Because I have a bone to pick with this sword…
At this point, it seems a bit perfunctory to provide an introduction to Fate as a multimedia series, but how else do you start something like this?
Spanning several anime series, films, games, the persistent live service that is Fate Grand/Order (2015), spin-offs, mountains or merch, and a nation of doujin works of chaste and lewd repute, Fate is huge. It’s easily one of the biggest IPs to emerge from Japan in the 21st century. However, before all of that franchising, the series was a visual novel produced by a small company that decided to create one of the grandest visual novels yet… and arguably since.
Fate/stay night (2004), henceforth Fate Stay Night or FSN, is a game that I’ve felt pressure to play ever since I got big into visual novels during the mid-2010s. Its reputation among the genre is sterling, often considered among the best of all time, but also one of the more daunting. The game is over 800,000 words long— comparable to 12 average-length novels— and playing it back then would require seeking out a fan translation from a group called Mirror Moon. The translation was an immense labor of love that served as the way English speakers experienced FSN for about a decade. Back then, I mused over doing such a thing, but kept putting it off, rationalizing that the translation was unofficial and may not properly capture this massive literary work with the care of a professional studio. In fact, in 2020, I explicitly said that “I’m still waiting for an official English release.”
In 2024, celebrating the game’s 20th anniversary, I received just that with Fate Stay Night: Remastered. This was update on the original game with redone user interface, an interactive flowchart feature, revised backgrounds and CGs, and a full translation in both Chinese and English. After some encouragement from people more familiar with the series than me, I finally took the trek, beginning a month-and-a-half-long 100 hour journey to understand why Fate Stay Night is so beloved.
Did I discover that? …Eh, for the most part.
Through my years playing many successive, more modern, visual novels released in the wake of FSN, many of its innovations lack the same impact. Things it did first were done and expanded upon by creators in the ensuing two decades, so the shock factor in its thoroughness, earnestness, subject matter, and dedication are not as strong as they would be if I were to have played it in, say, 2014. And as someone well into their 30s as of writing this, the same youthful convictions that drive its characters and crafting are not as potent as they were a younger person.
Still though, I have ultimately come to love FSN… while still being disappointed by it in several respects.
Fate/Stay Night: Remastered Review
Platforms: Nintendo Switch, PC (Reviewed)
Developers: Type-Moon, Fuzz Inc.
Publisher: Aniplex Inc.
Part 01: The Holy Grail War
The premise of Fate Stay Night is both simple and layered with numerous complexities through its lore, narrative mechanics, and iterations. Every few decades Fuyuki City stages The Holy Grail War. A battle royale where seven mages summon a Servant, a hero from yore and legend, and battle to claim the Holy Grail and have one of their wishes come true. As the fifth war begins, mages become the Masters of Servants, battles are waged, and an unassuming young man is drawn into the thick of things.
Shirou Emiya is 17-year-old boy traumatized by the fallout of the last Holy Grail War ten years prior. Having lost his parents and his adoptive father, he has dedicated himself to be a champion of justice a hero who strives save lives whenever possible, and prevent a disaster from befalling his hometown ever again. After nearly dying at the hands of a Servant, twice, he is able to summon a Servant of his own, the beautiful and mighty Saber, who serves as his sword in this war. To guide him into this world of magic and mysticism, he forms a bond with Rin Tohsaka. Acquainted with her through high school, Rin’s a thoroughly trained and well-bred mage who has been training her entire life for this war.
Together, and with the assistance of Rin’s Servant, Archer, the four form an alliance to survive together in this imposing war. They seek out Masters hiding in plain sight and venture out at nightfall to do battle with whatever lingering Servants they can uncover, or who can find them. Though, Shirou, and the player, typically spend more time learning about this world, the war, and nature of everything they are seeing. Every one of the game’s three routes progress differently, twisting and morphing the story and adding new texture to it, but that’s the gist.
As a premise, it’s kind of brilliant, the type of thing that would make YA publishers in the 2000s salivate. A contemporary setting following regular high schoolers, utilizing both magic and mythology by taking heroes of mythology and grafting them on a (loose) series of seven classes. Saber, Archer, Caster, Lancer, Rider, Berserker, and… Assassin (because calling them Killer was off the table). It’s a premise with legs so long the ankle’s in the next town over, prone to serialized storytelling. …Which is what the extended universe is for. As its own work, FSN instead drills down throughout this specific batch of characters, to the point where they are, without question, the main appeal.
At this point, through cultural osmosis, repetition, and reprisals across other works, the likes of Shirou, Saber, and Rin have all become iconic characters in and of themselves. Shirou is a stalwart and determined sort who will pursue his ideals and drive no matter what, pushing himself through hell and back, and with so much baggage behind him that he warrants his own section. Saber is a committed and regimented knight who views her duties with the utmost importance, while adhering to her coda and sense of honor to do the right thing. Despite this, even she can be blinded by her own desires, pushing herself to the brink of death as she refuses to compromise upon her principles.
Rin is a prim and proper young woman, most successful and desired girl at her school, and one with a good amount of emotional depth to her. As a mage, she is a true professional, viewing her status and role with the importance, care, and rigor they demand, yet around Shirou, she can be coy, teasing, and even sadistic in some instances. However, this guise can often slip, showing that she is still a teenage girl. Despite her attempts to regiment her emotions, is prone to being wooed, flustered, and overwrought with emotions.
