Game development begins with destroying Girls' Frontline.

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The process is slightly shorter and the pace is faster; the entire prologue takes about an hour.

It has its ups and downs, just like watching a movie.

The two quickly became engrossed in the game.

"They're here! They're here!!"

"After waiting so long, I can finally play the first chapter!!!"

The biggest change in the full version of Destiny Trails compared to the demo version is definitely the expansion of the storyline.

The game's prologue, which takes an hour, tells the story of Joan of Arc and establishes her character. As a result, many players assumed that the game would take place in England during the first chapter.

That is, entering Saber's route.

As the stars fell and time passed, the players discovered that they had landed in a city with a Roman style.

Roman elements appear in many games.

There are also quite a few games based on Rome.

However, once you actually enter the game and stroll through the Roman-style city, the feeling is truly magical.

"Rome?"

"Could it be that we're about to encounter Nero?"

“This character is quite difficult to portray.”

In the world of Fate, mentioning Rome naturally brings to mind Nero, the great tyrant of history, as well as Nero in Fate, who is tone-deaf, enthusiastic, open-minded, and very understanding of human nature.

If you look closely at the popular characters in Fate, it's not hard to find the truly popular ones.

They often possess the dual buffs of historical imagery and Fate imagery.

For example, Artoria, and Joan of Arc.

Both of them are people with very legendary stories in history or in people's influence. With such a foundation, and then the blessing of the FATE Heroic Spirit form.

Players are naturally much more accepting of them.

Characters like Nero, whose historical prototypes aren't great, certainly have popularity in Fate, but they're inherently at a disadvantage.

So, when the game enters this Roman-style city...

Although they didn't say it aloud, they were somewhat worried about whether Xinghuo could portray the character well. At the same time, they were also curious about the upcoming plot.

And soon, their curiosity was fulfilled.

Because the entire plot of the first chapter doesn't revolve around Nero, but rather tells the story of a very strange, unrecorded Holy Grail War that took place in ancient Rome!

The plot has obvious ups and downs.

As mentioned before, the setting in Fate/stay night is to "correct" history.

This "correction" does not mean not changing history, but rather removing the "anomalies" in this period of history.

In the prologue.

This vision is the corrupted British army, and in the first chapter, it is the Holy Grail that should never have appeared.

Aside from the main plot, the biggest difference between Fate/stay night and other similar FATE games is that players can "travel" with the Servants, an element that is particularly evident in this chapter.

If it were just a player traveling to ancient Rome, to be honest, the only interesting thing about it would be that the player gets to appreciate the art style of Starfire.

Within the player's sphere of influence, the city of Rome is indeed very well-built and has a great feel to it.

Based on this.

Joan of Arc's arrival brought the story to life.

"Here! This is Rome!?"

Joan of Arc's eyes widened, her face filled with disbelief, her delicate features etched with surprise and confusion.

She walked slowly forward, seemingly still not recovered from this sudden time travel.

"Wow! This really is Rome! Master, why aren't you excited at all!?"

The same plot, which was meant to be a setup, suddenly became lively and dynamic because of Joan of Arc's appearance.

This setting immediately sparked the players' imagination.

What would Joan of Arc's reaction be if she saw King Arthur in the future? Or if this time it's Nero traveling forward, how would he view people calling her a tyrant?

Will these dialogues between the spirits of historical figures lead to memorable scenes?

All of these are actually interesting extensions derived from the basic settings of the game FATE itself.

The Destiny Track does this part extremely well.

The first part of the first chapter of the entire game can be largely called "My Stroll in Rome with Joan of Arc," a heartwarming little story with a touch of sweet romance.

The timing of this story is perfect, because players have just finished the prologue and are still deeply impressed by their relationship with Joan of Arc, so this adds a touch of lingering charm.

Instead of pulling players out of the story, it will smoothly guide them into the new narrative.

The development team clearly understands the players' mindset. Just when players are indulging in this illusion of peace, the crisis section of the first chapter will begin.

Since this is a Holy Grail War that should never have happened, it naturally has opponents. However, in order to accommodate completely new players, that is, players who have never been exposed to the FATE series before, the game is designed to accommodate them.

This Holy Grail War involves only three factions, one of which is the player, whose Servant is Jeanne d'Arc.

Secondly, and naturally the main character of this episode, Nero.

The third one is King Arthur, who was inexplicably dragged into this.

This was something that Xinghuo and Mogu repeatedly discussed during the scriptwriting of "The Trajectory of Destiny," namely, to make the main story chapters as cinematic as possible.

At the same time, in terms of setting, this method of Guan Gong treating Qin Qiong is used to enrich the personalities of the characters.

The three-way plot design in this chapter is quite meaningful.

Nero and King Arthur, whether in their historical portrayals or in the Fate series, can be described as perfect opposites in terms of personality and other aspects.

Artoria treats people with benevolence, so she naturally harbors a dislike for Nero upon arriving in this world. Therefore, Artoria's goal is to obtain the Holy Grail.

Deny Nero.

Nero, as the protagonist of this chapter, will showcase both the "tyrannical" side of the tyrant and the other side of his "tyranny" in the story.

As for the players, they are both witnesses and those who solve the mystery.

During the trip.

From the beginning, the player knew that the Holy Grail was fake, so he wanted to mediate the matter. However, the two people fighting over the fake Holy Grail also regarded the player as a rival for the Holy Grail.

