Tag: Fate/Extra

Top 5 Type-Moon Moments for 2011

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If anyone is a long-term visitor to the blog they will remember way back in the day when the blog started we used to put top 5 lists on the bottom of each post. In fact the collected page of top 5 list was the most popular section of the blog for the first year of site’s history. As I was riding the train home from Manhattan yesterday I had a thought. Why not bring back ye olde top 5 lists as occasional mini-posts. People love them because they are easily digestible and they are not that hard to do. Win win. So of course I bring them back in the most predictable way possible.

This year has been a great year for Type-Moon fans. Fate/Zero on TV, Carnival Phantasm being awesome, wonderful figures being released, Fate/Extra being released in English, and so much more. I decided to take my favorite 5 moments from this year’s Type-Moon bonanza. For better or for worse they are not just pictures like this.

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Is There More to the Boy Who Would be King?

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Leonardo B. Harwey is the climactic boss of Fate/Extra. You fight one more Master during the falling action of Fate/Extra but so much of the game is building up to facing Leo in the final round that he is clearly the climactic boss. Through out the game he is built up as naive tyrant. He has grown up his whole life being told that he will rule over a perfect world where there will be a place for everyone and everyone will be in their place. And he will be at the top of that hierarchy like he was the Kwisatz Haderach.

His actions are never malicious. He merely assumes the position of  tyrant because it is the only path he has ever known and does everything in the game without a hint of conscience. At first he seems like a simple character. A character that is so pure being raised in an almost Skinner Box like environment that his evil and sociopathic actions are just as pure. He does evil and heartless things because he has never learned that such actions could ever been construed as anything but the correct choices. But as I played the game I wondered if there was deeper social commentary in his character.

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Fate/Extra’s Saber Route: Bisexual Girlgamesh is Sure to be Popular

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While Tsukihime maybe have been the title that put Type-Moon on the otaku radar it is Fate/Stay Night that solidified their names in Otaku circles. The concept of legendary heroes summoned by powerful wizards in a secret war for a fantastic prize in the modern age is a powerful and wonderfully reusable idea. The original visual novel spawned a sequel visual novel, a prequel novel series, several fighting games, several anime and manga adaptations, and more merchandise than you can shake a Golden Sword of the Victorious at. Anyone who has played the Fate/Stay Night visual novel will see the clear table top RPG elements that influenced the game. So the next logical step in the Fate franchise is take the visual novel and fuse it with the table top RPG and get their child, the video game RPG. Fate/Extra is set in an alternate universe than the main Fate/Stay Night world. It takes the premise and some of the structure of the visual novel and combines it with the game play of a Persona style Japanese RPG with its own unique spin on both.

In Fate/Extra you are allowed to make several choices that majorly effect the story including if you are male or female, which legendary hero you choose as your partner, and who you choose as your main ally and/or romantic interest. For this review I chose to play as a male protagonist, with Saber as my champion, and the Egyptian alchemist as my ally. In this post I will go over all the basic game review points and my musings on the path itself. I plan to do at least 2 more posts looking at the Archer and Caster paths, the female protagonist, the Rin path, and how much you get out of replaying the game a second and third time.

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