MMM - Technicolour Tele-Tuber Transcribes Tales of Travel, Trimming Times of Terrible Technicalities (Valentines 2020 Gacha)

So it turns out, I got into watching VRtuber videos pretty much around the time that FGO decided to make one of my favourite upcoming Seiyuus a new servant. And they’re a Japanese JK type. I can only get so “excited”, to keep things PG-13. One thing I can say for sure is that I don’t envy the NA localisation team when she’s in NA. Managing old fashioned Japanese for translation is a pain. JK / Gyaru talk is also a pain. The two of them together? Brrrrrrr.

More to the point, let’s get to gameplay. Sei is a new SSR Archer with a statline truly fitting for a Japanese servant - passably high attack in exchange for awful HP. It’s practically the Japanese national identity in FGO at this point. Having the worst HP of any SSR Archer in exchange for the 5th highest attack of your class is...well, it’s pretty bad. But to be fair, the Archer class really is made up of Archers high stat-total monsters like Ishtar and Orion, so even having a slightly subpar stat spread like Sei’s looks far worse.

She compensates for it slightly with her multitude of...abnormal passives, thankfully. At a first glance, you may think it’s a bunch of great passives - MR is a given, Independent Action, ANOTHER critical damage buff, and even more passive debuff resistance, but in reality, three of those are more or less nerfs from standard Archer passives.

Her Independent Action is simply extra star weight for Quick cards (which is nice, don’t get me wrong, but it’s not flat critical damage), the “other” critical damage buff is just critical damage on Quick cards (in other words, a downgrade from normal Archers), and lastly, the debuff resistance passive is solely for Charms, essentially granting immunity, like King Hassan or Kama. In the end, it’s slightly better critical damage dealing, though only for her two Quicks. Not exactly something worth having 1000 less HP than Ishtar for.

Dear DW,

Please bring back 2-hit Arts BBAAQ card sets. I’m sorry for complaining about them so much. At least their Extra cards were good. I’m just sick and tired of seeing 0.5X NP gain 3-hit Arts card sets now.

Yours Truly,

The Rath

Sei’s NP gain is pretty much as you would expect for all my complaints of 3-hit Arts on most servants. Her Arts cards are average, her Quicks work but don’t do anything spectacular outside of their 4-hit stargen, and her Extra card is solid. Her Archer star weight and bonus Quick card star weight will help her more than most servants in the NP gain department, but even crits can’t turn eh NP gain into something notable.  In terms of stargen, she’s generally pretty good due to her Quick focus and hitcounts, though her 2-hit Buster won’t do any favours in that department.

It’s honestly quite strange they made the one servant literally called “Sparkle Sparkle” Archer not have at least notable stargen. I guess she compensates in her skills, though.

So Sei’s got every colour under the rainbow under her skirt, but does she have the same coverage in gameplay? On one hand, she’s got a vivid palette:

However, she’s also a little on the dull side:

So on the whole, Sei is a servant not exactly lacking in any particular aspect, but simply mediocre. I understand that recently I was pretty harsh on Europa for a similar issue, but thing with Sei are slightly different - she has applications outside of farming and baseline 3-enemy quest due to her reasonably good critical damage and effective damage buffs from her NP. Also Charm immunity is sometimes quite handy for Challenge quests. She’s not really standing out from the crowd (not visually, anyways), she isn’t the new revolutionary Skadi farmer, but she’s a robust servant with serviceable applications and some niche uses when needed. Also cute as heck. Rath™ Seal of Approval.