Fate/Extra - Sony PSP

The game is a Rock-paper-scissors based RPG set in an alternate timelineto the fate/stay night visual novel in which traditional magecraft took a backseat to technological advancementand eventually died out.You take the role of a largely silent protagonist (s/he does give his/her impression on events though)in a virtual world created by the moon cell, an all-powerful machine which has set fortha new war for the wish-granting holy grail modeled after the wars of oldin which mages would use the grail's limitless power to summon heroes of old to fight beside them.You have a choice of the 3 servant classes Saber (all around), Caster (magic) and Archer (technical)and there are two routes you can follow, either Rin or Rani's.each week you'll be assigned to fight an enemy master and have 6 days to prepare. preparation has two phases:the school and the dungeons. At school you'll be buying items, upgrading your Servant's stats and talking to NPCs.And in the dungeons you'll be exploring for items, leveling up on enemies and sometimes run into the enemy master.Combat work as such: you have 3 choices of attack:Attack, Guard and Break. Attack beats Break, Break beats Guard and Guard beats Attack.You'll have to set 6 moves a turn, which will then play out in sucession, get 3 straight hits in and you'll get a extra turn.You also have access to unique skills both from the master and servant like healing and attacks at the cost of MP.The Master's support can be added on top of a move while the Servant's skills will take up a spot.When you've fought the enemy enough times, more and more of the enemy's moves will be shown to you,allowing you to quicker guess their patterns. Getting info on the enemy Servant works as such.during the 6 day period, you can find basic information on the servant's identity which will be added to your 'matrix' status screen. get 3 such pieces of information and you can level it up to rank E at the last day,which will show you the max amount of the enemy's pattern when you fight.Past knowledge of the Nasuverse is definitely required to fully enjoy this game as there are plenty of references,not only to the Fate universe, but also to other franchises such as Tsukihime and Kara no Kyoukai.Overall, Extra is a treat to anyone well versed in the nasuverse's history.But for anyone else, the persona remakes for the PSP would probably be a much wiser course of action.with my Nasu colored glasses, I see a great game. But I can't imagine going into it with no existing knowledgeof at least the Fate franchise.