Other characters similarly shine through their large personalities and imposing presence. There’s the barrel of enthusiasm that is Shirou’s faux aunt, Taiga Fujimura, who serves as a staple presence with her own bad end showcase. Sakura Matou, Shirou’s underclassman who acts as his live-in companion before Saber and Rin enter his life. Sakura’s brother, Shinji, Shirou’s long-time friend and the worst dude in almost every possible way. Irisviel von Einzbern, or just Illya, the resident sadistic little sister girl who functions as both an emotional core of several key parts of the story, and a secondary look at the complexities of this world’s magic system. All of which is before getting what are arguably the biggest selling points of Fate in a post-FGO world, the Servants.
The creators here gave themselves absolute freedom to create and reinterpret whatever historical figure they wanted to in whatever shape they want them to be. As we can see, this has invited a multiverse of hundreds of new characters and reinterpretations of myths and legends from around the world. Here though, we don’t quite get that variety, but the characters that were picked all have some pathos, purpose, and direction behind their rendition here. …Even if the game clearly plays favorites with some over others.
Still, I think what Type Moon created here is a hugely impressive narrative concept, and one that is used to achieve some truly exceptional peaks. …However, as a complete and linear story, I have several grievances with what Fate Stay Night is, compared to what it could be.
Part 02: The Most Linear Route-Based Visual Novel
Before talking about any individual route, I want to talk about how FSN structures itself as a visual novel. Its three routes all begin from the same universal Common Route, and function as alternate takes on the events of the story. These routes must be played linearly, so unless people skip around, they will go through Fate, Unlimited Blade Works, and Heaven’s Feel in that order. This gives the author an immense level of control in how the story is told, as it is effectively one long story told throughout two prologues and three 200,000+ word acts, set in their own continuities.
This is a strange use of the route structure, but I would be fine with any approach if the story warrants or justifies it and… I don’t think FSN really does. Every route, it needs to re-explain things through entirely or partially new scenes that cannot be easily skipped, as the protagonist must learn information the player is already intimately familiar with. It’s old news to the player, but all new to Shirou (UBW Ver.), I suppose. Scenes of bonding must be played out again, but differently, in order to justify the route’s emotional beats. This alone can be a frustration, yet the most perplexing element of this structure is how there isn’t a clear cause and effect for how and why these timelines diverge.
To begin a new route, you must meet the opaque requirements, go through the previously inaccessible gate, and stumble into a new scenario where new antagonists are suddenly aggressive, or simply appear from the ether. It makes each route feel less like a different way the story could go from the same conclusion, and more like some perpetual history remixing time loop à la Higurashi: When They Cry. Except, unlike most Higurashi chapters, FSN does not know when to toss the exposition, the table banter, and get on with the program.
As I said in the preface, FSN is very long, and it simply does not justify its runtime with interesting or consistently engaging events. There are simply too many scenes of characters going over this game’s deluge of Proper Nouns and what they are supposed to mean. The writer has a hyperfixation on cooking and people eating meals, to the point where I am not even surprised there’s a cooking spin-off game. There’s a reason for these cooking scenes, but we don’t need literally dozens of them. Even on a broader thematic and event level, the game repeats its ideas, plot beats, and even certain encounters so often that it feels like it’s padding for the sake of it.
There’s so much repetition, over-emphasis, and empty details in FSN that I’d say that it’s at least 20% longer than it needs to be to cover every idea it has. Despite its deliberate structure, I don’t think it uses the concept of multiple routes particularly well, and a persistent though I had from hour 40 to 100 was “this could have all been one or two routes, we don’t need three.” Every idea covered could have been explored in a more effective manner, without sacrificing the atmosphere and likability of the cast. This would, of course, not be easy, but it’s something that a good editor can push a writer to do, except I don’t think there was an editor. …And if there was, I would hate to see what the unedited version looked like.
Part 03: Audiovisual Splendor and Stagnation
One of the first thing you’ll notice about Fate Stay Night is how it uses the sound novel, or just “novel,” style of presentation. While an offshoot nowadays, it was standard in the 90s, and persisted throughout the early 2000s, but largely faded away with the “adventure style” presentation seen in the overwhelming majority of VNs hitting the scene today. It’s a presentation style meant to better mirror the format of a book, just with fewer dialogue tags than you might be used to, which is to say basically none. It’s something I’ve gotten used to over the years, yet can be a barrier for some.
Fortunately, the confusion is eased with the game’s voice acting, added in 2007 by the actors behind the 2006 Studio Deen anime adaptation of the game. Sure, I cannot understand them, but their deliveries have drive and passion behind them, clearly getting behind the source material and doing all they can to elevate it. You can tell why these actors have kept these roles for the past 20 or so years, as they nailed it across the board.
Through their performances, they do a lot to keep the audio landscape of the game engaging, which I’d have to say it is in need of. Remastered or original, FSN has the common bad habit of recycling the same two-minute tracks for too many tonally similar scenes, and after several dozen hours, you just want to hear some variety. The tracks are not bad, some are fantastic moody pieces that thrive with emotion and intent, though not all tracks are created or treated equal, or have the staying power to survive the 100 loop test.
Compared to the audio side, the visuals of Fate Stay Night are simply decadent. Characters are given a wide range of poses, expressions, and even outfits, allowing them to come to life in a manner far in a way beyond the typical budget conscious visual novel. Characters move their arms, clench their faces, and show a level of dynamism as they emote that does wonders to increase their presence and importance. There are so many unique poses for fairly mundane things that it almost feels like there was no budget with this game, and the same ethos of excess is carried over into its CGs.
