Naraka Mandala Heian-kyo

Naraka Mandala Heian-kyo is the story chapter after Olympus in Fate/Grand Order. So, does that make it the 6th Lostbelt? Well, no. It is a Lostbelt. But, it’s also a Singularity. And it’s a Pseudo-Singularity. Basically, it’s complicated.

The chapter starts off as a Singularity, which is weird. There haven’t been any Singularities since Part 2 began. But, whatever. Even though the world as we knew it no longer exists, we have to shut down this Singularity before it gets worse. So, we suit up to rayshift.

Immediately, we run into trouble. Mash and Fuuma don’t make the jump, leaving us with Danzou as our only servant. That’s right, this is the first story chapter of the game without Mash. I assume you can still bring her into battle, though. I didn’t actually test that out.

Oh, and why didn’t Mash make it into the Singularity? Because this is actually a Pseudo-Singularity created by Caster of Limbo, of course. As Admiral Ackbar would say, “it’s a trap!”

But, here’s the thing. I don’t think Heian-kyo was a very good chapter. The story wasn’t that good. And I didn’t think we got enough fights against each of the enemies. A powerful enemy would be introduced, we’d fight them once, and then we’d move on.

While that did lead to a variety of fights in the chapter, it left the antagonists feeling lackluster. The story wasn’t set up to be a boss rush like Olympus. So, without building up the enemies, the chapter felt like it was missing something.

With that said, I did like the overall cast of this chapter. Kintoki’s a fun character and I love Shuten and Ibaraki (both Bond 10). Also, Watanabe-no-Tsuna is pretty cool.

Shimousa Part 2

If you’re a newer player, you may have skipped Part 1.5 of the game. That includes the 4 Pseudo-Singularities: Shinjuku, Agartha, Shimousa, and Salem. Well, if you did, you should probably go back and play those before playing Heian-kyo.

Actually, you should have played them before playing Olympus. Musashi was one of the main characters in that chapter. And her storyline was set up back in Shimousa. But, completing Shimousa is even more important for Heian-kyo.

I’m pretty sure that was the first time we met Caster of Limbo, the main antagonist of this chapter. And, in a lot of ways, Heian-kyo is like Shimousa Part 2.

One way Heian-kyo is like Shimousa is in how boss battles are done. They take place in the same realm as the boss battles from Shimousa. But, this time around, you aren’t stuck with an NPC Musashi as your supporter.

To make up for that, though, I decided to give myself a challenge. I brought the Kintoki NPC (or another NPC if he wasn’t available) to every single battle of the chapter. No double Castoria for me.

The team you see pictured here is the team I used for the majority of the chapter. Its premise is simple: keep Kintoki alive so he can decimate everything in his path. And the reason why this strategy works so well is because of Kintoki’s NPC CE. He starts with 50% NP charge and has +50% NP gain.

In almost every scenario, you can either take out the biggest enemy or break their first bar on turn 1 with Kintoki. He has a 50% NP battery skill. So, you can fire off his NP on turn 1 of every battle. No enemy stands a chance.

Douman’s Eight General Gods

Okay, so I know I said that this chapter wasn’t a boss rush. But, that’s only partly true. It actually sets itself up to be a boss rush like Olympus. In Olympus, we fought the Mechanical Gods and Heian-kyo, it was the Eight General Gods.

However, the Eight General Gods differ from the Mechanical Gods in 2 major ways. The first of these is their appearance. Despite what you’ll see in the picture below, the Eight General Gods aren’t unique boss enemies. They were summoned using servants as vessels.

That means we don’t get to fight giant monsters with unique attack patterns and skills. We fight servants like Suzuka Gozen and Tawara Touta. That makes these fights way less interesting. Sure, they’re stronger than usual. But, they’re not on the same level as the Mechanical Gods.

The second issue with the Eight General Gods is that some of them are real characters. What do I mean by that? Well, while some of them take the form of servants we already know, others are entirely new servants. I’ll talk about them more later, but these are Taira-no-Kagekiyo and Ibuki-Douji.

Since these new servants were introduced in this story chapter, they’re actual characters. They don’t just show up and get defeated like Suzuka and Tawara. There’s some build-up for them before the fights. We learn about their backstories and what makes them such formidable opponents.

That’s good, though, right? Well, it could have been. The issue is still that we only got one “difficult” fight against each of them. So, there’s all this build-up, and then Kintoki smacks them with his NP and it’s over. At least, that’s how I beat Kagekiyo. I would have liked to see more from these characters.

