Fate/ Grand Order (FGO): a Japanese mobile gacha game where you use different characters based on real life historical figures to clear quests battling against enemy NPCs in a turn-based RPG format.
By all accounts, its gameplay system is quite frankly outdated, acquiring the newest highest rarity unit is at a rate considered extremely low by modern gacha standards and recent activities and events have been dolled out at an inconsistent pace! And yet, why do I feel so much fun when I play this game?
Gameplay
The gameplay is simple, field 6 different units when entering a quest, every turn choose to either activate the units’ respective abilities or go straight into battle and pick 3 out of 5 cards as shown above. Watch the units attack the enemies with unique animations, then receive attacks from the enemies and repeat.
When it comes to daily farming quests, I simply happy tap away at the different cards, seeing the different unique attack animations of each unit. However, when it comes to certain unique boss fights exclusive to the campaign mode, it feels like every step I take, I do not know whether the boss is going to one shot me or let me live for another turn. I feel nothing but pure uncertainty and danger.
Link (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DmWGvfNOUE)
If I were to view it through the Lens of Action, during these boss battles, I would like to think there is a somewhat fair balance between strategic (skills, special attack usage) and basic (card selection) actions, though the strategic actions acts as more like precautionary measures towards enemies. Having said that, one has to factor in the enemies unique abilities that could also render whatever skills you use use mute, not to mention sill cooldowns.
Events
Gacha games typically have monthly events that run for a few weeks. The most recent event that happened last year was a raid event where players “cooperate” to beat a raid boss by defeating the boss a cumulative number of times. I quoted that specific term because it is more of a race against other players to be able to beat boss before the threshold is hit and the boss is gone. That was the case until 1 boss in particular.
Link (https://fategrandorder.fandom.com/f/t/Tunguska%20Sanctuary)
In this case, there are at least 7 enemies to defeat. You could either defeat the main boss and clear the quest in 1 turn, or you could try to clear it in 3 turns and defeat all the enemies to maximize your loot. Essentially, if you were to 1 turn, you would be clearing the boss faster but losing out on drops. This forced players to instead of destroying the boss within a few hours normally, to take a day and half to clear the boss. Viewing it from the Lens of Competition vs Cooperation, you could say the players were playing both cooperatively (clearing slow enough for everyone to get drops) and competitively (clearing as much as they could before time ran out.
Story
Link(https://www.reddit.com/r/grandorder/comments/pe22qf/some_minor_but_interesting_missable_dialogue_with/)
Story has been one of this game’s strongest points. Simply put, the story brings together all these fantastical characters in ways where even if the characters were the most vile villains known, you could not quite hate them. This can be seen in its most recent storyline with the character Fairy King Oberon. I won’t quite got into the specifics, but through the Lens of Emotion, I’d like to think they managed to bridge some gap between the players’ emotions and what the designers intended..
Gacha
Simply put, gacha is a mechanic where players acquire units via chance, essentially gambling. When using the gacha or “rolling” here, there is no particular way to tell what you will get specifically, aside from the type and rarity. Above indicates that you will get a unit of the highest rarity, but whether its what you were aiming for is not yet known. This kind of randomness, can elicit excitement in possibly getting what you want, or sadness or lack of control if you fail to get it. Aside from that, abiding by the Lens of Chance, this can also be factored in to certain effects that take place in battle that may or may not “proc” when truly needed. In this case, players would be taking risk to survive.
Conclusion
There is much more to discuss about this game, but I will leave that for you to explore. If I had to sum up its experiences, FGO is a game with simple yet unpredictable battle system, has a deep story and cooperation via competition. IF I had to relate to the Elemental Tetrad, the game fulfills the Aesthetics, Mechanics and Story components, but not quite that of Technology. I am certain the above 3 aspects are working in harmony with one another to deliver an enjoyable experience, and perhaps the Technology can be improved to further enhance the experience. Granted the game was made using the Unity engine, and that it has come a long way since its roots, there is still room for some form of technological improvement. Time will tell I suppose.
Game website: https://fate-go.us/
Game is available on IOS and Android
For challenge runs using the bare minimum of units:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCR1qqjQs8Fg6vcCLX3btacQ
Basically doable hard mode if you can’t get highest rarity units with the best skills.