MMM - Dynamic Duo of Duos Deal Death under Domicile of Daimyous, Donning Dapper Documented Dress (Fate/Samurai Remnant Collab)

As Fate fans, we all like to argue about very pointless details, fighting over our favourites in the most meaningless ways, but I hope we’re all in agreement when I say this - she needed an ascension with her armoured form from the game.

I’m well aware the armour was mostly a thematic / identity concealing thing in the game itself, as Ushi Gozen was using it to pretend to be Raiko around her Master, but even so it’s just…so much nicer looking than any of her forms we got in my book. Otherwise, the designs here are very…textbook Raita, for both good and bad.

Perhaps the biggest shock to me in this whole kit is that, despite being canonically very scarily powerful, as a 5* Avenger Ushi Gozen is pretty shoddy in the base stats department. Her parameters are a little over the place, granting her the lowest Attack of any SSR Avenger in exchange for the second-highest HP, getting blown out in every aspect by Space Ishtar, and not looking too hot compared to many other Avengers.

But bear in mind here, Avenger is a crazy strong class offensively, and even the worst Avenger still does significantly more damage than most other classes just by virtue of the high base Attack and 1.1x Attack modifier they’re packing.

She also gets a fair bit of compensation from her passives, too. The standard trio of Avenger passives are here, of course, granting a passive increase to her defensive NP gain, a solid Critical Damage buff, and nearly 4% NP gauge each turn for free. All very strong perks to pack, but Ushi Gozen also has two additional passives on top - EX-ranked Madness Enhancement for a notable damage boost to her sole Buster card, and Oni God’s Clarity, a renamed Divinity skill that provides a small damage boost and a significant +20% Quick Critical Damage buff passively.

For a Servant who has a BAQQQ card deck and (spoilers) a significant focus on Critical Damage output, this is an insanely good passive to have, and more than makes up for her relatively low Attack stat. All she needs is to be thrown at fights where critical damage output actually matters.

A small detail I’ll point out is that Ushi Gozen is also one of the fortunate few to have anti-Berserker Attack Up for her Append Skills, providing a very good offensive boost versus her most common class advantage, so I’d bear that in mind and consider unlocking it if you can spare the coins.

With a 0.55% base NP gain and the aforementioned BAQQQ card deck, Ushi Gozen looks fairly typical for a Servant with a sole Arts card, her base Arts gain coming out to 2.2 on the dot for her 4-hit Arts card. While that’s more or less average, the real important card for her NP gain is her Quicks. With 6 hits to them each, Ushi Gozen benefits from absolutely nutty star generation as well as some fairly good NP gain. While the NP gauge these cards produce isn’t close to some monsters of Quick card NP gain like Okita or most of her variants, it’s still fairly good, and becomes more than enough to act like pseudo-Arts cards when backed by significant Quick booster buffs.

Naturally, as I’ve already stated, Ushi Gozen’s stargen is insane as a direct result of her card deck and hitcounts. In fact, so far as I’m aware, she’s the first Servant to have more than 5 hits on multiple Quick cards, instead of a singular one, so she’s literally hitting new peaks of star generation, though I believe Assassins with 5-hit Quicks will still produce more stars than her simply due to their superior passive stargen stats.

Point being, she’ll completely drown the team in critical stars no matter what, making her own Critical Damage output and NP gain much better for it.

So how’s Ushi Gozen on the whole? Well on one side of things, she’s a fearsome demon (by Nasuverse lore, at least), the Divine child of Indra, and her replay fight in Samurai Remnant took me like 30 tries to beat on the hardest difficulty, so she’s quite the monster:

However, she’s also got a Karen haircut:

There’s some very clear flaws and difficulties in using Ushi Gozen, as she exemplifies the card type that tends to be the most difficult to work with for farming. Arts Servants usually get enough refund to run simplistic setups, and Buster Servants don’t ever have to worry about refund period, but Quick is in an awkward middle ground that Ushi Gozen emphasises pretty well - a stray Berserker ruining the refund calculations can make the difference between a comfortable farming loop and a need to look for a different setup.

