#you will play mahoyo

[arimiadev]

exactly 1 week left until Witch on the Holy Night, the first TYPE-MOON (non-game play oriented) visual novel to ever be officially localized, releases on Steam on December 14th, 2023.

Witch on the Holy Night / Mahoyo is a coming of age story following Aoko Aozaki, a highschooler who has to balance her class president, perfect grades life with her secret afterschool life of being a mage—a secret she has to keep at the risk of death. Keeping this balance already isn't easy but one day she gets a wrench thrown into it with the introduction of a transfer student, Soujuurou Shizuki, a country boy so out of touch that he's never seen electricity before.

things Mahoyo is:

one of the most visually impressive visual novels ever made

a modern fantasy (1980s) tale about mages and magic intermingling with modern society

a coming of age tale about high schoolers finding themselves in this world

around 30 hours long

somewhat tied to other TYPE-MOON works, namely Garden of Sinners / Kara no Kyoukai and Tsukihime (but can be read without any knowledge of other TYPE-MOON works)

things Mahoyo is not:

a romance visual novel or a dating sim

a visual novel with choices or multiple endings

a video game with gameplay

another Holy Grail war

[sorairoknife]

SOUJUUROU'S VILLAGE DIDN'T HAVE ELECTRICITY???

[glassautomaton]

Top 5 favorite story tropes? :]

I'm sorry I've spent so long sitting on this ask, but I really had to think about this one. Spoilers for Xenoblade below because this is me we're talking about. Also, I'm sorry if the specific examples I bring up somehow ruin your opinion of me, but I wouldn't mention anything I don't recommend.

This is the big one. I love characters that are outwardly stoic to the point of being inhuman. Maybe they buried their emotions deep down, maybe they convinced themselves they never had them in the first place, maybe they never truly did. Oh man. I love seeing them start to really feel, and rationalize it away, only for it to get harder day by day. Maybe they accept it in a quiet moment, accepting the kindness of another for the first time, or maybe it's an explosive culmination of a life not truly lived. There are so many ways to take it, and there are tropes within this trope, but whenever I see a character who's so stoic and unemotive as to be described as a life-sized doll, to whom insults and complements fall off like water against steel, I rub my greasy little hands together. Notable examples off the top of my head include, of course, Violet Evergarden, the titular character in one of two series I own on DVD just because I love it so much. Vivy from Fluorite Eye's Song also goes here, the main character in, you guessed it, the only other series I have on DVD (at great expense I mean come on Funimation it wasn't even a nice box set like Violet Evergarden). Recently, Alice Kuonji has been a character that scratches this itch for me, as I've been reading Mahoyo and just finished Chapter 10. Fuck, man.

Characters who are just so consumed by a task that they start to forget who they are. Bonus points if the task is violent. Always fun to see a character gradually lose the light behind their eyes [citation needed]. Everyone loves to see someone have something ripped away from them and try to fill that void with something that utterly consumes them until there's nothing left of what they were trying to hold onto in the first place. I'll bundle a character coming back from this brink in with this as well, with yet more bonus points if the character gets a warm hand to the cheek, the first kind gesture in years, and some variation of "You must be so tired." The Boar Boy, Dimitri Fire Emblem, is, of course, a fine example, but NieR: Automata is the prime example for me. Having two characters go about this arc in more or less opposite directions to end with "That's all there needs to be for us to kill each other" is just. *Chef's kiss*

This might be a pretty simple, tried-and-true trope, but magic swords of destiny are great when pulled off well. There are a few ways to do this, be it something the hero must go on a great quest for or something that only appears to those deemed worthy in one way or another. Recovering the Master Sword in Tears of the Kingdom is such a spectacle, on top of the story behind the blade's restoration, that I think it'll be a prime example of this trope done well even if it might be early to tell. Xenoblade also fucking whips when it comes to this trope. I mean, it's in the name. Shulk seizing his destiny to create a world with no gods, and wielding the Ontos Monado? Rex finally taking on the fear Pyra and Mythra carry and helping to shoulder their burden in a way even Addam failed to, and awakening Pneuma? Noah, finally accepting that if the world holds the lives of the people of Aionios back, he must end it, and unlocking the power of the Sword of the End? Peak. The Eclipse Homecoming/everything at the Ascension Grounds is probably going to be the top sequence of at least this console generation for me.

