Visually, I will tell you that Fairytale Fights is nothing if not amazing. The character and level design were absolutely gorgeous. Since fairy tales are determined to teach us something, what's on the inside counts for beauty as well - After slicing up an enemy - bones, brains, and other "inside stuff" were nicely detailed on your screen. This also means that there were quite a few heavy visual distractions while playing. My sister and co-op buddy complained more than once "I can't see what I'm doing, because you did the slicing thing again!" as my slashing gore attack popped up in a bright pink picture in picture display covering about 1/3rd of our shared screen. This happened almost any time a successful slashing attack finished off an enemy, which was fairly often since I picked up approximately 70 slashing weapons according to my weapon statistics.
Something is amiss in the land of fairy tales, and it's not part of the story. On a number of occasions the game simply broke. The frame rate dropped to the point where it was unplayable once, and the level had to be replayed. Another time, I fell off of a raft while facing a giant beaver boss, and never respawned or officially died - the screen just stayed there, and the boss battle continued without me. With each of these glitches the system had to be turned off in order to remove the negative effects, and the entire chapter of the game had to be replayed. This happened 4 times to me, and it was reported that others had the same issues in different sections of the game.
Whether by glitch, sword, gunshot, or falling off a platform, while playing Fairytale Fights you will die. A lot. It was great that the game had an option to turn friendly fire on or off, or you and your co-op buddy would be sure to break up because you'd be sure to kill them almost as much as the enemies would. It is nice that the game gives you minimum repercussions for dying. You'll lose a chunk of your accumulated coins and your equipped weapon, but you just tap A and can be resurrected from a little tomb easily. Not having any healing items did get a bit annoying, especially losing your weapons during boss fights.
Having no slashing, crushing or magical weapon during a boss battle means one thing: The fight will last forever, because you'll be using your fists. During the single player, this was dreadful, and I turned off the game during the one boss battle I faced alone. With Co-op, it's much better, almost necessary. The battle took easily half the amount of time with two people, and was actually enjoyable with 3. Co-op overall in the game made it much more enjoyable, less frustrating, and hilarious to play with friends.
Fe-Fi-Fo-Fum we don't really recommend this to anyone. At least not until it drops in price quite a bit, and you can guarantee you have a co-op buddy to ease the burden of lengthy boss fights.
Verdict
Co-Op Score
Overall
The Co-Op Experience: Team up with a friend to hack and slash you way through fairytale inspired worlds.
Co-Optimus game reviews focus on the cooperative experience of a game, our final score graphic represents this experience along with an average score for the game overall. For an explanation of our scores please check our Review Score Explanation Guide.