Fate/Extra is an RPG taking place in a world alternative to the canon Nasuverse where mana has disappeared from Earth somewhere in 70s. As a result, magecraft has died out and former magi families reinvented themselves as spiritual hackers, people capable of using their magic circuits to “digitize their souls” and enter virtual worlds wholly rather than interacting with them through an interface. It’s kinda unclear what they normally do with that ability aside from playing virtual LARP games as the game takes place in a very special setting that probably doesn’t have an analog on Earth.
Specifically, we find ourselves on the Moon. There is an ancient computer beneath the surface built by unknown hands. From the dawn of humanity it recorded all information about Earth from the movement of tectonic plates to lives of ameba to thoughts and ideal of every single person. Its purpose is unknown, but what is known is that it hosts a modified version of the Holy Grail War to which all spiritual hackers who can find their way in are invited. Hundreds of magi would fight in an elimination tournament, and the last one standing would get their wish, any wish granted.
You are one of these magi. Prepare to get flashed.
Alright, first things first: costumes of female character are ridiculous.
Also, fun fact: when the MC first meets Saber Nero, they comment how they first mistook her for a man. Later Nero mentions she prefers male costumes for reasons. Now look at Nero’s picture once more. I honestly believe the writers had zero communication with the artists because how you can be unsure about Nero’s gender is beyond my comprehending. I can kinda-sorta buy it with Arthuria if I apply enough anime logic and drinks beforehand, but Nero makes it very, very clear she’s a woman. I guess the MC could be distracted by her shoulders.
The fanservice doesn’t stop at the ridiculous imagery and bleeds into the story as well. At your first meeting, Rin mistakes you for a mindless NPC due to blandness of your avatar and gropes you because she wanted to examine an NPC. That manages to be both awkward and pretty damn creepy. Caster’s stated goal is literally to be a waifu, Nero proclaims her love to you at one point (for some reason, there isn’t an option to either reject or accept her feelings, she just kinda takes it for granted that she needs to win you over) and there is a sex scene. The scene isn’t graphic and it’s actually entirely possible to miss it, but it’s still worth mentioning because it happens when an enemy Servant severs a link between you and your Servant and Rin/Rani… ah… take your place as a mana-provider, which involves sexing it up. In other words, it’s a callback to that threesome scene from FSN because certainly you all wanted to be reminded of it, right? Also seems to be a dub con.
So, yeah, the game drops the ball on fanservice front, being oversaturated by it. Which is a shame because beneath all of this, the game is actually pretty good if far from flawless.
So, let’s talk about it.
The game is divided into nine stages: the prologue (which mostly serves to introduce characters and get you familiar with the ground), seven battles against Servants and the final (very brief) stage.
During each Servant battle stage, you have six days to prepare, which involves investigating the school (which serves as a sort of lounge where Masters can safely interact) and exploring the Arena (dungeon crawling, basically). On the seventh day, it’s time for the boss battle.
The investigation part is easy: you just walk around, talk with people, watch the cutscenes and get some info on the enemy or help with the Arena challenges.
The Arena is where you spend most of the time as it involves lots of grinding. Each Servant battle takes place on a uniquely-themed stage (a sunken ship, an ice castle, jungles, etc.), but before you can be allowed there you have to find two trigger cards in two dungeons, which appear to be made of glass tubes hanging above the stage. It’s kinda a shame that you can’t explore the cool-looking locations in person but at least you get to look at them from above.
Naturally, dungeons are filled with monsters, in this case “malicious programs.” The in-universe justification for it is culling weak Masters to prevent winning by luck. If you can’t even find the key, you don’t deserve to advance, basically.
For the most part, it’s a pretty standard dungeon crawling, which quickly gets boring since you have only two dungeons to clear in six game days, meaning you’ll do the same dungeon three times in a row before moving on to the next one. At least leveling up is relatively easy, and the game helpfully informs you of your opponent’s level at the end of each day. Being of equal level is necessary to stand a chance of victory, getting 2-4 levels higher allows for a comfortable fight where you can afford to make some mistakes.
Sometimes the monotony is interrupted by special events: ambushes from the enemy Servant, some kind of trap preventing you from advancing past a certain point of the Arena, monster hunting where you and the opponent compete to kill more monsters of certain kind, etc. You usually get to fight the enemy Servant once or twice before the formal battle, though you’re not expected to win as the fight ends automatically after three turns by the rules of the Holy Grail.
The fights are turn-based. Each turn is divided into six moves (which you assign at the beginning of each turn and can’t change until the next turn). During each move, your Servant can perform one of three regular attack or use a skill. Regular attacks have a rock-paper-scissors relationship: Break beats Guard, Guard blocks Attack (some damage actually does get through. It’s minuscule, so normally doesn’t matter, but a few times I did finish off an enemy with it) and allows you to counterattack, and Attack is faster than Break. Some of the opponent’s moves are revealed to you at the beginning of each turn, which basically guarantees you a certain attack on those moves, the rest are hidden and it’s up to you to figure them out. Most enemies follow set patterns that can be memorized or even deducted (for example, one of the early enemies always goes Attack-Guard-Attack-Guard-Attack-Guard). Moreover, fighting the same type of enemy accumulate knowledge of them, allowing your Servant to predict more of their moves until you get to see all of them on consistent basis, guaranteeing a certain victory.
(For enemy Servants, it’s different. How many of their moves you see in advance depends on how much info you’ve gathered on them, hence the importance of the investigation.)
Skills are basically magic: buffs, debuffs, offensive spells, etc. Offensive skills automatically trump all regular attacks (though Guard reduces their damage significantly) and deal far more damage. Other skills leave you wide open for all attacks, so they’re best used when you know the opponent is going to Guard. When both you and the opponent use a skill, both take effect. The order in which they’re resolved is determined by respective Agility scores, though usually it doesn’t matter much.
Spamming skills for every move you can’t see sounds like a good idea, but your Servant doesn’t have enough MP to use them constantly (at least until the very late game, and even then you’d probably need to overlevel), so their use should be strategic.
Masters contribute to the fight as well with supportive magic (or “code cast” as it’s called there. You get it by equipping special items. You only have two slots, so you should choose wisely) and healing items, though they can act only once per turn (but you do get to pick on which move to act). It’s actually a nice way to demonstrate the difference in speed and general ability between Heroic Spirits and mere mortals.
Naturally, Servants have stats that would be familiar to FSN fans: Strength, Endurance, Agility, Magic, Luck. Investing stat points in them increases their absolute value (and different Servants have different grows rates: Saber is pretty round, while Caster has a very hard time rising Strength, but Magic is cheap, naturally). Getting a stat up to a certain value increases its rank (E, D, etc. All stats start at E because you suck as a Master), which increases the effects of the stats. All of them contribute to regular attack and skill damage, though the degree of influence varies greatly. As such, you won’t be completely helpless no matter how you distribute your stat points, but it’s still pretty easy to fuck up your character. A thing to remember: Strength is the most important attribute for both Saber and Archer, and even Caster would benefit from a rank or two. Endurance is the best stat to rise skill damage alongside Magic, plus it reduces damage from regular attacks and contributes greatly to regular damage as well, making it the second best stat (yes, even with all of these good things it’s only second best because damage is just that important). Magic is good for Caster and somewhat for Archer, contributing greatly to skill damage and reducing the damage from opponent’s skills. Agility and Luck are nigh-useless and can be safely forgotten.
So, yeah, the attribute part of mechanics is pretty shoddy and disbalanced. It’s also very opaque since you don’t get to see the formulas for damage or anything, which means you can easily spend a lot of stat points on something that looks useful only to realize an in-game week later you’ve made a horrible mistake. The translation doesn’t help. According to it, Agility “balances defense attributes” or something in that vein. What the fuck does it mean? Well, actually it means it decreases the damage range. So, if normally you deal 600-1000 damage, increasing Agility by a rank would lead to you dealing 720-1020 damage or so (mind, I’m eyeballing the numbers here). I’d suggest using a guide before playing to get a feel for where to take your character unless you really want to fumble on your own.
