in our continuing quest for draku bait here’s fate/sword dance, a 2d fighter based off a kinoko nasu visual novel


this game was made in 2005 i guess? it seems pretty high quality for that year. idk maybe my standards are off but i would’ve had an original xbox at that time so the comparison is this versus blinx the fucking time sweeper


it’s got all your favorite characters like saber, rider and rancer here
the question marks are secret characters i think? there were 8 super powered fucks running around in the story at this time so i’m guessing that corresponds to the 8 characters. so that would be caster and secret gold asshole man

they also have you picking between RUSH STYLE and STRONG STYLE when you select a character. i don’t know what the differences are but when i picked strong style i had less meter and couldn’t do combos properly. maybe they make your moves slower but have them do more damage?
after that i picked rush style every time.


i picked archer to start out because he’s the coolest and i wanted twin blades.
this dialogue sequence is fully voiced and they took the time to animate the other characters, rin and shinji. i’m genuinely impressed at the level of polish. already this game is better than marvel infinite


my opponent, rider, kicked my fucking teeth in. as you’d expect she swings that huge chain around and i was getting memed the entire time.
she also has this move where she throws the chain backwards and it comes out of the ground? the only fucking explanation for this is that the chain wraps all the way around the world, stops exactly halfway across from japan, and then tunnels through the entire earth to stab this man in the asshole


i could not get fucking anything going with archer. this was the only special i could semi-consistently get out. he just slashes a bunch and i think the animations are copied from his normal moves. it ends with a launcher so maybe you could jump and do more shit afterwards? idk

anyway i fucking died hard so i exited the game and looked around for help. luckily this game came with an instruction manual. here’s the combo.html page, helpfully google translated for your convenience

Spoiler: Show

On enjoying games

When picking up an opponent in the air, when you

use Delong Strong style, you can cancel lever exit or EX button technique from normal!
I will add a special mortal technique from there and compensate for the gap of skill!

Even if it is blocked, do not panic and keep calm! Risk is low if P & K attack!
If you guard or your opponent seems to come out with a late attack, come back again with P & K or throw!
Let's give up if we get over S w

To better put the chain combo
, press the button while checking the HIT sound and it will be beautifully connected!

Do not give up even if you get one!
The second gut value is not bad! !

thanks guys, i’ll be sure to compensate for the gap of skill
other pages were more helpful. there’s a full move list for every character as well as general information about the combat. they even tell you how to do a basic combo. punch > kick > slash > crouch slash > heavy slash


next up i picked saber. i also set up my controller correctly this time so i could actually do moves.
this is saber’s super. she flies across the fucking stage and then turns around and does it again like 5 more times. this move is really good and i spammed it all the time.

also, in a cool nod to the source material, her sword is actually invisible unless she’s swinging it, at which point it becomes a blue energy wave thing.


more fucking around with the buttons and i find this shit. basically you have one move that’s extremely slow but if it lands you knock the enemy up a million miles into the air and you get a free combo. this is straight up ripped from guilty gear, as are a lot of things from this game. guilty gear is a good thing to rip off though and it’s not a carbon copy. they have some of their own ideas and there’s shit from guilty gear that doesn’t appear here.
i had a much easier time fighting as saber and managed to actually get to stage 2


stage 2 is against assassin who is a dope samurai guy. ofc. he has a katana and you fight him outside a shrine.

uh one of saber’s moves is that she summons the star of david to distract you? it keeps the opponent in place for a long time, more than long enough to start a combo. honestly i think it might be kinda overpowered


and she has a shoryuken style uppercut. a really fucking good one too, it reaches like halfway across the screen. no one is jumping in on my girl


last but not least is her big level 3 super EXCALIBUUUUUR. she yells that voice line like goku powering up to super saiyan 12 and i fully respect her for it. anyways the point is she slams the ground with her sword and then does a bajillion damage. good move but getting 3 super bars takes too long so i just kept spamming the other one


here’s assassin’s super. it goes on for like 20 fucking hits, and each one is animated individually in painful detail. if you have to block this shit you have enough time to clean your bathroom, cook some instant noodles, get caught up on one piece and you’ll still be able to counter attack after his move ends.
fuck you assassin you pokemon scammer faggot stop air comboing me with your sephiroth sword


next up is lancer who’s name is spelled correctly here. as you’d expect from a man with a big lance his moves are long ranged as fuck. this is a normal attack.
despite the range he’s pretty fucking speedy too. i was getting combos of like 16 or so hits pretty easily with him because he just goes fucking nuts with that spear.

