Well well, it seems the White Day gacha came round just a couple months late this year.

Given Constantine’s plot relevance to LB6.5, I suppose it’s not shocking they would choose to package him in a pre-release campaign, and it’ll likely help distinguish the Paladins of Charlemagne who will be in the proper story chapter gacha with him, who clearly isn’t French or a crossdressing English prince.

With that in mind, we have a single Servant to review, and I’m dealing with my 3rd bout of that virus that was all the rage last year, so let’s make this smooth.

I gotta tell you, if you’re going to be the last king of a dying dynasty, then at least go out with some spectacular drip. Constantine certainly has it going on there.

All he needs is glasses. Give me the glasses.

Increase your Quick Card effectiveness by 9%.

Increase your Debuff Resist by 18%.

Increase your Critical Strength by 7.2%.

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As a 5* Rider, Constantine has a pretty broad range of competition, even if the Rider class’s stats don’t tend to be too spectacular in the first place. Constantine is undoubtedly defensively orientated, with the 4th worst Attack stat of his class and rarity, paired with the 4th best HP stat. Though if I’ll be honest, he’s practically tied with Medb on the HP front - they have a 15 HP difference between each other. I don’t think I can count a single time a Servant of mine has survived on 2-digit or less without other factors in play.

In any case, he’s pretty bulky, and trades a significant sum of offensive power for it. While that doesn’t bode well for his prospects as a damage dealer, he’s thankfully more of a support, so the bulk is probably more worthwhile.

On the Passives front, Constantine has nothing too crazy. The expected Riding and Magic Resistance of his class provide a notable boost to both his Quick card and ability to shrug off debuffs, while Independent Action C++ is an…interesting inclusion with an equally interesting rank, giving him a decent improvement to his critical damage.

On the whole, Constantine is a defensively-leaned Servant, but doesn’t sacrifice so much offensively that he can’t pack some punch from what he has in his passives.

Oh, woe is me. Is that a 4-hit Arts card I spy? It appears the curse of the high-hitcount Arts has claimed yet another.

With his 4-hit Arts cards and 0.52% base NP gain, Constantine clocks in with a base Arts gain of 2.08, a good sum above average, especially for a BBAAQ card deck, but at the cost of his other cards being a little gimped - his Quick card produces a really mediocre sum of gauge even with its good hitcount and Riding in play, and a 5-hit Extra card suffers more or less the same fate.

His NP gain off Arts cards will certainly be good, but everything else is pretty much par for the course, if not slightly worse.

Constantine is dealt a slightly better hand for stargen, considering his card deck. His singular Quick will be fairly good on stargen thanks to his Riding, his Arts cards may produce a star or two depending on your luck, and the 3-hit Busters and Extra card in play means he can provide a respectable star sum when dishing out Brave chains.

All-in-all, Constantine isn’t too bad on the generation front. While I may mourn how high-hitcount Arts cards tend to make the NP gain of a Servant all-or-nothing on their Arts cards, he has good enough NP gain that it isn’t crippling, and his stargen isn’t half bad, either.

Increase own NP Gain (1 turn). Apply Target Focus to self (1 turn). Gain Critical Stars.

First on the skill lineup is Prayer of the Hagia Sofia. Otherwise known as the skill all dome architecture enthusiasts have at EX rank.

This skill has a handful of effects, though each is not that potent. Providing a 50% NP gain buff to Constantine for a turn, putting a Taunt on him for the same duration, and providing a moderate star bomb, this skill kind of feels like a ghetto version of Leonidas or Achilles’s taunt skills. The NP gain is usually going to be pretty nice, but it’s notable that firstly, 1-turn NP gain buffs don’t apply to defensive NP gain, so Constantine won’t benefit from the NP gain buff when taking hits off the taunt, and secondly, NP gain buffs are significantly more mediocre when you don’t have an offensive NP, then again one without refund.

So as a result, this skill kind of has some anti-synergy, or at the very least it’s weaker than it first appears. The taunt can still be nice to redirect attacks, and likewise a star bomb is universally useful, but the NP gain buff is frankly misplaced. It also doesn’t help that this skill has an 8-turn base cooldown when it could reasonably be 7 turns, meaning it’s not going to come back up that quickly.

Increase ATK for all allies (3 turns). Increase Buster Card effectiveness for all allies (3 turns). Increase Critical Strength for [Roman] allies (3 turns).

Next on the list is Empire in Decline EX. While I’m not sure Constantine would be happy with his very skills telling him his dynasty fell off + ratio + mutually excommunicated, it’s a pretty solid skill.