While that stains her on the farming side of things, she’s more or less spectacular in every other form of content - high star generation and NP gain paired with her insanely strong critical damage output allows her to use the best advantages of a Quick-focused kit, dishing out absurdly deadly criticals and recharging her Stun NP endlessly to potentially kill the enemy before they even move. It certainly helps that she’s one of the best users of Skadi’s Quick Critical Damage buff tied to her Quick booster, allowing her to start punching for Superhuman Orion levels of damage if she gets the right chain set up.

And that’s ignoring how she can start casually dealing an extra 125% (1.5 times 1.5) damage on her NP’s if she’s fighting Earth Servants, a very common subcategory of most difficult fights in the game. You won’t even notice she’s working with an AOE NP’s damage output most of the time.

As much as I’d love to praise her based on her difficult content performance alone, the point remains that she’s far from the ideal farmer, though still good by Quick standards. Her issues drag her down significantly, but so long as she’s supported by the right lineup (in other words, own Summer Skadi), she should be good enough with a Kaleidoscope setup for the vast majority of content.

I’d highly recommend getting her if you’re lacking on Avenger offence, but otherwise she’s not bringing that much to the table that can’t be attained in some other way or form. Rath™ Seal of Approval.

I have to say, with all the new Servants available to include from Samurai Remnant, the wild card Master-turned Servant move (besides Iori) was not one I expected. In retrospect it makes sense, including the primary Master-Servant duos of the game as playable characters to reflect those Master+Servant fights in the game, but regardless, an odd move.

While Yui Shousetsu in actual history is probably worthy of being a Servant, her incarnation (naturally, genderbent) into the Nasuverse is an abnormal one, being a Homunculus made from probably-stolen-from-the-Einzbern designs likely bought off Dutch magi that essentially went rogue and did her own thing, including participating in the game’s funky not-Grail War.

Her weird state of being is why she overall is very…whelming as a Servant in terms of artistic design, NP included.

The Caster class is hardly known for its offensive prowess, and Yui pretty much highlights that by joining Medea Lily in the club of “Lowest Attack for a 4* Servant”, after the Caster class 0.9x Attack modifier is accounted for. As users of Medea Lily’s support-centric kit can attest though, having an abysmal attack stat as a Caster actually isn’t too bad, provided you’re support focused.

The HP stat Yui gets in exchange for such a dismal attack is more than worth the exchange, granting her the longevity of an SSR for practically no drawback. One of the few times I’ll be glad to see a low attack stat, that’s for sure.

Yui’s passives are pretty unimpressive, packing the standard Caster class skills at a moderate level, providing decent boosts to her Arts cards and Debuff success rate both. Par for the course, in other words.

With a base NP gain of 0.54% and a BAAAQ card deck, Yui’s 3-hit Arts cards come out to a base Arts gain of 1.73 after her Territory Creation is factored in, a very average number to work with, though solid considering her Arts-heavy card deck overall. The downside is her relatively low base NP gain means her 4-hit Quick and 5-hit Extra are pretty mediocre for NP gain, though not dreadful.

Having solid NP gain on her Arts cards is the most important thing to consider, though, and she passes that hurdle, so it’s not that dreadful a NP gain profile to work with.

Yui is mostly laughable on the stargen side of things - her Quick and Extra cards are decent for producing stars, but with her card deck and overall average hit counts she’s not packing anything exceptional in that regard, so don’t expect any star-spewing miracles out of her.

So how’s Yui Shousetsu overall? Well on one side of things she’s artificial perfection, a resolute champion of her ideals:

But she’s also a misguided, flawed creation, and seriously why is her NP literally just her standing still? I need to know:

I think by now I’ve run down the scope of Yui’s capabilities as a support pretty thoroughly. Having lower-rarity supports with good gauge charging skills is a rarity, and especially ones with solid offensive buffs to boot. Combined with the high potential damage boosts from her NP, Yui is one of the strongest low-cost support Servants in the game, even if the number of Servants she can maximise her value toward is limited.

