I would be lying if I said that I wasn’t surprised to see Fate/Extella on the exhibit floor at E3. I had forgotten that XSEED had announced that it would be there – but as soon as I saw the game set up, I jumped at the chance to play it.

I am a pretty huge Fate fan, and I’ve been excited for Extella since it was announced. Despite being incredibly excited by it, I was really worried by all of the screenshots we’ve gotten so far. Putting aside the non-direct-feed shots of course, most screens from the game so far looked lackluster to me. Many looked out of focus, and just generally…poor.

Having played the game now, I understand why. To begin with, Extella is gorgeous. The art style is true to the Extra games, and keeps that same feel going forward. The speed at which the game moves is definitely the culprit for the bad screens though, as there is very little downtime in the game. There is so much motion between you and the enemies that I’m almost surprised that the screenshots are as clear as they are.

The gameplay was really great with moment to moment action. It definitely feels very similar to typical Musou style games in the basic gameplay. You had square as the normal attack and triangle as strong attacks, as well as other typical actions like blocking, jumping, mid-air recovery, etc. Combos were fluid and quick, and the action was just as fast.

The demo I played was only a single map, and I was playing as Nero (Saber Extra) for the duration. During the battle, I cam up against Elizabeth Bathory (Lancer Extra), Gilgamesh (Archer), Nameless (Archer), and Tamamo no Mae (Caster Extra). The objective of the map was to destroy a number of ‘Plants’ which were summoning tougher enemies. It all felt like pretty basic objective stuff, and the end of the battle culminated in a showdown with Tamamo. The fight was hectic, and that was also when I decided to use the transformation.

The transformation for Nero was the white armor with the gauntlets, as we’ve seen before. I was happy that, despite it being plenty powerful, it wasn’t a kill everything button. The damage per attack was certainly higher than normal, but the overall power still wasn’t enough to bring Tamamo to her knees in the time allotted – I think it was very well balanced.

Overall, I’m even more excited for this game now than I was before. I’m hoping that more characters will be added before the game launches (We need an Assassin, Beserker, and Rider at least!) but either way, I think this game will definitely be something to look forward to. Fate feels right at home with the Musou style gameplay.

Fate/Extella is set for a November 10th release in Japan this year, and is currently looking at a winter release window this year for North America.