Fate/Stay Night Remastered Game Review

The Holy Grail War is a ritual in which a group of mages summon figures from history and myth, referred to as “servants”, to battle each other (often to the death) so they can have a wish granted by the Grail. Shirou Emiya, a highschooler with limited magical abilities, is suddenly thrust into this war when he accidentally summons a powerful servant.

A review code of the game for PC was supplied to ANN.

It’s very interesting that the Fate franchise has been so successful in the English language market without the official release of its source material: the 2004 visual novel by Type-Moon, Fate/stay night (FSN). I get that in this market, visual novels aren’t usually what I would generously describe as the safest gamble in terms of profitability, but surely—surely—FSN would be an exception, right? Yet it took until 2024 for this game to officially come out in English by way of Fate/stay night Remastered (FSNR). And flawed as its launch ultimately was, the fact that it was coming out officially in English at all was by itself a huge deal.

Let’s go ahead and address the elephant (whose sprite has been replaced by a corgi’s) in the room: at launch, this game was a mess. The wrong assets appeared in the wrong places, you had to switch your computer’s locale to Japanese to get it to work properly—it was a disaster. And everyone laughed and cried about it for a bit, but after a few hours, it was fixed. The same technical issues that made FSNR a wreck upon its launch are no longer present.

So knowing that, how is FSNR?

Broadly speaking, there are two different groups of people asking this, and they’ll use different metrics to answer it: new fans who haven’t yet played FSN and want to know if it’s good as a visual novel, and returning fans who’ve already played it—either in Japanese, or via the fan translation that’s been around for several years—and want to know if it’s good as a release. For those curious, I went into FSNR as a member of the latter group—an established Fate fan who’s already read the visual novel (as well as other Type-Moon works) and wanted to know if this made for a good way to enjoy a game that I already knew I loved. So, bearing all of that in mind, I’ll do my best to answer this question for both groups of people.

So how is FSNR as a visual novel?

Today, Fate is, of course, a sprawling (and heavily merchandised) multimedia expanse with anime, manga, games, and more. But there would be no, say, Fate/Grand Order if not for FSN—the wellspring from which the rest of Fate, as a franchise, sprang up. And this is far from a mistake; combining a layered story, rich lore, thrilling action scenes, and heart-wrenching character drama, FSN‘s status as one of the most celebrated visual novels in the entire genre is well-earned.

Probably my favorite thing about FSN is its ability to construct its story from three different vantage points. While the routes (Fate, Unlimited Blade Works, and Heaven’s Feel—and the game makes you play them in that order) are each focused on their heroines first and foremost (Saber, Rin, and Sakura respectively), they also explore different ways in which the Holy Grail War could go depending on the difference of what might seem at a glance to be smaller details. The result is a 3-dimensional view of the Grail War itself, from which one can learn more or less everything about how/why certain characters came to be involved, how prepared they truly were (or weren’t), how strong they are (or aren’t), the inner workings of the Grail War itself, and so on.

Sometimes, this can be to the game’s deficit—because you hear them in different spots, or in only mildly different ways, you’re going to end up hearing what’s functionally the same explanations for what the Grail War is and certain mechanics within it a few times. But more often than not, this benefits not just the story writing overall but also the world-building and character writing. More simply put, by the end, you feel like you have a full understanding of the story and the characters within it, and that serves to make FSN all the more gripping—especially as you get later in the game and you continue to watch how the Grail War unravels. Such is the strength of the story and writing that I think it could even potentially appeal to some people who don’t usually love visual novels. And for bonus points: if you’ve never played a visual novel, this is as good a starting point as any.

The story and writing are the biggest strengths of FSN, though as a lover of studying history, I’ll be the first to admit: don’t get your hopes up if you read the premise and were hoping for an edutainment history game. Sure, there are some fun nuggets of historical/mythical information in there, but don’t expect many of them. In fact, expect FSN to assume you’re already pretty familiar with the relevant historical/mythical figures, get some things wrong, and/or bleed history and myth together (and inconsistently, at that) in a way that it often makes it unclear what’s supposed to be regarded as historical vs what’s supposed to be regarded as mythical within the game’s universe. This is a shame—in the hands of a writer who was more interested in history, this could’ve been a fun and memorable way to learn.

The gameplay is entirely choice-based, though be warned: if your affection isn’t high enough with—well, it’s almost always the heroine of the route you’re currently on—you might just simply die. While this can be frustrating at times (especially for players who don’t know to expect this and don’t understand what they did that led to their untimely demise), I really like that added layer to Fate‘s gameplay—not to mention, storytelling.