I am used to visual novels being conservative with their CG usage, but Fate Stay Night has literal hundreds of CGs, not counting variants. They do an immense amount of work in painting the world, characters, and intensity of the game’s story. CGs are common enough that they are expected, yet striking and well composed enough that they still manage to feel like a treat when they appear. Backgrounds are similarly composed with a keen attention for detail, vividly crafting Fuyuki City, picturesque staple locations, homes, and the utterly gorgeous woods. The world is rendered with care and just enough distinct elements to make this fake city seem like a real place.
Unfortunately, the backgrounds suffer from the same problem as the music, as certain ones are simply overused to the point where they stop being engaging, particularly Shirou’s living room. It would be no exaggeration to say that 10% of all scenes take place here, and the sight of his table, kitchen, and samurai paper walls has been burned into my brain. Meanwhile, far more vivid and engaging backdrops are sparse or only used a single time. There is no single best solution for something like this, but drawing an overused room from another angle could not have been that hard, right?
All of this is before getting into the iconic style of Takashi Takeuchi, one of the more influential game artists of the 2000s. It’s both of its era and feels like a crystalline ideal of what that era could look like. Sure, a few things look a bit skewed, or weirdly pudgy, but his technical skills circa 2003 are evident, as is his penchant for striking dramatic framing, clearly dedicating himself to make things look as cool or dynamic. In fact, I would say the game might even resonate more nowadays as the art style of anime has continued to shift, giving Fate Stay Night a more recognizable look that is… Fate, that is Type-Moon, that is Takeuchi and artists who have emulated his style.
I would say that Fate Stay Night is probably one of the best looking visual novels of its era. Yet, what I played, and what you are seeing in my screenshots, is not the original, but the 2024 Remaster. Rather than just re-release it and call it a day, Type-Moon and Fuzz Inc. made a lot of changes, enough to warrant its own, far longer, section.
Part 04: The Remaster Review
Fate Stay Night underwent significant revisions in its 2024 remastering. While the dialogue, animations, and general composition are unchanged, the wrappings and broader presentation have all undergone a facelift. Some of them are good, others don’t take it quite as far, and some take away far more than they add.
The new flowchart feature is incredibly helpful for getting alternate scenes, bad ends, and not rotating through dozens of saves. As a part-time flowchart maker, I would simply LOVE to see other visual novels take notes from this. The thumbnails do a good job of conveying most scenes at a glance, there’s enough information to suss out what needs to be done without using a guide, in most instances, and it’s even pleasant to scroll through.
The autosave feature upon closing the game, with the quick continue option, make this one of the few visual novels where you don’t even need to bother saving. It’s a minor feature, but it’s a small thoughtful quality of life feature that I really appreciated, giving me the luxury to be careless. I’d call it the best I’ve ever seen, but the Steam re-release of the Muv-Luv games automatically resumed where you were at upon opening the game, no main menu or anything. Still, this gets the silver medal for me.
The remaster sports a deluge of audio and text options, truly letting you customize the reading experience however you want. The scene-based fast skip feature is a godsend for going through alternate paths, letting you plow through scenes in 5 seconds rather 50 seconds. Original UI elements, relegated to the pause and main menu, were completely replaced with a pleasant ethereal space theme that, while a bit random, adds a sense of grandeur to the experience. And, probably more remarkably, the art has been redone and reworked to fit the 16:9 aspect ratio of modernity over the 4:3 display of yore.
Normally, I would just expect them to crop things, as was done with the PS Vita and mobile releases a decade ago. However, Type-Moon went back through the original production files and delicately recreated and reapportioned every one of this game’s hundreds of CGs and dozens of backgrounds to make the game look natural in this new aspect ratio. It is a glorious effort that results in the game feeling fuller and bigger on a modern display, without the tendrils of the real world poking out from behind, or the black void lingering in the periphery.
However, there are some minor yet persistent technical frustrations with the wrapping of it all. When playing the game in full screen, the game halts itself when you alt-tab or change the primary window. Which, as someone who likes to take notes when playing massive VNs like this, was a persistent irritation. Some of the keyboard shortcuts are strange, like having shift function as a rewind button, when it is right next to the Enter key, the one you use to progress. Or, if you bring your mouse cursor down, where I typically keep it when playing visual novels, it hides all the text. You can still progress the game like this, can keep the text progressing, but it’s hidden. …Why bind the controls like this?
There’s also the standard annoying splash screens when the game boots up, something that’s really annoying when trying to keep an accurate track of playtime, but there’s fortunately a mod for that.
Another, minor yet major, change is to the text box of the game. As a sound novel type visual novel, you are looking at words as much as you’re looking at images, and the way words are displayed is naturally important. The original FSN placed a stylish black behind for its white on black text, with a good amount of the bright background poking out behind it. Remastered replaces this box with a murky dark gradient that covers the entire screen, darkening the entirety of the screen. There is no border between the words and the world, and everything looks desaturated and washed out, because there’s a black filter over everything.
Because of this, I decided to use the game’s numerous presentation options to make the gradient transparent. This can make it harder to read, in part due to a lack of text aliasing, and kills the mood of a sound novel on some level. However, I still think it’s an improvement.
