Review #640: Fate/EXTELLA LINK

 A rainbow-colored vomit made playable.

 Well, another year, another Musou/Warriors clone hits the shelves, this time inspired on the Fate series. As a matter of fact, this one's a sequel, but you don't need to have played the previous game, I think, to play this one, since the plot will make as little sense as if you had.

 The story pits you as Hakuno, kinda, a 'Master' that seems to be the Master of all the 'Servants' inside a virtual world of... sorts? Stuff happens, Nero's city gets invaded by glitchy enemies and a new servant, Charlemagne, jumps in to protect Hakuno. While the story is narrated from Hakuno's point of view, you'll be playing as any of 26 different Servants in an effort to protect Hakuno. The plot is completely boring and borderline nonsensical, but I don't think the plot was something the developers spent much time with. The game is made up of 27 story missions, divided into three 'routes', as well as a bunch of 'Extra' missions. For what it's worth, the game feels relatively lengthy even if missions are rather short, which, in turn, makes it great to play on the go. There's no split-screen multiplayer, which is a huge bummer, but there are a couple of online mode if you are so inclined.

 Fate/EXTELLA LINK plays like a Warriors/Musou game on crack. You've got a weak attack string that can be ended with different attacks depending on when you press the strong attack button. There's a gauge below your health bar that fills as you battle, and once it's full you can enter Moon Drive mode, which makes you stronger and lets you fire off a super move by pressing the Moon Drive button again. Killing enemies in Moon Drive mode fills yet another gauge that lets you use an even stronger super move, which can pretty much kill anything besides a final boss in one go. Lastly, holding the R button lets you use any of four Special Moves equipped on your character. Each character has about 6 of them, but you can only have four at a time. These special moves are strong and can usually cover wide areas, so as not to abuse them, they run on a cooldown timer.... which doesn't matter much, since they recharge fairly fast and are way useful than your normal attacks, so you'll be spamming a lot of these.

 Stages are comprised of various areas interconnected by gateways through which you character flies through. Enemies will respawn endlessly inside an area until you defeat the aggressors and/or enemy generals occupying them, as you play through missions, enemy reinforcements will arrive and try to reclaim zones, so it's a bit of a tug-o-war. That said, there's no penalty for losing areas, as rare as that is, so long as you and Hakuno stay alive you'll be good to go. Not to worry, since the game is rather easy and unless the mission scripted it so, generals won't target Hakuno's area. To aid you in battle, you can customize each Servant with a few passive boosts, found as spoils of victory, as well as craft items for Hakuno that'll allow him to temporarily buff your servant with a spell. Each Servant has an unlockable alternate costume, which is pretty neat.

 The entire game is a visual overload of colors and lasers. 70% of the time I wasn't able to even make sense of what was going on, I'd just be pressing buttons and watching colors fly on the screen. Hundreds of non-dangerous enemies swarm the screen on enemy-controlled areas, and they respawn as soon as you kill them, which is usually in a single swing of your sword, so it's not unusual to rack over 6000 kills on a single mission. This brings along the drawback of scoring kills feel a bit unrewarding and 'floaty', since every time you swing your sword you'll hit something that'll just keel over before being instantly replaced by another faceless goon. Which kinda lacks the 'magic' Warriors games have. Generals put up more of a fight, but they are the only enemies that feel like proper accomplishments. You can lock onto enemy generals, but they need to be inside the screen for it to work, which is a bit annoying, since sometimes you just can't move your finger to the right analog stick since you are trying to make mad combos but the enemy just got out of your zone of view, with nothing but a red arrow pointing you in their direction. It would have done wonders for the game for the game to just lock onto whatever this red arrow was pointing when you pressed the lock-on button. On another note, I wish mid-mission cutscenes, like the repetitive general-introduction ones, could have been disabled completely so as to do away with those pesky mid-battle loading screens.

 Fate/EXTELLA LINK is an entertaining but unremarkable time waster. It's a game with no depth and a few flaws but also a game that's not afraid to look bombastic as well as being simple, mindless fun.
7.0 out of 10