Gorgeous. This is a magnificently gorgeous VN. A perfect one? Probably not. But the presentation was so classy and refined that I feel the need to gush about it out of the gate.
I finished the main story of this VN a week ago, but I've been having a bit of a hard time coming up with a good, reasoned review of it. The thing is, it suits my particular tastes (or a subset of them, at least) so well that it's hard to sort out the this-was-done-wells from the how-I-like-it-dones.
It's an NVL style VN narrated in the third-person released in the year-of-our-Lord 2022. That, from the outset, is not something I've seen often. Part of my surprise may simply be my own lack of experience, as I am still relatively fresh to the medium, but when even The House in Fata Morgana uses the ADV format for text and a pseudo-third-person perspective, I'm inclined to believe that Witch on the Holy Night is a bit of rarity on those points.
In fact, I think Umineko is the only other VN I've read with a third-person perspective...
I bring that up because (in contrast to my ability to talk about the game) that style brought a detached objectiveness to the telling of the story that let it give detail and context as needed. Yet, it could also naturally maintain the atmosphere of secrets and solitude that were fundamental to the experience. To put my impression in a very generalized metaphor: compared to most VNs I've played this felt like watching a stage play compared to hearing a story from your buddy at the bar. That's not a measure of quality, but the difference was refreshing.
As for the content of the story, I'll start by levying what I imagine to be the biggest complaint that could be levied against it, which is that if you're already played or watched Type Moon's other prominent works, particularly Tsukihime or Fate/Stay Night, the broad strokes of the story here will feel very familiar. However, there's shift in tone and structure that I think make this the more compelling of the bunch (unless the fights in Fate are your main interest).
It's not as relentlessly edgy of a story as Tsukihime or Stay Night, and the plot is fundamentally more intimate. It's still set in Type Moon's signature secret world of "Magi" with all of their cutthroat ambitions and hazy sense of morality (which for the record, I enjoy about all of them), but there's no grand contest motivating the actors like a Holy Grail War. Instead, its very personal, immediate goals that spur the story along. Frankly, it's exactly the story I wanted from Type Moon after I finished Tsukihime just over a year ago.
I especially enjoyed the character writing here. Every cast member has a good amount of depth that's gradually revealed over the course of the story. The variety of happenings along the narrative reveal different layers of each personality, and those layers generally feel very consistent with the core of each character. But where there is some discrepency, it makes sense and you get just enough of a peek into the casts' internal conflicts to understand the mismatch in their actions. Their relationships with each other also evolve satisfyingly: sometimes through the tempering flame of conflict, sometimes through small gestures of compassion.
What I found rather surprising is, while there are certainly some fun romantic undertones in some of the interactions, the story never actually becomes a "romance." Normally I'd actually see this as a mark against it; nothing annoys me more than a romance that's teased and never delivered in a story. But here it actually works as the writing sets the expectation that romance won't be a focus, and more importantly it gives time to other kinds of meaningful character interactions to develop the characters' relationships. Conversations about goals, fears, values, history... you know, all those little parts of a peoples' lives that might be important.
The pacing is quite nice, too. It's definitely more on the methodical side, but the setting and presentation do their work to get you into its rhythm. With the winter imagery, the elegant artwork, the restrained framing and animation, and fairy-tale-esque elements; even a chimp-brain, button masher like me was convinced to slow down and take it in at the novel's pace.
I even waited for the text animations to finish (most of the time), which is practically unheard of for me.
And I will say yet again, the art and animation work was phenomenal. While it's not nearly as bombastic as a Muv-Luv, or Danganronpa, or Phoenix Wright, the amount of effort and subtle dynamism in every scene of the game was astounding to me.
... And yet as I sit here and throw all this praise at this game, I'm not actually sure how much of it would be appreciated by the wider audience. If I were being pretentious, I could say, "People just won't understand it's subtleties." But really what I'm curious about is how much other people will really relate to those details even when they see them. It's admittedly a fairly eccentric story at times even accounting for the cultural differences of it being a Japanese novel.
That perfectly fits my kind of eccentric, and while I'm not the most eccentric personality out there, I still feel like I just can't promise you'll come out as hot on it as I am.
I do have one objective complaint about the game, though. The translation seems like it could have used another editing pass. I don't know enough Japanese to spot any major discrepencies in the content itself, and it mostly read quite well in English, but there were a few moments with noticeable typos or small mismatches between what's said in the original VO and the English text. Nothing experience ruining, but I would have liked to see this novel get a little more polish there.
So, as far as recommendations go, I would say any regular VN enjoyer should put this on their radar. If you're a Type Moon fan already, then get this on the top of your backlog stack. For everyone else, look at some screenshots and promotional videos. If you like the atmosphere you see, I can at least assure it will deliver on that.