Another change to acknowledge is way the widescreen resolution changes the way text is displayed, using a wider horizontal space while using less vertical space. It’s not really a problem. It’s never hard to read. However, there’s something eerie and awkward with how rarely text fills up the faux text box, often only filling the top half of the display, and doing so with an inconsistent formatting. Line breaks, indentations, hard breaks, it’s all handled in a manner that functions, but the more I read, the more I pressed through the game’s tens of thousands of lines, the harder it became to rationalize the execution.
Yes, I know I am criticizing how a game displays text, but in a game like this… that’s at least 20% of the game, isn’t it?
That text itself is also subject to some level of scrutiny as a translation. No translators were named in the game’s credits, but all studios listed were reputable and long-standing intuitions who probably worked on some games you love. On a technical level, the translation is professional and competent. There are a few dozen errors I noticed, with “a different in time” having become a personal in-joke for me. The attempts at “translating” Rin’s German spells are so abysmal that I cannot view them as anything more than errors. And the frequent use of capitalized Proper Nouns, or better, Proper Verbs, warrants at least gentle ribbing.
Most of the time, the Remastered script delivers engaging scenes of prose, pleasant infusions of humor, and heartfelt character moments handled with the appropriate weight. Unfortunately, even in great scenes, there can be lines that don’t read quite right, that are too literal, too indirect, or phrase things in a not-so-English manner. I’d theorize that this is because the English translation was written in tandem with the Chinese translation. When doing multiple languages, translators are encouraged to maintain a more literal consistency, and that is especially true if the game supports easy language switching. If you want, you can switch languages every other screen in Fate Stay Night Remastered! …Also, the literal corporate-approved approach in general when working with something as lore dense as Fate.
If this were the only translation, I would accept this, be happy that I could read it, but whenever I stumbled on an awkward line or bad phrasing, I was reminded of the Mirror Moon fan translation. After completing the Fate route, I began to periodically compare these two translations, just a scene or two at a time, and I always found the fan translation to read better. The language is more natural, more direct, and it maintains both the prose and vivid imagery of Remastered at its best. It may be less faithful or professional, yet it gripped me faster and harder based on the hour I spent comparing both scripts. And in a visual novel, the script is ultimately the most important thing.
This left me in a quagmire of my own construction as I continued playing through FSN, as I had to debate if I felt the original or Remastered was better or more engaging. Yes, Remastered has QoL up the butt and around the corner, is easily accessible, and does not require navigating old patches or DL sites to get a 2007 Windows game running on your system. However, after going through Remastered… I do wish that I went through the fan translation instead, as what I value above all else is an enjoyable read.
Part 05: Thematic Ruminations
As a work so long and ripe with things to explore, there is much that one could say about the themes of Fate Stay Night, but most discussions tend to fixate on Shirou’s personal philosophy. He is a lone survivor dedicated to helping people however he can, who abhors death, and does not want for much other than the opportunity to be a champion of justice. Throughout the three routes, he is pushed through increasingly dire situations, forced to witness death, pain, agony, and the horrors that humans and Servants alike are capable of. And in the process, he is supposed to confront his philosophy to understand that wanting to be a hero is to crave danger, that heroism is an act full of sacrifice, and that his desire is destructive.
Shirou does not treat himself well as a person. He eats well, exercises, and goes about his life as a productive teenager, forming decent friendships. However, he is also constantly killing himself. For his job, he prefers to do intensive blitz work where he pushes his body to its limits. As part of his mage training (almost) every night, he undergoes a painful life-threatening procedure in order to activate his body’s “Magic Circuits.” Which is a thing that no sane mage should do, but he does, because he is self-taught and ideologically believes that if something is painful, it is probably worth doing.
Pain really is an apt word to describe Shirou as so much of his background as a person is defined by pain. The pain of losing his parents and youthful innocence in the fire. The pain of losing his adoptive father. Then, as the story progresses and Shirou finds himself involved in combat, he undergoes a level of physical abuse that is remarkable for a character, period.
Shirou is routinely brought to the cusp of death, breaks bones, loses copious amounts of blood, is overcome with nausea as his body is handled in ways it shouldn’t, and gets brutally messed up. Every time Shirou runs into a Servant, he is going to have at least two monologues about how much everything hurts. Every time Shirou trains, he is going to get his ass beat, but in a nicer way. As Shirou pushes himself, tries to fulfill his role as a Master, as a hero, he does so after undergoing immense physical abuse. Because he wants to be strong, and the more pain he can endure, the stronger he must be.
As part of this review, I watched the 2006 Studio Deen anime adaptation to see how his character would be read, and this aspect of his character is significantly downplayed. He gets messed up, grunts, groans, and leaks oodles of blood, but does not go on monologues about how his ribs are broken. In the visual novel though? The writer loves describing how messed up Shirou gets. More than being a man defined by swords, he is a man defined by pain, and no matter what happens, he opens up a capacity for more. In Shirou’s mind, that’s what a hero is. Someone who will take the pain away from others, protect the innocents, and most critically protect the women.
Fate Stay Night has a number of strong female characters— if anything, there is a conscious effort to make all of them strong in their own way. However, from his actions over his words, it’s clear that Shirou has complicated thoughts towards woman. He lives with women, enjoys their company, and clearly views them as people, yet he cannot let go of the idea that he, as a man, must defend them. It does not matter that Saber is a knight who could cleave a semi-truck in 5 seconds flat, Shirou thinks she is small, cute, and would die for her if he could.
