Tsukihime: A Piece of Blue Glass Moon

(Played with Japanese text on Switch)

I became aware the remake of visual novel Tsukihime in 2012, when the outlines of new designs of characters were shown on the developer Type-Moon’s 10^th anniversary book. That same year, CD Projekt Red, fresh off porting Witcher 2 to Xbox 360 then, announced Cyberpunk 2077. While those 2 games were announced way before the Xbox One and PS4 console generation, neither would come out until the successors of those console came out.

I read through Tsukihime A Piece of the Blue Glass Moon without knowing it early October, 2021. I thought I was only through 2 out of 5 story lines, but those 2 story lines are all the 20 gigabytes on my launch Switch contain. The other 3 story lines would be released in future as a “sequel“ subtitled The Other Side of the Red Garden. As someone who still haven’t touched any Final Fantasy game, I finally know how some of the unaware audience feel after playing VII Remake.

All that aside, Tsukihime remake is a visual novel worth recommending to those who can read Japanese. Playing it would make one feel like a penultimate weeb, since the ultimate ones would attempt translating the game on their own. Its design choices regarding UI and other elements would somehow justify the game being a AAA title compared to the indie ones. Be warned though, it takes a strong stomach to get through this game.

Do Not Except a Love Story

One of the first things Tsukihime remake put before its readers is a content warning mainly about graphic violence. This is not a Doki Doki Literature Club style subversion of exception, as the prologue would plainly demonstrate that this is a horror story, a fairly bloody one at that. It’s about serial killer and vampires mangling, and the result is more horror than romantic as it should be, genre wise.

CERO rated the game Z in Japan, think ESRB’s AO and PEGI-18. But unlike the 1999 original containing pornographic contents, the 2021 remake focuses all its NSFW energy towards horror imagery. Libraries of Slasher movies would look like child play next to the visceral graphic and disturbing words this game put in front of its reader.

Tsuhime certainly put up the façade that it’s a dating sim. But in typical Type-Moon fashion, getting into what constitutes as a committed relation with one’s “dream girl” is not about playing one’s cards right in their first playthrough. If you prefer Ciel with Raven hair, too bad, you have to entertain the idea of dating Arcueid the blonde first.

One should instead consider those story lines as chapters in a volume instead. Another typical Type-Moon visual novel trope, one does not play all story lines because they necessarily like the female leads in those. Instead, they play all to see all the mysteries unearthed. Which is a bummer given that two characters’ mysterious story would not be unearthed in this one but hopefully in the sequel.

If you are not that sensitive about spoilers like yours truly is not, I would recommend the podcast Fate/Moon Archive. As the time of writing the show is approaching the end of its read-along of 1999’s original Tsuhime. The show would give you a general idea about the plot of this visual novel but the remake has enough new characters so the show would not spoil everything if you decide to pick up the remake games.

Writing on the Veil

From expansive packaged goods to indie stuff “plaguing” Steam, visual novels’ interface is usually like this: a piece of background artwork take up the screen, with 2 or 3 sprites of character on the sides then a word box in the lower part. Type-Moon has stuff like that in its free-to-play phone RPG Fate/Grand Order or fighting game spin-off Melty Blood, but when it comes to the studio’s visual novel root, they usually reserve to something I would love to call “writing on the veil”.

Background artwork and character sprites are both present here, but words are not contained in a box to the lower part of the screen. Those are shown in a thin, black and veil like half transparent layer take up most of the screen. This seems to allow the presentation under this layer of visual veil bit more lively than the usual “two sprites talking to each other”. Type-Moon enjoy the reception of making cinematic visual novel, and how they do so with little animation is something one need to see to enjoy.

Compared to the indie titles I’ve played on Steam, namely the extremely hetero-normal Pixelfade outputs and pretty gay Summer’s End Hong Kong 1986, Tsuhime remake’s one particular feature feels rather more professional: the ability to save before choices. One gamey goal of Tsuhime is to collect all 21 Dead Ends of the point of view character, it would have been tedious if one cannot save before choices.

Final Words

Tsuhime remake is not dating sim for those who would love to have a love story to read. Instead, it’s for horror fans who prefer their feast cooked with a slow burn. Even though it’s relatively unfinished compared to its original, the 2 existing story lines stand on their own well enough and last long enough(I’ve spent more than 40 hours to read it according to Switch’s hour count) to justify the price tag. Not to mention, there might be more than a decade before we can get to that sequel as Type-Moon focuses more on plotting to bleed Fate/Grand Order whales dry...