How Fate Grand Order Inspired New Mobile RPGs

Fate/Grand Order (FGO) became a template for modern mobile RPGs by proving that story‑driven, character‑focused, turn‑based gacha games could sustain huge revenue and loyalty for a decade, and designers have been copying and iterating on that formula ever since. Its influence shows up in how newer games handle narrative structure, live‑ops, IP usage, combat pacing, and monetisation.​​

Story-first, character-driven design

FGO showed that a mobile gacha could succeed primarily as a long-form visual novel RPG with layered worldbuilding rather than just a quick power fantasy.

• Commentators point out that FGO’s popularity rests on “captivating characters” and an “engrossing story supported by elaborate worldbuilding,” where the gacha roster is an extension of a carefully built narrative universe.​
• FGO leveraged an existing Fate IP with deep lore, then expanded it into a ten‑year sprawling saga with constantly evolving arcs, spin‑offs, and cross-media tie‑ins, setting a benchmark for narrative ambition in mobile games.​​

New mobile RPGs, from Epic Seven to Arknights and Honkai: Star Rail, borrow this approach: episodic arcs, seasonal story events, heavy emphasis on character episodes, and long-term narrative payoffs as core retention tools, not just window dressing.​​

The “service JRPG” content model

FGO also helped normalise the idea of a “live-service JRPG” with constant updates instead of a finite boxed product.

• Analyses of gacha history describe how FGO, after its 2015 JP launch, “sat on top of the gacha mountain” for years, funding regular story chapters, collab events, and spin-offs through its ongoing gacha revenue rather than expansions alone.​​
• A decade retrospective notes that by 2025 FGO is celebrating a ten‑year anniversary with stable downloads and revenue, illustrating that a mobile RPG can act as a long-running platform for storytelling and systems updates.​

Many later titles adopted this cadence: multi-year main story campaigns, rotating events, anniversary reworks, and system revamps, essentially treating the game as a persistent JRPG world in which players live, rather than a one‑and‑done single-player experience.​​

Turn-based combat and no-PvP longevity

FGO also proved that a relatively simple, turn-based combat system without PvP could carry huge earnings and avoid the worst parts of meta whiplash.

• Discussions of FGO’s revenue point out that it remains in the global top‑10 gacha earners as of 2025, despite “ancient” systems and lack of PvP, precisely because there is less pressure for power creep to keep up with competitive modes.​
• Players highlight that without PvP, designers can avoid constantly invalidating old units, instead rotating spotlights through support buffs, challenge quest designs, and storytelling, which keeps a broad roster relevant for longer.​

Other turn-based gachas and hybrid mobile RPGs have followed suit, focusing on PvE challenge content, raids, and score attacks instead of direct PvP ladder wars, and using periodic buffs, upgrades, and new content to keep older characters viable.​​

Monetisation patterns and backlash

FGO’s monetisation, both its success and its criticisms, shaped how newer games design their gacha and pity systems.

• Historically, FGO made massive revenue with very low SSR rates and no hard pity for years, which later commentators call “ancient and greedy” compared with modern standards.​
• In broader gacha history timelines, FGO is positioned alongside earlier controversies (like Granblue Fantasy’s 90k-crystal scandal) that led competitors to adopt pity systems and more transparent guarantees, partly as a response to player frustration with FGO-style odds.​

Many newer RPGs deliberately pitch themselves as “FGO but with pity,” or “story-driven like FGO, but more generous,” incorporating:

• Hard pity counters and spark systems.
• Rate-up guarantees and selector tickets.
• Friendlier early-game gem income and less punishing duplicates.

In that sense, FGO became both a blueprint for monetisation scale and a negative example that others cite when promising fairer systems.​​

IP leverage and cross-media ecosystems

FGO showed how a mobile game can elevate an IP from niche to global multimedia powerhouse.

• A gacha-history breakdown notes that FGO, built on the already-established Fate visual novel universe, significantly “boosted the popularity of the Fate franchise” and led to a boom of spin-off games and anime projects tied back to FGO’s success.​​
• Revenue and anniversary analyses observe that FGO has been one of Sony’s most profitable media products, turning Chaldea’s cast into recognisable mascots across goods, events, and collaborations.​

New mobile RPGs increasingly follow this pattern:

• Launching alongside anime adaptations or web novels.
• Designing characters with cross-media potential from the start.
• Using the game as a narrative hub linked to manga, light novels, and anime seasons, mirroring how FGO sits at the centre of the modern Fate ecosystem.​​

A benchmark and a foil for “modern” gachas

Finally, FGO now serves as both the benchmark and the foil when players and developers talk about where mobile RPGs go next.

• Video essays and community debates often frame FGO as “outdated mechanically but unmatched in story and attachment,” arguing that newer games must combine FGO-level narrative hooks with better QoL, pity, and visuals to keep players in 2025 and beyond.​​
• Revenue reports still show FGO spiking to the top of monthly gacha earnings during big JP and global banners, sharing the podium with newer hits like Genshin Impact, Honkai: Star Rail, and Arknights, which themselves blend FGO’s long-form storytelling with more modern combat or world design.​​

So when newer mobile RPGs are pitched, whether as turn-based strategy titles, semi-open-world ARPGs, or hybrid idle games, they are almost always compared against FGO’s core pillars: deep character-driven narrative, long-lived service structure, PvE-focused team combat, and emotionally sticky gacha-driven progression. That combination, proven at scale by FGO’s decade-long run and multi-billion revenue, is what continues to inspire and inform the current generation of mobile RPG design.