It’s tempting to just say that Shirou is chivalrous, sentimental, or old-fashioned, but the violence he undergoes is so extreme that I don’t think those terms are appropriate. Despite what certain characters say, Shirou is a victim of a lot of things. He has unresolved trauma, survivor’s guilt, and a hero complex. Combined with his relationship to women, viewing them as something to protect, I’d say he’s also a victim of toxic masculinity.
Now, I’m not using the term toxic masculinity to say Shirou is callous, aggressively sexist, or demeaning. What the term originally referred to was men’s social tendencies to kill themselves. Refusing to acknowledge their own emotions, refusing to show vulnerability, throwing themselves into danger to protect women and children, trying to be a hero, a sole provider, and deny their own health to achieve this impossible role. That’s what toxic masculinity really is, and all of those descriptors fit Shirou. When I first acknowledged this on day 6 of the Fate route, I figured this had to be a core theme of the game. I expected that Shirou would learn how he needs to care for himself, that he’s a person, a human, not some great hero.
…He does not.
The game gestures about Shirou needing to balance his ideals, needing to choose between those he loves and the masses, and needing to be more selfish. Hell, Unlimited Blade Works is largely about Shirou going down a self-destructive path that would leave him spiritually vacant. The game sets this concept up, sets up Shirou to grow as a person, and… he doesn’t.
Shirou is a man who, even at the end of the world, will rush into danger, swinging whatever he can get his hands on. If he’s unarmed, he’ll just punch his enemies. Never does he stop and realize what he’s doing is literally killing him, and if anything, the game rewards his suffering with power boosts. When Shirou is at the brink of death, about to be consumed by manifestations of evil, break his body for good, or shatter his mind, he does the most hype shit possible. For as much as the writer wants to push Shirou, make him question his beliefs, make the reader reassess himself, he cannot stop himself from indulging in these glorious displays of shonen power fantasy.
This gives the game a fundamentally uneven thematic structure, as what the story is trying to say, about needing to balance one’s ideals with reality, is countered by “what if I fight this demigod, and win?” Rarely is it ever the right move for Shirou to not rush into danger with no more than the concept of a plan, and never does he truly falter, even as he is on the verge of death. What is someone supposed to take from that? Because my reading says that Shirou, from the start, was right to want to be a hero. He was a normal kid, but through trauma, dedication, killer work ethic, good fortune, and by being the ideal man, he became a legend. …Three times.
The game tries to challenge and complement him with various characters who are all some flavor of perversion or extension of him, yet with his shaky thematic bedrock, the parallels do not track as well as they should.
Saber is clearly meant to be Shirou’s ideal hero: gallivant, reserved, calm, focused, considerate, skilled beyond compare, powerful enough to fight fate itself, while being a girl who consistently takes his breath away. She has a similar hero complex, believing in self-sacrifice, and holding herself up to impossible ideals, informing her desire to claim the Holy Grail. However, she is also someone with the ability needed to achieve this divine goal, for she is a hero. Not a hero in the realistic sense, but if you somehow don’t know her true identity at this point, rest assured, she’s mythic. And this, this mythical hero, is who Shirou wants to be.
However, he does not desire to become Saber— as much as I would have loved that. While he has endless admiration of her, he still cannot get over his sexist ideals when around her, he cannot get over how darn cute she is. However, he wants to be like her, and after his bumbling nature bites him in the ass, repeatedly, in the Fate route, Saber’s role drifts from that of a mentor or ally and more towards as an impetus for Shirou to grow. Rather than have Saber to save him, he must stand on his own and take responsibility. Which might have been more effective and meaningful… if the story were just different, and Shirou wasn’t the most special boy of them all.
A more commonly cited parallel is Kirei Kotomine, a shady and villainous looking man whose creep factor is multiplied by the fact he’s a priest. However, I don’t really see him as a counter to Shirou’s ideals. Yes, Kotomine is a man driven by his ideals, but his ideals are presented in such a manner that they are inherently unpalatable. His desires are simple, bordering on Saturday Morning Supervillainy, and he is so hyper competent in everything he does, with a seemingly endless repertoire of skills that he registers as inhuman or subhuman.
Things seem to come to him with ease, his emotions are reserved beyond twangs of shock, and a love of mapo tofu, he is rigid and composed. He is a lot of things Shirou simply is not, and their ideals are incompatible. However, they don’t feel like opposites destined to do battle with each other. They just feel like a hero and villain.
Do not get me wrong, Kotomine makes for a great villain, his presence and performance doing wonders to sell him as a man of immense knowledge, conviction, and depravity. …But comparing them as ideological opposites always sounds like posing… Link and Ganondorf as “ideological opposites.” You’re not wrong, but I’m not going to say you’re right either.
Archer is similarly stated to be a reflection of Shirou’s ideals, being the distant, cynical, and composed cool guy whose personality pisses Shirou off, yet he ultimately envies. Archer’s actions are mysterious, as is his background, and his role in Unlimited Blade Works particularly is meant as a sort of ideological foil to Shirou. He makes threats, uses violence to push others around, and will pursue whatever approach works best for him at the moment. Despite the game insisting on some private definition on the term, Archer is the edgy anti-hero who every well-adjusted person wanted to be when they were 12.
There is room for a character like Archer to seriously make Shirou question his beliefs, but rather than have discussions about that, Archer’s biggest role is that of an absolute asshole. He does not make points, he insults, he does not try to persuade, he attacks, and rather than push Shirou to rethink his ideals, to develop some nuance… Archer’s the one who grows, not Shirou. Hell, I’m half-inclined to think his actual role is to make Shirou more stubborn and steadfast in his beliefs, not to question them.