The Genji Killer

Taira-no-Kagekiyo, also known as the Genji Killer, is the first of the new enemy servants. She’s an older version of Ushiwakamaru who appears as an Avenger. What is she taking vengeance against? The Genji clan, including our allies Kintoki, Tsuna, and Raikou.

I have some mixed feelings about her backstory. On one hand, she’s a cool character and I liked how she came into the story as the natural enemy of the Genji clan. But, her backstory also included a lot of Japanese historical figures.

I guess if you’re Japanese, you know who all these people are. But, there were a bunch of old guys with really long, similar names that kept being mentioned. I couldn’t keep track of it all. So, a lot of the stuff with her went right over my head.

The fight against Kagekiyo wasn’t very interesting. Because of her backstory, I figured we’d have to fight her a bunch of times over the course of the chapter. And I thought she’d be stronger each time to give us a new challenge. That’s not the case.

You can easily defeat her using the same team I used for the first half or two-thirds of the chapter. As long as you keep Kintoki alive, you’ll have no trouble taking down Kagekiyo.

Oh, and speaking of Kintoki being able to destroy almost every boss in the game, I need to mention something I hate. Heian-kyo wasn’t the first chapter to do this. But, I hate when I decisively defeat an enemy, and then my allies are talking about how they lost the fight.

There were so many times I destroyed an enemy on turn 1 with Kintoki’s NP. And then, after the fight, Kintoki comments on how he was the one defeated.

Ibuki-Douji Descends From the Mountain

Ibuki-Douji is the overwhelmingly powerful enemy of Lostbelt 5.5. And when I say that, I mean based on her lore. She’s supposed to be a combination of Shuten-Douji and a god of nature. She’s a divine servant — and not one who’s only a little divine.

I guess you could compare her appearance to when Surtr appeared in Lostbelt 2. They’re both ancient, powerful beings that we should stand no chance against. I’d also put Atlas from Olympus in the same category, even though we didn’t get to fight him.

Unfortunately, Ibuki-Douji has less build-up than Kagekiyo. But, at the same time, I can kind of understand it. It’s not like Surtr had any build-up, either. Still, I would have liked her to be a bit more involved in the story before her defeat. She’s connected to Shuten, one of the main characters of the chapter, after all.

Anyway, it was the Ibuki-Douji fight where I finally switched up my team composition. I still brought the NPC Kintoki to every fight. But, starting here, I moved him to the backline. Why try to keep Kintoki alive when I could use a team that just doesn’t take any damage?

I’m pretty sure Ibuki-Douji was supposed to be the hardest boss fight in the chapter. But, even she can’t do anything against the combined power of Himiko, Castoria, and Merlin. If the enemy doesn’t have a way to consistently remove buffs, they can’t get through this team.

The strategy is simple. You use Himiko’s NP, Merlin’s NP, and Castoria’s NP in that order whenever possible. This protects your servants, cleanses their debuffs, generates stars, and buffs their attack. Then, while you’re taking no damage, Himiko destroys the enemy with her Buster crits.

It’s broken.

From Singularity to Lostbelt

Now seems like a good time to dive a bit more into the whole Singularity to Lostbelt thing. So, from the Pseudo-Singularities, we know that Limbo can create Singularities. Well, we know he can create Pseudo-Singularities. So, that’s what he did here.

And why did he choose for this Pseudo-Singularity to take place in Heian-kyo? Because that’s where Ashiya Douman, Limbo’s vessel, is from. I’m pretty sure servants get power boosts when within their original time-space. So, Limbo is stronger than normal here. Also, he already has political power in Heian-kyo.

So, what about turning this singularity into a Lostbelt? As a disciple of the Foreign God, Limbo knows all about Trees of Emptiness. And with that knowledge, he was able to create his own Pseudo-Tree of Emptiness. However, Limbo’s Tree of Emptiness isn’t connected to the Foreign God.

Instead, he plans to use the Tree’s power to turn himself into another Foreign God. Why serve the Foreign God when he could become a Foreign God and serve himself? This means two of the three Foreign God disciples have betrayed the Foreign God at this point.

Overall, Limbo had a good plan. And he almost succeeded in it. But, he made one vital mistake. He invited us into his Pseudo-Lostbelt. Without us there, he likely would have won. But, he wanted revenge on Chaldea for ruining his plans in Shimousa.

Oh, and I guess I should mention the whole Casters-only Holy Grail War he set up in his Lostbelt. Do you know why he did that? It’s so the other masters would think we were a Caster servant (which they did) and kill us. Honestly, that was kind of genius even though it didn’t work out as intended.

