Fate/Extella:The Umbral Star gamescom Preview

In keeping with the Fate series’ penchant for genre switching, Fate/Extella:The Umbral Star, the third in the series, takes the series in a new direction, from dungeon crawler to huge scale hack and slash this time.

The game draws a lot from the great enemy-swarm fighters like Dynasty Warriors, Gauntlet or Earth Defence Force. You’re often faced with literally hundreds of enemies to slice through, and your task is to decimate them all in whatever means possible.

The graphics weren’t anything to write home about, but with the sheer number of enemies on the screen at once, it’d probably be hard to have something photo-realistic without slowdown. It ran smoothly regardless of the mass carnage on screen, although sadly it wasn’t at 60fps for those who care about such things.

There’s three separate story arcs in the game with a different heroine in each. Playing with each character will allow you to see the story from three different viewpoints. Although, to be fair, each of them is based around smashing enemies around like piñatas.

The Extella in the name comes from the deadly Extella manoeuvres in the game which are super powerful attacks, powered up by a combo gauge. Hits and blocks power up the move and then you can spend your gauge to unleash the devastating move. There are also “phantasm circuits” to be collected, which give access to the most powerful special moves. These rare drops come from mini boss enemies scattered throughout the game.

We were also shown a mode entitled Area Supremacy Battle, which was all about controlling land. There were the expected swathes of enemies, but defeating enemies in each sector gives you the chance to collect Regime Matrices, which are special keys that grant control to areas of the map. Collect more keys to unlock more of the map. The more keys in an area, the more difficult it is, so you can start with the harder areas and work your way down or increase your difficulty linearly depending on your playstyle. Once you’ve controlled an area, it doesn’t stop there as you must periodically return to defend it from the invading hordes who are trying to take it back.

At the time I saw the game, eight characters had been announced, with another eight still to be revealed. We’ve also just had word that the game is being delayed, with the 10th of November release date slipping to the first quarter of 2017. From what I saw though, if you’re a fan of over the top hack and slash games, then it should be worth the wait.