Fate/Hollow Ataraxia
Hollow Ataraxia is a victim of expectations, as much as any of its own actual faults. Going in, I knew two things about it: One, it was a follow-up (/sequel?) to Fate/Stay Night, and two, it was going to focus more heavily on the slice of life side of things compared to the former title. Let's see how Aniplex sells it:
"Half a year has passed since Shirou Emiya won the Fifth Holy Grail War. In the wake of the conflict, Shirou and his friends are readjusting to peaceful, everyday life. Meanwhile, in a desolate mansion on the outskirts of Fuyuki, a mage awakens: Bazett Fraga McRemitz, Seal Designation Enforcer from the Mage's Association...and former Master in the Holy Grail War.
"Come on, let's continue the Holy Grail War, Bazett Fraga McRemitz. All so we can find your wish this time," a shadow sneers at her. Its name is Avenger, Servant of an eighth class who never existed in the Fifth Holy Grail War. Their unlikely encounter signals that the battle is far from finished.
Shirou Emiya, aspiring champion of justice, steps onto the stage of the Holy Grail War once more. What fate awaits him beyond these four days of destiny?"
Well! The resumption of the Holy Grail War, a new master, that certainly sounds like a sequel to FSN, doesn't it? And yet, reality awaits us.
Taken as a whole, it would be more accurate to call F/HA something closer to a fandisc: one of those "technically a sequel but really just an excuse to have the cast hang out for 20 hours" types of games that visual novels frequently make after a big hit (see: No Sleep For Kaname Date, any of the 10 follow-ups to Steins;Gate, etc). While it does have a capital-P Plot that follows the events listed above, the meat and potatoes of F/HA are in the slice of life shenanigans that happen in between them. Each of the game's four days are divided into three time periods, during which you can freely navigate the town and chat up whomever you'd like. Want to see what Saber's up to down at the docks? Or what Sakura is doing after school? The world is your oyster, and while everyone gets a decent amount of events to see on the whole, it does feel like Rider gets a special amount of attention. I suppose it makes sense? Of the "main" characters and their servants, she and Caster were probably the two that got the least amount of screentime in FSN.
Anyway, assuming that you haven't chosen to just go straight to bed or something, the main plot comes back in at the end of Night 4. Unless you've seen a handful of specific scenes throughout the week, Shirou will be killed by the events of the Holy Grail War and be sent back to Day 1, with the task of figuring out what the hell is going on and why he's looping through these four days. Thankfully, the game marks those required scenes with a big "!" on the map, so it's pretty easy to make steady, if slow, progress. Once you've seen them, Shirou will still probably die on Night 4, but at least he'll die in a way that reveals more of the overall story or important information that you'll need to move on to the next part of the loop. Each one begins with a new scene with Bazett/Avenger and adds more scenes to the map, so at least it's obvious when you've made permanent progress, but that doesn't mean that it won't drag its ass in the process.
Though the game isn't nearly as long as FSN (about half as long, 20-ish hours to hit credits with a little over 80% scene completion), the pacing is...not great. The plot is mostly backloaded, and the first 6-8 hours of the game are a real drag, as it seems like no one (Shirou included) is really putting in any effort to actually investigate what's going on. I love Sakura, she's probably my favorite of the three heroines, but she gets a lot of the early focus in F/HA, and she is not a...proactive character in the plot, let's say. It is far more telling than it should be that everyone's reaction (in-game) to Rin coming back is "Oh thank god, now someone might actually solve this," and in her very first scene Rin immediately comes up with a plausible theory on what's happening and why Shirou is looping. Thankfully, the game picks up considerably around the 40-50% mark and strikes a much better balance between "Here is the plot" and "here is the hangout fluff" - though it should be said, the game's focus is still very clearly on the latter.
And look, I know, I'm critiquing the main plot of a game that is, at best, including one because they need SOMETHING to tie all these interludes together, but I still think it's important. FSN had no problem being a goofy game when it wanted to, but its focus was still on the main story that it was trying to tell. The slice of life stuff served a purpose, to be the bedrock of why we cared about all this high-level stuff about Servants and Holy Grail Wars and whatnot. Here, though, those roles have been reversed. In F/HA, the slice of life stuff is the point, and the plot is merely an excuse for how and why. While I cannot fault the game for going this route, especially in the context of a fandisc-style sequel, I do think that it struggles to bring everything together, especially early on. It's not so bad once things get going, but the "plot as an excuse to hang out" foundation proves to be a lot less sturdy than the other way around.
The game is also somewhat notable for being...difficult to pin down on where we are in the FSN multiverse. For one, the game's entire premise is that it takes place eight months after FSN, and yet every servant and master are still walking around like nothing happened. Similarly, the game regularly references events from all over the FSN timeline and across all three of its routes - to the extent that it is a sequel to FSN, it is a sequel to all of FSN, regardless of how much sense that might make. This cuts both ways; it is genuinely interesting to see characters like Rider and Caster adapting to everyday modern life without the specter of combat, but it also has some Ideas™ about how these characters would change that I'm not entirely sure I jive with. Some are obvious improvements: Sakura (and Rider) get the benefit of not having to share screentime with Rin for most of the earlygame, and seeing her come out of her shell and assert herself is very cute. Similarly, Rin (intentionally or otherwise) is much more open with her feelings, to the point where she arguably has more scenes that are openly flirting with Shirou than not.
But Saber...well, I already mentioned in my note about Last Episode that Shirou and Saber's romance was by far the least believable part of the Fate route, and Type-Moon appears to have taken that personally. Their relationship has been more or less rewritten from scratch, and while I wouldn't go so far as to call it a retcon, Saber does get a significantly larger chunk of the events that are explicitly romantic than anyone else. This version of Saber, sure, I can believe would fall in love with Shirou. But that's kind of the rub, isn't it? The other characters are extensions of who they were in FSN, obvious places for their characters to grow. Saber, however, might as well be an entirely different one with the same name and backstory; ironically, far closer to how a Servant "should" be between different summonings than any of the other actual servants.
And finally, a brief tangent on the sex scenes: like FSN, F/HA was originally an eroge, and this is a port of the all-ages version first released on the Vita. Some of these scenes have been covered up better than others - ignoring that it's extremely obvious what's going on, the new girl's scene is particularly uncomfortable, and is arguably more rapey despite no longer being sexually explicit. The others appear to have been cut entirely or heavily reworked to the point of unrecognizability, a move that I cannot say that I am sad about.
And that's all I really have for this one. When it's all said and done, I really did like the story it was telling... once they actually got around to telling it. It is absolutely fluff compared to what FSN was going for, but I think that's okay. Fluff though it may be, it was told earnestly, and that's what matters. It's hard to rate it as more than like, a 7/10, because it really doesn't provide much beyond an excuse to hang out with everyone from FSN, but if that's what you're looking for, it executes that with aplomb.