Board 8 > Trdl ranks every FGO event he's ever played

(+) Yeah! (+)

Hello, friends of B8. It's time for another Trdl23 Ranking Topic. As someone who got yanked into this gacha hell a few years ago and enjoys Fate/ (for better and often for worse), I'm eager to talk about what's kept me in this damn game for this long.

What and how I will be ranking

I'll be ranking all* limited-time events in which I have participated since summer of 2021. Both gameplay and narrative will factor into the ranking, but FGO's narrative is often more compelling than its gameplay, so that will usually take precedent.

I won't be putting scores on these ranks, though, just a simple bottom-to-top with writeups.

*What I will not be ranking

Events that have become Main Interludes are effectively real (and permanent) MSQ chapters. As such, they have a lot more meat on their bones, and it doesn't make sense to put them on the list.

I also will not be ranking Fest-style lottos because they have practically no narrative by design and very similar gameplay to each other. Plus, I had no capacity to go after the super-hard CQs for a while, so I can't rank the events by those in good faith.

"But Trdl, you never finish your topics!"

True! I've already got the rankings and summaries written down, so this time, I'm sure it'll happen. This time for sure!

Tag

Tag

Ooku low-tier event imo

1. Saber Wars 2
2. Summer 3
3. Summer 5
4. Waltz Collab
5. Case Files Collab

HMs: Yamataikoku (both OG and Iyo/Part 2)

Summer 2021 cutoff hurts GUDAGUDA 3 (Ryoma) which otherwise would be a HM contender. KnK Collab was sneaky good for an early FGO event and I'd even argue similarly for Prisma. But GUDA3 probably the big one affected by this cutoff I think. Maybe that mystery event where you had a vote for the culprit like the day before the reveal. That was also sneaky good.

Oh yeah, Saber Wars 2 #1 event.

Wasn't around for Summer 3 unfortunately!

bumpo

And in classic trdl fashion work inundated me. lol. lmao even.

#31: Mississippi Mythicizers
aka the Super Bunyan event

Overview
Jesus Christ, this was bad. So bad that I've yet to find a single person to defend it, and I hope no contrarian pops up in this topic to "prove me wrong."

The saddest part is that this could have been so, so good. American myth, tall tales, and even US history are rich and largely untapped for potential events and characters, Edison's stupid design notwithstanding. I know it's a Riyo collab and thus needs to be a gag event, but there could still be an attempt at an exploration of the mythos of the area in question. Instead we get Bunyan, but shes an influencer? Who is she influencing? Theres no social media that gets addressed, just places her shitty movies have wrecked that she gives vapid promises of helping with a golden statue of herself. Then she throws a pity party. Then surprise, Mike Fink, gator edition was the real bad guy! Honestly, if Fink had actually been treated as a proper villain, it might've kicked ass. One of myriad missed opportunities.

Mary Anning (who's awesome enough to have a non-Riyo design) is the arch-rival with a plesiosaur familiar and the Daikokuten are here because ?????

Stick to the comics, Riyo. Those are actually funny.

Gameplay

Imagine a lotto event, but make it suck. Someone at Lasagna, probably.

The reason we love lotto events is that theyre infinite based on activity, theyre consistent, theyre easy to acquire rewards from, and perhaps most of all, the lotto portion uses one currency. This events infinite rewards track has nothing of these traits. Excavation was a pain in the ass with inconsistent rewards and different currency costs for every square. Wanted to unearth that four-square material but ran out of shovels elsewhere in order to get drops you wanted? Sucks to be you, go farm more! The ease by which your tools got imbalanced was a headache.

The Daikokuten CQ was neat at least. Not neat enough to make up for everything else, but credit where its due.

I haven't been around as long (started during the Cinderelly event,) but that's the one event story I didn't finish reading.

As for me I started close to when the EN server launched but stopped playing through most of 2023 and 2024, so this'll be interesting.

Sad to hear Super Bunyan's event sucked though.

Did not do that event period

The funniest(?) part was that a few months later when Super Bunyan's materials dropped it had like the most fucking crazy lore drop about Super Bunyan and showed us what could have been if we explored that instead (we arguably came a bit close towards the very end but still no way to really make the jump to what we got in the mats without the benefit of informed hindsight.)

but yeah as it happened it was a pretty garbage event

I haven't played FGO since the start, but I did start with 1st anniversary and have played continuously since then, so I shouldn't have missed any events permanently. I went through the event list and found a whole 64 events from the start of the game to now that I'd consider rankable, which is basically excluding Nero/etc. fests, Grail Fronts, and Main Interludes. But man do I not remember anything about some of the early ones, so that'd be hard to do.

My start was like 2.5 years in. I think Setsubun was ongoing when I started but it was locked behind story progress (whatever the event was) so I couldn't enter even if I wanted. First event I could actually participate in was the Semiraimis Valentine's Day - which was pretty good for a Valentine's Event (but Valentine's Events are pretty low quality imhotbqh)

Semiramis Valentine might be the best one? The theming of the gameplay is cool, and the story was fun. But yeah, V-day events are mostly pretty meh (assuming you don't count the Valentine's scenes as part of them, which would make it more complicated...).

I might end up skipping this Valentine altogether, I feel burned out and don't wants to miss CBC this year since CBCs tend to be better.

Safety bump, plan on next one tomorrow or Tuesday