Who doesn't love a good breakdown? More specifically, when a normally put-together character has a breakdown, well-kempt hair falling into their face as they stagger around, cursing the sheer injustice of their situation. We love to see someone throwing their arms around, absolutely shrieking. Granted, these can easily feel forced or hammy if not built up to, but when a well-developed internal conflict finally reaches such an explosive and satisfying climax, or when a character has a beloved thing or unimpeachable ideal ripped away from them, seeing a satisfying blowup can get you excited for what comes next for the character like nothing else. I don't have that many examples off the top of my head, but even though I mentioned Xenoblade 3 already it's worth mentioning the most cucked man in all of fiction. I have a video of him screaming saved on my phone and the dialogue in each scene memorized.

This one is kind of odd, and I'm not even sure if it's really a trope so much as an emotion, but things that leave me just feeling hollow after I finish them are special. I can't really go into things looking for this, but when it hits, it hits like nothing else. Not sad, just empty. Utterly hopeless. Questioning what the point was. I won't give any specifics, but after I beat Signalis, an amazing horror game, I just laid awake in bed until like 4:30 that night. I wasn't even particularly scared, it just left that much of an impact on me. What a special, special game.

I ended up leaving some stuff out as they were too broad and/or overlapped significantly with things I listed. I love stories about androids, but the search for 'humanity,' in whatever form it may take, is a major appeal that's also covered by my first point. Violet Evergarden is basically an android show, as nobody who I've show the show to can tell if Violet is a human for a good four episodes. Alice is pretty different than the other examples I listed, and doesn't quite fit into that trope as cleanly, though the magecraft equivalent to androids, Homunculi like Irisviel von Einzbern, do a better job of displaying their emotions (bisexuality) than Alice. Similarly, I left out redemption/corruption arcs as I sort of touched on those in the second point.

If you have any questions/additions/recommendations about anything, feel free to send them in. This was a great ask, and really fun to type up.

[tainbocuailnge]

fgo is backpedalling on a feature for the first time lmao they'd expanded the append skill system to add one that increases crit damage and one that lowers the cooldown of the first use of each skill(!) but they all still cost the same amount of super rare servant exclusive currency so if you want to unlock them all you need to roll 8 copies of your bond 15 5* servant AND also not have used their excess coins on the feature they'd already introduced to turn spare coins (that now retroactively are not spare) into grails

compensation is 120 quartz (lol) and promising they're going to refund all the coins you put into grails (which they tracked apparently?) (why not retroactively hand out coins for amount of storylocked 3* then) and make it possible to swap levels from one append skill to another (bandaid solution to the real problem being that this coin system is bogus gacha bait to begin with) (they'd promised servant-independent coins ages ago)

i do think it's interesting that this is evidently where fgo players are collectively drawing the line and making enough noise that lasengle actually has to backpedal on it. I don't have any hard statistics on player activity but my anecdotal experience is that fgo is bleeding players at this point so I wonder if they'd still have backpedalled (and with such a sizeable sum of quartz) if player retention wasn't as much at risk lately. pulling out so many collaboration characters in an unusually short timespan and an incredibly long anticipated unit like summer ereshkigal with a literal affection meter mechanic and anti-ntr features that make it so you can never use her optimally if you don't roll her yourself feels like a real desperate move on their part to get people to come back. hey you left fgo to play real games like samrem and mahoyo and tsukire right look we have water saber and aoko and ciel please come back!!

fgo has been running into the limits of its fairly basic gameplay engine for years and rolling out various bandaid systems to pretend to add more depth for as many years without addressing the real issues but since there's so many other fate games getting (re)releases lately people have less reason to care about fgo specifically, because they can just pay for one of those other games once and have a complete story experience without having to do time-limited chores about it. I joked about oberon killing fgo earlier but I think realistically it's the combination of lb6 being a story high they haven't been able to reach again + samrem releasing and mahoyosweep picking up around when people were realizing fgo wasn't gonna reach that same high again. there's less and less reason to stick with fgo because there's real complete games coming out that will give you a very similar story experience and won't make you do various time-limited chores about it

ideally this will scare lasengle into making more intensive changes but they've been so stubbornly blind to the actual problems with the game for so long I'm not counting on them actually fixing those

[dgrailwar]

Hi Melt. Sorry we mischarged your np but I don't think this is a wasted opportunity if fact! Did you know that Witch on the Holy Night [Mahoyo] is on sale for 20% off on steam right now!? (uses the 3 command spells) Go grab a copy and play it Meltryllis :D

[muramasaofprophecy]

since the mahoyo collab is coming out and people might be thinking of playing it to get to speed with what will happen in fgo, i think now is a good time to warn yall that mahoyo starts with incredibly graphic, descriptive animal (cat/kitten) death with absolutely no warning, like, that is just what the VN starts with. full stop, you launch the game and it is just-- boom.

if you can handle that, great! i just figure it merits a warning.