Cutting Down the Caster of Limbo

The final fight against Limbo has a gimmick that could definitely make it difficult. During the fight, Limbo will apply a delayed debuff to all your servants. I believe it causes your servants to die after 3 turns.

But, we also have Golden Huge Bear on our side in this fight. Its skills replace your normal Mystic Code skills. And one of its skills, which have reduced cooldowns, cleanses the party’s debuffs. Still, you probably want another debuff cleanser for this fight.

Of course, as you can see from the image below, I didn’t have any trouble with this fight. Castoria has a party-wide debuff cleanse on her NP. So, keeping my servants safe from Limbo’s curse wasn’t hard. This screenshot was also taken moments before Himiko finished Limbo off.

If you read my review of the Atlantis chapter, you may recall I complained about the difficulty. That chapter came out pre-Castoria and I was still able to beat every fight thanks to Jeanne. I think only 1 enemy in the whole chapter had pierce invulnerability or buff removal.

The same problem exists for Heian-kyo. But, it’s not quite as pronounced. There are enemies who can pierce invulnerability or remove buffs. But, these effects aren’t prominent enough to be able to stop Castoria. Thanks to her, there needs to be a lot more NP/skill seal, buff removal, and nullify buff effects for content to be hard.

Challenge Quests and NeroFest/BiNY Exhibition Quests force you to build unique teams. Sometimes this is due to mechanics you have to build a team to fight against. Other times it’s due to limitations on the servants you can bring. Either way, more story content should do this.

Malice Severed — Golden Finish

I’m not going to say that Heian-kyo was the worst Lostbelt chapter. And that’s not because it technically isn’t a Lostbelt chapter — it counts as a Main Interlude. It’s because it’s still better than Atlantis. But, I’m going to say it’s my second least favorite chapter in Part 2.

Heian-kyo had better characters than Atlantis. It had a better story. And it had better boss fights, even if you can still beat them without taking any damage. However, compared to the other Lostbelt chapters, Heian-kyo was disappointing.

It also didn’t really feel like a main story chapter. There could be a few reasons for this. For example, the fact that Mash wasn’t there. Instead, we had Danzou as our Chaldean companion. And, unlike the other Lostbelt chapters, this one came out of nowhere. It wasn’t a pre-established part of the Cosmos in the Lostbelt story.

Building on the fact that it didn’t feel like a main story chapter, that also means Limbo’s defeat felt a bit hollow. I liked how we defeated Limbo. It was cool, especially when he got cut down while attempting to bring us down one last time.

But, it felt like a villain got killed off in the straight-to-VHS sequel of a blockbuster film. Maybe that’s how it had to happen, though. There are only 2 Lostbelts left and a lot of loose ends to tie up. And considering how long I know Lostbelts 6 and 7 are, there likely wasn’t room for Limbo’s story.

What could this mean for the Foreign God and her other disciples, though? Are they all going to get satisfying endings by the time Lostbelt 7 is over? I have a feeling there’s going to be another chapter after that, similar to how Solomon was.

Conclusion

Have you finished the Heian-kyo Lostbelt? How did you feel about it? Do you agree with my assessment of the chapter, or do you think it was better than I claim? Let me know in the comments.

If you enjoyed this review, remember to click the like button down below. Also, follow me on your social media of choice — links are in the footer. And come join our Discord server to discuss anime with other members of the community.

Finally, I’d like to thank Roman and Key Mochi for supporting this blog at the Heika and Senpai tiers this month. To learn more about how you too can become a supporter, check out Patreon.com/DoubleSama.

Interstellar Mountainous City, Olympus

As you’re most likely aware, Olympus is the second chapter of the Fifth Lostbelt from Fate/Grand Order Part 2. The first chapter of this Lostbelt was Atlantis. And, that makes Lostbelt No. 5 the first Lostbelt to have more than one chapter.

If you read my review of the Atlantis chapter, you’ll be well aware that I thought it was the worst Lostbelt chapter. Luckily, Olympus completely redeems Lostbelt No. 5. It wasn’t the best chapter in every aspect. But, I’m pretty confident in saying it’s the best chapter as a whole (so far).

When compared to Atlantis, Olympus is better in every single way. The characters are better, the story is better, the fights are better, and even the music is better.

And, what seals Atlantis’ fate is that wouldn’t say it adds to Olympus in any meaningful way. Sure, we take down Artemis and Poseidon in Atlantis. But, if you move those fights into Olympus, you can cut out Atlantis without hurting Olympus.