Sorry. I lost myself with that title. But it was necessary. I'll explain why momentarily. For summary skip to the bottom. Too many fanboys downvoting my review that is more than fair.The game takes strong cues from  Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 , The Matrix [Blu-ray ] and  .hack Collection (Part 1: Infection, Part 2: Mutation, Part 3: Outbreak, Part 4: Quarantine) .I didn't know what to expect going into this game. What I certainly didn't see coming was 1 HOUR1 OF NON-INTERACTIVE INTRODUCTION. Yes, I said that right. No less than 1 hour before I got to control the player. It's a LONG introduction and no way to really skip it. Then it got into things and I wasn't totally lost, but I was somewhat let down. You'll then control your Servant, who is the representation of someone from real history. They have selected Masters, seen as the school kids (thus the Persona 3 reference) to direct them in battle on their behalf. The whole setup culminates into a competitive tournament where the victor moves on...and the loser dies. It turns out that each of these kids are not actually at school at all, but are simply avatars of their real selves (thus the .hack reference above) and are in a software program. Your protagonist feels this disconnect at a subconscious level (thus the Matrix reference) and starts to question everything. He/she witnesses strange occurrences at the school, and then learns of the Master/Servant deal. The game then begins.Unique with Fate Extra - evident by the name - is that you can make faulty decisions that will result in Game Over. Yes, the game will let you fail, and if you haven't saved frequently, you may be forced to replay certain events over and over again until you get it right. Fortunately, it's often a two-choice selection, where you have at least a 50% chance of getting the right answer, and to be honest it's a bit intriguing to see what happens. IT does add a certain element of risk that makes the game slightly appealing. I made one choice that seemed like the obvious one, and ended up dead within seconds. It was then that I realized the error: instead of instructing my Servant like a Master is supposed to, I basically agreed with them and their impetuousness. The result was death. It occurred to me that in order to get through the game, I had to play the role the game wanted me to play...I had to make the decisions. I had to think about the repercussions. I had to make sure I was the leader, instead of just listening to everything told to me.If that sounds deep, it really is. Decisions that result in tree branching are always interesting to me, and I was curious as to how things would play out.Unfortunately, the battle engine is a bit too simplistic to give kudos to. Instead of a standard turn-based affair, you'll be presented with what is essentially a rock-paper-scissors template: you have the choice to attack, break (which means to break a block) or defend. Each of these is superior to another: the break beats defend, defend beats attack, and attack beats break. You'll always attack first, and all you really have to do is guess which your enemy is using, and then use the stronger choice. So in other words you have a 33.4% chance of getting a successful attack, and just as equal a chance to get pummeled, as equal a chance to get an even result. Sound boring? It really can be. You do get a few "gimmies" when fighting the enemies, which ensure that you don't get pummeled every round. But overall it gets dull, exciting only when going up against another Servant/Master.That's when you'll first encounter Noble Phantasm, which is a "limit break" of sorts, an ultimate attack that each Servant has. The difference is that these are also the key to learning who each Servant really is/was, and you'll use this information to gain an advantage when fighting them. As you progress through each day, you will collect various pieces of information about your enemy. There are certain scenarios and events set up for this, and at the end, you will go over the information collected and answer questions. If you're correct, you should be able to deduce who your enemy Servant really is/was...and I'm referring to real people from various countries' histories. Some are obvious, especially when it's disclosed where they come from. Some are not so obvious...you know the place but don't know the name. Some you have heard of years ago but don't remember. Don't feel bad if you turn to Google for clues...history class wasn't anywhere near sufficient for some of these people.As the game goes on, you'll be able to use SP to build your Servant's stats up and make them more powerful. Initially they're "ok" but when you start increasing their stats, they'll become a force to be reckoned with. You'll still have somewhat of a tough time in some battles where they don't give you enough hints, but overall if you're diligent about these increases, you should be perfectly fine. But the variety of battle does not change. If you didn't like paper-rock-scissors as a kid, you probably want to skip this title entirely.As for the environments, the school is your generic faire - in fact, I would go so far as to say they nearly completely ripped it off from Persona 3 - but the Arena has some really detailed environments. You'll spend a lot of time there, as that's where you not only build up your characters and gather treasure, but it's also where you will find the cipher keys necessary to compete in the final rounds of each tournament. In the Arena, the walking areas are transparent squares, and through them you can see fully animated backdrops of various places, such as underwater coliseums and and others. The depth is tremendous, and it is clear that this is where the bulk of the development work went. Similar to the dungeon on Persona 3, there are a lot of twists and turns here, and enemies scatter the floors. As you progress through the game, they will get longer and longer too, which just adds to some of the boredom as you eventually will get tired of the same paper-rock-scissors equation for every battle.Just as you begin to fall asleep, some event will hit you where your competition will either attack you, confront you or outrun you, and you get excited all over again. You won't actually get to complete these fights until you get rather stronger, but they offer a welcome respite to the boring same-old that you've been through up to that point. The script is also a good one, though lengthy. If you're not a fan of reading text skip this game for sure. There are voices but they're in Japanese, and not every spoken dialog has voices to them, which I found strange. That said, the bantering between each Servant is quite entertaining, and there are some Servants who are legitimately annoying enough to where you look forward to working hard enough to destroy them when the time comes.Fate Extra is one of those games marred by a very VERY basic battle engine, but is loaded with all sorts of deep story and character/plot development. Graphically it's not going to win any awards that I can think of. It's nowhere near the game that Persona 3 is, either. It's worth a playthrough if for nothing else than the general storyline and plot. Don't expect much out of the battle engine though, and realize that patience is a virtue here, especially when you start a new game.

really good. it s not easy to find psp games now, whatever fate is a good game lol. ty a lot