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Finished playing/reading Tsukihime. Did the remaining three routes in course of yesterday and today and just finished the epilogue, "Eclipse".
I'll probably post more in Tsukihime topic later but all in all I'm happy I went with this VN. I was a bit disappoint it didn't turn out to be Kara no Kyokai in VN form in terms of complexity + mindfuck and Fate is clearly superior out of the two if you ask me but overall the stories were well crafted and cast excellent. As for Nasu's prose there were some really well written scenes (Shiki killing Arcueid in Near Side sequence, the coffee drinking scene with SHIKI in Kohaku route, Eclipse etc.) mixed with at times repetitive and never-going-anywere shitty writing that could be seriously aggravating. Less said about sex scenes the better, I really skimmed through those
The biggest flaw would be the rather low quality of CGs and effects but maybe it's just FSN spoiling me. I doubt most doujin VNs stand up against Tsukihime in terms of this quality.
I'm really happy I ended up downloading the Ever After rearranged OST release because the music was of much higher quality than what comes with the original release and very enjoyable.
All in all: I'm glad I spent as many days as I did playing Tohno Shiki, that dirty rapist murderer.
Ryougi is still far superior Shiki though
Merridian wrote:Ah, so you finished the intro. Nice.
I'm not sure if you could call it "intro", given that Near Side storyline with its two routes is at least equal in lenght to all three routes of Far Side storyline. :P
Merridian wrote:IIRC, there's only like one "good" ending and one "not that bad all things considered" ending on the far side, with the other three or so being depressing as hell. But damn, save that good ending for last, because it's the shining field of sunflowers at the end of grim nightmares of bleak sadism and the near certainty of horrible, fated, indiscriminate character death. Fuck yeah.
Guhhhhhh yeah. While Far Side didn't reach the general level of disgusting Heaven's Feel did overall the whole storyline was pretty damn hard hitting and the endings were just... depressing is the word indeed.
Thankfully the "shining field of sunflowers" route is the last one to be unlocked so I naturally finished with it. Akiha Normal and Hisui's True End were just
(despite the darkness Hisui's true end was probably my favourite from the game and the final twist/revelations hit me really hard)
Funny thing is for some reason I'd seen the epilogue before but reading Eclipse after finishing the whole game it just ment much, much more. Very fitting coda for the game.
Merridian wrote:And Ciel sucks. The backstory was nice, but it seemed wasted on a character whose motivations were executed in ways that either came off as weak and incompetent or cumbersomely ineffectual. I guess that was part of her character, but if it's established early on that the whole crux of an antagonist's character is failure, then there's no point in trying to build up much tension around her and Arcuied in the first place. "Character A is a total failure at everything pretty much all the time, and has consistently lost to this particular enemy, so what'll happen when Character A has to take on Character B--who is pretty much a god incarnate?" The cards are so stacked against that the route seemed pretty pointless. In the end, Shiki did all the work either because of or in spite of Ciel's uselessness. It makes you wonder what she was there for in the first place. Like you say, she worked alright in Arcueid's route basically because of this reason, but as a heroine, she's terrible.
Yeah, what I liked about Ciel were her backstory and the revelations her route gave about Roa's character. Beyond that though it was easily the worst route of the game, no questions asked. Now I really understand what Sacchin's "even lost to Ciel in popularity poll" means
Speaking of "god incarnate", non-shiki'd Arcueid is supposedly one of the "hidden bosses" (ie. hidden boss in RPG that is far tougher than other opponents in the game including the real final boss) of the whole Nasuverse and I don't doubt that given what we know about her ridiculously overpowered wtfhax abilities and skills. Apparently these kind of characters are called "Types" or something akin that which is why my TM fag friend summed up Arcueid's character pretty well with "if Saber is king moe then Arc is Type moe"
Merridian wrote:Even her character design sucks. Paint on tattoos? Come on, man.
seriously, those tattoos/magic circuits looked pretty good on their own even but that paintjob was just ugly as hell
