Fate/Samurai Remnant Review (agrajag)
no you don't need prior knowledge to play this. there are cameo characters here from other fate works, but it's basically just for fun and not structurally important. miniature rant here, but i hate how much people overexaggerate needing prior knowledge to play or read type moon stuff, they are all standalone, with very few exceptions, just read/watch/play what you think looks interesting.
spoilers follow
flawed in a lot of ways, but when it matter it really hits. there is so much care put into the overall production. all the character portraits, the animations, the 3d environments and all the million other fine details, you can just tell the developers were type moon fans themselves and wanted to bring this setting to life out of that love, it is absolutely stellar on that front.
writing wise it is good in broad strokes. i do have complaints about the cast being too large and a lot of characters not getting more development, a bunch of the rogue servants in particular were basically just fan service and wasted in the story. The main cast is pretty great, though (and this is probably another minus) you won't get to see a lot of that until the second playthrough. iori and saber are the centerpiece obviously and by far the best part of the game, but i ended up liking all of the master/servant pairs by the end except like tsuchimikado and caster, who really suffered from the writing in general. tsuchimikado was always just a stereotypical cackling villain (or comic relief in dlc1) in his scenes, he practically gets more development in the digression about his brother than he gets in the entire rest of the game (also in the short story). i got a laugh from caster telling iori their true name and them immediately saying "i bet you don't even know who that is". also didn't pick up on this until i saw a post afterwards, but chiemon never actually killing anyone innocent (except arguably whoever was in edo castle in his ending) is such a subtle and good detail. by the end of entreat the darkness, which was i think the perfect end to the game, i just felt so bad for kaya, lol. i do wonder how much she understood iori, it's never spelled out but it felt like she knew more than she let on, but maybe that's just me coping.
it really feels like they should have forced the snake ending for the first play, it just makes significantly more sense. I also suspect there were supposed to be more differences across playthroughs but they had to pare back whatever their plans were due to scale. snake -> rat -> entreat the darkness just so perfectly follows the lineage of the original fsn's storylines that i have a hard time believing it wasn't intended.
gameplay wise i'm fine with it. not a musou player but this was more small scale fights than large fights, people compared it to p5strikers or yakuza which i've never played. lot of small irritating things, like dialogue happening during combat, or the way ranged servants worked. counterattack moves seem like by far the strongest thing in the game against strong enemies, outside of affinity np charges and nps/valor strikes, so i ended up abusing earth h1 a lot once i unlocked that. against trash mobs, water stance is great, but so is fire h4 (the multi stabbing move). h3 and h2 spam are also bonkers. void is just silly lol. honestly the most fun i had in actually playing the game was in the leyline battles, give me more of that.
dlc1
- should be saved for after first playthrough
- decent, a little tiresome by the end. it's extremely funny how like 80% of gil and ibuki's lines are repeated across routes. the ending cgs are extremely cute, especially yui/rider's.
dlc2
- should be saved for after second playthrough.
- short standalone story, young munenori is just a really fun character, writing and gameplay wise. loved the teamup at the end.
dlc3
- not played yet, will update later.