Skills are gained from spending a certain amount of stat points on any attributes (so, since there is no reason not to spend stat attributes the moment you get them, you just get skills at certain levels effectively). Along with grows rates of stats, they determine the fighting style of your Servant. Saber is, naturally, the most straightforward of the three: she has plenty of offensive skills, some buffs, a passive skill that increases drop rate from enemies and a skill that allows her to survive one fatal blow from the enemy. She doesn’t really require much of a strategy to use effectively. Just use skills when you can afford to or when a good opportunity presents itself, and otherwise go for normal attacks.
Archer favors skills that combine damage with bebuffs lowering opponent’s stats. His shtick is that to use his skills he needs to build up a projection counter. It’s done through the use of three supportive skills: Pre-projection just increases it by one for each use, but leaves him open to attacks, so it’s best used with the opponent Guarding. Fortification allows him to increase the counter each time he performs Guard against enemy’s Attack. The use of the skill itself still opens him to attacks, but its effect lasts for three full turns, so it’s a good way to build up the counter. The third skill is passive and just allows Archer to start with the counter at 1 instead of 0.
Fortunately, the counter stays once it’s built up. Once it’s at the level 1, you can use Weaken (which requires projection 1) as often as you want as long as you have the MP necessary, it isn’t going down. Most skills don’t require projection higher than 3, which can be built reasonably fast. The only exceptions are his shield (which can perfectly negate any attack and requires projection 5) and UBW (which requires projection 6, the max counter), plus another skill that becomes more powerful the higher the counter is.
Overall, Archer’s style is to meander and survive until he builds enough power to just nuke everything.
Caster I actually didn’t play. It seems she relies on skills more than other characters, uses them much more frequently to the point of nearly replacing normal attacks and can paralyze the opponent as long as she can predict their actions and pick the right skill to use in response.
Overall, the gameplay is nicely done. It plays to the setting’s strengths by empathizing the importance of information and planning, it rewards clever strategies and is unusual enough to be memorable among other jRPGs. You can actually miss the crucial info on your opponent if you don’t explore everything or don’t move on the second dungeon once it’s available, leading to you being at a disadvantage during the boss fight. Or even get disqualified if you fail to obtain the triggers (the game actually includes an option to start from the beginning of the current week for such situations, so you don’t need to be too careful with save files. That’s handy).
The grinding is still damn tedious, though, and it just gets worse late in the game. You see, there is a piece of equipment called Shockwave 2nd Strike and another called Sword of Repentance. The former allows you to paralyze the monsters in the field. If you enter a fight with a paralyzed monsters, they would be stunned for the first two moves, allowing you free attacks. The latter allows you to use a code cast in a fight paralyzing the enemy for a move. If you use both, the enemy would be stunned for three moves in a row, effectively granting you four free attacks (since successfully performing three regular attacks in a row gives you an extra turn where you automatically succeed in delivering a strike). That’s enough to kill any regular enemy in the game, which pretty much kills any challenge that could be found in grinding and makes the whole process an obligatory waste of time.
Now, to the plot.
The game starts with a prologue in which you go to school filled with familiar faces. There is Shinji Matou being smarm at you, his sister Sakura is around (though later it’s revealed in a creepy and funny scene that she’s actually a nurse AI), Taiga is your teacher (and falls on her face every day while entering the class), Issei is on the student council (he greets you with the same message every day before checking your look and belongings against the school code), etc. You are a member of the journalist club charged with investigating the seven mysteries of the school, which is a thing all Japanese schools are supposed to have. The first one is a bust, but then you meet “a girl in red” (that is to say, Rin), who disappears before your eyes, cluing you in that something fishy’s going on. As you continue your investigation, it becomes increasingly clear that the whole school is strange.
The repeated evens before with Taiga and Issei? They quite literally repeat each day without variation (until they interrupted by outside factors). Other people in the journalist club behave weirdly and just shrug off your increasingly weird findings, message boards become more and more ominous, etc.
Eventually, the situation escalates to the point where your vision is imparted by static that seems to dissolve the reality itself. Searching for answers, you follow Leo, a transfer student whose arrival interrupted Taiga’s endless fallings and who seems to know what’s going on. He leads you to a dead end and walks through a wall. You follow and enter what appears to be another world where you’re greeted by a mysterious voice announcing your invitation to the Holy Grail War. You’re granted an effigy, a featureless doll that follows your commands. It is to be your protector on the path to the Grail before you could obtain an actual Servant.
Followed by the doll, you proceed into a chamber where you find a corpse of the previous Master candidate with his effigy lying broken beside him. Suddenly, it activates and you enter a fight. Which you lose. And die, asking for someone, anyone to remember your name (alas, the game doesn’t inform us of the student’s name, so the plea was in vain).
At this point the game switches to the true MC. You can pick their gender and name (I went with Chara and didn’t regret it), though the most important choice is, of course, that of your Servant. Saber (Emperor Nero), Archer (EMIYA Shirou) or Caster (Tomamo no Mae, described in the game – and I quote – as “a magical fox girl”).
After that, you proceed to relive the last day of the nameless student from a different perspective. From the start we see a difference in personality between the two: where the nameless student was passive and accepting of weirdness surrounding him, you’re very on edge and frightened about your situation. You know how weird it is that Issei greets you with the same message each day and you walk past him, leaving him to deliver his speech to an empty air. You proceed to follow the nameless student’s path in search for answers and meet Leo before the entrance to another world. Where the nameless student thought of Leo as inspiring and encouraging, you see hidden malice.
Nevertheless, you follow in the nameless student’s footsteps and receive an effigy of your own before encountering his corpse (though before that there is a brief tutorial showing the basics of fight system). Much like him, you’re confronted with the broken effigy rising to strike you, and, much like him, you lose. This time around, you do have control over the fight, but you suck and can’t predict enemy’s moves at all.
Unlike him, your last thoughts were not of being remembered but of how you can’t give up yet. You struggle to stand to the last, and that determination allows your call to reach a Servant close to you in spirit, who naturally proceeds to demolish the effigy and welcome you to the Holy Grail War as the last qualified participant.
Later he or she explains that the prologue was a test: all Masters were brainwashed into believing themselves normal students in a normal school. Only those who’ve managed to break from the brainwashing qualified for the War and were granted their memories back. The rest are dead.
You, however, don’t regain any memories because protagonist and plot stuff.
I described the prologue in detail because I kinda have a love-hate relationship with it. It’s a very strong opening going from mundane routine that would be familiar to the target audience to reality breaking all around you, ending with your death demonstrating that shit got real and culminating in a pretty glorious appearance of your Servant.
However, it produces certain problems down the line. Specifically, Shirou and Alice (another Master, original character) remember you much like as if you were the nameless student and your desk in a classroom is the same as his despite you very clearly being a different person: Leo sees both you and the nameless student, you yourself see the nameless student as well and follow him… I guess it may not actually be a plot hole due to all the brainwashing involved and the fluid nature of reality in the prologue, but it raises questions that were unnecessary and that the game doesn’t answer.
That kinda breaks immersion.
Secondly, as you can see above, the MC actually has a personality. I don’t really object to it (a few flaws here and there aside, the character development was done nicely) as much as I’m surprised by it. The setup sounds perfect for a silent blank protagonist with the players projecting themselves into their skin. It even works on a meta-level with the MC being an avatar used to enter a virtual world.
Yet, despite everything, they’re not you.
They have opinions, they react on event, they get depressed over all the killing, they have a character arc… They’re a realized character despite the bland avatar and amnesia and everything else.
Go figure.
That rather blindsided me.
