This is my first SRW game and I played as the female protagonist.

It was neat to see how they wove together a bunch of very different series into a single universe, which was actually 3 universes but whatever, the point still stands. I loved seeing all the attack animations, especially for the ν Gundam, that was probably my favourite unit.

I liked the OC characters of the protagonist and Nine, they have a fun dynamic. However I do have some problems with the story. The story can be very unfocused with the bouncing between universes, and I was getting sick of the splitting the group up points in the story because it forced to use units I don't care at all about. By the end it felt like enemies were getting shoehorned in to make the game longer.

I feel like I would have gotten more out of this if I watched some of the more relevant series. I've never watched Space Battleship Yamato, the Nadesico movie, Gundam Unicorn, and Full Metal Panic. With the latter two, whenever they were the focus, I would only pay half attention to what was happening because they are things I want to watch.

As the game went on I found a lot of the maps to be annoying. Maps can be needlessly long and have conditions that have you stuck using a unit that you haven't levelled that causes a game over if they die. At least let me know the conditions before the starting the mission so I can at least mitigate the issue. Enemies can have effect that reduce the amount of damage they take or stop it all together and boy do they not make that clear at all. I can't imagine playing this game on higher difficulties, it has to be a fun vampire.

I was going to be harsher on this game due to its controls, but after a certain point I got used to them. They are still bad though, everything that is hard about this game comes from its control scheme.

Moving away from the negatives, this game is super charming. All of the designs are great, especially Roll's, a straight up 10/10. Graphically, this game is still great; the only way I can describe it is as charming. All the characters are fun, and the Bonne family makes for entertaining villains. Considering the era, the dub is surprisingly alright; again, it all helps create this charming quality.

This game is neat conceptually, but it's way too undercooked in every aspect to be anything more than that. Having the class system be school clubs is a really cool idea, but it doesn't matter because I just mashed normal attack and met no resistance at any point. This game is embarrassingly easy.

Who can equip what can feel completely random here, for example I played a female protagonist, fully levelled the kendo club, yet I was never able to equip the wooden sword, but I could equip the fake masamune.

Characters are whatever, they fall under the 'neat conceptually' umbrella, but you're never given anything to really chew on. Each chapter starts by having a problem needing to be solved, which do start with a feeling it could be interesting but always feels flat by the end, even when it get whacky.

I can't recommend this, which is sad because 'RPG set at a high school you would find in a Shonen battle manga' feels criminally underused.

This is the best one so far for me. 

The story is great; it felt so good to get all this closure for the Crossbell and Erebonia arcs. It takes a similar premise to Trails in the Sky the 3rd and supercharges it to make an amazing experience. Having the game be three routes was a smart decision; it feels like something is always happening. It also helps remove the feeling of bloat that these games can have at certain points. The new characters in the C route are all instantly great, especially C and Lapis. 

The gameplay is great; it is pretty much CS4 with the new United Front mechanic. A welcomed edition to an already great combat system. This game also significantly reduces the annoying bonus point requirements (called RP in this) found in previous games. Most of the ones found in the story routes are not difficult; they usually just 'beat within X turns' or go to X place. The ones in the Reverie corridor are unmissable, which takes away a lot of the worry. There is also such an excess amount of RP in this that I had over 60 RP more than required to get everything (I did not scan every monster or get every chest). 

Can't wait to see what goes on in the Calvard arc. 

I can tell a lot of effort and passion went into this, but it didn't result in something I can bring myself to continue. I got around 6 hours into this (a little after you get your third servant), and it already has a lot of problems.

The most obvious issue is how meandering the game feels; there are so many stretched-out points of nothing happening that I don't know why they made it like this. There are so many weird choices that make this worse, like every day having a scene in front of your house that usually adds nothing but an extra step between you and the overworld map. Speaking of the overworld map; 60% of the time there is only one option on the map, it should just skip it at those points.

The combat in this is slow and bad; it’s like a shitty version of Fate/Grand Order’s combat, which is already only serviceable at best. it’s like they didn’t understand what made it work in FGO. Everything in this takes too long to kill, adding to the meandering feel the game has.

The game has nice art, even if it can look a little wonky at times, but I can give it a pass. All the original monster designs are great of the ones I saw, they could be in SMT games. The sprites in combat are very good too, as I said; you can tell a lot of effort went into this. However, after all that praise I will say; the protagonist looks bad every time you can see him. I don’t know why they went with that design, but it is so fucking bad.

It kind of goes for a Persona-like system with bonding with characters, and it feels kind of flat with the few I did. It is also like Persona 4, where you have to gather information before you can go to the dungeon, but it is so basic and easy that it might as well be automated.

I should also mention the game has voice acting and they do a pretty good job at sounding like the originals of the characters I’ve seen, for the most part. Raikou doesn’t really sound remotely close in my opinion.

