I may be updating this review at some point. I’m planning on doing a re-read of the story at some point because even though I didn’t skip anything, it still feels like I missed something.
Oof…
That’s all folks.
Nah, just kidding, though I will throw this out there: there might be spoilers ahead so if you haven’t played yet, here’s your chance to hit the back-button. Also, there might be some spoilers here if you haven’t played Fate/Extella: The Umbral Star.
Most of Lostbelt 6 was a drag. I’m not saying that the story was bad—definitely the opposite. It was good, but it still dragged. I get why, though. There was a lot of lore that needed to be processed in order to understand what was going on with Fairy Britain. My props to Nasu and the writing team because I know that took a lot of work to put together. World-building ain’t easy—’specially when you’re building said-world only to tear it down again.
I think I finally understand what it takes to do any kind of world-building, though. I’ve been down that rabbit-hole with my old/soon-to-come-back🤞🏼 webcomic , Silent Shadow. Just because it’s urban fantasy doesn’t make it any easier, either 😉
Jokes about Nasu wanting to write high fantasy aside, he did a great job. He managed to do fantasy without the general-my-head-too-far-up-my-ass feel that most high fantasy nowadays seem to have.
I’m talking about Game of Thrones and Lord of the Rings. Yes, I know that they’re masterpieces at this point but they’ve spawned so many imitators that the market is practically saturated with them. It’s really the imitators that have their heads up their asses, though.
One of the theories that I had going on in my head was that Morgan was really a Servant. However, just not in the way I originally thought. Honestly, that was a nice plot-twist. Beryl summons Morgan as a Ruler-class Servant, who then uses the knowledge that she acquired on Ray-shifting to send information back in time to her Lostbelt version (Aesc/Tonelico), which then changes everything about the Lostbelt into a Lostworld.
That’s the plot of the third route in Fate/Extella: The Umbral Star. Hakuno sends information back to their past self as he/she is about to disappear, which sets up for the final arc. Some people want to beat up on Umbral Star because it was basically a Nero wank-fest—their words, not mine. I actually enjoyed the game. Its sequel was a little weak imo.
Another plot twist was getting the protagonist to feel sorry for the fairies—but by the end of part two, you realize that while Morgan was basically a tyrant, she wasn’t wrong. Fairies don’t learn from their mistakes. They’re the embodiment of both good and evil—basically perpetual toddlers. On that note, Morgan’s death-scene was… rough, to say the least.
There were red flags about Aurora (and Oberon, for that matter) in the first part of Lostbelt 6. Aurora struck me as too nice, considering Coral’s stuck-up attitude about humans. And Oberon was too helpful, if you get what I mean.
If someone is going out of their way to be nice, be wary. Be very wary.
At the start of the conclusion, you could almost tell that some shit was about to go down. During the coronation ceremony, the first flag was the wine being passed around. My first thought was “I bet that wine is poisoned.” Turns out that really was the case. This is the part that actually made me tear up a bit—Knocknarea’s death scene and Castoria begging her to live. Of course, her death is what triggers the rest of the events of the conclusion. It also calls back to Fae Britain’s early history with their king dying of poison on his coronation day.
Hence Morgan’s statement: fairies never learn.
Looking at history, the same can be said for humans.
I wasn’t particularly surprised to see that Muramasa sacrificed himself for Castoria. From Part 1, you could almost see the death-flags raised, particularly once Muramasa got attached to Castoria—not romantically. To me, it seemed more like a grandparent/child relationship more than anything. Another point to be made is that Muramasa sacrificing himself basically freed him from the Foreign God’s service.
Would have been nice to have those god-killing buffs when we faced off against Cernunnos, though.
Character Deaths that I’m Pissed At But Not Surprised By
I really wish that Barghest and Melusine got happy endings. Same with Gareth—though death-flags were raised around her early in the second part.
On that note, same with Percival—especially after his first fight with Melusine. To be fair, you got the impression that he was doomed after using the Spear of Selection against Woodwose, but still…
I’ve come to the conclusion that the Fate franchise itself is sort of like Game of Thrones—basically, don’t get attached because your favorite character is going to die anyway. However, unlike GoT, your favorite has a chance of popping back up in a spin-off work.
And why the hell couldn’t we keep Pepe? You know—like with Kadoc? Man, that would’ve been awesome. Honestly, in terms of Crypter survival and recruitment to our team, I think I would rather have had Pepe than Kadoc. His inferiority-complex-emo-shtick got old real quick. Maybe/hopefully his attitude improves in time for Traum?
Habetrot was another character death that was foreshadowed but actually unlike the others, I’m not particularly upset by. Maybe because it was sort of foreshadowed? Who knows. Or maybe it’s because I knew we were getting her at the end.
On that note, Habetrot makes a damned good QP farmer.
Gameplay
In many ways, the conclusion’s conveyor-belt of boss-fights reminded me of Heian-Kyo. I didn’t have too much issue getting through any of them, though. Most of the issues I had were self-inflicted, like forgetting to use a certain support, CE, or Mystic Code and having to waste the AP to go back and correct that.
The Cernunnos fight—for me—wasn’t particularly hard, just sort of time-consuming. I think Melusine and Barghest actually gave me more trouble than the plushie god.
One thing that I’m happy about—and I hope becomes a thing in later events—is having more than three enemies on the stage. It did get a little challenging when I couldn’t wipe out the entire line in one go, though.
That’s it, till next time!