Fate/Grand Order: Lostbelt No. 2 – Götterdämmerung

Fate/Grand Order: Lostbelt No. 2 – Götterdämmerung

Introduction to the Lostbelt

Originally I was going to review Lupin III (2015) today, but then the second Lostbelt: Götterdämmerung released in Fate/Grand Order and I ended up playing that for four days instead of finishing Lupin. But, I figured I might as well write about my experience playing through Götterdämmerung because I really enjoyed it.

Technically the last time I wrote about FGO was when I reviewed the Babylonia anime series. But if we’re talking about the last time I wrote about the FGO game itself, it would have been back during the original Prisma Codes event back in 2018.

So since I’ve never actually written about the main story of this game, let’s start off with a crash course on what the Lostbelts are. Basically there are three parts to FGO currently. The first (1) part covers (technically) nine Singularities from Singularity F to Solomon. The Epic of Remnant is the second (1.5) part and covers four Pseudo-Singularities.

Then we have the third (2) part, Cosmos in the Lostbelt, which has seven Lostbelts, only two of which are released internationally right now (Japan has five).

Fate/Grand Order: Cosmos in the Lostbelt main menu
Fate/Grand Order: Cosmos in the Lostbelt main menu (Featuring Lancelot Saber)

The second Lostbelt: Götterdämmerung takes place on the Scandinavian peninsula during an alternate, failed timeline in which the “Age of the Gods” never came to an end. Ragnarok happened, but it didn’t completely wipe out the gods and giants as it did in “Proper Human History.”

And if you’ve played FGO before, you should know that any time the Age of the Gods is involved, it’s probably going to be a fun time with some good fights.

There will be spoilers from here on out.

Sigurd is too Easy

Götterdämmerung is my favorite chapter of FGO so far, but that’s not to say that it’s perfect. One of the most disappointing parts of this chapter for me was the multiple boss battles against Sigurd, the servant of the Crypter Ophelia. The problem with these fights against Sigurd is that the story keeps hyping up how strong he is, but he was way too easy to beat every time.

First of all, Sigurd is a Saber-class servant. That’s not necessarily a problem in itself, but I have a lot of Archers leveled up. I have Artoria Archer, Ishtar, Chloe Von Einzbern, Atalante, Robin Hood, and my personal favorite, Euryale. It’s gotten to the point where I purposely avoid rolling on banners with Archers because I don’t need any more.

Now, the fact that I have a lot of good Archers isn’t a problem that will affect all other players. But take a look at this setup I used for the first Sigurd fight.

Euryale(s) and Artoria Archer vs. Sigurd from the game Fate/Grand Order: Lostbelt No. 2 - Götterdämmerung
Euryale(s) and Artoria Archer vs. Sigurd

I went into this fight thinking I was basically going to charm lock Sigurd just as I did to Gawain back in Camelot. But what you’ll notice is that they gave Sigurd an irremovable mental debuff resist so he can’t be charmed. On the surface, it looks like they took preventative measures against people using Euryale in these fights.

But they didn’t go far enough.

Sure, Euryale can’t charm Sigurd (or any Sabers in Götterdämmerung for that matter), but Euryale is still extremely powerful in these fights because she’s an anti-male servant. My level 90 Artoria Archer did around 50k damage with her Noble Phantasm. Can you guess how much damage my level 70 Euryale did?

Over 200k.

And that number is just with her own Arts buff. If you actually set Euryale up here, you could easily one-shot Sigurd with a three-star servant.

The Time of Twilight has Come

The second half of Götterdämmerung is when I think it got really good. I still liked the story in the first half, and there were some good fights, but everything improved in the second half. Once Surtr appeared, the story got even better and the battles got more difficult (but were still reasonable).

Now seems like a good time to also point out that I am entirely free-to-play. Yes, I do actually have a good deal of strong four and five-star servants, but I’ve rolled them solely with quartz I received through playing the game for free. So when I say that fights are too easy or are somewhat difficult, know that I’m coming from a F2P perspective.

Though, it should also be noted that being a whale will not inherently make the game easier for you. Cost caps still exist, as does team synergy.

Euryale and Artoria Archer(s) vs. Surtr from the game Fate/Grand Order: Lostbelt No. 2 - Götterdämmerung
Euryale and Artoria Archer(s) vs. Surtr

As you can see from the screenshot above, my game plan for fighting Surtr was very similar to fighting Sigurd. And this leads to the second issue I have with this chapter, which is that there are a lot of similar boss battles. Until the very end of the Lostbelt, every boss battle is either against a Saber or Lancer.

Surtr is a much better boss than Sigurd, though. For one, he’s just cooler (although Sigurd is still cool when he joins your side). But more importantly, Surtr can’t be easily defeated by Euryale alone. In fact, I relied much more on Artoria Archer for the Surtr fights, as you’ll see later on.

One thing that surprised me about Surtr is that he isn’t considered the “True” Saber. Just as King Hassan is considered the True Assassin, I figured Surtr would be revealed as the True Saber. He can literally destroy the planet with one swing of his sword, so how is he not the canonically strongest Saber? Do gods and giants not count?

