Review for FAIRY TAIL. Game for Nintendo Switch, PC and PlayStation 4, the video game was released on 30/07/2020
The greater the success, the more a work tends to become cross media, especially in recent times. This is precisely the fate that fell to FAIRY TAIL, manga created by Hiro Mashima in 2006 and ended 3 years ago. The Japanese mangaka has given life to a universe of wizards who, gathered in guilds, trying to carry their banner higher and higher at the expense of other corporations. In this whirlwind of battles between guilds, however, it is necessary to distinguish between those that follow the path of light and the dark ones, dedicated to business not really so recommendable, so much so as to be declared outlawed by the Council of Magic, the supreme body that regulates the use of magic and relations between guilds. Koei Tecmo and Gust have ventured into this enterprise, trying to do a magic in their turn come up with a title faithful to the paper work.
Welcome to Fiore
For those who already know the manga, Fairy Tail will welcome us with the meeting on the island of Tenrou, together with Mavis, the first master of the Fairy guild. Getting to know Acnologia, a very powerful dragon that will suddenly attack them, the components of Fairy Tail present on the island will have to resort to a unique defense spell: it will protect them from the threat but will block them in place for 7 years. Natsu and Co. will return to the guild headquarters after the time jump, finding it in a sorry state: the remaining members have done their best to keep up the shack but the economic problems, lacking the leading exponents, have overwhelmed the corporation. It will therefore be up to us to raise the fortunes of the guild, fulfilling all the tasks that will be assigned to us and bringing up the name of Fairy Tail. The plot will resume the entire narrative arc of the Grand Prix of Magic up to that of Tartaros, taking some license in the middle, resulting in enjoyable but without particular narrative peaks. Between one main assignment and the other we will be able to dedicate ourselves to the numerous collateral activities that the title will reserve for us.
The summer is magic… or not?
As soon as you get carried away with the Fairy Tail game system, you immediately realize how numerous are the tasks to be completed and their types. In addition to the missions that we will have to undertake to continue with the main plot, there will be some that we can select from the bulletin board, divided by rank. On the bulletin board there will be only the missions that will have a rank equal to or lower than that of the guild: to climb the ranks and the ranking we will have to grind as many objectives as possible, satisfying the principals of our assignments to earn positions in the rank, Jewels (currency of the world of Fairy Tail), items and fortifying the bond between guildmates. Just as it is stressed several times in the manga (perhaps too many), fortifying the with guildmates will also be important with regard to clashes: the stronger and more powerful the bond will be, the stronger the bonuses of the combined attacks. Much of the combat system will in fact focus on the ability to perform chain attacks between party members, knocking out opponents as soon as possible.
The clashes take place on a 3 × 3 grid on which only the enemies are placed, one per square. The party, consisting of up to 5 characters, can count on various types of basic action: attack, spells, defend and inventory. In the end, however, the really useful ones are only two, namely the use of magic and objects. In fact, the simple attack will be nothing more than a way to not give up damaging an opponent, without consuming too much mana (the characters go KO once the MPs are finished), but numbers in hand is a difficult situation. The use of magic instead allows you to inflict damage on enemies by targeting certain squares of the grid. The only element that adds a minimum of strategic depth, if we want to call it that, is the possibility, through the use of precise spells, to move enemies on the grid in such a way as to favor the intervention of allies, hitting the greatest number of enemies as possible and by exploiting weaknesses to certain elements. Stop. We would have expected something a little more stringent, maybe even inserting the party on the grid, making the clashes more tactical and fun but this is not the case. Everything seems to lean towards the quick elimination of opponents, including the use of chain attacks, which can be achieved in two ways: either by sacrificing a little of the bar dedicated to Awakening (when full we can enhance the characters, transforming them) or by pressing R1 when the circular bar on the right of the screen, called Fairy Gauge, will be full. With the Fairy Gauge you can unleash very powerful combos, complete with a Finisher, to inflict heavy damage on opponents. The only useful aspect of this mechanism is being able to easily complete the missions where we will be asked to eliminate a certain type of monsters in the various dungeons available..
The latter will not be complex at all, although the style of the settings is very faithful to that of the manga: in the dungeons we will be able to turn, bumping into enemies or collecting objects here and there, trying to open up blocked roads through the use of the Fairy Gauge in the fighting. , destroying obstacles. The exploration is therefore really very linear, regardless of whether you are in a dungeon or in one of the cities of the game world, within which we will move simply by choosing the location on a map. By turning to the latter it will be possible to meet some members of the guild and start dialogues that will strengthen the bond between the individual members involved, providing bonuses for reduced MP consumption. We will also be able to increase the rank of the individual characters in the party, taking advantage of the points we will earn by completing the tasks, in order to earn permanent perks for the single component, such as the increase in the probability of critical hits, alternative clothes or additional Tear slots.
Tears will practically be the equipment with which we can customize the party, providing statistical bonuses or the probability of inflicting particular altered statuses on enemies. Other improvements can be obtained by upgrading the guild premises, such as the general store or the laboratory: to do this you will need to obtain specific materials by defeating certain monsters. As we had anticipated therefore, there are a lot of activities in the world of Fiore, but these are limited to simple tasks such as "Recover this object" or "Eliminate X monsters", without even giving a plot outline a minimum captivating, making everything quite repetitive. Also the combat system could have been deeper: the basic idea is good but adapted in a somewhat superficial way and, above all, with a difficulty curve not calibrated as it should, given the ease of the fights.
The look of the fairies
Graphically Fairy Tail is not at the level of the latest productions but the cell shading style fits well with the manga style. A little less instead the animations and particle effects that turn out to be quite woody and rough, with little level of detail. It does not get to the point of damaging the gaming experience but surely something better could have been done, without a shadow of a doubt. The question regarding the audio sector is slightly different: the music does its job and they are well suited to the game world, light-hearted and cheerful, not memorable does however make their figure. Even the dubbing does not look bad (entirely in Japanese).
Playing Fairy Tail we had the distinct feeling of having got our hands on a title that could do more. Gust gave a RPG imprint but in a somewhat superficial way. Both the combat system and the exploration could be treated in a better way, articulating and deepening their characteristics, together with the difficulty curve that seemed to us tending downwards. The goodwill was all lavished on inserting as many features as possible: numerous (but simple) side missions, bonds to be strengthened with teammates, character ranks, guild upgrades, guild rank tasks to complete and so on. Street. We would have preferred that Gust and Koei Tecmo had concentrated on fewer aspects, digging the furrow more, rather than putting a lot of meat on the fire to cook it only on the surface. If you want to get closer to the world of RPGs, Fairy Tail does not offer so many new features but it will certainly be appreciated by avid opera lovers.
► FAIRY TAIL is an RPG type game developed by Gust Co. Ltd. and published by Koei Tecmo for Nintendo Switch, PC and PlayStation 4, the video game was released on 30/07/2020
