Fate/Extella: The Umbral Star

For as much as I enjoyed Fate/Extella, I must admit that there simply isn't enough to keep most people interested in it. This is definitely one for the fans.

A rock solid hack and slasher, Fate/Extella: The Umbral Star offers non-stop, totally over-the-top action from a fantastically fun cast of playable characters. Our only real complaint is that repetition can bleed into the experience over time, but give yourself a few days to recover from the fatigue, and you'll come back to a welcoming brawler that's stuffed with content. It's not quite up there with the best musou games on the market, but The Umbral Star scratches that button bashing itch and then some.

A real treat for anime-action fans, Fate/EXTELLA is a lovably frantic hack-and-slash with a feeling all its own. Appealing characters and an irresistible sense of style draw you into its world, and addictive, satisfying gameplay and excellent writing keep things exciting throughout. It suffers from some common ails of the musou genre, like minimal enemy variety and subpar AI, and it's far from a technical showcase for the system, but if you're looking for a fun, fast-paced slash-‘em-up on Switch — or to seriously complicate your relationship with one of Rome's most infamous sons — Fate is a perfect choice.

Caught between a rock and a hard place, Fate/Extella’s fundamentals are solid and fans will certainly love it, but newcomers to the Fate series should beware.

If you’re willing to forego the story and just enjoy the action, Fate Extella is undoubtedly one of the smoothest playing Warriors-style games to date with kill counts ranging in the thousands for each battle. Repetition may set in early on, but by then you should be all ready to unleash your Noble Phantasm.

Fate/Extella: The Umbral Star has a title that makes as little sense as its punctuation to an outsider, but it serves as the glue that holds everything together.

A game dripping with cool intrigue and style marred heavily by bad level design, bland hordes of enemies and awkward systems. Fate/Extella will still appeal to many but in this case, it feels like failed potential. To have started with an awesome, stylish, uncommon RPG to being diluted into a simple hack and slash title. This "Warrior-ising" of franchises is slowly wearing down the existence of more unique games. Disappointing.

The bloated and often confusing narrative might be a bit too much for those that aren't already fans of the Fate series, but for those willing to brave the ridiculous amount of dialogue a satisfactory Musou game awaits them underneath.

In the end, Fate/Extella: The Umbral Star serves as a good appetizer for those who want some Musou action now.

Fate/Extella: The Umbral Star for Switch could be considered as the best version of the title. Thanks to the technical aspects of the console that let it run with a better resolution in its portable format, it performs better that the one of the Vita. Also and eventhough it has less framerate in its TV mode, all of its gameplay runs smoothly, the ammount enough that make it not be outclassed by the PS4 edition. Also and as an aesthetic bonus, it has all of its DLC from the beggining.