Fairy Tail 2 (PC) Review – A Messy Step Forward, But It Is Forward

Fairy Tail by GUST Studios was a game I greatly anticipated. Even though its execution was a bit messy, it gave me a lot of Fairy Tail content to love. I was then greatly excited once the sequel of Fairy Tail 2 was confirmed.

Game Name: Fairy Tail 2
Platform(s): PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, PC (Reviewed)
Developer(s): GUST Studios
Publisher(s): Koei Tecmo
Release Date: December 13th, 2024
Price: $59.99

SPOILERS FOR THE SERIES FAIRY TAIL IN CASE YOU EVER WANT TO WATCH/READ IT

As I initially stated for the preview of Fairy Tail 2, the prologue of the game starts directly after the epilogue of the Fairy Tail game. The core crux of the second game’s story is about fighting Zeref. Zeref is the main antagonist for the entire series of Fairy Tail. His elite bodyguards are known as the Spriggan 12 and they will be constant enemies you will have to get through. You will have to work on defeating Zeref and saving the Fairy Tail guild from E.N.D.

Defeating The Spriggan 12

The game loop of Fairy Tail 2 has a lot going for it. You are in a big open map that is connected to other open maps throughout the area. These are branched out with alternate paths to treasure, crystals, and lacrima. You also can find Plue, the dog celestial spirit all around due to it getting cloned. Each one you find gives you a pawprint stamp and if you find enough of them, it gives you added materials. For those who want to max out the characters, you will need to find a lot of these Plue clones.

There are enemies throughout the maps, and if you touch them combat starts. If you attack them before combat starts, then you will add a fairy rank on top of combat. Fairy Rank will give you an added maximum SP for your skills. Each skill has an SP cost and doing regular attacks gives you SP. You don’t have to wait til your SP is maxed out to do a skill and you can also chain skills to use up more SP and combo the enemy. Just be sure you keep attention as some enemies can use stances that will counter skills or make them immune to skills. Be sure to keep your eyes on them and see if they get a circle on their body.

Each skill has various qualities. Some are physical attacks, some are piercing attacks and some are energy attacks. Certain abilities from enemies can be stopped if you attack them with the corresponding type of attack. Later bosses require a lot of skills to break past their ability build up. Each skill has a balance between break or power. Break strength does do extra damage to the stagger gauge. Power does damage to the HP. Though if their stagger is up, the full damage of the HP abilities is reduced. It is wise to wait to use the high HP attacks until they get stunned after their stagger gauge is depleted.

As you gain more strength in your party members, eventually you will gain access to burst break, which allows you to break obstacles along the open area maps. These give you access to even more routes. The routes can lead to more treasures, tougher enemies, or story areas you will need to access. As you gain access to more story areas, you will also unlock more maps and more enemy types.

Unison Raid is a mechanic that is very helpful in combat. When you break stagger or deplete one bar of stagger gauge, you will get a pop-up that asks what party member can attack. They can add a passive buff to your team afterwards or apply a debuff on the enemy. If you break stagger completely, your character you play as, and one party member of your choice will attack in unison. This deals extra damage if one of the characters in the attack has an element that is a weakness to the enemy.

Animating Fairy Tail

One of the highlights of the first Fairy Tail game was the animations surrounding all the attacks and skills you have access to. Fairy Tail 2 complements this highlight and adds more amazing visuals with a grander spectacle. I tried to get all the animations of the various unison raids you can use because of how amazing they looked. The models looked like they had more expressions too when you saw them in event scenes or even combat. Everything was enhanced in the visual department and you could tell.

Storytelling Hiccups

In my preview, I noted that I disliked that some of the issues of the first Fairy Tail game followed its way to Fairy Tail 2. That main gripe is with the storytelling. There are a lot of moments in the anime that are emotional and there are some fighting and scenes with characters discussing it. In the Fairy Tail 2 game, this game does the animations well but with how fast things happen in the game, it never hits nearly as well.

The pacing does not help with how the game tells its story. Since the series, Fairy Tail, has a huge cast and amount of locations overall, this snippet of the series from the game doesn’t explain things in the cutscene. To Fairy Tail 2’s credit, the game does have a terminology screen that you can open when special terms or names are referenced in the story. That does help especially for characters that haven’t been introduced in the game but have been introduced in the anime.

Playing Fairy Tail 2

I played Fairy Tail 2 on PC. I managed to play between my laptop, my main PC, and my RoG Ally. With all these devices, I played at a 1080p resolution with a consistent 60 fps. I had a few technical hiccups during the preview and when I tried the same things on the main build of the game, I had none of those technical problems.

The only issue I had with looking at settings was I couldn’t switch over to my second monitor on PC natively from the game. I had to do that manually with Windows or with Steam.

Joining Fairy Tail

The Original Fairy Tail game was fun with the guild aspects and building up everything the game had to offer you. Fairy Tail 2 does remove the guild aspects but it does add more fun in the combat and collecting. I had a lot of fun looking for the area bosses who would then unlock more things to collect and fight. The original story of Fairy Tail 2 after the anime’s end, was actually what I wanted out of it. It added more moments of character interactions and ultimately more Gildarts time. If you are a fan of Fairy Tail the series or the first game, then give this one a try. If you are not though, I can’t recommend Fairy Tail 2. It doesn’t do well in helping newcomers understand the series.

Fairy Tail 2 will be released on December 13th, 2024 on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, and PC.

Review Disclosure Statement: Fairy Tail 2 was provided to us by Koei Tecmo America for review purposes. For more information on how we review video games and other media/technology, please review our Review Guideline/Scoring Policy.

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