Art and music help bring writing to life. There are plenty of gorgeous songs and CGs throughout the game, a number of which have rightfully become pretty well-known and are recognizable, even to people who aren’t super (if at all) into Fate. Also of particular merit, many Fate fans have been praising FSNR for expanding upon a great deal of the backgrounds/CGs (possibly most or all of them) to better fit the 16:9 format, rather than just cropping/zooming into them as the 2012 PS Vita port did.

Regarding how the game runs, it’s a bit slow to start up for me, and not always, but sometimes it’ll randomly close after a few seconds—usually while the game’s on the disclaimer about being fictional. But once it gets past that screen (which it won’t let you skip), it’s fine. The rest of the game runs well (although sometimes the text looks a bit choppy getting on screen), and it has many of the features I’ve come to love and expect from visual novels with more of a budget: a flow chart, a button to skip scenes that I’ve already seen (although frankly I wish it were a skip to the next decision/skip to the next unread text button, but whatever)—stuff like that.

Newer potential readers especially might be wondering if FSNR is a good place to jump into the vast sea of Fate media, to which I’d say yes: this is without question the single best place to start. All the other pieces of Fate media are either adaptations (with varying levels of quality) of this, spinoffs of this (most of which, admittedly, might reference FSN but are self-contained enough that it’s not strictly necessary to understand what’s going on), or prequels/sequels.

Some may argue that you should watch Fate/Zero—a FSN prequel written by Gen Urobuchi—before playing FSN, and whether they love or hate this idea, Fate fans tend to feel strongly about their stances on this. But personally, I think if you can read the visual novel first, you absolutely should. Choosing to start with any anime, including Fate/Zero, will risk spoiling at least some aspects of the visual novel. That being said, it’s not the end of the world if you watch Fate/Zero first. And if, for whatever reason, you insist upon watching a Fate anime before playing the visual novel, I’d agree that Fate/Zero is probably the best choice (either it, or the 2014 Unlimited Blade Works TV series, which adapts—of course—the Unlimited Blade Works route). As I said, you’ll be spoiled on a few key plot points, but in my opinion the spoilers—while not insignificant—are neither so numerous nor critical that they completely ruin the whole experience of the visual novel. I would know, I watched Fate/Zero (and Deen/stay night) before I played FSN, yet clearly I still love FSN.

So that’s cool and all, but how is FSNR as a release?

Probably the most discussed facet of FSNR as a release, anecdotally, is the discussion surrounding the sex scenes—or, more specifically, the lack of sex scenes. The original release had several sex scenes peppered throughout the game. The scenes would then be “removed” for the 2007 PS2 port called Fate/stay night Realta Nua—which had other slight differences from the original release (EX: it had voice acting and more CGs), but certainly its lack of sex scenes would become the main thing this release would become most known for. And I put quotes around “removed” because most are replaced with other scenes, while others just become implied/less explicit.

As you’ve probably guessed by now, FSNR is the Realta Nua version of FSN. And even before FSNR, fans have argued endlessly over how necessary or not the sex scenes are (usually, these arguments go something like: “They make you feel a stronger bond with the heroines and they’re necessary to illustrate character relationships, especially evolving ones” vs “author Kinoko Nasu‘s erotic writing is tacky, and the alternate scenes accomplish the same thing while being better written/fitting within the story better anyways”). And because this discourse has been going on for so long, I know that not everyone will agree with me on this, but personally, I don’t feel like FSNR suffers from the loss of the sex scenes. In my opinion, most (read: not all) of the sex scenes felt really shoehorned into the original narrative anyway, and the replacement scenes feel much more natural within the story. Maybe I’ve been poisoned by the fan translation—it’s faced its fair share of criticism over the years for the negative impression it can leave of Nasu’s writing, especially his erotic writing—but I just can’t find it in myself to feel that FSN‘s sex scenes are a necessity.

