Golden_Sorcerer

All of my matchups regarding Fate/EXTRA in the Badass VS thread got me in the mood to play again, as well as revive a little side project of mine that never really took off before.

Since EXTRA Material got released, all of the Playable Servants' "canonical" stats were revealed to us, and that got me wondering: how much harder would it be if I bothered to run through the game with all of them, while also ensuring I never went beyond what their stats were supposed to be? I just finished Stage 3 with Saber, and I can say that it is much, much harder than any of my previous runs with her, at least for now.

That being said, I also have a very particular style of playing, at least against all the Servants. You see, depending on who I'm facing, or what the story dictates, I do my best to give my opponents a "fair fight" - letting them use their NPs at least once against me, intentionally not leveling up my stats if the opponents are holding back... that sort of thing. As I have no intention of letting those constraints go, that makes things even more challenging, but what can I say? I find the fights themselves far more exciting and showy, that way.

Anyway, while the game itself specifies Caster as the hardest and Saber as the easiest for a first run (Did I neglect to mention that I also threw all caution to the wind and deleted all my previous save data, just to get a more genuine first-run experience?), if you were to build them according to their canon stats, Caster is probably the easiest to handle, because her stat spread is more conducive to her playing style! As you could probably imagine, Nero's D-rank Strength and Endurance does not do her any favors, especially since she was made to be played like a straightforward, tanky sort of fighter. She doesn't have fancy stat-lowering Hrunting arrows like Archer, she has no MP-restoring skills like Caster, and she has absolutely nothing to shield herself like either of the two. And, to make matters worse, her physical skills are also greatly nerfed by her lack of strength. It also really doesn't help that her other three stats are actually pretty damn good, meaning they take a far heftier investment than Strength and Endurance.

All of these reasons are why I decided to start this experiment with her specifically. Simply put, if I could get through the game with Canon!Nero, then that means I could probably also handle whatever the game throws at me with the other two. On that note, I was originally thinking of playing Casko last, but I know I heard someone once mention playing the game with Archer's stats from the original VN, and those are actually mostly worse than what

No Name

Archer

is supposed to have here! So, since I have it on good faith that Archer's spread is at least doable, I've decided to save any runs with him for last. Sorry, Archer fans...

As for the actual first stage with Canon!Nero, there really isn't much to talk about:

Thankfully, there aren't too many points you get at the first week, at least if you go for a level a day, like I usually do. That was just enough for me to D-rank both Strength and Endurance, while also putting points in Luck and Agility. There really wasn't that big a difference from the usual experience, during the Servant battle proper. Not to mention, there wasn't much for me to do to make things "fairer". I mean, I could've probably let Shinji and Rider get all the treasure, but that would've just been stacking the odds too heavily in their favor, and wasting some good money for me to cash in for early game equipment! Also, it would've involved letting Shinji win the contest, which... would've left a bad taste in my mouth.

Robin, on the other hand, is a whole other can of worms... which I will talk about next time.