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| More like Lunar Legend infodumpTM. |
Genre: VN.
Unfortunately due to Arqueid and/or Ciel being the way she is the writer tends to get away with a lot
There's only has two routes Arcueid and Ciel, the latter is second play only
Developer/publisher: Typemoon.
Platform: PS4,switch.
VNDB: https://vndb.org/v17909
VNDB: https://vndb.org/v17909
Release date: 27-6-2024
I decided Tsukihime remake would be my next game as I wanted to try it... since I liked MahoYo.
This version of tsukihime is a remake of the original, I am well aware that it is
a partial remake but nevertheless I decided to buy and play it now.
Sadly I didn't really like this game as much as I would have liked
but it is definitely not the worst urban fantasy VN i've laid my eyes upon.
Rather it feels like this game just wants you to be upset or get angry with its MC.
Pro's
- Interesting setting and complex characters.
- For a story that includes the supernatural, its solid.
- High production values but the quality of CG's varied.
Grey area
- MC is difficult to like yet by the end of the 2nd route he had a full stamp card of pity points.
Con's
- Strong violence and horror. Did I mention gore? (Could be a grey area but yea...)
- Comparing the scene presentation to MahoYo, same style yet Tsukihime at times felt basic.
- Some CG's never get added to the gallery, I couldn't find Ciel's umbrella CG.
The opening doesn't play till you land on a character route
which isn't till 5 hours depending on your reading speed.
Both routes have their own opening but I will only link Arc's.
I wasn't as hooked to this unlike MahoYo and thus didn't enjoy it as much
but what I won't deny is that it was for the most part pretty well written
its just overstayed its welcome for me, I am really sorry! it ain't for me.
Not much of note happened till Arqueid shows up something
happened that made me do a record scratch *freeze* frame moment.
At that point the game utterly disgusted me because of what happened.
That aside everything else was interesting enough I pressed on, I have to say
from then on I started to feel constantly on edge and didn't like Shiki as much as before.
The MC Shiki is a broken guy who just tries to live but despite the advice he got from
his master, he just barely seem to hold himself to it almost as if its a silver lining.
Sure he has regrets of something really bad he did, you're given that choice
but the rest of the game just made me nervous because he's quite unstable mentally.
Shiki gets what he deserves when he gets roped into the stuff surrounding Arqueid
and there were some bad ends where I was like yea he had it coming.
It isn't like till later on in Ciel's route that I understood why the heck Shiki did what he did
and I just started to really get as to what was going on. Honestly I didn't think the plot
was badly written and for a story about vampires its not bad just... once again not my thing.
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| Had this been any other VN it would probably be romantic but this is Tsukihime... |
In terms of other characters; I didn't care much for his sister Akiha, she looked too much
like an Aoko clone but not as snarky. It wasn't untill later I saw her as her own character.
I found Akiha to be too much like a girlboss which would make Arcueid the gatekeeper.
Arihiko was funny at times but he looked too much
like Shirou from Fate except he's like a delinquent version...
I liked Kohaku but Hisui was a bit too stoic and/or deadpan to me but she gets better
its just I could never get too invested in them in this game which like Akiha is probably intended.
Arcueid would be fine she's fun, For Ciel it felt like there was more to her than meets the eye but
she is definitely best girl. I disliked Noel though as much as most of the girls at Shiki's school.😅
Noel also got worse as Ciel's route progressed which did not help... at all.
I loved Mario and his potty mouth though, easily the best side character.
The rest? too much of makes an appearance thus I forgot them because of infodumps.
Honestly I kept playing mostly for Arcueid and I didn't really care for Shiki as much.
Because I didn't do any of Ciel's events in the common route on my first play
she was also sort of just there, later on she becomes a bit more interesting
but when I started her route, I couldn't help but think she's a bit too perfect...
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| Me when I think about the story in this game. |
I did start to wonder why was this game even popular? because its violence? unhinged mc?
shock value? or because it was typemoon's first ever work before they got big from fate.
I mean Tsukihime started out as an unprofessional doujin, not many would probably try nowadays
unless you're super invested in nasu's works. Now what would happen if you turn that doujin
into a professional work? while fleshing out all the added lore it got via a fighting game no less.
I think the latter is why Tsukihime got popular, its Arcueid that carries it hard. Tsukihime is
likely aimed at people who tolerate these themes, I find it hard to get into it because sure
there's a good plot here but its buried beneath layers of lore which gets dumped on you in parts.
Anyways what I really liked about Tsukihime was Arcueid as a character and Ciel.
I didn't really care as much with the protagonist but I could sympathize with him a little.
Tsukihime looked like a normal visual novel and for the most part it just loves gore&blood
about as much as Virche evermore. Maybe I should have done more
research before I started this but that wasn't the worst of it.
While the beginning hours gave time for the reader to settle in and get familiar
with most characters while exploring the setting in great detail. If not for that i'd
probably have dropped it. In chapter 3 it took its first nose dive. It reminded me of when
I tried to watch Elfen Lied and then suddenly things get super gory like with cut-off body parts.