But even though the sex scenes have become a pretty hot topic, what I was more worried about upon FSNR‘s release was the translation quality. In particular, my main worry was less about whether or not the translation would be generally good (after all, Witch on the Holy Night‘s was fine, and Tsukihime -A piece of blue glass moon-‘s was magnificent), and more about what was going to happen to the many legacy terms present throughout it. A legacy term is a specific way of translating (or, in some cases, not translating) what’s usually a recurring word/phrase in a given piece of media that fan communities become accustomed to and adopt. While I wouldn’t go so far as to say this happens often, it’s also not entirely unusual for translations—good, bad, and otherwise—to sometimes stumble when it comes to legacy terms. FSN has its fair share of legacy terms that have, for better or for worse, been thoroughly cemented within its English language fan base over the course of several years. And yet, for the most part, FSNR seems to have stuck the landing with its legacy terms—but I say “most part” because there’s one translation decision that seems to have ruffled some feathers.

For those unaware, one of the main characters is called Saber, but her true identity is King Arthur. So when her actual name is written in Japanese—アルトリア—it’s easy to assume, based on the context, that she’s King Arthur, that it’s meant to be read as “Arturia” or “Artoria.” And sure enough, the fan translation calls her “Arturia.” And so, for several years, English language Fate fans have called her Arturia/Artoria. Yet FSNR has made the puzzling decision to call her instead “Altria.” Admittedly, this isn’t unprecedented—she’s also called “Altria” in Fate/Grand Order. But then, she’s “Artoria” in Fate/EXTELLA: The Umbral Star and Fate/EXTELLA LINK. And on MELTY BLOOD: TYPE LUMINA‘s website, she was initially called “Artoria” before being changed later to “Altria,” which is still the name listed for her as of the time of writing. Where is the truth?

Personal preferences aside, “Arturia” or “Artoria” just sounds like the more obvious translations, given that she’s King Arthur. And Arturia/Artoria have been so ubiquitous for so long in English language Fate fan communities that I have a hard time believing that Aniplex of America, Leedstranslation, and/or DIGITAL HEARTS (all of whom are credited for FSNR‘s translation, with DIGITAL HEARTS also credited for linguistic quality assurance) didn’t already know about them, and/or think to use one of them. I don’t know this for a fact, but it makes me speculate that the decision to call her “Altria” was probably out of their hands—perhaps a demand of Type-Moon, if not simply Nasu. But at the end of the day, perplexed as I am at what is almost certainly this stroke of Nasu-ian whimsy, this would hardly be the first time that an official translation used a name other than ones that had been codified into fandoms (I know the frequent renaming throughout 4Kids’ hack dubs are probably the most obvious/memorable examples of this, but even outside of 4Kids this has happened a few times. EX: “Enel” becomes “Eneru” in Funimation‘s One Piece), so it is what it is, I suppose.

While we’re on the subject of FSNR‘s translation, now seems like a good time to say that the overall translation in FSNR is great. While I hesitate to be overly critical of the fan translation, as I mentioned earlier, there’s been a fairly prominent belief among Fate fans that the fan translation didn’t leave its audience with the best impression of Nasu’s writing style (especially regarding the sex scenes). But I don’t think that will be an issue with FSNR, as its translation is infinitely smoother. This is a point that’ll be easier to demonstrate by showing rather than telling, so here are three examples of the same sentence:

1. Fan translation – “…I remember that face. A figure of a man, with tears welling in his eyes, delighted from the bottom of his heart that he found someone alive. —It was because he looked so happy…I even thought that he was the one that was saved, not me. “

1. Official translation – “…I remember that face. I remember the tears pooling in his eyes, how overjoyed he was to have found a living human being. He looked so happy. It seemed almost like he was the one being saved, not me.”

2. Fan translation – “There’s something unexpected there. The man with his back to the moon is golden. The man clad in gold is looking down at the yard with a cruel smile.”

2. Official translation -“I don’t understand what I’m seeing. There is a golden figure standing, with the moon behind them. It’s a man, clad in golden armor, looking down at the yard with a cruel smile.”

3. Fan translation – “Today is the day the new year starts. If I am to celebrate it, I have to shake off my old memories and hurry up.”

3. Official translation – “Today is the first day of the school year. If I want to celebrate, I have to shake off old memories.”

This is all a long-winded way of saying that FSNR is a great way to experience one of the most iconic—and certainly long-awaited, in the case of the English-language market—visual novels of all time. It’s very exciting that after all these years, FSN is finally available in an official capacity to English-language audiences. Its release is the latest in a string lasting a few years now of official English language visual novel releases that fans previously thought were never going to happen (EX: The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles, CHAOS;HEAD NOAH, Robotics;Notes, Anonymous;Code, and of course Witch on the Holy Night and Tsukihime -A piece of blue glass moon-). Visual novel fans have been feasting lately, and I hope FSN‘s official release helps welcome even more people to the table.