Fate/Extella: The Umbral Star (PC) Reviews

This game does not deserve getting a negative review from me.. but it's only barely positive at the same time. Even as a massive Fate fan who unfortunately dumped way more money into Fate/Grand Order than he should have. Let me start off with the story, which is fulfilling if you have not played Fate/Extra, which this game is a sort of sequel to. Note: you do not have to play Extra to know this game's story, though I would recommend playing Extra over this game anyway. Extella may be a sequel to a non-existant Extra route which I can understand, but what I don't approve of is how it ruins several characters and story setpieces from the original. Extra had you choose between three playable servants that you got to bond with very well over the course of the game through a Visual Novel story. The main servants easily made the game for me, and thus it's a shame that Extella throws all of it out of the window. Emiya has been made insignificant as well despite originally being a main character. While Tamamo is still a main servant, this game very obviously has Nero Claudius as the main protagonist. Her character has been turned from someone who you had to prove your worth for, to a Mary Sue-like character full of love. Tamamo was always the playful, slightly mischievous character, but now she was turned into a complete control freak. There is a reason for it, but the reason is stupid. This game has not done any good towards Tamamo and that's a shame because I may even prefer her over Nero in the original Fate/Extra, but here she is just plain bad. Other servants are also hit-or-miss, but I'll let it go for now otherwise this paragraph will go on for a long time. The other major part of this game is the musou-like gameplay after all which is.. okay I guess. The servants overall control nicely and I have nothing to complain about them. There's a good variety in playable servants as well, each being unique. They're further enhanceable with buffs, and Master him/herself also has some skills to use during battle. But the Musou part overall is just decent really. Capturing sectors to gain a majority is a chore, and sometimes you're barely allowed to capture a sector because there is constantly something happening in other sectors. This is not new to the Musou genre or anything, but in Extella it just felt frustrating because I constantly had to move between sectors because if I didn't, I'd have to capture them or another again which would cost me extra time. Fights can already easily last over 20 minutes so you don't want to extend it even longer. Some enemies can also very easily put you into a ''stun lock'', unable to release yourself from it. Lastly, there is a pretty small number of overall stages, and they get repeated pretty often as well, most of the times even with the same stuff happening like being locked into a sector, or plants spawning all over the place. Musou games have a bad reputation for being repetitive, and Fate/Extella does not do any favours towards making that reputation better. It's a shame, but if you are planning to get this game, do proceed with caution. If you're unfamiliar to Fate, you might enjoy it more than when you have already played the earlier games.