Fate/Grand Order General Discussion (CONTAINS SPOILERS)

[Catastor]

There are some parts of the end section i've other issues with personally like Cerny's curse not being clarified on it's current effects if it's even there or Dobrynya using Koyan's original name as meant to be a grand surprise on who took care of her child self but to little effect considering the final section decides to deep dive on it anyway. But I teared up from joy during the part starting from Koyan's final CG to the end of that section, that's the only time during Part 2 I ever did so I understand the feeling.

[Lily Emilio]

ITaigong just so happened to learn a skill from another Grand that allows him to resolve the whole final issue

I actually view it as a nerf to make him less OP. The god Pangu literally comes from a cosmic egg, so if anything the idea to create a cosmic egg to contain Vitch and send her to space is something within the realm of possibility going by his knowledge and power as a Shenxian (compared to the living gods like the Olympians by Da Vinci). Him saying he got the idea of the Ark from Noah is more to link reference to Arcade dealing with VI/S at the same time. Or he can just use one of the many paopei capable of sealing Vitch in (such as a jar capable of containing a whole world within, one of Yuanshi Tianzun's paopei). I don't think the "haha he has even MORE haxes" would be good considering how super competent and convenient he was already throughout the event.

Taigong only appearing due to mistaken identity and basically carrying the whole crew in terms of helping them escape after his screw-up and buffing them to survive Beast Koyan's onslaught and the story afterwords doesn't feel totally equal. Even if it's meant to not upset fans of the character, it won't feel that good to those who've zero interest in him.

I don't think its only just him tbh. He has been in the RM for awhile with Dobrynya and he couldn't solo the whole thing. The biggest firepower being contributed is none other than Ibuki Douji who was doing a fuckton of heavy lifting both in story and in gameplay (taking out hordes of enemies with ease, literally immune to RM nerfs cuz not a human, titanic snek form to wrap around Surtr, Ivan, and Vitch herself). I don't think her contribution should be neglected and give it to Taigong only. Sure he was extremely competent in what he does no doubt, and provided a bunch of haxes for conveniences that I fully understand why it upsets people, but the biggest flex on the bunny is the invincible Ibuki who literally took no L the entire time.

[Catastor]

literally immune to RM nerfs cuz not a human,

Technically she did suffer from amnesia due to the RM, though it didn't have much effect on anything so I don't blame anyone for forgetting. And I think people do have problem with her contributions just being the muscle in the story, but the actions she performs aren't unreasonable to people I believe because she was built and hyped up in Heian-Kyo (planned Beast candidate by Douman, basically the "King" of the Singularity-planned to become Lostbelt, her divine Susanoo sword that even Koyan admitted was a problem to her,) I mean her debut from what I remember had her appear with Fujimaru's crew unable to do any real damage, then she got captured by Douman and absorbed for him to attempt to become a Beast, and from within she just threw out her sword to lend Kintoki & friends a hand. I don't think anyone who'd hadn't complained about Ibuki when Heian-Kyo debuted would do so now, there's nothing too crazy in comparison.

[Petrikow]

I think you've entirely missed the point; I'm not upset that he's too powerful, I'm upset that an essentially unrelated character just came in and resolved the entire plotline surrounding Koyanskaya's characters with his bullshit magic. I don't have the slightest of interest in why he's a cool chinese sorcerer, because the story didn't make me care about it. I had no expectations on this dude, yet all he did was disappoint me regardless. Ibuki being a convenient powerful companion had very little bearing on the actual storyline, she summoned her snake and bashed heads; easily ignored.

Koyanskaya had developed connections with tons of actual characters throughout the overarching storyline, and instead of using those to deliver a satisfying climax, Tunguska focuses all its energies on these two newcomers who apparently were the most important Koyanskaya-related characters all along. That's terrible writing, and endears me very little to either of them.

I'm not sure "Traum was a random whim" is true, though. They clearly talk about it as if it (6.5) was always going to happen, it's just that it changed from "French Revolution" to "Massive Servant war, and also move Holmes reveal from LB7 to here since we have Jimmy". None of that really implies to me that the French Revolution wasn't still going to be the "story-relevant" 6.5 or wouldn't have the area 51 reveal stuff at the end.

Not really sure if I missed the part that implies Tunguska wasn't planned originally either, which section was that?