But anyway, moving on. The first battle is against Shinji, who remains his smarm self. I have another big problem with that section of the story: Shinji comes across as way more sympathetic than he’s intended to be. For one thing, he’s not abusive anymore if only by virtue of not having anyone to abuse (Sakura scared him shitless and Francis Drake is not a person who would allow herself to be pushed around. They actually have a nice mutually-irritating relationship). For another, during the course of the week he realizes your natural superiority and becomes increasingly more desperate to survive doing various frantic moves and covering his nerves with smarm. In the end, he begs for his life and pleads to be saved to the last moment despite futility of such an action.
And I think we’re supposed to laugh at him for it, especially since his death scene stands in stark contrast to other Masters who go down with much more dignity, but honestly? I think it’s very human to not want to die and be ready to abandon pride in the face of oblivion. Someone begging for his life should evoke sympathy and pity, not scorn. Stiff upper lip is all well and good, but there is no right way to die, and I think it’s disturbing that so much media doesn’t get it.
At least the MC did feel bad about him, though more in a vague “I just took a life” sort of way than feeling true sympathy to Shinji.
On the other hand, eh, it’s still Shinji. For FSN fans it should be pretty damn satisfying to first humiliate the smarmy ass and then kill him off, so my complaint is more of an abstract level.
After this rocky start, the plot chugs along nicely. You get to meet new interesting people, get to know them, learn their stories, and then you kill them.
I quite like that the game doesn’t shy away from this aspect of the Holy Grail War. FSN itself kinda downplayed it with a lot of participants being very villainous and sympathetic characters generally not dying by Shirou’s hand. Here, though? Most Masters are good or at least sympathetic people who fight you because it’s their chance to make their deepest wish come true, not because they’re evil and want to watch the world drown in mud. The second Master you face is a honorable soldier who goes out of his way and uses a Command Seal to forbid his Servant from fighting dirty, thus ultimately ensuring his downfall. The emotional punches just get worse from there.
And the game knows how to deliver them. Aside from your interaction with enemies during the preparation period, you get to talk to them for the last time during an elevator ride to the battle stage, thus giving you a bit more time to get to know them as people and learn about their ideals. After the battle, you and your enemies get separated by a barrier, and you watch them slowly disintegrate as they deliver their last words.
It may be a bit manipulative, but still it’s very effective in making you see your enemies as people fighting for what they believe into.
The only exception is the fourth Master, who is rather obviously villainous and more on a joking side than serious. They’re here mostly to provide some action while the MC struggles with the existential crisis and not developed much.
Otherwise, though, every Master has a story to tell and reasons to fight, and the game absolutely doesn’t hesitate in making you feel like shit for killing them.
(Also, it uses “It’s kill or be killed” line verbatim throughout the whole story, which makes me happy.)
In this light, I feel it’s forgivable for the game to abandon another cool aspect of the normal Holy Grail War: colliding plots. The Holy Grail War is interesting in that it has seven separate teams working against each other, which creates plenty of opportunities for temporary alliances, betrayal and people generally getting in each other’s way with their plans and schemes.
Fate/Extra doesn’t really do it. Each battle is against one team only, with the rest fighting their own battles. Sometimes you do get a bit of indirect help from Rani and Rin, sometimes another Master interrupts the normal proceedings with some murder scheme (though that mostly happens in interludes between the proper battles), but for the most part everyone but you and your enemy are reduced to peanut gallery.
Normally I wouldn’t like it as it reduces narrative possibilities, but I have to admit it does give the game focus it might have lacked otherwise. As Act noted during her readthrough, many Servants and Masters in FSN were underdeveloped in at least some routes since there wasn’t enough space to show off all of them. The way the game is set up, on the other hand, allows the story of each Master to shine (except, again, the fourth one).
Speaking of stories to tell, there are plenty of Masters around who aren’t important to the plot (aside from occasionally having a bit of info pointing you in the right direction) but who still have their developing stories that you can learn if you speak with them regularly. After each week their number decreases significantly until none remain, driving home once again the brutality of this war. It’s a nice detail.
The overall plot builds toward a confrontation with Leo, who is a heir of “Western plutocracy,” whatever it is and intends to become the king of the world in all but name. His ultimate goal is to create a world without conflict or strive, where nobody suffers from poverty or violence and everyone is in their right place, forever.
Rin is an insurgent who may or may not be connected to a terrorist organization and her goal is to stop Leo because she believes the ideal world of his would be utterly devoid of any progress, any evolution. It would stagnate and would ultimately lead to humanity’s ruin. Moreover, some people simply wouldn’t have a place in his world, and it’s pretty clear he won’t hesitate to eliminate them.
Well, it is an interesting theme to explore, though it remains very abstract. We’re on the Moon, we never see how things are on Earth either in regions under Leo’s group’s control or elsewhere. Nobody but Leo and Rin speak about it either, with the rest of the characters being preoccupied with their personal wishes or War in general. I don’t know how much merit Leo’s ideal has or whether Rin has the right of it, and so I feel far too removed from that conflict to feel qualified to do anything about it.
That is a serious flaw, though I’m not sure if it’s unintentional or not. You see, you being removed from the conflict ties to another theme of the game, that of you being a stranger in a strange war. Unlike everyone else, you don’t have any memories of the past, you don’t have a wish to fight for. You fight simply because otherwise you would die. And, as such, you can never care about this world as much as people who actually live in it.
(As an aside, it’s clear that while the game doesn’t really break the fourth wall despite the setting literally being a virtual game, it’s constructed in a way that takes into account player’s position relative to this world.)
The game fully acknowledges it, and it serves as a source of much conflict to the MC.
The MC actually goes into a whole internal monologue about how so many people came before them, all carrying their deepest wishes in their heart, all putting their lives and ideals on the line, and all dying one by one. In the end, the MC thinks, only they would be left standing, alone among the corpses. The only one without a wish, the only one without past or hope for the future. The only one who killed solely not to die. Everyone else would perish, drowned in their ideals.
Did I mentioned I named them Chara?
In the end, the issue is left ambiguous: the MC does get their wish granted, but what wish it was remains unstated. It’s up to you to decide how much they’ve changed the world if at all. I guess it’s not the worst way to handle it.
But before that there is a fight against the final final boss, after the real final boss of Leo.
It’s Twice H. Pieceman, and God, do I hate him. And not in a fun “love to hate” way, I hate hate HaTe him to the point I don’t even wish his death, I wish for him to disappear and leave no trace for his existence. Fuck the things I’ve said before, that is the wish my MC made to the Grail: erase this fucker to the last bit! Erase everyone who knew him! Erase the world that allowed his existence! Erase everything for it’s forever tainted by his presence!
The worst part is that he’s not even a bad character. Well, he is a bad character but he didn’t have to be! He has a very Nasu backstory of a doctor with a pathological, nigh-physical aversion to violence. Despite he, he was throwing himself into one conflict after another to save lives. Not because he valued them but because he couldn’t stand the very concept of violence and was willing to torture himself in order to eradicate it.
He died during a terrorist attack, but before death, for reasons probably caused by a brain-targeted bioweapon the terrorist were using, he came to accept violence not just as a part of life but as what gives humanity definition.
All information is recorded by the Moon computer, and his dying realization was recorded as well. His memories lived on, as do memories of everyone on Earth, but then his replica gained self-awareness, becoming a cyber ghost (their existence was established early in the game). He started to act on his last wish, entering the Holy Grail War again and again. He died many times, but, being a ghost, could try again and again until he got it right and gained access to the Grail. The Grail only recognizes living humans as valid Masters, however, so if Twice were to ever enter it, he would be erased. So he needed someone willing to fulfill his wish, and he thinks you’re just the right person, Chara.
He wishes for eternal war of survival in which the survivors could be forged into greatness and the rubble erased.
Naturally, you refuse and kill him.