Providing a 20% Attack Buff and Buster boost for 3 turns for the whole lineup, this skill boosts both Constantine’s offensive prowess as a Buster-focused Servant and his allies immensely. But adding onto that, it also provides a 30% Critical Damage boost to Roman trait Servants for the same duration, which includes Constantine himself. I’m not sure it’s historically kosher to call a Byzantine a Roman (I’m aware they’re derived from the Roman Empire and were called the East Roman Empire at times, but still, not the same thing), but when has Fate ever played by the rules?

This skill not only acts as a powerful offensive boost to Constantine himself, providing effectively an 87% damage boost on Buster crits, but also makes for a potent supportive skill on the right targets. Romulus=Quirinus is an offensive powerhouse, notably can even make the team Roman, and benefits greatly from those buffs, and I’m sure similar synergies can be put to use. Even without pairing Constantine with his numerous Roman predecessors, it makes for an effective team buff.

The only drawback, if any, would be the 8-turn base cooldown on this skill. It’s admittedly more powerful than most Charisma clones, but 7 turns is something of the standard for those. It’s a nitpick, I know.

Increase own NP Gauge. Increase own Critical Strength (3 turns). Gain Critical Stars each turn (3 turns). Apply Delayed On-Death Buff (3 turns). - On-Death effect: Increase last party member's NP gauge. - On-Death effect: Increase last party member's Critical Strength (3 turns). - On-Death effect: Grant last party member [gain Critical Stars each turn] effect (3 turns).

Boy, I thought the previous skill was bad. Constantine has the exclusive privilege to die with his last skill, Dying Privilege. Wish that could be me.

But jokes aside, this is a really cool skill, both in gameplay and thematically. This skill provides Constantine with a 30% gauge charge, as well as 3-turn Critical Damage and Stars/turn buffs, giving him a potent critical damage engine to work with.

The cool part, however, is that he also gets an on-death buff that will apply those very same buffs to the party member in the furthest-back frontline party position when he dies, literally passing the torch onwards like he’s All Might or something.

Since it’s a gauge charge skill, you already know I’m gonna say this skill is great, but it also notably pushes Constantine’s critical damage to a very respectable level, having +67.2% bonus to critical damage when his skills are up, on top of the Attack and Buster boosts from his Charisma clone. Combined with his Rider star weight and multiple star generation skills, forming devastating critical chains with him is a piece of cake.

At this point, I wonder if the designers at Lasengle actually intentionally design skill cooldowns to align when they can. Though his other skills have a 7-turn base cooldown, 8 turns makes perfect sense for this one, and as a result his entire skill set comes off CD simultaneously. Regardless, a very strong and very thematic skill.

Increase own Buster Card effectiveness (3 turns). Apply Invincible to self (1 time, 1 turn). Apply Damage Cut by 5,000 to all [Roman] allies (1 turn).

Increase DEF for all allies (1 turn).

Vow of the Threefold Walls

Increase own Buster Card effectiveness (3 turns). Apply Invincible to self (1 time, 1 turn). Apply Damage Cut by 5,000 to all [Roman] allies (1 turn).

Increase DEF for all allies (1 turn).

Wrapping up Constantine’s kit is Theodosius Constantinus. A Noble Phantasm embodying the supposedly impenetrable nature of Constantinople’s walls, this is naturally a defensive NP, and quite a powerful one at that.

I say “supposedly”, since well, they didn’t call it the Rise of Constantinople, that’s for sure. Gunpowder weaponry cracked those things open like an egg.

In any case, this NP has 4 effects - it provides Constantine with a pretty powerful 30% Buster Up buff for 3 turns, gives him a 1-time, 1-turn Invincible buff, Provides the whole team with a crazy powerful 100% Defense Up buff for a turn, scaling on Overcharge, and also gives Roman Servants a colossal 5000 damage cut for a turn.

So what exactly does that translate to? Essentially, the entire team is immune to damage for a turn unless the attacker hitting them has defense pierce or a decent amount of attack buffs, Constantine himself is basically untouchable to all but Invincible Pierce + Defense Pierce NP’s, and Roman Servants won’t be taking anything unless it’s a Defense Pierce NP. And then Constantine hits harder.

This makes the whole thing something of a curious defensive NP, as it’s currently the only NP which provides 100% or more Defense Up at baseline, making it a team hard defensive buff by proxy.

In case you didn’t know, Defense Up / Attack Down in FGO are essentially the same thing for calculation purposes, and the total % of it is that much of a reduction in damage. So 100% Defense Up is 0% damage taken, unless the thing attacking has Attack Up / Defense Down or Defense Pierce (which bypasses Defense buffs entirely) to counteract it. Thanks to the formula, even if an enemy has +9999999999% NP Power Up or Card Booster on an attack, if the 100% Defense Up remains intact, the damage inflicted will still be 0. In the right situations, 100% Defense Up is even better than Invincibility or Evasion.

