Review: Fate Stay Night

After having read favorable reviews, getting positive comments from acquaintances, and discovering it's popular enough to have manga and an anime made from it, I decided to try the visual novel Fate Stay Night by Type Moon. Like all visual novels it plays like a choose-your-own-adventure book with special effects and a mostly linear path. Despite the limited game side of it, as many options are A or B and B gets you killed or false choices where your choice makes no difference, it made a pretty interesting if long winded story for the first third to half of the game. I was beginning to really enjoy the story and characters. And then the game went H. It totally blindsided me. I should of paid more attention to those reviews I suppose. Sadly, this is also the point the game finally veered too far into typical anime tropes that I dislike, such as an over-important useless male lead, absurd gender roles, and stupid heroism without an accompanying price. I went ahead and pushed though to the end having to endure the increasing standardization of the plot. It's too bad too, I enjoyed the tantalizing subversion suggested in the early plot. Overall it makes the equivalent of a decent manga which already exists.