![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bard_linn....And I'm firmly in the minority camp with hating Heaven's Feel, or at least portions of it. (I think this would be an interesting exercise to break down by gender and attraction guidelines and see if there is a correlation. *math geek*) The sad thing is I was really enjoying it until around Day 9/10ish. I have summarized most of my gripping below. If you prefer to not have HF criticized, you’re probably better off not reading it.
How to Make Heaven’s Feel More Palatable (Minor Tweaks, no plot revision required!):
1) Have a progression with Shirou’s abandonment of his beliefs. We just spent a whole arc dealing with a Shirou who refused to sacrifice his beliefs despite knowing what the outcome could be (Archer). Here he immediately discards them when Sakura might be a threat, but not even that she’s confirmed as the Big Bad. A better option here would simply to have him insist they try to save/help her when they first find out she’s a master and she does an energy-sink, not say he’s giving up being a superhero. After all, Shirou at one point wants to save everyone, even if he knows that isn’t possible. This would be the first step on that road. Make compromise those beliefs, then, when they find out she’s the shadow, make him abandon his dream.
(This whole idea of sacrificing your ideas for the one you love actually bothers me to an extreme level, but it’s very rapid in game which makes it even worse.)
2) Remove all the ‘it’s only lust’ and anything synonymous from the H-scenes. His relationship with Sakura is supposed to be all consuming to the point he’s willing to give everything else up. So make that a constant - don’t rotate it 180 between day and night. Both Saber and Rin have rather cute leads in to their scenes. Here we have various things that basically undermine his love and dedication to Sakura, the girl he knows the best and should have the deepest relationship with. Everything should be emphasizing their closeness and the depth of their connection if you’re going to have him throw away his ideals. No contradictory evidence please!
Larger Revisions for Heaven’s Feel:
1) Make a better emotional response to Saber’s abduction and when she becomes his enemy. Tiger Dojo 40 shows he still deeply connects with her - show that. (I also don’t particularly care for how they deal with him killing her either, but I can deal with that because of the urgency of the situation.) We have Shirou’s point of view here - you could spend a few more minutes having him reflect on it.
2) Fix the ending. The ‘True/Good’ ending is ridiculous. It’s way too convenient. Of course Sakura is still a Grail and yet not falling apart so she can keep her Servant and her boyfriend supplied with mana.
Supposedly Shirou can learn to use his Reality Marble despite the damage he did to his memories and circuits. They say they resurrect his soul, but they also specifically mention that souls are made of memories (and other stuff). Shirou was happily shredding those left and right before he died. He should not come back (and being able to talk) that easily. He should be missing all sorts of things and not properly functioning.
If you want an ending that perfect (and honestly, with the type of things Sakura was doing, having no consequence just doesn’t feel right) make it hard to get. It should be ridiculous like your Illya score has to be +9 and your Sakura score has to be +14. Add in Rin and Saber scores too, just to make it that hard.
Also, why does Sakura still have Rider? Please remember she got Rule-Breakered and she doesn’t have any command seals so she can’t remake a contract, which means that they shouldn’t be able to transfer mana back and forth. (Unless they do it via ~mana contract~, of course.)
3) Better Integrate It.
I know there is some reason supposedly why the shadow/Sakura wasn’t active as a Grail didn’t happen in the other two arcs. I have to reread it, but I wasn’t impressed. Bringing this aspect into the other two arcs would help with the sudden change in mood/tone.
Bring Sakura more into the other arcs. There’s a lot of cute domestic stuff in the beginning of Heaven’s Feel that totally could have happened in other arcs. I know there’s issues with Shinji, but having Sakura not vanish so quickly will really help us connect with her character earlier as opposed to waiting until Heaven’s Feel (where if she’s not our type, we won’t be as interested since we already have links to the other characters). I actually was finding Sakura really cute and liking her in the domestic stuff in the beginning of Heaven’s Feel. (When she went dark I just wanted to smack her upside the head, but that’s how I react to that sort of thing.)
Possibly do something about her in the other arc(s?). You could easily have her killed by Gilgamesh - Gil POV if you want to keep it somewhat secret. If the compulsion for her to be involved is so strong it seems strange she doesn’t do anything the other two. Besides, Gilgamesh already threatens her; it wouldn’t be strange for him to do something about her.
While I’m asking for the world, I may as well just be ridiculous. If you really wanted to make me happy...:
1) Have a real Harem Ending, don’t just tease me about it with a Tiger Dojo. It wouldn’t even be hard since we have both Rin and Sakura around at the end of Heaven’s Feel. Rin already reveals she likes Shirou, so all you’d need is to somehow purify Saber. It could be an easy subroute after you finish HF. Maybe save Saber during the fight you originally have to kill her, she can help Shirou to the battle site, he saves Sakura and Saber can Excalibur the Grail. You could also have her either keep her bond with Sakura (making it easy to keep her around if Sakura is the Grail) and or have her rebond with Shirou (and why do his command seals randomly vanish anyway?) which could help with his condition considering the whole Avalon thing and the blades in his body and other Bad Things.