I know this game warns the player about disturbing content
when booting it up but I didn't expect it to be like that.
Gonna say I can stomach some violence now, I didn't even mind what happened to Shinji
in the second heaven's feel movie but Tsukihime takes everything to another level.
Now this wasn't actually what bothered me, I can get past the violence and gorewhat I didn't like was the dragged out battles and infodumps. There was almost an hour
of vampire lore for dummies moment nvm the fight against the guy itself. 💀💀💀
Which was just so drawn out and felt like some stuff from dragon ball like it
kept going and going. You know what's funny about the early infodumping? not even
Shiki understood all of it so I guess I could relate to his single working braincell.
Okay you beat this vampire guy but here comes shota saber and dumps his church lore
right before the chapter ends while I was already tired from everything beforehand
and that is just an example of how this game does things especially in Ciel's route.
Like in Arc's route Shiki would just sleep but in Ciel's he fucking wakes up and goes to read
which leads to a convenient infodump and thinking about it just makes me hysteric.😂
It was important later but god damn this game is so messy...
Despite that there was some hilarity amidst it all to be found, not on the same level as MahoYo
but I generally did like most Shiki and Arqueid scenes despite the former being a dick.
That's putting it nicely, like Shiki can be sensible but more often than not he's just an idiot.
Like he doesn't need to be a Shirou, that's not the point I have to try really hard to find
good points about Shiki and when I think he's okay the guy ruins it yet again. SIGH.
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| Yea fuck you Shiki. |
because it doesn't matter how much they gets hurt. If Shiki was a LI in an otome game
he's a failure of a man. Sorry but imma roast this guy like Aoko would.
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System wise it is pretty much a straight-forward VN with some choices that could
lead to a bad end of which there are 21 in total. There's a hint corner as well
so you pretty much won't need a guide if you follow the advice.
The flowchart was good but you couldn't use it to quickly get bad ends
as there would be no choices so best advice I can give is manually save a lot
especially at the start of a chapter. So if you get hit with a delayed bad end
you can easily get back to somewhere to fix that.
so basically you will have to play it twice but Ciel's route felt more like it was some
alternative route going deeper. Also I thought I was tripping but i'm pretty sure some
early scenes ch5/6 stayed the same with some slight differences here or there because
you were with Ciel instead of Arc. There was definitely some copypasta because
there were numerous occasions where I saw dialogue I knew I read before but couldn't
skip cuz the scene was a tad different which is nothing unusual it just got on my nerves in
Ciel's extra end since they also would love to show the same scene prior
from another perspective which changed nothing.😑
Also I didn't really play this game till I was sure I have atleast two hours I could
spend on it as I don't like leaving the scenario hanging in some awkward spot
like in the middle of a infodump or epic fight scene and this game had a few of those.
Chapter length was quite inconsistent, Arc's route was relatively short overall but
it got worse in Ciel's route due to being full of infodumps and just longer in general.
Ciel's ch13/14 took me three sesssions to get through it was insanely long...
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| Glad I took this screenshot while playing cuz this shot was not in the gallery. |
TL;DR: Tsukihime was a solid urban fantasy with high production values
but if you can't stand strong violence,gore, vampire themes, horror and a lot of infodumping
I don't recommend it. I loved some of the characters and the setting was interesting
but it was simply too long for its own good. Plus some of the material at times
just did not make me feel good, so while I kept in mind what I liked
that honestly won't matter if the material just makes me uncomfortable.
This is also one of the few VN's where I didn't like the protagonist much which didn't help.
Half of it was due to the Roa BS but even then he only turns out OK thanks to one of the girls.
Looking back at MahoYo, this VN didn't have as good as a scene direction except for fight scenes
and the art/cg varied greatly in quality. While MahoYo would put characters to the side or use
half a sprite, Tsukihime still did this but mostly I was looking at full sprites or zoomed in sprites.
In the average scenes more often than not I thought it would be better with text boxes
than text over busy backgrounds. Much like FF7 remake it ends up being longer than
the original some of it could be in a good way but 60 hours for only 2 routes?
while the original was 40h average with all routes? yea they padded this one out.
By the time it was over it felt like a relief... cuz at times it seemed like to never end.
Though if you like Nasu's work and don't mind the above or my complaints then sure
Tsukihime might be another cake for you to dig into! but it may not be for everyone
so don't feel bad if you cannot get into this game, there's an audience but its not for all.
To me however Tsukihime a piece of blue glass moon is a FINE dumpster fire. A solid 6.3/10
its just a classic that I personally, while I tried just couldn't enjoy as much.
More rambles after the jump but there's not much to write about honestly.
I did try to write out my thoughts about both routes, so if you don't
want spoilers just stop reading here. I probably wrote too much but this
game also had a whole lot of stuff to unpack so it kind of checks out.
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