The middle part of the first chapter of the game tells the story of the Holy Grail War, in which the two sides fight for this cause.

Chapter 435 Holy Grail War

This section.

It's very interesting, firstly because the combat style is interesting.

Spark has prepared a Rome city for players. Since this is a game, it is impossible for it to be a complete replica, but the area is still quite large.

It is a turn-based game.

To improve the game's playability, you need to work on the large map and numerical values.

First, regarding the numerical aspects, Destiny Track, like Galaxy Paradise, adopts an experience-based collaborative system. However, Destiny Track has a major problem.

Its framework is essentially designed as a content-based game.

Unlike Galaxy Paradise, which has a ton of gameplay options for players to level up, it doesn't offer the same level of fun.

The player leveling up in Destiny's Path mainly comes from three directions. The first is character leveling up, which is basically the same as Galaxy Paradise. When a player gains experience, the entire team gains experience as well.

The goal is to eliminate the time wasted on leveling up new characters and reduce the cost of character development.

However, after reducing the character experience progression, a new problem arises: after completing the storyline, the player's character needs to grow, equipment needs to be upgraded, and skills need to be changed.

As a turn-based game, how can you keep players engaged?

To this end, Spark has prepared two systems. One is the dungeon growth system. The so-called dungeon growth system looks mysterious, but it is actually very simple.

Each copy, that is, each chapter.

Taking the first chapter, the Holy Grail War in Rome, as an example, after the game enters the middle of the first chapter, monsters summoned by the Holy Grail will spawn in the city.

These monsters will evolve from Roman soldiers, people, and animals.

Killing these monsters will grant you the power of the Holy Grail.

This Holy Grail power is something that exists independently of experience and only increases the player's combat power in the first chapter of the dungeon. You can think of it as Starfire treating each chapter of the story as a large-scale roguelike dungeon.

On the one hand, this is to provide positive feedback to players, and on the other hand, it is to avoid numerical crashes.

The reason is actually very simple.

In turn-based games, besides killing monsters through certain strategies, the positive feedback for players comes from the experience and items obtained after each battle.

However, taking Starry Sky Railway as an example, because the characters and weapons have been removed, the only way to truly develop your character in Starry Sky Railway is through the artifact system.

Therefore, when running daily dungeons, players rarely think about farming mobs unless absolutely necessary.

At this point.

Fate Tracks is much stronger because, like the most classic turn-based games, players gain experience every time they kill a monster, but this is not a single-player game after all.

Spark has to consider whether there are any players who seem to be having a lot of trouble, or scripts that are just bored and want to create a "Sword God of Shili Slope" and level up their character to the maximum level in the initial dungeon.

This is okay for single-player games, but for content-driven games, it will disrupt many subsequent gameplay elements.

Therefore, on the one hand, Spark gives players the experience they gain from killing monsters, while on the other hand, it locks the experience cap for each dungeon. As compensation, players will also receive some additional dungeon combat power bonuses when killing monsters.

In addition to the positive feedback of gaining experience from battles.

Another positive feedback loop of Spark is the process of farming materials, which can be used to enhance weapons, essentially breaking down the weapon upgrade system in the Mi Home game.

It has returned to the core game mechanics.

In short, in Mijia Games, weapons need to be repeatedly drawn to be strengthened, while in Destiny Trail, weapons, or treasures, are upgraded by farming materials.

The return of this mechanism has also greatly improved the game's playability and positive feedback.

In addition, Spark has made another change to the player's combat incentives, namely rating rewards.

As we all know, most players don't want to use their brains when playing games, but in turn-based games, if you don't use your brain, then the battles are actually very boring.

However, it would be incredibly foolish for Spark to create a negative experience by forcing players to manually interact with the game.

Therefore, in each battle, a battle rating will be given based on the player's action strategy, combo, damage, kill time, etc. The higher the rating, the higher the reward will be.

The game's BOSS battles are ranked globally, and there's also a derivative global BOSS challenge. Spark will release BOSSes regularly.

It allows players to engage in PVE challenges, while using ranking gameplay to achieve pseudo-PVP competition.

Finally, in order to reduce the low stickiness caused by low development, Spark added a brand new system in the official version of Destiny Trail.

The Holy Grail War

This is a hybrid PVE gameplay.

The gameplay is also very simple; it can be understood as a large-scale roguelike mode.

There are currently six maps in the official version. Taking Fuyuki City as an example, players need to defeat monsters in Fuyuki City to obtain different buffs.

Other heroic spirits will appear on the map.

Players need to make choices about the order in which they defeat the Heroic Spirits, as defeating other Heroic Spirits will grant different buffs.

If that's all there is to it, it's a gameplay mode very similar to the "Star Trek" roguelike mode, only with richer rewards.

However, as mentioned before, this is a hybrid mode.

When a player turns on the "Invasion" switch, the game mode remains unchanged, but the player will be matched with other players in their instance.

You can be matched with a maximum of three players.

At this point, the player's core objective changes from completing the roguelike mode to grinding monsters, being wary of other players, and potentially engaging in PvP at any time.

The fun of this game lies in the player's decision-making. You can go find other players or grind monsters, because although it is PVP, grinding monsters and killing other BOSSes will also give you buffs.

These buffs will significantly affect subsequent PVP, so in this mode, the player's hero combination is not the only factor that determines victory or defeat.