JRPG developed by Gust, parents of the long-lived role-playing series Atelier. Many hours of content, three stories drawn from the anime plus a generous epilogue, well-animated turn-based battles and lots of chats between the members of the wizard guild are the strengths of this title.
It’s refreshing that a relatively current anime license is tailored to the video game as an RPG. Since the success of the fabulous Naruto Shippuden Ultimate Ninja Storm , it seemed that every video game that was published about a manga had to be about fighting. The problem is that none of them could even touch the quality standards of CyberConnect2 work ; at least until the arrival of why not try another genre? I was happy when it was announced that Fairy Tail was going to be an RPG developed by Gust. A JRPG would allow us to travel their world , have more conversations, level up and enjoy a story; something fundamental when we talk about the adaptation of a work of these characteristics. outstanding Dragon Ball FighterZ . Neither the title based on One Punch-Man, the two My Hero One’s Justice or several appeared on One Piece managed to offer a solid combat system. They did not motivate to continue playing after passing the campaign or unlocking four things. That is why, knowing this and how difficult it is to make a good fighting game,
To find out how development was going, we recently got to speak with its producer . We had doubts to resolve regarding the duration of the title, which of all the stories that make up the fictional world of Fairy Tail would be adapted, what their fights would be like and also their version of Switch. Today I can put in context all the answers that Kikuchi-san gave us and shed light on some questions that you have left in the comments. To begin with, this Fairy Tail JRPG is not the ideal product to enjoy this manganime from scratch . The three plot arcs that the game adapts are left a lot to narrate from the beginning of the series, and although we have an encyclopedia to detail questions that are not told, we areloses much of the interesting of the manga .
It doesn’t go into detail about Zeref’s nature, it skims over Natsu’s past, and the story begins at a point where tensions between many of his heroes are already high. The secondary missions do not make an effort to clarify these gaps in the game’s heritage either, just some of the conversations we have. In fact, the best thing to do to enjoy Fairy Tail is to tackle the manga directly , since the anime has a lot of filler. If you are going to see the series, do it with a guide to discard chapters that do not obey the canonical plot. Once you have done your homework, this is when it is advisable to play this game.
Magical abilities take over in latest JRPG Fairy Tail trailer
The JRPG of Fairy Tail will work for those who have read the manga or enjoyed its seriesBecause the JRPG of Fairy Tail will work for those who have read the entire manga or enjoyed its television adaptation. The video game has more vocation to review than to conscientiously count all the events of the arcs it collects. Another caveat is that this is a pure fan service video game . In other words, it is not a Japanese role-playing game with solid, efficient game systems that know how to evolve well during the course of the game; is a title that relies on the turn-based fighting of the genre to show off its characters (especially them), which abuses its common mission structure and the need to level up to make us play for hours and hours, but as JRPG never stands out; yes as a game made for the Fairy Tail fan. That is, if what you are looking for is a title in which to see Natsu showing off her pectorals, Lucy in a swimsuit, Erza with her different outfits or Wendy transforming through colorful sequences, this is your game, but it won’t be if what you want is a remarkable JRPG inspired by an anime series you don’t know about.
What the JRPG of Fairy Tail tells us
The history of the video game begins just before the seven-year lapse that follows the events on Tenrou Island. Once this ellipsis is overcome, the entire team returns to the city where their guild is located to discover that it has fallen into decline. To make Fairy Tail the best in the world again, they embark on a succession of missions and tasks to move up the ranking of magicians . While they are engaged in it, the great games are called in which the wizards compete with each other. Once this arc is finished, the one of the eclipse is passed. When finishing it, history rushes to catapult us into the fighting in Tartaros. This is what concerns the main content of the game and that I finished in 23 hours. Once all this is dispatched, there will come a funny epilogue . Among all the missions that you will have left to do at the end, this JRPG goes easy at 30 hours in length easily.
The game is very uneven in how it lets us enjoy its stories. On the one hand, everything that pertains to the canon is quite careful . The game distributes its narration in cutscenes and conversations. The modeling of the characters are great, even though theirs are even more exuberant than those in the anime itself. When some shot is a low angle, Lucy, for example, her chest covers half her face. It’s ridiculous. As the adventure progresses, the narrative speeds up and gets sloppy. He takes his time to explain well everything that happens in the great magical games, but when we reach the end of the adventure, to the battle in Tartaros, there are many wonderful moments that he does not let you play and tells you without any passion. Instead, it plants a static image on the screen and dispatches events to you with four lines of text .
Side missions are very boring
There are many times when you can tell that Gust didn’t have the entire budget in the world to make this game. There are several characters our heroes talk to that have not been modeled so they are not seen on screen. When the Fairy Tail wizards have to chat with them, they are forced to look out of the plane, into nothingness, their interlocutors being represented by a static image and a speech bubble. This, added to the parts narrated with static scenes, greatly disfigure the narration of the work.