I will readily admit there are no direct statements that 6.5 wasn't planned, but given how hastily they appear to have worked around it, it sure makes it feel like they just had to come up with something to pad into LB7. First it was French Revolution, then Higashide changed it, all while moving the Holmes plotline from LB7 to it; coming up with Y.M and last second adding Charlemagne too.

Like, if you strip off the Servant War and Y.M plotline for 6.5, you have less content in it than the usual Lostbelt Prologue. And those were the things they just changed around nilly-willy. I could totally believe 6.5 was supposed to be the fucking prologue to LB7.



Here's Sakurai acting all surprised that Tunguska would even happen at all. If the person who literally wrote it was like "wait what, I'm doing this?!" doesn't scream unplanned, I dunno what does.

That said, I'm not fundamentally upset that they changed their plans. Things like that happen in a long ongoing project. The point is that the product of such changes in these cases feel to me like they solely exist to buy time so they can delay LB7. I didn't like either Tunguska or Traum (and yes, I know not liking Traum is apparently an unpopular opinion, but I do genuinely feel like it was super boring and pointless) so them essentially resolving two characters I had high hopes for in the most unsatisfying way possible because of whims and "oh shit we gotta make sure people have some content" is honestly disheartening as all hell.

[Rafflesiac]

The biggest plot twist of Traum for me thus far has been that Charlie is actually a fun character. The generic Isekai protag design really made me just automatically assume he'd be bland as shit.

This is why none of you deserve him but me (who didn't get him).

Geez... another NP charge upgrade... of course...


Also WHY MURASAKI SHIKIBU SUMMER? I think summer mordred needs the NP upgrade more....

NP charge is the best and Murasaki is simply superior to Mordred. Especially Swimsuit Mordred.

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Wild how they got a full CM for Big Tungus but not Traum.

[Catastor]

Oh, I remember seeing those blue sections around the early Famitsu pages. Those were commentaries from the writers, then?

EDIT: I can understand the connections issue since Fujimaru's the sole reason Light and Dark even came to Chaldea to begin with but they didn't really feel like they contributed that much to directly helping her in the event aside from being the final push to talk her into the World Egg idea and ending with a "no thanks necessary".

[Comun]

Yeah, the blue sections are comments on each specific event.

[Deathhappens]

Skill upgrade for Tawara Touta. His third skill gets a 10-20% Buster Up and a flat 10% NP charge, both for the whole party. The Max HP effect was untouched.

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NP upgrade for Shikibu's Rider version. Apart from the damage upgrade, she does 150% supereffective damage against Earth Attribute enemies.

lmao wtf

[Synaptic Star]

Regarding the padding discussion, I have a question, why do you think they are padding out part 2? If Nasu still wants to work on FGO, he can work on part 3. Is he struggling to think up ideas for part 3?

[Kamera]

As much as I do enjoy Traum as it is, I'm actually kinda mad that it was supposed to be a French Revolution-themed chapter. Would definitely prefer that scraped idea.

I somewhat agree with Petri that it was mostly a pointless chapter. The whole Three Kingdoms conflict, all the deaths and tragedies, all amounts to nothing. The final confrontation between Holmes and Moriarty also seem very out of sync with the rest of the chapter.

[Petrikow]

Regarding the padding discussion, I have a question, why do you think they are padding out part 2? If Nasu still wants to work on FGO, he can work on part 3. Is he struggling to think up ideas for part 3?

He clearly still hasn't made up his mind about Part 3 given recent comments, so there's that. Takeuchi also reveals that they only just recently worked out what to do after LB7, which feels to me like it was originally supposed to be the ending, but they've now shunted that back, so they've had to come up with more content. It's like "Oh, we can't just end FGO with LB7, uhhh, gotta delay that so we can come up with some way to not end FGO with LB7".

[Comun]

My read was that the final chapter was always going to happened and only recently that they settled on what's the right gimmick for it.

[Herod]

My idea is that they always intended to mirror part 1 and to have an additional chapter after LB7, and that around Olympus implementation (or even Atlantis) they decided to also have the additional X.5 chapters in between the story chapters, and that the change of Traum and the addition Tunguska happened somewhere after the release of LB 5.5

[Lily Emilio]

I think you've entirely missed the point; I'm not upset that he's too powerful, I'm upset that an essentially unrelated character just came in and resolved the entire plotline surrounding Koyanskaya's characters with his bullshit magic. I don't have the slightest of interest in why he's a cool chinese sorcerer, because the story didn't make me care about it. I had no expectations on this dude, yet all he did was disappoint me regardless.

