"There are no grades given for goals and wishes. No matter how small they may seem to others, as long as I keep moving forward they will eventually come to fruition.
As it is the desire for that wish to become reality that will keep you going until the end."








This is gonna be the single most biased review in all of history so buckle up.

Type Moon's magnum opus, the first and best game of Kazuya Niino's PSP trilogy.

I love Fate/EXTRA to death, it is the most masterfully crafted and methodically put together piece of media I've ever had the pleasure to experience.

This is the story of Hakuno Kishinami searching for themselves amidst a dire scenario where they have to face mankind at its purest state to fully understand the meaning of being human, the thing that drives us to go out there and want to make a difference, stand by our values and enjoy life even at its harshest moments.

Every foe they face carries a theme and none of them are wasted. It builds this incredibly flawless character study of humanity itself through people who embody the aspects that define us as people.

Shinji's friendship and greed, Dan's pride and code of honor, Alice's vulnerability and need for support, Gatou's religious clinging, Ronnie's downfall to the carnal desire, Julius' search for love, Rani's understanding of humanity and Rin's rebellion against stagnation (Cleverly both defining aspects of Hakuno, who they get to interact with the most), Leo's strive towards perfection and Twice's nihilistic and bitter but ultimately thoughtful view on the process of human evolution.

It wastes no beats and packs so much density in such a perfectly tied narrative.

The recontextualization of the Holy Grail War into a death game that dissects humanity is a sight to behold.

The servant trinity is an absolute highlight. Nero, Nameless and Tamamo are fantastic. They provide an amazing replay value to the game since each one has their own distinct chemistry with Hakuno and they're all so fucking cool man I love them so much.

There's an infinity of nuance and depth to explore after multiple playthroughs and way too many shower thought sessions.

Hakuno Kishinami is my favorite character of all time. Don't see that ever changing either. There's something truly special with Hakuno that gets me in a way no other character ever could and I honestly cannot point out what it is specifically. Is it their beautiful story of self recognition? Is it their awe inspiring unbreakable resolve and strive towards betterment of the body and mind? Is it their bittersweet and often times heart wrenching purity that leads them to still find a worth to this life they were given even amidst this hellish scenario? I honestly can't tell and I could waste 90% of this review just gushing about every single character defining line they hit you with like a hammer when you least expect, however I do want to keep this spoiler free so I don't want to delve into the specifics and revelations about their character. They're just the best man, I love my Hakuno Kishinami so much.

Even without spoilers I will say tho the ending is the most beautiful and heartfelt conclusion possible to this story accompanied by an ending quote that instantly became my favorite bit of writing ever.

I don't think exploring the writing any further is needed since there's just WAY too much to talk about so yeah it's the coolest fucking shit ever written. #ThankYouNiino

Outside of the writing, it's a game that aged like wine visually. The look of Niino's games are always artistically driven to the bone and EXTRA is no different. The dungeons are extremely striking and creative, Tsukihimihara is such a cool place to live in, Wada's art is awesome, the enemies look so wacky and fun...

I DON'T EVEN NEED TO SAY ANYTHING ABOUT THE OST BRUH THAT SHIT IS NUCLEAR BANGER ITS BEEN KNOWN SHINJI HOSOE TE AMO JAZZ FOR THE SOUUUULLL

The gameplay is infamously the divisive factor but I personally am a fan. I respect the hustle Niino has for never going for the traditional no matter what with the combat in his games (I will get to Black Rock Shooter's bizarre third person turn based jrpg combat) and the RPS combat has layers beyond its initial RNG factor. Boss fights in particular are immensely fun with this system, at the cost of a repetitive but decent usage against average mobs.

In summary, it's a game that drips heart through every single one of its pores, has so much to say while at the same time being so simple and sincere at its core. A masterpiece in every sense of the word. A game I will forever hold dear and cherish, truly a lifechanging experience that has been shaking up how I perceive myself and life as a whole immensely during these early stages of adulthood.





