YMMV / Fate/Extella: The Umbral Star

• Accidental Innuendo: At one point Elizabeth tells Nero, "I'm finally looking down on you, and the view is incredible." Given how busty Nero is, it could be more than one type of incredible view.
• Americans Hate Tingle: The gameplay is generally looked down upon in Western countries compared to Japan. This is because it is part of the Musou game genre, which is seen as a repetitive button masher, whereas it's more popular in Japan due to the Dynasty Warriors games. There is also how the game is generally more simpler than any flagship Musou title in terms of gameplay, due to more emphasis on storyline.
• Anti-Climax Boss: The Final Boss of the True Route is the Velber ship core. One would expect this to involve a massive, epic final battle. Instead, the entire stage involves simply killing low-level enemies that the player has likely killed hundreds of thousands of by that point, and attacking an enemy that can't fight back. The Final Boss on the other three routes is much more difficult, though it's justified: the core of a ship can't really fight back. Though one still has to wonder why they couldn't have the boss call upon higher level enemies and spawn some more throughout the fight, have a defense system to attack you with, or just plain have a boss who can actually fight back defend the core.
• Awesome Music
  • This a franchise which is no stranger to having great music, but we should start with the very opening named after the very game with no other than ELISA handling it!
  • The properly named teardrop that'll played in many tearing moments throught the game. And trust me, you will cry!
  • breeze of a new world is such a relaxing and funky track. It's among the tracks that feel the must EXTRA in the game.
  • razoredge is one of the game's mandatories songs that fits either an intense discution, or carry straigth to battle. Though is usually plays before battling.
  • Suiten Nikkou Amaterasu Yano Shizuishi a techno-war remix of Tamamo's theme, fitting for the game's main conflict.
  • Strike Back. Just as the name implies. A franfic and proper action theme, that gets more and more serious as it continues on.
  • rise and fall one of the games boss themes. However is standing scene must be when played at the moment in which decided to protect a harmed Altera.
  • The final boss theme, White Titan or also simply refer to as Sefar. It's a song imposing the final battle ahead, and that Nero has gotten the power boost she needed to deal with the Velber Ship Core!
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment:
  • In Lu Bu's route, Chen Gong comes right the fuck out of nowhere to derail Lu Bu's plans, which Lu Bu mysteriously accepts. Chen Gong is mentioned only once in one off-handed comment by Lu Bu, and seems to exist only to rob Lu Bu of a proper boss fight.
  • In Tamamo's final Special My Room event while she and the protagonist are talking another Tamamo wearing and acting like Tamamo's role play character comes in. Tamamo wonders if this second one is one of the Tamamo Nine. This is never elaborated on later.
• Broken Base: Archimedes' reveal as the Big Bad. One camp sees him as an effective, entertaining chessmaster, while others decry him claiming that his reveal completely sidelines and damsels the much more well received Altera, his plan and motivations make no sense, and his lore as a Velber-corrupted Servant completely contradicts the laws of Moon Cell Servants being literally incapable of defying the Moon Cell's will in any way.
• Catharsis Factor: The Nasuverse is a World of Badass, and the player gets to take control in defeating every single one that stands in his path, making defeating the game's top Servants or even one the player may dislike feel very satisfying and a part of that same world.
• Continuity Lockout: Considering that this game takes place on the same timeline as the Fate/EXTRA games, those who might have not picked them up might get very left out of the loop concerning the world the game builds up. Especially since CCC wasn't released outside Japan. In addition Extella also references Altera's backstory from Fate/Grand Order, which at the time of Extella's release, wasn't localized outside Japan yet.
• Die for Our Ship: The apparent fact that Nero is the canon servant of Hakuno which is confirmed in this game, has made a lot of Tamamo fans attack Nero (both in forums and in game) more than before.
• Game-Breaker:
  • Gawain in Umbral Star. Once his full moveset is unlocked, Gawain have a self buff that gives him improved attack range, and 2 move that staggers the opponent in place for high combo count before exploding them for massive damage with the full version of C4 and C5. During the duration of his self buff, C4 fills the Extella gauge at ridiculous pace, allowing Gawain to freely use Extella Maneuver to fulfill killcounts quota and quickly fills out his Moon Drive gauge. In his Moon Drive form, Gawain's C5 turns into a monstrous move, it locks enemy servant in place even through Super Armor, and the explosion finisher does massive damage, able to 1-2 shot most boss servant.
