We may have just finished our October contest, but there also was a contest back in May, and the winner tasked me with playing Fate/stay Night, which is simple now thanks to the remaster.
That was the start of June, so why are we talking about it in November? Because it’s a long visual novel. I mean, it’s a long visual novel.
But now I’ve finished, so let’s talk about Fate/Stay Night!
I’ve been on the periphery of the Fate series for a long time now, having played Witch on the Holy Night and Tsukihime from the same universe, as well as the Fate/Extella spin-offs. You’d think that would give me an idea of what to expect, but I went into Fate/Stay Night with little actual knowledge of what the original visual novel is like.
I was probably thrown off because of my light experience with the franchise, in fact. The Extella setting is so different that I wasn’t prepared for Fate/Stay Night to star a protagonist who’s living in a regular town and going to high school and stuff like that, even if I probably should have expected it because of Tsukihime.
Similar to how the Tsukihime remake has two routes but makes you play them in order, Fate/Stay Night also has a set order for its three routes. (On a side note, when I saw the first route was called “Fate,” I fully expected the next two routes to be called “Stay” and “Night.” This is not the case.)
The first route is with Saber, a character so iconic I know her even from just being on the fringes of the fandom. I really enjoyed this route, and the romance between Saber and Shirou felt to me to be the truest.
Despite that, some of the most interesting characters to me are ones who feature strongly in Rin’s route, so I thoroughly enjoyed the second route as well. In fact, despite what I just said about the Saber/Shirou romance feeling the truest to me, Rin’s route is probably my favorite in terms of story progression.
But I also loved Sakura’s route, because it has much more of a horror atmosphere than the other two and gave me backstory for another character I liked a lot. It really felt like a great way to finish.
Now, you might also think that my loose knowledge of the Fate series would have spoiled me on some things, but not as much as you’d expect.
Click for Fate/stay night spoilers
I did know Saber was King Arthur, and I recognized Gilgamesh when he appeared, but that’s about it.
Looking back on it, I’m pretty sure I’d seen Archer referred to as Emiya before, but since I didn’t know it was a spoiler when I saw it, it vanished from my mind so completely that when I learned Shirou’s name, my only reaction was “Oh, so that’s Emiya,” and the reveal about Archer in the second route still came as a complete surprise to me.
On the other hand, something that did stick in my memory was that I’d once seen a certain priest compared to a certain other visual novel character, and the result was that I was TERRIFIED of Kirei for the entire Fate route. He wasn’t as scary as I expected, which makes my terror funny in retrospect.
There are plenty of bad endings along with way, with little comedy skits after each one that let you know what you should do differently to avoid dying. I loved that in Tsukhime, so I was delighted to discover that it’s a thing in Fate, too. The flowchart makes it easy to jump around between scenes once you’ve seen them, so I went back through after I finished to get every bad ending and at least most scenes (I may have missed a couple that are just minor variations).
Overall, I really enjoyed playing Fate/stay Night. I liked Tsukihime more, but this was another another fantastic visual novel and another wild ride with lots of twists and turns.
And you know what happened as soon as I finished? Fate/Hollow Ataraxia went on sale. My backlog says no, but my heart says yes…
Anyway, what are your thoughts on Fate/Stay Night?
There’s a new State of Play set for tomorrow, and while they tend to be hit or miss, I’m more excited for this one than usual.
