Video Game / Fate/Extella Link

This is the story of the hero Charlemagne, why not take a seat and listen to his story?

The fourth game in the Fate/EXTRA series of the Nasuverse, Fate/Extella Link is a sequel to Fate/Extella: The Umbral Star, taking place after its Golden Ending. After the war between the armies of Tamamo-no-Mae, Nero Claudius, and Altera ended, peace has finally come to the Moon Cell. However, a new threat lurks in the distance as the young Altera mysteriously disappears...

The game retains the musou style gameplay introduced in its predecessor and focuses on a new Saber, Charlemagne. In addition, the sixteen playable characters from the first game will also return to be playable. There have been confirmed to be ten new playable Servants to be added in this entry, with the aforementioned Charlemagne, Francis Drake, Astolfo, Scathach, Robin Hood, Arjuna, Darius III, Gilles de Rais, Lancelot, and Karl der Große. Notably, MONACA of Nier and its sequel fame composed the game's music.

It was released for the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita in Japan on June 6th, 2018, in North America on March 19th, 2019, and in Europe on March 22nd, 2019 alongside worldwide ports to the Nintendo Switch and PC on Steam.

Tropes appearing in Fate/Extella:

• Absurdly High Level Cap: The level cap reaches up to 150, whereas finishing the main story on Normal difficulty usually puts you at an average level of 40. However, the Extra missions' recommended levels reaches up all the way to 150, making it a bit necessary to raise your level to even stand a chance against the later ones.
• Adaptational Badass: Lancelot is able to make use of all three of his Noble Phantasms in this game, whereas in his original appearance in Fate/Zero, merely drawing Arondight would seal Knight of Owner and For Someone's Glory.
• Alternate Self: Ruler Karl der Große, who is "another Charlemagne." (That is the German version of his name.) It turns out that Karl der Große is the historical version of Charlemagne, while the other one is the fantastical version portrayed in The Song of Roland and other Chivalric Romances of the Matter of France.
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • Story mode has stage selection open right from the start, allowing you to unlock and (re-)play stages in any order. Notable since this allows jumping between mutually exclusive timelines at will, which usually requires careful juggling of save files in Fate/ games, if it's even possible at all.
  • Unlike the last game, the + Mystic Codes you get for EX ranking missions no longer counts towards 100% Completion
  • The "Money is Power" system makes a return. This time, it's available for all mission types so you can potentially bring all your Servants up to the level of your most experienced player character provided you have enough QP, to prevent Forced Level-Grinding.
• Anyone Can Die: More than three fourths of the cast is gone by the final ending.
• Assimilation Plot: Essentially what Karl's plan boils down to, with his goals being to Oraclize everyone in the Moon Cell to be subservient to his will.
• The Bus Came Back: Extella Link features several servants who debuted in Fate/Extra, but didn't appear in Fate/Extella, most notably, Francis Drake and Robin Hood.
• Bragging Rights Reward: Certain Skins and Mystic Codes can only be obtained by completing the very toughest Extra Missions. Whereupon you will have few occasions to use said Skins and Mystic Codes.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: Iskandar outright asks if you want to fight against him in Versus Mode in one of his conversations.
• Challenge Run: "Bond Challenges", where you accept challenges from up to 5 of your Servants in order to increase their bond points; the challenges here are various, from "taking over a number of sectors under certain seconds" to "scoring enough numbers of K.O." to "keeping your HP over certain percentage for certain seconds".
• Competitive Multiplayer: The game includes a 4-on-4 online multiplayer mode, unlike its predecessor which was strictly single-player only.
• Cutting Off the Branches: This game takes place after the last game's fourth main route, since it tied up most of the plot threads in Extella.
• Downloadable Content: Like the first game, many costumes are available for DLC. Unlike the first game, Link also introduces DLC characters starting with Altera Larva, the reborn young Altera from the end of Umbral Star.