  • In general Extella Maneuver is broken, but what really breaks it is using it by forgoing extended Extella Maneuver in favor of spamming it for 1 bar each. To begin with, the start up for Extella Meneuver gives you invincibility, and the move is executed during a time stop state making it really safe, and it covers the entire screen. While the overall damage of Extella Maneuver is tied towards the gauge spent during the move, the finisher of Extella Maneuver still have enough damage to clear most mobs, and do a decent damage against servant enemies. Used this way, Extella Maneuver is essentially a crowd clearing, safety, and offensive move all at once, and the only thing that comes close to its limitation is the amount of Extella gauge to use, something that is easilly solved with instant skills, and the sheer amount of kill counts you get by spamming the move.
  • Saber Venus is specifically created to be this. Her normal attacks can stagger Servants even if they are in Moon Crux/Regalia Mode and is an incredible Lightning Bruiser. Her only flaws are that she cannot use Moon Crux/Regalia Mode (since Saber Venus itself is a Super Mode, this makes sense) and Noble Phantasm (considering how powerful it is at the end of the True Route, it could easily destroy the battlefield, this also makes sense) in Free Battle and her Bond Level Growth is incredibly limited ^note  You can only use Code Casts to improve her Bond Level which is odd because Saber Venus is Nero but she is incredibly powerful.
• Goddamned Bats:
  • Although all the foot soldiers in the game are pathetically weak, the archers and fliers are particularly annoying as most of the time you won't see them getting ready to fire at you. It won't hurt your character much, but it will break any combo you've built up. Even worse with the fliers, you'll have to jump into the air to get at them and being hit while in the air will send you crashing back to the ground, costing time as you try to get back up and opening you up to counter-attacks. Even worse, the fliers have a much faster charging and firing time than the archers, so by the time you've gotten back up and jumped into the air there's a pretty good chance they've already gotten their next shot at the ready, so it becomes a race against time to stop them before they start the cycle again.
  • Almost all of the Aggressor enemies are fairly weak, even the Smash Mook Giant ones... And then there's one that looks like a floating collection of blades. Though it seems to have as much defense as the standard Aggressor, if not even less, it is incredibly annoying because it seems to have a permanent guard, which will cause your character's weapon to bounce off, opening you up to counter-attacks. The only way to deal with them is Aerial Heavy attacks or Extella Maneuvers.
  • There also are the enemies that use some kind of spear/pike weapon which they use to run at you from out of nowhere and, once again, will break any combo you built up and send your character flying.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Crossover fanart of Saber as Sailor Venus is now even funnier with the advent of Saber Venus. Her declaring herself as "Saber Venus" even shares bits of a classic In the Name of the Moon speech!
  • In Deadliest Warrior, Attila the Hun was matched up against Alexander the Great. Their Fate counterparts fight each other in the very first battle of Altera's route. In both cases, Attila wins. As a bonus, if you end the battle with Altera's Noble Phantasm, Iskandar gets defeated by the Sword of Mars, just like in Deadliest Warrior.
• Les Yay: Mostly due to the fact that Male Hakuno doesn't interact with the male Servants as much as the females.
  • Of special note, Nero seems to have a... fixation on Altera. Specifically, Altera's body. In Nero's route, Nero even says she would "gladly touch [Altera's] body."
• Mis-blamed: A large portion of the fandom blamed what they saw as bad writing, particularly the "Altera being an alien weapon" and "Archimedes being evil" twists, on the assistant writer, Hikaru Sakurai. Nasu had to clarify on his blog that even though Sakurai did write Altera in Fate/Grand Order, Nasu was the only one responsible for writing the aforementioned twists.
• Moe:
  • Elizabeth is probably the most obvious example since she's an idol and dresses in a way that was clearly meant to invoke this. Even her Corroded form counts, if a bit more unhinged than the usual example.
  • The female Hakuno also counts with her long brown hair, large brown eyes, white dress, and bare feet adding a very innocent effect to her appearance.
  • Altera can veer into this at times. Titan Altera is this, despite her enormous size. Though, it helps significantly that she's voiced by Mamiko Noto. This is without even counting the Cheerful Child form she gets at the end of the story.
  • Nero is this in spades this time around. Unlike previous games where she was basically a Defrosting Ice Queen, here she's a sweetheart right from the beginning and this makes her positively adorable at times, with ear-splitting grins and boisterous claims galore.
  • Jeanne D'Arc can come across as this at times, as well. Although it's difficult to see until a cutscene in the Dawn Arc, her model is just plain cute!
• Narm Charm: The song that Elizabeth sings in the first battle is as silly and generic as J-pop songs get, but it's hard to not get a little bit of enjoyment out of it.
• Player Punch: During Altera's route, you're forced to kill both Tamamo and Nero to complete it. Both times "body" Hakuno feels extreme regret over it having to happen.