In case you forgot, none of our ally servants from Atlantis survived into Olympus. So cutting their stories out completely doesn’t matter for Olympus’ plot. And even the setting of this chapter is different too.

The Servants We Never Got

If there’s one thing I hate about Olympus, it’s that the character designs were too good. There were some characters with amazing designs that aren’t summonable as servants. I’m talking, of course, about the Machine Gods in humanoid form.

If you’re wondering why we can’t summon these gods as servants but can summon others, there’s a lore reason. Pseudo-servants like Europa are fair game. Divine servants like Dioscuri are fair game. But literal gods are not. And that’s why we can’t summon the Machine Gods of Zeus, Aphrodite, and Demeter.

But, of course, we could summon them by using a simple loophole. We could say that their humanoid and Machine God versions are distinct. That would solve the lore issue.

Evil of Humanity Hoard

I’m going a little out of chronological order here, but I want to discuss Tamamo Vitch Koyanskaya now. Koyanskaya has been one of the main antagonists throughout Part 2. And, 6 chapters into the part, we finally get to fight her.

We don’t defeat Koyanskaya once and for all here. But, she does serve as a boss of Olympus. And considering how important she is to the story, I figured I should dedicate a section of the review to her.

So, we learn that Koyanskaya isn’t one of the Foreign God’s disciples. Up until this point, we’d assumed that to be the case. But, it turns out that Foreign God’s 3 disciples (servants) are Rasputin, Limbo, and Muramasa.

Koyanskaya is something different. All we know right now is that rather than serving under the Foreign God, she’s a business partner of the Foreign God. And on top of that, she doesn’t care what happens to the Lostbelts.

As for the fight against Koyanskaya, called the “Beast of Taming,” it’s pretty simple. I used my classic Mash/Tamamo/Jeanne team, as you can see from the screenshot above. By the end of the fight, all 3 of those servants were still standing.

If you’re having trouble with this fight, there’s an easy way to beat it. All you have to do is bring Casters and have some way to clear her debuffs. Koyanskaya does almost no damage to Casters. I’m pretty sure I could have soloed this fight with my Merlin that has Code: Cure command codes on all his face cards.

And in case you’re wondering, I put those on him as a joke for the Yang Guifei Challenge Quest. But, it turned out to be very effective.

The Day to Bring Down Gods

This next part of the review is going to be all about the 3 boss battles against the Machine Gods. But, before I get into those fights, I’d like to brag for a moment.

Olympus is often said to have the hardest boss fights of any chapter up to this point. And yet, including in the Koyanskaya fight, I didn’t use any command seals. That’s right, even for the infamous Demeter fight.

While I am bringing that up to brag, I’m also bringing it up to say that you can do it too. These fights are going to seem tough at first. But, if you plan for them, they’re not that bad.

Also, I’m not including the various Dioscuri fights or the Europa fight in this review. Those are more like mini-bosses and you should be able to figure out how to beat them.

Demeter (ΔΗΜΗΤΗΡ)

Demeter is the hardest boss in Olympus. I’ll admit that. And, I’ll even admit that I had to retry this fight a few times before beating it. But, it was also the only boss fight of the chapter that took me more than one attempt.

If you’ve been playing FGO for at least a year, you likely have everything you need to beat Demeter as I did. I didn’t use any SSR servants. And the only SR servants I used were the forced support Caenis and 2 free servants from events.

Paracelsus, Ryouma, and Caenis made up my front line (shown below). In the back, I had Hans, Asclepius, and Santa Nightingale. I also used the Chaldea Combat Uniform as my Mystic Code.

This team didn’t work as intended for me (because my teams generally don’t). But, despite that, I still managed to win. So, let’s look at the basic idea behind this team. That way, you’ll be able to make a similar one with your resources.

I chose Ryouma as my primary damage dealer for a very simple reason. All my SSR Riders either have AoE or support Noble Phantasms. Ryouma is my best single-target Rider. If you have him, he should be at NP5.

Paracelsus and Hans were there to help Ryouma loop his NP, which he did very well. Asclepius keeps Ryouma alive. And Santa Nightingale didn’t do her job. I intended for her to prevent Ryouma’s buffs from getting removed. But, at level 8, her buff removal resist skill failed during my successful run.

Aphrodite (ΑΦΡΟΔΙΤΗ)

After I beat Demeter with relative ease, the Aphrodite battle worried me. Everyone said the Demeter fight was the hardest. But, Aphrodite seemed like she would be more of a challenge for me. Luckily, that wasn’t the case.