Now, his goal is obviously batshit, and I don’t think it works as a counterpoint to Leo. It’s too extreme. With Leo, you could see his point and wonder if his world would be better than this one. Yeah, stagnation sucks, but not as much as crushing poverty or being afraid to walk down a street because of your gender, race or orientation. Not everyone would fit his utopia, but many people don’t fit this world, either, so even if you disagree with his goals, they still make you think about such problems and possible solutions to them.
Eternal war, on the other hand, is easily rejected without a thought.
Still, at least it ties to the themes of the story and kinda works narratively. It could have worked with more thought put into it.
The true problem is that that backstory and goals? Was delivered by Twice here in a speech that took at least ten minutes to read through. He just talked and talked and he didn’t stop.
And he had to. He was not established at all prior to this scene, only mentioned in passing once or twice (I guess it’s Twice, given his name).
It’s the same problem as the abstract conflict above, only amplified greatly. Look, Twice, I cared about Leo not so much because of his ideals but because he was with me throughout the game. We had plenty of conversations, I got to know him, I got to plan his death. I cared about Rin and Rani and Alice and Julius and Blackmore and that stupid clown. God, I even cared about Shinji, and that’s no easy fit. Why? Because they were with me. I’ve seen them in action, I talked with them, I was threatened by them and I’ve won against them. They made me care so I could kill them.
You I don’t know. You appeared out of nowhere, talked way too much about things that don’t concern me with the prize so close and then had an indignity to demand I share your view.
I don’t care about you, Twice. Go away and die.
And the worst thing? The game fucking tricked me! You remember that mysterious voice from the prologue? Yeah, it was him. As well as, I think, the bits of poetry the game gives you when you complete a week.
The thing is, the MC commented early on that they thought for some reason the voice sounded like a middle-aged priest. So, I thought, hey, Kotomine! He’s actually in the game, getting his disco on:
He’s an AI in charge of organizing the War. Here to make sure the rules aren’t broken, to remind people when it’s time for the boss battle, that kind of thing.
So I thought he was going to be the final boss. It would have been so cool! He could even have delivered basically the same spiel about the eternal war, only he’d have made it two paragraphs instead of twenty because he needs no introduction. Neither for the FSN fans who know and ship him nor for the newcomers who knew him for most of the game.
Also, his disco clothes are obviously some kind of secret weapon.
Alternatively, I thought maybe the final boss would be an avatar of the Grail itself, which would make sense for plot reasons. You actually fight a system avatar before that point due to your Servant becoming more loyal to you than to the system, which the system seeks to punish, but that event has little buildup, no followup, and the avatar itself is very unimpressive. So, finally going up against the system itself would be a fitting final battle with a great potential for awesome.
Instead we’ve got that fucker.
We could have had Goddamn Kotomine, and all we have is a piece of shit.
Suffice it to say, I disapprove.
*Sigh*
Alright, I don’t want to end this review on an angry note since for the most part I was pleasantly surprised by the game. Despite its fanfic nature, it managed to provide a for-the-most-part solid story, some interesting characters and conflicts, and it sure knows how to twist a knife in player’s heart.
So instead have some good news: there is a cameo from Touko and Aoko. They’re here looking for a certain person and are not part of the war. Instead, they do alteration of the soul, which basically allows you to spend stat points as you can’t do it otherwise.
Touko looks weird, though I think that was her early design for KnK. Besides, it fits. The Holy Grail War allows for custom avatars, and Touko always wanted to be Blue.
And on that note, let’s finish it.
Overall, I do recommend playing this game if you can stomach the very in-your-face fanservice, excessive grinding and some narrative blunders along the way. It’s not a masterpiece or anything, but it is entertaining, it does give some food for thoughts, and its flaws are tolerable.
Plus, hey, Garcher.
Very nice review, illhousen! So you actually liked the rock-paper-scissors battle system?
Does it still count as fanfiction if it was written by Nasu himself? :-)
Oh, as for Drake, it seems she’s actually implied to be Queen Elizabeth, not Drake proper, in the original Japanese. Nero is an out-and-out genderbend, though.
“So you actually liked the rock-paper-scissors battle system?”
Well, it’s not the best thing evah or anything, but it fits what the game’s going for and it’s a nice departure from RPGMaker style combat for me, which is utterly bland.
“Does it still count as fanfiction if it was written by Nasu himself?”
Well, it’s definitely constructed as an AU fanfic, what with all the familiar characters still around filling similar roles and such.
I guess technically it’s not a fanfic, but there are enough similarities that I feel the comparison justified.
“Oh, as for Drake, it seems she’s actually implied to be Queen Elizabeth, not Drake proper, in the original Japanese.”
Well, it certainly didn’t come across that way in the English version. Plus, the characterization of Drake was that of a money-hungry mercenary (she’s actually empowered by looting money), which is something I wouldn’t expect from royalty.
Plus, the characterization of Drake was that of a money-hungry mercenary (she’s actually empowered by looting money), which is something I wouldn’t expect from royalty.
Really? That seems perfectly fitting for royalty to me. :-)
It’s the “mercenary” part that I object to.
So Kotomine had no major importance to the plot? What’d he do, just stand around being a wordy dick to be people?
He’s actually an AI replica of dead Kotomine. And yeah, he’s basically here to be a wordy dick and remind you about important events.
He broke a fight once and organized a challenge event in the Arena, that’s about it as far as his contribution to the plot goes.
He’s a cameo basically.
It wouldn’t be so bad, mind, if he weren’t a perfect fit for the final boss in place of that fucker.
And yeah, he’s basically here to be a wordy dick and remind you about important events.
Livin’ the dream.
Lovely review Illhousen. My piece of constructive criticism for future reviews is to add a conclusion paragraph summarizing your positives and negatives of the work. It helps the audience process the information better. Also, there’s only one thing I don’t think you fully elaborated, and its how you said that the handling of the MC blindsided you. Speaking of which, anything to say about how the narrative treats the MC’s gender as someone attracted to females regardless of the MC’s actual gender? Finally, (When) do you plan on doing one for Extra CCC?
As for my thoughts on the game, Extra, especially CCC, feels like Nasu, or perhaps Type-Moon as a whole, making something with a certain filter turned off, specifically male-centered fanservice. If that one filter was turned on, this spin-off, for better or worse, wouldn’t stand out as much compared to the original material and Fate related works.
I wish this game got a better localization. You can find out Caster’s identity immediately by looking her up in your journal as soon as the game starts proper. The worst part of it, to me, is that during the boss battles, the voiced participants like to banter at each other and there are no subtitles so I can’t understand what they’re saying. I really wish I can only imagine what they’re saying, and my imagination isn’t very good.
“He could even have delivered basically the same spiel about the eternal war, only he’d have made it two paragraphs instead of twenty because he needs no introduction.”
I’m sorry but we both know that’s not true. It is physically impossible for Kirei to be on-screen and talk about something important in less than two pages. Dude really loves to talk, and with a voice actor as nice as his, I don’t blame him.
Regarding Twice, while I agree on your evaluation of him, though I don’t share your hatred, I really appreciated having a character in a story argue the benefits of war. That’s so fucking rare. I especially enjoyed, on a meta level, how Twice completely deconstructs Kiritsugu’s wish for world peace.
Knowing CCC’s plot structure and if I had to describe the two games with a single sentence, I’d say they’re Type-Moon’s version of Persona 4. I’d like to see how much people agree/disagree with that statement.
“There’s too much being left out. Ideally I, as a commenter on this site,
would like to use your concluding paragraph as a reference point for
everything you mentioned in your review so I don’t have to navigate
through numerous paragraphs to find the one thing I want to respond to.”
Hm. I generally regard the last paragraph as parting words rather than a reference point, but OK. I like talking, after all, so repeating myself shouldn’t be much of a problem.
“Also, there’s only one thing I don’t think you fully elaborated, and its
how you said that the handling of the MC blindsided you.”
