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Game adaptations for anime are sometimes hit or miss for me. Depending on the anime, I feel like certain adaptations are just overdone. Dragon Ball Z does well, as does One Piece, but a lot are half-baked attempts to capture the source material. In 2024, Fairy Tail had a big year with both Fairy Tail Dungeons and Fairy Tail 2.

Fairy Tail 2 is an RPG developed by Gust and published by Koei Tecmo. Anyone who is familiar with Gust’s work on the Atelier series will be able to tell what you’re in for here. Fairy Tail 2 is a solid Action RPG with a few bits that only really work if you’re already a fan of the Fairy Tail anime or manga.

The storyline of Fairy Tail 2 covers the “Alvarez Empire Arc” which was the climax of the original Manga series. You play as various members of Fairy Tail (and their allies) as they go up against their biggest threats yet. As you fight enemies and level up, you’ll also unlock story vignettes you can view at camp that give you a bit of background on characters, their relationships, and how they interact with one another.

In a way, these vignettes serve as filler episodes, though unlike in the original Fairy Tail game, there aren’t side quests associated with them. There are side quests you can do, but most of them are fetch quests and aren’t that interesting. With that said, there are a lot of things to find and do as you explore the various areas in Fairy Tail 2.

Most of your time will be spent fighting enemies, which takes place in a pseudo-turn-based combat style. Each character has SP, and you can issue attack commands until you run out of SP for that turn. It is fairly standard for most Gust RPGs right now, though there are also elements such as awakening (which boosts stats) and things like Link attacks, staggering, and Unison Raid combo skills.

The combat is interesting, and the storyline is solid, but it is there mainly if you are a Fairy Tail fan. For the average RPG fan, the game feels a little sparse. Few side quests that actually mean anything, a set of three skill trees for each character that mostly feel the same, and battles that start to feel repetitive after a while.

As a fan of Gust’s Atelier franchise, which boasts a variety of complex systems and sprawling storylines, it feels…strange. While the gameplay feels familiar and enjoyable, the simplicity and repetitive blandness feels disappointing. This isn’t to say that Fairy Tail 2 is a bad game really, it just feels average.

I think if you’re a fan of Fairy Tail you’ll enjoy Fairy Tail 2. It’s fun to play through the Alvarez Empire Arc, swapping out parties of familiar characters and building up teams to take on bosses. However, if you’re looking for something with more substance, I’m not sure this Is the game you’re looking for.

The visuals are great, the gameplay is decent, and if you don’t mind Japanese-only voice acting you’ll enjoy the audio. It just feels like it needs a bit more side-content or side-quests that aren’t just fetching crafting items for random NPCs. I like it, but knowing the developers and the studio’s background makes me feel like they could have done a lot better.

A PlayStation 5 Review Copy of Fairy Tail 2 was provided by Koei Tecmo for the purposes of this review.

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Fairy Tail 2

$49.99 USD

6.5

Score

6.5/10

Pros

• Decent Combat Mechanics
• Colorful Characters and Environments
• Interesting Storyline

Cons

• Bland Side Quests
• Combat Gets Repetitive
• No English VA
• Non-Fans of the Anime might not get the story