Type-Moon : Fate series

[Ultiɱℯciɑ]

Fate/Zero

Originally a novel, but now an anime is on the works and the manga version is being published. It tells us about Kiritsugu's story during the 4th Holy Grail War. He was a mercenary magus known as majutsushigoroshi (Magus Killer). Ruthless and cold, Kiristugu was a top killer (his first kill was his own father, just get the idea). He was hired to represent the Einzbern family during the grail and developed a relationship with Irisviel, a homunculus from the noble line of magi. He was Saber's master but he never even talked to her during the course of the Heaven's Feel, except for his final order.

It shows Kiritsugu as a incredibly bastard in all sense of the word. He reached the conclusion that is OK to sacrifice one person to save thousands , so he killed his own emotions. Because of it, he saw himself as unfit of Saber so he let Iria act as Saber's master while he fought on the shadows often using terrorist tactics (like blowing up an hotel to lure out a master. Like that).

Saber hated him, he was the complete antithesis of everything she believed but she certainly enjoyed Iri's company.

The novel also shows the relationship of the young Kotomine Kirei and his master, Tohsaka Tokiomi and how they worked together during the war and how Kotomine finally came in terms with his true self. The relationship of Rider and his Master is also a fun bromance between two opposites and while they can be the comic relief they aren't silly. Rider's easily my favorite servant of this war, I mean, he's Alexander the Great! And he likes video-games! And challenges Saber and Archer to drink wine! He's so much awesomeness.

Fate/Stay Night

Set in the same world as the Tsukihime games, the story takes place during the 5th Holy Grail War. It got three different routes: Fate (Saber), Unlimited Blade Works (Rin) and Heaven's Feel (Sakura). There's the Playstation 2 version with more images and no hentai, but I think this would cripple Sakura's route (I haven't played this version), but anyway.

The Fate route got only one ending and is almost what happens in the anime, except that Caster appears only to be killed by surprise and it goes on right to the ending arc against Kotomine. I think this one might be the "cannon" one.

Unlimited Blade Works route got two endings, and both endings are good ones actually, but the true ending is...Well, kinda sad. There's the OVA based on and is just like this, but they completely cut off the interaction between Shirou and Lancer (they picking on Rin was awesome) and the Shirou/Rin date with Saber tagging along.

Heaven's Feel is Sakura's route, and also got two endings: one is incredibly sad and the other is kind of bittersweet. This route or you love it or hate it, there's no other way. I'm among the ones who hate it. It's the most sexual of all routes, with many hentai scenes and the entire route wouldn't make much sense without it. It centers around two things, actually: Shirou's struggle to remain sane after an accident and an operation and Sakura's incontrolable primal desires. Nuff said.

There's also the Tiger Dojo, where's Taiga shows up with her apprentice, Buruma (Illya in P.E. uniform) giving you hilarious hints on how to proceed without dying, scolding you and making fun.

Graphically is much better than Tsukihime. The backgrounds are all hand-drawn instead of photos, the quality of the character's illustration is also pretty good and every conversation got voice acting (the same as the anime). It explains lots of things that the anime don't shows (for example, what's on the Church's basement that made Shirou feel so horrified? Yeah, it IS bad)

I tried to read the manga, but it's awful. It tries to have all the three routes at once and they don't match. Even stuff like the chronology is all messed up. Avoid at all costs.

Fate/Hollow Ataraxia

Hollow Ataraxia is Fate's Kagetsu Tohya.

Bazett wakes up in a abandoned house with her memory all fuzzy and confused and is greet by an unknown servant, her servant. A guy who she hated right away for his homicidal tendencies, lack of respect and discipline. He was annoyed by his master strict behavior and being such a "goody two-shoes", but they got this contract. According to him, he's the weakest servant ever, completely useless (and he's not so far from the truth) except for one thing: they are locked in a four-days loop and as long they are killed during the night they go back to day one. No cost, no nothing. So what's the catch?

Meanwhile, things are also incredibly weird to Shirou. Rin is at London taking care of some stuff and he's living with Saber, Sakura and Rider at his place with frequent visits from Taiga and Illya. Caster and Soichiro are recently wed and living at the temple and Lancer's around fishing at the pier. Both Saber and Rider warms Shirou of this feeling they have, it's just like they felt during the Holy Grail War and Shirou decides to investigate. The problem is he also is locked into a four-days loop and every time he meets a mysterious girl with golden eyes and white hair he gets himself killed.

There's also strange creatures lurking around the city, killing people. Whoa, lots of stuff, huh? The fan-translation patch is only at around 43% so I had to stop playing but so far it's good. It got better effects than Fate/Stay Night, many minor characters got extra screen time and Illya's mini-game is just so fun

Fate/Unlimited Codes

Avaliable for PS2 and PSP.

It's a 3D fighting game, and it got many characters each one with their own movesets, three costumes and unique storylines based on all the three routes and Ataraxia. There are 18 characters and 10 stages, some of the characters even got special moves for certain adversaries.

