Fairy Tail: Dungeons - PC Review

Fairy Tail: Dungeons by developer ginolabo and publisher Kodansha—PC review written by Nick with a copy provided by the publisher.

Estimated reading time 4 minutes

Fairy Tail: Dungeons was one of those games that almost completely snuck up on me. A simple presentation and fairly easy to learn gameplay mechanics give way to a surprisingly engaging roguelite with more variety and depth than I was expecting.

The more traditional RPG version of Fairy Tail that came out for PlayStation 4 a few years ago was a bit of a mixed bag for people, but I personally enjoyed it quite a bit and am looking forward to the announced sequel. The visuals and music certainly fit the anime well, but what we see here in Fairy Tail: Dungeons is a much more simplified presentation. That’s not necessarily a problem, as the title is reasonably priced and a good fit as a Steam deckbuilder.

Fairy Tail: Dungeons sees series mainstay Natsu Dragneel tossed into a pretty zany but exposition-heavy introduction that sees him dragged into some strange, otherworldly dungeon. Right off of the bat there’s some name drops for known characters and world references that assume you are at least passingly familiar with the IP, but the story’s not so involved that a lack of familiarity will be a barrier to enjoying the game itself. Part of me thinks that this would work just about as well without having been Fairy Tail themed, but what’s here is still nice for fans of the IP, such as myself.

As a roguelite, you see a lot of the norms of the genre. Randomly generated stages and enemies along branching paths that will almost certainly lead your demise over and over again. If you were a fan of similar titles like Slay the Spire or Monster Train, you have a pretty good idea what to expect here. I will say that despite being a budget title, the pixelated visuals are more interesting than a lot of similar titles in the genre. The music’s good too, but I’ll be honest in admitting that it didn’t ‘feel’ like Fairy Tail to me. 

 

Really though, while the presentation and the story are nice ways to wrap the content up, the meat of Fairy Tail: Dungeons and its ilk are the gameplay. Here, we have a robust number of cards to support the turn-based combat. It then becomes a game of managing action points against the cards in your hand, and balancing offensive abilities against defensive ones. So often in games like this, there’s a fine balance to be struck. You want to play just enough defense that you survive the encounter and the ensuing ones, but often times turtling up like that is not a winning strategy as your enemies have a knack for getting stronger the longer they’re alive. It’s all quite simple on the surface, but combinations and a fair amount of progression make the gameplay loop a rewarding one.

That progress comes in a few different flavors, probably the most interesting of which is unlocking new characters. These new archetypes provide new strategies that keep the formula feeling fresh, despite dying and replaying the same stages over and over again. These new powers and decks really do change the tactics you’ll use quite a bit, and while the presentation itself is a high pixelated one, I have to say there’s a bit of flavor to the cards and animations that help elevate the gameplay a bit. 

 

This kind of strategic die, learn and improve is the tactics version of Soulslike games, and the genre has become a favorite of mine. Fairy Tail: Dungeons is one of the better examples of this style of game, wrapped up in a bit of extra anime packaging. If there is a quibble to be had here, it’s that the game is a relatively short one, as I was able to wrap it up in about a half dozen or so hours. The release price point is certainly a reasonable one too, and I enjoyed tinkering with the various ways to play that I kept coming back for more anyways. Fans of this genre will absolutely want to pick Fairy Tail: Dungeons, while fans of the anime will likely still be interested, but I feel like this is a deckbuilding roguelite first, and a Fairy Tail game second. 

Score: 8 / 10

 

 

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SOULVARS - PlayStation Review

SOULVARS by developer ginolabo and publisher Shueisha Games—Sony PlayStation 5 review written by Nick with a copy provided by the publisher.

Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes

SOULVARS is an interesting game. I had heard about it some time ago when it released to widespread acclaim in Japan as a mobile title. A lot of those elements translated well to the console release, but it’s not always a seamless transition and despite some deep systems that kept me interested in progression, there were some other aspects of SOULVARS I found somewhat lacking as well.

To start, SOULVARS just drops you into the fray. Now, some games do that rather well, working in some lore and / or character building during these encounters. Sometimes you get some flavor of the big bad bosses to come, or some unlocked future power but there’s really none of that world building in the beginning. You’re just tossed into a battle that does an adequate enough job teaching you combat basics before moving you along into the story.

