Dies Irae: Amantes Amentes is a quite polarizing visual novel for me. On one hand I don't have too fond feelings towards any of the first three routes, only really enjoying their endings and what they do for the final route. Yet on the other hand I believe that Rea route, the fourth and final one within this game, is truly mind blowing.
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Each route stems from the same first 6/12 chapters called the Common Route, the choices within these are what locks you into one of the rest of the 4 actual routes. Kasumi, Kei, Marie, and Rea are the routes within this visual novel in that exact order.
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The first three routes will be talked about within this one paragraph as, besides Rea route, I genuinely feel the same way about the routes. I honestly do not care about these routes. Although I can recognize their importance towards Rea route and understand how others can say they're mandatory to do I see no positives towards them within themselves besides their conclusions. The endings of each of these routes were all positives, however for the time investment that goes into each route it just isn't worth it to me. I initially dropped this series a while ago due to this issue within the first route yet due to some hidden masochism or a feeling of needing to finish it I decided to stick my way through it and wade through the garbage.
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I truly cannot state truly how fantastic Rea route was. After some time I may need to come back and only replay Rea route in order to view it more positively as my thoughts upon it, although fantastic, are still muddied by the previous routes experiences. Everything within this story has been building up towards this and it was executed in such an amazing way. Ending 1 personally is my less favored of the two endings, however the conclusion to Mercurius was genuinely fantastic as well as the final conversation between Merc, Rein, and the girls. Ending 2 to me is easily the better ending, especially after truly sitting on it and thinking back upon it. The final three way fight, 'Amantes, Amentes', final talk with Lotus, and the conclusion itself are all genuinely so mind-blowingly fantastic.
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Mercurius himself is a fascinating character and one in which I'll have to go back to and think about. Alongside himself, his dynamic with the rest of the main cast is very interesting too. Ren, Reinhard, and Marie are all fairly good too and characters I'll have to think about more to gather thoughts upon.
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Overall this was a positive experience, but not one in which I could force myself to reread in its entirety anytime. It has it's positives but these positives are heavily shadowed by its own former inconsistencies and flaws.
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TLDR; Rea route saved Dies Irae.

Easily one of the best novels I've ever seen (especially being the first one I read/played from beginning to end), although the plot is quite shallow in the kasumi and kei routes, I'm not saying they're unnecessary at all, as they show part of the story that complements the two main routes (rea and marie). But that's only it, complements. Honestly, the biggest point of this novel would be where the development of the protagonist and the charisma of the villains often exceed the brilliance of the protagonist himself. And the development of the plot throughout the main routes is simply “absolute visual novel”. My review? 4.5 (it would be a 5 if kasumi and kei's routes didn't exist to be honest, but especially kasumi's is useless.)

This VN is the prime definition of trying too hard. The main characters are good, their VA's do an INCREDIBLE job, music is fire, images and ambience is really nice and even the animation is really nice.

Now for the bad... The villiains, HOLY FUCKING SHIT, SHUT UP FOR ONCE YOU FUCKER. I get wanting to make the game philosophical, I get trying to make the reader think and I like it in other videogames or books, but here? Dude, you get SPAMMED CONSTANTLY, NONSTOP, PARAGRAPH AFTER PARAGRAPH.

When you repeat the same thing over and over and over, it doesn't matter how touchy or deep what you're saying is, you're gonna end up boring the living shit out of me. If all these metaphores and philosophical takes happened at the start and at the very end or when a fight just ended I'd be happy with it, but it happens so SO often that it loses meaning.

I didn't like the prose of it at all either and the length is just obnoxiously long just for the sake of being long, the story could be half the length and still be really good.

Overall I'm sure some people are gonna enjoy it, but I really don't get the comparison with Fate or Tsukihime. This feels like taking the worst from Fate, giving you 1/5th of the plot and spamming fight scenes and nonstop thought provoking babbling to fill that gap.

Masada really knows how to write his characters. They all feel very alive and well characterized. Mercurius in particular has one of the best character concepts I've ever seen and his reveal at the end has left me speechless the first time I witnessed it.

Although I do adore Dies Irae for it's pretty much filled with incredible fights, characters, emotional moments, music and amazing messages. I have to admit this series suffers from repetitiveness, especially in the first 3 routes.

Rea route is literally the pinnacle of this visual novel. Most of the best moments within the novel are present in the last 3 chapters of Rea route. With both ending 1 and ending 2 having great conclusions to the story. Without Rea route this visual novel would just be above average.

Overall though I would still say that Dies Irae is one of the best pieces of fiction I've ever consumed and it has some of the best character writings I've ever seen.

Dies irae is the story of a man who dreamed. It's as much the story of Ren and Reinhard, Marie and Mercurius as it is of Masada himself.

Incredibly ambitious and a bit too long, it's the game that most expresses the desire to create a story ive played in a while. It mixes everything that's cool in modern japanese urban horror with chuuni media and nazis and ties it all in a story about influences, legacies and authorship. By the end of Rea's route you'll be crying your eyes out at the sheer scale of the monster you just experienced and see it cross yet another mountain before gently decending down into a pristine lake. Play this if you want to experiences the highs and lows of an author with a lot of ambition and the jank to pull it through and fall apart again and again.

