Title: Fate/Extra
Developed By: Type-Moon and Imageepoch
Published By: Aksys Games
Based on: The visual novel Fate/stay Night developed by Type-Moon.
Console: Playstation Portable
Release Date: November 2011
Genre: Role Playing Game
Audio: Japanese
Subtitles: English
Region: This review was conducted on the North American release. Currently it is unknown if there will be a release in other regions.
Classification: The ESRB has classified this game T (Teen) for Drug References, Fantasy Violence, Language, Sexual Themes
After highly successful visual novel releases as well as an anime series based on them (For which it recieved a B+) and a currently airing prequel series – it was about time that we saw the international release of the video game based on the series – the release of Fate/Extra on the Playstation Portable. Retaining some themes from the source material while implementing its own concepts relating to the Holy Grail War, it certainly has the tools to be a great game…. but does it use them? Find out in my review of Fate/Extra on the Playstation Portable.
While I hate to rehash the things that every single reviewer would have mentioned about the game – it is most certainly comparable to Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 in the core gameplay, however with a few elements to differentiate it. Your unrecognisable character with a custom name through the plot which will be discussed later goes through High School and then one day gets dragged into an alternate reality of his or her school, where they and their servant must fight other masters on a periodical basis (A week) to survive in the Holy Grail war which may see them surviving or may see them losing their lives. The battle system would be the most significant different, and while I can appreciate the concept – a battle system involving mostly Rock – Paper – Scissors is not one I would have personally gone for. When up against an enemy you are asked to fill six slots with either an ATTACK, BREAK or GUARD command with Attack > Break > Guard > Attack and performing the winning move will allow you to deal damage to your opponent. The novelty wares off fast as despite having three servants to choose from, each seem to hold a similar battle style, skills are relatively limited and your only change against some bosses unless you powerlevel are sheer luck or writing down what you could consider the potential attack pattern to be. Oh, and did I mention that enemies hit rather hard at the start of the game?
The game itself is split up into a number of weeks, in which your task is to complete plot related content, level up your characters and defeat enemy masters and servants keeping you one step closer to unlocking the wish from the holy grail. I hate to keep comparing it to SMT: Persona 3, however that was one of the things that it had on the game – that unlike the social link system in Persona which you had to randomly find stuff to do at times, it felt like you had to do something every day. Not completing these or making a mistake in any plot related element could quite easily lead to a premature game over, to the point where the game advises you at the start to SAVE OFTEN and USE ALL SAVE SLOTS. Every week you are provided two dungeons which you have to clear, which contain enemies in what seems to be the exact same location every time, however are long enough to provide a decent challenge. The overall gameplay is fine, although there are better games in terms of the battle system which felt rather lackluster after the first few battles.
Despite the gameplay being rather lackluster, the storyline does have the charm other Fate games had. It surrounds a group of individuals who are taking part in the Holy Grail War, where human Masters and their servant (A personification of a legendary individual) fight to knock the other competitors out and take the grail for themselves….. but this is not just an ordinary one of those as shown in Fate/Stay Night or Fate/Zero. Taking part in a parallel world from the main series, the event takes place in an artificial world known as Moon Cell where those who take part in the event are dragged to a school known as Tsukumihara Academy – where they are sorted out in the preliminaries and then duel it out with another 127 competitors over a weekly brawl session. Failure? Where one will walk victorious the other 127 will find themselves deleted from existence. With a disadvantage of not having any of your memories restored after passing the preliminaries and no idea what you are in for…. will you be able to win?
The plot is continuous and as I mentioned above, unlike a certain similar game the game is more linear but gives a more consistent story. The implementation of 1 versus 127 others and a far different storyline from the original source gives it the extra kick it needed to set itself apart and works. Characters from the anime and visual novel return as NPC characters and do mostly play some role in the storyline, while others are relatives of previous participants who return as either friend or foe (Sometimes depending on your actions) so fans of the series will not be left with a whole new character cast. The problem was the story started far too slowly. Instead of choosing to begin as your character, you play an unnamed student who you lead around for the first 30 minutes – hour, doing journalism assignments and getting a feel for school life and the mysteries. It provides the setting well, but could have easily been done with your protagonist and with more to do so it doesn’t drag on. I will reiterate a comment I made when discussing the gameplay – the storyline has a frequently branching plot and doing something incorrect story or gameplay wise can lead to you going down a path that “deletes your character” so to speak.
Overall, the storyline is creative, especially as you get deeper into the plot, but the start to it was rather unnecessary and dragged on.
In terms of aesthetics, I think they pulled off a visually appealing game considering the limitations of the Playstation Portable. The school building you spend a majority of your time in is almost structurally identical to that of Yasogami High School from Persona 4 but has a more modern motif to it… furthermore, once dragging you to the actual artificial world of Moon Cell and SE.RA.PH, the schools exterior environments recieve a blue digital design to it, which personally I think is creative. The dungeons also retain the same digital designs, however given that you spend most of the time wandering around the labyrinth it does tire you out after a while. Given that most characters wear a school uniform and seem to retain default character appearances there is not so much diversity, however most primary masters and NPCs hold unique designs which suit the games genre and setting. The same can be said for the character models of the servants, with two of the protagonists choices being based on Saber and Archer from Fate/Stay Night – alongside a third Caster choice based off a a foxgirl design…. and was the one I chose. Character portraits were of comparable quality.
I am a fan of the darker and gothic pop tunes of ALI PROJECT, so the inclusion of their song Ranse Eroica as the opening theme was a welcome addition and was coupled with good animation. There is not as great a diversity of songs in the games tracklist, but I think the number of tracks they had were of quality, even if repetitive at points. There is no English dub included with this release, but retains the original Japanese dub, which is most certainly of a good standard but there are frequent segments which are devoid of voices which was a minimal disappointment.
I feel like I may have been a little bit rough on the game, but I did have high expectations given the source and I felt that they did not meet these expectations and had a lot of wasted potential. I look forward to hopefully an eventual international release of Fate/Extra CCC to see how they improve the game, as it still does have potential.
Final Score
Storyline/Character Development: B+
Design: B
Music/Voice Acting: B
Gameplay: C-
Replayability: B
Personal Opinion: C+
Overall Score: C+