I finished the main story of this VN a week ago, but I've been having a bit of a hard time coming up with a good, reasoned review of it. The thing is, it suits my particular tastes (or a subset of them, at least) so well that it's hard to sort out the this-was-done-wells from the how-I-like-it-dones.
It's an NVL style VN narrated in the third-person released in the year-of-our-Lord 2022. That, from the outset, is not something I've seen often. Part of my surprise may simply be my own lack of experience, as I am still relatively fresh to the medium, but when even The House in Fata Morgana uses the ADV format for text and a pseudo-third-person perspective, I'm inclined to believe that Witch on the Holy Night is a bit of rarity on those points.
In fact, I think Umineko is the only other VN I've read with a third-person perspective...
I bring that up because (in contrast to my ability to talk about the game) that style brought a detached objectiveness to the telling of the story that let it give detail and context as needed. Yet, it could also naturally maintain the atmosphere of secrets and solitude that were fundamental to the experience. To put my impression in a very generalized metaphor: compared to most VNs I've played this felt like watching a stage play compared to hearing a story from your buddy at the bar. That's not a measure of quality, but the difference was refreshing.
As for the content of the story, I'll start by levying what I imagine to be the biggest complaint that could be levied against it, which is that if you're already played or watched Type Moon's other prominent works, particularly Tsukihime or Fate/Stay Night, the broad strokes of the story here will feel very familiar. However, there's shift in tone and structure that I think make this the more compelling of the bunch (unless the fights in Fate are your main interest).
It's not as relentlessly edgy of a story as Tsukihime or Stay Night, and the plot is fundamentally more intimate. It's still set in Type Moon's signature secret world of "Magi" with all of their cutthroat ambitions and hazy sense of morality (which for the record, I enjoy about all of them), but there's no grand contest motivating the actors like a Holy Grail War. Instead, its very personal, immediate goals that spur the story along. Frankly, it's exactly the story I wanted from Type Moon after I finished Tsukihime just over a year ago.
I especially enjoyed the character writing here. Every cast member has a good amount of depth that's gradually revealed over the course of the story. The variety of happenings along the narrative reveal different layers of each personality, and those layers generally feel very consistent with the core of each character. But where there is some discrepency, it makes sense and you get just enough of a peek into the casts' internal conflicts to understand the mismatch in their actions. Their relationships with each other also evolve satisfyingly: sometimes through the tempering flame of conflict, sometimes through small gestures of compassion.
What I found rather surprising is, while there are certainly some fun romantic undertones in some of the interactions, the story never actually becomes a "romance." Normally I'd actually see this as a mark against it; nothing annoys me more than a romance that's teased and never delivered in a story. But here it actually works as the writing sets the expectation that romance won't be a focus, and more importantly it gives time to other kinds of meaningful character interactions to develop the characters' relationships. Conversations about goals, fears, values, history... you know, all those little parts of a peoples' lives that might be important.
The pacing is quite nice, too. It's definitely more on the methodical side, but the setting and presentation do their work to get you into its rhythm. With the winter imagery, the elegant artwork, the restrained framing and animation, and fairy-tale-esque elements; even a chimp-brain, button masher like me was convinced to slow down and take it in at the novel's pace.
I even waited for the text animations to finish (most of the time), which is practically unheard of for me.
And I will say yet again, the art and animation work was phenomenal. While it's not nearly as bombastic as a Muv-Luv, or Danganronpa, or Phoenix Wright, the amount of effort and subtle dynamism in every scene of the game was astounding to me.
... And yet as I sit here and throw all this praise at this game, I'm not actually sure how much of it would be appreciated by the wider audience. If I were being pretentious, I could say, "People just won't understand it's subtleties." But really what I'm curious about is how much other people will really relate to those details even when they see them. It's admittedly a fairly eccentric story at times even accounting for the cultural differences of it being a Japanese novel.
That perfectly fits my kind of eccentric, and while I'm not the most eccentric personality out there, I still feel like I just can't promise you'll come out as hot on it as I am.
I do have one objective complaint about the game, though. The translation seems like it could have used another editing pass. I don't know enough Japanese to spot any major discrepencies in the content itself, and it mostly read quite well in English, but there were a few moments with noticeable typos or small mismatches between what's said in the original VO and the English text. Nothing experience ruining, but I would have liked to see this novel get a little more polish there.
So, as far as recommendations go, I would say any regular VN enjoyer should put this on their radar. If you're a Type Moon fan already, then get this on the top of your backlog stack. For everyone else, look at some screenshots and promotional videos. If you like the atmosphere you see, I can at least assure it will deliver on that.