Fate/Stay Night - English Patch v3.0

After three years of work, mirror moon have released Fate/Stay Night English Patch v3.0!

Realta Nua voice patch included in the installer. All questions and llamas to ask in their IRC channel (#mirrormoon @ irc.irchighway.net) or in their forums (http://forums.mirrormoon.org)

Tsukihime: Far Side of the Moon Routes

Aaaand~ here's the second part of the Tsukihime post.

In the Far Side of the Moon routes, we have Akiha's True and Normal ends, Hisui's True and Good ends, and Kohaku's True end. Kohaku is the only heroine in the game that only has one ending, nor can you reach her route until you've played either of Hisui's...
The Far Side routes are about 'the threat from within' - in this case, the Tohno family.

The endings in these routes are far less light-hearted than in the Near Side routes (although you could argue the True ends weren't very light-hearted at all), and this became quite apparent when I played both of Akiha's endings.

The Tohno family is descended from demonic blood, and those that inherit this blood all possess something inhuman inside them. Some of them fall prey to the 'inversion impulse', when their demonic instincts come to the surface and reign supreme.

Seven years ago, a child of the Tohno family fell prey to the inversion impulse and killed a child adopted by Tohno Makihasa (the head of the family at the time).

Was that the beginning? Perhaps the beginning was when Makihasa had the Nanaya family - a clan of demon killers - wiped from the face of the earth and, on a whim, adopted the last survivor because the child had the same name as his own son.
Perhaps the beginning was when Makihasa adopted two girls with the ability to help him suppress his inversion impulse, but at the expense of their childhood.
Perhaps the beginning was many centuries ago, when a man fell in love with the Princess of the True Ancestors (vampires that were born vampires, rather than 'Dead Apostles' - humans that became vampires).

The events of Tsukihime are all intertwined. Even if Arcueid isn't present in some of the Far Side routes, her existence itself was one of the root factors behind the events that occurred.

There's no way someone could just play one of the routes and not play the rest. Most people would probably install the non-ero patch though. :P

Tsukihime: Near Side of the Moon Routes

OK, so I compared several of the previously mentioned visual novels with Tsukihime. A lot. A bit too much.

So I may as well do a piece on it. Rather than flood this place with one post per route, I'm just going to do two posts - one for the Near Side of the Moon routes (Arcueid True and Good ends, Ciel True and Good ends), and one for the Far side of the Moon routes (Akiha True and Good ends, Hisui True and Good ends, Kohaku end).

Anyway. Any of the Near Side of the Moon routes provides the background necessary to understand the universe of Tsukihime. Hence, one cannot progress to any of the Far Side of the Moon routes without playing to the end of either of Arcueid's or Ciel's routes. Considering the choices needed to be taken to get onto the Ciel route (and stay on it) compared to those needed to keep to the Arcueid route, it is actually 10 times easier (roughly) to get Arcueid's endings.

Just a piece of random trivia.

Anyway. In this game, you play the role of Tohno Shiki, a male student that was disowned by his father and sent to live with a branch family. Just prior to the beginning of the game, Tohno Makihasa (the father) passes away, and Shiki is called back to the Tohno mansion by the new head of the Tohno family.
The reason why Shiki was disowned in the first place was that after an almost fatal accident seven years ago, he was too weak to remain the heir of the family and would thus tarnish the name if he remained in the Tohno mansion.

Meanwhile, there have been mysterious murders occurring in their city - the victims have all been found to have been completely drained of blood. With all of the chaos of moving house going on, Shiki pays little attention to these deaths, thinking that that sort of thing wouldn't happen to anyone he knew.

Until one day, he encounters a beautiful foreign women that seems so otherworldly it makes his blood pound and his mind to scream that he wants to...

...kill her.

Tohno Shiki, a young man capable of seeing the 'death of things' after he all but died seven years ago. And it was thus that he sliced Arcueid into seventeen pieces.

Of course, she comes back to "life", being a vampire. *rolls eyes* She ropes him into helping her hunt down other vampires to make up for the fact that she was weakened by his actions, and thus begins the many trials and tribulations of Shiki.

The story of the Near Side of the Moon deals with 'the threat from outside', whether it's Arcueid losing control of her vampire instincts or the monstrous vampire she's hunting deciding that Shiki is an eyesore and needs to be removed right now. Near Side serves mostly as an introduction to Tsukihime, laying the background for the Far Side routes. Even so, the routes aren't completely lacking in complexity and are still good stories in their own right.

For those that watched the anime, you really should play the game to find out why there are die-hard fans that insist that 'there was no Tsukihime anime'. Truly, the anime failed to capture a lot of the character expression and development seen in the game. The manga version has so far managed to stay faithful to the game, but as in most cases - the original is the best. There is no media adaptation that can give you all the possible scenes that are seen in the game.

Visual Novel Translation Group: mirror moon

One of the better established visual novel translation groups is mirror moon, the group 'responsible' for the English localisations of Tsukihime, Tsukihime Plus+Disc, Melty Blood, Melty Blood: ReACT and Utawarerumono (this was a joint with Soylations).

Their translator, Takajun, was also the translator for the first Kara no Kyoukai movie, Fukan Fūkei (the fansubbing of it was done by the group gg). With a great number of successful projects under his belt, mirror moon's translation accuracy appears to be very good.

mirror moon focusses mostly on TYPE-MOON games, and is currently working on Fate/Stay Night (the translation of the last route, Heaven's Feel, is just past 80% at the time of writing this post). There is no indication whether they will work on Fate/Tiger Colosseum, but it is almost certain they will not be working on Fate/Hollow Ataraxia or Kagetsu Tohya as there already exist two translation 'groups' for the former and a complete English patch for the latter.

The other major project that is in progress is Men at Work! 2, which is currently going through beta testing.

In regards to the large amount of piracy that occurs with visual novels (as they are difficult to procure over seas), this group takes the policy of 'don't ask, don't tell'. Of course, there are some people that don't read the rules, and/or don't realise that what they're saying makes it obvious that they have pirated the game...