Review/Thoughts of Fate/Stay Night
PostPosted:Sun Mar 07, 2004 9:13 am
<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>This game makes me sad about RPG and Anime in general because it is just so good! I know you probably never heard of it, and it is certainly not playable without being able to read Japanese (however one of my friend is working on a translation), but I felt this game is so good I should tell you about it.
Disclaimer: I can understand Japanese but by no means fluent, so it is possible I misunderstood parts of the story.
Overview: In modern Tokyo, a secret underground society of Magis are fighting to control the Holy Grial that will grant the winner one wish. To compete, Magis summon powerful heroes known as "Servants" to do their bidding. Our hero, an apprentice magi, was being chased by Lancer, one of the 7 servants, after he accidentally stumbled on the battle between Lancer and Archer (both are Servants). To save his own skin he managed to summon Saber, the reigning champion of this competition for the 4 times (it's his lucky day!). And the story begins there...
Characters:
Magis:
Hero (Shirou) - He is the narrator of this story (minus some very rare scenes where he does not participate). He narrates the story too figuratively (like Ilya is almost always referred to by one of her many flowery descriptions) for a generic Japanese high school student, but that's understandable. I really like his description of girls... it actually sounds like what you'd expect from a guy who's lucky enough to be surrounded by beautiful girls.
Rin Toukasa - The generic straight A girl, but beneath her good student appearance she's also a full time Magi. Out of all the girls, her lines are certainly the most clever. She joins up with Shirou after failing to summon Saber (smart girl!) in the contest. I think her goal is world domination or something but I could be wrong.
Ilya - Despite her totally pure & innocent appearance, evil is her middle name. Her best lines are actually in the Tiger Dojo (a recap after you died), with gems like, "Out of the 8 times you could've died at this point of the story, I have killed you 5 times! But one of those time I didn't really kill you!" Actually, she's just, as Shirou describes, innocent and merciless with no concept of good or evil. While this type of character is hardly unheard of or even uncommon, Ilya does a really good job being evil. You won't feel the generic 'oh she just didn't know better' excuse they toss around with such characters to her at all (but you can't kill her anyway). She is adorably evil. By far the strongest Magi in the game, Ilya's armed to the teeth with spells. Fighting Ilya gives you the feeling of what it must be like to a bad guy in a RPG to go against the good guys that never run out of healing spells.
The Servants:
All Servants are spirits of past heroes, whether real or imagined.
Saber (Artolia) - Order Good. The 'best' of all Servants, and the reigning champion. She belongs to the main character. Artolia's weapon is the Excalibur, and in the universe this story takes place, Artolia is King Arthur's shadow. She was the one who actually pulled the Excalibur out of the stone, and did a lot of the grunt work. She is noble, kind, and boring, but pleasant to read, and her talking style no doubt will drive would be translators insane (she's from Arthurian time, but this game takes place in Tokyo, so she can't exactly talk in Old English).
Archer (identity unknown) - True Neutral. This is Rin's Servant. He does not have much exposure in the first story since it focuses on Artolia, so there's not much I can say about him. He appears to be carefree but is quite loyal to Rin. He doesn't actually use a bow, for reasons I'd assume would be explained in Rin's story.
Lancer (Cu Culain) - Order Neutral. This Servant does not have much involvement in the first story arc. He uses the Gaebolg (spelling?) and serves as a minor annoyance to Artolia at best (Artolia blocked his ultimate attack without using a sword).
Berserker (Hercules) - Chaotic Berserk. This is Ilya's Servant and for all practical purposes the 'boss' of this game. His stats are better than even Gilgamesh's. Artolia has won the last 4 times because Hercules drains too much mana to be maintained for any reasonable amount of time for the Magi. Unfortunately, Ilya has an endless supply of mana to keep Hercules around in the real world.
Rider (identity unknown) - Chaotic Good. A personalityless Servant whose only purpose is for the awesome scene where Artolia draws her Excalibur and utterly destroyed her.
Caster (identity unknown) - Neutral Evil. A Servant whose only purpose is for Artolia to laugh at her because Artolia comes with magic immunity ("Excuse me, but you know I am immune to all magic."), and for Gilgamesh to make his entrance.
