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)

Chaos;Head

Described by the development team as a 'Delusional Science' visual novel, Chaos;Head is garnering a new boost in fame with the recent announcement of an anime adaptation. What many of the visual novel community are more interested in, however, is the English localisation project of the game.

Translation was completed at break neck speed, and it appears that we'll soon be able to see just exactly 'whose eyes are those eyes'. Gore may abound, but we're in it for the psychology!

I, for one, want to know why there's an auction of a dead, possibly decaying man (he's green, for goodness' sake!) in a bathroom. Er...

<_<

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...

Wind -a breath of heart-

Wind -a breath of heart- didn't really live up to expectations. I was expecting some epic character development far beyond that seen in Tsukihime, as the latter fell into more than just the romance genre.

...what I got had some smatterings of action, some (over-played) drama, a cliché set of girls (the tsundere, the promised one, the imouto-that-isn't-actually-related, the girl-with-more-problems-than-the-others and the crazy non-human girl) and some really random characters that didn't actually contribute to the storyline. Of course, that last one may be more due to the fact that the people translating it seemed to cut corners at times, for the sake of 'making it flow better' as the original version was 'a complete mess'. It's a possibility.

This story could have been a lot better, and since the translating group seems to have a pretty good reputation (and didn't get completely flamed over cutting a few corners here and there), let's assume that the English translation is representative of the original work.

Um... it had an interesting premise, but I think it could have been improved by dropping some of the routes (i.e., one of the sisters at least). Hikari's route was completely 'what on earth?!', and one had to suspend their disbelief to continue reading at many times - particularly that route.

It was an alright piece of fun, but certainly not one of my favourite visual novels.

A Midsummer Day's Resonance

A very short visual novel, again available in English for free. This one I didn't really like.

The set-up of the story was a little contrived, it forced the reader along (for example, the POV character becomes completely enamoured with a girl for no other reason than that she is incredibly beautiful) and seemed to merely exist as a 'HAHA PLOT TWIST ARE YOU SATISFIED?' sort of story.

Of course, most of us were expecting that 'twist'. Honestly. As if all the 'hints' being dropped weren't enough.

Anyway, premise of this story is that the main character happens to have a guy run over her schoolbag with his bicycle. In that bag is her school things, as well as her mobile phone and a bottle of soft drink. Soft drink - which she buys every morning and puts in her bag to drink at school later - explodes all over her stuff, and soaks into the cracks of her crushed mobile phone. For some odd reason, she carries the completely broken phone around, when suddenly, it projects a screen in front of her and on that screen is another girl...

Main character chats with this Girl A, who also brings her neighbour Girl B to chat. Main character 'falls in love' with Girl B, everyone chats, various blatant plot points are thrown around, the three girls decide to meet up after exams.

Anyway. For reasons which are complete spoilers, they can't actually meet up. Main character is depressed at losing these two dear friends of hers (cue eye-roll), and the magic phone connection never works again.

...and she asks out the guy who broke her phone.

I don't know. A very short story (although in this case, it was probably a good thing), a rather stupid storyline, some 'home truths' stuffed in at the end... The SFX were annoying (with that bzzzt of the holographic screen turning on/shorting out), the music wasn't anything particularly spectacular, nor was the artwork.

Not one I would recommend to others.

True Remembrance

True Remembrance is a free visual novel by Shiba Satomi (available for download in English from the first link), and is a relatively long story (for a non-commercial game) about, well, life. It's not exactly a 'slice-of-life' game, but I suppose the major themes I got out of it would include things like 'the things sacrificed to achieve a goal' and 'overcoming loss'.

The world of True Remembrance is one where 'The Dolor' has infected humans - a state of severe depression that can only be remedied by having the offending memories suppressed by a Mnemonicide. The main male character, Blackiris, is an alpha class Mnemonicide (the highest class bar the omega class), and the story begins with his meeting his next assigned patient, La.

This may seem like a rather slow story, but in a world where action packed movies abound and we are fed with endless dramatic stories, one must remember that the old classics like Lord of the Rings began with a lot of background building. Even with that said, the seemingly pointless introduction contains little bits of information that become more significant as more is revealed.

Unlike Narcissu, this has a happy ending. Sort of. It's a bit of a sad story at times, but it doesn't over do it to the point of being overly emotional. The background music of this game is also lovely, something which most of us take for granted in the visual novel scene.

Fate/Stay Night: Fate Route

I wasn't entirely enamoured with this ending, as it was far too similar to Arcueid's True End in Tsukihime... of course, the people who played F/SN's Fate route before playing Tsukihime said the complete opposite!

I suppose it meant that we all found the ending a bit trite. It's true that the 'end' is the same (the girl can't hang around for various reasons), but the way the story progressed to that point was different. To me, Continuation of the Dream seemed a bit rushed compared to Tsukihime (referring to Arcueid's True End, not the entire game!), but that's probably because Saber couldn't control how fast she was disappearing.

As it is, the story itself is a very good tale. Lots of very good fights, lots of interesting scenes, heaps of awesome BAD ENDs, plenty of amusing Ti Taiga Tiger Dojos (the help corner after reaching certain BAD ENDs, much like 'Teach Me, Ciel-sensei!' in Tsukihime)...

A very good story (my favourite part would have to be when you tell Saber you're fasting today), and I'll look forward to the epic GARness of Ultimate Blade Works and Heaven's Feel. That's three and a half routes to play, as UBW has a True and Good End, while HF "only" has a True End, with a pseudo-real ending labelled 'Normal End'.