...not that it'll stop me of course.

It's difficult for me to describe what I think of F/SN as a whole due to how wildly inconsistent its quality is. There would be moments were I was left raging at something (most likely an infodump or the protagonist being a tool) only to be immediately swept away in either a moment of gloriously entertaining stupidity, something genuinely awesome, or a sequence that was just plain fun.

But let me tell you, it makes for quite the experience. I can't recall one dull moment in the entire VN (well, other than all the incredibly overwrought and drawn-out Deus Angst Machina backstory parts in Heaven's Feel, anyway). Even the more slice-of-life parts usually either had some sort of tension in them or played a part in the world building, so I was invested nearly the whole time. That's quite a feat, seeing as it took me about 68 hours to read the entire thing.

That's not to say I appreciated all of those 68 hours, naturally. Some of the other problems I had with F/SN were that its characterization wasn't always the strongest (I often wondered whether Zouken was inspired by Captain Planet villains), that the Holy Grail concept still felt a bit vague to me even with all the infodumping, and that it missed a fair bit of potential (such as what might happen had Shirou decided to become a ruthless hero like his father in that one ending of Heaven's Feel, the lack of time given to just Berserker and Ilyasviel without outside intereference or Sasake Kojirou's character in general), though I'll grant that we got so much already that asking for more is kinda greedy.

Positives: Art, setting, premise, character interactions, all were pretty good in general. Not really sure what to say about them; 70 hours can't be crammed into 400 words. Music was a bit on the dull side; I can say that much at least.

As far as the routes go, Fate was, well... cute, I guess? The rest was like taking drugs: Unlimited Blade Works was my twenty hour high, and Heaven's Feel was the withdrawl symptoms that came after. It was draining to read until it picked up 3/4 of the way in.

So yeah, I'm not sure this told you anything about the work, or whether that's even possible in such a short space, but whether or not I liked it, I don't think this is something visual novel readers should pass up.

Fate/stay night has no idea what it wants to be. Low-key Urban Fantasy or High-key Ultimate Showdown Of Ultimate Destiny? Dark and serious story or Sengoku Basara-esque Rule Of Cool fest? F/sn tries to be both but, while I'm not saying it couldn't have ever pulled it off, fails miserably at it. The 'serious' stuff just ends up dreary and distracting, while the 'awesome' stuff just ends up childish and out-of-place.

I mean, King Arthur being a girl alone (for no real reason I may add) practically invites irony and sniggering, yet it's taken 100% seriously.

If the 'darker' approach was to work, then F/sn would need decent characters worth caring about. Characters it doesn't have. Shirou's dull, preachy and unrelatable (even in HF), Saber's even duller, Rin's just plain annoying, Archer only serves to make Shirou even preachier, and everyone else is either drowning in Deus Angst Machina, a stereotypical Complete Monster, or barely developed at all. Even the servants, for all Nasu's 'research', come off as pitifully watered-down versions of their legendary selves (Cuchullain especially, and what's the point of having Heracles there if all he's going to do until his 'death' is scream mindlessly?). Oh, and special note goes to completely ignoring Gilgamesh's entire Character Development in the original Epic.

All the usual pitfalls of the Nasu Verse make their appearance here too, rigid, inflexible and utterly boring World Building, tons of Info Dumps and Purple Prose that read just as bad in Japanese as they do in English, an unhealthy overdose of Magic A Is Magic A (so it can be conveniently broken for the main character) and being too far up on The Roddenberry Line for its own good, and an adolescent focus on 'action' (albeit justified this time considering F/sn's premise) prevented from being any fun from how hugely pretentious the rest of the work is.

Oh, and when F/sn actually does try to be humorous, the results are... dire, to say the least.

I guess the premise alone was intriguing, and some of the music and artowrk was fairly good, but those are about the only positive things I can say about F/sn.

Final Verdict: Avoid. The Nasu Verse in general is in need of a serious overhaul (or a much stricter editor), and Fate Stay Night shows that more than anything else.

