Shiki is a bit boring personally, and when he isn't boring, he's real rapey. God there's so much rape in this, Nasu what were you thinking. Best thing about the game is getting to know the characters through their routes.
Wanted to come back to this review and flesh out my thoughts a bit more.
Honestly, I think the biggest draw backs of the game are the presentation and the large overlaps between routes. On the presentation front, the background cgs are just irl environments with a filter over them, which isn't bad in itself, but there's also a real lack of variety with the backgrounds. The ost is also insanely small, there's like only 10 tracks in the game and this is not hyperbole (also I can't remember if the game has a single sound effect besides the fight scene sharp clanking noise). The character portraits, while wonky looking at times, has a nice charm to them. The characters are really expressive in the portraits and that's endearing. Switching to the topic about the routes of the game, Ciel's route is really hampered by the fact that like 3/5 of the route is the same as Arc's. The far side routes also suffer from this, but not as much as Ciel's. I'd say only the first third of the far side routes really overlap with each other.
Smaller gripes I have with the game is the way how the dialogue is written in certain scenes. There are moments where characters are talking about concepts/lore about the world, and it lasts like 5 screens, but could've easily been shortened down to, like, 3 paragraphs. These aren't that big of a deal though since they're few and far between, but the pacing really drags in those parts.
Also I'm not against a story having rape in it. Like anything in any piece of media, it can be done well. The ways Tsukihime inserts rape in it's story feels forced, and could've been entirely cut and instead just be replace with 'wanting to kill X' or 'the urge to hurt Y'. There's only one instance in the story where I'd say it's used okay and felt sort of mandatory considering the context, and that's with a certain character's backstory. I can't really see any justification of the addition to rape in most of the scenes, and feels like it's only there for the sake of being 'mature'/edgy.
Wanted to come back to this review and flesh out my thoughts a bit more.
Honestly, I think the biggest draw backs of the game are the presentation and the large overlaps between routes. On the presentation front, the background cgs are just irl environments with a filter over them, which isn't bad in itself, but there's also a real lack of variety with the backgrounds. The ost is also insanely small, there's like only 10 tracks in the game and this is not hyperbole (also I can't remember if the game has a single sound effect besides the fight scene sharp clanking noise). The character portraits, while wonky looking at times, has a nice charm to them. The characters are really expressive in the portraits and that's endearing. Switching to the topic about the routes of the game, Ciel's route is really hampered by the fact that like 3/5 of the route is the same as Arc's. The far side routes also suffer from this, but not as much as Ciel's. I'd say only the first third of the far side routes really overlap with each other.
Smaller gripes I have with the game is the way how the dialogue is written in certain scenes. There are moments where characters are talking about concepts/lore about the world, and it lasts like 5 screens, but could've easily been shortened down to, like, 3 paragraphs. These aren't that big of a deal though since they're few and far between, but the pacing really drags in those parts.
Also I'm not against a story having rape in it. Like anything in any piece of media, it can be done well. The ways Tsukihime inserts rape in it's story feels forced, and could've been entirely cut and instead just be replace with 'wanting to kill X' or 'the urge to hurt Y'. There's only one instance in the story where I'd say it's used okay and felt sort of mandatory considering the context, and that's with a certain character's backstory. I can't really see any justification of the addition to rape in most of the scenes, and feels like it's only there for the sake of being 'mature'/edgy.