Fairy Tail: Dungeons is one of the two games that have been created so far for the Fairy Tail Indie Game Guild, a contest launched by Hiro Mashima and Kodansha to sponsor fan-made titles for the popular anime and manga series.
Part 1 of this contest has graced us with Fairy Tail: Beach Volleyball Havoc, a casual sports title, and Fairy Tail: Dungeons, a turn-based roguelike which we’ll take a look at today.
Does Fairy Tail: Dungeons live up to its expectations as one of the three Indie Game Guild contest winners? Does it do enough to differentiate itself from other roguelikes? Read our full review to find out!
Fairy Tail: Dungeons
Developer: Ginolabo
Publisher: Kodansha
Platforms: Microsoft Windows (Reviewed)
Release Date: August 26, 2024
Players: 1
Price: $13.99
In this game, a mysterious portal opens up at the Fairy Tail guild’s basement, which leads to a massive labyrinth that saps away the magic power from those who enter it. As is usual with spin-offs, the characters lose their skills by entering the labyrinth, but slowly remember how to use their powers in the form of cards thanks to Cana Alberona’s magic.
It’s difficult to shake away the feeling that this is just a regular roguelike with a Fairy Tail skin on top of it, and the issue is exacerbated by the game’s enemies and bosses, who are drawn in a completely different art style and don’t feel like they belong in the same universe as the Fairy Tail characters.
The game tries its best to incorporate the guild’s characters in different roles throughout the game, featuring a lot of character cameos, but overall it reads like a filler or OVA plot that will be undone by the next episode. Thankfully, the Fairy Tail cast is generally versatile enough that they can work even outside of their setting, and the game’s original characters aren’t bad either.
When it comes to its gameplay, Fairy Tail: Dungeons is split between dungeon exploration and turn-based fights. While traversing the dungeon, players have a limited amount of moves before their protective lantern loses its power, exposing your party to the current floor boss.
During exploration, players will encounter random events, regular or elite enemy battles, treasure, and Lacrima, which is the currency used to upgrade your character and buy items from shops.
Most of the game’s content can be seen in under four hours, as it only features two dungeons, which are separated by a boss that you only have to fight once. It’s needless to say that this is a pitiful amount of content for a roguelike, and while the game’s combat is fun, it can’t carry this little content.
Fairy Tail: Dungeons does have a saving grace, though, which is the Tome of Remembrance. Every time the player clears the game’s first dungeon, they can equip their loadout to tackle the game’s second dungeon as a 3-character party, and getting a good Tome is very challenging.
Each character’s skills are completely randomized every time you start a new run, so getting the perfect combination of powers and cards matters a lot, especially because of the game’s magic chain system, which gives a massive damage boost to specific skills used in certain orders.
Every character starts with one magic chain unlocked per run and can acquire more by blindly upgrading their way through a randomized skill list. Since the player has a limited amount of moves every dungeon floor, they also have a limited amount of fights, upgrades, and random events they can partake in, which heavily affects how your Tome is going to turn out.
There are about four or five layers of RNG that will decide whether you get a good deck or not, including your starting selection skill, what card offers you will receive as rewards, and what members of the guild you will find through random events. You also still need to clear a run to actually get to keep your Tome, so the stakes are high when you do get a good combination.
This system is going to either make or break the game for certain players, as some people will enjoy the insanity that comes with trying to get that “perfect” run to register as a Tome, while others will probably detest the system thanks to how randomized it feels.
This much RNG would probably be bad in other games, but Fairy Tail‘s runs don’t take too long, and the fact that some characters can fit into multiple roles incentivizes the player to try out different builds, especially since the game’s last dungeon is played as a party of three, letting you cook up your own team compositions.
A little gripe, especially when playing with a controller, is that card readability in Fairy Tail: Dungeons is really bad, and different characters are affected by this problem in different ways.
The cards you use to attack have a basic amount of info displayed on them by default, like their damage and cost, but accompanying special effects can only be seen when inspecting each card. Characters like Natsu, whose cards all basically look the same, become really annoying to play because of that.
This issue is lessened when playing with a mouse, as you can just hover over the cards to check their effects, but having to inspect them one by one when playing with a controller becomes a big waste of time. Every other card-battler roguelike places the cards at the bottom of the screen for a reason, there’s no need to reinvent the wheel.
Fairy Tail: Dungeons has five playable characters in total, and they can be built in different ways depending on what cards and chains you focus on. The game lets us play as Natsu, Lucy, Gray, Erza, and Wendy, which is a pretty good selection, especially for an indie project.
Every character has their own unique set of attack cards, but can also unlock relics that change their starting hand. Characters like Natsu and Erza focus on doing as much damage as possible, be it to a single target or to all enemies, while Gray, Wendy, and Lucy fit more support-focused roles, ranging from healers to tanks, although they can also be damage dealers if built that way.
Each character’s playstyle is fitting with their set of powers in the anime, and it’s especially impressive to see just how many different sprites there are for Lucy and Erza’s outfit changes, which must have been a lot of work to draw.
Overall, Fairy Tail: Dungeons is a great framework for a roguelike, but it does suffer from some issues and a lack of content. The game does a great job at highlighting each character’s unique fighting styles and the plot doesn’t deviate too far from the anime’s tone.
The Tome of Remembrance system adds a great amount of optional replayability to the game and will probably get players who enjoy crafting builds and min-maxing their characters hooked for a few extra hours. The system is not perfect by any means, as it can feel a bit restrictive at times, but it does a good job at providing variety.
Fairy Tail: Dungeons is not necessarily a good game to pick up if you aren’t familiar with the roguelike card battler genre, but it is a decent product for Fairy Tail fans and it does enough with its premise to be fun for a few hours, even if lacking in content.
Fairy Tail: Dungeons was reviewed on Microsoft Windows using a game code provided by Kodansha. You can find additional information about Niche Gamer’s review/ethics policy here. Fairy Tail: Dungeons is available on Microsoft Windows (through Steam).
