Fate/Grand Order: Lostbelt No. 3 – SIN

Fate/Grand Order: Lostbelt No. 3 – SIN

The Synchronized Intellect Nation

This probably doesn’t need saying, but if you haven’t completed Lostbelt 3 and don’t want to be spoiled, you shouldn’t be reading this review. If you’re reading this and are still back in Part 1 of Fate/Grand Order, feel free to follow me (you can’t friend me) if you’d like to use my support servants to help you get caught up. My friend code is: 217,535,152.

With that out of the way, let’s get into Lostbelt 3 – SIN.

Lostbelt 3: The Synchronized Intellect Nation, SIN from the game Fate/Grand Order
The Synchronized Intellect Nation, SIN

After going through two previous Lostbelts featuring regions of snow and ice, the mild-weathered region of China Lostbelt 3 takes place in was a welcome sight. And not only did I appreciate the change in visuals, but the soundtrack for this chapter of the game was probably the best so far.

Scenery and music aside, there are some other good things about Lostbelt 3 that I knew from the outset. First, I knew nothing of the story, just as with the previous two chapters — so I was able to experience it without any sort of spoilers. That can’t really be said of the future chapters though.

And second, I’d heard that Lostbelt 3 is the hardest chapter of the game released to date, even on the Japanese version that has up to Lostbelt 5 released. I love hard content in FGO, so I was really looking forward to this.

Death to all Oppressors!

Before I get into the role that our allied servants played in this chapter, I want to go over some of the viewpoints they bring. Specifically, I want to talk about Spartacus, the savior of China.

Just as Napoleon was the best ally servant in Lostbelt 2, Spartacus was easily the best ally servant of Lostbelt 3. He had some great dialogue, added an interesting subplot, and got to go out in a blaze of glory. All things considered, I think he was actually a more interesting character than Napoleon was.

Unfortunately for Spartacus, he didn’t stick around for as long as Napoleon did.

Spartacus saying "Death to all opressors!" from the game Fate/Grand Order: Lostbelt 3 - SIN
Spartacus: “Death to all opressors!”

While Spartacus’ obsession with rebelling against oppressors is definitely meme-worthy, I think it actually added a lot to this chapter’s story that the previous chapter was lacking. For example, the people of the Chinese and Scandinavian Lostbelts lead very similar lives. They’re both protected by an omnipotent figure, kept separated and uneducated, and unknowingly forced to die early.

However, the difference is that the children of Lostbelt 2 remained in this state for the entirety of the chapter. We tell Gerda that her life shouldn’t be tossed away so easily, but in the end, we don’t help her accomplish that.

What Spartacus brings to the people of Lostbelt 3 is a way out of their confined lives. He teaches them that they should strive to be free even if it’s difficult or scary. Spartacus is the embodiment of what we wanted to do in Lostbelt 2 but shied away from because we knew we would be destroying their world in the end anyway.

And along those lines, Spartacus says something else that makes a lot of sense. He believes that the people of the Chinese Lostbelt should fight back against us because just as we’re fighting to restore proper human history, they should have the right to protect their history as well.

The Role of Allied Servants

Spartacus aside, the role of allied servants in this chapter was a bit odd. We had Mordred, Nezha, Jing Ke, Red Hare, and Chen Gong. I think that’s all of them, but I may be missing one. Anyway, I say their role was a bit odd because I felt like none of them mattered much.

Jing Ke mattered somewhat because she had the whole revenge against the emperor story arc. But for the most part, these servants were kind of just there as members of our rag-tag group. Despite being one of my favorite servants, I often forgot that Mordred was even around — and the same goes for Nezha, though she’s not one of my favorites.

The fight against Spartacus from the game Fate/Grand Order: Lostbelt 3 - SIN
The fight against Spartacus

What I will say about these allied servants is that at least most of them made sense for the Lostbelt. Nezha, Jing Ke, Red Hare, and Chen Gong all fit within the region. Spartacus doesn’t, but it was obvious why he was summoned — because there were oppressed people in need of a rebellion.

