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Fate/Grand Order

Fate/Grand Order is a Mobile RPG where players can summon and collect Heroic Spirits of Legend and fight to protect history from anomalies. The game is set in the popular Fate/Stay Night universe and players can summon popular Servants such as Arturia Pendragon, EMIYA, Gilgamesh and Jeanne D'Arc.

Publisher: Delightworks, TYPE-MOON
Playerbase: High
Type: Mobile RPG
Release Date: June 25, 2017 (NA/EU)
Pros: +Beautiful Anime Sprite Graphics. +Huge variety of heroes. +Top notch production value.
Cons: -Pricey gatcha. -Only Asynchronous Multiplayer

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Overview

Fate/Grand Order Overview

Fate/Grand Order is a Free-to-Play Mobile RPG with asynchronous multiplayer that takes place in the Fate Universe (Nasuverse) which has spawned several novels, anime and games. Players take on the role of a Master and can control up to six servants in a party (mana willing) as they take part in a main storyline that involves traveling through time to deal with historic anomalies. Servants are representatives of "Heroic Spirits" which are figures from history and legend and each one has their own class, abilities and stats. Make use of a counter-system within the classes in order to plan your way to victory as you utilize each class to its full potential: Saber, Lancer, Archer, Rider, Assassin, Berserker, Caster and even Ruler. Show off your Servants to your friends and have your friend's Leader Servant join you in battle!

Fate/Grand Order Key Features:

  • Summon Heroic Spirits - summon heroes from history and legend, level up both their power and your relationship with them and unleash devastating Noble Phantasms. Servants are also voiced by famous Japanese Voice Actors.
  • Ascend Your Servants - ascend your heroes to the next level and they will change in appearance and gain more skills.
  • Collect Craft Essences - collect powerful Mystic Codes that you can equip onto servants to boost them with special effects.
  • Strategic Card Battle System - take advantage of your Servant's card loadouts to build a perfect team for each scenario. Your composition is only limited by your wit and imagination.
  • Frequent Events - participate in special events that occur frequently with brand new storylines, some written from the original author of Fate/Stay Night.

Fate/Grand Order Screenshots

Fate/Grand Order Featured Video

Fate/Grand Order PV

Full Review

Fate/Grand Order Review

By, Barclay-Kallistra

Fate/Grand Order, or F/GO for short. There’s a lot to be said about this game – but let’s start with the basics. It originally released in Japan in 2015 and quickly rose in popularity to become one of the most successful mobile games in the world before eventually launching globally in English in June, 2017. It’s a story driven experience where you, the protagonist, have to take back the future for Humanity. Players summon and control legendary heroes, called servants, like Gilgamesh, Joan of Arc, and King Arthur to defeat their enemies.

Introduction, Tutorial, and Battle

Fate/Grand Order starts off with minimal story. Players who first download Fate/GO will be thrown into a battle, with a basic tutorial. The battle system is rather simple – players control three “Servants,” who are mythical figures from history summoned to fight for the player, who is a “Master.” Each Servant has 5 “Cards” that range from Buster, to Quick, to Arts. Busters do a lot of damage, and Quick attacks cause enemies to drop “C. Stars,” which are then distributed later and give a random card a chance to strike critically. More C.Stars means more chances of crit. Finally, you have Noble Phantasms – these are special, high-power attacks based on the Servant’s myth. King Arthur (Or Artoria, as she is known in the Fate series), has “Excalibur,” where she unleashes a powerful wave of magic with her blade that hits all the enemies on the field. Cú Chulainn, an Irish hero, utilizes the Gáe Bolg.

Noble Phantasms, or NPs, work off a meter than needs to be charged. This is where the final cards – Art cards – come into play. Arts charge your Servant’s NP, which then lets them execute a powerful attack. Each character has 5 cards – a mixture between Buster, Quick, and Arts, though some characters lean heavily towards one type of card. Since you have 15 cards across 3 servants, every 3 times, after all 15 cards have been played, they will be refreshed and re-shuffled for you to draw every 3 turns – so if you have a rare combination of three Buster cards, it may be wise to use them, as using three of the same card gives you a bonus to the card’s effect. Three Art cards mean extra NP gauge, and three Quick cards mean a bonus to C. Stars.

Players also have “Mystic Codes,” which are three spells that change based on which outfit the Player is wearing. The player starts out with the Chaldea Uniform, which lets the player grant either Damage Up to one Servant, heal one Servant, or give one Servant 100% evasion. These spells are on a very long cooldown, and are different from Command Spells. Currently, the Chaldea Uniform is the only outfit in the NA version, but more will be added in future updates.

Players also have access to Command Spells, which can do one of three things – grant a Servant 100% NP gauge, fully restore the health of a Servant, or – for the price of three Command Spells, restores your entire party after a wipe, with 100% NP gauge.

Story
The story is focused with you being a person who has the potential to be a “Master.” Using the Fate summoning system, Masters can summon Servants – notable figures from history, as stated before. The player character wakes up in the halls of the Chaldea Security Organization – an organization that has devoted itself to ensuring humanity’s continued survival into the next 100 years, at minimum. To that extent, they have developed several tools to aid in them in this endeavor, in addition to the Fate summoning system.