Unfortunately, I didn’t take a screenshot of my team before this battle. So, I don’t remember who my support servant was. If this was another forced support battle, then you know who I used. If not, I doubt they mattered too much.

The servants I brought to the fight were Sitonai, Tamamo, Asclepius, Hans, and Enkidu. The basic idea of this team was to use Sitonai as my primary damage dealer, with most of the team supporting her. Enkidu was in the final slot to clean up at the end.

If you’re wondering why I chose Sitonai and Enkidu as my damage dealers, allow me to explain. Casters have a low attack multiplier. Also, there aren’t many single-target Casters. And, as far as I remember, every single-target Caster is a buster servant.

So, I opted for Sitonai instead because she still has some class advantage over Assassins. And on top of that, as an arts servant, I could support her very well with Tamamo.

Enkidu is a great backline servant. But, what makes him good for this fight, in particular, is that his NP has anti-divine damage. Aphrodite is a god, so she has the divine trait.

Zeus (ΖΕΥΣ)

For the Zeus fight, I also don’t remember the full team I used. But, I do know 4 of the 6 servants. They were Space Ishtar, Mash, and Tamamo in the front, and the forced support Romulus=Quirinus in the back.

By the end of the fight, I had Space Ishtar, Mash, and Romulus=Quirinus in the front. So, I’m guessing I lost Tamamo and whoever the other two backline servants were. That’s not too bad, though, considering this is one of the major boss fights.

But, I don’t want to discuss the actual fight against Zeus here. It wasn’t a very eventful battle, as you can tell from my remaining servants. What’s more interesting is everything surrounding this battle.

Zeus is an intimidating opponent, and I liked that about him. Sure, he made the classic mistake of sending the other gods to fight us one by one. They could have wiped us out if they came all at once. But, he’s still a cool Lostbelt king, so I’ll forgive him for that.

Something I haven’t seen other people bring up about this fight is that we summoned 2 Grand servants for it. Everyone remembers Romulus=Quirinus as the Grand Lancer. But we summoned Ares too. And from what I remember, it said he was the Grand Saber.

Of course, there’s not only one Grand servant in each class. Even though we summoned Ares as the Grand Saber here doesn’t mean we won’t see a different Grand Saber later. The Grand designation means that they’re the “perfect” servant for the particular situation.

Oh, and we summoned a literal Machine God here. So why can’t we get my beloved Demeter as a servant?

We’re Here to Kill Chaos

Memes about killing Chaos aside, I was very concerned when Chaos appeared. I wasn’t concerned about there being a difficult boss battle against Chaos. I knew I could kill Chaos if it came down to it. No, what concerned me was this “ancient enemy” appearing out of nowhere at the end.

That’s a trope I’ve never liked.

But, despite that, I did think the appearance of Chaos was pretty cool. I mean, it’s a giant, fiery eye staring down at us from a tear in space-time. That’s crazier than when Sutr crawled out of the Sun in Lostbelt No. 2.

Of course, I wish I could have had the chance to fight against Chaos. Unfortunately, I didn’t get that chance. And I doubt I’ll ever get that chance because of what happened to it.

Musashi pulled a Charlotte Corday and stole an epic boss battle from us. But, I’ll forgive her because Musashi’s sacrifice was the coolest part of the chapter. If that didn’t get you hyped, nothing will. I kind of want to go back and rewatch it now.

Also, a neat fact you may not know is that after this point, Musashi is “erased” from the game. When playing FGO, navigate to My Room, then Material, and then Spirit Origin List. Here, you’ll see a database of all the servants you’ve come across.

After Musashi sacrifices herself, you’ll notice that entries 153 and 261 now say “Data Lost.” Those IDs correspond to Musashi and Summer Musashi.

A Battle Among Equals

After we defeat Zeus and Musashi sends Chaos to the Shadow Realm, Kirschtaria Wodime shows up. It turns out that he’s been using everyone else this entire time. He’s no friend of Zeus and also isn’t working on behalf of the Foreign God.

Instead, Wodime tricked both of them so that he could use Olympus’ Tree of Emptiness to summon a servant. That servant is the titan Atlas. Wodime’s summoning of Atlas was kind of thwarted, though. So, he then chooses to have a friendly bout of fisticuffs with us.

At this point in the chapter, I decided I was going to have fun with the final battles. In the first fight against Wodime and Caenis, I used a team built around Elizabeth Bathory (Brave). I did the same for the final Caenis fight. Why? Because Brave Eli-chan is fun.