Historically that’s been a good position for a welfare Servant to be in, and while Yui is a little less accessible than that, she still remains a strong supportive option regardless, even if fundamentally she won’t ever pack the same value as a big name 50% gauge charger support in the same slot.

The places she can be effectively used to boost the offensive capabilities of a damage dealer, though, she really does shine. Rath™ Seal of Approval.

Musashi’s golden boy himself, and the man who manages to somehow be “food-whipped” for his partner of no specific gender, Iori was a foreseeable addition for this collab, and packs the welfare status to boot.

I’m very glad his emotions in the sprite sheet for this game keep to the same vibes as Samurai remnant. While not necessarily emotionless, Iori is definitely well-tempered, and somehow any expression other than exasperation or seriousness comes off as weird from him. I’m sure that has absolutely zero grander meaning for his nature as a character!

In the very flooded category of 4* Sabers, Iori has a lot of competition, and unsurprisingly despite having a very good attack stat, he ends up being the tied 5th best in terms of Attack, simultaneously having the tied 5th worst HP, a shared stat spread with Setanta, which is a little cute given both’s presence in this event.

That position may seem kind of middle-of-the-pack, but the Saber class is generally stuffed full of monsters stat-wise for no good reason, so you should really just bear in mind any 4* with nearly 10k Attack is very strong offensively. His relatively low HP stat is a fair drawback, though.

So far as passives go Iori is very typical, having moderately ranked Magic Resistance and Riding, providing both some solid passive debuff resistance and a boost to his Quick card.

…Though saying that, this soft confirms that Iori has pretty good horse-riding skills despite never being seen riding one in Samurai Remnant. Even funnier is the concept that, like Artoria, he could drive motor bikes and cars no problem. Servant shenanigans, folks.

With a BBAAQ card deck typical for a Saber, and very reflective of my preference for Water and Fire stance in Samurai Remnant over the other two (until you get Void, that is), Iori’s 0.42% base NP gain produces a very average 1.68 base Arts gain in combination with his 4-hit Arts cards. While those are average on paper, his other cards are dragged down a fair bit by his low base NP gain, getting practically nothing from his Quick, and mediocre NP gauge from his Extra in spite of it having 6 hits to its name.

Conversely his stargen is pretty solid in spite of his card deck not being geared towards it. Having 4 hits on most of his cards is always solid for stargen profiles, and his 6-hit Extra naturally drowns him in stars when he can use it with the Quick first card bonus.

Iori’s Arts cards are serviceable enough, but it’s a shame the rest of his cards are dragged down, as he’ll end up being fairly dependent on them for gauge charging in difficult content.

So is Iori a cut above the rest? Well on the one hand, he’s a stone cold killer with a blade that only hungers for more, sharpening itself on the countless warriors who stand before him:

However, he’s also tempered by a softness that longs for the path of peace, a burden that must be cut away to ever reach the peaks of swordsmanship:

The Saber class as a whole tends to be loaded with heavyweights simply by virtue of its overpopulation, and for welfare Servants it’s no different. Until now both Santa Karna and Summer Hokusai have been superb single target damage options for the class, and now Iori comes in to claim a similar throne for Buster.

His offensive capabilities, even separating him from a high-investment setup that aims to NP loop, are superb, dishing out high NP damage and solid critical damage alike, with NP gauge charging and defensive tools that don’t leave him overly dependent on support options to back up his offensive pressure. It’s no doubt that he surpasses his teacher in both lore and, well, NP damage output (with just his own kit at NP5, his NP does 62k damage neutral compared to Musashi’s 50k).

And if Iori can out-do Musashi, he can certainly out-do other competitors, albeit within the constraints of Buster’s strengths and weaknesses. Even with how absurdly high his damage output is, I’d be hesitant to deploy Iori over Summer Hokusai simply because he demands more actions to complete a farming run. Though sometimes that tradeoff is worth it, of course.

To surmise, Iori makes for an incredibly valuable single-target damage dealer who can plough through content, whether high-difficulty quests or single-target farming with ease, and even when stacked versus other welfare Sabers, he has plenty of perks that make him worth using. Rath™ Seal of Approval, with a recommendation.