 Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be a samurai? Well, whatever it is, I'm sure it's absolutely nothing like this. Fate Samurai Remnant is a new action RPG in the Fate universe, where you play as a rogue samurai during the KN era of Ido Japan. I got an early look at the game thanks to Koei Tecmo, and for what I've played so far, I actually think it's a really interesting game, especially if you're into samurai and Japanese history. Now I'm gonna be honest with you guys, I'm not super familiar with the Fate franchise. I know it's considered to be an essential pop culture among anime fans, but I haven't really had a chance to look into it until this game. I mean it's a huge multimedia franchise with visual novels, books, animes, mangos, you name it. And I didn't really even know where to start with this. Luckily, however, this game does a really good job of explaining everything, and its story seems to be very standalone. So I think even if you don't know anything about Fate, you should honestly be fine. It's pretty easy to follow. In this game you play as Iori, a samurai who has no master. He winds up finding himself as a contestant in the Waxing Moon Ritual, a sort of battle royale where seven summoners or masters have to fight to the death to get a wish that will come true. The masters are joined by servants, or heroic spirits, which are reincarnated real life famous warriors or mythical figures who serve as each summoner's companion, assisting them in battle. Now if that sounded like a lot to take in, fair warning, the game is very story heavy. I mean this game has so much to unpack. I would say from playing it, about 60% of the game is just cutscenes and dialogue. The game's narrative makes up a huge chunk of the experience. There is a lot of talking going on here, and I mean a lot. There's conversations going on for like 10, 15 minutes at a time. But oddly enough, I didn't really mind it that much. If you follow this channel, you probably know that I'm the kind of guy who typically gets bored of games with really complex stories and long cutscenes. I kind of want to just get on with the game and just hit stuff with my sword. However, the characters in this game are really interesting and the unique premise really caught my attention. I'll be playing this game and just get lost in the story while I listen to the characters talk. It's overall a very interesting tale. The characters are lively and realistic and we've got the main character, Iori, who's a bit of a serious, you know, straight man who does samurai things and he's joined by his companion Saber, a heroic spirit who refuses to tell him her real name. Yeah, the heroic spirit's all of class names depending on the way they fight. So you have Saber, Lancer, Berzerker, among others. But they also have a real name like Miyamoto Musashi, who in the stories actually Iori's original master reincarnated into a big titty anime girl, which I'm sure is a very common occurrence in this universe. I really like seeing Iori and Saber's interactions together. They honestly make a really great team. Saber is wide-eyed and new to the time period because some of the servants are from many generations in the past. She constantly wants to be fed and is really curious. So when you're walking around town, she'll often run off and ask about different spots and ask you to buy her something, to which Iori always says no because it costs too much money. So he's a huge cheapskate. I gotta say though, he's a stronger man than Iori. I would definitely let her drain my bank account, no question. There's other characters too. Iori has a younger sister who lives with them and they have a grandfather who is also a talking book who makes you do a base defense minigame and I'll talk more about that in a bit. And across the story you of course run to many other masters and servants, some of whom might be friend or foe. And there's even rogue servants who don't have any master and they just pick and choose. Like this here pink fox girl who follows you around and has an adorable voice. Oh yeah the voices are all in Japanese by the way. There's no dub which I'm totally cool with since the game takes place in, you know, Japan. So it actually makes sense that there's nobody walking around speaking American. Like I'm not even sure why you'd even want that. That would completely take me out of the experience honestly. Overall playing this game is kinda like watching an anime. The chapters and segments are paced like anime episodes. The art style even has that anime aesthetic with great looking backgrounds, character models, and even the character portraits have this hand drawn anime style and they're animated too. There's even anime cutscenes between chapters which are really nicely done. In between the story segments you play as Iori in these large, explorable towns that seem to really replicate the time period. You know there's shopkeepers, there's other samurai, there's geishas. Just a ton of characters pop up in these areas. In the towns you face