Fate/Grand Order

While I wait for Fate/Stay Night to go on sale, I've picked up Fate/Grand Order.

Fate/Grand Order is a mobile gacha game in TYPE-MOON's Fate franchise. The story so far comprises of trying to save humanity by correcting "corrupted" historical events. These events (or in-game story segments) are called "singularities". I'm currently on the third singularity out of the currently released eight (though, there is currently twenty eight-ish main story segments total. Not sure how Lostbelt will work but, well, I haven't gotten there yet lol). A good chunk of the game play is building teams of servants and going into battle, though there are a few small ways to interact with them directly (ex. interludes, "my room" flavor dialogue, etc.).

So far the writing is fine. There is a rotating cast of characters in each singularity but there are some mainstays. It's also fun seeing their interactions and personal beefs with each other. I hear the writing picks up later on. Normally I'm iffy on picking up stories like this since I don't want to wait for something to get good but 1) I'm already interested in the franchise and 2) I feel there's enough going on in the game to make me power through it (I'm grinding those bond levels like it's the end of the world. I need to unlock those voice lines!!).

The main thing you will be interacting with in this game is servants. You mainly use them for battle, enhance their skills, etc. There's a massive assortment of servants you can meet, all with their own voice actors and unique dialogue. Some of them have appeared in previous Fate entries (ex. Fate/Aprocrypha, Fate/Extella, etc.) but there are many who made their appearance in this game.

The servants I rotate between are: Jing Ke, Fergus Mac Róich, Diarmuid Ua Duibhne, Cú Chulainn (Caster, Prototype and Lancer), Manannán mac Lir and Medusa (Rider and Lancer). I think they're all neat in their own little way though.... you can see what character types I gravitate towards lol. I'm desparately trying to up their bond and get more of their "my room" dialogue.

Jing Ke.... I lov eyou...

I honestly didn't expect to love her as much as I do. Great vibes, a touch of chaos, lovely voice and dialogue. This one especially made me fall in love with her more. 10/10 would go drinking and star gazing with her I don't drink but I would for her

Diarmuid's a sweetie!! Though, for some reason, his voice clips are surprisingly very quiet? I had to turn down the background music specifically for him.

MEDUSA!!!!!!!! I loved her so much when I watched Unlimited Bladeworks. I've seen the teeniest bit of Heaven's Feel where she has a bigger role and I am both excited and very scared.

Admittedly, I went on a whole adventure trying to learn more about Prototype!Cú. So far, he's one of my favorite iterations of him. I really like his design and how he has a different VA than the final iteration. He just feels a bit more rougher/somber. I especially love his design in the OVA. Would love to cosplay him and Caster!Cú!

I do appreciate how, if you acquired certain servants, others will actually comment on their presence. Otherwise, they may have dialogue where they name drop some! It's partially why I'm hunting down a lot of the Celtic folklore-related ones first (they just fell into my lap, honestly. I also know nothing of Celtic folklore so why not take this as a fun learning experience too).

Fergus's dialogue if you have Cú Chulainn (Lancer (first image) and Caster (second image)).

I also like Fergus's uncle/dad vibes. Also!! Apparently he share's the same voice actor as Kazama Kiryu from Yakuza????

Manannán's dialogue if you have Cú Chulainn. (Context: In Celtic mythology, Cú stole Manannán's wife.)

I love the grace and poise Manannán displays. I also love them being in a giant, poofy ball gown, though I wished they had some sort of head accessory for balance. When I first evolved them, they immediately shit talked Fergus, Cú and Diarmuid on the same thing in a row which I thought was hilarious.

Bonus

Here's some Fate-related art I've done during the month and an edit since this series is giving me serotonin

Wanted to experiment with coloring so Jing Ke... my muse... Not gonna lie, I saw what she looked like in the manga adaptation and oh my god.... my ultimate push to draw her..... I tried to draw her similarly to what I saw

I recorded a timelapse cause I kinda forgot Clip Studio can do that, whoops. It's not the whole process as my computer freacked out at the end but it's the majority of it: Video link

Another coloring/rendering experiment. Cú is slowly growing on me lol I can't seem to draw him right, though... This is the best I've gotten. I really wanted to draw his hair....

In commemeration of my Cú collecting, here's a decent edit I made. I needed to kill time while a package was slowly making it's way to me and I went "why not dip my toes back into video editing while I wait?" I wanted to do more with it but I burnt out when hunting down footage so this is it rip

The song is "Something Blue" by VOILÀ

I am very much a "early 2000's AMV" girlie (/genderneutral) and so the editing style is very much that I miss you Windows Movie Maker. I also ran into some technical limitations with my editing software... I wanted to add subtitles but the program just... doesn't have a convenient way of doing it. Gonna try and find another one as the one I used had very limited options.

Video editing is something I don't really do a lot of due to hardware limitations (fuck my baka life) so it's rough lol but I had fun and that's what matters

Pokemon Unite

I picked this up per a friend's recommendation! I remember seeing news of this upon release years ago in a Nintendo direct.

I've never personally played a game with a League-like format before so this was very interesting to me. The basic premise is easy to understand: You play as a Pokemon of your choice and try and score the most points in your opponent's goal. You get points either by defeating the random enemies on screen or members of the opposing team.

One big thing I did notice was the speed/weight of the characters. The last co-op game I got into (King of Fighters XIII) is very fast paced. It didn't help that I liked playing characters who are nimble on their feet. Everyone in Unite, even if they're listed as "speedster", feels slow/heavy but I think that's just the nature of the game. Something to get used to. I feel like most of my time is navigating through the menus rather than playing the game.

Another thing I noticed was the ungodly amount of menus within menus. I'm playing this on my Switch but I get the feeling that this was built for mobile devices first. It's honestly the most eggregious part of the game really. There's also so many events going on that it's genuinely overstimulating (granted, right now is the 4th anniversary so I'm not sure if the amount of events is a norm or not. I get the impression that there is a lot of things to do regardless).

Now, I will caution you, this next part literally does not matter. Your character avatar takes up 15% of gameplay time. The way your character avatar dresses does not matter.

That said, I love dressing up characters and I love fashion, and so I will yap. My Love Nikki genes were kicking in when I saw the avatar outfits. I had to have 'em.

Admittedly, I was scared starting the game. Once you pick your avatar's gender, you can't switch it back. I loved how the masc one looked but I was traumatized with Style Savvy on the fashion choices (it is literally the saddest thing on the planet trying to dress up the guys in that game...). I did eventually end up picking the masc option and I'm really happy with it!

I love the fashion in this game! It's fun. It's interesting. They don't stick to one vibe/aesthetic. My one complaint is that I wish the outfit pieces were actually separate. Top and bottom pieces are literally stuck together. The hairs act like wigs (which is why character profile's don't show them) so I can't mix and match.

Top tier sets... I cope by making them kiss and beat the shit out of each other... Enemies-to-competitive lovers with the classic blond-black hair yaoi-ism...

Again, would like to reiterate that the dress up portion does not matter. It doesn't affect gameplay nor my personal experiences substantially. It made my little fashionista happy but I still grimace at the money hungry aspect of it.