Also Hakuno is so fucking hot please have sex with me I am begging you

The story has good ideas, especially near the end, and I'm glad that the MC isn't a 100% silent one. But even though I am probably the millionth person to say this, the gameplay is absolutely unenjoyable, probably my least favourite turn-based battle system that I've ever played. The game in general is underwhelming and episodic in the first half, with most of the thematic and interesting story moments coming later.

At least the music and visual style are very good, especially for a PSP game. Sadly, I was really only playing this for CCC, which was apparently Nasu's favourite project he worked on.

Amazing game. Gameplay is a bit repetitive, but it has enough variety in terms of skills and enemies to make it worth it. The setting and environment are amazing, love the ocean aesthetic and how you're rising to the surface throughout the game. Hakuno is an amazing MC and provides a fantastic master servant dynamic with their servants. Saber is a really great servant, she's very funny and interacts super well with Hakuno while also having some emotional/sad character writing that works really well. Some really amazing lines and character writing. Ending goes so hard. OST is really fun too. Only negative would be some masters/servants aren't the most interesting they can be. But I'd still say they're all good at the bare minimum. Julius, Alice, Gawain are all great. My boy Twice H. Pieceman is also a great villain with some really cool lines. Peak Fate, Peak gaming. Love you Fate/Extra.

There was a time that I was a big fan of animes. I watch 10 episode in one day, keep reading side materials to get the lore of it and have a really good time(until realizing most of the animes using the same handful of character stereotypes that started boring me to death and that realization came with when I was trying to understand why I don't enjoy fairy tail like everybody else).

In that time I found the "best visually looking" anime fate zero, of course I watched it and fell in love with it, both the story, visuals and characters was awesome, then watched fate unlimited blade works and somehow found it less visually, character and story wise. Then when I searched about it, I found that it was just one part of it's visual novel not the whole story, oh also that there were games about it as well! Of course I get excited and read the visual novel immediately, it was awesome. Then I read Tsukihime vn from the same writer, it was awesome too! Then I read Kara no Kyoukai novel and... it wasn't awesome for me because how it felt disjointed but that's beside the point. The point is, when I learned there was a fate game after finishing the anime that is about an alternate universe I wanted to play it of course.

It started as an strange game, where you are a limbo like school place, you need to choose one servant from 3 different servants(I choose Archer) and need to find information from npcs and enviroment in the school until the fight day comes, also you need to finish the "dungeons" before the fight day happens(I didn't play persona at the time but now looking back it's funny realizing that they just copied the whole structure with less content from persona). But it was such a slog.

I think I played near 10-15 hours and wanted to tell my experiences about it.

Combat
Combat is paper rock scissors simulator. That's all there is. Only strategy you can use is when fighting memorize your opponent's attack strategy(because most of the time same enemy type use the same attack type) and if you die, just use what you learned.. that's all there is. Also both enemies and dungeons are super boring. They are repetitive looking to the mindnumbing level. THERE IS NOTHING INTERESTING.

Probably the most boring jrpg combat system stretched to it's limit in my opinion. First 5 minute gameplay is equal to my last 15 hours of gameplay. That's all there is.

School sections
These are also a slog too. What you need to do is, interact "everyone" to find one helpful scripted character to learn about the new upcoming master fight, interact with your servant to learn nothing interesting and lastly, farm enemies to level up and also get to the end door of the dungeon before the next fight comes. My favourite activity (Sarcasm).

Story
From what I played it had an interesting premise, you are in a simulation that you don't know anything about or how did you get there or you don't even know who you are. But from what I played, story didn't move one bit. Probably "everything will be explained in the end" type of story this is. But also it made me run out of my patience. Also game have a lot of fanservice characters, but I suspected they are just a "simulation" and not important with how they force them to your face without no reason at all in the first place. Unfortunately I can't say anything about the story as a whole but if I talk about what I played until choosing the abandon is, it's a waste of time.

