Star Rail Fate Collab 2 - Rin and Gilgamesh! Castorice keep blinking!

Star Rail has released its second Fate collaboration, and honestly, it has been much more entertaining than the first one. My main gripe with the first one was (aside from the lack of voiceover in many scenes) how much time was dedicated to someone who had nothing to do with the Fate franchise.

This time, things are different; the story is entirely focused on Rin Tohsaka, not the teenager we knew from Fate/stay night, but an adult version who is currently traveling between worlds, ends up in Star Rail by mistake, and is unable to travel further due to the lack of mana in this world.

Castorice x Rin yuri confirmed? Now that's something I can get behind, maybe let Stelle join in too and it'd be perfect?!

This is the iconic scene, but this time around things are quite different. Stelle with the bat looks amazing as a servant though I have to admit.

She decides to recruit a Servant using a Grail she stole and summons our protagonist, Stelle. The conflict within Rin is the key, and she is the protagonist of the story this time around, with Stelle being merely a partner who walks along with her. The final battle against Ishtar, with Rin using command spells to use all the Noble Phantasms, was hype!

Over the course of the story, lots of familiar faces appear, like Castorice, Herta, Phainon, and Sparxie. They intertwine in telling an extremely action-packed story with lots of references from the Fate franchise and even other Japanese media. I mean, Sparxie literally went Light Yagami at some point, and I really laughed at that.

Gameplay-wise, they added a completely new game mode based on cards that get drawn and used in battle. Think Chaos;Zero Nightmare, but more simplified, I guess? It was fun to find the right balance of cards with one character just in time for them to give you a new one, and the cycle continues.

I haven't tried the non-story battles yet, but I'm sure they will be fun enough to waste a few hours on. There are plenty of rewards to be obtained too, which makes it a good source of Stellar Jades in preparation for Nihilux and the other characters that are ahead of us.

...and off Rin goes toward another world, I wonder where she'll end up. Hopefully back for another collab in a year time.

Ratio appearing together with Herta was nice, they do fit with Rin because she was always more of a technical person. Seems like the two worlds aren't that different after all...

Now I wonder, are we going to get a third collaboration next year because it seems to be timed to be yearly at this point? That would mean it is time for a Sakura-face to appear, and maybe Rider too as a playable character. Lancer? Who is Lancer? There is no Lancer in this world!