With Constantine’s own Invincible buff and the damage cut for Roman trait Servants in play, it’s going to take a lot to actually breach this NP’s defenses, then again Constantine himself. Invincible Pierce + Defense Pierce NP’s, or NP’s which remove buffs before damage do it, but those don’t account for the majority of NP’s in the game. If you were to compare it to similar NP’s like Jeanne’s, the number of NP’s which bypass either is about even. I looked it up, and there are about as many Servants with Invincible Pierce as there are those with Defense Pierce NP’s / Buffs, so it ultimately boils down to what you face up against.

So while this NP essentially rounds up Constantine’s game plan as a defensive support with offensive proclivities, on its own it’s a very unique and effective defensive tool.

So how good is Constantine, actually? On one hand, he’s got years of tradition reinforcing his position:

Constantine has some pretty gnarly offense backing him. While the lack of a damaging NP is obviously against his favor, his offensive boosts to his Buster cards and crits means he can seriously bring the hurt when he needs to, and with Rider star weight and his numerous star generation tools, he can do so consistently as well. It isn’t as impactful as the damage output of someone like Super Orion or Himiko, but certainly good enough to be notable. Considering he’s half-focused on defensive support, it’s not a bad cop.

It goes without saying that the walls of Constantinople are great defensively. He doesn’t have too much difficulty building up his gauge given his charge charger, NP gain buff, and decent gain in general, and versus the majority of offensive threats his NP will completely neutralize damage taken for the turn, as well as bolstering his own offense. Paired with his own taunt, he can even protect the team from Single-Target Defense Pierce NP’s if need be, due to the Invincibility packaged for himself.

However, he’s also built on unstable foundation about to collapse:

The issue when you are fundamentally a supportive Servant is that you ultimately get compared to the big contenders in the field. And when squared up against the likes of Castoria or Skadi, some pretty clear weaknesses in Constantine become clear. Lack of any team or targeted gauge charge means his capability for offensive support is pretty heavily outclassed, even for pseudo-supports like Koyanskaya of Darkness. Add in that his NP, for all its uniqueness, is completely outclassed by Castoria’s, and is mostly matched by Skadi’s, and there becomes less and less reason to consider him.

It’s better to full-ass one thing than half-ass two things. While Constantine’s mix of defensive support and Buster crit-focused offensive prowess is cool, it doesn’t lend itself to a powerful Servant. Constantine isn’t offensively powerful enough to be a damage dealing threat on his own, or at least not one competing with similar, stronger options, and supportively I’ve already covered his downfall. The hilarious outcome of this is that he ends up being too supportively oriented when trying to deal damage, and when supporting his Rider star weight ends up stealing stars from the damage dealer. While Reines shares the same issue, she at least doesn’t have star generation built into her kit, and has much more potent supportive tools to compensate.

While it may seem like I’m ripping into Constantine a lot, he’s a case where he has plenty of power in his toolkit, but it’s either mismanaged into effects which don’t help him that much (like his NP gain buff), or spread too thinly to give him a powerful niche to abuse. His supportive capability for Roman allies could be considered that, but when squared off against Merlin or Koyanskaya of Light he still falls short if you want to deal big damage with your Romulus or whatever else.

Really, the thing that will stand out for Constantine above anything else is his NP’s defensive support. While I feel the game has grown past the days of hard defensive options like Jeanne’s NP being a rarity to clear difficult content, the truth is that it doesn’t make having one around any worse. You only get one Support Servant in a quest, after all, and being able to not take Castoria for once tends to broaden your strategies a little.

That’s only considering an incredibly unlucky or recently-joining F2P player, though. Most of the time, in the vague bubble of “A player with a large enough Servant collection to form most meta team compositions with the addition of a Support Servant”, Constantine doesn’t add anything new to the table.

Situations where utilizing him as an offensive Servant solely because you need the extra protection of his NP may come into play, since frankly Constantine / Merlin / Castoria sounds like a pretty disgusting iron wall of a team, but that’s for a hypothetical which won’t constitute the majority of situations.

He’s fun, useful if you really lack access to the Servants who outclass him, but he’s not really anything spectacular.

A short one, and also a little painful to write. Some of my friends are essentially colossal history buffs, and as a result also Byzantine fanboys (since it is a really cool Empire and historical period), which means I was pretty hyped up for Constantine.

But hey, not all your favorites can be spectacular meta threats - just ask this Karna fanboy.

With that out of the way, we have LB6.5 on the horizon, and a whole lot of western knights, too. Roland? You already know it. Charlie? Seems almost assured. Kreimhild? Possible, and interesting to see where they take it. If they put in Ogier or Olivier then I’ll be content. Until then!

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