Well, it’s not a big thing, but basically I’ve managed to ignore the signs of the MC having personality in the prologue (or, more specifically, I though them being more aware about stuff compared to the nameless student was more a compliment to the player than their own character) and expected them to be a mute blank protagonist who would be mostly monologued at. You know, like in Might&Magic games or Pokemon.
Then they went and had a full character arc with ups and downs and evolution and all that jazz, and it took me by surprise to realize they’re not simply an immersion tool for me to use but an actual person with their own perspective on what’s going on.
Initially it kinda threw me off balance, but overall it was a pleasant surprise.
“Speaking of which, anything to say about how the narrative treats the
MC’s gender as someone attracted to females regardless of the MC’s
actual gender?”
Ah yes, that. I’m actually not so sure the MC themselves are necessary attracted to anyone, or at least I think there is room to argue that way. It is, however, undeniable that Saber, Caster and Rin/Rani are attracted to you regardless of your gender, which is a sadly common trope in media.
It’s very clearly an extension of fanservice being here more to pander to the audience than to advance the narrative.
Personally, when it comes to romance in video games, I like the DAI model: everyone has their different preferences, and if you don’t fit them, well, sucks, they’re not interested.
I’m also forgiving towards DA II where you can romance practically everyone regardless of your and their gender since at least it’s an equal-opportunity pandering.
(Basically, what I’m saying is, I should have been allowed to bang Archer.)
“Finally, (When) do you plan on doing one for Extra CCC?”
When someone points me to a working translation.
“I never got that impression with Shinji’s death scene, especially with a
certain reveal near/at his death scene, (I can’t remember specifically
where it is), regarding his age.”
Wait, it was supposed to be for real? I thought he was just reaching for anything that could save his life in desperation. I mean, you do kill a kid later, and that plunges the MC into depression lasting for the next week (well, that and later the plot revelation), so I’d expect them to react more strongly to Shinji’s death if the bit about age was supposed to be taken seriously.
Overall, I’ve got an impression that Shinji was supposed to be a buffoon character you won’t feel too bad for killing. Laughing at his death scene is probably too strong a word, it’s more that it isn’t supposed to hit you hard compared to the following scenes.
“… Goddammit Illhousen.”
:)
“I’m sorry but we both know that’s not true. It is physically impossible
for Kirei to be on-screen and talk about something important in less
than two pages. Dude really loves to talk, and with a voice actor as
nice as his, I don’t blame him.”
Yeah, that’s true. But at least he wouldn’t need to deliver his own backstory, which takes a bulk of Twice’s speech.
“Knowing CCC’s plot structure and if I had to describe the two games with
a single sentence, I’d say they’re Type-Moon’s version of Persona 4.”
Hm, in what way? I actually have mixed feelings about P4 compared to P3. A lot of aspects were improved gameplay-wise, and the dungeons are much more connected to the narrative that the Tower of Grinding, but I think P3 plot was overall better constructed.
(That said, it was very funny to play Extra after P3. Both have thing school/dungeon dichotomy going on, but while in P3 the school section is important by itself and connects you with people who will provide you with the reason to fight for and help to defeat the final enemy, the school section in Extra is a sick joke with lives of NPCs ending abruptly and without resolution.)
“I generally regard the last paragraph as parting words rather than a reference point”
Your final bit with Archer was great, just want to clarify that you can keep that in while also adding more to your concluding paragraph. Thanks for listening.
Oh speaking of which, did you know that if you choose the female MC and save Rani you can ask Archer about his relationship with Rin? The results are hilarious.
“(Basically, what I’m saying is, I should have been allowed to bang Archer.)”
I think you can do that if you choose the female MC, which you should have done anyway because she has the more interesting design, imo.
“Initially it kinda threw me off balance, but overall it was a pleasant surprise.”
Same here. Again Nasu shows just how much of a narrative genius he is. If only he wrote Fire Emblem Fates, he would’ve made that game into a masterpiece.
“When someone points me to a working translation.”
There is a (second) fan project working on providing said translation. Should be done in a year or two. In the meantime, there is a blogger who translated their playthrough of CCC with the new Servant Gilgamesh. They translated all of the multiple choices and bad ends, so you can play the game in Japanese and use the blog to understand what everyone is saying. Unfortunately, they stopped right before getting to the ending… until this month apparently. Excuse me while I leave this link and leave to read the ending.
https://tsukinoura.wordpress.com/
I recommend reading the playthrough sooner than later because CCC has some truly stand out characters like Karna from Fate Apocrypha, his master, and Hans Christian Anderson as Caster. Another reason I recommend reading sooner than later is because CCC has two endings, the regular ending that’s unique to each Servant and a true ending. The true ending is only obtainable by making certain choices in the story and doing certain side quests that are easier to do on new game+. Thankfully the game does point out which choices will point to the true ending on new game+, but that still requires playing the game twice. That gets really boring really fast, especially on new game+ since you’ll steamroll through at least half the game without any challenge. If you read the blog, you’ll only have to play through the game once to get the true ending, and the game won’t feel so repetitive once you actually play it in two years.
“Wait, it was supposed to be for real?”
Considering what we find out about Rin and the others later on, I’d say most likely.
“Laughing at his death scene is probably too strong a word, it’s more that it isn’t supposed to hit you hard compared to the following scenes.”
That I’ll agree with. His death scene really drives home that yes, these people will die when they are killed (I’m not sorry). The death scenes really stand out to me as particularly inspired by Metal Gear Solid 1’s death scenes for its bosses. Speaking of which, do you have any favorites or standouts with the Masters and Servants? For me Archer and Leo are my two standout favorites.
“Hm, in what way?”
That statement mostly comes from CCC’s plot structure; its impossible to play CCC and not see the similarities. Though yes, Extra does have more in common with P3 than P4.
Oh one thing that I remembered, I like how Extra answers the question that several of my friends have asked when I introduced them to the Fate series: what happens if I summon a god as my Servant? Extra answers that becoming a Heroic Spirit is a complete downgrade for these gods. So you can’t cheese the Holy Grail War by summoning Hades or some other death god to act as your own personal Death Note.
Oh, did you ever try out the secret boss in Extra? You have to be on new game+ and do all of Taiga’s sidequests.
“Oh speaking of which, did you know that if you choose the female MC and
save Rani you can ask Archer about his relationship with Rin? The
results are hilarious.”
Isn’t it on Rin’s route? I’m actually currently on fourth week with Archer, stalled because of the repetition but determined to beat the game again eventually.
“I think you can do that if you choose the female MC, which you should
have done anyway because she has the more interesting design, imo.”
I mean, regardless of gender. As it stands now, it’s basically more of the “bisexual women are hot, bisexual/gay men don’t exist” type of thing that you can also see in DF. If you really have to pander (which is really not necessary, I would be just fine with my Servant becoming my buddy fighter, not a potential lover), at least pander to everyone.
“There is a (second) fan project working on providing said translation.”
Yeah, I know about it. The timeline of updates looks grim, though.
Thanks for the link, I’ll check out the translation, though I have to decline playing it. Playing a game in Japanese with English translation elsewhere sounds like a particularly inventive form of masochism to me.
“Speaking of which, do you have any favorites or standouts with the Masters and Servants?”
Well, Rin and Archer are still Rin and Archer (despite Rin not actually being Rin), so they’re automatically the best.
Other than them, I like Blackmore. He has a nice point about how the Holy Grail War is a war of ideals, so you should not think just about achieving your goals but about achieving them in a way you can be proud of. Everyone there has a wish they want granted, an ideal they pursue. By winning, you deny their wishes, so you must be sure that you can live with yourself afterwards.
While I prefer a more practical approach and don’t mind a bit of cheating the MC does (like blocking out the sun), I appreciate the sentiment.
Among Servants, Alice has a cool concept and I generally enjoy the RM fuckery.
