The much anticipated expansion/sequel to Fate came out on the 28th and is most likely going to set a new record for most copies of a computer game sold in Japan that's not named FF11. The official site is at http://www.typemoon.com/hollow/index.html though no meaningful info can be gleamed.
I'll start by saying most of this is my educated guess on what's going on, and it might be wrong, but my guesses have been pretty good.
The story takes place half an year after Fate Stay Night. It seems to most likely follow the Heaven's Feel Normal End continuum, where our hero, Shirou Emiya, died trying to destroy the Black Grail and failed. His harem is in shambles as Sakura went insane, and all the other girls besides Rin are dead, and of course Rin was never interested in Shirou Emiya to begin with so life sucks for our hero. However, since he was the last person to reach the Grail, the Grail granted his wish, which was to create a peaceful, neverending world where every single one of Fate's girls are miraculously alive. Since Rin went to study sorcery in London in the real world, this phoemona went unchecked as Angra Mainyu, the entity known as "All of the World's evil" inside the Black Grail, plans to loop Shirou Emiya's fantasy world forever as it draws the strength of the characters in this never ending world until it has enough power to manifest itself into the real world. Angra Mainyu also chose to reanimate Bazette (one of the 2 new girls), a Magi who was fatally wounded in the previous Holy Grail War, as its temporary Master since all Servants, no matter how powerful, requires a human master, and in this dream world, Angra Mainyu manifests itself as the Avenger with the body of Shirou Emiya.
At this point the game is very reminiscent of Terranigma, where you spend the game actively leading the world to destruction, as you play as Shirou Emiya and, unbeknowst to you, everything you do is to buy time for Angra Mainyu to gain power. During day, you're in Shirou Emiya's fantasy land where you can talk to any of the 15 or so girls. During night, reality sets in and you must get past area guarded by Karen, the other new girl dispatched by the Association to see what's wrong in Fuyuki City, and Archer, ever the reluctant defender of humanity. Getting Saber to like/join you will take care of Karen and Archer fairly easily especially since Archer apparently conveniently forgot that Shirou Emiya can copy any of his moves with 100% accuracy (Shirou's ability is to mimic other people's moves with significant penalty, but since Archer is Shirou from the future, he is mimicing his own moves and thus has a 100% success rate). Then again, we are in Shirou Emiya's dream world, even though the heroes do not bend to his rules, unlike normal humans.
Since Shirou Emiya's personality is your typical save-the-world do-gooder, of course eventually you do encounter Bazette. Bazette has control over time so when she uses her sword, she also rewinds time on her opponent which renders their attack ineffective. Her attack, of course, is not affected. So, even with Excalibur on your side you get utterly owned. After some more traversing in the dream world, you finally get Lancer, Bazette's ex-Servant, to help you. Lancer is the only hero who possess an attack that isn't affected by the time-unwind mechanism and Lancer and Bazette double KOs each other. At this point Angra Mainyu comes and bails Bazette out by unwinding the 4 days completely (Bazette can only unwind minutes). He kills Shirou Emiya just for fun (since death is inconsequential after time is unwinded) and reveals that he is almost ready to manifest himself in the real world and all that good stuff.
So now that Shirou Emiya realized that his dream has gone horribly wrong, he needed to finish everything he wanted to do in the dream world before putting an end to it. I think the game only requires you to wrap up Saber's arc (Wish) but it is obvious you're supposed to finish Sakura's arc (Dress of the Stars) and Ilya (Winter Night). Note that Rin is actually alive and she is not affected by the rules of this world even though she shows up so you don't get to do anything interesting romantically with her. This is where the game actually gets good beyond the usual harem-like nature of such games. In the Winter Night arc, Ilya finally gets to live with Shirou Emiya like brothers and sisters, and at the end of the fourth night she's crying because she, unlike the other deceased girls, is aware that she is dead and that all this happiness is meaningless. In Sakura's arc, Sakura spends a night with Shirou Emiya in Castle Einzbern and she remarks that she feels like Cinderella, and that when clock strikes 12 she'll have to run away. It's hard to tell if Sakura is dead based on the background story but certain she's one of the girls under the effect of Shirou Emiya's endless looping world. I haven't read Saber's arc but I'm guessing they wouldn't screw up there either.
