Thank you Kodansha for sending us this game to review!

Fairy Tail is one of those shows that has maintained a steady fan base all over the world for many years. It's an enduring cast of characters, with fun and lovable goofballs that can be fun to watch. While it's not short on fanservice (unnecessary partial nudity that some fans look forward to), it generally encourages friendship and accepting people of many personalities, as well as a shared sense of purpose and mission. This game has a very simple premise: what if Fairy Tail had a beach volleyball tournament?

Given the nature of the competitors, normal rules, and especially normal game play, do not apply. The mages of Fairy Tail and other friendly guilds don't just play normal volleyball. Of course there is a ball, and it is indeed volleyed and points are scored if it touches the ground. But where there are mages, there is magic - and the ball, environment, and opponents are in for some big surprises.

Each match is a two-by-two affair, with both characters having free roam of their side of the court. Games are always a total of four players; if you don't have enough human players to cover all spots, an AI takes over what's left. You win by scoring four points against the other team before your opponents do the same to you.

Each round starts like a normal volleyball game, in that one side serves to the other. All serves and volleys are fairly low skill, in that it's not difficult to hit or return the ball. While a keyboard is possible for single players, using a gamepad of some kind is strongly recommended, and required for two or more players. To move around the court you just use the left analog stick or the D-Pad. To dive, bump, or spike, you press the X or Y buttons on a typical Xbox controller. A is used to jump, which helps with spikes a lot. You bump by quickly pressing the button, and you spike by jumping and hitting it, or by holding it down a bit before hitting.

While tossing the ball around, crystals will fall out of the active player, and land on the court. If you collect the crystals, a magic meter fills up. Once it's maxed out, you can replace a simple spike with a magic attack. Each character has their own unique starting magic attack, but more are unlocked as you play, as between each match an 'enchant time' starts, where one player on each team gets an additional magic power. Depending on the button you hold to activate the magic attack, X or Y, determines what magic attack is executed. You can have up to two per slot, and both are activated if that you have two in that slot. So balancing out what team member gets what as the rounds progress is an important part of a winning strategy. Stronger abilities tend to unlock as the game progresses also, which can lead to some pretty insane battles near the end of a match.

It's hard to overemphasize how chaotic games can get. Some skills are pretty straightforward, in that they just throw the ball quickly towards the other players. But even these seemingly simple skills can be challenging if they obscure the other player's view of the play area. Others change the field, by adding lava, water, or who knows what else. Some even impact your ability to move. Others impact characters themselves. You might find yourself big and with muscles for some reason, or you might find yourself stuck in a block of ice. Some attacks, or combination of attacks since you can use two at once, clutter the screen with so much chaos that knowing what is going on or where the ball might be can be a real challenge.

When first booting the game up, you have the original crew of Natsu, Lucy, Gray, and Erza to choose from. After each match, win or lose, you unlock the next set of characters, until all thirty-two are available. After that, you start to unlock fan art, of which there are eighty-six. Thankfully, in all cases you unlock them in groups. I was able to get everything unlocked in around three hours of playtime. The playable characters are quite varied, and while there is no way they could include everyone, I was personally satisfied with the selection.

The included fan art greatly varies in quality, but most of it is pretty well done. (One piece was added later from the creator of Fairy Tail, but most are done by fans.) Some is more suggestive and sexy than others, and at least some features some common (or confirmed) in-universe relationship, but none cross the line to inappropriate. While there is a heavy emphasis on the classic characters who are closest to Natsu and Lucy, there is certainly a good variety that covers most of them. As you might expect for a volleyball game, much of the featured art displays that or the beach theme quite prominently.

The developers of Fairy Tail: Beach Volleyball Havoc chose a pixelated art style for this game, and while I generally prefer more detailed art, it works really well here. Everything is quite colorful, though I will say lighter colors do feature quite prominently. The characters and ball in action have smooth animations, and the art style lends itself well to the absolute chaos that happens on screen in later stages in a matchup. The sound and music also reflect this well, as the music fits right into the Fairy Tail universe, and the sound effects and voice acting are pretty crazy, giving emphasis to what is happening on screen. At least some (if not all) of the voice prompts features are in English, but characters themselves aren't voiced, just the narration.

From an appropriateness point of view, most of the issues with Beach Volleyball Havoc are more or less what you would expect. As I already mentioned, everyone is a mage, so magic use is prominent. Some characters turn into creatures or even a demon, though the magic use takes many forms, from causing elemental effects to summoning to transforming who knows what. Also, beach swimsuits aren't known for their modesty as it is, and some characters wear particularly busty and/or revealing clothing.

Fairy Tail: Beach Volleyball Havoc is a rather simply game that I found far more fun than I expected, honestly. It's not a particularly deep or long game, and it pretty much only does the one thing, volleyball. But it's well done for what it is, and for fans of Fairy Tail, it has a ton of callbacks to the series with text quotes during and after games, especially for canon pairings or close family. If you love Fairy Tail and can tolerate some rather excessively immodest outfits, then it's really fun in short play sessions. If this sounds like something you would like, then I easily recommend it for the bargain price on offer. I love it when a small, focused game is priced right!