Leo was more a satisfying opponent to take down than someone I liked as a person, and I think I enjoyed defeating Julius more, especially with his comeback.
“Extra answers that becoming a Heroic Spirit is a complete downgrade for these gods.”
Well, it’s not surprising. Becoming Servants is a downgrade to Heroic Spirits, after all.
“Oh, did you ever try out the secret boss in Extra? You have to be on new game+ and do all of Taiga’s sidequests.”
I know of her, but didn’t get to her yet.
“Thanks for the link, I’ll check out the translation, though I have to decline playing it. Playing a game in Japanese with English translation elsewhere sounds like a particularly inventive form of masochism to me.”
Eh, its not too bad if you have two monitors, one with the game and the other with the blog. That’s the set-up that I used. I just remembered that reading through a Gil playthrough of CCC adds some Hilarious in Hindsight moments to Fate Zero. Since you can take any scene where Gil and his master quarrel and imagine the conversation in your head between Gil and the Extra MC where said person gets Gil to do what they want.
Speaking of the Extra MC, which I’ll refer to as the fan name Hakuno from now on for ease of use, I did some thinking regarding them and Chara. The reason why Hakuno works so well is because Nasu struck the same idea well as Toby regarding video game characters: they always win because they never give up. As CCC most definitely shows, determination is Hakuno’s defining character trait, just like a certain other character mentioned in the review.
Between this game and Undertale, we’ve seen two very good uses of this realization regarding audience-insert characters in video games, so naturally the next question to form in my mind is: what else can be done with this idea? Not an easy one to be sure but I think between all of us here we can come up with at least something vaguely reminiscent of the genius used in our example cases.
“The reason why Hakuno works so well is because Nasu struck the same idea
well as Toby regarding video game characters: they always win because
they never give up.”
Well, it’s actually more that the MC can’t lose as long as the player doesn’t give up. No matter how many time you’re defeated, you can always reload and try again. Even if you’ve managed to lock yourself in an unwinnable situation, you can restart the game and try again with foreknowledge.
It’s interesting to compare the two games because they have similar goals of integrating player’s experiences into the narrative but approach the issue from vastly different angles.
Undertale directly incorporates traditionally non-existent gameplay elements into the narrative: when you reload the game, you literally send Frisk/Chara back in time with all the knowledge they’ve gained on the first run. Exp and lv are actual things within the world rather than abstractions measuring your experience. Stuff like that.
Extra is more conservative in its narrative. While some NPCs give you gameplay tricks, I didn’t get the feeling that they actually exist within the setting. The MC doesn’t talk about dying again and again before getting everything right, doesn’t retain the info on enemy Servants if you reloaded after gaining it, etc. In-universe, you get everything right the first time around, bad ends are not part of the main narrative.
Instead, the incorporation of the player is done through creating a character with similar relationship to the world around them. The MC doesn’t know this world and doesn’t have any goals beyond beating the game, which stands in stark contrast with other characters fighting for their deepest wishes.
Though, of course, Undertale does it too with Chara, who represents the munchkin side of gaming but is an actual in-universe person whose behavior is shown to be reprehensible as you’d expect from someone whose life revolves around killing people and taking their stuff in order to get stronger.
The big difference between the two games is that Undertale is first and foremost a reflection on games and underlying assumptions of the RPG genre with a good story attached while Extra is firstly a good story that happened to have an MC who is much closer to the player than is normal.
Extra is empathetic: while the MC is very much not you, you can understand them better than anyone and feel their plight. Undertale is reflective: it forces you to examine your own behavior in games and unspoken assumptions you make while playing.
I did with Caster and it was great! Except for the part where Suspended Esoterica, an attack that, unlike Twin Towers, is used at random, kills you in one hit unless you’re using Apothic Cave on every move of every turn. If you enjoy your sanity, go with Archer.
As for CCC… when you said that ‘Fate Extra dropped the ball on fanservice’ you were making quite the understatement; but CCC is that times 10. On top of that, I assure you that the third game will come and go (it was announced recently) much earlier than any kind of official translation patch.
That said, Gilgamesh backhanded compliments in CCC are great. It’s almost worth using two monitors for him alone. King of Tsunderes.
“Gilgamesh :: ………What do you think I’m going to say. Do I love people, you ask? What have you been watching this whole time? You should already know perfectly well how I view humans from how I’ve treated you! Do not ask me things I’ve already made clear!”
“Looks like he’s scared desperate. He’s acting like a child pouting after being caught. Also, “from how I’ve treated you —” If I were to form my answer just as he instructs, then I do understand his stance toward human beings…”
Source: https://tsukinoura.wordpress.com/2013/12/19/entry-111-extra-gilgamesh-is-tsundere-for-humanity/
For what it’s worth, the manga seems to have taken that tack regarding Shinji’s death: it’s sad, but in a pathetic sort of way, with Drake even thinking to herself something like “It’s a shame I didn’t have the time to make you into a man”, with the narrative seemingly adopting the view that “Hey, he’s just a kid and it’s sad, but he should have paid more attention to what he was getting himself into, you know?”. Does that map more or less closely to the game?
Hm, kinda? It’s pretty obvious that Shinji isn’t suited for the game and seems to not quite realize that yes, people die when they’re killed (going as far as to ask you to throw the fight in exchange for a portion of “prize money”).
Personally, my impression was that his death was sad in an abstract way: people die in this game, and you’re going to kill again and again if you don’t want to die, but these specific people dying is not that bad because one is a smarmest guy in the room who couldn’t even go down with dignity and another is a self-styled villain.
I guess it’s possible that my previous encounters with the trope of begging being bad colored my impression, but that’s what I’ve got from the scene.
Personally, my impression was that his death was sad in an abstract way: people die in this game, and you’re going to kill again and again if you don’t want to die, but these specific people dying is not that bad because one is a smarmest guy in the room who couldn’t even go down with dignity and another is a self-styled villain.
Yeah, that’s what I got from the manga.
Yaay, someone played this so we won’t have to! Of sorts. Now to make a hugeass quote textwall, which won’t have much insights since I haven’t actually played the
thing myself:
“As a result, magecraft has died out and former magi families reinvented themselves
as spiritual hackers”
Better not run that matou.exe
“I honestly believe the writers had zero communication with the artists”
Considering nothing good ever came out of Waifudude communicating with Nasu, this is a valid approach.
“Caster’s stated goal is literally to be a waifu”
Explains why internet creeps like her so much.
“gameplay”
It all sounds pretty interesting but certain to turn into an unbearable slog after a few hours. I don’t envy the task.
“The game starts with a prologue in which you go to school filled with familiar faces.”
This sounds entertainingly meta. Nasu’s stuff seem to have a good track record for utilizing their medium.
“Suddenly, it activates and you enter a fight. Which you lose. And die, asking for someone, anyone to remember your name”
Nasu was Dark Soulsing it up before Dark Souls was cool! No wonder he quit writing to play Dark Souls forever. Except Nasu didn’t actually write Extra but whatevs.
“You struggle to stand to the last, and that determination allows your call to reach a Servant close to you in spirit, who naturally proceeds to demolish the effigy and welcome you to the Holy Grail War as the last qualified participant.”
So we’re CyberShriou. Except not cool enough to be menaced by Cu.
“Only those who’ve managed to break from the brainwashing qualified for the War and were granted their memories back. The rest are dead.”
CyberGrail is just as bloodthirsty as the real one then. Also a lot of Nasuizied scifi happening. Shame this story is tied to a crappy jrpg.
“but it raises questions that were unnecessary and that the game doesn’t answer.”
Maybe they were going for the mystery angle. That’s known to fail sometimes.
“They’re a realized character despite the bland avatar and amnesia and everything else.”
Sounds like a neat scifi trick. Probably intentional. Also sounds properly Nasuey.
“I have another big problem with that section of the story: Shinji comes across as way more sympathetic than he’s intended to be.”
