Fate/Empire of Dirt is a Fate fangame, which is why I'm putting this post in the "miscellaneous" category rather than the big fate masterpost. It's a game of insane production quality, with gorgeous sprite work, banger music, full voice acting, and generally ton of efforts and passion poured into it. It's a product of love, by fans, for fans.
See, I'm in a bit of an awkward situation right now. I want you to play this game. As I said, a lot of people very obviously worked super hard for it. And the whole translation was made by a single dude! So many people spent so much time and effort to make it available just for you! I am a firm believer that anyone who actually does try to create shit is deserving of praise, and by god did they go above and beyond on this one.
Unfortunately. The game is mild. It is so fucking mild.
But let's start with the beginning, so I can at least pretend I have a coherent way of presenting things. You play as some guy whose name I forgot- arguably it's fine because you can rename him as anything, but I only realized that super late in game because the voice acting never refers to him by name lol. Protag-kun is a teacher at the local university of magic. He lives in a city were a giant pyramid resides in the middle of it, which is odd if you're not Cairo but aright. He has a beautiful wife, Minamoto-no-Raikou, a bestie, the librarian Rama, and various students, most important of which the prodigy Brynhildr
Now that is a very cool premise imo. It's a fangame, you can expect players to know the base shit about Fate when booting it up. Anyone with a vague knowledge of fgo is gonna be tripping balls seeing all these people wondering wether they're servants, reincarnatinos, or completely unrelated to the dudes we love. It's rad! I do like it a lot!
One day, after class, Protag-kun gets attacked by a witch. The Witch, in fact. The Witch makes some cryptic comments, then syc a fucking cool monster on him. Dude almost dies, but at the last minute, Scathach on a motorcycle shows up to save him, which is awesome. And that's when we get our first fight!
The few reviews of this game mention that the fighting system sucks. I personally find it okay, tho the translation patch I downloaded came with a balancing mod lol. But the base idea is cool! It's basically an improved version of the fgo combat system. If you don't vibe with the fighting however, Scathach has a skill that insta-kill non-boss enemies, so you can just skip everything. Odd design decision imo, but that's how it be sometimes.
Once she's done saving his ass, Scathach says that she followed the ghosts out of the land of shadows into this world, and she's like to keep kicking ass thks. Since protag-kun would also very much to learn what the fuck is wrong with the city, they decide to team up. From this point on the game will switch between investigation sequences (where you can fuck around in various parts of the city), dungeons sequences linked to a specific servant, and fights.
Imma be real with you my guy. These are bad.
It's a bit hard to explain, but bear with me for a second and imagine: the protag just woke up. To advance the story, you need to: 1) move physically to your car, 2) click "yes go to school," 3) read a small paragraph about getting out of school, 4) click "yes I wanna explore," and THEN you can do your investigation. Every in-game morning. Every single. In-game. Morning. I think making me click five repetitive buttons with no changes for the entire game just to be allowed to play the game proper is a crime against my inhuman rights.
Another issue is the level design of some town parts or dungeons. It can be stupidly hard to tell if something is interactible or not, or if you can move from one side of the map or not. I got a literal game over because I didn't realize there was a pathway to the left where the thing I needed was, and I ran out of time. This gets a bit better mid/late game (I can only assume they realized it sucked as they were going) but christ this is annoying. And you better have a strategic save somewhere cuz if you get a game over and your last save leaves you with too little time to do your thing? You gotta redo the whoooooooole game babey. This isn't a visual novel with rpg elements, this is an rpg with vn elements. You can't fast forward thsi shit.
But I mean, who cares right? No one plays fate games for their riveting gameplays. We're here for the STORY. For the CHARACTERS. So, are they good?
Frankly, the early game is a chore. For some reason, the writers just cannot handle any fgo character. Rama, Raikou, Brynhildr are all painfully hinged. Scathach is okay, but everyone else plays it very obviously safe, and it's boring. Maybe some people will like it idk man but personally I like this serie BECAUSE it will give me shit like "what if dinosaurs with guns" not despite it.
It gets a bit better afterwards. The original characters all have deals that fuck hard. The game gets fucking insane on the middle part, and man I was BALLING. Saberface gangs!! Jeanne d'Arc's serial killing cults!! Monster floods!! Finally some weird fucking shit!!
But the hype falls again in the third arc. The main villain was absolutely not foreshadowed, and while there are good ideas they're very disjointed from the rest of the game. Idk man I just Didn't Care.
Oh yeah, there's also romance in this game. It's one of those "you need to increase your affection level by x to achieve romance" kinda thing, which is never good game design for romance. It's not even well implemented either, I got confused and somehow ended up with a neutral ending despite going on fifty dates with Rider. The actual content of the romances are okay from what I've seen (only ever played one so could be wrong) but it's deeply harmed by the fact that the protag is boring as fuck. I want to fuck Guda you guys KNOW I'm lenient when it comes to protagonists but this guy got nothing.
Fate/Empire of Dirt is... very clearly a game made by people who never made games before. It tries to be an rpg and a vn at the same time and thus fails at both. If you're interested in making games, I urge you to play this one, because the game design is very interesting as an exemple of things to not do. Otherwise though... well, you read my review. You decide if you wanna play it. It's not a bad game. It's also not a good game. It's deeply, painfully mild.