Lots of exciting things going on this year for the Fate fan. The biggest news is Ilya joins Fate/Grand Order
This apparently propelled Fate Grand Order to #1 on the Japanese mobile chart, even if it's only for a few days. For the low price of around $1500 you too can pull Ilya (Magical Girl) from a time limited pool before she rotates out of the pool forever. Eric posted a few video of Magical Girl Ilya before, and I'm sure all her other forms (Saber, Archer, whatever) will eventually find the way into the game. You can also pick up Kuroi, the slutty version of Ilya for free and she's apparently totally overpowered for being part of the Ilya power ranger series. As always, Ilya is heavily clothed to the point where you might be wondering if she's actually a character in a hentai/harem/magical girl game or anime. For some inexplicable reason Typemoon decided to abandon their #2 female lead, Rin Tohsaka, and decided to go with the magical girl approach with the #3 girl. If there was actually any point to the game F/GO itself I would be tempted to try to go on a reroll marathon to get her, though with an estimated 500 pulls to hit any particular 5* if you're lucky, that seems like it'd take a pretty long time! Apparently the whales just hired some guys to keep on hit the 'get 10 more summons' button and it can still take days to max out Ilya (need 5 of her to max her super out).
Chapter 6 for Fate Grand Order came out a few month ago, and while most people claim they're playing these games for the story, Chapter 6, the Battle for Camelot, is actually good enough to be playing for the story. In F/GO, humanity was wiped out by an unknown cataclysm in the year 2016 and you're supposed to travel back in time to investigate temporary anomalies (like Dragonball Xenoverse) with your team of random legendary heroes to try to reverse what led to the unknown cataclysm. In Chapter 6, the Knights of the Round conquered Jerusalem during the time the Crusades took place and burned it to the ground, which probably causes some kind of butterfly effect that's likely very bad, though you found out right away that the Knights of the Round are planning to destroy Earth right now, to prevent it from being destroyed in 2016. Although Excalibur is a small unit of measure, as in 'this guy's attack does about one billion times the damage of an Excalibur', the story mysteriously remembered its setting where a legendary hero's strength correlates with how famous they actually are in the real world as opposed to some fantasy world where everyone and their brother can beat King Arthur in popularity. Shortly after the chapter started you also found out the Artoria Pendragon (Fate's #1 girl, the female version of King Arthur) got tired of being a punchline in power level discussion and rerolled as a Lancer class and is leading the new Knights of the Round to purge humanity. Thankfully, as any dataminer would know from the prologue, you have the genderbent Sir Galahad on your side as the generic underclassman girl, and Sir Bedivere recently defeated to join the hero's side as well. With two moles from the Knights of the Round, the hero sets out to brutally murder the Knights of the Round to prevent this timeline from being destroyed:
Sir Gawain: He was fighting something like 50 random legendary heroes summoned by the hero throughout the chapter before finally died, and it turned out that was really because Artoria had no use for him and since dying for Artoria is the greatest honor a Knight of the Round could have, he decided to let the heroes kill him.
Sir Mordred: Sir Galahad tries some Naruto-ism trick by saying Mordred failed to protect her (of course Mordred is a girl, and super cute too) soldiers which totally didn't work if you have any idea what kind of person Mordred is supposed to be. However, Sir Bedivere pulls some elite Naruto-ism by saying that he knows Mordred is the most innocent and devoted Knight of the Round whose loyalty is second to none. This confused Sir Mordred greatly and Sir Galahad repeatedly bash Mordred on the head until she finally died. Sir Bedivere then said that Mordred's greatest sin was that she's too weak to kill Artoria and he'll succeed where she failed. And yes, you're supposed to be the good guys. I really wish there's an option to switch sides and kill the traitors to the Knights of the Round, though. As Sir Mordred said, "The Knight of Treachery was betrayed... she was the one who was supposed to kill me, not you!", it's seriously demeaning how she died in the hands of two traitors of the Knights of the Round.
Sir Lancelot: Sir Lancelot immediately defected to the hero's camp after being promised of being able to hang out with the hero's harem. During the assault on Camelot, Sir Agravain fought Sir Lancelot 1on1, and while Lancelot is supposed to be way stronger, Agravain killed Lancelot and said that a knight that runs off with random sluts cannot possibly beat him, because he originally thought all women are sluts after Lancelot ran off with Guinevere (he's the one who exposed Lancelot and Guinevere, I think), but Artoria showed him that it's not a shame to be a man. It took more than ten years but it seemed like Artoria finally figured out that if she wanted to know what love is she always could have picked from the Knights of the Round instead of hanging out with random losers. Okay I'm guessing what is supposed to happen is she just said, "I'm a woman and not a slut" and that was enough to restore Sir Agravain's faith. I always disliked Artoria's character because the game always puts her as "I'm not interested in man" and then become romantically involved, despite the fact that if she had any interest in man she could've any kind of man she wanted.
