Review: Fairy Tail – PS4

Fairy Tail is a game that pulls you into Fiore and lets you participate in some of the biggest adventures of your favorite characters across multiple guilds. There are a few shortcomings, but I had a great time exploring, fighting, and experiencing everything the world had to offer. If you’ve wanted to see the Fairy Tail universe from the inside, you’re going to like it.
The stories in Fairy Tail are taken from several different arcs including the Grand Magic Games and Tartaros and divided into episodes within larger chapters. As shounen anime stories go, they’re good with a focus on protecting your friends, defending your guild, and beating the bad guys. There are some deeper emotional moments in these stories, but it’s normally lighter and more upbeat.
Natsu and Lucy start as your main characters trying to rebuild Fairy Tail into Fiore’s top guild after the beginning of the game, but many quests require you to use other combinations of the game’s sixteen playable characters. They unlock slowly as you play, but a good chunk of characters won’t be unlockable for use until toward the end. Unless someone is required, you have the freedom to build your team with any characters you’ve unlocked from any guilds. This is awesome.

Although it may eliminate some of the surprises, I would recommend you have some knowledge of the characters and stories, before you jump into the game. Fairy Tail is made for the fans. They don’t waste time with lengthy explanations of a character’s backstory, preferring to get directly to the action with a ton of content and even more after the main credits.
If you need a refresher, you can visit Lucy’s House for info about the world and characters by looking at her bookshelf. You can also change your costume (and yes, that means swimwear as well), and deliver the hidden candies scattered throughout the game to Nikora for rewards. Beyond being a famous location from the world, it’s really useful.
When you’re not hanging out with your friends, you’ll be fighting monsters, collecting items, taking down dark guilds, and blowing away all the other wizards in the Grand Magic Games. Fairy Tail is a turn-based RPG with pattern attacks that cause damage in particular areas. Your enemies are arranged in a grid pattern of rows and columns. Your attacks may impact a single block on the grid, a row or column, or some varied design. With attacks that can push an enemy back or pull an enemy forward, there is some strategy in planning your attacks and choosing the right balance of power and MP cost.

A chain attack can be unleashed after you fill up a gauge. It allows your team to keep adding attacks to increase the damage to a crazy degree with flexibility and options to use an extreme magic attack as a finisher or use a combo attack between two characters in a unison raid. For an extra boost to attack and healing, your awakening ability powers up and heals your characters or can be exchanged for an additional attack. The game gives you a lot of opportunities to feel powerful and look cool doing it.
Combat does have a couple of minor issues. I played on normal difficulty, and, with a little bit of over leveling, the fights were not challenging. If you want that, I’d recommend stepping up your difficulty. Combat and missions can become repetitive after a while, but switching out my team members helped a lot.
Those points aside, the attacks in the game are amazing to watch. They range from quick hits to longer, elaborate animations in chain attacks or unison raids that look incredible and deliver the explosive punch that you would expect with extra visual pop on HDR TVs. Gray lays down a floor of ice, Natsu fires a barrage of flames, and Mirajane’s Sitri is a demonic force to behold. Lucy’s summons range from a static image of the celestial spirit to a fully 3D Aquarius showing up to cause a flood that also washes away Lucy. Erza is still probably the best girl, but you can debate that in the comments. Some attacks are better than others, but I loved seeing them, powering them up, and unlocking new ones.

Between fights, you can rebuild Fairy Tail by increasing its guild rank. This involves completing jobs off the request board, increasing your character bonds, raising your character levels, and improving the facilities. The jobs are little quests with difficulty up to S level, and you’ll slowly unlock higher ranks. Some feel a little bland and quick, but later missions extend the difficulty and time. Characters will increase their bonds at the end of a quest unlocking more chain attacks and a short interaction cutscene. The character levels use Fairy Points to give your characters even more chain attacks, special abilities, and alternate color costumes.
The new guild facilities start with an item shop, a lab, and a bar but expand later to much more. The shop will stock health and MP items and better quality items become available as you raise its level. The lab allows you to create lacrima that will give your characters a boost in areas such as attack power, speed, luck, HP, or a chance to hit an enemy with a status effect. The bar will let you buy drinks that buff your characters for a short time. Several other facilities can be improved and renovated from a pool to a library, and I couldn’t wait to head out to grab something to upgrade the next one.
The presentation is nice, even if it’s a little uneven. The world textures can be a little flat in some places, but the character models and attacks look fantastic. I don’t have any complaints about the majority of the game’s in-engine cutscenes either, but the CGI cutscenes are a huge step up. For the most part, I felt like I was living the Fairy Tail dream, and it’s exactly what I wanted.
Overall, that encapsulates my thoughts about the game. I wanted an RPG set in Fairy Tail’s world where I could hang out and be a member of the guild, play with my favorite characters, and use their over-powered attacks on anyone crazy enough to stand in my way. With a few issues, this game delivers that experience, and I would recommend it to any fans of Fairy Tail searching for the same.

Fairy Tail PS4 Review

• 7.5/10
  Overall - Very Good - 7.5/10

7.5/10

Summary

Fairy Tail seeks to give players a day in the life of Fiore’s greatest guild, and it’s mostly successful. The quests can start to become a little repetitive and world textures can appear flat, but it doesn’t take away from the excitement of playing with your favorite characters in some huge story arcs and being thrilled by their overpowered attacks. If you’re a fan, Fairy Tail is a great chance to visit that world.