Fate/Grand Order

Fate/Grand Order is above all a storytelling experience built on the extensive Fate universe, where historical and mythological figures – so-called Servants – appear in modern form and lead the player through long, text-heavy chapters that feel more like reading a visual novel than playing a typical mobile game. The battles themselves are turn-based and relatively simple: three card types, Buster, Arts, or Quick, line up into combos, while the real depth of the game lies elsewhere – in the stories, which can take dozens of hours of reading for a single chapter, and in fan knowledge of characters from anime, manga, and previous Fate titles that the game references extensively.

The game was created at the studio Delightworks (today Aniplex) in 2015 and quickly became one of the highest-grossing mobile titles ever in Japan, thanks in part to an engaged fan base that carried over from earlier visual novels and anime series set in the same universe. The English version arrived two years later and brought the same emphasis on story, just at a slower pace of content releases than the Japanese version, where entire seasonal arcs had already played out by then.

FGO's gacha system is notorious for the low chance of pulling the rarest five-star Servants, which has become so well known that even the player community itself jokes about it in countless internet memes. The game is nonetheless free to play, and the story campaign can be completed without needing to pay for extra characters.

Why play it: For fans of the Fate series and players who don't mind dozens of hours of reading in exchange for simple turn-based combat, rather than those looking for fast action.