How are we doing with spoilers here? Seeing how I actually know some story stuff and just pretended to be ignorant until now, maybe I shouldn’t mention this but: He’s not even Shinji. Just someone using Shinji Matou as an avatar for VR, for some reason. All the baggage FSN’s Shinji has is just trolling audience. It’s also very meta, like many things I’ve heard of from this weirdass game.
“Stiff upper lip is all well and good, but there is no right way to die”
There is a right way to live tho and it’s called not being Shinji Matou. But since this character had got that one down, it’s a bust.
“You get to meet new interesting people, get to know them, learn their stories, and then you kill them.”
Video games inciting our youth to violence.
“Most Masters are good or at least sympathetic people who fight you because it’s their chance to make their deepest wish come true, not because they’re evil and want to watch the world drown in mud.”
Kirei and Goldie just wanted to have some fun. Nothing wrong with fun.
“Normally I wouldn’t like it as it reduces narrative possibilities, but I have to admit it does give the game focus it might have lacked otherwise.”
Games have to focus on player. Can’t have 2 hours of cutscene interruption to play out some sidecharacter subplot. They could’ve switched our pc, many strategy games feature campaigns of enemy sides, but it’s never done in rpgs for some reason.
“After each week their number decreases significantly until none remain, driving home once again the brutality of this war.”
CyberGrail seems indistinguishable from the real one.
“Well, it is an interesting theme to explore, though it remains very abstract. We’re on the Moon, we never see how things are on Earth either in regions under Leo’s group’s control or elsewhere. Nobody but Leo and Rin speak about it either”
Enter scifi. Scifi loves going for weird abstract for the sake of messages.
“The only one without a wish, the only one without past or hope for the future. The only one who killed solely not to die. Everyone else would perish, drowned in their ideals.”
So maybe we’re not CyberShirou after all.
“It’s Twice H. Pieceman”
Hmm. There was a Triple H pun here just now. Maybe I dropped it…
“He has a very Nasu backstory of a doctor with a pathological, nigh-physical aversion to violence. Despite he, he was throwing himself into one conflict after another to save lives. Not because he valued them but because he couldn’t stand the very concept of violence and was willing to torture himself in order to eradicate it.”
How was wading into ongoing wars as a pacifist gonna stop violence? I don’t think he thought things through. It probably hit him just before he died.
“His memories lived on, as do memories of everyone on Earth, but then his replica gained self-awareness, becoming a cyber ghost”
Dr Cyberghost is a good supervillain name.
“The true problem is that that backstory and goals? Was delivered by Twice here in a speech that took at least ten minutes to read through. He just talked and talked and he didn’t stop.”
A man after Kirei’s heart. So to speak. Also another FSN allusion. Maybe I should’ve called him CyberKirei.
“And he had to. He was not established at all prior to this scene, only mentioned in passing once or twice”
Maybe he was CyberBeetlejuice and appeared when called. No, Dr Cyberghost is still the better name.
“So I thought he was going to be the final boss. It would have been so cool! He could even have delivered basically the same spiel about the eternal war, only he’d have made it two paragraphs instead of twenty because he needs no introduction.”
I’m going to assume hatred is clouding your mind, since DiscoKirei would do forty paragraphs.
“Suffice it to say, I disapprove.”
DiscoKirei would’ve been obviously low hanging fruit after all those FSN allusions. A Cybra Mainyu would’ve been much better, something completely new would be best, a zook.exe would’ve been bestest. They went for option 2 but doesn’t seem like they succeeded.
“The Holy Grail War allows for custom avatars, and Touko always wanted to be Blue.”
How does Aoko’s sorcery fare in the postmagic virtual reality? Glossed over, I bet.
“Plus, hey, Garcher.”
He’s one to talk about dick moves.
“It all sounds pretty interesting but certain to turn into an unbearable slog after a few hours. I don’t envy the task.”
It actually lasts longer than that, partly thanks to lovely battle animation. Eventually, though, yeah, it starts to drag.
“So we’re CyberShriou. Except not cool enough to be menaced by Cu.”
Fun fact: Cu is around. He’s Rin’s Servant.
“Maybe they were going for the mystery angle. That’s known to fail sometimes.”
I don’t think so. The questions are all on my part, the game doesn’t acknowledge them in any manner. Could be an abandoned plot thread, given later stuff, though.
“How are we doing with spoilers here?”
Well, I’m OK with discussing them.
“He’s not even Shinji. Just someone using Shinji Matou as an avatar for VR, for some reason.”
Oh, that is neat. Wish it was more clear and provoked a stronger reaction in the MC.
“They could’ve switched our pc, many strategy games feature campaigns of
enemy sides, but it’s never done in rpgs for some reason.”
Mostly because there is generally a lot more plot in RPGs compared to strategies, so programming it would be a chore, and most players won’t bother. Cost/benefit and all that.
“How was wading into ongoing wars as a pacifist gonna stop violence?”
He was a doctor treating the wounded and such. Probably was with the Red Cross or something along those lines.
“I’m going to assume hatred is clouding your mind, since DiscoKirei would do forty paragraphs.”
Probably. Twice raises all of my SI Villain Sue flags.
At least Kotomine wouldn’t need to blab about his backstory.
“DiscoKirei would’ve been obviously low hanging fruit after all those FSN
allusions. A Cybra Mainyu would’ve been much better, something
completely new would be best, a zook.exe would’ve been bestest.”
System avatar then. It actually has more than one reason to want you dead, it potentially can have as much power as it wants (though there are some unstated limits since apparently it takes a lot of power to maintain Heroic Spirits compared to mortal humans despite both basically being simulations, so a chance of victory remains) and it has a pretty menacing name of SE.RA.PH. (which stands for something or other but who cares).
“How does Aoko’s sorcery fare in the postmagic virtual reality? Glossed over, I bet.”
Pretty much. It seems both sisters now practice the same cyberwitchery, with Touko being far greater than Aoko.
By the way, I should mention something since I think you missed it, but the clown actually isn’t the only fourth Master. You missed the route split in the game. The other route has you fighting a guy who believes his Servant is a god (not… far off), and his Servant is none other than Arcueid. What route you get is determined by which female lead you throw in with, which also determines a late-game fight.
And yeah neither Rin nor Shinji are the F/SN ones. The Rin in F/E is actually Rin Tohsaka’s niece using her famous aunt’s visage.
There’s actually a sequel to this game (two, but the second isn’t out yet) that didn’t get a translation. It’s definitely a lot more fanservicey, but it’s self-described as a girls’ love (the protag is canonly female going by CCC) and is about Sakura and her love for the protag.
Relatedly, it’s too bad you missed out on Caster. She actually starts off incredibly weak without any spells or skills, but eventually she becomes a complete monster with her Noble Phantasm.
CCC adds two playable Servants by the way. One is only a temp Servant so I’ll skip talking about them, and the other is GILGAMESH, who is just as strong as you’d expect. He adds a lot of male fan service to the game to, including a scene where he casts off his armor to astonish an enemy with his literally glowing dick.
“By the way, I should mention something since I think you missed it, but the clown actually isn’t the only fourth Master.”
Yeah, I know, though I think both fourth Master ultimately serve the same narrative role of providing action without the need to contemplate their own stories too deeply.
“And yeah neither Rin nor Shinji are the F/SN ones. The Rin in F/E is
actually Rin Tohsaka’s niece using her famous aunt’s visage.”
Well, it does make sense given the timeline.
“It’s definitely a lot more fanservicey, but it’s self-described as a
girls’ love (the protag is canonly female going by CCC) and is about
Sakura and her love for the protag.”
That can only end well.
“Relatedly, it’s too bad you missed out on Caster. She actually starts
off incredibly weak without any spells or skills, but eventually she
becomes a complete monster with her Noble Phantasm.”