And you didn't get my point either. I understand your frustration, but your anger is misdirected, because if the character being OP as fuck isn't the problem but how he shows up seemingly "outta nowhere" to those who never knew his myth and ignored all of his foreshadowings, you should be upset at the abuse of the Grand system for such conveniences mainly.

The entire premise of it is to summon the strongest person with the most convenient counter to a Beast (in this case the world just asked and Taigong agreed). When it's not enough, send more of those. Most of the time (King Hassan, Orion if he didn't go out in Atlantis, Noah, Merlin both versions) have zero personal contacts and history with the Beasts they defeated, but ended up being important forces in defeating them, literally no difference from Chinese gigachad showing up to deal with the issue. When Grands are not involved, you get bullshit like Anti-Tokugawa sword from Nobu simp or Arthur shows up in Arcade to help blasting the Beast cuz lul Merlin. Taigong showing up, like I said, is in line with what the Grand system is about. In fact, I, under misconception that Koyan is Daji, speculated that Taigong might show up as her natural counter, and I was fucking right on that latter part. I didn't expect him to make things that easy tho, that is on the writers. That was why you have cases where Nasu avoided the "originally 7 Grand are required but we only need like 1 or 2 and a bunch of other sources of help", "the Beast is not fully matured", "the Beast is killing herself" and Grands throwing away crowns to not show up as Grand again (at least in FGO mobile timeline).

The system when used well in the hands of writers who are aware of the possibilities it could bring, can be good without feeling like an asspull (like King Hassan, he helped making Tiamat killable, but it was still far from enough, did not take away the contributions and spotlight of any other chars), meanwhile it is a disaster in the hands of whoever wrote Tunguska and Arcade finale (Sakurai?)

[Petrikow]

Misdirected? Taigong hasn't done anything aside from Tunguska. His role in it is the only thing to judge him by. Honestly, you can go ahead and like him, I really don't care. But to me he's just a boring plot device.

[Lily Emilio]

Misdirected? Taigong hasn't done anything aside from Tunguska. His role in it is the only thing to judge him by. Honestly, you can go ahead and like him, I really don't care. But to me he's just a boring plot device.

If you hate every character just because they are used as plot devices and didn't have any other good showing yet, then I assure you this whole series has more of those than just Taigong, better hate all of them, that's the point. Not complaining about the other ones feel like a huge bias than being logical to me. Complaining about the misuse of the system is more constructive.

Heck I could say the same for the other Grands too cuz they are no difference, they are plot devices, to out the specific targets then poof out of existence. But that is not the problem. The problem is the writers abusing the in-universe asspull plot device system that is the Grand servants without considerations, and that should be the main thing to complain about, because it is so easy to abuse again and again down the line as an easy way out when the writer has no idea how to take out a particular Beast.

[Petrikow]

He's had a showing, and it was shit. I'm judging the story by what it's given me.
What's so special about this dude that he gets to be judged by things that haven't happened?
I am all for changing my mind if they bring him up again, but the chances of that are quite low given he seems to exists solely to solve Tunguska and nothing else.

And yes, most characters in a plot are plot devices, but if they're a fun plot device rather than a boring one I'm all for liking them.

[Lily Emilio]

So you had nothing to say about the other plot devices nor the inherent problem with the Grand system, I got where your bias is at now. No other comments needed.

[Kyte]

Most characters are plot devices that don't get reused afterwards though.

He clearly still hasn't made up his mind about Part 3 given recent comments, so there's that. Takeuchi also reveals that they only just recently worked out what to do after LB7, which feels to me like it was originally supposed to be the ending, but they've now shunted that back, so they've had to come up with more content. It's like "Oh, we can't just end FGO with LB7, uhhh, gotta delay that so we can come up with some way to not end FGO with LB7".

Wasn't there a quote last year (or maybe the year before) about how after lostbelt arc was over they'd survey the playerbase and see whether to still with team chaldea or start a new story? I don't think they've changed direction from that?

[Petrikow]

So you had nothing to say about the other plot devices nor the inherent problem with the Grand system, I got where your bias is at now. No other comments needed.

Yes, the Xian fanboy wants to accuse me of bias surrounding Taigong.