I dropped this game half-way through about 4 years ago, and after about 5 minutes of picking it up again i could immediately tell why.
Gameplay-wise this game is.. not great. Not even in the usual way too mindlessly easy way that Musou's tend to suffer from, it's just incredibly one-dimensional.
Extella Maneuvers and Moon Drive are so much better than anything else you can do that you're solely using regular attacks to build those up. It's mindnumbingly boring.
The writing is also.. questionable, to say the least. It's rife with weird fanservice and bizarrely raunchy descriptions to the point where nearly the entire game reads like a censored h-scene. And sure, i know Fate fans love to defend that kinda stuff as "well ackshually it started out as an eroge it's always been like that" and well, you're not wrong - but the series is honestly at it's best when it's as far away from that as possible.
Fate/Extra and F/HA's Bazett being, in my opinion, the perfect examples of that.
That aside, from Altera's route onwards, the story ends up being surprisingly good - and Altera herself is a really great inclusion to the Extraverse, so it's not without it's merits. Soundtrack's a goddamn bop too. That rendition of Cosmic Air? Godly. Wish it played more often, probably one of my favorite Fate themes.
So TL:DR; it's allright for it's story if you're looking for more Extraverse content or want to properly prepare for Extella/Link's story - but if you're looking for a genuinely fun musou experience.. well, you're better off looking elsewhere.
Gameplay-wise this game is.. not great. Not even in the usual way too mindlessly easy way that Musou's tend to suffer from, it's just incredibly one-dimensional.
Extella Maneuvers and Moon Drive are so much better than anything else you can do that you're solely using regular attacks to build those up. It's mindnumbingly boring.
The writing is also.. questionable, to say the least. It's rife with weird fanservice and bizarrely raunchy descriptions to the point where nearly the entire game reads like a censored h-scene. And sure, i know Fate fans love to defend that kinda stuff as "well ackshually it started out as an eroge it's always been like that" and well, you're not wrong - but the series is honestly at it's best when it's as far away from that as possible.
Fate/Extra and F/HA's Bazett being, in my opinion, the perfect examples of that.
That aside, from Altera's route onwards, the story ends up being surprisingly good - and Altera herself is a really great inclusion to the Extraverse, so it's not without it's merits. Soundtrack's a goddamn bop too. That rendition of Cosmic Air? Godly. Wish it played more often, probably one of my favorite Fate themes.
So TL:DR; it's allright for it's story if you're looking for more Extraverse content or want to properly prepare for Extella/Link's story - but if you're looking for a genuinely fun musou experience.. well, you're better off looking elsewhere.