So after you're done saying goodbye to all the girls, you talk to Ilya and she'll confirm that everything is indeed just a fantasy world, and if you wish, you can end this world and never see all the girls again. So you choose to assault the Black Grail once and for all and end this, and Shirou Emiya unleashes one of the most ridiculously powerful collection of girls on Angra Mainyu, who is summoning an army of allegedly unimaginiably powerful dark beings from the far reaches of the universe. The result is one of the craziest beatdown known to gaming kind. I don't know if the game expect you to take the enemies seriously but if this is a RPG you'd have 15 characters to use at the same time and the your first two (Rin and Archer) could've taken care of everything by themselves. Even Sakura came back as a Magi and was throwing stuff like random Grand Magic like it's going out of style and she's by far the weakest Magi in the whole game, as prior to this she wasn't even accepted at a Magi school. If there's any doubt that this is a total beatdown at the end you get the holy trinity of Fate's most powerful characters: Perfect Ilya, Original Saber, and Gilgamesh and each of them could've taken care of Angra Mainyu alone. You've cutscenes explaining like how Gilgamesh is using the sword that once split the universe from the void and he's going to use this power again. You got Original Saber who's using Excalibur like miniature nuclear explosions, and Perfect Ilya is probably teaching Sakura how to be a sexy lady while her summons are taking care of everything. Since the fight does take place in the dream world the heroes don't have to worry about how their attacks normally would've destroyed the city/nation/planet that they were trying to protect.
So Angra Mainyu's plan gets mesed up, but only human beings who have direct ties to the Black Grail can destroy it. Normally this is Perfect Ilya's role except she is dead (remember just about everyone in the dream world is dead minus Rin). At this point Bazette decided that being animated from the dead by Angra Mainyu didn't sound as great as it used to be now that they're losing and since she was empowered by Angra Mainyu she has the power to destroy the Black Grail. Angra Mainyu, who inherited Shirou Emiya's personality, decided that destroying the world wasn't as great as it first sounded like, so the Black Grail gets destroyed, and I don't quite get the ending but Bazette managed to live anyway because she was only put on suspended animation as opposed to reanimated from the dead, and while Shirou Emiya's lala-land is gone now, life still goes on.
Okay, so how was the game? Like I may have implied, I had no interest in Shirou's adventure in wonderland. The battle scenes, as always, are Fate's greatest strength. Archer solidly confirms why he's the most popular male character ever from such games with a great duel against Shirou + Saber. Bazette's moves are all really cool. The final battle, even though it is total overkill, is satisfying to see the full power of all the entities in Fate. The farewell scenes to the girls before the final battle is well-done, and certainly one of the best romantic scenes in any game I've played. Overall, the game's brilliant moments are comparable or maybe even better than its predecessor's Unlimited Blade Works arc, widely regarded as the best written story in any game, ever.
Of course, like its predecessor, there are parts that are absolutely uninteresting and boring. The story seemed to have lost some of its witty evil-ness which is expected in the dilution of characters. Sakura finally gets some decent development and is out of the shadow of Rin, and looking at Sakura's arc it seems like Ilya has chosen Sakura to be Shirou's girl so at least if there's ever yet another sequel there will be a legitmate girl to challenge Rin's stranglehold as Shirou's girl.
The mini game, Ilya's Castle: Assault the Einzbern plays like some variant of Smash Brothers and is actually quite fun to play. I'm not normally a fan of minigames but this one has it all right. It serves a purpose but is not necesary to beating the game, and it is fun and simple. Even the card game would be pretty good if I can actually figure out what the rules are.
Overall I think this is a good game, but only if you know which part to look for ahead of time. I really have a hard time imagining most people would enjoy another day in Shirou's fantasy land because it's just him rambling forever about one girl after another. When the story does pick up, it is very good, but it can be a pain to get there. I don't get as much play time out of this as I did with the original Fate (Fate took me 60 hours to finish. This took 4) but the very best 3 hours in Hollow Atarxia is easily as good, if not better, than the best 3 hours of Fate. I do not judge a game by quantity and if it provides some great entertainment for a short while, then I think it is worth it.
Now if only the rest of Hollow Atarxia can retain the same level as Fate's UBW or even Fate arc, then there would be a reason to spend the 60 hours that the game no doubt recommends you need if you're to actually read everything that's happening. Fate Stay Night has at least 30 hours of interesting content to spend your time on. For Fate Hollow Ataraxia, I'm not so sure.
