Game 17: Fate Grand Order (Part 1)
Mobile games have not had a great track record when it comes to motivations for players to keep playing their game, and while there are plenty of mobile games out there that just try to sell you a pretty PNG, Fate Grand Order never really feels that way. Absolutely on a marketing stand point FGO is a moneymaker, and something that takes advantage of people's gambling habits and the predatory strategies of free to play games. However when we look deeper into the game itself, there is also a lot of heart and soul poured into FGO that just feels genuine with it's writing and character dynamics that you really can't write off FGO as a simple marketing scheme.
Fate Grand Order has this interesting gameplay loop that is both highly addictive and incredibly time consuming. Largely the game focuses you, the player, to level up your servants thru resources, and this comes in a variety of ways. From various materials you need to level skill sets, additional copies to power up servants super moves, and other materials to literally level up your servants, and give them higher level caps. The game is a constant grid when it's not telling a story to you, and in a lot of ways FGO is just a gamification of the grind mindset at times. What perhaps becomes even more baffling is that FGO usually does a ton of events to help make these said materials easier to obtain thru various wacky adventures, straight up just grinding, or thru their constant log in bonuses.
Playing FGO is certainly a test of patience, but one that feels rewarding once you start to understand the game's mechanics. This is mainly due to the combat, and the way a player can really start to understand how to optimize it. The game starts out fairly easy, and only starts getting hard about 4/5ths the way thru the game. Within that time you should be able to understand the combat system and servant leveling to really be able to handle what the game starts throwing at you, and while it certainly is a punch to the gut in terms of difficulty, it's not hard to recover from it. On top of that the game gives you ways to keeping going thru saint quartz and command spells, and while I'm sure a lot of veteran players are cringing at using saint quartz to continue battles, sometimes it just feels needed on battles that feel really difficult, and you just want to keep going. This isn't to give away the idea that FGO is a pay to win type of gacha game tho. While getting servants that are SR or SSR are relatively low, the servants that you have free access to can be some of the most busted units in the entire game. It is absolutely possible to beat the majority of the game's content with lower ranked units, and often it's to the point that most of the lower ranked units are better than some SRs and SSRs.
Grand Order's combat is a rather simplistic one of a mix of rock/paper/scissors with servant types, and matching card sequences that provide for the best hitting juice. You can also power up various cards/servants, or debuff the enemies with various skills or after effects of certain attacks, but largely the game can sometimes just be about matching all the red cards together to hit the meat sack. FGOs combat is far more complex than that with a mix of 3 different card types, but if I was going to start explaining this to you now, you might as well just download the game and look at more experienced players tutorials.
So all this micro managing and mastery of game mechanics ultimately boils down to the one missing element of the gameplay loop that FGO has, story. While I can't say that FGO always has a good story to tell; I will say there are absolutely some truly golden moments in it. This mostly comes in the form of character interactions, and the way the Fate franchise tends to address it's characters and the myths/legends they are based on. By having a basis of how a character is through outside source material, the Fate series tends to lean in subverting expectations, or giving more nuanced takes on the lore we were already given. FGO does this in a way that you mostly won't have to know about these characters original backstories because the way they interact with you, and how they already know they are a historical figure. Sometimes this givens into info dumping, but it's mostly used as proper winks and acknowledgement of the history of the character. Later on in this game the quality of writing improves to the point that it really starts to feel like you are reading a visual novel over simply playing a mobile game with images that say nice things about you.
Honestly your enjoyment is just a testament of how much time and effort you are willing to give FGO to make it work, and unlike most mobile games, this one has a payoff. Sadly, I can't say I'd recommend this game to most people due to how highly demanding it is in terms of your time. FGO is a real hard sell because it truly does feel like it gets good at the half way point, and by that point you're already like 30 hrs. in, and that just feels like you could be doing something more productive.