Now, you may have some questions after looking at the above image. That’s the result of the fight that’s against Wodime himself. And yes, I 3-turned the fight.

So, you may be familiar with the fact that you can solo this Wodime fight with Mash. I considered doing that because it seemed kind of fun. But, then I saw someone else do something that seemed like more fun. I saw someone 3-turn Wodime with Euryale.

In case you don’t know, Euryale is one of my all-time favorite servants. So, I didn’t have any choice in the matter. I had to do it too.

This isn’t a team I made myself, but I don’t care. I used a team that looked fun, and it was. The team was Euryale, Mash, Santa Nightingale, Reines (I may have added her), and double Tamamo.

The Foreign God Descends

I’m pretty confident in saying that nobody predicted Chaos would show up. But, I also didn’t predict that the Foreign God was going to descend at the end of Olympus either. Yes, that was the whole point of the Olympus Lostbelt. But, I didn’t think it would happen.

I figured we wouldn’t learn anything about the Foreign God until Lostbelt 7. But, no. The Foreign God is here in the flesh. And by “the flesh,” I mean Olga Marie Animusphere’s flesh. Even if you predicted the Foreign God would descend, you couldn’t have predicted that.

And the weirdest part is that the Foreign God calls themself Olga Marie. It’s not that they look like Olga Marie. They are Olga Marie. So, what’s going on here?

Okay, so saying the Foreign God is Olga Marie may be a little inaccurate. I mean, they are Olga Marie. But, they don’t seem to be the same Olga Marie we knew from Chaldea. There’s some connection between the two, though.

At first, I thought that Olga Marie could have been setting this all up from the start. What if the whole purpose of Chaldea was to summon the Foreign God to Earth? What if Olga Marie knew about all the Singularities, Pseudo-Singularities, and Lostbelts?

This could have all been part of her plan to summon the Foreign God in her own body.

That theory still seems possible. But, then I also thought what if the opposite was true? What if the Foreign God was the one controlling Olga Marie and setting this all up? That kind of makes more sense.

Cosmos Denial

In the end, I enjoyed Lostbelt No. 5 – Olympus a lot. As I already mentioned, everything about it was better than Atlantis. Sure, the part where we have a meal with Europa and the two “kids” was unnecessary. But other than that I liked it.

I know a lot of people say that Lostbelt No. 6 is even better than 5. I hope that’s true. And I hope its chapters are more like Olympus than Atlantis.

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 come join our Discord server to discuss anime (and FGO) with other members of the community.

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My review of the Heian-kyo chapter is available now.

Ancient Ocean of the Dreadnought Gods

I hope you’re ready for a long review because I have a lot to say about Lostbelt No. 5 – Atlantis. I also hope you’ve already played through Atlantis, because I’m going to be spoiling just about everything in it.

Now, I want to get something controversial out of the way right here at the start of the review. I think Atlantis was the worst Lostbelt chapter in Fate/Grand Order so far. It’s also not even a close competition for that title. This is definitively the worst chapter.

However, I do realize that Lostbelt 5 isn’t finished yet. Atlantis is only the first half. The second half, Olympus, is going to release some time in April or May if I’m not mistaken. And, yes, I’m expecting Olympus to actually be good based on what I know of it so far.

It’s kind of disappointing that I feel this way about Atlantis, though. I really enjoy ancient Greece. In university, I studied ancient Mediterranean history (Greece, Rome, Egypt, and the Near East). And if you’re wondering, my area of focus was on how these cultures influenced each other’s art with their own.

But, anyway, I had high hopes for Atlantis based on the subject matter. And, unfortunately, it didn’t live up to my expectations for a number of reasons. I think the characters, plot, and gameplay of this story chapter were all sub-par.

Servants of Proper Human History

I can’t think of all the friendly servants we’ve partied up with throughout the Lostbelts so far. But, I don’t think any previous Lostbelt had characters I disliked as much as Atlantis did. I don’t think every character in Atlantis is bad, though.

Off the top of my head, the friendly servants from Proper Human History in this chapter were Super Orion, Charlotte Corday, Jason, Mandricardo, Achilles, Kiyome Mochizuki, Bartholomew Roberts, Paris, and Francis Drake (sort of).

Starting with Drake because she didn’t actually join our party, I think her character itself is fine. But the fact that she just happened to “find” one of Poseidon’s cores made no sense.

Next, let’s go over the good characters. There are two of these, and their names are Mandricardo and Jason. Look, everyone loves Mandricardo; he’s basically Ishigami from Kaguya-sama. But, I also really liked Jason because I felt that he had a good mix of comedic relief and serious character moments.