It was developed by Cavia and published by Capcom, so the quality isn't surprising. It's a fast-paced game, fun to play with some cool extras.

My friends hates when I play with Lancer Zero because...Well, 'cuz.

Fate/Tiger Colosseum and Fate/Tiger Colosseum Upper

Another fighting game. I tried my hand at it but couldn't understand a thing on the tutorial and the gameplay, so I was utterly pwned on this. But it's cute, got a wide variation of characters and huuuge backgrounds.

(I wish there was Archer in casual outfit at the other games too)

Fate/Kaleid Liner Prisma Illya

It's an official manga that takes place where Kiritsugu and Iri are still alive, they adopted Shirou and the main character is Illya. It's a parody using the magical girl thing as a story. Just for laughs but meh. No, no hentai and they even make fun of Shirou's harem

Fate/School Life

Haven' t read yet, thanks for the link. Those three characters are Rin's classmates and they also appears A LOT in Hollow Ataraxia.

Doujins

Fate/Sword Dance

It's a 2D fighting game by a group called Rapid Fire, got six playable characters since the start and two secrets. The control is a six-button layout and got a Last Blade-ish gameplay, with two character modes: Strong Style (Power) and Rash Mode (Speed). It's a fast-paced game and a little unbalanced, specially if you're playing with Saber. The turn starts right away after the enemy is defeated and the winner don't recovers energy.

The story mode is very nice, with scenes right before each fight. But not all musics fits, the HUD is horrible and the voices are random fans, not the official thing so it can get a bit weird

Fatal/Fake and Crucis Fatal/Fake

I talked about those games A LOT, right? so I'm going to spare you guys. Crucis Fatal/Fake is IMO the best Fate fighting game (only lacks a story mode, but who cares with an online multiplayer mode?)

Fight Magical Tag

The game's is about SD fighting but it's not nearly as fun as Tiger Colisseum. You got 5 teams that fights in tag, you can't change them except the order. The sprites are OK, but the fighting itself isn't much fun.

Battle Moon Wars

It's a four-part Strategy RPG featuring the characters from Type-Moon, specially Tsukihime and Fate characters. I still have to play it, through.

From Fate it features (as far I know): Archer, Dark Sakura, True Assassin, Avenger, Bazett, Berserker, Caster, Saber Alter, Gilgamesh, Iri, Kiritsugu, Lancer, Illya (NPC only), Rider, Rin, Leysritt, Saber, Sakura, Sella, Shirou and Zouken.

Fate/Stay Night Racing

Never played it either. It crashes every time I try to play it

http://www.dailymoti...om/video/x4e48n

Guardian Heroines

Features many characters from Fate series, like Saber, Rin, Archer, Gilgamesh and Illya, it's a beat'em up with Tales-like graphics.

http-~~-//www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukyNJK3U0hw

I'm going to update this thread and add a review for Fate/Extra, be patient

[Brucelee41126]

Online gameplay, you say? Hmmmn Going to grab Fatal/Fake again.

[Ultiɱℯciɑ]

Translated from my gaming blog

Fate/Extra (PSP)

Some years ago Type-Moon released Fate/Extra in Japan. It looked like this game would never see a release overseas until Aksys Games quietly announced the US release just before material related to the sequel, Fate/Extra CCC, started to pop-out

The story

It was an ordinary day at school. People doing ordinary things they usually do, same with the classes, even through the subject is always the same but no one seems to care. A foreigner student called Leo started to attend classes and suddenly disappears and it was like no one noticed. The protagonist started to get suspicious and decided to follow Leo and find a door that wasn't there before. A doll, a faceless mannequin starts to help the character and follows into a mysterious dungeon that appeared before them, guarding him against the enemies.

At the end, the corpses of many other anonymous lie in the floor and the protagonist is about to join them when a Heroic Spirit hears his (or her) refusal to give up and die. And so another War begins

You can chose between female and male protagonist and between three different servants: Saber, Archer or Caster. There are few differences in dialogs depending on the gender (for example, there's an exclusive conversation between Archer and the female character about his preferences) and the lines are according to the servant, but in the end the story is the same. There's one decision that's is going to change your ally and two bosses at the middle of the game but that's not this important.

The story takes place in an alternative timeline to regular Fate/Stay Night inside a virtual reality program called SE.RA.PH., which is a part of the Moon Cell which controls the Holy Grail. It means that some familiar faces from the other games aren't the same known to the fans, but other versions with different origins, but they are still quite similar.

Each character from this game got a background carefully put together. The masters are quite a colorful cast, going to an old gruff soldier to psychos. The enemy servants are also quite good, sticking close to their source material and with some great lines too.

The playable servants got their own moments to tell their stories in your privative room. It's also possible to interact picking answers that might change the entire conversation with various results.

The script was written by the same author who did Fate and Tsukihime and it's easy to notice if you know his work. Every NPC got a past, every detail got a reason. Every Dead End and tension moment got some pretty good narration and there is a unique Game Over for every boss battle you lose.

