Fairy Tail: Dragon Cry's movie takes place between somewhere between the Avatar and the Spriggan 12 arc and this movie might as well be a stand alone movie much like Priestess of the Phoenix movie due to it having an isolated story involving the Fairy Tail crew.
So on speaking of Priestess of the Phoenix, Fairy Tail: Dragon Cry has a similar setting and setup, with a female movie-only character central to the plot (Sonia) whereas they try to find an artifact (Dragon Cry staff) that may revive or fix something in their country for the greater good, but is stopped by Natsu and the crew as they aren't helping at all at the expense of all the sacrifice happening. But where Priestess of the Phoenix takes this to a T with no great twists about it and is the typical stand alone anime tied movie, Fairy Tail : Dragon Cry though having similarities to Priestess of the Phoenix, at least "tries" and LA says "tries" in the loosest definition to get out of the mold and gives us a few plot twists here and there.
Once again LA will say that Natsu and the crew and obviously Natsu is subjected to plot armour but that isn't really LA major problem with Fairy Tail: Dragon Cry, but it's almost plot beats to Priestess of the Phoenix right down Erza taking on a enemy mage having to do with "beauty" in this case LEGS and of course what LA detailed in the above premise.
Where Fairy Tail: Dragon Cry does at least have one major strength is in it's plot twist and that plot twist being linked with Sonia and LA really didn't see it coming and it does take some liberties here and there especially in the dragon lore department for some suspension of disbelief but nonetheless the Sonia twist was a strength to say the least, the next would be that the animation done by A-1 Pictures this time did great from the sharper and crisper character designs and though the the battles does get rather hectic and chaotic at times as well as the few cutting corners choreography in fight scenes, the animation was step up from Priestess of the Phoenix and LA says this as Satelight helped with that but in this one, A-1 Pictures took the helm. The last strength LA could see was again Sonia and her presence in the movie but to counterbalance this, the instigator that kickstarted the movie, the sub-villain of Lord Zash was an unbashed typical lecherous asshole of a character and sure like Sonia, he gets screentime as well as his motives in all this, but man did LA not like his presence in the movie.
As for the voice cast, with the addition of the new movie only characters, we have Aoi Yuuki as Sonia, Makoto Furukawa as Animus and Jirou Saitou as Zash, with Aoi Yuuki probably being the best out of the three though we do get to see Makoto and Jirou go a bit ham with their roles as well. Since this is a Fairy Tail movie, the large cast is back but with most of the screentime going to Natsu's crew, thus Tetsuya Kakihara, Aya Hirano, Sayaka Ohara, Satomi Sato, Yui Horie, Rie Kugimiya and Yuuichi Nakamura gets most of the limelight of this movie and thus the voice cast from the anime series is mostly back.
Fairy Tail: Dragon Cry does take ALOT of the plot beats from Priestess of the Phoenix thus almost a carbon copy of it, but Fairy Tail: Dragon Cry DOES by the by try to do it's own thing with the setup given and the plot structure it was given, from the good character developments from the new movie only characters, the great plot twist near the end and what looks like better production value than the first movie. Yes Fairy Tail: Dragon Cry has it's problems especially with the movie trying to put the Fairy Tail crew mashed into another plot to the Natsu plot armour and the character quirks and running gags to this even being an isolated story that really doesn't effect what will happen in Fairy Tail: The Final Series going against it, but where LA sees it, Fairy Tail: Dragon Cry was doing what could had been improved by Priestess of the Phoenix but using that template thus all the problems stemming from it and healing some wounds in the process with some of the strengths of good movie only characters, good plot twist and better production value.
Fairy Tail: Dragon Cry isn't gonna win any awards here, but for a "Fairy Tail movie", it's a marked improvement from Priestess of the Phoenix whilst chained down to the same problems Priestess of the Phoenix had.
