Fate/EXTELLA LINK review for PS Vita, PS4, Switch

It?s been a couple of years since I played Fate/EXTELLA: The Umbral Star. Long enough for me to forget pretty much everything about it — and long enough, apparently, for me to forget how much I loved how insane it was.

Even if I had remembered, however, I still don?t think I would have been prepared for just how bonkers Fate/EXTELLA LINK is.

Because seriously, this game is completely nuts. It starts off by…I want to say overwhelming you with characters and information, but that doesn?t even get the half of it. Rather, Fate/EXTELLA LINK seems to exist to throw everything it can possibly think of at you, all at once, at a very high volume, as quickly as it can.

Characters pop in and out of the story at random. Things happen so fast that unless you know what?s going on (which I very clearly did not), you?ll be completely lost right away, and your only options are to either just go with it, or to get frustrated by everything and walk away.

I chose the first option, because Fate/EXTELLA LINK is so much fun, I can?t imagine wanting to walk away.

What makes it fun — at least for a complete novice like me — is that it takes the traditional Warriors/Musou formula, and doesn?t even pretend to ground it in reality. You want to launch a special attack on your enemies from outer space? Then buckle up, because you?re about to go soaring into the ether. Want to be encounter historical figures like Charlemagne, a genderbent Francis Drake, or Arjuna, only completely removed from everything in their history? You?re in luck, too, because here you do those things right off the bat. The only Musou game that even comes close to matching Fate/EXTELLA LINK for sheer absurdity is probably the One Piece: Pirate Warriors series — and quite frankly, I don?t think even the One Piece games have the same feeling of surreal nonsense that Fate/EXTELLA LINK does.

Nor, for that matter, do they make moving around maps quite as much fun as Fate/EXTELLA LINK does. Where all the other Warriors games and their variants make you run from point A to point B, here you?re literally flying through the air. That may be disappointing to anyone who likes running through long, boring pathways, but for everyone else, it means you get to go from battle to battle without the dull bits in between that usually stop momentum dead.

And my goodness, does Fate/EXTELLA LINK every have momentum. It has that to spare, even if it may not know what to do with it, nor does it ever stop and explain where it?s going. As I said, however, your only options are to go with it, or to get off the ride — and if you like nonstop, nonsensical action, you couldn?t do any better than go with Fate/EXTELLA LINK and enjoy every insane moment.

Marvelous USA/XSEED provided us with a Fate/EXTELLA LINK PS Vita code for review purposes.