Fate/Extra Review

The Fate franchise is incredibly fascinating. Tales of warriors and legends trying to fight against the fate and either succeeding or failing to do so in a magical death tournament is a good concept. That the prize for the tournament, also known as The Holy Grail War, is one free wish for the legend and mage that summoned them makes the struggle and resulting drama incredible. Fate/Extra takes this concept and adds in a few key differences to give the series a breath of fresh air so to speak.

Originally released on the Sony Play Station Portable, Fate/Extra is a dungeon crawler RPG with turn based combat and visual novel elements where players take the role of a Master in the Moon Cell Holy Grail War. Players of this game summon one of three servants chosen near the end of the prologue and that choice determines the difficulty of the game.

The Holy Grail War

Before getting into the gameplay and difficulty, the context of the tournament would be good to go over for those who haven’t heard of the series. This franchise, created by Kinoko Nasu, started with Fate/Stay Night in 2004 as an adult visual novel but had a rerelease on the PS2 in 2006. The rerelease was made for a wider audience, removing the adult scenes of the original while adding in voice acting and various other features. In the game, players get introduced to the concepts of the Holy Grail War. In short, seven mages summon seven legendary heroes from myth and legend in order to complete a magical ritual powered by the deaths of said legends in order to obtain the Holy Grail. Each mage only summons one hero, which is distilled into one of seven classes. Those classes are the Saber, Lancer, Archer, Caster, Rider, Berserker, and Assassin.

Mages that summon a hero for this event are known as Masters. Servants are the distilled legend focused into one class. For instance, Heracles (Hercules for those who know him by the Roman version of his name) could fall under a variety of classes such as Archer or Berserker because of his actions and feats in his legend. Mages summoning him for the War would only get him in relation to one class and only one class. The tournament goes until there is one Master and Servant pair left standing.

Story

With initial context of a Holy Grail War out of the way it’s time to cut right into the story of the game. Players take the role of a participant in a strange iteration of the Holy Grail War. More specifically, this War is a week by week elimination tournament that goes until one Master and Servant pair are left standing. Each Master has their opponent decided at the start of a given week and the fight itself takes place at the very end. Masters must also qualify for the fight by searching and finding two keys to enter the battle arena. If a Master does not have the pair of keys, they lose by default.

The player character in all this stumbles into the tournament with absolutely no memory to their name and no idea how they even joined this tournament to begin with. As such, players can expect to work toward survival and uncover the mystery of their character’s identity. Normally I would go into greater detail over story and the introductory phases of the game. However, the prologue and first chapter of the game are incredibly well done in setting the stakes that to go over either of them in any extreme detail would ruin the experience for players. The end of the first chapter alone gave a gut punch that I didn’t see coming and frankly will likely stay with me for years to come.

Gameplay

With that bareboned glance at the story finished, we can now turn our attention to the gameplay. Players have two sections of gameplay to deal with. First, is the school section in which players view events, level up a servant’s stats, and interact with their own servant. This section is often prepping the player for dungeon crawling or gathering information on their opponent at the end of the week. Which leads to the information matrix. While legendary heroes of myth and legend are incredibly powerful, they also have well known weaknesses. For instance, Achilles is famed for his heel that strips him of his invincibility. This leads opposing Masters to hide their Servants true name under all costs as correct identification can lead to an easy loss. As such, players are led to solve a weekly mystery on their opponents in order to prepare for their fight.

Combat

The second section of gameplay is dungeon crawling. This has players go through dungeons in order to find the qualifying keys. This section includes story events, where the player run into their opponent for the week, and general combat where they fight monsters in turn based combat. Which leads into the fourth section, combat. Combat in the game is essentially rock, paper, scissors, but planned ahead. Basically, players can see a limited amount of an opponents actions, in a given round of combat, and try to counter with their own attacks. Attacks out speed a powerful Break, power Breaks crush a Guard, and a Guard defends against a normal Attack. If players succeed in countering an opponents actions three times in a row they deal an extra attack which deals an extra attack of damage.

In addition, Servants can use skills which take the place of an action. These skills vary in cost of Servant MP and can be used consecutively so long as a Servant has MP to cast. Masters can also cast spells or use items in conjunction with their servant using Master MP to cast for the former. However, Masters can only cast or use an item once per round of combat. A fight will go on until either a player’s opponent or the player’s servant runs out of HP. Winning a fight gives both money and exp.

Personal Thoughts

With combat and gameplay finally finished, I wanted to go over my thoughts on the game itself. I originally received this game as a gift for Christmas around the time of it’s original release. Going through the game again, was incredibly nostalgic and reminded me of some good times playing through it. I loved the story and interacting with each servant the player can summon. However, there are issue with the game. First, voice acting is generally not a thing. While interacting with a player’s servant in one one one conversations will have the dialogue voice acted, the most to expect is the occasional grunt or gasp from other characters. Leveling is also an issue. While earning levels is no problem, applying the stats is tedious as players need to return to the school in order to do so.

This is a problem as doing so proceeds the game to the next day in the week which moves a player closer to a game over if the didn’t find everything they needed in the dungeon. Combat for the first few levels is fine but becomes repetitive when trying to grind and I tried to avoid it as much as I could. In addition, the ending and the story itself is fairly linear, with only one or two major differences partway through. Which is unfortunate, but understandable considering the characters at play and the setting. The music for each dungeon varied in tone and pace but ended up blending together and was overall forgettable.

Final Thoughts

Moving onto my final thoughts, this game was very nostalgic for me. It was in many ways, the first visual novel I played, introducing me to the genre and the setting. Despite the issues, both in the ending and the gameplay, I honestly feel as though the initial chapters were probably the best of the game. They set the tone as bleak and serious for the player and the end of the first week leaves them wrecked emotionally. It’s not uplifting or inspiring and I love the writers did that. The characters of the game are memorable, and help to establish the conflicts well. Overall, the game is above average, about a 3.5 out of 5. It’s opening was great. It’s ending made replaying the game tedious.