I stopped watching the Fairy Tail anime some time after the Tenrou Island Arc, but I still read about the story’s later arcs from time to time. Thanks to that, I went into my 10-hour-long hands-on preview of Gust’s Fairy Tail 2 with the knowledge that the Alvarez Arc it adapts is, going by English-speaking internet reactions, not exactly the best the series has to offer. After defeating six of the mighty Spriggan 12 within four chapters — eight if you count two off-screened fights — via boss battles that were flashy but repetitive, I have a feeling that the RPG sequel, despite being decently fun in general, is not going to provide any big redemption for the arc.
For those completely unfamiliar with Fairy Tail, the Alvarez Arc is the final arc of the series and covers the invasion of the Ishgar continent by the Alvarez Empire, which is ruled by the incredibly powerful dark wizard Zeref. The game includes a database with basic character descriptions, and optional conversations can prompt some of the cast to reminisce about relatively ancient events for newcomers’ convenience, but it’ll definitely be easier to keep up if you at least have some familiarity with Fairy Tail. After all, there’s a complicated history between Zeref and the titular Fairy Tail wizard guild, and there’s also a third party in the form of an evil dragon that neither side likes.
The Spriggan 12 are powerful wizards who serve Zeref, and based on my time with the preview, the Alvarez Arc part of the game is mainly about running across the overworld to get to them. During the overworld exploration, you can collect items and resources, access unlocked character interactions at campfires, do basic side quests, and battle both regular enemies and hulking Area Bosses. Some paths are blocked off until you’ve unlocked a specific character. While these sections provide a good change of pace from the main boss fights, the lack of build-up for the latter, from both a narrative and gameplay structure perspective, makes the start of a boss fight sudden and lacking in anticipation. It doesn’t help that the Spriggan 12 members I’ve fought are mostly forgettable and underwritten, and that the couple of fanservice outfits among their ranks feel a bit silly even considering that this is Fairy Tail.
While Fairy Tail 2’s 2020 predecessor (which I haven’t played) had turn-based battles with grid-based enemy positioning, the action in this game is officially described as real-time, though there’s a lot of turn-based DNA, no movement, and similarities to the Active Time Battle system. Bumping into an enemy transitions the game from exploration into combat, and your attack combos are spaced apart by a cooldown timer, which can be shortened with Speed stat improvements and abilities. While the basic attacks you use to generate SP for magic skills happen from a standard third-person perspective, using your skills causes a special attack animation to play.
A “turn” of attack typically involves using your standard attacks to get some SP, then queuing up the abilities that you want to use. There’s an SP limit, but it’ll increase as you fight, and also as a potential bonus from striking enemies before entering combat. The latter is one of the similarities Fairy Tail 2 shares with the recent Metaphor: ReFantazio. The other is that if you’re stronger than the enemy, you can defeat them in one swing without going through the usual combat encounter.
Battles in Fairy Tail 2 are enjoyable to watch, thanks to the myriad of eye-catching abilities (a character can equip up to six, split across two tabs). In a single battle, I can see Mirajane transform into one of her demon forms for an attack, Erza unleash a storm of swords while clad in her ferociously spiky Heaven’s Wheel Armor, and Grey pull out an Ice Cannon to bombard enemies. Having two party members who can fight and cast support abilities on their own makes battles feel even more active. It’s all very fun and over-the-top, although it still would’ve been nice to have the option to skip the attack animations. The sight of Erza hurling a spear that further boosts itself with streams of fire is very cool, but I don’t want to be forced to sit through it every single time.
Remove this spectacle, and the combat becomes less memorable. During my 10 hours, I never ran into enemy compositions that required me to think about who to target first, and I never felt threatened by the size of the enemy groups. Even with elemental resistances and buffs and debuffs, fighting against regular enemies mostly meant picking the damage skill I fancied using and switching the character I was controlling when I wanted some visual variety. Guarding is a thing you can do, but I barely used it. It’s possible that later stages where ailments like Curse and Burn play a more significant role might make scraps a bit more strategic, but my experience with the former during a boss fight didn’t leave a strong impression, as I finished the battle without needing to keep its damage effect in mind.
Among the myriad mechanics that the game introduces, including stat-boosting Lacrima and active and passive effects provided by characters who aren’t in the playable roster, the main one to keep in mind is Break. Depleting an enemy’s Break Gauge allows you to trigger a Link Attack, which has effects dependent on your party members — I liked having Laxus by my side because his Link Attack inflicts Paralysis. Reducing a Break Gauge to zero also stuns the enemy and allows subsequent attacks to deal more damage.
Against bosses with multiple Break Gauges, depleting the final one allows you to activate a Unison Raid, which is basically a more powerful Link Attack. I didn’t have to care much about Break in regular fights, but it’s impossible to ignore when fighting a boss. Their incredible resilience necessitates the use of Unison Raids and critical damage to do meaningful damage to their health bar, so you have to include skills that deal greater Break damage in your character and party composition.
The boss battles are a step up from the regular fights, because they actually require me to swap to someone with healing abilities to top up my party’s health. I could also use health potions, but I find that less interesting. However, cutting down their Break Gauges over and over, a process that gets dragged out even further because of their second phase, quickly becomes repetitive and isn’t alleviated by boss gimmicks. Moments where a specific character gets a narrative-induced power-up to match the boss’ power level in a one-on-one makes things worse, because now you don’t have party members or character-switching to serve as a distraction.
The other thing you have to maintain an even spread of is attack Styles. Styles sound similar to damage types in RPGs, but instead of providing another general layer of resistances and weaknesses, they are used to determine what attack skills are needed to interrupt the charging of an enemy’s Risk Gauge, thus stopping them from unleashing a powerful attack. As with Break, I never paid much attention to this mechanic against mobs, but bosses can unleash pretty devastating attacks, so it’s good to maintain a mix of Styles for both individual characters and the overall party.
It’s a little disappointing that the sum of Fairy Tail 2’s various mechanics doesn’t manage to make its battles feel satisfyingly intricate, at least for these first four chapters. The non-controllable Supporting Characters, for instance, are determined by the story and have useful but unexciting abilities (like simply unleashing a Light element attack) with very basic trigger conditions, so I never had to think about this layer of the game at all. When I finally found a Lacrima that I could slot Ability Pieces into in Chapter 4, I discovered that the damage-improving pieces I had only provided a 1% boost each.
Despite all these issues, as well as the dull skill trees, I still enjoyed being in the company of familiar faces, leisurely sprinting across a field or desert between bosses, and controlling characters I used to watch on the screen. The battles are simple, but building up SP to then repeatedly wallop a soldier with Laxus’ Thunder Dragon Iron Fist (with each subsequent strike being stronger, but also more costly) or saturate an area with Mirajane’s Raging Bolt feels therapeutic. Fairy Tail 2 doesn’t feel like a notable RPG, but if you’re a fan of the IP and a cast that packs flashy attacks, there’s some fun to be had here.
Fairy Tail 2 will be released for Steam on December 11, 2024 and for PS5, PS4, and Nintendo Switch on December 13, 2024.
