Fairy Tail: Beach Volleyball Havok review

Habitually, popular manga are converted into either modest mobile games or epic-sized role-playing adventures. Over the years, Fairy Tail has received both kinds of adaptations, with the guild’s adventures appearing on phones and consoles.

Recently, Fairy Tail’s publisher pursued a more interesting approach for their interpretations. The Kodansha Game Creator’s Lab pays indie developers 10 million yen (about 70,000 US dollars) a year to create games. Undoubtedly, inaugural effort Fairy Tail: Dungeons was a rousing success, with solo developer ginolabo placing Natsu, Happy, and the gang in a combat-focused deckbuilder. But sadly, Fairy Tail’s latest indie adaptation isn’t nearly as triumphant.

Some Solid Foundations

Undoubtedly, Fairy Tail: Beach Volleyball Havok is conceptually solid, sending its characters to the beach for magic-filled sports match. There are moments of irrefutable potential, with a player select screen flaunting stylized pin-ups of Lucy and Juvia as well as some beefcake courtesy of shirtless Zeref and Laxus. And while Beach Volleyball Havok has some serious deficiencies, the game’s selection of playables can’t be faulted. You’ll start with a handful characters but gradually unlock a catalog of 32 different mages.

Havok strives for accessibility. Each game is a two-on-two match that streamlines the sport into serving, setting, and spiking, as each team tries to score four points to win the match. Like most adaptations of the sport, on-court highlighting shows where the ball is going to land. Digs allow for imprecision, so your character only needs to be near an icon to keep the ball from hitting the ground. For the most part, pacing is relaxed, it can take seconds for the ball to soar from one side of the court to the other.

Devastated by Magic

The first few volleys of a match are certainly serviceable, recalling the simplified take on a sport offered by titles like Super Dodge Ball or Mario Tennis. But as teammates pass, lacrima gems begin filling the court, which are gathered to fuel magic abilities. Volleyball Havok flaunts over 100 different spells, with some offering comical visual gags, such as turning characters musclebound or plunging the entire court underwater. Additionally, whenever anyone scores, Enchantment Time awards a new spell to each team.

While the formula is great in theory, it soon becomes chaotic in execution. After a few scores, the magic intensifies, resulting in chaotic visual effects like intense screen judder, invisible players, or dense clouds that obscure an entire side of the court. Commotion has always been part of sport game formula, from the wild ball trajectories in Mario Tennis to the splashes of Squid Ink in Mario Kart. But here, it’s much more than a minor disturbance, occasionally turning Beach Volleyball Havok into visual anarchy.

Just Me Against the Guild

Escalating these issues are some AI flaws. Although your CPU-powered teammate in a capable partner, there’s little rhyme or reason to your opponent’s behavior. Occasionally, volleys will persist for over a minute. But other times, they’ll instantly flub a slow and simple serve return for no apparent reason. As such, there’s little gratification found in the game’s single player component. You won’t feel like your skills are improving since your rivals are so erratic. Even worse, there’s no way to adjust to the difficulty of opponent AI.

Should you really want to subject others to the on-screen chaos, Beach Volleyball Havok accommodates up to four human participants. Sadly, multiplayer games arrive with a list of provisions: you can’t remap inputs, so playing with others requires a controller. Given that there’s no online matchmaking, the other possibility is using Steam Remote Play, forcing your friends to use their phones. As such, I didn’t test out the game’s team-based offerings.

Conclusion

Unfortunately, volleyball doesn’t inspire many game adaptations, so you’ll have to revisit Beach Spikers for the Gamecube or import a copy of Dead or Alive Xtreme 3 Scarlet to get some simulated digs in. With fan-art, remarkable character portraits, and a spirted soundtrack, Fairy Tail: Beach Volleyball Havok nails the secondaries but drops the ball as a sports game.

Fairy Tail: Beach Volleyball Havok was played on PC with review code provided by the publisher.