The game

The game itself is divided into rounds, each one there's one opponent to be defeated. The protagonist got one week to collect evidence to guess the identity of the opponent servant and collect to "keys" to be able to continue.

Like Persona 3, once you enter the Arena (the dungeon itself) you can't go back to the school unless you want to end the day. By the way, the Arena is just like Tartarus design-wise and general idea, but there are only two floors each week and once a new week begins the older floors becomes unavailable.

But unlike Persona 3 there's some events at the Arena like treasure hunting, competitions to see who kills more enemies and some other small stuff. Some decisions made in the Arena can also prove fatal.

The battle is like scissors-paper-stone. Guard wins over Attack which overcomes Break which defeats Guard. Simple like that. Only one enemy is faced at time and both can enter six actions each turn. In the bottom part there are the servant's actions and the enemy's, but only some of the opponent's actions are visible at the start (the more you defeat a certain type of enemy, more actions became visible). Against the masters, if you got a good amount of information before the battle, more actions are visible each turn.

Given enough time and after some level up your servant is going to learn useful abilities, unique to each one. Saber is a attack-focused character, while Archer is more into technical battles and Caster got a big array of skills. The common enemies can also use skills but they use it at seldom moments, but the bosses use it all the time.

The protagonist can also help the battle using items or supporting magic once each turn. The same rule applies to the other masters, and some of them can be quite annoying.

Each time the master levels up, the player can use 3 points to level up any of the servant's attributes at the Chapel, where Aoko and Touko Aozaki help all the masters. Taiga Fujimura also makes an appearance requesting items from the arena. In a New Game + after helping Taiga with all her requests there's an extra boss to be faced at the last floor.

The entire mechanic is very simple and easy to get used to. Every time before the day starts the protagonist recalls what to do or the servant reminds him/her. If the player screws up and can't meet the requirements to fight the boss there's a "Retry" option to re-start the week.

Graphics

The game got good models. The servants are amazing, the masters are well done and the backgrounds got many details. Each Arena floor got a theme based on evolution, the primordial sea and this is reflected at each round. After the protagonist finds out it's a simulation he/she can see the "data flux" around the school.

Like Persona 3 this game also suffers from repeating enemies and bland stages. Each Arena floor got the same basic setting (no random this time) with semi-transparent floor and walls in the ocean.

Most enemies are abstract forms, varying only the textures. They aren't much inspired or anything, but in-game they are programs designed by a computer which the priority is fast-processing data over detailed stuff, so we can try to do with that.

Sound

Every Type-Moon game got few tracks repeated over and over again but they are pleasant to hear so it's no biggie. It's the same here. Some rounds got their own music, but most of them are shared.

The common enemies are bland both in design and sound. on the bright side your servant is always talking and there are conversation at the boss battles. Too bad there isn't subtitles or something like that.

There are many spoken conversations, specially at the key moments. There are two routes and three servants in this game, a respectable amount of recorded lines with good quality. Aksys was wise to keep the Japanese voices.

Conclusion

Fate/Extra is like every Type-Moon game: it's strong point is the story. If you like a complex tale, with existentialist questioning and growing characters this is going to be a fun game that is going to hook you for hours. The turn-based system is unusual but easy to get, even if sometimes the inability of changing your actions mid-turn can be annoying.

The game explains many things for the newcomers, so you don't need to have played the original FSN or watched the anime. Specially because it's an alternative timeline and the Holy Grail is very different altogether. Some references to the old series might be lost, specially if you play with Archer but it's not a big deal.

In short, Fate/Extra is a good RPG for PSP. If you know the series you're going to love it and who doesn't is still a fun game. The New Game + feature is quite useful specially because it's a short game.

[Ultiɱℯciɑ]

Playing Fate/Extra for the second time, I realized one thing.

During the first playthrough, I recall Archer saying more than once the avatars might not be the same as the person IRL. It's clear if you take Rin's route and see her at the game ending

She's blond! Oh what a difference!

When you fight Shinji, Archer comments he's not a bad guy like the original one and all. I remember how the comment sounded strange at the time because it was really outside the context. While Red Saber mocks Shinji, Archer makes this comment and Shinji gets upset for no apparent reason (I think it's a pre-determinated script, no matter your servant)

When you beat Rider and they are fading away, Shinji asks for help, quite desperate. Then he screams "Help! Why aren't you helping me?! I'm only eight years old!"

I thought "Yeah, right. Screw you, liar"

But then I recalled the prologue with the fake protagonist. Shinji was at the classroom teaching some girls how to do his homework, being awesome (in his imagination, of course, for everybody with good sense he was being an idiot). But then he makes a stupid mistake, like "2+2=5" or something like that. And if you think about his overall behavior...Holy crap! Your first enemy is a kid! You end up killing a 8-years old!

Not to mention that clown-woman who ate her own baby boy...

I wonder how FE CCC is going to be...