2) It’d be nice if Rin got to keep Archer in one arc. Come on, just one.
How to Make Heaven’s Feel More Palatable (Minor Tweaks, no plot revision required!):
1) Have a progression with Shirou’s abandonment of his beliefs. We just spent a whole arc dealing with a Shirou who refused to sacrifice his beliefs despite knowing what the outcome could be (Archer). Here he immediately discards them when Sakura might be a threat, but not even that she’s confirmed as the Big Bad. A better option here would simply to have him insist they try to save/help her when they first find out she’s a master and she does an energy-sink, not say he’s giving up being a superhero. After all, Shirou at one point wants to save everyone, even if he knows that isn’t possible. This would be the first step on that road. Make compromise those beliefs, then, when they find out she’s the shadow, make him abandon his dream.
(This whole idea of sacrificing your ideas for the one you love actually bothers me to an extreme level, but it’s very rapid in game which makes it even worse.)
2) Remove all the ‘it’s only lust’ and anything synonymous from the H-scenes. His relationship with Sakura is supposed to be all consuming to the point he’s willing to give everything else up. So make that a constant - don’t rotate it 180 between day and night. Both Saber and Rin have rather cute leads in to their scenes. Here we have various things that basically undermine his love and dedication to Sakura, the girl he knows the best and should have the deepest relationship with. Everything should be emphasizing their closeness and the depth of their connection if you’re going to have him throw away his ideals. No contradictory evidence please!
Larger Revisions for Heaven’s Feel:
1) Make a better emotional response to Saber’s abduction and when she becomes his enemy. Tiger Dojo 40 shows he still deeply connects with her - show that. (I also don’t particularly care for how they deal with him killing her either, but I can deal with that because of the urgency of the situation.) We have Shirou’s point of view here - you could spend a few more minutes having him reflect on it.
2) Fix the ending. The ‘True/Good’ ending is ridiculous. It’s way too convenient. Of course Sakura is still a Grail and yet not falling apart so she can keep her Servant and her boyfriend supplied with mana.
Supposedly Shirou can learn to use his Reality Marble despite the damage he did to his memories and circuits. They say they resurrect his soul, but they also specifically mention that souls are made of memories (and other stuff). Shirou was happily shredding those left and right before he died. He should not come back (and being able to talk) that easily. He should be missing all sorts of things and not properly functioning.
If you want an ending that perfect (and honestly, with the type of things Sakura was doing, having no consequence just doesn’t feel right) make it hard to get. It should be ridiculous like your Illya score has to be +9 and your Sakura score has to be +14. Add in Rin and Saber scores too, just to make it that hard.
Also, why does Sakura still have Rider? Please remember she got Rule-Breakered and she doesn’t have any command seals so she can’t remake a contract, which means that they shouldn’t be able to transfer mana back and forth. (Unless they do it via ~mana contract~, of course.)
3) Better Integrate It.
I know there is some reason supposedly why the shadow/Sakura wasn’t active as a Grail didn’t happen in the other two arcs. I have to reread it, but I wasn’t impressed. Bringing this aspect into the other two arcs would help with the sudden change in mood/tone.
Bring Sakura more into the other arcs. There’s a lot of cute domestic stuff in the beginning of Heaven’s Feel that totally could have happened in other arcs. I know there’s issues with Shinji, but having Sakura not vanish so quickly will really help us connect with her character earlier as opposed to waiting until Heaven’s Feel (where if she’s not our type, we won’t be as interested since we already have links to the other characters). I actually was finding Sakura really cute and liking her in the domestic stuff in the beginning of Heaven’s Feel. (When she went dark I just wanted to smack her upside the head, but that’s how I react to that sort of thing.)
Possibly do something about her in the other arc(s?). You could easily have her killed by Gilgamesh - Gil POV if you want to keep it somewhat secret. If the compulsion for her to be involved is so strong it seems strange she doesn’t do anything the other two. Besides, Gilgamesh already threatens her; it wouldn’t be strange for him to do something about her.
While I’m asking for the world, I may as well just be ridiculous. If you really wanted to make me happy...:
1) Have a real Harem Ending, don’t just tease me about it with a Tiger Dojo. It wouldn’t even be hard since we have both Rin and Sakura around at the end of Heaven’s Feel. Rin already reveals she likes Shirou, so all you’d need is to somehow purify Saber. It could be an easy subroute after you finish HF. Maybe save Saber during the fight you originally have to kill her, she can help Shirou to the battle site, he saves Sakura and Saber can Excalibur the Grail. You could also have her either keep her bond with Sakura (making it easy to keep her around if Sakura is the Grail) and or have her rebond with Shirou (and why do his command seals randomly vanish anyway?) which could help with his condition considering the whole Avalon thing and the blades in his body and other Bad Things.
2) It’d be nice if Rin got to keep Archer in one arc. Come on, just one.
