Fate Stay Night is a visual novel that takes place in Japan as some secret war is about to take place. This visual novel has spawned multiple games and two anime series. Fate/Zero is one such anime that takes place 10 years before the event of this title and really adds a lot of background to the characters but at the same time it will spoil some surprises for this game like who are bad people and what the Holy Grail is. It isn’t required at all to understand the story and may cause you to skip text as the game teaches you things you have already learned from the anime but it definitely is worth watching. So what is this game about you may be asking by now. Well it is about an omnipotent grail that is capable of granting any wish but it requires a 7 person fight to the death until there is one standing. The grail summons these beings to fight and chooses seven mages which will feed these beings called Servants mana so that they may retain their physical connection to this world. Which also puts these “Masters” in a lot of danger since if a Master dies their Servant will soon disappear.
We start off playing as Toshaka Rin who is the school idol and appears perfect in every way. She is the last surviving member of a powerful mage family and has inherited great power since in this series magic grows stronger the older their linage gets. Rin enters this “Holy War” willingly and tries to summon a Servant without the proper preparations causing her to summon the wrong Servant from which she wanted. Her Servant quickly gets injured and she then forms an alliance with a schoolmate called Shirou Emiya. From this point on the perspective of this game will focus on Shirou which is kind of disappointing since Rin is a much more interesting character. Shirou is your typical anime protagonist who wants to be a hero and repeatedly pulls off moronic stunts and always ends up surviving or even winning. In contrast Rin is a very intelligent and always multiple steps ahead to outsmart her opponents.
Due to circumstances both Rin and Shirou’s Servant called Saber stay at Shirou’s house throughout the adventure. You would expect a lot of sex since this is a hentai game but that isn’t the case here. There are very few sex scenes in the game and are handled very poorly. They feel extremely out of place and will surely have you think to yourself “Really?!. At times they even feel kind of rapey and extremely uncomfortable. There are three possible love interests but you will not be able to choose. The first time playing through it will be Saber and there is no way to avoid sex with them. None are really a suitable partner since Saber is insanely stubborn when it comes to emotions, Rin is highly abusive even though she likes you and Sakura is way too submissive. Admittedly those may be a turn on for some but it would be nice for the option to keep it in your pants regardless considering how out of place they seem to be. Luckily throughout two play-throughs there are only three sex scenes so most of the time it is a rather well written narrative featuring both light hearted moments and a interesting plot.
You may be wondering what the incentive is for replaying the game multiple times. Well each time you play and complete the game an alternate time-line unlocks. Each of these time-lines focuses on a single love interest and drastically changes the story. It is pretty impressive how different these time-lines are and each feel like a game on their own. Each also feel better written than the last and the decisions for staying alive become more blurred offering massive replay value. You will have multiple decisions throughout the game but most don’t really effect the story in the time-line you are on and picking the wrong one will usually just lead to your death and a game over sign. Our protagonist Shirou has a will of his own and we will not be given a choice over everything he does even though it seems incredibly moronic like sparing your enemy. I don’t see that as a negative aspect though, Shirou is not a blank slate and has a personality of is own and is fully voice acted like everyone else.
I can’t really judge the quality of the voice actors as everything spoken is in Japanese but they do put a lot of emotion behind into it which adds to the immersion even if you do not understand. Strangely enough the hentai scenes are not voice acted. The sound effects that are there aren’t anything special, just swords clashing, doors closing and footsteps but they do their job. There is no animation in this and battles are handled by zooming into the picture and shaking it to create the illusion. There is one rather spiffy animated intro though. Music ranges from pretty catchy to that annoying intro music with the sounds of chains shaking but are really well placed further immersing you into the story. Art style for this game is pretty good but there is a lack of unique environments and you will usually be looking at the same ones of your house and school. There is blood but not an exaggerated amount and really well placed which well have you worried about the characters as you watch them dying.
Overall I had a lot of fun reading this adventure. Enough to replay it three times in a row as it has three very different and interesting time-lines to indulge in. In the main menu you have an extras section which lets you listen to all the games music, look at all the pictures you have unlocked, view the stats of each weapon and character assuming you reached a point in the story to know them and much more. It is a well written game and the massive amount content of content really sets it apart from most visual novel games I have played. It’s let down a bit by the protagonist Shirou and his dream of being in a fire playing each time he goes to sleep and effectively stating the same thing again and again. He does get more interesting in the second and third time-lines though. There isn’t really much player interactivity either, you studying the stats of weapons and characters really have no effect at all and battles will simply be resolved by choosing one of two options. Still this game is really about its story and the interactions with characters in both fun and dire situations which it exceeds on in both fronts.
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