Review: Fairy Tail 2 Is Flashy Fun, but Unstable on Switch

There’s been discourse recently about whether or not a reviewer should have an intimate knowledge of the source material a game is based on before playing it. While the arguments were based on the new Indiana Jones game, I found it relatable as I’d been playing through Fairy Tail 2. I have not seen the anime, read the manga, or even played the original video game adaptation. I am joining halfway through the story, which could have been a recipe for disaster. Thankfully, it was not.

Fairy Tail 2 takes place during the manga’s original Alvarez Empire Arc, which acts as the story’s major climax. It centers on the Fairy Tail guild of mages as they take on the invading Alvarez Empire. The Empire is commanded by an immortal mage named Zeref, whose long life and inability to be defeated has made him cynical and eager to claim power simply because he can. To do this, he recruits the Spriggan 12, a misfit bunch of powerful mages all with their own agendas. Defeating them takes up most of the earlier parts of the story.

As stated, starting here could have been a terrible idea, but it says a lot about the strength of this story that I still had a great time. The game does an excellent job of getting the player on board, mainly as a refresher for those returning from the first game, but it worked to my benefit too. Every character gets a moment that highlights exactly who they are, the main cast are introduced gradually, and special campfire scenes even outright show flashbacks to significant character moments of the past. There are also walls of text that explain each character’s backstory if you need them. However, I didn’t really want to sit and read each of them because it was a lot and I wanted to get on with the game itself. Fortunately, they weren’t really necessary.

It helps that this is a delightful cast that quickly charmed their way into my heart. Natsu, our protagonist, is a meathead with a heart of gold who doesn’t seem to understand what’s going on most of the time but he is at least enthusiastic. His feud with Gray is also a highlight, as these moments of unnecessary competition between the two always made for excellent comedy. Especially when Gray’s clothes decide to inexplicably vanish to everyone’s confusion.

The character dynamics were the highlight for the story for me. The team are constantly communicating with each other, often joking around and sharing stories. The campfire stories, unlocked by leveling up the cast, also provide some extra scenes that flesh out who this band of weirdos are.

They even manage to make this extend to the villains, as each member of Spriggan 12 has some connection to the main cast that emerges during the boss fight. This could be Erza confronting Ajeel out of a sense of duty or Wendy learning to become more powerful when facing off a near-impossible fight with a time mage. It was a nice touch and one that made the villains feel like a team in their own right.

Combat in Fairy Tail 2 is a great time. It sits somewhere between real-time and turn-based. You can freely throw out moves, but everything ultimately has a cooldown you have to wait for. You have a basic combo attack that helps build up ability points. With those points, you can throw out special moves and chain those for as long as you have said points to use them. As you hit enemy weaknesses and break their armor you increase your Fairy Rank, increasing how many ability points you can accumulate at once.

It leads to some chaotic battles as every character ultimately throws out huge flashy moves, yelling their attack names and exploding the screen in magic. There is a guard button but more often than that not so much was going on I found little opportunity to use it. It’s a little messy but it feels amazing.

It’s not perfect, as at times it can feel repetitive, especially early on when you have few moves to play with. I also would love to have had more control over character switching. As it was I could only change character when my current one was idle, but it would have felt more satisfying if I could switch mid-combo and chain attacks together. It’s not a deal breaker by any means, but it would have improved the flow of battle drastically if that change was there.

What I was less impressed by was the game’s abysmal performance on the Switch. Whenever I entered an area with a lot of characters on screen, or just a field that was a little too wide, the frame rate plummeted through the floor. Some battle animations got extremely choppy at times too, as the Switch desperately tossed out animation frames simply to keep things going.

And that’s before we get to the potentially game-breaking issues. Loading screens were always a tense experience, not only because they were long but also because they would often freeze up entirely. One chapter opened with a total hang that could only be ended by briefly returning to the Switch home menu and back, allowing the game to remember what it was doing. I even returned to the game on one session only to discover the game had loaded in as a pure white void.

If these were pre-release bugs that will be fixed in a day one patch, I’d be willing to bump my score up a point. However, if this is a general issue with the Switch itself, I highly recommend playing Fairy Tail 2 on another platform. Unless other platforms are experiencing other issues, of course.

I was able to mostly forgive all this, however. The story and the combat both did a lot to win me over. Combat could certainly do with some minor tweaks but nothing that ruins the experience, while the story has convinced me to go check out more of the franchise at some point.

Fairy Tail 2 was a great time. If you’re a fan of the series already, you are almost certainly going to have fun here. It’s just a shame the technical issues on Switch hinder the experience.

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