Mordred was technically there for a similar reason as Spartacus, but not really. It felt more like she was added just to have a bit of variety. It hurts me to say this, but I think I would have preferred her not to be included since she served no purpose.

Oh, but one thing I did really like was how Chen Gong mentioned that he would be our ally in the future when he was disappearing at the end of the chapter. He’s not a summonable servant right now, but he will be some time around August of 2021. That was nice foreshadowing.

High-Difficulty Content

Losbelt 3 definitely had harder boss fights than Lostbelt 2. It also had a wider variety of boss fights. While Lostbelt 2 mainly had Saber-class bosses, Losbelt 3 had Saber, Lancer, Assassin, Berserker, and Ruler bosses. I also appreciated that there were fewer fights with “?” class bosses.

The reason I don’t like “?” class boss fights is because it’s effectively a fake higher difficulty. The reason those fights might be hard is that you may bring a team that’s just not good against the class you end up fighting. That doesn’t mean the fight is hard. It just means now you have to waste AP to try again with the correct team if you lost.

That said, I didn’t find most of the boss fights in this chapter to be too difficult, such as the Spartacus one pictured above. Generally speaking, if I lost any boss fights, I was able to make adjustments to my team and win on the second attempt without a problem. However, I will admit that I probably have a better selection of servants and CEs than most other F2P players.

The fight against Xiang Yu and Yu Mei-ren from the game Fate/Grand Order: Lostbelt 3 - SIN
The fight against Xiang Yu and Yu Mei-ren

I didn’t find the fight against Yu Mei-ren in which she uses her NP every turn to be that bad. And the same goes for the fight against Li Shuwen (the captain of the guard). But the one fight I did have trouble with was the Xiang Yu and Yu Mei-ren fight pictured above — and I loved it.

I’m not sure how many times I attempted this fight, but it was at least five. And when I did finally beat it, my last remaining servant was my grailed Cu with one turn left before he went down. It was a challenging fight, but I don’t think it’s so challenging that most other F2P players will get completely stuck.

What I really liked about this fight though was that I had to think of it as an event Challenge Quest. A standard team of powerful servants wasn’t going to cut it. I had to build a team with a specific game plan in mind. And so, I used one of my Challenge Quest go-to teams that attempts to NP loop with Hokusai.

I think this was the only fight I didn’t use Mash in.

Qin Shi Huang’s Philosophy

Qin Shi Huang is the other character in this chapter that I really liked. I found him to be much more interesting than either of the previous two Lostbelt Kings. He’s kind of like Skadi in that he’s trying to protect his subjects, but while she uses magic, he uses technology.

His philosophy is that if you keep your subjects uneducated, disconnected, and safe, then they’ll live without worry, fear, or pain. There’s no suffering in Qin Shi Huang’s world. Nobody ever goes hungry, there’s no war, and everyone dies peaceful and painless deaths.

But at the same time, all of the civilians live in the bronze age. They’re simple farmers who live in villages made up of a cluster of huts and they’re forbidden from traveling outside of their bubble. Unlike in the Scandinavian Lostbelt, this ban on travel is in place to halt the spread of information and ideas.

Emperor Qin Shi Huang from the game Fate/Grand Order: Lostbelt 3 - SIN
Lostbelt Emperor Qin Shi Huang

On the surface, Qin Shi Huang’s world is a utopia. But as we can all probably agree, what the people of his Lostbelt are doing isn’t really living. They merely exist in a static environment.

Another thing I found interesting about Qin Shi Huang was his outlook on ruling. It reminded me a lot of the debate in Fate/Zero between Gilgamesh, Iskandar, and Artoria regarding how a king should rule. To Qin Shi Huang, although he’s distanced physically from his people, he sees no reason to hide from them and instead views himself as one of them.

