As of writing this, I have completed the Saber route, Gilgamesh route, and CCC route.

After playing this, I see why it is called a companion game. While telling its own story, it gives more time to the already-established characters while also adding new ones. Giving you plenty of opportunities for characters to get more characterization that wouldn’t really make much sense in Fate/EXTRA. CCC also gets an overarching villain with BB, which I would count as a strength over the original Fate/EXTRA. Also, it is fun to watch her do her usual thing of being an evil imp. Bringing up BB, I should also mention how, boy, this is way more horny than EXTRA. Not just horny with designs, but plot horny; it’s up to you if you have a problem with all the stuff that comes with that; it didn’t bother me.

There are some slight problems caused by this being a sort of sequel, but not really a sequel. An important aspect of a lot of Fate works for me is the developing relationship between Master and Servant, and you lose that in this in a not satisfying way. They try to reset your relationship by giving you memory loss, but it’s nowhere close to capturing the original Fate/EXTRA. Honestly, it felt like a pointless plot point. I assume they did this so you could go into Fate/EXTRA no problem if, for some reason, you played CCC first. It probably would have been better to have CCC be a more direct continuation of your relationship with your Servant from EXTRA.

That is why picking Gilgamesh is so great because you get that developing relationship part back. It’s really interesting to have this feeling of walking on eggshells around your own Servant. He is such an ass in a way that is really entertaining and, honestly, kind of endearing by the end for me. Also, picking him straight up makes CCC’s story better. If you are reading this without playing CCC, I strongly recommend picking Gilgamesh.

I’m still not crazy about the rock-paper-scissors combat, but it is still a definite improvement from the original. Things in general look better presented with menus and animations. All the music is good, but I found the battle OST to be a step down from EXTRA. I miss the jazz.

Ultimately, I like the original Fate/EXTRA more than CCC, but there are aspects of CCC that are improvements, and it is definitely worth playing if you are a fan of Fate/EXTRA.

This game introduces the braindead lizard idol. How can it be bad?

I like it. There are a lot of good Pokémon and character designs. The music is strong too. Playing this I even got some new favourite Pokémon like Krookodile and Archeops.

I think having your game be a region with only new Pokémon was an extremely ballsy move and I commend them for it, even if I think it causes some slight problems. By problems I mean stuff like how Elesa's team of three Pokémon has two Emolga. Another weird thing I feel is the first gym being a hard counter to your starter's type, a really neat idea. But they don't really give you anyway to compensate for that on the route to the gym, so some random person has to give you an ugly monkey. Why not have them just be on the route beforehand?

I have never had to try this hard in a Pokemon game before, which I do like. Actually thinking when going against a gym leader or an important character is weirdly novel in Pokemon, at least in the ones I've played. This difficultly does cause a problem in another area; grinding. I am not a fan of how the EXP system works in B&W, with it's harsh level curve on EXP. it just results in things taking longer. I probably would have given this a 8 or even a 9/10 if EXP wasn't like this. Like I never skipped encounters or trainer battles and I was still like 5 levels lower than what they probably wanted for the Ghetis fight.

Also man, they couldn't even pretend Team Plasma wasn't super evil for more than one scene. They're lucky their battle music slaps.

The story is pretty good compared to some other Pokémon games. I get this strong feeling that I would have been way more into it if I had played at a younger age. Especially with the N stuff.

I'm glad I played this, I just hope B&W2 is an improvement whenever I get to it.

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.

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.