Lastly, I want to remind everyone that I am just talking about the experience I had until the 15 hour time(I think last place I was Nursery Rhyme fight), so if the game gets good or something like that I don't know. But I have a right to criticize what I played and the parts I had played wasn't just the worst jrpg experience it was also the worst and the most boring gaming experience ever for me to the point of abandoning a game(I rarely abandon games, I even finished drakengard 1 aka. the worst melee combat the game). It's unfortunate saying that but that's all I feel when thinking about this game.
Monotonous boredom simulator.

7/10 (Estou sendo bem complacente e gentil. )


Jornada cansativa.
Foi uma boa narrativa, uma boa história, mas todo o resto não valeu tanto.
Não irei dizer muito ou o que devo, pois teria diversas coisas a dizer e seria mais interessante em formato de vídeo e uma pesquisa adicional.

Em suma assisti a adaptação em conjunto com o jogo e tive uma experiência interessante, por mais que eu prefiro e acho a adaptação superior, não consigo dizer que ela funciona totalmente sozinha.

Fate extra nas suas primeiras 8-10 horas é bem passível de drop, um ritmo bem fraco, uma gameplay que me deu um burnout fodido, ccc tá vindo aí não sei se vou tankar, mas enfim esse jogo cansa de vdd, seja pelo level design simplório das dungeons, pelo grind ruim,pela falta de diversidade de cenários com detalhes a mais e etc, etc, sim eu sei que o psp é limitado e infelizmente ele afetou demais o projeto final, anseio que o remake corrija os defeito e faça o melhor fate.

Dito isso, se você se agradou em digital devil saga no segmento budista, se gostou da temática presente em obras como texhonlyze e similares, creio que vale a pena dar uma chance

That was fantastic, I'm glad I actually got around playing it
This setting is so interesting, I love seeing their takes on returning F/SN stuff, and the themes it uses it for
The cast is all around pretty solid but the one who truly shines is Hakuno, what a great protagonist they are
I do wish some of them got more time, specially the main antagonist, but I understand the limitations probably prevented that from ever happening
Also the gameplay loop was great, had a lot of fun with it
As annoying as the combat can be at times, I find it fun and satisfying most of the time
Overall a great game, I really liked it a lot

some of the tightest character writing since stay/night, though i think that the villain-of-the-week format of this holy grail war denies most of the cast the depth you'd expect (or desire) out of a successor to said story. unfortunately said format means the plot structure is pretty rote and repetitive without much in the way of divergence from its own linearity, which isn't easily overlooked considering the lackluster ending of the only character arc that really gets any room to breathe: the protagonist's.

also, probably the single worst combat system i've ever had to deal with in a jrpg. rng is always bad game design in my book, but basing your combat almost exclusively around it is pretty much unforgivable.

oh god i liked a fate game

The whole Fate franchise is something I’ve never really been able to engage with. It was first pushed on me in an old friend group. It was a toxic toxic group, the sort of group that just sort of forms with any batch of high school kids in a small town who don’t really know how to engage with a lot of things appropriately. One of those friends was a guy named Ryan, who was the sort of dude who considered it normal for every group to have a “resident asshole.” He spent a lot of time pitching Fate to me through the context of power levels and awesome fights and explicitly highlighted Gilgamesh as his favorite character because, paraphrasing, “he’s so powerful there’s nothing he can’t do.” I watched a few episodes of Fate/Zero and bounced off.

Years later, I would ask about Gilgamesh in a different friend group, describing Ryan’s pitch to me. They laid out some, uh, pretty heinous stuff Gilgamesh wants to do with that power and my lack of surprise indicated to them and myself that I should probably not be friends with Ryan.

Incidentally, the last time I saw Ryan, he spent most of our brief interaction complaining about the girls in our quickly splintering friend group who had cut him off. “They’re just too emotional to have a reasonable conversation without me looking like the bad guy.”