Really Good Boss Fights

The final three boss fights of Götterdämmerung are really good. First, you go up against Surtr Fenrir. Then you fight Queen Scathach-Skadi and the final remaining Valkyrie, Ortlinde. And directly after that, you fight the Tree of Emptiness.

I wouldn’t say that Surtr Fenrir was an extremely difficult boss. And I actually don’t remember the full team I brought against him, but at the very least I can tell you Artoria Archer, Euryale, and Mash were on the team. I’ll also admit part of the difficulty of this fight came from my team not being the best for it.

Below, you can see how close I came to losing the fight. But if I had built a better team, it wouldn’t have been nearly as close. For example, Euryale got taken out on the second turn right before she was going to unleash her NP. If I gave her a better Craft Essence or even used someone like Robin instead, that wouldn’t have happened.

Artoria Archer vs. Surtr Fenrir from the game Fate/Grand Order: Lostbelt No. 2 - Götterdämmerung
Artoria Archer vs. Surtr Fenrir

For the Skadi and Ortlinde fight, I had a much easier time (the second time). I actually lost my first attempt using Lancelot Saber, Mash, D’Eon, Medea Lily, Martha, and Drake. So for the second attempt, I knew exactly what I needed to do: Take out Ortlinde as soon as possible, because Skadi isn’t a threat without her.

So for the second attempt, I swapped out Lancelot for Mordred and Medea Lily for Georgios. Mordred broke Ortlinde’s first health bar on turn one, and Georgios was just a much better pick for this fight over Medea Lily since healing wasn’t necessary. Also, I swapped Drake for Achilles in the final slot, but I actually didn’t need to use him at all. Martha was enough to clean up Skadi.

The final fight against the tree was another good one. Surprisingly, I beat this on the first attempt by guessing what class it was going to be: Caster. This fight is a lot of fun because of the buffs/debuffs the tree uses, and luckily for me, I brought Martha who basically shuts down both of those.

Götterdämmerung Needs an Anime

Fun final boss battles aside, Götterdämmerung was extremely enjoyable to play through. I’ll be honest, I skipped through the story for all of FGO part 1 and the Epic of Remnant. I only actually started paying attention to the story in Lostbelt 1, and even then I only half paid attention.

With Götterdämmerung, I made sure to pay full attention, and I wasn’t disappointed by the story it told. In fact, I think it needs to be animated, and if it is, I think it could end up being the best Fate anime.

Fate is usually known for breaking the rules and pulling things out of nowhere, but that wasn’t the case here. The only thing I would say may count as that is the appearance of Sitonai, but she didn’t really play much of a role. Everything else, even the introduction of Surtr, was set up from the start and made sense in the context of the story.

Napoleon Bonaparte from the game Fate/Grand Order: Lostbelt No. 2 - Götterdämmerung
Napoleon Bonaparte

Of course, I can’t discuss how good the story of Götterdämmerung is without mentioning the characters. I really liked the Brynhild/Sigurd dynamic. I think Skadi, the Valkyries, and even Surtr were really interesting antagonists. And, as we all know, Napoleon is best boy. Napoleon is such a bro that he may be my favorite part of Götterdämmerung.

But going back to Skadi and the Valkyries as antagonists, I think this is what made the storytelling so good. They weren’t really antagonists, they were just trying to protect their world. And we saw another side of this with Gerda (RIP) as well.

For the first time, I felt like the Chaldeans may have been the bad guys. Yes, we’re trying to restore Proper Human History, but at what cost? Did Gerda and all the people of this Scandinavia deserve to die? Would it have really been so bad for this Lostbelt to continue on?

Sure, you could argue that killing all humans at the age of 25 is a negative, but once Surtr is defeated, that’s no longer necessary. With Surtr gone, the world can return to “normal” and humans can expand outside of their villages. A new human history could have begun within that Lostbelt. But we destroyed it, and Gerda, instead.

Conclusion

Have you played through the second Lostbelt yet? If so, what did you think about the battles and story? Is this your favorite chapter so far, or do you prefer one of the earlier ones? Let me know in the comments.

I’ll probably do reviews/discussions of the future Lostbelts as well. I don’t know much about the next Lostbelt, so that will be interesting. But I do know the fourth Lostbelt is supposed to be hard so that one should be fun. And of course, the fifth Lostbelt is basically just a bunch of boss battles, so I’m looking forward to that.

If you enjoyed this review, remember to click the like button ❤ down below. Also, follow me over on Twitter @DoubleSama so you don’t miss out on any future content. And if you like playing FGO, come join our Discord server. We have a channel for gaming, but it’s basically dedicated to FGO because of how much I talk about it in there.

Finally, I’d like to thank HeavyROMAN for supporting DoubleSama.com at the Heika tier this month. To learn more about how you too can become a supporter of this blog, check out Patreon.com/DoubleSama.

My review of the next main story chapter is available here.

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