Strangely, I think the best foil to Shirou is in his friend Shinji. While Shirou is the internally destructive side of toxic masculinity, Shinji is everything else that comes to mind upon hearing that term. Shinji is deeply entitled, rude and demeaning to others, is a blatantly talentless individual in every material facet, yet walks without a hint of humility. He tosses work onto others, takes what he wants, and is… literally a rich kid from a wealthy family who lacks any of the traits that brought his family notoriety.
Shinji is a genre of man who has always been annoying, yet became inescapable as these fundamentally unintelligent slackers failed upwards into power. And what does he do with this power? He deceives, tries to form alliances where he offers nothing in exchange for safety, and berates his allies for failing to do something beyond them. He never self-reflects, never thinks poorly of himself, despite not even being a mage.
Shinji’s relationship with women makes his character’s flaws all the more overt. He berates and polices his sister, viewing her more like a pet than a person. He has the cojones to ask the most popular girl out on a date, yet cannot tolerate a rejection. And when he inevitably gets his hands on a Servant… it’s effortless to imagine him doing deranged sex crap with them. After all, being a Servant means unconditional consent.
Shirou is strong, Shinji is weak. Shirou wants to improve himself, Shinji does not. Shirou wants to be a hero, Shinji is just an IRL villain, and even calling him an incel creep feels like doing his character a disservice. The man hates his own mother and does not even want to meet her for the rest of his life, as he views her as a birther. That is some contemporary manosphere shit, from a game written in 2003.
What I am trying to say here, in case I’ve lost you in this wall of impulsive analysis, is that FSN does touch upon a number of things well with its cast and broader themes. It is clearly trying to create something with sufficient pathos and a strong emotional core. Sadly, the execution can often read as far more adolescent than I would hope, wanting to have conflicts about ideals, wanting to touch upon larger themes about growth, sexism, and society by in large. However, for all its verbosity and drive, it never reaches the heights I expected.
But I think that’s enough talking about the generalities of FSN, and I should probably touch upon the three routes, trying my best to avoid overt spoilers.
Part 06: Fate – The Beginning of a World
As the main, premiere, and initial route, Fate has a lot riding on it, and it both does and does not make a good first impression. The opening three hour prologue is told from the perspective of Rin Tohsaka as she regales the reader with Proper Nouns about magic in this world, describing her role as a mage, a student, and the Master of the ornery Archer. It’s an effective opening that, while way too invested in meaning deprived school drama, does not wait too long before showing sparks of action, establishing Rin as a poised professional with all the sentimentalities of a teenage girl.
It effectively endears the reader to her and her plights and ends on a reveal meant to make an initial player question her role in the game. …Before the game then spends another three hours introducing its “real” protagonist, Shirou Emiya, and his supporting cast.
It’s a frustrating choice as the reader is getting double-stuffed with exposition, knows where Shirou’s story is going to go from the prologue, and is left in wait of a cliffhanger. Then, once the player finally gets back to brass, the Fate route crawls through its next few days. The days are full of conversations about magic, or rather magecraft, The Holy Grail War, school fluff, character introductions, and food scenes. So many food scenes. Despite some intriguing reveals and an engaging action scene, the route is pretty dry… Until 10 or 12 hours in, when things become thrilling!
Betrayal, body horror, the unleashing of Servants’ true magical powers, the only true example of magical urban battles in the entire game. Stakes are raised, Shirou soars into his raw form as he is forced to fight or die trying— literally in many cases— all while the enigma that is his Servant, Saber, is gradually unveiled, with new information coming in every morning. The game gets going at this point, and right when it comes time to calm down, it launches into a new villain arc.
Admittedly, the pacing can be slow in spots, with scenes outstaying their welcome and explanations going into so much detail it obscures the point. This is especially if you are playing the game properly, going for bad ends and seeing the dozens of ways Shirou can get dead-ed. However, every hour or so, the game rewards your patience with some patently ill ish. The woods section is a captivating race through impossible odds with a destination beyond the pale, forcing the characters to clash against an impossible threat.
The crystallization of the bond between Shirou and Saber is beautifully rendered through literary flourishes and evocative imagery so resonant that it’s amazing to think it used to be some boring old sex scene. And, as a whole, it is triumphant, invigorating, and it makes all of that waiting around in the first ten hours feel worth it. This is especially true once the ultimate antagonist is introduced— and I mean ultimate in at least three ways.
Sadly, in its rush to introduce this antagonist, the game pretty much steamrolls over half of its Servants, barely giving them anything beyond their debut introduction and maybe a cool death sequence. For characters who are rendered with such confidence and wrapped in a mystique or reinterpreted mythology, it makes them feel less like they were defeated and more like they were disposed of. Clearly, this is meant to get the player curious as to who Rider and Caster really were and what Assassin’s deal was, keeping them going. …But that assumes the player is curious and patient enough to wait 10+ hours to get answers to questions they have now.
Though, a player might not even notice this due to how thrilling the final few hours can be, sending the characters through impossible ordeals that make everything else seem like a diversion. It’s thrilling, but it possibly goes a bit too far. This is not in respect to spectacle or action, both of which are far in a way appropriate given the epic scale of the Servants and their established power. Instead, the subject matter veers into a dark turn when the orphans are revealed, and I don’t think the game ever quite feels right afterward.
It comes off as immature writing, imposes a world detail that must exist in every subsequent route, despite being never acknowledge again. Rather than have Shirou do something heroic or question his values on life and killing, the orphans are largely a tool to push him forward, a trauma-based excuse to power him up.