The characters I’m neutral on are Achilles and Kiyome. They both played their roles and didn’t do much more than that. I have no issues with them, but they didn’t stand out either.

The rest, I disliked. Orion, Bartholomew, and Paris were annoying. Orion and Bartholomew are just womanizers (and not in a charming way like Napoleon was). And Paris is a literal child who whines all the time.

I wasn’t a fan of how Corday was just constantly talking about how useless she was, either. But, the real reason I don’t like Corday is something I’ll get to later on.

Plot of Atlantis

At this stage in the review, I want to point out three issues I had with the plot of Atlantis. These are that Odysseus was a shounen antagonist trope, Caenis didn’t get a real story, and I didn’t care about the people of this Lostbelt.

Starting with Odysseus, he pulled the classic shounen battle series antagonist trope of constantly underestimating us while we made progress through the Lostbelt. Odysseus never really tried to defeat us at any point in the chapter.

He’d send some troops or a Cerberus our way. We’d defeat them. Then he’d say something like, “Well, there’s no way they’ll win in the end so we can just let them keep struggling on their way.” And this happened multiple times. Every time we won a battle, he just acted like it was no big deal.

Now, Caenis was the opposite of Odysseus personality-wise. She (he?) wanted to destroy us as soon as possible and actually attempted to do so. I like that. But, she’s defeated like halfway through the chapter and never gets a good character arc.

Caenis’s whole story was that she hates Wodime for forcing her to fight on the side of the gods. And Wodime views her as disposable in return. That’s it. Nothing more happens with her character. I would have loved it if we somehow recruited her to our side.

Lastly, there are the Atlanteans. The previous Lostbelts, I think, did a good job of making us empathize with the people who lived there. I really didn’t care at all about the Atlanteans. They played such a minor role that they don’t matter.

Gameplay of Atlantis

In this first of multiple gameplay sections of the review, I want to focus primarily on the difficulty of the chapter. Atlantis was the easiest Lostbelt chapter so far. And I can tell you right now, the same isn’t going to be true for Olympus.

But, just because there are going to be harder fights in the Olympus chapter doesn’t mean the Atlantis chapter should have been as easy as it was. In fact, one of the hardest battles of the chapter comes right near the start: the (first) Cerberus fight.

The first Cerberus fight isn’t the hardest. But Cerberus was kind of the hardest “real” enemy of the chapter until the Poseidon cores in the very last section. And, while I’ll discuss Poseidon more, later on, I don’t particularly think the Poseidon cores were hard either.

Cerberus (and most bosses, to be fair) couldn’t touch the team pictured above. Of course, you could argue that using Qin Shi Huang, Tamamo, and Jeanne is unfair in general. But, I think it’s on the game to pit me against opponents that make team compositions like that not effective.

For example, that team composition would never work against Xiang Yu and Yu Mei-ren. SIN had some challenging content that forced me to use a variety of different teams to clear the chapter. Atlantis didn’t really do that.

If Cerberus was a Berserker without the Berserker weaknesses, that would have been better. Or, it would have been cool if each Cerberus head was a separate enemy and they all had to be killed in the same turn. Those are just some of my ideas for how to make it a bit harder.

Forced Setup Battles

The true hardest battle of Atlantis is one I haven’t mentioned yet. But before I get to that, allow me to explain the way Atlantis adds difficulty. It’s not by putting your team up against challenging opponents. It’s by restricting your team formation.

Team formation restrictions aren’t inherently bad. In one of the Halloween events, formation restrictions added a lot of fun. For example, some battles had to be completed with an all-male or all-female team composition. It made players use servants they normally didn’t in order to build a full team.

Unfortunately, Atlantis’s restrictions aren’t like this. They do things like forcing you to use specific, NPC servants or removing your ability to use Mystic Code skills. Not being able to use Mystic Code skills isn’t really a problem, though, considering how easy the battles are. The battle pictured below is one such example.

With that in mind, what was the most challenging fight of the chapter? It was the one where you were forced to solo a fight against Chiron and two mobs with Achilles. Believe me when I say that was literally the only battle I wiped against.

You may have beaten that fight on your first try. That’s fine. However, that fight is entirely up to RNG. I think I did it four times before winning. There’s no strategy, though. You click the same cards every time and just hope to get lucky with the enemy attacks while saving Achilles’s Invulnerability skill for the mob NP before Chiron’s.

That fight illustrates the biggest problem with Atlantis’s gameplay. It’s extremely easy except for the one fight that’s completely reliant on RNG. That’s not fun.

