The Old School Otaku Lounge

I've been slowly playing through this game since I first bought it back in November, and I am finally very close to the end, it seems. It's not really an RPG, but more of a dungeon crawler (although not a Roguelike game). I'm only really familiar with the series through the Fate/Stay Night anime and manga, as well as the surprisingly great Fate/Unlimited Codes fighting game. This time around, the Holy Grail War is being held within a virtual reality world, so that only those who are fighting are the ones who suffer. The entire game takes place inside of the school. This time around, Saber is the incarnation of a Roman emperor, so her personality is more pompous than noble.

When entering the dungeon, combat is essentially a form of rock, scissors, paper. While this may sound boring to Westerners, the ability of rock, scissors, paper to entertain and maintain the attention span of kids in Japan is certainly a uniquely Japanese cultural quality. Each enemy follows a basic set of attack pattern variants, so it boils down to writing these patterns on paper and recognizing which one is being used by the enemy. When this game was released in Japan a few years ago, I figured that it would never be ported to English audiences. However, I was wrong. Fortunately, the Japanese voice acting was left intact. Sakura Tange (Cardcaptor Sakura, Kasumi from the Dead or Alive Games, etc) plays Saber in this game.

The focus of the game is exploring the dungeon for treasures as well as completing mission objectives (often given by Taiga-sensei). At the end of each week, an elimination battle takes place between Masters. Fortunately, the Servants are not a rehash from the F/SN, but a few familiar faces appear such as Archer and Lancer (who is Rin's Servant this time around, and you don't fight against him).

A sequel to the game was released in Japan, but I am very doubtful that it will be ported to English audiences this late into the PSPs life.

So I finally finished this game last night. I'm not sure if it was the optimal ending, but it was an ending. I get the feeling that the game may end in different ways, depending on how the game is played. But I played the game fairly thoroughly, so I can't imagine how it can turn out differently.

The game had a compelling storyline, and it seemed to make more sense than the Fate/Stay Night story because it takes place in a virtual world of sorts. It has quite a plot twist and a bit of a surprise at the end of the game. The game gives a way to grind before the final confrontation, which I did a bit, but regardless, it seemed that the final boss was a bit way too easy compared to previous adversaries. I've been playing this game off and on for over a year, and while I am tempted to start up some other game, I still have a few other games I've either been playing off-and-on or abandoned a long time ago that I should get back into.