I'm really happy that it was a turn based RPG. I'm pretty over arena fighters. Give me more turn based and action rpgs!

I play now the game and im almost 6 hours in. Yes it is the best anime rpg for sure and yes has slowdowns with some areas, but still i will say it is worth the money. The gameplay is fun and rewarding, the characters are loveable, the upgrade and lving system also checks out all the good stuff. EDIT: I am 30 hours in, some thoughts... 1)Play the game on Hard it is way better, normal is just too easy.2)The rank S missions bring a lot of challenge in the endgame and are really good. 3)Get Gildarts, he is a beast of a character .

Hi Alex, we noticed you were heading through our comments section replying to many and thought we’d say hi! We certainly saw this one differently and that’s fine. Good job completing all the side missions what an absolute slog! Fair play! Mark

I pre-ordered it, I can't wait. Been itching to play a solid jrpg after farming in FOMT and putting 100s of hours into ACNH.

Nice review! I brought the Guild Edition limited edition.

Thought for sure you’d use one of the cgi clips where Natsu kicks but when I talked about the game’s cutscenes look, instead you went for the fanservice scene. Naughty Jordan xD

Thank you for the great review! :) Cant wait.

Great editting as always dear Jordan! Sorry for putting your voice through such a beast of a review, I am glad that I could help though and grateful for the trust you put in me to do it! Couldn’t help but notice though, that you left out the part where I ask the community for their favorite battle themes :-)

Thanks. Kept my pre-order now. Sounds fun

I preordered this game on switch and picked it up on day 2 of its release. I am a fan who watched many episodes and I love this game! I enjoy the turn-based gameplay and i like how while your picking your move, while your character is making their ready stance, there facial expression will change depending on if you are hovering over a "resist" or "weak" attack.

I'm a little salty because I recently found out that this game has a collector's edition I probably would have gotten it if I known about it but I was able to get a standard copy I'm waiting for it to get shipped

When you were breaking it down I was contemplating how to tell my friends this is an Atelier game without being an Atelier game. Then ya compared it to the series yourself!

Freakin great to hear it’s a good game. Definitely going to pick it up.

Awesome review, this game reminds me Enchanted Arms form the PS3. It feels nostalgic to me so I'll pick it up and also fairytale was overdue for a new game since most of them were Japan only releases. Just taking a break from arena fighters with an anime face on it feels good, I hope other anime series come to life into a jrpg.

FPDS DROPS are not because of the recording , please update this review and do not tell anymore that it is the reason. I already have this game and even have the day one patch, the fps drops is a big problem most specially in some areas like towns. I got this game because you mentioned that the FPS drop is only because of the recording and now I am really disappointed. Why not test the game first without recording it?

I lready preordered this but I was waiting for this review cause it’s hard to trust good reviewers nowadays. Great job, I hope you’ll get better.

Thanks for the review ,hope your well Jordan 🙏

Thank you guys for a very well detailed review, its sad how other reviewers would of dogged this game. I also missed out on watching this anime but I know its a great one (I will watch fully soon) already have this pre-ordered so I'm just waiting. As long as the story is great & gameplay that's good enough for me, giving it a 8 feels about right (now watch ign or gameinformer probably give it a 6 & downplay it). I'll continue to keep a eye out on your reviews, (can't wait to see how you do bravery default 2) also wanna point out on how you went to Alex for more insight on the anime that was cool. Keep up the great job guys

Hey everyone, many thanks to Alex for doing this review us. We couldn't have done it without him. Are you fans of the anime? Do you plan on picking this one up? Do let us know! And just a heads up about the footage. Due to circumstances we had to use the Switch’s internal capture software which is a bit crap. Hence the low quality look. Sorry for that, but it’s what we had to work with for this one. The frame rate is a bit worse than what Alex thought. He played for over 50 hours and it didn't bother him at all. Apologies for that, we will try to be more scientific next time.

Appreciate the review!

Not. censored, let's get it!

thanks for this review, I was gonna purchase it when it comes out but with the knowledge that the story of this game doesn't start from the beginning of the anime I'm probably gonna either finish watching the show first or wait for the earlier games to be released in the west.

My favorite type of games. I am going to keep an eye out on this one

I think I'm going to pick this game up even though I never watched show but I may play after watching the show up to the points in show you mentioned.