Assassin (Sasaki Kojiro) - Neutral Evil. Another Servant that exists to show off Artolia's power.
Archer (Gilgamesh) - Chaotic Good. The real 'boss' of this story. As Gilgamesh is the first hero in recorded history, he has a special place amongst the Servants. He does not belong the 7 listed above, but some evil force brought him into this world to deal with Artolia. He uses the Elma Elrishi (probably misspelled this horribly). His moves are really cool, especially the Genesis Star (rough translation). His power exceeds even that of Artolia's ultimate move, Sword of Promised Victory (Excalibur).
Before I get into more detail, let me say that I've only finished the first story (Fate, focus around Artolia) out of the 3. It took 8 hours and that's with skipping every non vital dialogue and even a lot of vital dialogues, and having a guide so I know what choices to make. It'd take 20 hours easily to finish one story if you're actually reading it all.
First I'll start with my very few gripes.
The sex scene betwen Artolia and Shirou on day 8 is completely meaningless. Given the game says 18+ you can probably expect Shirou to have sex with every female character (but not Ilya, as I'm told) but it is really hard to believe that while being chased by the super powerful Ilya they have time to do this. I mean come on Archer told them he'll stay here and hold off Ilya while they escape even though it's certain death for him to take on Ilya + Hercules by himself, and then Rin/Artolia/Shirou just decided to have sex in an abandoned ruin. Yes the game says Artolia ran out of mana from using the Excalibur and that was supposed to be the only way for her to regain her mana back so she can defeat Ilya, but I mean, get serious. That said, it can be forgiven since Rin had some of the funniest lines in this scene ("You mean you don't know sex can restore mana? No wonder you're just an apprentice magi. Or do you deny it because you can't do it anymore?"). I can understand the day 14 one because Artolia is about to return to her time and never come back, and frankly 1 out of 2 isn't too bad...
For all the game's focus on the Servant's identity must remained secret, Artolia was the only one whose identity remained secret for any reasonable amount of time. She doesn't want to use Excalibur because it'd be a dead give away to who she is (remember that this is an alternate world that does know about Artolia as the wielder of Excalibur) but after her identity is revealed it had no effect on the rest of the story. Gilgamesh and Hercules, the boss enemies, also starts out with every info known already, and it does not appear that knowledge did Artolia and Shirou any good. Certainly not on Gilgamesh.
Okay now to the good.
The fighting scenes in this are great. Consider they only consist of a few frames of actions and all text, that says a lot. Any company that thinks CG cutscenes are necessary to make a battle meaningful needs to look at the Lancer vs Archer fight, which is basically 6 still frames repeated over and over. In the fights where there is actually animation, like Artolia vs Hercules/Rider/Gilgamesh, the quality is quite impressive. Of course, the animation is still quite minimal, but quality definitely beats quantity here.
The weapons are great. From Artolia's Excalibur to Gilgamesh's Elma Elrishi, or Rin's Azoth Dagger, just about everyone has a cool weapon to use besides the main character.
The RPG stats. You might notice there are character alignment, and there's a lot more stats even though none of them has anything to do with the game (you do not get to control of the fight except the option of saying fighting versus not). It's pretty cool to see a battle scene in the story and then go to the character status reference sheet and see what move they used. For example Sword of Promised Victory (Artolia's Ultimate) is listed as class A++ but it loses to Genesis Star (Gilgamesh's Ultimate) because it's class EX and that's also what happened when they first fought.
The story is just excellent. It is very well polished. There are even great details about how you lose. For example if you make the wrong decisions on the Ilya fights (like trying to run away) it'd tell you how you thought you managed to escape, but Ilya caught up and slowly tortured you to death and so on. Rin and Ilya are both funny in their own ways, and Artolia is boring but pleasant to read.
The main female characters are incredibly well animated. There is really no Anime or game that will touch Fate in the anime-style characters (Artolia is in my sig, and her resolution in the game is that high).