This irregularity in the narrative is tamed in the events dedicated to everyday life. Between missions we can talk with the members of Fairy Tail and strengthen our ties with them, they will invite us to go on a mission or they will confess their shame or feelings. Although all these conversations are filling, they are pleasant and they manage to fill many of the gaps that the story leaves. The problem is that the entire game comes exclusively in English with Japanese voices , and there is a lot to read. It’s more; The best of the game occurs when its characters speak or when they unleash their powers in combat. So if you don’t know English, there is half a game that you will miss.
Fighting and exploring in Fairy Tail
The weakest point of the game is its secondary missions . They are hideous, hideously designed, and outrageously boring. Fairy Tail is a guild of magicians, their profession forces them to accept orders from a board and fulfill them to get paid. By doing so and succeeding, your guild improves, moves up the overall ranking, and gets paid. In the anime, this excuse was used to make us travel the world, solve conspiracies, kill outlaws, save a village … But in the video game this does not work the same way. In addition to the central cities of the game, we have other locations designed like a maze . There are monsters in them. Well, the vast majority of missions consist of going to one place or another and killing a certain number of creatures. And again. And again.
Game performance on Switch is not optimal
If they don’t ask us that, they force us to go through the cities looking for things. Sometimes we will have to fight a boss, but things do not improve . As we increase in rank, these tasks remain the same only as requiring us to kill and kill a greater number of critters. To make this matter worse, there is a very poor variety of them , so we will feel that we will be doing the same without stopping. And again. And again. Now you will be thinking: ‘well, I don’t do them and I focus on the main mission’. Well, you can’t, because the game forces you to do almost all of them . To advance to the next story arc, it will ask you to reach a certain level or a specific guild rank, so there is no escape.
Doing all of these missions wouldn’t be a problem if the combat was gripping or deep. Unfortunately, it is only in appearance . Each of our magicians has a series of spells. These attack in specific areas of the ring, hitting only enemies located in the range of effect of our spells. There are altered states, turns, and elemental weaknesses and strengths. But all that has no practical effect on the game. What matters here is to have a higher level than the rival, activate the magic and enjoy their execution. This is the best care in the game: how Natsu, Lucy, Erza, Wendy, Juvia, Gray and the others move to unleash their powers. And in fact this is what we have come: to look at them and talk to them. Because the game fails to take advantage of its systems. In the interview with the producer, he explained that the game was wanted to be absolutely accessible to enjoy watching its magicians; And so it has been, but at the cost of sacrificing a playable depth that the game says it could have.
The Switch version of Fairy Tail
The best are the animations of the magicians during the battles
The version that we have analyzed is the Nintendo Switch version. Unfortunately, it has serious performance issues . Whenever we are in open places, inside our guild or several of the magicians appear on the screen, whether in cinematics or not, the rate of frames per second suffers, dropping a lot from the thirty. In the fighting, yes, the game is perfect almost always . You can tell that Gust wanted us to be able to see our magicians in action in the best possible quality. The resolution is adequate, both on a laptop and a desktop. Loading times are smooth. However, in the final stages of the adventure, there is more when we move on to the fighting. This does not imply that the Nintendo Switch version is unplayable., but it does make the sections in which we carry out secondary missions very ugly, which are already quite heavy.
The best versions are those for PS4 and PC, and jump into the game only if you already know the licenseThat is why if you are going to play Fairy Tail, pay attention to the following: the best versions are those of PS4 and PC, and jump into the game only if you already know the license and want to see your heroes in action, Gray without a shirt, Lucy in a bikini, and recall the most legendary matches of the series. In spite of everything, know that this is not a deep JRPG , but a title of pure fanservice, humble in its production values, and that relies on the common elements of the genre to generously show all its characters. If you have all this clear, about 30 hours of pure Fairy Tail await you, which could be much better as a video game, but which is indisputably palatable for the fan .
Technically the video game is beautiful when it moves its characters in combat, but not so much in the recreation of cities . The music is functional, but there is a need for a larger collection of melodies that do stand out in the occasional cinematic. It has a ton of content, but it gets repetitive too soon. The exploration brings up some interesting ideas like the ability to blast trails if we do a lot of damage in combat, but it doesn’t get us anywhere interesting. As you can see, it is a constant tug of war, enough if you love the series, but it needed Gust to have taken more risks.
“Regular”
Fairy tail
Gust uses the JRPG genre as a container for all the Fairy Tail fanservice we want. Unfortunately, he is not able to delve into the game systems he proposes. That leaves us with a lazy role-playing video game but one that passes at satisfying the license-goer appetite. It could be technically better and perform more efficiently on Switch, also be more varied and less repetitive, but if you are passionate about anime, this video game will not disappoint.
- Good combat animations
- Long and generous in its contents
- The conversations between your characters
- It does not arrive translated into Spanish
- Performance issues on your version of Switch
- Very boring side missions
- The narration is stumbling