£54 is a bit steep yes, I'm wondering what the eShop price will be since games are usually higher on there. The game also has DLC.

The reasons why today’s Anime games don’t have English voices now is because Bandai dropped out the R1 anime distribution industry years ago, which is where they pulled in most of their voices for the video games division. Today they only dub the games that are expected to pull in a large amount of profit like anything from the Tales franchise.

I've had my eye on this for a while, looks like fun. This game and Trails of Cold Steel 3 are probably going to be my next purchases.

so...the game is actually smooth aside from the recorded clips you show?

It looks good, I was keen but $100 price tag in Australia just isn’t worth it.

Just wondering any other recent big name JRPGs? I honestly thought this was going to be a typical fighting game. I will deft be getting this. Thank you.

why does the game looks choppy? is it like 15 fps?

Damn I'm not even 30 episodes into the series I'm going to be completely lost 😭

Just waiting for Friday this game looks really good.

These mechanics remind me alot of trails of cold steel with link attacks and bonding points

I love how they added Lucy kick.😁😁

Wow, this was a long review.. fantastic review Alex and Awesome overview Jordan.. now get a cup tea w/ honey to Sauve your throat man.. for this game, I have not a single clue what this anime all about.. game looks pretty interesting.. nice job guys 👍🏾👍🏾👍🏾

Good review!

I heard it was up for discussion about an English dub but COVID-19 hit and made it difficult so they kept it Japanese (the voice cast is still amazing)

I might have missed it but i just mostly wanna know if it performs well in handheld as well as docked.

.hack were some of the best anime jrpgs on ps2. I wish they would port them over. Ill check this one out on bigger sale than it is now

I don’t know if it’s intentional or not but I feel like the comment replies from SwitchWatch claiming the technical shortcomings in the video are due to a bad capture card are very misleading. Other reviewers of the game have addressed the same issues and said they’re part of the game. Hopefully we get a patch fixing some of these things but maybe don’t mislead people here

I gave my thoughts on this game on the SwitchUp channel, and I was VERY harsh towards it. I'd only played it for about an hour by that point and it gave the impression that it was a very shallow and poorly made game. Some of my original criticisms still remain after about 10 hours of gameplay, namely how low the framerate is. The game doesn't run so well and some of the textures are pretty poor. The environments also look quite flat. That said, I'd suspected the game to lack any depth in its mechanics but I've been pleasantly surprised by the amount of development the game has. There are lots of systems in place to upgrade your characters, the guild hall, etc, and these upgrades all affect the gameplay in pleasant ways. An example of this would be that upgrading one of the many elements of the guild hall increases the amount of money you get for selling items, another increases the money you get for completing quests, and another increases the amount of experience your teammates get when they're not in your party. The game is full of these sorts of little features and it was a nice surprise to find out. I've had a few crashes already, one was a hard crash that stopped the game and gave me a notification. The other two were just me getting stuck in never ending loading screens. Thankfully, the game autosaves when you enter or leave an area so I didn't lose any progress. Anyway, that's my thoughts about the game. I still hold to the belief that the game shouldn't cost $60, perhaps a $40 game would've been more fair. That said, it's not the total ripoff I'd feared it was when I first got it and that's a good thing. In reality, it's actually quite fun to play, and that's what's most important.