In some ways, this is the most frustrating aspect of SOULVARS for me. There’s this promise of a bigger world, some interesting narratives of how technology has ruined the world teased out and never fully realized. Character interactions generally feel shallow. Most interactions are a line or so. There’s plenty of background information that can be found in the menus, and I read through it and liked the gist of what was there, but to have it optionally presented in such a way really creates a strange disconnect from the actual gameplay.

With this being a mobile port, I didn’t have particularly high expectations of the overall presentation, but SOULVARS actually held up better than I expected here. The sound and music were pedestrian and never particularly memorable to me, but I enjoyed the pixelized style of the visuals. That’s probably one of the aspects of SOULVARS that translates best to console. It was likely a sharp design choice for smaller screens such as mobile phones, but it still works well on the big screen. The environments simply ooze sci-fi style, dripping with water, neon colors splashed against darker backdrops that actually do far more to set up the atmosphere than the story or dialog ever did. You can tell some interesting, terrible things happened by the bodies and ruined technology found all over the place, it’s just never really explained in-game in an interesting way.

There is a continually running clock as you navigate maps and partake in different quests that hangs over your head as you play the game, but most of the time my focus was on the combat. Here is where SOULVARS was both most interesting to me, and somewhat disappointing. Maybe ‘disappointing’ isn’t quite the right word, but when I think of a game that advertises itself as a ‘deckbuilder’ I think of actual cards. Maybe it’s just my years of playing Magic: The Gathering and other card games that have my expectations slanted in such a way, but SOULVARS has a different take on that term. So while it was not what I expected, it was still a pretty deep system once I got into it.

That however, was another of the challenges – ‘getting into it’. The tutorials explain the basics, but they are not the most easily digestible introductions to gameplay I have ever seen. SOULVARS doesn’t feel terribly welcoming to new players (though there are a plethora of options to help tweak the experience to your liking at least). But with some time coupled with trial and error, I definitely got into the combat more and found it pretty rewarding once I knew what I was doing. I'm okay with how the combat system wasn't quite what I was expecting going into it, but it probably did make it a smidge more challenging for me to wrap my head around as well.

The ’deckbuilding’ is more of a concept that revolves around action ‘types’. Different skills or pieces of equipment have action types assigned to them. These then get put into a pool of actions that you draw at random and then get to choose which to leverage. There’s an action point system that lets you build up more attacks that can be strung together into combos. So for example, if you equip a sword on your character, it can boost that character’s stats, but it may also add a couple of sword slash actions, a self-boosting action and a guard action, all of which may be drawn on your turn. If you have a fire spell as a learned ability, casting it doesn’t hit the enemy with that spell – it puts a fire ‘action’ into your pool that can be drawn.

Technically all of this is explained at the start (and thankfully there is a nice glossary built into the menu system that can help you go over these types of systems in some detail), but I found it a bit unwieldy at the start. It didn’t really sink in for me fully until I started moving pieces of gear around on my characters and customizing them with special nodes that can add abilities or additional action types to the gear.

Combinations and character progression were pretty fun. I wonder though, if this worked better as a mobile game in part due to people playing it in smaller, bite-sized chinks for time. My console experience usually went like this: Fire up the game, enjoy exploring a new dungeon for a bit, get some gear, tweak my characters – lather rinse and repeat. I think if I was playing for ten or twenty minutes and then putting it down for several hours, that would work better than sitting down and playing for nearly three straight hours, followed by four later in the afternoon. A sense of repetition and sameness started to set in during those longer sessions that I simply couldn’t fully shake. I suspect a lot of this comes back to my feelings of narrative shallowness during gameplay.

In the end, SOULVARS is an above-average turn-based JRPG with some interesting ideas both narratively and in the gameplay. However, none of it is overly approachable. The worldbuilding is there in the fringes, but never fully surfaced during the game in a way that I enjoyed. Character development was sort of lacking from me from a story standpoint – I actually enjoyed customizing their gear and abilities more. However, areas and combat begin to feel repetitive when played for long stretches, and in the end I felt as though SOULVARS was fun enough, but could have been so much more as well.

Score: 6 / 10

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Turn-based Deckbuilding RPG, SOULVARS, Announces Release Date and More Platforms

Japan - May 20th, 2023 - Publisher SHUEISHA GAMES and solo developer ginolabo are thrilled to announce that SOULVARS, the popular turn-based RPG deckbuilder, will be coming to Nintendo Switch, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and PC (Steam, Epic Games Store) on June 27th!
 
