Fate/EXTRA Record Preview

There are plenty of interesting elements to the story premise, and the game’s combat system certainly looks to have much more depth and strategy than that of the original release.

Despite some uncertainty earlier this year, Type-Moon’s Fate/EXTRA Record has received plenty of details, including the reveal of its new publisher and a January release date. Ahead of its appearance at this week’s Tokyo Game Show, RPGamer was able to attend a virtual preview and see the game and its new card-based combat system in action.

Fate/EXTRA Record is a remake of PlayStation Portable title Fate/EXTRA. The game is a spin-off to the wider Fate series that began with visual novel Fate/stay night, taking place in its own continuity. It sees players controlling an amnesiac male or female protagonist, joined by one of three Servant characters, attending Tsukiumihara Academy. This academy is a digital world hosting a contest called the Holy Grail War, run by an entity known as SE.RA.PH. Each week, competitors, known as Masters, are drawn against each other in an elimination tournament, aiming to emerge victorious and obtain the Holy Grail, an artifact said to grant any wish. They are partnered with a Servant, manifested Heroic Spirits that usually keep their true name a secret.

Fate/EXTRA Record features some familiar faces for series fans, though they are independent from their other versions.

The demo focused on the game’s dungeon-crawling aspects from its first in-game week. During each week, players have a number of days to spend time in the academy and learn about their opponent. This often requires diving into the Arena, a digital dungeon that holds important items called Trigger Keys, which are required to progress. Players choose from Saber, Archer, or Caster as their partner Servant at the start of the game, with each option providing their own distinct combat style and story elements. Type-Moon did note that Caster is considered the more challenging option of the three.

Throughout the arena, players will find hostile programs acting as enemies, including powerful Gatekeepers that must be defeated to get past them, with a Floor Boss waiting at the end and guarding that floor’s Trigger Key. As players explore, they will find traps and directly encounter their upcoming opponent. Although fighting outside of the duel data is prohibited, these encounters will give players opportunities to learn more about their opponent. On the day of the duel, players will need to emerge victorious and survive their opponent’s Noble Phantasm, an extremely powerful ultimate attack.

Taking place in the first week of the game, the demo took place in a nautical-themed Arena seemingly appropriate to the Servant of their first opponent in the tournament, Shinji Matou. The dungeon itself is fairly linear, with a few small offshoots to explore to find items and other bonuses, and various visible encounters that can be engaged with — with an advantage if players strike first — or avoided. As the player progresses through, they encounter some traps placed by Shinji, most notably a pixel avatar throwing bombs that need to be avoided as well as a wall of avatars requiring removal through a brief QTE, with some routes forward also needing to be activated by interacting with the environment. There are various conversations for players to have with their Servant, with dialogue options providing different reactions from them, including special Servant Time events that can increase the player’s bond with their Servant and grant new abilities or power ups.

Players will need to avoid traps placed by their opposing Masters.

Fate/EXTRA Record features a completely reimagined combat system to the original rock-paper-scissors-style combat of the original Fate/EXTRA. The new system is based around cards and deckbuilding. Each turn players draw Commands for their Servant from their deck, using them in an order that makes the most out of their Action Points (AP) while best countering the enemy’s upcoming actions, indicated by icons in the combat UI. Guarding reduces the damage from incoming attacks and is used by both the player and their foes, potentially negating damage received in a turn entirely if high enough. Players also have access to Code Casts, which lets them directly influence battle with attacks and other effects by using up MP. In addition, by using three chain icon cards, players can activate an extra attack for no cost. As players defeat enemies, they will gain new cards, and also gain the ability to upgrade their current cards.

The preview showed both Saber and Archer’s combat styles. Each card shows its AP cost, and some cards have a cost of zero. Saber’s style makes use of her Rose Commands and building up powerful blows; many of her cards have a rose icon upon them, and some of her skills can add Rose cards to the player’s hand, with each Rose card increasing the damage of the cards in their hand. Players can use them in different ways, including holding onto them to increase the damage in the next turn. Meanwhile, Archer’s combat style is built more around quick Command chains and making effective use of extra attacks. Some attacks will return cards to the player’s hand if they defeat an enemy, allowing players to continue to chain their attacks, and Archer can also increase his AP.

After battle, players earn experience, which is used to level up their Servant, and PPT, a currency used for items and card upgrades. Players will also encounter special battles against their opposing Servant and Master. Due to the rule against fighting outside of the designed duel time, these encounters are automatically ended after a few turns, but they give players objectives to meet while trying to survive. Players can leave the dungeon and return to the Church that acts as their base when they find a Gate Room; however, doing so advances the day, so players will need to decide whether to recover and when to push on in order to be able to retrieve the Trigger Keys in time. In addition, players will be able to take on various side quests from Taiga Fujimura, another familiar Fate face, that offer various rewards.

The new card-based combat system appears to have much more depth than the original.

The game makes use of Spine animations on the character designs by illustrator Arco Wada. The animations work well at giving the characters different expressions and movements during conversations and dialogue, while the cel-shaded character models fit in well with the designs. The game definitely retains the same style as the original game, but its extra details work well at providing extra flavour and character to the dungeon. It’ll be interesting to see if the environment visuals manage to hold up, as the digital location designs are more thematic rather than being built around dedicated or memorable landmarks. Its storytelling stays partly true to the original Fate/stay night visual novel format, using first-person narration to describe events and internal thoughts.

I’m interested to see how well Fate/EXTRA Record builds on the foundation of the original game. There are plenty of interesting elements to the story premise, and the game’s combat system certainly looks to have much more depth and strategy than that of the original release. Fate/EXTRA Record will release for PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, and Nintendo Switch 2 on January 28, 2027. It will be published for consoles in North America by XSEED Games and in Europe by Marvelous Europe, with Aniplex publishing the game worldwide on PC and for consoles in Japan.