Corday Ruined the Chapter

Moving away from the gameplay aspect of the chapter for a moment, let’s get into the fourth major issue with Atlantis as well as why I didn’t like Corday’s character. Corday makes up her own Deus ex machina to deny us a fight against Odysseus.

Throughout the entire chapter, I was waiting for the fight that would finally be against Odysseus. There was even one time that he said he was going to fight us, the enemy class showed as Rider (which he is), and then it turned out to be another Cerberus fight instead.

A fight against Odysseus could have actually been good and difficult. But, even if we ignore that part of it, don’t you think we should have gotten to fight against the main antagonist of the chapter? Just as I’ll never forgive FGO Arcade for all the servants they get that we don’t, I’ll never forgive Corday for killing Odysseus before me.

On top of everything Corday denied us, I also just wasn’t a fan of how she killed Odysseus. She uses her NP on him once, and he defends against it because he suspected that she might pull something like that. Fair enough, Odysseus.

But then Corday just uses her NP again and there’s nothing Odysseus can do to stop it. That’s so dumb. Okay, Achilles fighting Chiron while being literally dead but not feeling like dying was also dumb. But Corday’s double NP was probably the worst. At least we fought Chiron.

Oh, and I almost forgot, Corday also suddenly got amnesia at the end before disappearing. I really don’t understand why that was included. I guess to give her some sort of emotional goodbye? At that point, I just wanted her gone faster.

Orion Somehow Redeemed Himself

As I mentioned earlier, I really didn’t like Orion’s character. He was introduced with a pee joke, and he wasn’t much better than that for the vast majority of the chapter. Of course, I did like using him in battle thanks to his insane crits. But character-wise, he’s terrible.

I also didn’t really care all that much about his storyline involving the Artemis of the Lostbelt. At least, not until the end. Orion shooting down the Lostbelt Artemis was actually a good scene for a few reasons, and I do think it redeemed him in the end.

He didn’t shoot her down because that’s what needed to be done for Proper Human History. He did it for her. After recognizing that the Artemis he knew wouldn’t want to be up there all alone (and fighting against him), he basically put her out of her misery.

But, I think what really made this scene impactful, for me, was the narration. The narration during this scene was some of the best in all of FGO so far. That, combined with the final scenes we got of Orion and Artemis together really sold me on Orion in the end.

I still count him among the characters I dislike, though. That one scene isn’t enough to erase everything else he did throughout the chapter.

Also, I already knew that Orion was the Grand Archer going into this story chapter. But I thought it was odd that the first we actually heard of this was when he gave up his Grand status to shoot down Artemis. That seemed like a big deal and he just casually dropped that on us — and then it was never mentioned again.

Poseidon and Olympus

Finally, we get to Poseidon. Although I don’t think the Poseidon core fights were that hard (my Qin Shi Huang, Tamamo, and Jeanne team dealt with them easily), I do think these were the most enjoyable fights of the chapter.

I can definitely see these fights being difficult if you don’t have many servants leveled and skilled up. That would restrict your formation and you might not have the right servants leveled up to easily deal with the cores.

But, anyone can use a Support Jeanne. And Jeanne basically makes these core fights a joke. They have AoE NPs, but neither the cores themselves nor the mobs with them have any way of piercing or removing her party-wide invulnerability. As long as you use Jeanne’s NP whenever the core is about to NP, you shouldn’t have a problem.

Now, I think in one of the fights there was a mob that applied NP seal to your entire party. That can be an issue, for sure. But even with that AoE NP seal, I didn’t have any trouble. I think my team just tanked the core’s NP even without invulnerability. So maybe that was an Assassin-class core.

Anyway, the Poseidon core fights were a nice way to end the chapter, even if I wish there were harder fights. But, that’s where Olympus comes in. Poseidon and Artemis are destroyed now, however, there are other gods to be defeated.

I don’t remember what other gods there are left, though. I know there’s at least Zeus. And we also never fought against Dioscuri, who I’m assuming we’re going to face eventually. Also, Wodime has to be beaten after he styled on us by summoning meteors.

Basically, there should be a lot of big fights in Olympus and I’m looking forward to them. I can’t say I’m expecting much from the story after Atlantis, though. My prediction is that the fights are going to carry the chapter.

Conclusion

What did you think of Lostbelt No. 5 – Atlantis? Which characters were your favorites and least favorites? Did you find any of the fights to be hard? And, are you as disappointed as I am about not getting to fight Odysseus? Let me know in the comments.

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My review of the Olympus chapter is available now.