I'll start by saying most of this is my educated guess on what's going on, and it might be wrong, but my guesses have been pretty good.
The story takes place half an year after Fate Stay Night. It seems to most likely follow the Heaven's Feel Normal End continuum, where our hero, Shirou Emiya, died trying to destroy the Black Grail and failed. His harem is in shambles as Sakura went insane, and all the other girls besides Rin are dead, and of course Rin was never interested in Shirou Emiya to begin with so life sucks for our hero. However, since he was the last person to reach the Grail, the Grail granted his wish, which was to create a peaceful, neverending world where every single one of Fate's girls are miraculously alive. Since Rin went to study sorcery in London in the real world, this phoemona went unchecked as Angra Mainyu, the entity known as "All of the World's evil" inside the Black Grail, plans to loop Shirou Emiya's fantasy world forever as it draws the strength of the characters in this never ending world until it has enough power to manifest itself into the real world. Angra Mainyu also chose to reanimate Bazette (one of the 2 new girls), a Magi who was fatally wounded in the previous Holy Grail War, as its temporary Master since all Servants, no matter how powerful, requires a human master, and in this dream world, Angra Mainyu manifests itself as the Avenger with the body of Shirou Emiya.
At this point the game is very reminiscent of Terranigma, where you spend the game actively leading the world to destruction, as you play as Shirou Emiya and, unbeknowst to you, everything you do is to buy time for Angra Mainyu to gain power. During day, you're in Shirou Emiya's fantasy land where you can talk to any of the 15 or so girls. During night, reality sets in and you must get past area guarded by Karen, the other new girl dispatched by the Association to see what's wrong in Fuyuki City, and Archer, ever the reluctant defender of humanity. Getting Saber to like/join you will take care of Karen and Archer fairly easily especially since Archer apparently conveniently forgot that Shirou Emiya can copy any of his moves with 100% accuracy (Shirou's ability is to mimic other people's moves with significant penalty, but since Archer is Shirou from the future, he is mimicing his own moves and thus has a 100% success rate). Then again, we are in Shirou Emiya's dream world, even though the heroes do not bend to his rules, unlike normal humans.
Since Shirou Emiya's personality is your typical save-the-world do-gooder, of course eventually you do encounter Bazette. Bazette has control over time so when she uses her sword, she also rewinds time on her opponent which renders their attack ineffective. Her attack, of course, is not affected. So, even with Excalibur on your side you get utterly owned. After some more traversing in the dream world, you finally get Lancer, Bazette's ex-Servant, to help you. Lancer is the only hero who possess an attack that isn't affected by the time-unwind mechanism and Lancer and Bazette double KOs each other. At this point Angra Mainyu comes and bails Bazette out by unwinding the 4 days completely (Bazette can only unwind minutes). He kills Shirou Emiya just for fun (since death is inconsequential after time is unwinded) and reveals that he is almost ready to manifest himself in the real world and all that good stuff.
So now that Shirou Emiya realized that his dream has gone horribly wrong, he needed to finish everything he wanted to do in the dream world before putting an end to it. I think the game only requires you to wrap up Saber's arc (Wish) but it is obvious you're supposed to finish Sakura's arc (Dress of the Stars) and Ilya (Winter Night). Note that Rin is actually alive and she is not affected by the rules of this world even though she shows up so you don't get to do anything interesting romantically with her. This is where the game actually gets good beyond the usual harem-like nature of such games. In the Winter Night arc, Ilya finally gets to live with Shirou Emiya like brothers and sisters, and at the end of the fourth night she's crying because she, unlike the other deceased girls, is aware that she is dead and that all this happiness is meaningless. In Sakura's arc, Sakura spends a night with Shirou Emiya in Castle Einzbern and she remarks that she feels like Cinderella, and that when clock strikes 12 she'll have to run away. It's hard to tell if Sakura is dead based on the background story but certain she's one of the girls under the effect of Shirou Emiya's endless looping world. I haven't read Saber's arc but I'm guessing they wouldn't screw up there either.
