So as I pray: Unlimited Blade Thoughts
This is a continuation of my thoughts on Fate/Stay Night. You can find the first iteration covering the Fate route here.
- I definitely enjoyed it more than Fate, although it wasn't revelatory or anything. The pacing is significantly better on account of being able to skip a lot of the general setup stuff, but I think my enjoyment is mostly on the strength of Rin as a deuteragonist; she was still prominent in Fate, but here she gets to stand on the stage alone and she is fantastic. The "B-Baka!" shit is trite, but her character arc gradually softening from "I am going to actively murder you, Emiya" to taking him with her as an ahem apprentice when she goes to London is well done.
- It is at least a little funny that in the route where Rin gets to be the main girl, the actual story is almost entirely about Shirou and Archer's existential catfight. I don't have much to say here, it's very well done and I like Shirou a lot more than I did in the Fate route, but it's kind of funny that in the grand scheme of things, it basically circles around from "I'm gonna be a hero of justice! (naive)" to "Actually you know what? I was right, fuck you Nihilism Me."
- Caster is a weak villain and is absolutely not capable of carrying the weight that this route puts on her. It was sort of inevitable once it was clear that she was going to be the main villain for most of the route, but the kind of underhanded tactics that she engages in are just...boring, I guess? "Oopsie your servant is mine now" is a really lazy way to up the stakes, I feel, especially when the route doesn't actually do anything with that move. Saber is captured, but spends the entire time up until you defeat Caster "resisting her command seal" (ie doing nothing), and it's unclear whether Archer was ever under her control at all, considering that he personally killed her.
- I do appreciate this route giving the masters (generally) a bigger role in the proceedings. The reversal with Caster and her master being the actual fighter of the duo was neat, and of course Shirou and Rin are way more involved with the overall conflict. I suppose that's only possible because you take away their servants but...eh, still not a fan of that particular plot point.
- I don't really understand why the route has two endings. Saving Saber is non-canon, sure, but there doesn't seem to be any reason why Rin couldn't have kept her around in the true ending. It's not like it hinges on a plot beat that's different if you spend a bunch of time with Saber instead of Rin or anything, she just...contracts with Saber afterwards because she doesn't want to lose her.
I've actually seen the Heaven's Feel movies, so I know way more about that route, but it'll still be good to play through it. So far the "there was a sex scene here" cover-ups have been pretty good, but I'm very interested to see how they handle that in HF considering...uh, everything in that route.