Sir Tristan: The heroes hired an assassin and poisoned Sir Tristan (he supposedly die from poison in the legends). When this didn't work, the assassin summoned one of the many readily available demon gods in the world of Fate that devoured Sir Tristan.
After defeating all the Knights of the Round, the heroes confront Artoria (who actually is drawn like a pretty boy as opposed to 'who can possibly confuse her for a guy' like the original) in her throne, and Artoria revealed that she already knew the world was going to be destroyed in 2016 and that she's been fighting extraplanar Gods that try to wipe out the universe since the dawn of time and even if this cataclysm was averted it was only a matter of time before some other cataclysm wiped out humanity so her plan is to put humanity in her throne room where they'll rest as her trophy for all of eternity. Sir Bedivere revealed he ran off with the Excalibur instead of throwing it back to the lake which is what caused this new timeline to emerge, and I guess in this timeline Artoria loves Bedivere so she asked him to come back but Bedivere rejects her, making her go from monotone girl to axe crazy. This turns out to be the only way to defeat Artoria who has a power level of 3 billion Excaliburs or whatever because she powers down greatly when she's actually affected by stuff like emotions. So the party does succeed in killing her and finally correcting the timeline. So I guess the heroes are the good guys after all. It's just a really good narrative of the Knights of the Round and it makes you wonder if you're even fighting on the right side, though I guess the point is that they had to stop Artoria from purging humanity and she and the Knights of the Round are so powerful that you couldn't have possibly beaten them in any standard honorable RPG way.
Also this month, Fate/Prototype Silver Fragments illustrations for the final chapter:
Manaka Sajyou, the girl in the blue, is finally going to die! Overpowered amongst overpowered, cutest amongst cutest, and sickest amongst the sickest. There's no such thing as too cute to die when you're as evil as she is. It's up there with Ilya getting killed by having her heart ripped out on the second playthrough of Fate Stay Night. I'm a huge fan of both characters, but they're both unabashedly evil and 100% deserved to die. Well, since Silver Fragments is a prequel, everyone already knows that she didn't really die anyway. Death can only slow her down a bit since her two powers are Omniscience and Omnipotence. I don't think Fate Prototype (the work in progress that comes after Silver Fragments) is ever even going to go anywhere, because it's not clear how anyone could kill Manaka a second time. In the rather ironic words from herself, power of love does beat anything, even her own powers, because she'd never use Omniscience on her Prince Charming to see if the relationship is going to turn out okay.
This apparently propelled Fate Grand Order to #1 on the Japanese mobile chart, even if it's only for a few days. For the low price of around $1500 you too can pull Ilya (Magical Girl) from a time limited pool before she rotates out of the pool forever. Eric posted a few video of Magical Girl Ilya before, and I'm sure all her other forms (Saber, Archer, whatever) will eventually find the way into the game. You can also pick up Kuroi, the slutty version of Ilya for free and she's apparently totally overpowered for being part of the Ilya power ranger series. As always, Ilya is heavily clothed to the point where you might be wondering if she's actually a character in a hentai/harem/magical girl game or anime. For some inexplicable reason Typemoon decided to abandon their #2 female lead, Rin Tohsaka, and decided to go with the magical girl approach with the #3 girl. If there was actually any point to the game F/GO itself I would be tempted to try to go on a reroll marathon to get her, though with an estimated 500 pulls to hit any particular 5* if you're lucky, that seems like it'd take a pretty long time! Apparently the whales just hired some guys to keep on hit the 'get 10 more summons' button and it can still take days to max out Ilya (need 5 of her to max her super out).
Chapter 6 for Fate Grand Order came out a few month ago, and while most people claim they're playing these games for the story, Chapter 6, the Battle for Camelot, is actually good enough to be playing for the story. In F/GO, humanity was wiped out by an unknown cataclysm in the year 2016 and you're supposed to travel back in time to investigate temporary anomalies (like Dragonball Xenoverse) with your team of random legendary heroes to try to reverse what led to the unknown cataclysm. In Chapter 6, the Knights of the Round conquered Jerusalem during the time the Crusades took place and burned it to the ground, which probably causes some kind of butterfly effect that's likely very bad, though you found out right away that the Knights of the Round are planning to destroy Earth right now, to prevent it from being destroyed in 2016. Although Excalibur is a small unit of measure, as in 'this guy's attack does about one billion times the damage of an Excalibur', the story mysteriously remembered its setting where a legendary hero's strength correlates with how famous they actually are in the real world as opposed to some fantasy world where everyone and their brother can beat King Arthur in popularity. Shortly after the chapter started you also found out the Artoria Pendragon (Fate's #1 girl, the female version of King Arthur) got tired of being a punchline in power level discussion and rerolled as a Lancer class and is leading the new Knights of the Round to purge humanity. Thankfully, as any dataminer would know from the prologue, you have the genderbent Sir Galahad on your side as the generic underclassman girl, and Sir Bedivere recently defeated to join the hero's side as well. With two moles from the Knights of the Round, the hero sets out to brutally murder the Knights of the Round to prevent this timeline from being destroyed:
Sir Gawain: He was fighting something like 50 random legendary heroes summoned by the hero throughout the chapter before finally died, and it turned out that was really because Artoria had no use for him and since dying for Artoria is the greatest honor a Knight of the Round could have, he decided to let the heroes kill him.