Shirou’s superpowers in this route are twofold. He can shrug off a six-pack of broken ribs with just six hours of sleep, and he has the unique ability to “support” Saber in key encounters. This still makes him dependent, merely enduring, but neither of these are what make him a hero. That is instead his force of will, his eagerness to look at the face of death, at nihility, at a profound suffering that he played some role in, and say no before punching it in the face. It’s idealistic, quite juvenile, yet the prose and sheer magnitude of crap Shirou goes through makes his final role in this story feel warranted.
It is all poised to end the route on a high note, and in a sense it does. The climax is a reprisal of the intense sound novel action that defined the rest of the game, and pushes characters to further extremes. Sadly, the epilogue sadly crashes things down to earth in a less than gentle manner. A melancholic tone persists following this victory, with characters feeling empty after their journey, and the proceedings being a bit too clean for comfort. This is especially true concerning Shirou’s reaction to all this, who is so dismissive he may as well just order the reader to play the other half of FSN.
Not half in terms of length, but in the sense that, if Fate is the hero story, Unlimited Blade Works is the dark story.
Part 07: Unlimited Blade Works – The Edge of Fate
While Fate was the introduction to Fate, Unlimited Blade Works aims to tell the other side of a story that was simply too big for one route. Rather than focus on the relationship of Shirou, Saber, and Rin, the mostly “complete” Saber is cast aside for Archer, Rin’s tall and imposing Servant, and different tone. Fate had the characters on the backfoot for many encounters, but setbacks were brief, alliances were reliable, and there was a clearer forward momentum. UBW, despite starting in a better place, is far quicker to throw characters into long-lasting conflict, while focusing on Servants that were minor characters in fate and revealing their Masters.
For an invested player, this means they are constantly getting bombarded with new answers or events that deviate wildly, keeping them unsure of what would happen next, as everything seems to be on the table. Characters revealed at the very end of Fate show up early, others are killed with an abrupt casualness, and with a more embolden Rin supporting Shirou, they find themselves in a heap of trouble. It all feels believable within the fiction of the first route, never contradicting it, and often complementing it in how concepts are remixed.
UBW does suffer from a slightly aimless, overly symbolic section in the middle where Shirou is left incapacitated before being miraculously cured, meant to mirror the digestion chapter in Fate. However, it functions more as a way to eat a day in an arbitrary 16 day structure, before the route really hits its stride in disempowering Shirou and Rin. It’s a loss that would hit any dedicated player, and persists to Shirou and Rin as their efforts to save a bad situation only lead to collapse. Yet, they still persevere, for that is all they can do with the Holy Grail on the line, pulling off some feats that would feel like utter nonsense… if they weren’t paired with bad ends, and rad as hell.
It paves the way for a conclusion that carries the same urgency as Fate’s, yet alters it by adding more to Shirou’s already grand power set. It’s not enough that he’s able to shrug off getting hit by a metaphorical truck, but stature as a character reaches a point that’s… too much by even my liberal standards.
I could easily go on a thousand word tirade about the merits of this concept, how it plays in with the game’s nature as a visual novel, and the murky mythology outlined during its explanation. It’s an escallation that makes thematic sense, but with squishier narrative backing, and one that changes Shirou’s class of powers. It’s a bit too pre-ordained, exceptional child chosen by FATE itself for me to buy as more than a bunch of chuunibyou malarkey. …But it’s also the coolest shit ever to the 12-year-old boy who lives in my head, so I cannot hate it. Instead, I’ll reserve my frustration for the actual conclusion where Shirou, this supposed regular-ass guy, to make a final stand that… he has zero business winning. Ah, well. At least it gave me one of my favorite things as part of its climax, rendered in all its glorious early 2000s CG glory.
Going through UBW, I kept thinking about how much this route could be merged with the Fate route into a single, longer, yet more cohesive story that trims the fat and some of the more extreme edge cases. …Then I watched the 2006 Studio Deen adaptation, which tried to do that, but in a rather awkward, half-assed, sort of way. However, looking back, I do think it functions as a parallel story. It makes the world seem larger, more coherent, and actually delivers on the happy ending I wanted after all the characters’ struggles. The good ending indeed.
In the end, everything, except for a few minor references, flowers for Assassin, and Rider’s name, are accounted for. It might have some pacing issues, and general problems, but I still admire the sheer effort and drive that went into this world, storytelling, and presentation. If this was it, the end of Fate Stay Night, I think that would be worth celebrating as an engaging and distinctive visual novel with an already grand scale
Instead, the creative team at Type Moon just had to continue things with Heaven’s Feel.
Part 08: Heaven’s Feel – The Devotion to NuLore
So, much of my frustration with Heaven’s Feel steams how it feels so divorced from the story that came before it. Whereas Fate and UBW were successful divergent of the same timeline that kept just about everything consistent, Heaven’s Feel carries the spirit of retcons and backported continuity. In my notes, I said that the concept feels like it was appropriated from another story and grafted onto the world and story of FSN, and that’s a pretty good way to describe it. Rather than aim to expand on what was seen in the prior routes, Heaven’s Feel fancies itself as a “true answer” route. Yet, it only gets there, only does anything really, by introducing concepts that are incongruous with what we just saw with the prior game, and simply do not, and cannot, exist in those worlds.
