It’s easy to point at the gratuitous sexual assault scenes as being incredibly edgy and indicative of quality, and I think Tsukihime would have benefited from cutting some of them out (others could have stood a rewrite but still have a function). But there is a heart to Tsukihime, a cast of scared, lonely teenagers (and one ancient vampire) all going through their own Hedgehog’s dilemma. Don’t let the rough spritework and poorly compressed soundtrack scare you from giving Tsukihime a try, as it still maintains an incredibly unique sense of atmospheric style that shines through the lack of polish.

Arcueid is such a fascinating character. I know a lot of people joke that despite being the main heroine, she doesn’t appear for the second half of the VN, but her route really is great as a tone-setter, and it’s where Tsukihime states a core part of its philosophy. The other heroines have loved at some point prior and been hurt for it, but Arcueid had never developed a true bond before Shiki. During her bittersweet true ending, she outright states that she’d rather have loved and lost then never have loved at all, a mature insight that reverberates throughout the rest of the routes. She’s incredibly memorable for her unique philosophy on humanity and innocent humor, and the only downside to her is that you’ll be missing her dearly after her route.

My other favorite heroine is Kohaku - to keep it vague without spoilers, I think her character is the most human of all, at times very ugly but also capable of being beautiful. Sometimes we seek to deny our own humanity because of how much it hurts to be vulnerable, and Kohaku demonstrates the psychological horror of that self-dehumanization in such a subtly eery way, I ended up crying a few times during some scenes because of how terrifying raw some of her story is. She’s an excellent foil to Arcueid: the non-human who wishes she was human, and the human who wishes she was anything but. It’s why I think her route is great as the finale.

Please don’t wait for the remake to get a translation, the original is absolutely worth your time. It’s an important piece of VN history as one of the first notorious horror VNs and I honestly believe it still holds up to its contemporaries in that genre today.