That’s a long way of laying down the way Fate has always left a bad taste in my mouth, despite the fact that most of my friends, particularly the many trans groups I’m happy to be included in, seem to like it. Most big anime franchises generally kinda flow through me like water at best and leave me just tired and annoyed at worst. So I sort of expected that, like dozens of other big anime rpg attempts, I’d play this for an hour and then drop it.

But uh. Fuck. It's really good actually.

From what limited grasp I have on the Fate franchise, this is basically an AU story that’s completely off the rails from the main canon. The central conceit is the same: various magic users from across the globe fight with magically powered historical/literary figures, all in the aim for a magic wishing cup. Many of those figures are gorgeous anime women now.

The key difference is that the real world’s magic has fallen apart, requiring the creation of a magi-tech AI to build a magi-tech digital world for the anime battles to keep going. Because of this, the number of potential servants/anime fighters are basically infinite and hundreds upon hundreds of magic hackers can all play in the Anime Battle War at once. A tournament system emerges to keep some semblance of order and now you’re off to the races.

The gameplay is… weird. It's not quite traditional rpg mechanics. It's like a game of rock paper scissors: Attack, Guard, and Break, each one beating the other. On the screen are six question marks, each one hiding a different Rock Paper Scissor/Attack Guard Break strategy. The more you fight these enemies, the more you learn their patterns. The question marks will eventually flip around to reveal their strategy, making them much easier to defeat.

The gameplay loop that emerges in this setting is instantly addicting. Once a week, you and your Anime Fighter are pit against your opponent and their Anime Fighter. But you aren’t just biding time: you need to spend that week getting as much info on the enemy as you can. Who are you fighting? What’s their powerset? The more info you gain, the more the question marks in the boss battle will be flipped around to reveal the boss’ strategy. Each week becomes a short little mystery drama as you try to figure out who your opponent could be. And within learning that gameplay strategy, you learn about the goals and motives of your enemy, drawing you deeper into the character work it's crafting.

I’ll offer more precise examples. Week 1 pits you against a shitty teen named Shinji and the hot anime fighter he’s managed to recruit. Shinji is arrogant, smug, and insufferable. As he won’t stop bragging about the Armada or the Fleet, you’ll eventually be able to learn that his anime fighter is Francis Drake and use that knowledge to curb stomp Shinji into the ground. Drake salutes you in her death, taking it gracefully as another fun pirate adventure. Shinji, who you’ve grown to just despise as an awful tool, instead drops this line as his teenage digital avatar, and his other self in the real world, dies pitifully.

“I’m only eight!”

Each round has these sorts of tragedies. The game starts with 128 different fighters, and you gradually see the crowd of NPCs in the digital landscape vanish from week to week. I regret not talking to all the NPCs from the start. Each day, the whole school has different dialogue, but I just sped through when it all seemed to be just general obvious statements. During the first week, I found a lovey-dovey couple flirting in the hallway. In week 3, I found a single NPC in that same hall, a young girl staring at the wall.

“I had to kill my darling. I didn’t want to but… I didn’t want to die. I… could kill anyone now.”

It's moments like this that add so much flavor to this game for me. I’ve always disliked the whole “secret magic hidden from the public eye” kind of setting and it's so nice that this game just doesn’t bother with that at all. Instead its about being trapped with a bunch of hackers, many of whom didn’t know what they were getting into, and the ideological, philosophical fights that emerge from it. They really make the battles and setting have such a weight to it. Before you select your protagonist, you actually get to play as one of the nameless NPC hackers in the prologue. After twenty minutes of tricking you into thinking this is your character, you die instantly in the preliminaries and get replaced by your real, slightly customizable protagonist. There’s dozens of corpses around you, demonstrating exactly how many people have bumbled into this without a plan and failed. It gives the game a sense of weight to its gimmick that imitators might lack.

It's just really charming character work, bundled up in a surprisingly fun package. There’s a remake coming that’s ditching the rock paper scissors stuff, and that's probably for the best. But its really easy to dig your teeth into in a way that catches you really off guard.

