Tsukihime (visual novel)/Review by o
Wikireview – What the people think
- Before reading this review by o, it may be helpful to read his biases.
- Opinion: good but not quite my type of story
I played the PC version with the fanmade English translation patch soon after the patch was released.
- Spoiler warning: Minor plot details follow. The reviewer does not believe that these will affect the reader's enjoyment of the work.
Tsukihime is a visual novel about a boy named Shiki who can see "lines" in objects, both human and otherwise, and can instantly kill or destroy them by cutting along those lines. Tsukihime involves five separate but related stories about what happens to him when he returns to his old home after eight years living with relatives. Which story you get depends on what choices you make. The plot heavily involves vampires and other special powers that the main characters have.
I found the presentation very good, better than Ever17, the other visual novel I've played. There were few slow scenes; it quickly got into the main plot and didn't stop. The translation quality was also good, with only some minor grammatical errors. The hints given by Ciel at each bad end were a very nice touch; even without those the actual game was very easy - but the point of a visual novel is not to beat the game but to read the story.
On the other hand, it just wasn't my type of story. I generally dislike the supernatural, and this had a lot of it. From what I could tell, the plot was very well written and fit together nicely, and was certainly sufficiently complicated to keep me interested. But - and I knew this would happen when I started playing the game - I couldn't really get into it with its subject matter.