Things I liked

Music - Definitely the most consistently good thing. Lots of variety from guitar heavy songs, to organ heavy songs, synth, emotional songs, etc.

Shirou + Ellie as a whole. Being a cool constant secondary couple is a big rarity in VNs (anime too) so seeing them be important AND cool/funny is a nice treat. Shirou is admittedly too much of a dick at times but his fights are usually entertaining enough to make up.

Kei Sakurai as a character. The one major character who was important in all routes (minus Rea's RIP). It was obvious from the beginning she had by far the most animosity with her villain group so it made her motivations interesting. Lots of interesting backstory even without the side stories. While her romance wasn't amazing it was still loads better executed to me than the others (and I'm usually a fan of childhood friend romance and/or nice girls).

There's not many stories in any media that go into such detail of backstories of all the major villains. It was actually interesting to see them expanded in Side Stories and a little in certain routes to make you care about them more.


Mixed feelings

Our protagonist Ren. He did have some kinda interesting thoughts about how he wants to preserve his daily life and his view on reviving the dead. Other than that I thought he was pretty vanilla/predictable protag with a lot of UUUUUOOOORRRRRRRRRRGGHGHHHHH.

Kasumi. I actually really liked her in the common route, humor was like a better version of Sumika from Muv-Luv. Her whole thing of being left out of all the big happenings and wanting to be helpful was part of the reason she killed all those people. The removing her memories to keep her sane was neat. However, it seems like the writers hated her after that because her inclusion in her route felt super rushed and while her being a Sonnenkind replacement made sense later it felt like she herself didn't get enough time to develop what she got/lost from the common route. She didn't feel as funny after her memory was wiped too.

Fight scenes - I actually liked the simpler fight scenes since it was interesting to see the strategies going on, that's way I liked Shirou's fight scenes without his chain powerz a bunch. However, a big problem with the fights is they're a bit way too descriptive. Dialogue between them was fine but having to describe every single thought and action happening was really tiring to read as well as the cheesy as fuck villainous laughs/speeches. It got worse when fights became super shounen-y (not bad in of itself) when the descriptions get ridiculously long for no reason even though everyone just has powerful magic shit with no real strategy. Doesn't help I'm not super big on fight scenes in VNs when the best representation of some attacks is showing a curved colored beam. The power up CGs for everyone were pretty cool though.


Things I didn't really like

Padding through extreme narration. I know this isn't the only VN to do this but I felt half the narration of what the characters were doing or what was happening was completely unnecessary and just made the VN longer than it really needed to be.

The major villains Reinhard and Mercurius. I get part of the point of them was that they're powerful and were limited on screentime on purpose. But... I really did't get them. They took waxing poetic to the extreme any time they talked, especially Mercurius. I'm going to guess the way they talked was part of their charm to people but to me they just added annoyance to the already padding heavy narration. Also any fights were them were so boring to read because of how powerful they were.

The Romance. Kei's was kinda interesting but the other 3 were completely rushed. With Kasumi and Rea it seemed like "well they've known each other so it'll work out" but gave almost no development to the relationship. Marie's was the worst where she was forcibly given personality by Reinhard to where they just wrote her as a love interest. It's disappointing how bad the romance was given how long the game is.

The general lack of emotional payoff at the end of the VN considers the potential true routes. Kei's route was bittersweet so that was alright. Kasumi's was a big downer ending but at least it was unique. Marie's route between the worst romance, the ridiculous long and boring final fight, and the Marie dying but then reviving people in the side story? Rea ending 1 was kinda alright since the using Mercurius and Reinhard to kill each other thing was interesting but Rea ending 2 just gave Ren a shounen-like power up with no real build up. And in either case Rea's romance was meh.

One thing is sure, the first route of Dies Irae (Kasumi) is very slow and even tiring, only valid for the end of the route. However, the rest is a CHUNNI EXPLOSION that screams Nietzschean philosophies at every turn. Everything in the work revolves around an ABSURD metalanguage about Also Sprach Zarathustra, which I believe is magnificent. And yet Dies Irae in my view is best apprehended on an emotional rather than an intellectual level. Hunting for connections between the book and the game can make you lose the immersion, and at certain moments, the chuunibyou of the work is so explosive and certain resolutions are so forged in how Ren "just doesn't want that result", that this whole Nietzschean theater that screams the values of the book in your face is simply secondary compared to the emotions that the work gives you, without any relation to the book, simply for being what it is. Consuming Dies Irae is attesting, by x + y, Nasu's influence, because honestly, this is almost another Nasu writing, however with much more freedom to explode things on your screen. It's wonderful and I've never seen a universe as rich and ingenious as the Masadaverse since the Nasuverse. Masada deserved more recognition and greater support for his works, very sad that to read his other works, just by fan translation or studying Japanese, which honestly, for this man's work is worth it, but as he uses archaic Japanese it is even more laborious. Masterpiece.