Inspired by classic JRPGs with modern gameplay elements, this action-packed pixel art game provides players with a nostalgic yet fresh experience. Both fans of classic JRPGs and newcomers to the genre will surely enjoy the innovative gameplay mechanics, pixel art visuals, and memorable soundtrack.
 
SOULVARS will be featured in the upcoming Steam Next Fest with a demo from June 19th-26th, so be sure to check it out! In the meantime, watch the new gameplay teaser trailer for a glimpse at what to expect:



In SOULVARS, the emergence of grotesque Dominators has brought about the consequences of technology for humanity, and as a result, Elite units comprising Soulbearers - the next generation of humans born with alternate Souls - are deployed around the clock to intercept and counter these attacks. Players take on the role of a Yakumo, a freelance Soulbearer, as he handles assignments from private military contractor "DDO" (Dominator Disposal Organization).

Gameplay Features:

• Classic JRPG nostalgia with a modern twist - Players immerse themselves in a game that blends the best of two worlds: stylish pixel art animations and dynamic, turn-based tactical planning.
  


• Deckbuilding combat system - Collect gear to expand your Soulbits - cards for your hand - and personalize your deck, then mix and match various Soulbits to uncover new attacks and unlock over 100 different Arts and Abilities. Hunt for rare and powerful gear by defeating unique Dominators on your journey to mastering the ultimate Arts!


• Party-based combat - Each enemy is a puzzle to solve, a challenge to overcome! Customize your party to deal with different enemy types, identify their weaknesses and combine Soulbit actions to unleash over 200 powerful finishing moves!


• Compelling narrative - Through Yakumo and his fellow Soulbears, uncover the dangers of unchecked technology, the origins of the "DDO" (Dominator Disposal Organization), and the conspiracies behind the emergence of the Dominators.


• Localized in 12 languages - Both interface and subtitles are available in English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, Russian, Simplified and Traditional Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Hindi so players worldwide can enjoy this action-packed adventure.

SOULVARS began as a passion project for solo developer, ginolabo, and was initially designed as a classic JRPG. It became a huge success when it was released as a mobile game for Android and iOS in early 2022, soaring up the rankings to #1 for paid RPG apps and #2 for paid game apps on both Google Play and iTunes in Japan, and continues to garner wide acclaim among mobile gamers.
 
Ginolabo secured the support of SHUEISHA GAMES, the gaming branch of Japan's largest manga publisher, to bring SOULVARS to PC and multiple gaming consoles. SHUEISHA GAMES recognized the game's success on mobile and is collaborating with the developer to ensure that the launch on other platforms is not a simple port, which is often the case with mobile-to-console adaptations. Gameplay has been optimized and enhanced for PC and consoles, featuring a horizontal UI and intuitive controller support that delivers a seamless and dynamic gameplay experience on bigger screens.
 
Through the collaboration with SHUEISHA GAMES, ginolabo has also partnered with the prominent mangaka, Shiro Usasaki, on the character illustrations in the key visuals and in-game. Usasaki is best known for their work on mangas such as Act-Age.
 
Prepare to embark on an action-packed journey when SOULVARS simultaneously launches on Nintendo Switch, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and PC (Steam, Epic Games Store) on June 27th! In the meantime, stay updated with news by checking out the official website and following on Twitter and Facebook, and check out the demo during the upcoming Steam Next Fest in June!

About SHUEISHA GAMES

​SHUEISHA GAMES is a new video game publisher born by crossing the boundaries between the publishing and game industries, founded by the owners of the influential and popular Jump shonen manga publications and Viz Media. SHUEISHA GAMES aims to combine the ability of a publishing company to find and nurture new talent with the power of a game company to develop and deliver titles, bringing unique games to a worldwide audience.
 
SHUEISHA GAMES’ first wave of titles includes The Tower -To the Bottom-, Captain Velvet Meteor: The Jump+ Dimensions, SOULVARS, ONI: Road to be the Mightiest Oni, and UKIYO, with an upcoming large-scale collaborative effort in the works with NetEase Games titled unVEIL the world currently in production. Early recognition for their works includes awards from Japan’s premier indie showcase BitSummit, and selections by Day of the Devs, The MIX, INDIE Live Expo, and Asobu Indie Showcase.

Article by: Susan N.

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