Finally, the scripted battles. This game is obviously designed as a RPG in mind despite the lack of your ability to effect the outcome, and as such almost every battle is scripted. The cleverly scripted battles also makes them enjoyable to read despite minimal animation (or none, in some battles). Why can't a RPG have a 1on1 battle like Artolia versus Gilgamesh?</div>
Disclaimer: I can understand Japanese but by no means fluent, so it is possible I misunderstood parts of the story.
Overview: In modern Tokyo, a secret underground society of Magis are fighting to control the Holy Grial that will grant the winner one wish. To compete, Magis summon powerful heroes known as "Servants" to do their bidding. Our hero, an apprentice magi, was being chased by Lancer, one of the 7 servants, after he accidentally stumbled on the battle between Lancer and Archer (both are Servants). To save his own skin he managed to summon Saber, the reigning champion of this competition for the 4 times (it's his lucky day!). And the story begins there...
Characters:
Magis:
Hero (Shirou) - He is the narrator of this story (minus some very rare scenes where he does not participate). He narrates the story too figuratively (like Ilya is almost always referred to by one of her many flowery descriptions) for a generic Japanese high school student, but that's understandable. I really like his description of girls... it actually sounds like what you'd expect from a guy who's lucky enough to be surrounded by beautiful girls.
Rin Toukasa - The generic straight A girl, but beneath her good student appearance she's also a full time Magi. Out of all the girls, her lines are certainly the most clever. She joins up with Shirou after failing to summon Saber (smart girl!) in the contest. I think her goal is world domination or something but I could be wrong.
Ilya - Despite her totally pure & innocent appearance, evil is her middle name. Her best lines are actually in the Tiger Dojo (a recap after you died), with gems like, "Out of the 8 times you could've died at this point of the story, I have killed you 5 times! But one of those time I didn't really kill you!" Actually, she's just, as Shirou describes, innocent and merciless with no concept of good or evil. While this type of character is hardly unheard of or even uncommon, Ilya does a really good job being evil. You won't feel the generic 'oh she just didn't know better' excuse they toss around with such characters to her at all (but you can't kill her anyway). She is adorably evil. By far the strongest Magi in the game, Ilya's armed to the teeth with spells. Fighting Ilya gives you the feeling of what it must be like to a bad guy in a RPG to go against the good guys that never run out of healing spells.
The Servants:
All Servants are spirits of past heroes, whether real or imagined.
Saber (Artolia) - Order Good. The 'best' of all Servants, and the reigning champion. She belongs to the main character. Artolia's weapon is the Excalibur, and in the universe this story takes place, Artolia is King Arthur's shadow. She was the one who actually pulled the Excalibur out of the stone, and did a lot of the grunt work. She is noble, kind, and boring, but pleasant to read, and her talking style no doubt will drive would be translators insane (she's from Arthurian time, but this game takes place in Tokyo, so she can't exactly talk in Old English).
Archer (identity unknown) - True Neutral. This is Rin's Servant. He does not have much exposure in the first story since it focuses on Artolia, so there's not much I can say about him. He appears to be carefree but is quite loyal to Rin. He doesn't actually use a bow, for reasons I'd assume would be explained in Rin's story.
Lancer (Cu Culain) - Order Neutral. This Servant does not have much involvement in the first story arc. He uses the Gaebolg (spelling?) and serves as a minor annoyance to Artolia at best (Artolia blocked his ultimate attack without using a sword).
Berserker (Hercules) - Chaotic Berserk. This is Ilya's Servant and for all practical purposes the 'boss' of this game. His stats are better than even Gilgamesh's. Artolia has won the last 4 times because Hercules drains too much mana to be maintained for any reasonable amount of time for the Magi. Unfortunately, Ilya has an endless supply of mana to keep Hercules around in the real world.
Rider (identity unknown) - Chaotic Good. A personalityless Servant whose only purpose is for the awesome scene where Artolia draws her Excalibur and utterly destroyed her.
Caster (identity unknown) - Neutral Evil. A Servant whose only purpose is for Artolia to laugh at her because Artolia comes with magic immunity ("Excuse me, but you know I am immune to all magic."), and for Gilgamesh to make his entrance.
Assassin (Sasaki Kojiro) - Neutral Evil. Another Servant that exists to show off Artolia's power.
