Thanks to Kadonsha for sending a key to review.

Fairy Tail: Dungeons is an indie game based off the Fairy Tail universe. It plays similar to your standard deck building rougelite with a few twists to separate it more than just being a licensed game. I used to watch Fairy Tail a lot, though I stopped when it started to drag a bit before starting the next big arc (I believe it was called the Phoenix City arc.) but I kept following news of the series with plans to get back into it once more was released. That is what surprised me when I saw this title appear on Steam seemingly out of the blue. Not only did the release surprise me, but it was an interesting combination of genres and art styles that really drew me in and I was so happy to get the chance to be able to review this title.

To start off Fairy Tail: Dungeons is a game based off the anime and manga series called Fairy Tail. While it does a lot to pull from the series, even having appearances from the creator’s other work, you don’t really need knowledge about the series to get enjoyment out of playing it, though it will greatly help. Also, for fans of the series worried about spoilers, I wouldn’t say many are present, but there are some abilities that I’m not that familiar with from where I stopped. I would say that it probably falls between the main series and the start of the 100 Year Quest.

The gameplay is fairly basic deck builder roguelite. You get different cards (attack, defense, and support) and draw four each turn and have limited points you can use to play them. As you play through the different dungeons, you can upgrades cards, remove cards, and gain various abilities to increase your strength. The biggest unique thing I’d say is present here to differentiate itself from others is how your runs are handled. You have to do solo runs of the first set of floors with one of five characters, but once you finish that run you can save that character's state at the end of that run. Once you have three saves with different characters you can head to the next set of floors bringing along those three characters. You must do all character leveling and deck building in the first set of floors since the second set offers team wide buffs. It is a truly interesting change that I really like having to keep in mind when doing future runs.

The story on offer is very front loaded, but is oddly good given the set up of the game. Basically a portal opens up in the bottom of the Fairy Tail guild hall and Natsu and Happy get sucked into it. While there they meet one of the talking cats named Labi. He informs them that he is looking for his friend Arthur who built the labyrinth they are in to trap an evil dragon. In order to trap it the labyrinth sucks out all the user’s magic power. They then run into Cana, who also got sucked in, and she gives them some of her magic cards which will let them use their magical attacks. That is basically it.

As you reach certain parts of the game you unlock four other characters (Lucy, Gray, Erza, and Wendy) and get the ability to form teams with them. There are also a few cuts to what Arthur is off doing as well as running into various other characters from the series. You can now also run into the main character from Rave Master which is a series from the same creator as Fairy Tail which is an inclusion I find really neat, though I have yet to see him. The story ends with you, obviously, defeating the dragon and saving the day. From there you can continue to explore the dungeon and try to unlock more things. Overall, while the story is simple, it feels like something I’d expect to see while watching the show during a filler arc. It is something without much importance, but it could easily be a canon occurance that just is never brought up again.

Exploring the dungeon is fairly straightforward. Each floor seems to have a set layout with the various rooms filled with different encounters. As you progress to a new room the floor boss appears in the room you just left. After you both move a new encounter is spawned in the room. This leads to you both just circling around playing chase until you run out of moves. This leads to a slightly different map traversal than similar games since you can’t fully plot out your route since new options are constantly appearing.

Combat, while being very visually flashy, is actually very simple. There are very few stats, largely just damage and defense, with a couple different buffs and debuffs. You draw four cards a turn and can reshuffle all or as little as one, but you have to give up a percentage of health. By default, you have three mana to play cards with. Some cards can be strung together to provide bonuses, but I didn’t find this mechanic as present as I hoped when it came to building decks. Once you unlock the later half of the game with teams you start to unlock more interesting combat. You can freely swap the acting character at will, but you have to play all their moves before selecting another. This can lead to some more strategic gameplay depending on which characters you pick and how you build them.

The pixel art is quite stunning. Everything looks recreated very well and has a nice amount of animation to them. Most cards are very flashy including the basic starting non magic cards. Erza and Lucy in particular stand out with all the different outfits their moves include plus all the celestial spirits Lucy can get. Every spirit she has a card for also shows up in her victory pose. I’d say it is pretty strategically unwise to collect them all, but it is a goal I want to work towards eventually. Only real complaint I have here is some characters look a bit off proportionally. This mostly effects all the cats which are way taller in this title then in the show or manga, though that is a minor complaint.

Sound design is on point. Abilities have a nice variety of impact sounds and I was surprised I wasn’t hearing the same thing the whole time. The music was solid, and sounds enough like something from the show, but it did lack the punch that a lot of the battle songs from the show possess. That said, I know some animes have very strict things relating to their music so it might have been too hard to get a hold of or might have made it hard to upload videos of without facing copyright threats so I’m fine with it. It is also worth noting there is no voice acting, but aside from having no battle sounds during combat, I don’t find its absence noticeable.

The controls overall feel solid. I played on mouse and keyboard and everything felt fine, aside from the hover over of status effects, but some elements felt intentioned for controller. Some screens felt so meant for controller I was shocked to find out this was a PC only title when getting the information together for this review. Both ways are probably fine, though I do think selecting actors in the battle portion is easier with a mouse verses a controller.The only real other minor complaint is that in some areas the dialogue felt off, though some of those special speech patterns might be more of an anime or dub original.

As for the morals section there isn’t much to cover. The biggest thing is the presence of magic. The magic is more on the flashy throwing fireballs side, though there are a few characters you can run into that might cross the line a bit further. For instance I know Mirajane is present, who does some devil takeover magic, but I was not able to get enough random interactions with her to see what see gives you. The biggest thing the player characters can do is summon some celestial spirits which are largely based off the zodiac. Next biggest thing might be revealing clothes, but the pixel art doesn’t show off as much as the outfit designs do in other mediums. There is a large amount of fighting, but the game does make it clear that, aside from the nether dragon at the end, everything you fight is fakes recreated from the memories of the player. Most enemies just disappear when defeated. Finally, I didn’t see any language present in all the encounters I had, but I would say I only got to interact with maybe 20% of all the characters you can encounter while exploring. There are at least one or two enemies I encountered with H*ll in their name.

Overall, I really enjoyed my time with Fairy Tail: Dungeons and wpuld recommend it to any fan of the series or the genre. It does a great job of standing on its own merits and I do believe it can be enjoyed with no knowledge of the series nor being a major fan of the genre. It also does enough new to not just be a copy of anything out there, at least as far as I am aware. The people behind it also seem open to adding more in even a while after launch and have made a couple of balance patches. It is a nice breath of fresh air in the anime / manga tie in game space.

- Paul Barnard (Betuor)