Fairy Tail 2

Fairy Tail 2 was provided by Koei Tecmo for review. Thank you!

It's not often I get the chance to review a JRPG, and my experience with the genre is somewhat limited, but I think Fairy Tail 2 might be an excellent JRPG for newcomers to the genre to get started with.

I'll start by saying that although I think this JRPG is good for newcomers if you are new to the Fairy Tail series, you may want to go back and play the original Fairy Tail. The games are based on other media, and Fairy Tail 2 throws you in at the deep end, with the period covered in the game actually being the climactic part of the original manga. The continent the Fairy Tail guild occupies is being invaded by an all-powerful army from another continent, led by Zeref, the series' primary antagonist, and his loyal followers, all part of the "Spriggan 12", who play the role of bosses you'll need to fight against in the game.

This means that you'll be bombarded with a great number of characters that have various interconnected relationships that aren't really explained to you. As Fairy Tail 2 starts you off in the middle of a story, being a direct sequel to Fairy Tail 1, you should play the original game first.

I would recommend Fairy Tail 2 to JRPG newcomers because it is simple to play. The game Overworld is quite easy to navigate, and the combat system has enough mechanics to make it interesting without being deep enough to the point of min-maxing your characters and ensuring they have the best equipment, at least not at the default difficulty.

In fact, the game doesn't even have equipment like armor or weapons. Every character has their pre-determined equipment, and while they can level up and you determine what skills and abilities they upgrade, you can even automate this process with a feature called "auto-evolving," so the game will allocate points by itself when your characters level up.

So if an RPG or JRPG experience feels too complicated, really, all you have to get the hang of in Fairy Tail 2 is the combat, and then you can just enjoy exploring the world and progressing the story.

Fairy Tail 2's combat system has some depth without feeling overwhelming. Essentially, you have your basic attack (the X Button), which you can use up to 3 times per turn to boost your Skill Points (SP). Once you've built enough skill points, you can use your abilities with your Y, B, or A buttons, potentially multiple times in one turn, if you saved up enough skill points. The game uses a hybrid turn-based system, so while there is a "timer" you must wait before enacting your actions, you may act multiple times before an enemy does, or vice versa.

You will occasionally be able to do a link attack with a party member to deal some extra damage and use a Fairy attack with some supporting characters to pull off a special move, either to support your party or damage your foes. All of this is handled on a time basis with cooldowns, though, and it's pretty easy to keep track of it all, making the experience a pleasant one and not as monotonous compared to traditional turn-based JRPGs where you make 1 move at a time and then the enemy attacks back.

It can devolve into a routine of mashing X 3 times to build up SP, hitting Y to fire a special, mashing X, hitting Y, etc. But that's more reserved for boss battles, which can be tediously long. We're talking upwards of 20 minutes, which is a long time when you mostly repeat the same actions with little variation. This area could have been done with a little tweaking; the boss battles should be half the length they are.

This is actually a bigger problem than it sounds. The way the game is structured means you are essentially traveling from boss battle to boss battle, with a few smaller battles in between. A number of "big bad " are invading, and it's your job to defeat all of them, so that means you need to get through a sizable number of boss battles in short succession.

The presentation of the game is reasonable, although the screenshots in this review aren't really a fair example, as they are taken on a Steam Deck that has to run at lower settings. Still, the sounds, voice acting, and overall feel of the world are there, and it's quite a pleasant design. The music can get a little repetitive, as there seems to be just one music track used for "tense" situations, and it's used quite often.

The menus are laid out very easily, aiding the simplistic RPG feel I mentioned earlier. The amount of items in the game is pretty low, there are items for buffing your stats like Defense, Attack, Speed, and healing items, but that's about the extent. Every item in the game serves a purpose, so thankfully, your inventory won't get filled with random rubbish. Merchants also work in an interesting way, where instead of accepting currency, you merely supply them with the materials you find in the field, and they'll give you the item you want.

Fairy Tail 2 isn't the best JRPG I've played. The story, much like everything else in the game, is on the basic and 1-dimensional side and kind of feels almost throwaway at points, but it's one of the more easy-going, casual ones I've had the chance to enjoy, and if you are in the mood for an RPG-lite as it were, then Fairy Tail 2 might just be the one for you.

Fairy Tail 2 - Steam Deck Performance

Fairy Tail 2 sadly does not support 16:10 resolutions, so we're stuck with a 1280x720 resolution here, which means black borders along the top and bottom of the screen. The game's controller support is excellent, with both menus and gameplay working perfectly with the Steam Deck's controller layout.

Plenty of graphical settings are available, which can be a rarity for a JRPG, although we have to keep Fairy Tail 2 on the lower side of settings to make it run well on the Steam Deck.

Recommended Settings - 40 FPS

Set the SteamOS frame rate limit to 40, and no TDP limit here.

For my recommended settings, you should change the "Overall Quality" setting to "Low" to get the basics in place. Then, raise the Frame Rate Limit from 30 to 60, go down to Intel XeSS, and raise it from "Balanced" to "Ultra Quality."

The game takes quite a bit of a visual hit at these settings. Notably, the texture quality is pretty poor, but as I already used over 5GB of VRAM, I didn't want to risk going any higher. Bushes can also look quite poor, but generally, the game holds up reasonably well, and bumping up the XeSS quality helps to produce a much smoother image.

Generally, the game stays at 40 FPS in the overworld with these settings, with some environments dropping to the mid-30s, although this is rare and only in specific areas. In combat, when a large visual effect is played, the game can often drop into the 20s, this isn't avoidable, but it also doesn't affect the game's playability too much.

The power draw stays on the higher end, mostly around 18W-21W. So expect a couple of hours of battery life from a Steam Deck LCD and around 2.5 hours from a Steam Deck OLED.

Temperatures are in the 60C-70C range, with some fan noise.

Accessibility:

Fairy Tail 2 has some accessibility options. It has varied difficulty levels, the ability to change font coloring slightly, subtitles for all dialogue, even the overworld chatter, and rebindable controls.

Conclusion:

Fairy Tail 2 is a simplistic approach to the JRPG genre. It has an easy-to-understand combat system, a fairly straightforward storyline, and minimal effort required on the part of the player to maximize the efficiency of equipment and items. It's a good compromise for someone who wants the gameplay and storyline of a JRPG without all the unnecessary party management. The story might be a little simplistic, but overall, the game is a good time.

The game runs pretty well on Steam Deck. You won't be getting a 60 FPS experience here, but 40 FPS with the occasional drop was perfectly fine for my playthrough. The controls work beautifully, and although we do get black borders due to the lack of proper resolution support, the game itself plays fine.

Our review is based on the PC version of this game.

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