Fate/EXTELLA: The Umbral Star takes on a familiar hack & slash, 1 vs 1,000 gameplay style. A few unique gameplay elements were added to the mix, but it may not have been enough to save it from a stale experience. There’s not much that sets The Umbral Star apart from other games of the genre, aside from the heavy incorporation of dialogue and story.
The core gameplay is set on battlefields that are made up of keeps. Your objective is to maintain enough keeps by not letting the enemy team get a hold of too many. On top of that there is a main objective, generally involving taking out a boss. Keeps are separated between a stream of sorts that can be traversed through, so there is no ground between the keeps. Within keeps, a certain number of aggressors need to be defeated in order to claim the keep. The number of aggressors is indicated on the screen and will not appear until you’ve defeated enough minions.
The combat itself falls into monotony the majority of the time. Being forced to battle simple minions, one can repeatedly spam the same attack to take them all out. The aggressors don’t put up much of a fight, either. You may need to block occasionally, but you’re essentially just spamming attacks.
Before you think turning up the difficulty will provide a more robust challenge, the overall tedious battle mechanics do not change. It basically serves to give the enemies more HP and attack power, meaning you’re just going to be attacking for even longer. More enemy types are introduced on higher difficulties, like archers that can stop you in the middle of your combo. They are a minor annoyance at worst, though. The bosses do put up more of a fair fight, at least. Repeating basic attacks against a boss can spell your own defeat, so a bit of a reading is necessary.
Despite the overly-simplistic nature that the gameplay can fall into, it appears quite a bit of thought was put into the game mechanics. There are many skills you can aquire in levels and equip before battle. Using the same type of skills will make their bonuses stronger. Bonds can be created with characters to make them stronger. And there’s quite an array of items, different types of characters, lots of moves and attacks, and even crafting. There are transformations and power-ups that you can save for fighting bosses to give yourself extra power. There really is a fair amount of depth here.
The problem is that none of this really seems to matter since the same combos can be used repeatedly to achieve victory. If you’re not victorious, then it will likely be the cause of a one-hit-kill that bosses can dish out. With a lot of health, death can be avoided. They do telegraph this super powered move and spend a bit of time charging it, so it’s not difficult to avoid most of the time. Nonetheless, getting thrown off guard and getting killed in one hit just plain sucks.
Beyond just killing your foes, there is some strategy involved. It’s necessary to think about which keeps you are going to go to and when. You don’t want your allies to fall in battle, nor do you want your keeps to fall. There are enemies known as “plants” which spawn aggressors and can send them to other keeps. Plants need to be quickly dealt with all while maintaining your team’s well-being. I did find my self getting tripped up on a few levels, trying to find the best course of actions to take. The planning involved is implemented quite well. If even half the game was done just as well, these battles would be awesome.
Between battles there is a ton of dialogue. Way too much, in fact. It gets to the point where I’ve had enough, and they aren’t even halfway done talking. You do have the option to skip, which is good, but it would have been even better if they could wrap it up a lot quicker. I found myself relatively interested in the story. I wanted to know more about the Praetor, the servants, and the moon cell core, but not many people would want to sit and read for literally 20 minutes or more between every level. I certainly didn’t. A lot of what is said is just fluff and really could have been condensed into just a minute or two and contain actual substance. It’s not even interesting to look at. Everyone stands around with blank looks on their faces with each character only having a few expressive portraits to augment their speech.
The enemies aren’t interesting, either. Everyone except for the bosses are just polygonal soldiers with no real defining features. Yes, this is supposed to exist in some digital realm with digitized baddies attacking you, but couldn’t a little effort have been put into them? Even something to easily distinguish between the different enemy types would have helped.
What would have also helped is English voice overs. The lack of a dub is fine in many cases, but when you need to know what’s going on, being able to hear your allies during combat is far more useful than having to take your eyes off the action to read the subtitles. Especially since they’re talking very frequently.
The environments themselves look very nice. They’re often wide open giving you plenty of space to fight, but also frequently cram you into tighter areas where the struggle with the camera is real. Just trying to look in one direction becomes a fight of its own as the camera bounces and swings around into directions you’re not trying to look. Trying to fight off multiple aggressors while trying to cooperate with the domineering camera induces nothing but frustration.
Almost everything about this title is a slog. I quickly began to dread entering and completing battles. The battles are long and drawn out and the scenes between battles are long and drawn out. Even for someone looking for mindless hack and slash fun, which by itself can be fun, the scenes really break the pacing of the game. The scenes could have gotten a pass if only the crucial story elements were presented. They would even be good. As it is, they’re a chore to sit through.
If the developers really wanted to convey all the in-your-face details of their story in such a bloated way, it would have been better off being released alongside a book that contains everything about the characters and the world they’re from. There’s plenty here to fill a light novel. However, I must commend them for including such a nice manual with some lore included. It’s even in color. You don’t see manuals included with physical copies of games very often these days. If you wanted any kind of story, expect to get way too much, or none at all because many will want to skip so much of the dialogue.
Despite getting as banal and tedious as this game does, it does an okay job at offering a mindless hack and slash experience and good bit of planning and strategy. Just don’t expect it to hold your interest for too long.
