| Creator | Imageepoch, TYPE-MOON | Released | 2010 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Medium | Video game [PSP] | Misc. | Played via emulator |
via the typemoon fandom wiki:
"Protagonist Hakuno Kishinami wakes up in a strange virtual world with no recollection of the past and finds themselves forced to fight for survival in a war they do not understand for a prize beyond value: the opportunity to have one's wish granted. With only an enigmatic 'Servant' by their side, they face both friends and foes in battles to the death to not only gain possession of a mysterious object known as the 'Holy Grail,' but also to find the answer to the most important question of all: 'Who am I?'"
[☆ Posted: Nov. 28, 2022.]
as of writing, i've been into the fate series for nearly four years. i first tiptoed my into this sprawling behemoth of a franchise with its mobage outing fate/grand order. i was and continue to be a near daily player and have spent definitely too much money on its gacha. i have yet to hit every nook and cranny of fate yet (there is so much), but it's a near and dear franchise to my heart now. in particular, my god, i love fate/extra.
extra is jank as all fucking hell, and i need to rethink my top 10 favorite games of all time to potentially include it. i love weird things rich with flaws and heart, and just...man, fate/extra...
do i think extra plays well? not really. the battle system is a pain in the ass where you try to navigate rock-paper-scissors to counter your enemy's moves. i do like how the element of information gathering comes into play with how the more you encounter a specific type of foe, the more of its moves are revealed to you at the start of your turn. but when you don't know which move you are countering, it can be completely random for how right you may or may not be for what you select. pattern predication is also incorporated into the whole "guess what move your enemy is going to make" angle, so it isn't, like, totally random...but it's sufficiently so that you can get assblasted pretty easily, especially with bosses.
the dungeons are all pretty samey. the structure is pretty samey across the entire game. there is very little variation in gameplay even outside of battle. there are three different servants (saber, archer, and caster) that you can choose from at the beginning of the game to accompany you, but the basic rhythm remains the same. extra is not a game containing much deviation.
and i can't dislike it for that. at all. in fact, i sort of love it. it makes it a slog to play in some regards (save states and the fastforward feature on ppsspp make it tolerable), but i love it all the same. fate/extra is about echoes. week in and week out, you are subjected to the same preparation period utilizing se.ra.ph's arena and gathering information on your assigned opponent. the week caps off with an elimination battle where it is victory or death between you and a rival master. the details vary, and there is an evolving storyline on your protagonist's personal state and relations to other masters and their servant, but the structure is brutally rigid until you emerge as the victor of the moon cell holy grail war.
and this is just so perfectly tied into the story's themes of cyclical violence and progression. humanity is stagnant in the world of extra, slowly declining until it is inevitably pruned as one of the branching timelines of mankind. the main antagonist, twice pieceman (welcome to type-moon's brand of western names if you're new lmao), intends to plunge the earth into conflict to stimulate growth and steer it off the course of a quiet death, taking mankind's history as evidence to this end. the very nature of the game's grail war reinforces this: the protagonist is shaped from a former npc, a digital ghost, into an individual through each elimination battle. (reasons why i prefer rani's route to rin's is partly because of how she also echoes this all!) conflict does birth growth, but it is also through the protagonist's relationship with their servant and their foes (who can turn friend), through how the protagonist tries to understand and empathize with others, that they grow. violence is not the only route to growth; compassion also lets us grow and change.
extra is all mirrors and echoes. its themes are tightly packed together in its writing and gameplay, however clumsy the latter can be. it's deeply compelling and heartfelt to me, and i won't ever regret slogging through it.
Do I like it? very dearly and deeply, yes.
Do I rec it? not really. it honestly isn't that fun to play, however much i might defend the thematic aspects of its gameplay. if you do play it, i recommend using and abusing an emulator's save state function. there is also an as-of-now ongoing lp over on the somethingawful forums that will eventually be archived on lparchive.org that i would recommend as an alternate way to experience extra!