Fate/Extella: The Umbral Star is a Hack & Slash action game of the Dynasty Warrior variety, in where you effortlessly mow down a ton of nameless enemies. It takes place after the Holy Grail war of the first game, named Fate/Extra that was released exclusively for the Sony PSP. We play as a character whose name and gender are ours to choose, who after having won the war of the first game has claimed a powerful artifact called the Regalia ring. He is immediately attacked by a mysterious shadowy figure and awakens next to his faithful servant Nero with no memories.
If you have not played the prior title of this series or know about the Fate universe, this will take a while to wrap your head around as it has a very bizarre plot and premise. In any case, you’ll be given plenty of time before the plot kicks up and will go through a ton of text all throughout the course of the story. There is in fact quite a lot of dialogue after and before fights. It can be compared to a pseudo visual novel due to the sheer amount though you can skip through all of it if you wish and head right for the action.
Up into the halfway mark, the story relies solely on the character interactions, as the plot up until then is boring at best. Most of your interactions will be with whoever your main servant is for that story line and they play out in a dating/romance novel fashion. Nearly all of them have strong affections towards you from the get go whether you be male or female, making for some rather humorous situations whenever those servants meet each other. You’ll be given some dialogue choices to make from time to time, however they make no difference other than increasing your “bond level” to increase the amount of skills you can equip them with.
Surprisingly, the story gets very good later on and is well worth pulling through the boring first half. As mentioned you can install skills you’ve gathered into a servant to enhance their damage, add defense or give a chance for your attacks to have an elemental effect, to name a few of them. Where you’ll place them matters as some sections are interconnected to each other leading to substantial bonuses if you position skills of the same type in the right place. It is an interesting feature that adds a sense of control as to how your servant plays. Your character will not do any fighting, instead he/she takes the form of a support character uses “Code Casts” that buffs and heals from the safety of the Regalia ring which he is teleported into.
You’ll have up to four support casts at any one time and buying items unlock different casts & combinations. With all that being said, it is at its core still essentially a Dynasty Warrior and you could likely ignore all of those depending on both your character’s level as well as the difficulty you are on. For those unfamiliar with that franchise, you are for all intents and purposes a one-man army that will mow down tons of enemies via button mashing your way to victory. Some sections of the map are controlled by you and some by whoever your foe may be so you are tasked with capturing their territory while defending your own. Certain sections are worth more than others and stopping an enemy attack preemptively can be a better solution than fighting them on your own turf, making you have to put in more thought than simply killing everyone around you.
Taking over areas require you to take out some tougher foes called Aggressors that protect those lands. In order to get them to show up, you will have to kill a certain amount of grunts before you can in turn wipe them out and taking their territory. The enemy side have a troublesome opponent called a Plant that will contentiously spawn aggressors and enemies, eventually leading to a horde attack your section of your lands. These are fairly annoying enemies that seem to pop up again as soon you manage to destroy one, leading to you running around all over the place while your useless ally commanders do nothing. It feels similar to a single person taking all the roles in a baseball game on his own while the rest of the team sit on the bench shouting encouragement.
All joking aside, all the juggling from constantly respawning Plants, defending territories and whatever one-sided gimmick that level throws at you do become a bit frustrating. Each character has their own fighting styles however their combos are tied to their current level so starting off with a new character for the first time means that the combat feels clunky due to being unable to string together more than four attacks in this already basic fighting system. Once they level up that problem is fixed and you’ll have fun smoothly rampaging around the battlefield, though by that point that character’s story is nearly over and it’ll soon be time to start the cycle again. Their stats increase with levels as well which works perfectly well, unlike the combos.
Aside from your normal and heavy attacks, you’ll have access to the Regalia ring that can temporarily give a character immense power and make them invulnerable for a set amount of time. Another ability is an Extella attack that will destroy most enemies anywhere near you when set off. Both of these require you to take or dish out enough damage to fill up their respective bars before being able to be used. They help add some variety to the combat and will help you out of a cinch or when you are low on time and must kill everyone that stands against you. Your ultimate attack is your servant’s Noble Phantasm, that can only be activated once you find three shards scattered around the map. On the PS Vita version, you activate the Noble Phantasm by the touchscreen and you lock on to certain enemies by that manner as well.
You can only lock on to other servants while the rest of the foes you’ll face will have to be fought without it leading to occasional camera issues. Servants are the only enemies on the battlefield that actually pose a threat and make conquering or defending lands they are on significantly more challenging. With how often you have to hurry to one location to another it is a good thing that dashing is infinite if you keep mashing the button. It gives it a nice sense of speed and aerial control that really separate the named characters from the slow, lumbering grunts. The environments you are fighting on are interesting as well. They have a dream-like feel to them as they are all unfinished and completely disconnected to one another. To travel between them you must find a wave of blue light on the edge of them in order to fly between sections.
Making your way across the battlefield can be difficult in some maps until you memorize them due to a few having questionable level design. After you finish or just want to take a break from the Main Story there is a Side Story mode that allows you to play as the other 13 characters to view their perspective on the events. It is a neat mode but is significantly hampered by two things. One is the aforementioned combos being slowly unlocked as you leveled up but that can be negated here if you are willing to spend a ton of in-game currency to level him/her up that way. The other is that the missions are 1:1 copies of those in the main story mode with only the dialogue being different. It is neat that everyone has their own little stories but playing through missions that may not have been very fun to play the first time is a detractor. Completing their story unlocks a costume for them which is a nice touch.
The final mode is called Free Battle and it lets you fight a character of your choosing by playing through certain main story missions as any character you want. You may notice that there is an extra slot with no portrait in it on the character selection screen. This game features an unlockable character that you can obtain via some convoluted means very reminiscent to the rumors you’d hear around the schoolyard in a time before the internet was mainstream. Finally, you have a Gallery section where you can view character models, replay story events and listen to the great soundtrack. When all is said and done, Fate/Extella’s flaws are enough to keep it from being a great title yet not enough to turn it into a bad one. Its surprisingly good story, memorable characters and unique setting make it worth a play for those willing to accept its shortcomings.
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