This comes in play with a new character who had been persisting as a conniving mastermind since the Holy Grail War began. A new Servant that is just sort of thrust in there with a fairly flimsy justification. And a whole new background for Sakura, the route’s heroine and central character.
For the first two routes, Sakura Matou is simply Shirou’s kouhai, the little sister of his incel best friend, Shinji. Sakura clearly has a crush on Shirou. She wakes him up, makes him food, looks after him, and is functionally his wife. However, she never really has much plot relevance, existing to paint what Shirou’s life and relationship with women is like before the start of the Holy Grail War. Like all the school elements, she is discarded during the second half of the story, when things get serious. Characters like her, Taiga, and the other school girls, exist to ground Shirou in a normative reality that is then stolen from him, and don’t do much beyond that.
Despite this, Heaven’s Feel is firmly the Sakura route, so how do they go about making her relevant? Well, they prescribe her with a backstory that makes her out to be one of the most important characters in the game’s history, world, and broader canon. She is intimately related to the Holy Grail War and its construction, intimately related to Rin, and is intimately related to nearly every event in this route. Very little of this newfound importance is foreshadowed, and what happens is so hyperbolic and extreme that it feels cheap. It is trying to one-up a story that already went past the point where its plot scaling and power scaling went beyond the pale of believability.
Many key characters, especially Servants, from Fate and UBW are disposed after only a few minutes of screen time, as the story has no interest to exploring them further. Much of the prevailing mystery is easily intuited from the day it emerges, leaving the days worth of ruminations feeling like padding and best and misdirection at worst. The transformation narrative for the protagonist is simultaneously more cumbersome, weaker, and less intuitive than the conceptually similar transformation in UBW. It’s just more physical than it is mental, with even more pain fetishization. The last minute escalation of events and lore drop would have me rolling my eyes in a JRPG where this stuff is expected, but had me groaning at hour 95 in a visual novel. C’mon, guys! You’re supposed to be better than that!
However, most of my grievances with this route are with Sakura herself. I think Sakura is the weakest main character in the game. She is an inoffensive, tender, passive, loving, considerate, kind, demure, and clearly gains happiness from doing kind things to others. She’s built as the traditional conservative ideal of a Japanese woman, but it is that specific flavor of idealism that makes her seem forced in my eyes. Adding a mountain of trauma to her background does not make her more interesting, it makes her current wannabe housewife status all the less believable. You cannot traumatize someone into wifey material.
I also found the game’s attempts at endearing the player to her in this route to be… misguided. For the middle of Heaven’s Feel, Sakura spends her time either pushing herself to do basic housewifey things or being bedridden. This is meant to facilitate sympathy from the player, yet she winds up hijacking the story at this point. Every conflict, bit of desperation, and emotional quarry is tied back to her in some way. It’s the Sakura Show, everything I liked from the other three routes is GONE, and everybody spends three days mulling around in Shirou’s home, being miserable.
Eventually, the writer gets tired of this novella’s worth of traumatic ruminations, and the story gets thrown forward into its grand finale. For as much as I will criticize the construction— and the pacing— of this 35 hour long beast, it does do quite a few things that I rejoiced in upon seeing. The utter disrespect and dragging of Shinji as he reveals himself to one incest away from being the worst dude ever. The treatment of Saber here is more effective than the tease featured in UBW, and simply cooler. In fact, between Shin Sakura, The Squid, and Fetus of God, my inner edgy 12-year-old was feasting on what this game was throwing down.
I could easily go another 1,000 words into the fine details of why I don’t like the story of Heaven’s Feel. I haven’t even talked about how this route is effectively about a man deliberating if he should kill his lover as she is about to birth the genocider. And… that description alone carries so much baggage about the idea of women as objects, the demonization of pregnancy, and romantic violence writ large. However, I cannot deny that the route has its moments. It has peaks of excitement and action that pulled me back from whatever I was done, and got me fully invested. The new antagonist is basically a character I would write, worms and all. And once Shin Sakura made her debut, it almost made her tuberculosis wife arc seem worth it. Plus, it ends well, and I am a sucker for a good epilogue.
Speaking broadly, I do not think Heaven’s Feel warrants the emotional or time investment it demands on the player. I don’t think it works in the established canon of the other two routes because… what the fuck, Sakura? Yet, I can absolutely see why some people would appreciate its desire to deviate from the established world and push the story, and characters, in a different direction. …Or maybe, despite all the frustrations, despite the slowness, they think the peaks are worth the trouble.
Conclusion: Sore is My Body, Burning is My Blood
As this 9,000 word review has illustrated, I have no shortage of bugbears with Fate Stay Night. Its pacing, its themes, its structure, its remastering, its official English script, and much of its final route. Walking away from it, I was left feeling twangs of regret over my decision to approach a juggernaut of this scale instead of, say, the comparably long literary epic that is Umineko. However, over the course of writing this review and going through my notes… I can’t help but love Fate Stay Night, and feel that I now understand why the series has resonated with millions of people.
The triumphs, the characters, the relentless determination of its protagonist, the rich mythos, the excellent artwork, and the bleeding hard, utterly shameless, commitment to making mythology dope as hell. I can admire what it does well, when it works… but goldarn do I wish I had played the original when I was 19, or watched the anime when I was 14. I don’t think it’s a masterpiece. Its shortcomings are numerous. And considering its enormous length, I simply would not recommend it as an introduction to Fate. Start with something smaller, please!
That all being said… when it reaches its strides, there are few pieces of adolescent fiction as glorious as Fate Stay Night.