FAIRY TAIL: Beach Volleyball Havoc Review

As an anime and fantasy fan, I was inevitably going to run across FAIRY TAIL, the manga series by Hiro Mashima about the adventures of a magical guild of wizards, at one point or another. Years ago, I read a great many volumes thanks to my local library, but it has been a while since I picked any up and I’ve never even gotten into the anime adaptation. So of course, the best way to get back into the series is to enjoy a pleasantly ordinary game of volleyball with its cast!

FAIRY TAIL: Beach Volleyball Havoc is that very game, developed by tiny cactus studio, MASUDATARO, and veryOK. You start out with four characters — Natsu, Lucy, Gray, and Erza — and can pick any two of them to face off against any two other unlocked characters. After each match, more and more characters are unlocked until the count finally totals at 32. After that, each match instead unlocks new, specially-made fanart. Thankfully, these characters and art unlock whether or not you win a given match! Even more thankfully, my favourite character, Levy, shows up relatively early, being part of the second group!

Each 2v2 game of beach volleyball starts out simply enough: one side serves, then the ball gets battered back and forth over the net. You can move around, pass the ball to your partner, jump, and “attack” the ball back over to the other side while jumping, all with only the control pad and two buttons. The game is played until either side scores four points in total, with each score being accompanied by a blaring meme airhorn — an excellently silly choice. The game is simple, but it works nicely. Admittedly, it might edge a bit too simply, as it’s extremely easy to pass the ball, since your character makes a dash over to reach it, even with a bit of distance in the way. Yet, when the very ordinary and not-at-all-weird game of volleyball gets a bit more… intense, it can be nice to have this dash of simplicity to fall back on.

Plus, that easy-to-learn style of gameplay matches well with Beach Volleyball Havoc’s cute and simple visual design. With its bright, soft colours and expansive beach, this does seem like a great place to hang out, and while the characters are smaller than usual, they maintain their unique charms and are easy to distinguish from one another. Some look a bit silly, but this is FAIRY TAIL; they’ve always looked a bit silly. The music too is bright, peppy, and tropical. There’s not a great wealth of variety here, but it’s pleasant to listen to.

Now, I’ve been a tad coy so far in my depiction of Beach Volleyball Havoc, but it’s time to come clean. As simple as the game humorously claims itself to be, it wouldn’t be FAIRY TAIL without a splash of magic in the mix. You see, whenever you pass the ball, little purple gems called ether lacrima fall onto the court. Collecting enough of them to fill a meter transforms your attack button into a magic button, summoning a strange effect to coincide with your hitting of the ball. At first, the magic in play depends on your selected character, with every single one of them having a unique ability. Levy, for instance, has Solid Script: Ball, where she uses her word magic to manifest several fake volleyballs that also get sent over to the other side and slam into the ground.

However, after every point is scored, both teams receive a randomly selected new magic ability to equip to either member of the team. There’s a bit of strategy to this decision since you need to pick both whether you want to have control of a given ability or give it to your computer-controlled ally as well as which attack button you want it to be assigned to. Oh yes, there are two attack buttons. The initial spell starts off on one of the two buttons, leaving behind one open slot there and two open slots on the other button. Having two spells on the same button means that that button will perform both feats of magic when it’s used. This is important to remember because not all of the magic is… shall we say, good.

Some magic will send some sort of distraction over to the opponent’s side of the beach, some will actively get in the way of their movement, some will change the trajectory of the ball in weird ways (my personal favourite is the one where the ball soars around the world three times before landing), and some will cause a distraction that coats almost the entire screen. After a few rounds, or even a very unlucky first round, the screen can become a mess of visual noise to the point where even your own spells make it hard to see where the ball or the players are. Yes, Beach Volleyball Havoc is always pretty and funny to look at, with many of the spells offering hilarious spectacle, but there’s very little focus here on keeping up the visual clarity. I often resort to trying to spam the pass button and letting my AI partner try to hit it back, at least knowing that I can usually get to the ball, even if I have no clue where I am amidst all the bright, shining colours.

This does sadly mean that trying to be good at Beach Volleyball Havoc is an exercise in frustration since the extent of the strategy involved is “try to keep away from the magic that makes it hard to play” and “spam the pass button until you can get a clear shot”. There doesn’t seem to be any sort of way to aim the ball anywhere in particular, so the AI opponents’ response to your attacks can range from anywhere between struggling to surmount your indomitable first serve to consistently hitting the ball right back at you, followed by horrendous magic. I imagine playing against friends would make this more fun, as you would both be affected by the weird happenings onscreen and it could become a test of wills, but the computer-controlled opponents are not there yet. Thankfully, the game supports up to four players!

Overall, FAIRY TAIL: Beach Volleyball Havoc can be an incredibly fun and simple game to enjoy for a while and its very forgiving way of unlocking characters means there’s never a moment wasted while playing. Even so, playing on your own and trying to seriously win is just an exercise in frustration. If you can take the game with good humour and be patient with it, however, it’ll offer loads of simple, silly fun.