Welcome to our review of this new Nintendo Switch game called Fate/Extella, a game in the Fate series!
Fate is a big game series in Japan that found its’ origins on the PC with the original release of the Fate/Stay Night game, a game mostly intended for mature audiences that later had anime and manga spin offs. The original premise of the story was easy. The battle for the holy grail is the red line throughout the original story, where the hero has his/her own servant, our main hero has Saber as his servant, a beautiful armor clad girl with an incredible knack for swordsmanship to make up for the lack of confidence of her master.
Fast forward to the new game, the one we are reviewing today, it mostly has the same feeling. In between action, there is a large amount of reading, much like the original. But that and the fact this game seems to pick up partially where the original seems to have ended, are all about the only similarities these two games share. For the genre, this is what we call a Musou game, a genre that you can love to hate or hate to love.
The story itself picks up after Nero and her master (whose name is Hakuno Kishinami but you can make it personal in the game) have won the war, giving them control over the Moon Cell Automaton computer, which has the power to grant them a wish. As proof of their kingship, they have gotten hold of the Regalia ring, with which they appear to rule over all the former enemy servants; they are however confronted by a new enemy, which also seems to hold a Regalia ring. A very familiar face…
The story is told from the perspectives of Nero, Tamamo (once described as a lewd wench haha) and Altera (also known as Attila), which brings forth a lot of reading in between fighting. The story is very elaborate and often I found myself wanting to be able to skip most of this, heck, a Musou game needs no big story, just fight fight fight, right?
Wrong, this one is the exception to the rule, teaching us the deeper story of the game, half of your kingdom is now no longer under your control and this is where the game really starts! The battle to reclaim your lands.
As the game itself is a musou game, you are facing hundreds and thousands of enemies when you finally pass the talking parts and get to battle! The battles are typical, being gazillions of enemies that are fodder, then you have the aggressors which are more powerful and as you beat those, you end up conquering the location on the map you are on.
As you conquer more and more, you finally get the face the evil boss of the level. Basic musou gameplay which you would expect in any game of this genre, but what is fun about this game is that you get these new enemies that just spawn the aggressors around it. Forcing you to switch your focus on them above anything else. This adds a nice layer of extra ingenuity and gameplay to a genre that often gets called bland.
When I originally heard this game was making it to Switch, I was wondering how the graphics would present itself, being such a high level of action on one screen and well, I was curious to see how the Switch would do. Basically during battles, you do not really take notice of how the graphics are, as you are just pounding away. I took several screenshots while in-action to see how they held up and I must say, they are not crisp clear, but again, noting that you will never notice this during game play and I specifically went to screenshots to show myself the lower resolution.
Outside the action, this game is plain gorgeous and just amazes me how pretty it sometimes looks. Add in the crafting system, numerous side quests, tons of clothes and a very weird “my room” and you got Fate/Extella as a game!
In conclusion, this game is for a very specific audience, one that loves musou games and does not mind the sometimes endless reading to be up to date with the story line, sure you can skip them, but skipping out on the entire story is not what you would want. I love musou games myself but seriously, not the reading part as that got tiresome at times. Sure, they need to build a story, but what about introducing cut scenes with the plots being spoken instead of having to read them.
I am giving this game a 70% rating.
7/10
