Fairy Tail on PlayStation 4
The absolute first thing to mention is how similar Fairy Tail is to the biggest Gust series Atelier. From separate and condensed maps to picking up random ingredients from the side of the paths for synthesis, it’s very Atelier. Just needed that bit of information out of the way.
The second most striking thing is that, in many ways, it feels like Fairy Tail was made explicitly for fans of the anime. According to the list of story arcs, the game doesn’t take place until episode 122. It was astonishing to learn this, as it’s usually not the case for the first game adaptation.
The opening of the game feels very much like it is assuming (for those who haven’t seen the show) you know far more than you might. However, the game is also kind enough to give a bit of background information in the form of eight pieces of “Story” in the game’s encyclopedia that can be accessed as soon as you take control of Natsu. Even so, when these moments are referenced throughout the story, it feels flat having simply read a couple paragraphs about them.
Fairy Tail plays as a fundamentally sound but basic turn-based RPG (again, very Atelier) with a group of party (starts at three and goes to five) members who all have different elemental specialties to offer to the guild itself, and allows for some level of group synergy.
As the story covers so much ground, sometimes you don’t get to play out events, there are scenes where Lucy simply recounts details you didn’t see in journal entries that use visuals from the anime.
While there is a lot of story covered in the game, the text box dialogue doesn’t overstay itself welcome and story moments are just long enough to be informative and enjoyable, but short enough to not break up the flow of the game.
The story starts with a guild known as Fairy Tail fighting a battle against an older wizard called Hades who wants to open a portal to another world. Fairy Tail wins but then, once gathered outside on Tenrou Island, they are attacked by a dragon from the sky.
It’s a devastating attack they all know they would never survive. The friendly spirit of the guild’s first master protects the guild members from the attack, but the resulting protection seals them away for seven years.
Upon waking/returning, the members of Fairy Tail find that their guild house in the city of Magnolia has been entirely downgraded and is currently in the care of a man and his son, nowhere near the elite status it was before their disappearance.
As they work to build the guild back up, the members of Fairy Tail are told that the Grand Magic Games, a tournament that decides the strongest Guild in the Kingdom of Fiore, will be taking place in three months’ time.
Speaking of the guild, from the very first entrance into the Fairy Tail building, the game becomes focused on requests, and raising your guild rank from the very bottom 168th rank in which it currently languishes.
It is through requests that this rank is raised, with the difficulty of the request determining how much of an increase that the guild sees. Certain other guild related fixing up also contributes to the rank increase.
The guild is home to some extremely helpful facilities that do things from provide a bar to buy stat increasing drinks, a library that increases the XP non-active characters receive, to a storeroom that automatically gathers items from the world for you to collect.
These facilities can be upgraded 10 times each, and are where the bulk of the money in the game is spent, as there aren’t many other places that are worth money of any sort. They aren’t available off the bat and cannot even be fully leveled up until the epilogue, leading to a bit of frustration if you just want the benefits to stack up.