It was a bit odd to see this ruler who’s so disconnected from his people say something like that. But at the same time, it made perfect sense. In his mind, only a ruler who’s afraid of losing their power would hide from their subjects. Qin Shi Huang knows his rule is absolute, and so he apparently has no issue conversing with those under him.

Oh, and before I move on, I also want to mention that I liked the whole side plot about the miniaturization of technology in our world. But I’m not going to go into that.

The Emperor Strikes Back

It probably comes as no surprise that Qin Shi Huang is one of the most broken servants in the game. And as such, you may think that the battle against him would be one of the more difficult ones. After all, he has some good skills and a powerful NP.

However, I found that this wasn’t actually the case. I saw a lot of people saying that they were going to use Hessian Lobo, or maybe even Angra Mainyu to take down Qin Shi Huang because they both have ways to get around his invulnerability. I opted for a different approach.

Rather than removing his invulnerability or hitting through it, I decided that if I click enough red cards, a few turns of invulnerability wouldn’t save him. I have both Hessian Lobo and Angra, but why use them when I have an NP2 Gorgon instead?

The fight against Qin Shi Huang from the game Fate/Grand Order: Lostbelt 3 - SIN
The fight against Qin Shi Huang

I’m not going to say this was the easiest fight. But I did beat it on my first attempt without any major issues. You don’t really even need an Avenger to do it. All you need is a decent Berserker, like the Berserker Jeanne Alter we just got from this year’s summer event.

As long as you have a Berserker that’s leveled, grab a support Merlin if you don’t have one of your own and you’re pretty much good to go. That said, I still thought it was a good fight with a decent level of challenge. His critical hits are very strong though, so that’s the main thing that worried me.

We just Destroyed Another World

Before I touch on the final battle against the Tree of Emptiness, I want to go over how this chapter compared to Lostbelt 2. If you’ve read that review, you’ll know that I really liked Lostbelt 2. However, I also recognize that it had many shortcomings, such as the repetitive boss classes.

As for the story, though, I actually think Lostbelt 3’s story was better for the majority of it. Lostbelt 2 had a lot of going back and forth between locations while not making much progress towards our end goal. Lostbelt 3 fixed that. It was much more linear, which made me feel like I was actually progressing through the story.

I also thought that the ideas and world views presented in this chapter were more interesting and engaging. Unfortunately, I didn’t think the ending was as good.

The end of Lostbelt 2 left me feeling empty and dead inside. How could I possibly go on with the knowledge that I wiped someone as wholesome as Gerda from existence? Lostbelt 3 didn’t give me that same feeling. Instead, Qin Shi Huang was surprisingly agreeable regarding the destruction of his world, and then everything kind of ended suddenly.

Battle Finish screen of the Tree of Emptiness fight from the game Fate/Grand Order: Lostbelt 3 - SIN
Battle Finish screen of the Tree of Emptiness fight

Despite the Tree of Emptiness battle not being particularly difficult, it actually took me three attempts. The first time, I just brought a random team because I didn’t know what class it was going to be. The second time, I figured I might as well try to do a support Qin Shi Huang solo since he was available.

Much like the previous Tree of Emptiness fight, this one likes to debuff your team. In Lostbelt 2, I believe it stacked burns, and in Lostbelt 3 it stacked poison or curse. For the previous fight, I just used Martha because she could cleanse my team and had class advantage. I could have used Circe to do the same thing this time around.

But, as you can see, I opted to go back to my roots with a Mash/Tamamo/Jeanne setup. Sure, it was using Ortinax Mash, not the better Mash, but the strategy is the same.

Conclusion

Overall, I think Lostbelt 3 may be better than Lostbelt 2. The Lostbelt 2 boss battles did feel more like boss battles because of the nature of Surtr. And I did think the ending of that chapter was better. But SIN was better in just about every other way.

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My review of Lostbelt 4 is available now.

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