‘Fate Trigger: The Novita‘ is a 3rd-person slash 1st-person battle royale shooter that is set to launch on PC, consoles, and even mobile devices going into next year. And admittedly, were it not for its art style, I likely wouldn’t have given this game a second glance. I’ve always wondered why game developers tend to shy away from “anime” aesthetics, but maybe these games do exist and somehow, they’re just flying under my radar. Regardless, Fate Trigger sold me on its art style, the arena taking place in some sort of time-shattered flying island, and last weekend I got a chance to give this game a whirl during its Closed Alpha playtest.
What I ended up playing was a surprisingly fun, slow-paced battle royale title. With some deep flaws in its map design and game pacing. If you missed out on the last playtest, not to fret—I can at least give you the rundown on what Fate Trigger really plays like and how monetisation will likely play out in developer Saroasis Studios’ upcoming shooter.
Dropping Right into the Sky
Upon loading into the game, the first thing Fate Trigger wants players to do is head straight into a match to learn the basics. I don’t necessarily mind this approach, but I’d much rather be able to modify my game’s video settings as well as any controls. Oh well, before I knew it I was drafted into a squad of three others and thrown onto the battle royale island. I had to lock in as a character before the game could start, and so I went with the cover girl Eos because I wasn’t really sure who did what and normally, said cover girl is the safest choice.
Characters possess skills that can be fired off during the match. Some are offence-focused like Eos while others like Camille and Kira do best as support and defence. If you’ve played a hero shooter before, you’ll be right at home here, particularly the more tactical king. Fate Trigger is a much slower game than I originally anticipated, although I suspect that because I only recently stopped playing Fortnite. Character movement is slow, there’s no sliding, and running before going into prone will have your chosen character dolphin dive to the floor. And sadly, there’s no bursting through doors. I would honestly put Fate Trigger much closer to PUBG in terms of physics and the overall character controller.
The majority of the game is primarily played in third person but aiming down sights on just about every weapon will push the player into a first-person view. Shooting is responsive and feels really good. Weapons have kickback and you’ll need to manage your shooting proper, though it did feel like there was some bullet magnetism at play. Though ultimately, I didn’t feel it was strong enough to ruin gameplay. There was a small but decent selection of weapons, such as assault rifles, machine guns, snipers, and the like. And with collected resources, there are also upgrade machines placed about that can increase the stats and rarity of your weapons.
As for skills, I’ll admit, I didn’t use them much. Most folks I matched with didn’t bother either, except for Kira players and the digital forts that they can build from out of nowhere. Eos has a super charged beam she can fire off as an ultimate and while I seldom used it, it did come in handy as an option for suppressive fire.
Upon being KO’d, players will leave boxes with their gear behind. Opening one of these menus presents you with a rather busy user interface and I’m not sure I like it much. Yes, it’s detailed, but my eyes dart all over the place when I open it up. Now for what it’s worth, the game does automatically yank the best gear and ammo, leaving you with the decision to swap weapons and accessories. I guess that’s better than having to navigate through that mess of an interface, but I think the team should give the screen a onceover especially for the game’s upcoming console and mobile audiences. Granted, those versions will likely have their own custom user experience, but I think any improvement on the PC side would benefit those versions too.
Now Fate Trigger feels pretty good to play. I think the combat and character controllers feel great and teamwork is vital to your survival. But even though I played only a couple of matches, one of the game’s worst aspects reared its ugly head: the map itself. The map is kind of cool, being a bunch of floating landmasses with weird, 50s styled house and cars that are littered here and there. It’s also big—very big. As in, despite there being a hundred players in a match, the likelihood of you finding anyone is very low. The time I spent with this game, in a team and alone, have been mostly walking around and admiring the scenery. The plague circle or whatever it’s called converges as quickly as a bad case of bradycardia. It’s only by the final stages that I can actually find other players and by then I’ve likely been lasered.
Worse yet, the map is boring. I know, how does one turn floating islands into a boring experience? Well, for starters, it’s largely flatland with a few trees and towns slash cities placed all over. There aren’t any standout points-of-interest except for the occasional care package drop. The second-best point of elevation in the map is another large landmass and I didn’t meet a single soul up there. On the bright side I could at least admire the view—the world design strikes me as what Hannah Barbara thought the future would look like in The Jettisons. That trickles down to the car designs as well, where we have a two-seater retro concept cars with serious boosts and sedans that can transform into floating cars.
There’s a good game here and I hope the developer can increase the speed of the game and potentially make the intended POIs stand out. As it stands now, the game is far too slow in its main game mode.
Doll Management
When you’re not in game, you’re at home base. Here you can customise and learn more about the “Awakeners” you play as. In the playtest we were given a couple of costumes to work with and I imagine the bulk of spending will be from players buying cosmetics and the battle pass. Costumes aside, we also have stories to read that involves the Awakener and their role in the great, weird time loop(?) calamity that happened. At the moment, only Eos’ was available and I read through a couple of chapters to get an idea of who she is. Each chapter is accompanied with a CG and a fair bit of text, and, upon completion of all the character’s story chapters, it seems you’ll also be able to unlock a free skin as well.
Going back to the Awakeners, the attention to detail is great. They are very animated on the main home screen and surprisingly, the English dub had a perfect lipsync to match. You can poke them to get some extra dialogue out, but otherwise that’s basically the extent of your interactions in this playtest. Now for the stories, I did see that I could buy gifts for the Awakeners, but I wasn’t able to give said gifts. No idea if there is some sort of inventory system not yet in place or if I missed it, but that might yield players some extra lines out of their favourite characters as well.
And that more or less wraps up my time with Fate Trigger: The Novita. I can actually see this game as the perfect mobile shooter for me as I quite like my GameSir G8+ and I need more games to play with it. I’ll be keeping an eye on this game and I think you, my good reader, should do the same. ∎
Fate Trigger: The Novita will launch on PC via Steam/Epic Games Store, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series consoles, iPhones and Android devices in 2025.
