This review contains spoilers
I'll spoiler tag this review just because the story is so full of plot twists that shake up your fundamental understanding of every aspect of itself that it's impossible to talk about basically any specifics without spoilers.
The House in Fata Morgana is an exceedingly earnest story about the power of love and forgiveness. A very emotionally loud drama where our two protagonists have to struggle as paragons of virtue against an incredibly cruel world. And an unabashedly sincere romance about two outcasted and traumatized people completing themselves through each other, in a love that transcends life and time.
It tonally embodies its themes of human connection and redemption through embarrassing, revealing sincerity. It's got a lot of interesting larger themes given how religious zealots within the story are largely violent bigots, while the story itself is full of miracles and comes from a deeply Christian worldview. It gives the impression of, "god is real and good, but the world is full of people who misinterpret his word." And most importantly for my experience, the leads are just fantastic characters who you love and cry for and hope on the edge of your seat that they'll prevail. And this is more of my personal taste, but I adored the labyrinthine haunted mansion aesthetics, and the subject matter of people struggling to hold onto their sanity when cursed to live for huge stretches of time.
This is most of what I loved about Fata Morgana, but any recommendation of it has to be tempered by the fact that it's full of problems, in it's structure, in it's basic writing, and in several of its individual arcs. Those protagonists who I was so attached to by the end, who I think completely carry the story? They are essentially absent from it for the first 40% of the story. It starts with a series of only loosely connected vignettes, and to be blunt, half of them are downright terrible. After chapter 3 I was close to dropping the game. These are partly justified by it later becoming clear why they were important and included in the story at all, but that doesn't excuse how bad they actually are, in terms of bad characters, pacing, and frustratingly trite tragic plots.
The biggest obstacle to enjoying Fata Morgana is the first half, but many of these writing flaws continue throughout the whole thing. Much of the dialogue feels stiff and unrealistic. There's a very inconsistent application of time period dialect that becomes confusing and takes you out of the experience.
And one of my biggest issues was how full it is of long sequences of characters suffering, I think to varying degrees of success in communicating it emotionally. At times it did work quite well, and I felt sick with the horror of what was happening. But from it's ubiquity and failures in many individual scenes to be compelling, I usually felt emotionally dulled by the endless torment, until I couldn't take it as seriously as I was meant to.
I'm still not sure how I feel about Fata Morgana. When I listen to some of the stellar tracks from the ost and think of its best moments, I feel in love with it. But then I think of the dismal lows in its early chapters and the constant small frustrations with its clumsy writing pulling me out of the experience. Do I recommend it? That depends on how put off you are by the flaws I listed, but if you do give it a shot, I recommend powering through at least through chapter 5, even if it seems downright bad at first. Because despite all my issues, by the time it got going, I was moved by its story, and I'll remember Michel and Giselle as compelling and admirable characters for a long time.
The House in Fata Morgana is an exceedingly earnest story about the power of love and forgiveness. A very emotionally loud drama where our two protagonists have to struggle as paragons of virtue against an incredibly cruel world. And an unabashedly sincere romance about two outcasted and traumatized people completing themselves through each other, in a love that transcends life and time.
It tonally embodies its themes of human connection and redemption through embarrassing, revealing sincerity. It's got a lot of interesting larger themes given how religious zealots within the story are largely violent bigots, while the story itself is full of miracles and comes from a deeply Christian worldview. It gives the impression of, "god is real and good, but the world is full of people who misinterpret his word." And most importantly for my experience, the leads are just fantastic characters who you love and cry for and hope on the edge of your seat that they'll prevail. And this is more of my personal taste, but I adored the labyrinthine haunted mansion aesthetics, and the subject matter of people struggling to hold onto their sanity when cursed to live for huge stretches of time.
This is most of what I loved about Fata Morgana, but any recommendation of it has to be tempered by the fact that it's full of problems, in it's structure, in it's basic writing, and in several of its individual arcs. Those protagonists who I was so attached to by the end, who I think completely carry the story? They are essentially absent from it for the first 40% of the story. It starts with a series of only loosely connected vignettes, and to be blunt, half of them are downright terrible. After chapter 3 I was close to dropping the game. These are partly justified by it later becoming clear why they were important and included in the story at all, but that doesn't excuse how bad they actually are, in terms of bad characters, pacing, and frustratingly trite tragic plots.
The biggest obstacle to enjoying Fata Morgana is the first half, but many of these writing flaws continue throughout the whole thing. Much of the dialogue feels stiff and unrealistic. There's a very inconsistent application of time period dialect that becomes confusing and takes you out of the experience.
And one of my biggest issues was how full it is of long sequences of characters suffering, I think to varying degrees of success in communicating it emotionally. At times it did work quite well, and I felt sick with the horror of what was happening. But from it's ubiquity and failures in many individual scenes to be compelling, I usually felt emotionally dulled by the endless torment, until I couldn't take it as seriously as I was meant to.
I'm still not sure how I feel about Fata Morgana. When I listen to some of the stellar tracks from the ost and think of its best moments, I feel in love with it. But then I think of the dismal lows in its early chapters and the constant small frustrations with its clumsy writing pulling me out of the experience. Do I recommend it? That depends on how put off you are by the flaws I listed, but if you do give it a shot, I recommend powering through at least through chapter 5, even if it seems downright bad at first. Because despite all my issues, by the time it got going, I was moved by its story, and I'll remember Michel and Giselle as compelling and admirable characters for a long time.