Theorizing that planets have souls, the Chaldea Security Organization constructed CHALDEAS – a representation of the Earth’s soul. As long as CHALDEAS keeps burning bright, humanity’s survival is guaranteed. To observe CHALDEAS, a sort of ‘telescope,’ for lack of a better term, known as SHIVA was designed to observe CHALDEAS.
Lastly, Rayshifting is the final trick available to the men and women of the Chaldea Security Organization. Breaking down a person’s body, Rayshifting enables someone to travel through time. Having detected the light of humanity diming with CHALDEAS, and new, ‘unobservable’ zones appearing throughout time, the Chaldea Security Organization quickly found 48 candidates who can quickly become Masters, intent on sending them to this unobservable zone.

A few spoiler-free hiccups later, and you’re in Japan!

The Map, and Menus, and Summoning
The game is rather straightforward in its menu system. You have specific Singularities that you, as the player, are tasked with resolving. Each singularity has quests within it, that take you a battle. Sometimes versus golems, other times versus zombies. Sometimes, you’ll be put up against enemy Servants - there is no PvP in this game. The tutorial practically hand-holds you through the first three story missions, and then it takes you to a summoning tutorial, which brings me to my next part – the summoning.
There are two different summoning options – Saint Quartz summons, and Friend Point summons, or SQ and FP summons. Both Saint Quartz and Friend Points are in-game resources, that allow you to summon Craft Essences, and new Servants. Unfortunately, F/GO is just as prone to something I’d like to call “Mobile Game-ism.”
Upon executing the player’s first Summon, they are guaranteed to one 4-star servant. This is something that draws the player in, a cool character they can take into battle to fight. However, this is the only time players are guaranteed to a 4-star servant. Saint Quartz is a paid currency that players have to buy, but Fate/Grand Order does reward it on occasion.
Here we go to the double-edged sword I talked about at the beginning of my article. Because the North American version of F/GO is following the release schedule of the Japanese version, players in NA know all the Servants that will be coming out. Players who want to save their Saint Quartz (I know I will be – I want Edmond Dantes!) can, which means that if you are smart with saving your Quartz, you can potentially stockpile up to 1,000 free Saint Quartz, and when there is a servant you KNOW you want arrives, you can roll for them over and over.

Conclusion and Final Thoughts
Fate/Grand Order is many things. At its base level, it’s a Fate theme park. Servants from Fate/Apocrypha, Fate/Zero, Fate/Extella, Fate/Extra CCC, and just about every Fate game in existence, can be found in Fate/Grand Order. However, players who have not played any of those, and know nothing about the Fate franchise (known as the Nasuverse within the community, named after Kinoko Nasu, the main writer at Type-Moon), can still come in and enjoy Fate/Grand Order for what it is – a game where you summon the most powerful and legendary figures in history to save the world. I wouldn’t call it a Pay-2-Win game – you can summon your friends’ Servants, and if you make friends with someone who has a powerful 5-star Servant, you can just about get carried through the game until you get some better ones.

The story itself is also solid, and leveling Servants is not bad. It can get a bit grindy – spamming Chaldea Gate daily missions for EXP cards can get tiresome. On top of that, to Ascend Servants (raise their level cap), players will need to occasionally GRIND certain missions for Ascension items. A lot of emphasis on the word grind. If you are a player who enjoys collecting characters in mobile games, or enjoy the more traditional turn-based RPG style of gameplay, or just want to say “I love Vlad the Impaler, he just whooped Caligula,” then Fate/Grand Order just may be for you.

Final Verdict – Great

While Fate/Grand Order isn't a revolutionary new game it's still incredibly fun. The grind can be long and the Servant drop rates are low (1% for a 5-star, 4% for a 4-star). However, the traditional RPG combat is fun, and as engaging as you want it to be. Players who do not want to spend money on premium currency will, most of the time, not feel pressured into it. The story, cast of characters, wide range of Servants, and seeing famous figures in history having new life breathed into them is fantastically done. The top tier visuals and production value really make the game shine.

Screenshots

Fate/Grand Order Screenshots

Videos

Fate/Grand Order Videos

Fate/Grand Order TV-CM 第2弾

System Requirements

Fate/Grand Order System Requirements

Minimum Requirements:

Operating System: iOS 6.0 / Android 4.1
Device: iPhone 5, iPad 3rd Generation, iPad mini 2nd Generation, iPod touch 6th Generation, iPhone 4s, Android Smart Phone With 2GB RAM minimum.
Hard Disk Space: 77.8 MB

Music

Fate/Grand Order Music & Soundtrack

Coming Soon!

Additional Info

Fate/Grand Order Additional Information

Developer: Delightworks, TYPE-MOON

Release Date (JP): July 29th, 2015

Release Date (NA/EU): June 25th, 2017

Development History / Background:

Fate/Grand Order was developed by Delightworks and TYPE-MOON and includes original writing from the original creator of Fate/Stay Night. The project originally used the Fate/Apocrypha scenario, which had instead been turned into a book due to delays. The game currently has over 5 million downloads.