So after you're done saying goodbye to all the girls, you talk to Ilya and she'll confirm that everything is indeed just a fantasy world, and if you wish, you can end this world and never see all the girls again. So you choose to assault the Black Grail once and for all and end this, and Shirou Emiya unleashes one of the most ridiculously powerful collection of girls on Angra Mainyu, who is summoning an army of allegedly unimaginiably powerful dark beings from the far reaches of the universe. The result is one of the craziest beatdown known to gaming kind. I don't know if the game expect you to take the enemies seriously but if this is a RPG you'd have 15 characters to use at the same time and the your first two (Rin and Archer) could've taken care of everything by themselves. Even Sakura came back as a Magi and was throwing stuff like random Grand Magic like it's going out of style and she's by far the weakest Magi in the whole game, as prior to this she wasn't even accepted at a Magi school. If there's any doubt that this is a total beatdown at the end you get the holy trinity of Fate's most powerful characters: Perfect Ilya, Original Saber, and Gilgamesh and each of them could've taken care of Angra Mainyu alone. You've cutscenes explaining like how Gilgamesh is using the sword that once split the universe from the void and he's going to use this power again. You got Original Saber who's using Excalibur like miniature nuclear explosions, and Perfect Ilya is probably teaching Sakura how to be a sexy lady while her summons are taking care of everything. Since the fight does take place in the dream world the heroes don't have to worry about how their attacks normally would've destroyed the city/nation/planet that they were trying to protect.
So Angra Mainyu's plan gets mesed up, but only human beings who have direct ties to the Black Grail can destroy it. Normally this is Perfect Ilya's role except she is dead (remember just about everyone in the dream world is dead minus Rin). At this point Bazette decided that being animated from the dead by Angra Mainyu didn't sound as great as it used to be now that they're losing and since she was empowered by Angra Mainyu she has the power to destroy the Black Grail. Angra Mainyu, who inherited Shirou Emiya's personality, decided that destroying the world wasn't as great as it first sounded like, so the Black Grail gets destroyed, and I don't quite get the ending but Bazette managed to live anyway because she was only put on suspended animation as opposed to reanimated from the dead, and while Shirou Emiya's lala-land is gone now, life still goes on.
Okay, so how was the game? Like I may have implied, I had no interest in Shirou's adventure in wonderland. The battle scenes, as always, are Fate's greatest strength. Archer solidly confirms why he's the most popular male character ever from such games with a great duel against Shirou + Saber. Bazette's moves are all really cool. The final battle, even though it is total overkill, is satisfying to see the full power of all the entities in Fate. The farewell scenes to the girls before the final battle is well-done, and certainly one of the best romantic scenes in any game I've played. Overall, the game's brilliant moments are comparable or maybe even better than its predecessor's Unlimited Blade Works arc, widely regarded as the best written story in any game, ever.
Of course, like its predecessor, there are parts that are absolutely uninteresting and boring. The story seemed to have lost some of its witty evil-ness which is expected in the dilution of characters. Sakura finally gets some decent development and is out of the shadow of Rin, and looking at Sakura's arc it seems like Ilya has chosen Sakura to be Shirou's girl so at least if there's ever yet another sequel there will be a legitmate girl to challenge Rin's stranglehold as Shirou's girl.
The mini game, Ilya's Castle: Assault the Einzbern plays like some variant of Smash Brothers and is actually quite fun to play. I'm not normally a fan of minigames but this one has it all right. It serves a purpose but is not necesary to beating the game, and it is fun and simple. Even the card game would be pretty good if I can actually figure out what the rules are.
Overall I think this is a good game, but only if you know which part to look for ahead of time. I really have a hard time imagining most people would enjoy another day in Shirou's fantasy land because it's just him rambling forever about one girl after another. When the story does pick up, it is very good, but it can be a pain to get there. I don't get as much play time out of this as I did with the original Fate (Fate took me 60 hours to finish. This took 4) but the very best 3 hours in Hollow Atarxia is easily as good, if not better, than the best 3 hours of Fate. I do not judge a game by quantity and if it provides some great entertainment for a short while, then I think it is worth it.
Now if only the rest of Hollow Atarxia can retain the same level as Fate's UBW or even Fate arc, then there would be a reason to spend the 60 hours that the game no doubt recommends you need if you're to actually read everything that's happening. Fate Stay Night has at least 30 hours of interesting content to spend your time on. For Fate Hollow Ataraxia, I'm not so sure.
