Fate Extella/Link (Switch) Review

Welcome, Masters, to the Moon Cell. The time has come for you to pick a Servant and take up arms against the chaos threating the stability of this digital landscape in Fate Extella/Link, coming from the developers at Marvelous and published by Xseed Games, who also supplied a review code for this video. Now that we’re all here, let us begin.

Fate is already a complicated series to try and explain, what with alternate continuities and universes up the wazoo. This continuity is the one that started with EXTRA, and is the third sequel in that sub-series (though because canon is really weird in this franchise, even that’s debatable), so there’s going to be several elements that come across as confusing or unexplained to players just getting started. There are better options to get into the series anyway, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

You are the last remaining Master in SE.RA.PH, a digital landscape existing on a supercomputer located within Earth’s Moon. Side note, you can name yourself whatever you like, but for this plot summary I’ll be sticking to the master’s canon name, Hakuno. Within SE.RA.PH, there is currently a state of peace stemmed as the result of several large-scale confrontations over time, resulting in not only Hakuno having sovereignty over SE.RA.PH, but also the reconstruction and indeed repopulation of territories damaged because of these conflicts, so much so that the Moon Cell could become a civilization in and of itself.

During an ordinary day in SE.RA.PH, Hakuno, accompanied by Altera, former and now de-aged combatant in a previous conflict, (yes, this does make sense in context) is attacked by the Moon Cell’s protective systems seemingly going haywire, and being defenseless, must summon a Servant for protection. Hakuno is quickly rescued, though not by the expected company, but rather a new face in town, unknown at first, but pretty much immediately afterwards reveals himself to be the historical Charlemagne, or as he asks you to call him, Charlie.

Reuniting with the other Servants, including the gender bent Nero Claudius, it’s immediately noted that SE.RA.PH is being invaded by a mysterious figure with a goal of bringing “peace” to the land, who also has Servants assimilated in some unusual blue mist. So now it’s up to Hakuno’s party to eliminate this new threat and perhaps find out what his relationship with a few select characters is.
The plot’s a mouthful, which from this franchise is to be expected, but it’s also strangely simplistic considering that the goal of defeating the new threat in town is always center stage, though we’ll get back to that. It’s not exactly bad either, though if you don’t have previous familiarity with Fate at all you’ll be hopelessly lost, as if you were playing Kingdom Hearts 3 before playing every other entry.

Fate Extella/Link is a musou title; that is, a Warriors style game, much like Hyrule Warriors and Fire Emblem Warriors on the Switch before it. With that in mind, the common gameplay style of this type of title is here and accounted for. Stages are wide open areas where you as a lone fighter head out and destroy thousands of red shirts while capturing separate areas, known in this game as Sectors and completing side missions to ultimately complete the stage. As you’d expect, there’s several distinguishing features to set Extella/Link apart from other similar titles.

The playable roster is composed of a class system, splitting into nine types: Saber, Archer, Lancer, Rider, Assassin, Caster, Berserker and Ruler. Each class has an advantage for certain styles of play, but for a musou title it’s not as pronounced compared to other games in the franchise where tactical rock paper scissors comes into the picture. Everyone can beat anyone in a fair fight. How you do this, though, is another matter.

All playable characters, known as Servants, are defined by two aspects besides their class: Active Skills and a Noble Phantasm. Active Skills behave like skills in an MMORPG, where you use it and it goes on cooldown, and can be offensive or defensive in nature. These are what you’ll be popping frequently to reliably damage mid-level and boss enemies as well as rack up combo numbers when you need them. While powerful, these skills aren’t mindless, as a sufficiently strong enemy can hit you out of them during the rev up time, wasting the attack and forcing the cooldown period, so a certain level of strategy is required when using them. Except when you’re using a certain Gilgamesh, because he’s actually mindless.

While we’re on the topic of Active Skills, another strategic element to using them is the Rush Stop. By landing normal attacks on enemy Servants followed by a Class Skill (an Active Skill that is class oriented), the enemy is left open for you to damage heavily via button mashing. This is a reliable way of whittling down health bars, so make sure to abuse it in tight spots.