One thing that catch me is the originality of this series... it's pretty straightforward in general, wizards competing over wish granting machine. But it become interesting when comes to character's background story... Yeah some character is not nicely characterized unlike other characters, especially secondary character we barely know but still... Shinji and Gilgamesh are jerks, but considering their background... it's just realistically human. Shinji was actually used to be a proud sweet kid that grep up become a jerk he was when he realized he was not special and all he did for mastering magic was all for nothing. Gilgamesh... he is a demigod, not half but two third so... and he is suppose to be like that according to his original myth. King Arthur is a girl? No prob? Married to a girl? Okay, no choice there. She had a son with his step-sister when Merlin decided to play prank on her and give her a penis? Another thing that's too muchSakura's apparent miserable life Maybe this is things that too complicated so we better ignore it. Archer's identity is a brilliant plot and really realistic,you have to admit Shiro's ideal with fat chance would land him there~ All of us is irritated with Shiro's ideology and stupidity at various degree, at least the writer didn't hesitate to show the result of what if Shirou screw up in the future.

On the surface, Fate/stay night is a story about an annoying and arguably misogynistic teenager named Shirou who teems up with a sword-wielding heroine named Saber in order to defeat six other "Servants"—great heroes of history summoned into the modern day—and win a competition of magi known as the Holy Grail War. The writing style is pretty terrible, a whole ton of exposition is thrown around and there are occasional scenes of badly written sex. So far, so iffy.

Here's the thing: like the best visual novels, Fate/stay night isn't about what you think it's about. The Servant fights, while stylish and interesting, are ultimately window dressing. The Holy Grail probably isn't the Holy Grail you know. Shirou's rampant idealism is quickly exposed to be something a lot more interesting—a pathological desire to put other people in front of himself, which ranges from inspiring quality to tragic flaw. The story isn't so much about the Epic Battles to End All Epic Battles as it is about the ideas swimming under the surface. If you don't come to terms with this than you probably will hate Fate/stay night.

Because for all the explosions and kinetic battles and magical weapons, Fate/stay night is ultimately a multi-part examination of heroism. Every facet of the story is used to explore the central message—from the main character's actions, to those of his friends, to the existence of the Servants themselves. Each consecutive route further develops Shirou's martyr complex, from the idealism of Fate to the utter demolishing of Heaven's Feel. What initially appeared to be leaden and occasionally stupid is revealed to be remarkably complex and even remarkable. It's not profound or even intellectual, but for a piece of pop philosophy/fantasy/horror Fate/stay night is arguably a masterpiece.

Granted, it is infuriatingly slow-paced and probably overlong. But when in motion, firing all cylinders, it is a beautiful thing to behold. Kinoku Nasu, the writer of Fate/stay night, is a pretty terrible writer; but when it comes down to it, he's a great storyteller. Fate/stay night might be his best story. Just be aware that it takes a lot of patience to see it through.

(Also the sex scenes only take up around half an hour of thirty-five, and can be skipped. So don't let that turn you off! The game's pretty cool otherwise)

Fate/Stay night could have been one of the coolest and most epic shows ever - it certainly has the setup for it. An ultimate showdown of ultimate destiny between (heavily re-imagined) legendary figures summoned into the modern world? Where can I buy tickets?

But, a few interesting fights aside, the anime fails to live up to its potential. (The visual novel is better, since it actually reveals the whole backstory.) The anime felt listless to me, with a main character that I frequently wanted to strangle. Its main crime was simply not being epic. It was a solid show, as shows go, but not particularly impressive. Archer's motivation is never explained. Any series where you have to read a wiki (or tvtropes) to get a plot-important piece of information is a bad show. (Unless its attraction is its mindscrew.) Oddly enough, it seems more awesome when reading about it on a wiki than it seems while watching it.

The legendary weapons were very cool, and the servants were (mostly) likable and fairly well-realized characters. (Except for those that got short shrift in the anime.) The route picked for the anime was the most straightforward 'giant contest we must win' route, as opposed to the 'abuse the loopholes of the rules to kill my past self' route (awesome) or the... ...actually, I have no idea how to describe HF.

And then there's the way the bowdlerize the sex scene. They replaced the act itself with a shot of a dragon ripping the main character's arm off, but didn't bother to rewrite the scene leading up to the act, or try to make the morning after look like anything other than, well, the morning after. Completely ruined the tension, which was quite a feat, considering that one character had recently died and the remaining ones were about to go up against the same foe.

Visually, it's usually a nice-looking show, but that couldn't make up for its bad pacing. I felt like I was waiting for something to happen the entire run of the show, but whatever I was waiting for never happened. This anime never really created much suspense or got very intense. And it managed to do that while having one of the most epic concepts I've ever heard of.

I recommend reading the LP of the game. Some parts are cool, some parts are actually funny, and then there are the parts that the LP's author mocks.