Going through Fate/Extra in a new save with Caster felt like a different experience. It was painful at the beginning but me, being a totally normal person, grinded to unlock all her skills and raise Magic stats to the point by mid to late game I was overleveled.

But yeah, I love Tamamo. I've already loved her before but I finally did her Matrix Event without messing up this time. A certified Chiwa Saito classic. I also love Rani and in my opinion, fits this game's story more than Tohsaka. Hakuno Kishinami is still top 5 best Type-Moon protagonist of all time.

I really going to miss OG Extra's music. It's one of a kind so going through the game made me appreciate it a lot more. Sad to see it go in Record remake.

My take on its infamous gameplay is that it's satisfying when you don't have someone screaming in your ear about how bad it is. It's not perfect, when you gotta grind for levels you gotta take the time to learn the patterns each time you go to a new Arena so it can get tedious but a lot of it's shortcomings are negated by the existence of Skills. By midgame, you don't need to worry learning patterns and just spam Skills.

Fate/Extra is truly underappreciated game. I always felt it gets overshadowed by its sequel but I think it still holds up well today. It's story, characters, and music really moved me. It's definitely one of my favorite Fate spin-offs or even Type-Moon works in general. I can't wait to play Fate/Extra Record when it comes out in 2049.

I really adore this game. The setting, concept and ideas that it introduces are perfect. But at the same time it does not explore them very much... and that is just waste of potential. Game feels lacking... it sets up a stage for many things to happen, many mechanics to occur, but doesn't use it. The corridors are filled with students, each having a little story arc, but the only interaction you can have with them is just talk and read a couple of their lines. Game also does a poor job in keeping track with these story arcs, if the student you want to talk to isn't in his usual spot, you don't know if he's dead or the game just doesn't render him right now. There are only a few side quests and you get them from only one npc.

Fate/EXTRA prioritises it's narrative over anything else... which I wouldn't necessarily call a good thing in this situation, because it doesn't need to do it. I even dare to say that it would have more impact if more content was added on top of it. With a simple linear storytelling and a basic repetitive gameplay loop, for some... it may just feel shallow.

Nevertheless, I really enjoyed the overall story. And I'm also one of the six people who actually like rock-paper-scissors so yeah. Still kind of repetitive, but it helps that it's a hand-held game. It's meant to be played on your free time. I completed the game in 4 months... that was really fun.

I really do like how this game remixes several plot elements from Fate/stay night in a way that constantly surprises people familiar with that story while still being very approachable to newcomers and doesn't overstay its welcome. That said, I also probably have a more positive view on this title because I picked Saber as my Servant and used a guide, she really does make the very novel yet poorly executed battle system a lot easier to handle with her brute strength. I'm watching a friend do a Caster playthrough right now and I can feel his frustration during some parts. That isn't to say I like Saber solely because of her ease of use, she's actually one of my favorite characters in the entire Fate franchise, and a great representation of how Extra expands upon Stay Night thematically with the ways she compares and contrasts to Stay Night's Saber.

I'm sad that I don't have more contact with Buddhism to be able to understand all the allusions that F/Extra ends up making. But its central themes are one of my favorite themes; Stagnation, War, Nihilism. While a lot can be taken from Buddhism that the work is steeped in, in my opinion it can also be taken from Nietzsche, since Nilism is one of the components that runs through the entire game. I think Extra encapsulates Nasu's pessimistic phase well, as it is hammered into our heads how stagnation is not an option and can be worse than war, but at the same time war is not a good thing and neither should it be be an option, much less an endless repetition like Twice wanted, because it would just be hell - A war that never ends just another means of stagnation. All that remains for us is to look for another option other than either of these two, however the work does not indicate which option this is. It says that we must find, however it does not indicate what we must find, what we must aspire to. This reminds me a lot of Nietzsche, who for years had not yet discovered amor-fati and was therefore unable with his heart to cling to the notion of the superman, or his other beliefs.