The Awakened Fate Ultimatum is the follow-up to The Guided Fate Paradox, which came out in 2013. Both of these games are, in fact, spiritual successors to the Zettai Hero Project game that came out for PSP in 2010. All three games feature mostly traditional rogue-like elements, tasking players with moving through a dungeon while collecting items, beating baddies, and strengthening your character.

The Awakened Fate Ultimatum features a protagonist named Shin Kamikaze, a humble human who is disenchanted with humanity as a whole. On his way home from school one seemingly random day, he is assaulted and killed by devils. An angel comes to his aid, named Jupiel, and with the help of the (potentially mad) Scientist Ariael, they resurrect Shin. This resurrection isn’t as clear cut as that. By modifying Shin’s body through the use of the Fate Awakening Crystal, Shin is actually made into a God.

The game proceeds from there, throwing the player into rogue-like dungeons while progressing Shin’s Angel and Devil powers. That’s right – as God, Shin has access to both ‘good’ and ‘evil’, ‘angel’ and ‘devil’ powers. This becomes a large focus of the game, as throughout the story the player will be making ‘Ultimate Choices’ as Shin. While the sides are indeed pretty clear cut as you make the choices (There’s a scale with one blue side, and one red side), the choices themselves are less clearly good and evil.

For a good example, the first ‘Ultimate Choice’ you’re presented with is saving a number of dying angels in front of you, or trying to take out the enemies, thereby saving more angels overall. This seems to be more of an emotional versus logical response, which is really quite nice, as neither choice is actually evil. This pattern extends to the later choices as well, with the so-called ‘evil’ choices never actually being things that you feel bad picking.

Of course, there are also a large number of conversation events that will also having the player decide between two options, though the outcome is far less drastic story wise. They will still influence the story and the scenes the player will view, but the overall story impact is low compared to the ‘Ultimate Choices’. These scenes are used instead to help build trust between Shin and the other characters, hopefully drawing them closer as friends, comrades, or even more.

The game features a number of characters, all with exquisite art. All of the art is handled by Noizi Ito, famous for her work in the Haruhi Suzumiya novels, as well as the Shakugan no Shana novels. All of the character designs and art in The Awakened Fate Ultimatum is fantastic, really giving life to the characters. And not only that, but the titular Haruhi and Shana even both appear in the game during some late game side-stories!

The story of the game, unfortunately, is not all that engaging. While the character interactions and characters themselves are fun, the story tries to get serious in strange moments, and the pacing is inconsistent, leaving parts of the story hanging or feeling incomplete as it throws you into a dungeon to complete before continuing with the scene. It’s not a huge problem here, as the choice points, if nothing else, do feel consistent and are treating with care-even if some of the lesser scenes seem tossed around carelessly.

One thing I would like to cite here is the translation. The translation/localization teams did great work with The Awakened Fate Ultimatum. The language and word choices are consistent with the Japanese moreso than most games I’ve seen recently, and they didn’t over-localize, which seems to be a problem that many games and anime run into. They also did a good job with the Ultimate Choices, keeping the wording on most of them more in the grey area and less black and white.

Now, as for the gameplay, the most commonly found comparison is that The Awakened Fate Ultimatum plays similarly to the Pokémon Mystery dungeon series. However, for people with a bit more obscure knowledge, the game play is more similar to Shiren or Izuna. It’s very simplistic in nature, and requires some good grinding.

Unfortunately, that simplicity makes the gameplay very bland. Ultimately, the game comes down to how well you utilize Shin’s two forms, the Angel Form and the Devil Form, accessed through ‘Deitizing’. By becoming God associated with Angels, your attacks will deal more damage to Devil enemies, while attacks during Devil form will deal more damage to Angel enemies, and you will encounter plenty of both.

Throughout the game you’ll be developing your two forms to your liking through the use of skill tress that are filled with ‘Crystal Points’. CP is generated in two ways. First, through levelling the traditional way, you’ll gain CP that can be used toward your Angel or Devil side. The second way is through progressing the story and side stories. As you answer Ultimate Choices, you’ll be given CP based upon the side you chose. So, if you go with the Angel side, you’ll be given CP that you can only spend on developing your angel half, and vice-versa.

In addition to this, you’re able to strengthen yourself through ‘Item Boosting’. This synthesis-type system will allow you to strengthen items by combining them with the same items to boost their base strength. You can also implant Skill Crystals into items, which you’ll come across throughout the game.

Creating various items, weapons, armor, and such are your ticket to make it through the game without issue. You can change your equipment on the fly as you travel through the dungeons, so switching out what you have equipped to better yourself in attack or defense will keep you one step ahead of your enemies. Abusing this system makes most enemies laughable, if you take the time to build up your arsenal carefully.

So, The Awakened Fate Ultimatum has a very solid gameplay base, but ends up not really doing anything too significant with it. It’s fun, but doesn’t have the spark that Zettai Hero Project had; something that was sorely missing from The Guided Fate Paradox as well. It’s not so much that The Awakened Fate Ultimatum is a bad game, because it’s really not. It’s solid, just not as good as its predecessor.

If you’re contemplating whether or not to pick it up, doing so is not a bad decision. The Awakened Fate Ultimatum is a strong game, and one of the few games that still carry the rogue-like torch—it’s just missing that last little touch to make it great. And ultimately, that’s how the game feels; it’s a good game that is just shy of being great.

The Awakened Fate Ultimatum was reviewed using a code provided by NIS America. You can find additional information about Niche Gamer’s review/ethics policy here.

Overall: 7.5

The Good:

Solid rogue-like gameplay

Breathtaking character designs / art

Characters that are less cookie-cutter than the norm for the genre

More story involvement than the genre usually allows.

The Bad: