I can appreciate the original Tsukihime from a distance for the impact it made to the visual novel genre and smaller studios making them, but actually playing it for myself, even if I know that the other routes explore more interesting themes and ideas, I can't bring myself to push past the first two main routes.
What makes this more difficult to parse and discuss is the fact that for the vast majority of people playing this in the west, if you're playing Tsukihime in English, you're not exactly playing the original work. It's a translation, and a fan-made community one at that which was released back in 2006 to 2008. From everything I keep hearing from those who have played Nasu's games in Japanese, there's a certain way he writes his stories that is incredibly difficult to translate into English and I get the feeling it's something that affects Tsukihime.
Is the dialogue amateurish because it was Nasu's first major work? Or is it because of the translation? Are some of the occasional weirdly out of line character reactions and dialogue from the original text, or is it translation error?
Even besides my issues with the writing itself, there's so many other little things that make engaging with the original Tsukihime so much more difficult compared to other titles in the genre today. There's 10 total songs in the OST, and they're all barely a minute or two long loops that get tedious and annoying fast. The main theme is iconic and I do like some of the more strange creepy songs like the one with drums and hymns, but they very rarely ever show up; you're going to be listening to this stupid goddamn daily life song that increasingly grew on my nerves for how often it plays and for how obnoxiously short it is before it loops. This is the song that will play in my nightmares, I swear.
Also Tsukihime is an eroge. And not a very good one at that. Sure don't appreciate the completely out of nowhere and in thoroughly poor taste rape scenes!
What makes this more difficult to parse and discuss is the fact that for the vast majority of people playing this in the west, if you're playing Tsukihime in English, you're not exactly playing the original work. It's a translation, and a fan-made community one at that which was released back in 2006 to 2008. From everything I keep hearing from those who have played Nasu's games in Japanese, there's a certain way he writes his stories that is incredibly difficult to translate into English and I get the feeling it's something that affects Tsukihime.
Is the dialogue amateurish because it was Nasu's first major work? Or is it because of the translation? Are some of the occasional weirdly out of line character reactions and dialogue from the original text, or is it translation error?
Even besides my issues with the writing itself, there's so many other little things that make engaging with the original Tsukihime so much more difficult compared to other titles in the genre today. There's 10 total songs in the OST, and they're all barely a minute or two long loops that get tedious and annoying fast. The main theme is iconic and I do like some of the more strange creepy songs like the one with drums and hymns, but they very rarely ever show up; you're going to be listening to this stupid goddamn daily life song that increasingly grew on my nerves for how often it plays and for how obnoxiously short it is before it loops. This is the song that will play in my nightmares, I swear.
Also Tsukihime is an eroge. And not a very good one at that. Sure don't appreciate the completely out of nowhere and in thoroughly poor taste rape scenes!
Reviewed on Sep 20, 2022