• Ron the Death Eater: Tamamo has been victim of an In-Universe example of this trope with her worst traits being greatly played up.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • Where normally it's a godsend for the player if they're swamped by a horde of enemies due to its nigh-unbreakable nature and ability to be used even while being comboed, the guard system in this game is very annoying when another Servant is using it because they have the same advantage. The only thing that breaks through the guard is your Servant's Noble Phantasm or the special Armor-Piercing Attack each character has but can only use while in Regalia/Moon Crux Mode. Everything else you throw at it will just bounce right off it, and they'll only drop their guard once you stop hitting them for a few seconds.
  • Plants. While they seem like something designed to test your ability to strategize and prioritize, they spawn so frequently (and in later maps, in many numbers) that primary objectives have to be abandoned constantly in order to deal with them; which will leave you in Struggling or Danger status for a good 2/3rds of the map unless you know exactly where important spots on the map are.
  • Enemy Servants retreating during fights can be absolutely infuriating as it means you have to wait for them to reappear before you can carry on fighting them, and they can do this several times. While it can be useful if a player is trying to complete particularly difficult goals (such as killing large amounts of enemies, collecting items, or simply clearing all the sectors on the map for a perfect run) and doesn't care about time if it means completing them before the stage ends, for speed runners especially it seems less like a way to build tension and more like a very lazy attempt by the developers to make the battles go on for as long as possible.
• That One Achievement: Royal Tailor, hands down! The achievement requires the player unlock and craft every Mystic Code. The problem is that some of the requirements to unlock them are tied to the Ranks, Difficulties, a combination of both, Story and bond levels. Then to actually craft them requires a ton of QP. Needless to say, this achievement requires a lot of grinding.
• That One Boss: Gilgamesh in Altera's second stage is the final boss and evokes this trope among all the normal Servants who aren't being treated as mini-bosses who must be defeated before you can fight the actual Stage Boss. Unlike the previous battle against Ruler, Gilgamesh isn't holding back from constantly pelting you with Gate of Babylon which at this stage of the game, can easily force players to use up all of their Command Seals just to get a chance to even win. He's possibly the only Stage Boss in the form of a Servant that can live up to this when you're forced to fight with no time to think of an effective strategy.
  • Sephyr, the true final boss for all three main routes also fits this if you are doing it on Hard, Very Hard or Intense (only available on certain stages). Starting on Very Hard (where Sephyr is a whopping Level 75 opponent), she will start off by slamming the entire arena with her arms and just one hit is enough to knock any Servant's HP who's not at a high enough level and not properly set-up to tank into the low red zone (even in Regalia/Moon Crux, where all damage is halved, a single hit still hits hard enough to where the best action is to heal off the damage received) if not defeat said Servant. Two hits is a guaranteed defeat to your current Servant. Not to mention that at this difficulty, Sephyr's attack speed is much faster and to even hit her arms (which you need to completely disable to harm the core) you need to be extremely quick since her recovery time from the delay after pausing from that thrashing is so fast. Her beams of light that she fires will guarantee a defeat if one manages to hit your Servant should they not be in their Regalia/Moon Crux Mode but two hits will either wipe you out or nearly defeat you making the only safe option to heal your Servant and avoid taking any more damage. Her slash attack also is enough to knock any Servant into the low red zone in one hit if they aren't at a high enough level at the very least.
• That One Level:
  • Can be considered a Wake Up Call Level. Medusa's level, which is also the second level of story mode, is rough for new players who don't know how to strategize around the map and deal with Plants. After taking the first area, Medusa activates Blood Fort Andromeda, which reduces the fighting ability of all Nero's forces, leaving them at the mercy of Lu Bu. To deal with this the player needs to fields where the spell is being cast. What makes this difficult however is the previously mentioned Plants which will constantly spawn Aggressors that will overwhelm the stage. And because the level is so early in the game, neither Nero or Nameless will really have access to their more powerful attacks.
  • The first stage of the Dawn arc is this for the sole reason that Hakuno can't or won't use Code Casts due to being Altera's prisoner. This makes taking over Sectors much more troublesome because Altera can't be healed on the go forcing her to rely on health items found in the field. Furthermore, because the arc begins without Hakuno being given the choice to install skills to Altera, her attack power is very weak making the task of taking out Plants much more difficult. None of this is even getting to the boss of the stage who can shred your health bar like nothing.
  • The second stage isn't much better as you can't use Code Casts until during your battle against Gilgamesh and since the scene cuts into the battle against Jeanne first, you can't use skills to help you. Even if you manage to defeat Ruler, you then get pitted against Gilgamesh right afterwards who's much more frustrating to get around.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: The drastic change in gameplay and aesthetic, combined with Merging the Branches has alienated some fans. Made worse because the player has no freedom to explore the world outside of battle, forcing lore and character interactions to be spoonfed to the player, or relegated to encyclopedia-style info dumps.