NOTE: I don’t know anything about the Fate franchise. The only Fate-related thing I’ve exposed myself to is a magical girl spin-off anime called Fate Kaleid Liner Prisma Ilya, which I like a lot, but I don’t think it’ll be enough to understand this game. Please keep that in mind before getting angry over my words in this review, which are generally pretty positive, save for a few details.
Short Version: It’s pretty good, but if you’re not a fan of the Fate franchise, everything about it will feel intimidating and incomprehensible. It’s a fairly simple story told in the most overly complicated and convoluted way possible. In terms of the actual gameplay, it’s just Dynasty Warriors with Fate characters, so if you like that kind of game, then you’ll feel right at home.
Long Version: It’s has been pretty easy to notice some sort of sub-genre being created around the concept of creating a Dynasty Warriors “Musou” style game with a variety of different intellectual properties such as The Legend of Zelda, Fire Emblem, One Piece and many more. Most of these games are practically identical to their game of origin, in both structure and execution. However, it is the brand recognition and name value that truly defines how people will take to the game. If you have never seen the One Piece anime or manga, then you will probably not care or like its video game “Musou” equivalent at all, rather than a hardcore fan that can recognize every character and call them out by name. Exactly the same thing could be said about Fate/Extella, a game that fits exactly this mold, but still tries its best to set itself apart from its peers.
Be My Noble Phantasm
Based around the popular franchise, Fate/Extella is a Musou game with a few RPG elements, featuring recognizable characters destroying oceans of enemies with their power. This is done by experiencing the game’s story, which is essentially the anime version of a sci-fi, post apocalyptic narrative with an innumerable amount of references in an attempt to make everything sound more deep and special than it actually is.
It involves a protagonist character that is the winner of a Holy Grail War. Due to a mysterious monster encounter, the protagonist has not only lost his/her memory, but has also been split into three parts, creating three different stories to follow. Every story essentially involves you and your servants trying to conquer territory for different sides. This is done with the objective to put a powerful ring together, that has also been split into three parts, in order to protect themselves from the Umbral Star, a predatory planet that is on a course to destroy everything in its path. What I just told you is possibly the simplest way I can muster to explain the story, for the unfiltered experience is an overly complicated, convoluted and confusing mess that only hardcore fans of the franchise will understand. It’s games like these that make me happy that they come with a database, so I can read up on everything I didn’t understand about it.
Talks of Moon Men
Coming from someone that loves the Blazblue story and understands it fairly well, I felt pretty intimidated with all the terminology and name-dropping found in this game. It also doesn’t help that all the characters talk like aloof badasses that always seem to know everything, while leaving the player completely in the dark with no explanation of what all of these different things mean. This story reminds too much of Nitroplus Blasterz, in the sense that all of it, from the wording to the exposition, could be so much simpler, but it insists in making itself sound like it’s some sort of complex story out of Greek mythology, but still keeps some anime tropes for the fans to enjoy. I could spend an entire day trying to make sense out of the story, but I’d rather leave it at: “beat up everyone, make the cool ring, stop the apocalypse,” because that’s essentially what the whole story is, with some romance, fan service and pseudo badass dialogue mixed in between.
There are even games out there like the Senran Kagura series, which contain highlighted words within their dialogue boxes, to which then you can click on them and receive some information on what those words actually mean, which always proves useful and convenient in order to understand the game and its world better. Fate/Extella however, doesn’t have that at all, which is something that it urgently needed for its story mode, especially when it already has an encyclopedia that explains everything.
[I originally posted this review on The Buttonsmashers. You can read the rest of the review
by clicking here or just listening to the video version above.]
Game Review – Fate/Extella
0NOTE: I don’t know anything about the Fate franchise. The only Fate-related thing I’ve exposed myself to is a magical girl spin-off anime called Fate Kaleid Liner Prisma Ilya, which I like a lot, but I don’t think it’ll be enough to understand this game. Please keep that in mind before getting angry over my words in this review, which are generally pretty positive, save for a few details.
Short Version: It’s pretty good, but if you’re not a fan of the Fate franchise, everything about it will feel intimidating and incomprehensible. It’s a fairly simple story told in the most overly complicated and convoluted way possible. In terms of the actual gameplay, it’s just Dynasty Warriors with Fate characters, so if you like that kind of game, then you’ll feel right at home.
Long Version: It’s has been pretty easy to notice some sort of sub-genre being created around the concept of creating a Dynasty Warriors “Musou” style game with a variety of different intellectual properties such as The Legend of Zelda, Fire Emblem, One Piece and many more. Most of these games are practically identical to their game of origin, in both structure and execution. However, it is the brand recognition and name value that truly defines how people will take to the game. If you have never seen the One Piece anime or manga, then you will probably not care or like its video game “Musou” equivalent at all, rather than a hardcore fan that can recognize every character and call them out by name. Exactly the same thing could be said about Fate/Extella, a game that fits exactly this mold, but still tries its best to set itself apart from its peers.
Be My Noble Phantasm
Based around the popular franchise, Fate/Extella is a Musou game with a few RPG elements, featuring recognizable characters destroying oceans of enemies with their power. This is done by experiencing the game’s story, which is essentially the anime version of a sci-fi, post apocalyptic narrative with an innumerable amount of references in an attempt to make everything sound more deep and special than it actually is.
It involves a protagonist character that is the winner of a Holy Grail War. Due to a mysterious monster encounter, the protagonist has not only lost his/her memory, but has also been split into three parts, creating three different stories to follow. Every story essentially involves you and your servants trying to conquer territory for different sides. This is done with the objective to put a powerful ring together, that has also been split into three parts, in order to protect themselves from the Umbral Star, a predatory planet that is on a course to destroy everything in its path. What I just told you is possibly the simplest way I can muster to explain the story, for the unfiltered experience is an overly complicated, convoluted and confusing mess that only hardcore fans of the franchise will understand. It’s games like these that make me happy that they come with a database, so I can read up on everything I didn’t understand about it.
Talks of Moon Men
Coming from someone that loves the Blazblue story and understands it fairly well, I felt pretty intimidated with all the terminology and name-dropping found in this game. It also doesn’t help that all the characters talk like aloof badasses that always seem to know everything, while leaving the player completely in the dark with no explanation of what all of these different things mean. This story reminds too much of Nitroplus Blasterz, in the sense that all of it, from the wording to the exposition, could be so much simpler, but it insists in making itself sound like it’s some sort of complex story out of Greek mythology, but still keeps some anime tropes for the fans to enjoy. I could spend an entire day trying to make sense out of the story, but I’d rather leave it at: “beat up everyone, make the cool ring, stop the apocalypse,” because that’s essentially what the whole story is, with some romance, fan service and pseudo badass dialogue mixed in between.
There are even games out there like the Senran Kagura series, which contain highlighted words within their dialogue boxes, to which then you can click on them and receive some information on what those words actually mean, which always proves useful and convenient in order to understand the game and its world better. Fate/Extella however, doesn’t have that at all, which is something that it urgently needed for its story mode, especially when it already has an encyclopedia that explains everything.
[I originally posted this review on The Buttonsmashers. You can read the rest of the review by clicking here or just listening to the video version above.]Game Review – Hatsune Miku: VR Future Live (2nd & 3rd Stage)
Game Review – Berserk and the Band of the Hawk