• Floating Continent: A new area introduced in the game is a mansion on an artificial island which uses rockets to fly around. This turns out to be one of Charlemagne's Noble Phantasms. Karl has his own version as well which is substantially more menacing and features multiple cannons.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: Invoked when using "Free Mode" unlocked after at least seeing one ending. You can use Servants that should be antagonists at the time or have already disappeared, and you can increase their bonds too.
• Gratuitous French: "Joyeuse ordre les deux ailes" is a subtitle in the game's logo. The first part is a reference to Charlemagne's Noble Phantasm, Joyeuse Ordre. "Les deux ailes" is French for "The two wings", referring to the two wings in the logo.
• Law of Conservation of Detail: The game avoids an Info Dump by only bringing up enough details about the setting necessary to understand what's going on currently, making the story much more approachable to someone without an understanding of the Fate Series' notorious complexity. More detail is available in the in-game glossary.
• Let's You and Him Fight: The game's plot largely revolves around this due to Karl der Große's Oraclization ability and misunderstandings resulting in potential allies fighting or needing to get the curse beaten out of them.
• Mini-Mecha: The third Noble Phantasm Karl has, Karolus Patricius Auctoritas, which transforms part of his Floating Continent into a battle machine which he uses in both the final battle in story mode and as his Noble Phantasm attack during gameplay.
• More than Mind Control: This is how Karl's Oraclization works. It doesn't brainwash or change the victim's personality. Karl uses his own overwhelming Charisma in addition to the Monolith to rewrite the victim's Spirit Core to mentally connect their ideals with Karl's.
• Multiple Endings: Depending on the choice during the dialogue, you proceed through three different routes that lead to one of the three endings:
  • Route A: Possibly the happiest ending, with how Karl is defeated, all the Oraclized Servants returning to normal, and peace returns to Moon Cell, with the Hakuno's Servants have a nice big party, and Charlemagne leaving Hakuno's party to parts unknown.
  • Route B: In this route, it's revealed that Charlemagne's life is connected to Karl, leading to a solemn goodbye with Hakuno before Charlemagne disappears in Hakuno's sight. Also, unlike Route A, all the oraclized Servants and a good number of Hakuno's allies die.
  • Route C: A sort-of continuation to Route B and possible Sequel Hook, where while Karl and Charlemagne still die, Altera reveals and enacts a plan to Loophole Abuse the Moon Cell's registry in order to convince it to bring those two back.
• Mythology Gag: One of Tamamo's random conversations will have Hakuno ask her about the Tamamo Nine. She'll smirk and say that she has no idea what Hakuno is talking about, "but they sound cute and playful."
• Non-Entity General: Averted. The Master can't hide in the Regalia this time, and is present on the battle map. Letting them get defeated is a universal failure condition.
• Old Save Bonus: Having save data from Extella unlocks certain costumes from that game.
• Scenery Porn: The updated graphics make each area look much better in comparison to Extella and are a delight to look at.
• Sequel Hook: Route C's ending features the start of Altera's plan to bring both Charlemagne and Karl back. A process that she says will take quite a while. In addition she points out that they need to assemble as many Servants as they can for Velber's inevitable return, which won't be easy considering how many Servants were lost in the fighting.
• Shout-Out:
  • Gilles de Rais' profile mentions that those affected by his "Gaze into the Abyss" skill will have to pass a Sanity check.
  • The trophy name for defeating Scathach with Cu Chulainn: "We're Lancers on the moon! We carry a harpoon!"
• Tamer and Chaster: The rather infamous "Saber Venus" did not return in this game, the story is more focused to the main plot with no intimacy scenes and shorter cutscenes overall, and the game has fewer content warnings in the US version.
• The Virus: Karl's fourth Noble Phantasm, Karolus Particius Dimite, which uses the power of the Monolith to enhance the Orcalization process up to eleven, affecting not only Servants but all digital beings, and those that resist the process are deleted outright.
• We Cannot Go On Without You: A Justified Trope. The Master and their Regalia are the conduits for Servants' power. If they're forced to flee, Servants cannot fight on without them.