The other key aspect of each Servant is their Noble Phantasm, which in this game acts as a screen nuke. To use a Noble Phantasm, the meter must be charged, either via NP-filling items hidden across a stage, or more commonly, entering Moon Drive mode and slaughtering cannon fodder like normal; the latter mode is also charged by killing enemies regularly. After the Noble Phantasm Bar is charged, hitting ZL will trigger the screen nuke and likely kill anything that isn’t an end-level boss, though it will still damage them significantly if they survive.

The action, for that matter, doesn’t entirely revolve around the Servants, for the Master has a significant role in battle as well. Represented on the d-pad are Code Casts, which are better defined as instant support, doing things like charging Moon Drive instantly, healing health, boosting attack, defense or range, and a slew of other affects. What Code Casts you have is dependent on the Mystic Code you equip before a mission. These are dropped at the end of stages and are built within your stronghold, more on that in a bit. The Master’s most powerful assets, though, are Command Spells. Pressing Minus brings up the Command Spell options, which are powerful, game changing abilities that can be used at the expense of one seal. Teleportation is one of them, useful for emergency defense situations where you need to cross a map quickly, and there’s also a full HP restore to escape certain death. The third option requires all three seals and fills up HP, Moon Drive and Noble Phantasm gauges to full, so it’s a last-ditch option to survive or finish off someone quicker. Command Spells regenerate after every battle, so don’t worry about wasting them.

Before a battle begins, you have a moment to wander around your mobile base of operations, where you can converse with Servants, modify your currently equipped Servant, and generally just mess around in a limited capacity. Though speaking of modifications, each Servant can be equipped with modifiers that provide a suite of standard buffs. Extra damage against select enemies, more currency, more experience, more defense, more attack, the works. These are dropped through regular combat, so you’ll see a lot of them. Unlocking more slots requires maxing out Bond levels with Servants, which is done via side missions. Before a mission starts, going to the Side Missions tab lets you select the Servant whose bond you want to level up, and you’ll have a side objective to accomplish, like killing a set number of enemies, reaching a combo threshold, or capturing several Sectors. The higher your Bond, the more modifier slots open, so max out the Servant you like the most.

This formula repeats across the game’s 27 levels, in a progression style comparable to, of all things, Shadow the Hedgehog. Before you panic, the implementation is much, much better. Not only can you backtrack freely to complete missions as needed, but you don’t have to start from the beginning to unlock every route. So, while completing all three routes is necessary to unlock every Servant and get the full picture of the plot (because no, you won’t get the full story on an initial run), it’s far less tedious to accomplish by comparison. As a bonus, after completing the first route, you can freely use any unlocked Servant in the story, so bringing your favorite along for the other stages becomes possible. Completing all three routes will take roughly 9 hours on average, so the main story is robust enough. Then come Extra battles, an even bigger time sink as they get progressively harder, and multiplayer, either local or online.
The gameplay is also a mouthful, but if you’re into the musou genre to begin with, it all clicks quickly as well.

-Presentation (skip)
One aspect of Fate that rarely lets down is the presentation, and Extella/Link looks great despite being downsized to the Switch and being intensive as a musou title. The gameplay runs at a stable 30fps without any hitches to speak of while still looking respectable, whether in portable or docked mode. On a visual level, the artwork for each Servant is very well drawn, helped in part by the continued improvement of Type-Moon veteran and Fate/EXTRA character designer Arco Wada, and those models are very well translated into 3D. The music to accompany every battle, while you might not hear it all the time, is also good, and worth sampling in the BGM library. Some tracks are re-used from previous EXTRA entries, but they’re also some of the better tracks, so it balances out.

The game’s well made and fun, but here’s the thing. Something like this is best defined as a fanservice game, not in the usual definition (though there’s the usual sexiness that makes the term still apply), but rather in the “complete sense of joy and satisfaction” way, in that the game is made to appeal towards established franchise fans while not really doing much to attract any newcomers, not just on account of being a third sequel in a sub-series, but also having tons of small interactions and references that non-fans wouldn’t catch, not unlike its two Switch brethren. So ultimately, while the game on a fundamental level is solid, it’s also a difficult sell to anyone not already invested in Fate. If you’re already into it, then this is worth picking up, and the opposite is also true. Though if you’re in the middle, interested but not invested in the franchise already, go watch other Fate media and then consider picking this up to understand things better.