I will go through my thoughts here. A lot of people have already mentioned the biggest downside of this Switch version. Performance. There are absolutely some frame drops for sure. But I think it has more to do with docked play rather then handheld. As a switch lite owner, handheld performance is the only part I care about and I haven't found to much information about handheld performance so that I what I will go over. Just going through Magnolia (the first big city), I suffered zero drops aside from Standing far away and looking at the old Fairy Tail building and looking at the entire city from the old building. Those droped to a locked 20fps mark, which sounds bad on paper but doesn't actually feel as bad as it sounds because it's a stable 20 rather then a fluctuating one. The game recovers to a smooth 30 very quickly after getting away from those select spots. In the starting guild hall, performance is either 20fps locked or 30fps locked, depending which way you look. If you look toward the door, away from the NPC's, it's 30. Look in toward the building, facing NPC's, it's 20(it's a mostly 20fps experience in the guild hall). That's is really the only frustrating part of the experience. It should be 30fps locked because it should only be rendering the building but due to the very fast(or non existent) loading between the Guild area and to Magnolia, it may be rendering both the Guild area and Magnolia, causing performance issues(speculation). If this is the case, patching the game to load the Guild area and Magnolia separately with a small load between them could potentially fix the performance in these areas. Combat is a smooth 30 or it at least feels like it. Exploring the other areas on the game yields a mixed bag of results. Areas like the Boundry Forest and the Great Plains fluctuates between 30fps and 20fps with some occasional performance hovering between. It's not that bad(In my opinion) but it is a little disappointing. So on the whole, I think the performance is good were it matter most, but does take some hits in other areas, though I think it could be easily fixed with a patch. Visuals are really good at a quick glance, character models by far are the shining point of the game. In combination of the audio, it's a very pleasant experience. Upon closer inspection though. Some textures are downright terrible, such as rock formations and the stairs by the old Fairy tail building. Shadows also look good, primarily for character models, though I have seen one or two shadow maps with some jagged, low resolution assets. Overall though, it's a solid game, but only for those who have watched the anime. The game talks a lot about past events in the anime and it will be very confusing for someone without the knowledge. For fans like me, it should be easy to look past the performance issues and enjoy the game. Edit 1: Grammer fixes and minor clarifications. Edit 2: Major Clarifications and added more info about performance, shadows, and opinions.

I have played the crap out of it. Its worth the money if you have seen the anime otherwise you'll be lost on whats going on at first. Otherwise I enjoy it as i have been a fan of the anime. I do hope to see dlc for it even if it means the game going backwards and adding the missing part of series and starting over. It would be great to play it as the full series. From beginning to end.

Finished the story yesterday. The game crashed many times right after entering a loading screens, after finishing the current quest objectives. It will also crash 100% if you approch and interact with the questboard, right after entering the guild hall if the board is compleatly empty. So make sure to save the game once you complete an objective.

the graphics are not that great tbh but the battle system feels polished and thats enough for me

I actually started watching the anime so I could get this game, since it looks so interesting !

Nuts, I was hoping this would have been a game from the beginning since I’m a newbie.

Maybe if they released the first one I’d be more interested. Props on tackling this review!

Personally, my only problem with the game is the huge lag (in certain areas), it’s really annoying on switch version

It always upsets me when games based on popular modern anime don't have an English dub despite the show having one. I get it for games like J-Stars Victory Vs where not every anime represented has an English dub, but for games like this and My Hero One's Justice, I don't see any reason there can't be a dub ESPECIALLY if there's a sequel due to high sales of the first one.

I love the game so far but one thing that I wish they added was that when fighting Hades, in they anime they didn’t power up using the power of friendship it was because there friends destroyed Hades’ heart (his heart was connected to the ship they were on) leaving him vulnerable to Natsu’s final attack

Hades was actually the second master (Makarov is the third. And sixth. And eighth.). Also, he didn't summon Acnologia knowingly; Acnologia came to him on his own.

Thanks! I’ve been looking forward to this review. I’m not a fan of the series, so it might not be for me.

Looks really fun, and I absolutely love the Fairy Tail anime. That said I really hope they add a English dub option down the line like they did with My Hero Academia One Justice 2.

I've been waiting for this review.

The game ran smoothly? 16:11 are you sure?

That old dude with white beard reminds me of Tung Fu from Fatal Fury. Beed old dude he be 😁😁😁

Is there a possibility that they’ll dub the game in English sometime in the future?

Not gonna lie, other then frame rate this game is everything I want in an anime rpg. Turn based an all! Def recommend if you already read or watched it. Also the cutscene are nicely animated an run smooth. Just general running around out an about is where you feel the drop in quality

Overall: lots of repetitive missions. Not recommended if you are not interested in fairy tail. Not recommended on switch, you will randomly stuck at loading screen after completing mission. Gust could have extended the game to the final arc, the story is so short without it.

Does anyone know what part the game takes place in the series?

How does the game run on Switch compared to the PS4?

Glad to hear this game goes until the avatar arc. I'll pick this one up eventually. Just not a day one buy for me.

Have it pre ordered and just got the notification that it’s being shipped rn, and I’ll have it by 2:30! I’m only on season 2.... is this gonna be spoiler territory!

