After 160+ hours, I've cracked the code. If you git hit by a big mob as a female character, you can see their panties. 10/10

Dang bro where is my saber Mana Transfer scene it should have happened by now.

Whilst I can't review Fate/Samurai as a part of the Fate series as I've had very little interaction with it - I've only played a small chunk of the VN, a couple of hours into FGO and outside of those, just looking at the myriad of art across Twitter. What I can do is review the game as a standalone project.

Fate/Samurai is a scaled back take on the Musou (Dynasty Warriors) genre, with a very different albeit similar style of play. The game doesn't feature the usual level-based structure, nor does it feature an open world like the recent Dynasty Warrior, instead you'll have a rather similar take to Yakuza's map. It ain't AS deep or intricate as you'd find in Yakuza, but there's a lot of similarities between the two, overall presentation is similar (the way NPCs walk the streets, fade in/out constantly, the way their speech is presented to the player, etc.) Challenges/overall map design feels like something straight out of Yakuza. Sidequests themselves have similar writing to those you'd find in that series. Again though, it ISN'T as deep or interactive as Yakuza, it's more superficial comparisons, don't go buying the game expecting musou-yakuza.

Combat wise, Fate/Samurai's combat lends itself to being very different from the usual style. You won't be playing some superhuman warrior who can take on hundreds of guys with the press of the button, instead fights will consist of 8-15 enemies, or even less if they're demons/possessed units or even mini-bosses. Iori (The protagonist.) feels very detached from any other Musou, whilst he's strong enough to hold his own, combat is played rather evasively/defensively in comparison to the other games in the Musou series. The second you begin fighting demons/boss fights you'll feel that human nature of Iori slip straight into the combat with him dealing little damage until you're able to deplete the enemies stance. However... Switching out to Iori's servant, Saber. You'll instantly feel right at home with the usual Musou style, Saber will tear through any and all enemies like butter, she's able to dish-out incredible damage withing a short amount of time and is a stark difference from her human Master. Switching between the two throughout combat is incredibly satisfying and feels great *every* time.

Writing wise. I feel this is where the game truly shines, the characters are incredibly well written even minor characters. The dynamic between Iori and Saber his Servant is incredible, you can feel each character grow as the story progresses and their bond strengthens, unlocking new abilities for both characters (including movesets as Iori who's able to access five sword-stances.) The sidequests with Gilgamesh had me in stiches every time, the awkwardness of Iori dealing with Tamano, etc. It's all incredibly well done. I absolutely adored the characters in the game, and I was sad when the credits finally rolled on my playthrough, I want more adventures with the characters, and I'm interested to see where the DLC next year takes the game.

Overall, I'm really pleased with the game. I hope the game was successful enough to have Koei/TypeMoon colaborate again, whether for a direct sequel or just an outright entirely new game set within the universe Nasu created.

Only noticed 8 hours into the game that cutscenes were being auto-skipped, fixed by going into nvidia settings and setting Anti-aliasing mode to Application Controlled.

5 months and no patch for it either. Other than that, good game.

Would’ve been a perfect game if there’s a mana transfer scene with Saber

tl;dr Worth the wait if you're a musou fan and you don't hate TYPE MOON or a TYPE MOON fan and you don't hate musou games.

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Based on my initial impressions of the game, I'd say it's more or less following a more open version of the Persona 5 Strikers formula. It's really technically smooth too for me; haven't run into any crashes or anything like that. Some occasional stutter while loading shaders but that goes away the more you play. I have heard about the cutscene skipping bug some people are experiencing; I really hope that Omega Force fixes it, since this game is pretty darn good at first shot.

You got an open world with different zones to walk around and do missions in, you got some navigation that can be done with the help of your servant, dual techs, follow-up strikes, you can temporarily swap to your servant and fight as them for a while, you equip gear, learn spells that use consumables... it's pretty expansive, and has a lot of strong RPG elements that give each character a strong progression curve. The musou combat is on point, though I wish the battles were larger. I hope they get larger later in the game.

I've seen some people liken the game to the RGG Studios games as well; walking around town, doing small missions and favors and errands for people, and yeah I would say that's present but not really that oppressive. The point of the game is to ease you into the battles and get you used to these micro-encounters with 25-50 enemies at once, much like Persona 5 Strikers did.

I think the main problem with this game though, for most people, is probably going to be that it's pretty niche for what it is; you have to really be a neutral-to-positive fan of both musou games and TYPE MOON, particularly Fate, to really like this. If you are, then this will probably be one of your favorite games to come out this year; and you also probably don't need to be convinced by me to buy it.

But, for the rest of the internet, I think it's probably worth waiting for a sale. This definitely isn't a game that you can use to get into Fate; the story is a mimicry of the core beats of the original Fate/stay Night story, but it won't tell you about anything you'll see in the other big name Fate franchises, instead being more of an isolated story that uses similar themes and ideas. It might be a game you can use to get into the musou genre, but because of its open world and RPG elements, it's very different from the more mission and campaign-based structure of the mainline Dynasty Warriors games, or even the earlier spinoff licensed titles like One Piece: Pirate Warriors, Berserk & The Band Of The Hawk or Hyrule Warriors.

The bottom line is, for fans this is exactly what they want, but for anyone who isn't already in on this type of game or franchise, there's nothing here that will blow your mind or turn you into a fan of either that couldn't be found in one of the games I mentioned earlier in this review. Because of that, while I can easily recommend this to a certain type of person, if you're not really familiar with TYPE MOON or with the musou genre, I would wait for this one to go on sale before you experiment with it.

For the rest of you, you've probably already made up your mind about this game; go download it and play it! It's great.

What if Fate games were actually good is the question this game answers.

jalter on pc

I'm a simple man. I see Jeanne (Alter), I buy.

I picked Sword Expert because I thought it'd be an easy game.

I died in the dodge tutorial.