Hands-on with the April Fool's game Fate/Grail League

series live broadcasts. However, in recent years, Type Moon released a new Fate/Grand Order

paired with parody smartphone games, every April 1st – each game can only be played for a short timeHour.

This year’s game is called Fate/Grail League. It is a simplified clone of the popular baseball smartphone game – only Fate/Grand Order as recruitable players. The plot involves our heroes being transported to a world where they need to compete in a baseball tournament. While some Servants, such as Artoria and Mash, joined the main character from the start, most Servants split off to form their own themed-appropriate teams – such as BB forming a team of Moon Cell servants team, or Nero formed a team all of her Roman brothers. By beating any of the countless other teams, you can add their team members to your roster–though it might take a game or two to collect them all.

As for the game The gameplay itself: You play a total of two innings – starting with the point differential, which increases depending on how difficult the team you face is. Fortunately, running is easier than you think. When hitting a ball, all you need to do is tap the screen to swing the bat when the ball goes straight over home plate. Swing earlier and the ball will move to the left. Swing late and it will move to the right.

This is important because the back of the stadium is lined with padding. Depending on which batting pad you hit, you’ll get a single, double, triple, or home run — and the position of each batting pad will vary depending on the batter. Additionally, a “Home Run Bonus” counter goes up as the inning progresses. Because of this, you can easily grab + Single Home Run – This means you only need to hit a single home run in any inning to win any single game Contest.

But of course, hitting is only half the game. You also need to allocate time. For pitching, you can choose to throw a fastball, slowball, curveball, or limited-use special pitches that vary depending on your pitcher, to either side. After selecting a pitch, a power meter appears – automatically increasing and decreasing until you tap the screen. If you hit the sweet spot on the meter, you’re guaranteed to hit the ball. Meanwhile, if you miss a mile, you hit the ball, leading to a walk. However, even if the batsman is hit, it’s possible for your teammates to catch the ball–however, it all depends on their stats, which will improve as you progress each game.

As the game progresses, you unlock stronger teams and each character’s special skills become more important. This is especially true for pitchers. Joan of Arc has a special pitch that makes the ball disappear before it hits home plate. Meanwhile, the final boss has a ball that, if you hit it, actually destroys your bat–meaning you can’t swing again until a new batter comes on.

Outside of the actual game, you get special baseball character art for each servant you recruit to your team, with backgrounds that change as they level up. You can even use your smartphone camera to take AR photos of your servants.

All in all, this is a fun little game to spend an afternoon playing–although a day is barely enough to master it. It’s a pity that the time to play is limited, and these games are basically lost at the end of the day. Still, I’m sure I’m not the only one who fills up their smartphones with screenshots of the game whenever we get the chance, so at least it’s not completely lost.

Fate/Grail League