off against different types of enemies, you talk to NPCs, you find stuff on the floor, you find cats and dogs to play with. And that's pretty much it. That's literally all you can really do outside of story missions. Sure there's side quests, but the side quests involve fighting dudes, talking to people, and playing with animals. The game clearly wants players to just do the story. There's not a whole lot else you can do outside of that. Missions evolve doing odd jobs, investigating, roughing people up, sneaking into places, you know, things like that. Nothing too interesting or crazy aside from the fights. If you're expecting some kind of sprawling open world samurai RPG where you explore and go on adventures, I think you might be disappointed to know that it's not quite on that level. And this is disappointing because these towns are really nice, there's so many towns for you to visit and they all have a unique look to them. I'm sure they could have spent more time developing different ways to make the world a little bit more engaging, but they didn't, so it's a bit weak there. Where the game isn't too weak, however, is in the combat. It really does not get old running into an alleyway full of thugs where you and Saver will then hack and slash on the pieces while focusing on one bigger enemy. There's just so many different enemies you'll run into in this game. You'll fight samurai, ninjas, gangsters, demons, monsters. There's a lot of cool fights here. It's not the most complex battle system, but it's also not that simple. You have two different weapon types. You can use one sword, which is slow but powerful, or you can use two, which gives you more speed in exchange for attack power. I kind of prefer a single sword for that old school samurai kind of look, and you can even lock on to enemies, dodge, jump, dash around, and attack using weak attacks, heavy attacks, spells, and Saver even lets you use support moves to take out enemies. You can even switch to Saver for a short amount of time once you've built up enough energy during a fight, and she just absolutely destroys the enemies with her fast strong attacks. Most grunts are really easy, but occasionally you'll run into the tough boss type who takes more precision to defeat. Eory and Saver also have skills that can be upgraded with this neat skill tree. You can unlock for posting, which lets you parry and counterattack when you do a perfect dodge, which isn't always easy to do, and you can even customize your sword right down to the hilt, scabbard, guard, even the handle wrappings, and I really like this. The game definitely has a good balance of easy enemy waves and very difficult boss fights. Boss fights with other masters and servants can be very difficult requiring a lot of precise movements, attacks, and dodging to take them down. Is it a bit repetitive? Yeah it is, but I would be lying if I said it wasn't fun just mindlessly slashing through enemies. It's honestly a very fun action game, I had a good time with this. Outside of battles, another major part of the game is this base defense mini game called Laylines, which are areas of power throughout Edo. The Waxing Moon Ritual is a territory war to control the land's power. You're basically running around the map trying to link these spirit fonts to give your servant more power. It kinda reminds me of the game Snake. You have these lines of power you're drawing, and while you're doing this there's enemies you need to feed who are also running around the map, and you can destroy them by cutting off their power source by drawing a line between them. There's a bit of strategy here, you know, you can get ambushed, and as you do more of these segments they add new rules, and they get more and more complex. Normally I kind of hate tacked on mini games like this, but I didn't mind them here, it was nice that the game gave me more things to do. I actually enjoyed claiming the territories, it was too intrusive, and it integrated the battles well for a good experience. You can even explore your own base where you can buy upgrades for the Layline segment, they let you teleport around among other abilities, and at your base you can perform weapon maintenance, upgrade skills, rewatch cutscenes, change outfits, and even go to sleep. Overall I actually enjoyed Fade Samurai Remnant despite not knowing much about the Fade franchise. It's clearly a very beginner friendly entry into this universe, and does a very good job of delivering a Samurai RPG experience with some supernatural elements, even if the game isn't exactly a huge adventure with tons of things to do. I kind of wish they gave us a bit more to do in the world, but aside from that it is still a good game. It is clearly more of a story focused game, and I can respect that, so if that's something you're looking for it is definitely worth giving a try. If you enjoyed this look at Fade Samurai Remnant and want to hear about some similar themed games, you should start with this video right here. I think you'll enjoy it. I'll see you there.