actually combos in this game are generally really smooth and easy to pull off. once i got the hang of saber i could freestyle a bunch of shit and it would generally work. i was doing short combos into her uppercut, getting combo into super relatively consistently, and even picking opponents up while they were in mid-air and doing cool shit from there. i actually think i’m better at this game than guilty gear lol


here’s his super. after he nails you with that huge kamehameha slash thing he continues to beat the shit out of you for a good little while. not half as long as assassin does but it’s still pretty wack

tbh lancer was not that hard and i have little to say


ay here’s berserker. berserker is pretty fucking lame but his master illya is cool so here’s a shot of her. don’t look at anyone else onscreen they’re all losers in comparison.

berserker is, as you’d expect, slow as shit but he hits like a truck.


he can avoid being interrupted during certain attacks. the glowing red shit on him shows that he has super armor on this charge.
that flippy move from saber hits high i think? and it’s relatively fast if you use Slash, and covers like most of the screen with Hard Slash. i used this quite a bit when the opponents started blocking more.

it’s inspired by a move ky kiske from guilty gear has. i didn’t realize it for a while but i think saber in this game is generally inspired by ky. they have pretty much the same color palette so i can see why. even saber’s super is kinda ky’s. the similarities aren’t close enough to call her a carbon copy but i think she deliberately plays a lot like him.


berserker’s super move is another charge but this time he’s on fire. wow cool
he pretty much only charged at me for the entire fight, i didn’t see a single combo or other special move. being aggressive meant he had no chance to move his slow lumbering ass and attack me


after berserker i fought archer! i took this screenshot for anyone wondering if he is an archer.
also, he managed to set up that black knife and it stayed there for like 15 seconds. it could be a glitch but i think it’s supposed to be a set up for cool shit? i have no idea


after beating the fuck out of archer you get this cutscene between creepy church man and the motherfucking OG himself, gilgamesh. he was the eighth secret asshole i mentioned earlier so i’m glad he’s actually in the game.


being a secret boss character he’s fucking ridiculous to actually fight. this is a shoryuken type move and it’s not even one of the crazier things he can do. he spins all over the place when he does it, too. that’s a good trick.


THIS is the real bullshit. he can summon other characters’ weapons to stab your shit. i’ve been in the middle of a super move and saber ended up ramming a floating magic energy sword through her eye socket and the super got interrupted. if you stand at a distance he spams this shit like crazy too. i had to go in but not too aggressively or he’d do his spinny shit and no one would be happy.

i died an uncomfortable amount of times on this boss but through attrition i won


this is you win screen i guess. it’s one fucking line of text over the city being destroyed.
and no i did not unlock gilgamesh after all that fuckery. if you have to beat story mode without dying or something i’ll probably never do it.

ultimately this game was really fucking fun. the characters are cool and the game holds itself together well whilst giving you some fun stuff to play around with.

it also features what might be the coolest and stupidest super move i have ever seen




five umihara kawases out of five

thats really cool actually. the spritework and voices are hilarious but i guess not every doujin game can exactly be god tier in those departments. sounds like it plays relatively well and everything, which is great for an amateur fightan.

>also, he managed to set up that black knife and it stayed there for like 15 seconds. it could be a glitch but i think it’s supposed to be a set up for cool shit? i have no idea

i imagine it's similar to how many characters in other games like roa in melty can set up shit to fire off later for pressure/combos.

the way UBW works in this appears to be about the same as in unlimited codes, the official fate fightan that came out a few years later. so thats pretty cool

>i imagine it's similar to how many characters in other games like roa in melty can set up shit to fire off later for pressure/combos.

went and checked
yeah there's another input he can do to fire the knife. the AI never bothered with it fsr

this dialogue sequence is fully voiced and they took the time to animate the other characters, rin and shinji. i’m genuinely impressed at the level of polish. already this game is better than marvel infinite

i laughed.

this game looks genuinely really good for a fan made thing, almost to the point where i wonder why i've never seen it before? excellent read as usual though, i liked the part when gilgamesh beat you up

this game looks genuinely really good for a fan made thing, almost to the point where i wonder why i've never seen it before?

yeah i'm kind of shocked i only ever see that french bread april fools where they pretended they were making a fate fightan in the spirit of melty as a joke when someone asks about fate fighting games in melty discussion if this was here the whole time