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Hey guys, kanna here. Well, it was only a matter of time before I got to this. And boy, have I been dreading it. Not that the Fate/ series is bad or anything like that, but because it seems to go on and on and on without an end in sight.
Allow me to elaborate. Fate/ was originally called Fate/stay night, and was released as a visual novel by Type-Moon in 2004. And they're known for Kara no Kyoukai, Tsukihime, Melty Blood, and others, including a few upcoming works. I don't think they're stopping anytime soon. Kara no Kyoukai, a series of light novels that were published in 1998 and reprinted in 2004, was writer Kinoko Nasu and artist Takashi Takeuchi's (the founders of Type-Moon) debut work. However, their debut visual novel was Tsukihime, a doujin soft circle (pretty much an independent or fan-made video game circle) for Windows.
On a side-note: doesn't it just suck that they don't make visual novels for Macs? And the ones that they do make for Macs are ones where you have to know Japanese to play?
Moving on.
PLEASE NOTE: THE FOLLOWING PARTS WHERE I TALK ABOUT THE GAMES ARE FROM RESEARCH ONLY. I HAVE NOT ACTUALLY PLAYED THESE GAMES (except for Fate/Grand Order).
Tsukihime was insanely popular, having sold millions of copies and amassing a large fanbase due to its comprehensive and expansive storyline. Because it was such a big hit, Type-Moon developed sequels to it, and it even got an anime series in 2003 (which I haven't seen yet).
After their transition from a doujin soft organization to a commercialized organization in 2004, Type-Moon released a PC-based visual novel meant for adults called Fate/stay night on January 30, 2004. It was a big hit, having broken all records on its opening day. It was later adapted into an anime that aired in 2006, a second anime series that aired in 2014, and a manga series that ran for a pretty long time (2005-2012).
There. That's all the background you're getting.
Since a new video game in the Fate/ series was just released, Fate/Grand Order, for iOS and Android phones, I figured I'd give it a review. I know, this is an anime blog and I don't typically review games (if ever). But this one deserves a proper review.
So the backstory of this...doesn't really make much sense. You kind of need to have seen Fate/stay night or played the games; even though in the game, they do a pretty good job of explaining everything you need to know. Even though I have seen the anime, the backstory really confused me. I guess the general gist is this:
The player is a young candidate in a research facility whose goal is preserving humanity. This facility has developed time-travel technology (not the TARDIS from Doctor Who) that allows them to send people to various points in time. However, an accident occurs that kills almost every other candidate and sends you, Mash Kyrielight (your sidekick if you want to look at this from a superhero point of view), and Fou (some kind of animal that looks a like like a squirrel that travels with you) back to the Japanese city of Fuyuki (fictional city where the series Fate/Zero, Fate/stay night, and Fate/hollow ataraxia are set) in 2004. Your goal, I guess, is to use the time travel technology to correct the anomalies in history before the villain can use the Holy Grail to erase humanity for good.
Now, given I've never reviewed a game before, this will be a little difficult. I'll just do my best and figure this out as I go by breaking it into categories.
The story: Okay, the first part that Director Olga Marie explains (the backstory of the game) is ridiculously complicated. I barely understood it. However, it's when everything starts going to heck that things start to make sense. I addressed this in what I thought was the general gist of the game, but here's the short version: In 2017 AD, there were calculations that proved extinction of humankind in 2019. Researchers were utterly perplexed. Then, a region that could not previously be observed appeared: a small, provincial town in Japan from 2004. The researchers assumed this was the cause of humanity's extinction and ran an experiment to travel back in time to prevent it. The name of the mission was "Grand Order." And...that's all you're getting. I don't want to give anything away.
The characters and voice actors: This is going to be one part, as I think these things go hand-in-hand.
First off, you not only get to name the protagonist, but you get to choose whether you want your character to be male or female. I haven't gotten far enough in the game to discover whether or not you can change things like hair or clothes, but you should be able to, right?
Secondly, the characters are in character. Most of the characters in this are fictional (i.e. Mash Kyrielight, Olga Marie, etc.), but other characters were actually based on real people from history or people from myth and legend. We have Jeanne D'Arc (real), Sir Lancelot (legend), Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (real...still don't understand why he's included in the game), King Arthur (legend...who just happens to be a woman in the game, don't ask), Leonardo da Vinci (real...who just happens to be a woman in the game, don't ask), Elizabeth Báthory (real), and so many more. It's incredible that you get to fight with people of history, myth, and legend.
Third, the voice acting is incredible. I don't know if this holds true for the UK release, but for the US release, they didn't change any of the original Japanese voices to English. They just stuck with the original Japanese voice actors. We have actors from UtaPri, Diabolik Lovers (as bad as the anime was, the voice acting was decent, and Hikaru Midorikawa and Kosuke Toriumi did give us a kickass opening song), Attack on Titan, and many more anime series. There are lots of Japanese voice acting legends in this, and others I haven't heard of.
The animation: I am beyond impressed with the animation. It makes me feel like I'm watching an anime rather than playing a game. The characters are accurately drawn, there's little to no CGI (not that CGI is a bad thing in anime; it just needs to be used properly), and the movements aren't robotic. Even the animation for the Noble Phantasms are pretty impressive. Sure, the dragons are called wyverns (even though there's a dragon in the game that's actually referred to as a dragon), the zombies don't look that different from regular soldiers, and the ghosts remind me of something out of Corpse Bride, but everything is drawn really well. Kudos to the animation team. They really did a good job.
The music: Ok. Whoever did the soundtrack for this game deserves a Grammy (or the Japanese equivalent of it), because the music is AMAZING. As we all know, I am a sucker for a good soundtrack, and this game does not disappoint. The music during the fight scenes is great, and it really makes you feel like you're actually in whatever era you're in during the game. Can someone PLEASE tell me who the composer for this is so I can add them to my favorite composers list?
So, rating: 10 out of freaking 10
Why: I pretty much have nothing bad to say about this game. It's a good installment to the Fate/ series, and while you need to be a little familiar with the series in order to fully enjoy the game, it's still pretty good. I'd definitely recommend it. There are some moments that really make you say, "What the f**k am I looking at?!" like I did after certain scenes (play the game, and you'll find out which ones).
I guess if I had a couple of things, it would be that they put it in the app store before it was even ready to play. As you may have guessed, I was pretty pissed about that.
My second thing would be the whole "choose your own dialog" thing. There are some cut scenes where you get to choose your own dialog out of one, two, or three options. I don't know how which one you choose changes the course of the game, as I rely on gut instinct to tell me which one to choose, but it does get annoying after a while. You can't keep relying on gut instinct or morality or whatever. This isn't a "choose your own adventure" game. It's an RPG.
So, that was my review of Fate/Grand Order, as well as my first review of a video game. I'm probably not going to do another one of these, as
1. I have a Mac, and you can't play a ton of visual novels on Mac computers. True, you can play a few on iPhones and Androids and the like, but I think PCs are the more traditional format
2. I think anime reviews do much better and are easier to write
Anyway, I hope you enjoyed it, and look forward to next Anime Monday, where I review...wow, this is hard to choose, so I'm going to let you pick. Your choices are:
a) Attack on Titan: Junior High
b) Tokyo Ghoul
