Review: Fairy Tail 2 is fun but unstable on Switch

There has been debate recently about whether reviewers should have intimate knowledge of the source material on which a game is based before playing it. While the arguments are based on new one Indiana Jones gameI found it easy to understand when I played through it Fairy Tail 2. I haven’t watched the anime, read the manga, or even played the original video game adaptation. I’m halfway into the story, which could be a recipe for disaster. Thankfully, it didn’t happen.

Fairy Tail 2 takes place during the original Alvarez Empire Arc of the manga, serving as the main climax of the story. It focuses on the wizard guild Fairy Tail as they confront the invading Alvarez Empire. The empire is commanded by an immortal mage named Zeref, whose longevity and inability to be defeated has made him cynical and eager to claim power just because he can. To do this, he recruits the Spriggan 12, a group of powerful mages, all with their own purposes. Defeating them takes up most of the earlier parts of the story.

With that said, starting here might have been a bad idea, but it says a lot about the strength of this story that I still had a great time. The game does a great job of engaging players, mainly as a refresher for those returning from the first game, but it also benefits me. Each character gets a moment that highlights exactly who they are, the main cast is introduced gradually, and the special campfire scenes even clearly show flashbacks to key moments. importance of characters in the past. There are also walls of text explaining each character’s backstory if you need it. However, I don’t really want to sit down and read each book because it’s too much and I want to get on with the game. Luckily, they’re not really necessary.

It helps that this is an interesting cast that quickly drew them into my heart. Naruto, our main character, is a meathead with a heart of gold who barely seems to understand what’s going on but at least he’s enthusiastic. His feud with Gray is also a highlight, as the moments of unnecessary competition between the two always make for excellent comedy. Especially when Gray’s clothes inexplicably decided to disappear to everyone’s confusion.

For me, character dynamics are the highlight of the story. The group is constantly in contact with each other, often joking and sharing stories. The campfire stories, unlocked by leveling up the cast, also provide some additional scenes that help establish who this eccentric group is.

They even sought to extend this to the villains, as each member of the Spriggan 12 has some connection to the main cast appearing during the boss fight. This could be Erza confronting Ajeel out of duty or Wendy learning to become stronger while facing a near-impossible fight with a time mage. It’s a great touch and makes the villains feel like a team in their own right.

Fight in Fairy Tail 2 is a great time. It lies somewhere between real-time and turn-based. You can freely unleash moves, but everything eventually has a cooldown that you have to wait for. You have a basic combo attack that accumulates ability points. With those points, you can perform special moves and chain them for as long as you said to use them. When you hit an enemy’s weak point and break their armor, you increase your Fairy Rank, increasing the number of ability points you can accumulate at once.

It leads to some chaotic battles as every character ends up unleashing flashy moves, shouting out their attack names, and blasting the screen in magic. There is a guard button but more often than not there isn’t much activity happening so I see little opportunity to use it. It’s a little messy but it feels amazing.

It’s not perfect, as it can sometimes feel repetitive, especially in the early stages when you have few movements to perform. I would also love to have more control over character switching. Due to the fact that I can only change characters when my current character is inactive, it would feel more satisfying if I could switch mid and chain attacks together. It’s not a deal breaker by any means, but it would greatly improve the flow of the battle if that change were made.

What I’m less impressed with is the game’s abysmal performance on the Switch. Whenever I entered an area with a lot of characters on the screen, or just an area that was too large, the frame rate plummeted. Some of the combat animations also become extremely choppy at times, as the Switch tries to strip out animation frames just to keep things going.

And that’s before we even get to the issues that could ruin the game. Loading screens are always a stressful experience, not only because they are long but also because they often freeze completely. A chapter opens with a complete freeze and can only be ended by returning to the Switch’s main menu and returning briefly, allowing the game to remember what it was doing. I even returned to the game during one session only to discover the game had loaded in as a pure white blank space.

If these are pre-release bugs that will be fixed in the first patch, then I’m willing to increase my score by one point. However, if this is a general problem with the Switch itself, I highly recommend playing it Fairy Tail 2 on other platforms. Unless, of course, other platforms are having other problems.

However, I can almost forgive all of this. Both the story and the fighting attracted me a lot. Combat could certainly do with some minor tweaks but nothing that ruins the experience, while the story convinced me to check out more of the franchise at some point.

Fairy Tail 2 is a great time If you’re already a fan of the series then you’ll almost certainly have fun here. It’s a shame that technical issues on the Switch hindered the experience.

Fairy Tail 2 will release for PC via Steam on December 12, 2024. PS4, PS5, and Switch versions will release on December 13, 2024.

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