Archer (Gilgamesh) - Chaotic Good. The real 'boss' of this story. As Gilgamesh is the first hero in recorded history, he has a special place amongst the Servants. He does not belong the 7 listed above, but some evil force brought him into this world to deal with Artolia. He uses the Elma Elrishi (probably misspelled this horribly). His moves are really cool, especially the Genesis Star (rough translation). His power exceeds even that of Artolia's ultimate move, Sword of Promised Victory (Excalibur).
Before I get into more detail, let me say that I've only finished the first story (Fate, focus around Artolia) out of the 3. It took 8 hours and that's with skipping every non vital dialogue and even a lot of vital dialogues, and having a guide so I know what choices to make. It'd take 20 hours easily to finish one story if you're actually reading it all.
First I'll start with my very few gripes.
The sex scene betwen Artolia and Shirou on day 8 is completely meaningless. Given the game says 18+ you can probably expect Shirou to have sex with every female character (but not Ilya, as I'm told) but it is really hard to believe that while being chased by the super powerful Ilya they have time to do this. I mean come on Archer told them he'll stay here and hold off Ilya while they escape even though it's certain death for him to take on Ilya + Hercules by himself, and then Rin/Artolia/Shirou just decided to have sex in an abandoned ruin. Yes the game says Artolia ran out of mana from using the Excalibur and that was supposed to be the only way for her to regain her mana back so she can defeat Ilya, but I mean, get serious. That said, it can be forgiven since Rin had some of the funniest lines in this scene ("You mean you don't know sex can restore mana? No wonder you're just an apprentice magi. Or do you deny it because you can't do it anymore?"). I can understand the day 14 one because Artolia is about to return to her time and never come back, and frankly 1 out of 2 isn't too bad...
For all the game's focus on the Servant's identity must remained secret, Artolia was the only one whose identity remained secret for any reasonable amount of time. She doesn't want to use Excalibur because it'd be a dead give away to who she is (remember that this is an alternate world that does know about Artolia as the wielder of Excalibur) but after her identity is revealed it had no effect on the rest of the story. Gilgamesh and Hercules, the boss enemies, also starts out with every info known already, and it does not appear that knowledge did Artolia and Shirou any good. Certainly not on Gilgamesh.
Okay now to the good.
The fighting scenes in this are great. Consider they only consist of a few frames of actions and all text, that says a lot. Any company that thinks CG cutscenes are necessary to make a battle meaningful needs to look at the Lancer vs Archer fight, which is basically 6 still frames repeated over and over. In the fights where there is actually animation, like Artolia vs Hercules/Rider/Gilgamesh, the quality is quite impressive. Of course, the animation is still quite minimal, but quality definitely beats quantity here.
The weapons are great. From Artolia's Excalibur to Gilgamesh's Elma Elrishi, or Rin's Azoth Dagger, just about everyone has a cool weapon to use besides the main character.
The RPG stats. You might notice there are character alignment, and there's a lot more stats even though none of them has anything to do with the game (you do not get to control of the fight except the option of saying fighting versus not). It's pretty cool to see a battle scene in the story and then go to the character status reference sheet and see what move they used. For example Sword of Promised Victory (Artolia's Ultimate) is listed as class A++ but it loses to Genesis Star (Gilgamesh's Ultimate) because it's class EX and that's also what happened when they first fought.
The story is just excellent. It is very well polished. There are even great details about how you lose. For example if you make the wrong decisions on the Ilya fights (like trying to run away) it'd tell you how you thought you managed to escape, but Ilya caught up and slowly tortured you to death and so on. Rin and Ilya are both funny in their own ways, and Artolia is boring but pleasant to read.
The main female characters are incredibly well animated. There is really no Anime or game that will touch Fate in the anime-style characters (Artolia is in my sig, and her resolution in the game is that high).
Finally, the scripted battles. This game is obviously designed as a RPG in mind despite the lack of your ability to effect the outcome, and as such almost every battle is scripted. The cleverly scripted battles also makes them enjoyable to read despite minimal animation (or none, in some battles). Why can't a RPG have a 1on1 battle like Artolia versus Gilgamesh?</div>