That’s a part of the reason why I didn’t play her, though. Sounds like a slog to grind her up to gear.
“One is only a temp Servant so I’ll skip talking about them, and the other is GILGAMESH, who is just as strong as you’d expect.”
Yeah, that I know. Should be amusing.
She’s difficult at the start but once she gets rolling she makes the game a LOT easier, so I think it’s an overall benefit.
As for CCC, “That can only end well” pretttyyyy much sums it up.
The third game that’s coming out is a musou game, amusingly.
I know there are 3 mutant Sakuras in CCC and it sorta branches off of Extra in the early days. Maybe she’s getting her Agent Smith on, I dunno. All the CCC Sakuras I’ve seen on the internets is terribad, Nero ain’t got shit on them. And it’s also actually written by Nasu after he liked what he saw of vanilla Extra, so it’s extra shameful that it hasn’t been translated properly.
As I said, it’s a lot more fanservicey.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4y9BDpn_Pk The music is still top-notch though.
So the music is good there?
One thing I forgot to put in the review is that I found the soundtrack to be very weak. At best it’s OK and I like the NP chords, but at worst it’s actively irritating. I ended up doing dungeons with sound off because the theme that’s playing when you walk around the Arena started to get on my nerves. It’s just so… I don’t know, meandering? Devoid of any character.
Sorry, but why do you keep saying Nasu didn’t write “Extra”?
Mainly cos he didn’t. It was sanctioned fanfic until Nasu played it, then he wrote CCC on top.
He’s credited as the writer, though.
Poor guy had to retcon Archer’s CCC Excalibur attack.
“think both fourth Master ultimately serve the same narrative role of providing action without the need to contemplate their own stories too deeply”
I’m pretty sure Bersercueid is there to be the most weirdass fanservice ever conceived. She pops into a random VR deathbattle because why wouldn’t she and then just quits. She’s just there to amuse the fans.
Oh, yeah, forgot to comment on one thing:
I honestly believe the writers had zero communication with the artists
That actually happened at least once. Archer wasn’t supposed to be able to Project Excalibur, but the development team had already produced all the assets, so instead of throwing everything out, Nasu came up with an explanation that conditions in the Moon Cell let Archer Project holy swords (something which apparently he couldn’t do in the original VN, although that doesn’t account for the sword which Shirou Projects at the end of Heavens Feel in the Normal End).
He can project them, but using their true name is impossible to do without dying.
And I think the explanation was that it was a degraded version-hence the faname: excalipoor. Which, ironically enough, was taken from one of Gilgamesh’s attacks (Final Fantasy Gilgamesh)
That’s what I believe, but Nasu’s answer was ambiguous (probably deliberately).
What really bothers me the most about Drake’s design is the lack of bra. That can’t be nice. And I doubt they’d be that perky without a bra.
If the MC is Chara, does that make Kotomine Flowey? Sadly, there aren’t any pictures of floweymine, but there’s plenty of Flowbey.
“YOU IDIOT. In the Holy Grail War, it’s kill or BE killed.”
I wish CCC was translated so we could boggle more easily at the sheer amount of fanservice (Red Saber gets some truly ridiculous outfits and Caster too). Wasn’t bisexuality treated really skeevily in this game? All of your hot girl servants are totally fine with girl on girl, but it would be icky if Garcher was into dudes.
“Caster’s stated goal is literally to be a waifu”
Does that account for why there are so many figures of her wearing different outfits? Second only to Saber and her clones, probably.
oh god i looked it up because i couldn’t believe it and it was true
Fate/Grand Order looks like a hilarious trainwreck from the outside, but at least berserker Cu (Berserkcu) is cool. Too bad it’s not translated.
IIRC, the male protag can get a luv-luvy end with Archer.
And definitely does in CCC, and with Gilgamesh too.
Nope. Archer grows more fond of you as time passes, but it never really crosses into romantic territory the way other two Servants do.
CCC may be different, of course, but I can’t comment on it.
It is the time in the gamewhere the gender makes a big difference. On all other cases, it is, at most, a line or two.
Although I think a list of possible candidates in a dialog with Archer changes depending on the gender. I only tried with a female, and it was Leo, Julius, Gatou, Shinji and Archer.
“If the MC is Chara, does that make Kotomine Flowey?”
Well, technically Twice is Flowey: he greets you to this new world, tries to kill you, comments on proceedings in-between episodes and serves as a final boss.
But I hate him, so, sure, let’s go with Kotomine.
“Wasn’t bisexuality treated really skeevily in this game? All of your hot
girl servants are totally fine with girl on girl, but it would be icky
if Garcher was into dudes.”
Yep. It’s pretty obviously done for the sake of fanservice rather than any other goal, and male fanservice specifically at that.
“Does that account for why there are so many figures of her wearing
different outfits? Second only to Saber and her clones, probably.”
Probably. That, and she’s a magical fox girl (described so in-game even, when you select a Servant).
“oh god i looked it up because i couldn’t believe it and it was true”
Never underestimate the depths to which games can sink!
“Fate/Grand Order looks like a hilarious trainwreck from the outside, but
at least berserker Cu (Berserkcu) is cool. Too bad it’s not translated.”
Honestly, a lot of Fate/Franchise outside of the main canon (FZ, FSN, HA) makes me go “Ah… Nasu, dear, are you quite sure you want to do it? Really sure? Did Takeuchi threaten you with drawing his dick everywhere again?”
Laugh? At Shinji? Jesus christ, no. He’s supposed to show what happens to people who doesn’t take the war seriously. He’s almost an innocent bystander with his ‘this is a video game’ attitude.
Hey! Archer said he was, unlike Matou, good at heart! It shows on the sequel, but SPOILERS so yeah.
That was great. It wasn’t that much, but I expected nothing and was pleaseantly rewarded.
She’s great. Really difficult to play but enjoyable once you build up enough mana reserves and skills. Even grindi-er than the rest though, so probably not up your alley.
It was intentional, but it diminishes the stakes of the final grail match a ton… You’re still all about survival. Which isn’t a bad thing, but a wasted opportunity. Maybe if both side characters talked more about their past, we’d give a damn. Thanks for putting words to my disinterest in the final fight (besides the MC’s identity thing)
GODDAMN I HATED THIS. Why was this so underwhelming?! Why did the fucking system gave up after one shot?!
“Laugh? At Shinji? Jesus christ, no.”
As I’ve said down in the comments, laughing is probably too strong a word. It’s more that yeah, it’s sad that people die when they’re killed here, but these specific people dying isn’t too bad. The lack of dignity in Shinji’s death, I feel, is supposed to soften the blow of his death by your hand before next opponents start delivering true emotional punches.
“She’s great. Really difficult to play but enjoyable once you build up
enough mana reserves and skills. Even grindi-er than the rest though, so
probably not up your alley.”
Yeah. I may try her at some point with cheats for fast leveling to see what she’s about, but raising her honestly from zero sounds like a real slog.
“Maybe if both side characters talked more about their past, we’d give a damn.”
Personally, I’d like for the nameless Masters around to talk about the Earth from time to time rather than focusing solely on current events. It should be easy to distribute the exposition among them, and it would be your choice to disregard all this and fight for your life or actually try to learn about the world and its problems.
“GODDAMN I HATED THIS. Why was this so underwhelming?! Why did the fucking system gave up after one shot?!”
Yeah, it basically left me with “Eh?” feeling. It honestly feels like an aborted plot thread than anything. Like, I like the idea of going against the system, and the weird magic sci-fi left enough room to explain why it couldn’t just wipe you out at a distance, but what we’ve got was very, very underwhelming.
Also: FUCK GAWAIN
You gotta wonder how much of a hand he played in the fall of Camelot, however unwitting.
In the myths, or in the Nasuverse?
I don’t know enough about the myths to know how important Gawain was there, so in Nasuverse.
Ah, can’t help you then, sorry. :-)