The premise of the story really didn’t interest me, to be honest, and learning more didn’t really help. It’s a premise of convenience, so you can have a bunch of servants and not really worry about anything before the start of the game or the consequences of supernatural events in the city. There are a lot of story choices that don’t really jive with me, like Raikou being your wife; it just feels like it's there; maybe more will come from it later, but I don’t care. It feels… pandering? Superficial? Basic? Something like that.

A lot of my problems also come from the protagonist, which I already mentioned as having a bad design. His personality is very unappealing to me as a protagonist, he’s very uninteresting, like a generic insert-type character that they stapled some things onto him to trick you into thinking he’s more than that. His power and how the Servants treat him give him some "OC DO NOT STEAL" energy. The fact that it is called Abyss magic might be a major part of that. Raikou being your wife, Rama being your best friend, and Brynhilder being your student all at the start of the game feels lame to me; it wouldn’t bother me if it was just one of those things, though the Raikou one might still bother me.

The worst thing I can really say is that it just doesn’t feel like Fate; it’s a bad urban fantasy VN-RPG hybrid with vague Fate-shaped things in it.

I might come back to it to give it a fairer shake but not right now.

As a big fan of Part 5, I got a lot out of this. Unfortunately it is also has very bad gameplay.

I love how the game looks and it is interesting to see how they thought characters would sound way before the existence of the anime. But boy does the gameplay have some problems, with things like poor lock-on and bosses doing loops on you.

This is definitely something you would really only get through because you're a fan of Part 5.

I’ll just get this out of the way first. You do not need to watch, play, or read any Fate-related thing to play Fate/Samurai Remnant. Anyone who says otherwise is a liar.

The short review is that the game is good enough in most areas to overcome its shortcomings in gameplay.

I’ll talk about the combat system first. It is serviceable; it gets the job done, even though I wish there was more to it. The game does a pretty good job of hiding the combat simplicity with plenty of flare; almost everything you can do as Iori or a Servant looks cool. Iori having multiple styles is cool, but I found that the early ones tend to get outshined by the latter ones.

General gameplay involves navigating large areas linked by an overworld map. The environments themselves are very pretty, and I’m very much a fan of how this game looks graphically. The game does a mostly good job at getting you to explore the areas with bulletin board missions. I say mostly because some have missions that require you to kill X amount of enemies, which usually requires you to load out and back into an area to repopulate the zone with enemies. On the topic of enemies, there are some that are set amounts, like Blue Oni and Izuna, which means you can’t farm them for resources or hunt them for Edo Commissions, a completely baffling decision. While also on this topic, this game is not built for you to do everything in a single run; they want you to do multiple runs. I have no problem with this; the game gives you a lot of incentive to play New Game +, like new scenes, quests, and an exclusive NG+ ending. Also, I like the Spirit Font Conflict; I don’t really have much to say about it, but I definitely see people not liking it.

I won't get too much into the story; I’ll just say I liked it a lot. I think all the endings are good (especially the NG+ exclusive one). The relationship between Iori and Saber is 100% the highlight of the game; everything about it is perfect to me. I think all the Servants are great too, new and old. I like all the Masters, but I do wish a lot of them got more screen time. What was there was good, but I think it could have benefited from more. On the topic of characters, there are a bunch of NPCs that should have gotten proper portraits, like the people in charge of Edo commissions.

I love the art style of this game. Rei Wataru’s art is fantastic and a great fit for Fate, and I hope to see more from them. I don’t even mean only in a TYPE-MOON context; just in general, I really like their art.

Getting into nitpicks: The logbook is incredibly poorly designed. You have no way of knowing if you are missing something, and the game gives you no way of knowing how to get what you are missing. I know it is bad because I got the platinum for Fate/Samurai Remnant, and let me tell you, the trophy that took me an embarrassing amount of time to get was the one you get for completing the logbook. Also, I do think Koei Tecmo cheaped out by not dubbing this game; there is no good reason to not dub this. I wouldn’t usually hammer on this, but this is an action game where people talk in fights.

I hope Fate/Samurai Remnant leads to more TYPE-MOON games like this and that they improve on it. My only worry for the future is that if they make another one, they stick to the Samurai-era Japan setting. There is a lot of potential here for different countries and/or eras.

Overall, I liked it. It has good art for the characters, which is the main reason I went to play it. BTW, the artist is Constellor if you want to see more of their art. The pixel art is also very good.

The combat was enjoyable. I have never played a battle network game, so I don't know how it compares to those games, but I feel it does a mostly decent job at being entertaining the whole way through. I say mostly because I really don't like Undertale-like parts. They ruin the flow of combat for me by being too long, especially if you get a bunch of enemies doing it in a row.

I liked the characters and story; both are pretty straightforward. I did find a few points pretty eye-rolling (e.g. The Murk Slayer), but I feel that comes with the territory a bit with this type of story. The comedy in this is extremely hit-or-miss. There is way too much cheap reference humour in the superfluous text. It's 2023; you can't make eating a mushroom will make you big joke anymore, come on.

Despite all the negative stuff, I still think it is a 7/10. If they make a sequel, I will play it.