Sir Mordred: Sir Galahad tries some Naruto-ism trick by saying Mordred failed to protect her (of course Mordred is a girl, and super cute too) soldiers which totally didn't work if you have any idea what kind of person Mordred is supposed to be. However, Sir Bedivere pulls some elite Naruto-ism by saying that he knows Mordred is the most innocent and devoted Knight of the Round whose loyalty is second to none. This confused Sir Mordred greatly and Sir Galahad repeatedly bash Mordred on the head until she finally died. Sir Bedivere then said that Mordred's greatest sin was that she's too weak to kill Artoria and he'll succeed where she failed. And yes, you're supposed to be the good guys. I really wish there's an option to switch sides and kill the traitors to the Knights of the Round, though. As Sir Mordred said, "The Knight of Treachery was betrayed... she was the one who was supposed to kill me, not you!", it's seriously demeaning how she died in the hands of two traitors of the Knights of the Round.
Sir Lancelot: Sir Lancelot immediately defected to the hero's camp after being promised of being able to hang out with the hero's harem. During the assault on Camelot, Sir Agravain fought Sir Lancelot 1on1, and while Lancelot is supposed to be way stronger, Agravain killed Lancelot and said that a knight that runs off with random sluts cannot possibly beat him, because he originally thought all women are sluts after Lancelot ran off with Guinevere (he's the one who exposed Lancelot and Guinevere, I think), but Artoria showed him that it's not a shame to be a man. It took more than ten years but it seemed like Artoria finally figured out that if she wanted to know what love is she always could have picked from the Knights of the Round instead of hanging out with random losers. Okay I'm guessing what is supposed to happen is she just said, "I'm a woman and not a slut" and that was enough to restore Sir Agravain's faith. I always disliked Artoria's character because the game always puts her as "I'm not interested in man" and then become romantically involved, despite the fact that if she had any interest in man she could've any kind of man she wanted.
Sir Tristan: The heroes hired an assassin and poisoned Sir Tristan (he supposedly die from poison in the legends). When this didn't work, the assassin summoned one of the many readily available demon gods in the world of Fate that devoured Sir Tristan.
After defeating all the Knights of the Round, the heroes confront Artoria (who actually is drawn like a pretty boy as opposed to 'who can possibly confuse her for a guy' like the original) in her throne, and Artoria revealed that she already knew the world was going to be destroyed in 2016 and that she's been fighting extraplanar Gods that try to wipe out the universe since the dawn of time and even if this cataclysm was averted it was only a matter of time before some other cataclysm wiped out humanity so her plan is to put humanity in her throne room where they'll rest as her trophy for all of eternity. Sir Bedivere revealed he ran off with the Excalibur instead of throwing it back to the lake which is what caused this new timeline to emerge, and I guess in this timeline Artoria loves Bedivere so she asked him to come back but Bedivere rejects her, making her go from monotone girl to axe crazy. This turns out to be the only way to defeat Artoria who has a power level of 3 billion Excaliburs or whatever because she powers down greatly when she's actually affected by stuff like emotions. So the party does succeed in killing her and finally correcting the timeline. So I guess the heroes are the good guys after all. It's just a really good narrative of the Knights of the Round and it makes you wonder if you're even fighting on the right side, though I guess the point is that they had to stop Artoria from purging humanity and she and the Knights of the Round are so powerful that you couldn't have possibly beaten them in any standard honorable RPG way.
Also this month, Fate/Prototype Silver Fragments illustrations for the final chapter:
Manaka Sajyou, the girl in the blue, is finally going to die! Overpowered amongst overpowered, cutest amongst cutest, and sickest amongst the sickest. There's no such thing as too cute to die when you're as evil as she is. It's up there with Ilya getting killed by having her heart ripped out on the second playthrough of Fate Stay Night. I'm a huge fan of both characters, but they're both unabashedly evil and 100% deserved to die. Well, since Silver Fragments is a prequel, everyone already knows that she didn't really die anyway. Death can only slow her down a bit since her two powers are Omniscience and Omnipotence. I don't think Fate Prototype (the work in progress that comes after Silver Fragments) is ever even going to go anywhere, because it's not clear how anyone could kill Manaka a second time. In the rather ironic words from herself, power of love does beat anything, even her own powers, because she'd never use Omniscience on her Prince Charming to see if the relationship is going to turn out okay.