I'm loving it on the ps4 it's a refreshing take on an anime game.

i had fun with it and you i will say it is the best JRPG based on an anime.

i love the gameplay of this game but as a major fairytail fan im really disappointed in how much of a let down the story turned out to be. the arcs we do end up getting have soo much content skipped over and they even only use a small amount of characters for parts (like only using kagura and ichiya for their respective guilds in the grand magic games). considering they pushed games release back in order to "polish it" it seems like they really missed the mark for getting this right as it makes game feel real incomplete due to this. like they could have even used cutscenes to get parts across instead of just having the speech bubbles without showing the characters - princess hisoi and arcadios arent shown at all apart from one cutscene/background scene which shows hisoi around the gate area. like i said i do enjoy playing the game for the gameplay, the story just annoys me and ive seen loads of people on fb agreeing that they didnt deliver the story as well as they should have

Hmmmmm. You weren't kidding when you said this was going to be a monster review. Looks like it could be decent but I have only watched 1 episode of the anime. I think i will ultimately pass on this but thank you for putting the time and effort on this.

Mystogan should have his own manga

Platinumed the game and have over 100 hours in still not done, definitely a good game but definitely has its issues, like misspelling Canas name for no reason

BEST ANIME RPG TO DATE I LOVE FT characters Jeez can't waiiit to playy and finish the game 100%

That sucks that my favorite character Mystogan isn't a playable character but at least Jellal is.

Looks fun, but the FPS drops are just dreadful... You would think it's going to lag once the screen gets busy, but the game appears to be lagging all the time. Not a very good port, it seems. Hopefully it gets patched.

It looks like a ton of fun, but I never watched the anime so may wait to buy this one.

I love Fairy Tail, I want this game to have an english dub, so someone please start a petition to make this happen! The game deserves it darnit!

As someone who's read through he manga and watched through he anime twice, yea my first thought was "man this is gonna be confusing as hell for newcomers"

16:12 "The game ran very smoothly"... Have you seen the framerate? It hurts to look at. I canceled my switch preorder and bought the ps4 version instead.

Looks like as someone who isn't into the show, I have to do some research beforehand. Hopefully nowhere near as much as the five anime episodes and the full-length film I had to watch before Final Fantasy 15! (BURN!!!)

The lag was really off putting but I got used to it a couple hours in. Having lots of fun with this game.

I am so on the fence with this game ugh, first off i enjoyed first season of fairy tail a couple of years ago and the idea of a licensed anime rpg excites me but i really dislike koei tecmo and their dlc pricing strategy. They are notorious for under printing their games and this makes them hard to find within just a few months after release, not only that but there are reviews stating a unwanted censorship patch was forced on players upon updating the game and persistent performance issues on switch. Still.... even with all these concerns i am attracted to buying this game just not at full price but since this is koei tecmo it will become hard to find on switch like atelier ryza and cost 100$ on SchemersBAY SMH.

This game might actually make me want to watch the Fairy Tail series to completion!

Finally got my hands on a Switch!

Please tell me that the fps drops are only there because you're recording, because the frame rates are all over the place. Made it hard to watch the video ngl.

Man. I never watched the anime so it sucks it jumps in the middle. The game actually looks pretty fun. I'd get it if I didnt have to know back story on my own. Oh well. 🙁

Is the PS4 version better? The frame rates look terrible on switch

I'm enjoying it.

That copyright at the lower end of the screen tho... The game looks like an ok RPG but I'm not really into Fairy tale... That and the "deluxe edition" kinda sets me off

Do i need to watch the anime to understand the story?

I'm happy this kinda looks like dragon quest xi in terms of gameplay

Yo fairy tail gets a win in something LETS GO

Ok I wanna know if there's a Japanese text option, if not I'm getting there Japanese edition xD because I'm learning the language and it'll help a lot

Great gameplay but poor framerate especially when in town. Hold your pennys wait for devs to fix the game.

ITS A GAME WHAT HOW DID I NOT HEAR ABOUT THIS

Bought the game. Has it's fair share of flaws. But still like it on Switch. Combat is great. Game has it's unique charm, fun characters

One thing that annoyed me tho..i cant hit all the letter "now loading" with happy

Why so much people hate this game? I LOVE fairy Tail and this game looks fun

Erza is the best

Is it me or does the animation or game play looks a little slowed down...🤔

Are there costumes? Like swimsuits?