[getmoneyghoul]

I draw Tsukihime too much these days I need you guys to know that I hate it I hate this gammmee so much and you should play Mahoyo instead. I just like yuri. and Ciel

[toskarin]

Would you want a fate vn remake? I’ve been playing mahoyo it’s been making me wonder what an updated version of fsn would be like and if it would really be an improvement from the original. Part of me feels like it would lose some amount of charm but I’m not sure

my hot take is that I don't want a F/sn vn remake. Fate is perfectly fine as it is, not to mention that it already had an update via Realta Nua, then a remaster with the advent of Realta Nua Vita

while it might be nice to see it done up in the style of more modern Type-Moon VNs, I don't think it needs that at all

what F/sn actually needs is a rerelease with official translations. if that rerelease could reintegrate cut content, that'd be nice, but I think it coasts pretty well on being a VN that needs no introduction whatsoever

[tamamita]

sal do you think i should play fgo? i'm currently enjoying fate, but a lot of people are talking about it on tumblr

Stay away from FGO at all cost, you can enjoy the franchise without ever exposing yourself to it. In fact, read Mahoyo or Tsukihime!

Otherwise, read the manga adaptations of fgo, but stay away from Gacha.

[arimiadev]

also can we talk about this small description for mahoyo

A tale told with vivid colors and rich sound in a classic TYPE-MOON visual novel.

what is this?? did someone who just discovered what a visual novel is write this?? even if you've never played it you can workshop SOMETHING better than this in just a few minutes. why are they dead set on making mahoyo flop

[dh-tan]

Hey, are you an FGO player, a long time Fate fan, or just a visual novel enjoyer in general?

If so, than I highly recommend that to play Witch on the Holy Night (Mahoutsukai no Yoru) or as dubbed by long times fans, Mahoyo for short.

To sum it up, it's a story about witches and magic with hints of slice of life here and there starring an unlikely found family trio of quirky teenagers.

Not only is it available in english, but it's also now on Steam if you don't have a PS4 or a Swtich!

So what are you waiting for?

PLAY MAHOYO.

-----------

ONE MORE THING!

If you enjoyed Mahoyo and would like to check out other VNs by Nasu and Type-MOON, then please consider playing Tsukihime: a piece of blue glass moon which will be available in english and on consoles in late June and the legend itself: Fate/stay night [Realta Nua] set to be released later this year as well.

[glassautomaton]

Hey Glass Automaton resident yuri liker, I just finished Signalis (And I'll be honest, I played it because of the stuff you reblogged about it, I had no idea what it was prior) and I'm I insane for Ariane reminding me of Iris/Veselka or can we be insane together...

I'm glad my posting actually convinced someone to get a game I like which means I need to ramp up my Mahoyo posts. Alright soldier your next mission is to convince @drdapper to finish it, as I am already pestering him about Samurai Remnant and can't afford to be pushy about two games at once. Gonna be putting the actual meat of this response under a collapsible so as not to spoil anything for anyone who hasn't finished the game.

I was thinking about this ask for a while, and while the characters are obviously different in terms of backstory and whatnot I realized something: Ariane is driven by her fixation on a single person, while Lily is more concerned with people in general, if we're taking a cue from this very good tale about her, which I do. To that end, Ariane forces the memories of Elster onto others in her longing, even though that effort is ultimately a selfish pursuit, whether she knows it or not. Meanwhile, Lily imprints herself onto others, but takes their memories rather than give them, then cements herself in other people like a companion. In that sense, Ariane and Lily are sort of equal opposites - one only wants to be remembered by the woman she loved and forces others to fit that mold, while Lily wants to be remembered by everyone and forces her consciousness upon others. I think it can basically be summed up as longing vs loneliness for Ariane and Lily, respectively.

If you've got anything else to say about Signalis feel free to send it over, I love that game. Probably the single most atmospheric game I've ever played, it absolutely nailed that. I like how Adler's plan was just to walk up to Elster and shove her down an elevator shaft each time she showed up and the three-story pile of bodies tells us this was actually a very effective strategy.

[typekiku]

thoughts on TYPE MOON stuff

well these are my the type moon stuff i have read or watched or whatever so far. this is my opinion only so its inherently correct argue with the wall or touch grass as the youth say SO here it goes drum roll

FATE EXTRA

boring as shit. no joke im sorry its just booty cheeks but of the not sexy kind. its beyond mid its so mid i cant even act like i enjoyed it. it has an interesting concept and world sure but everything else is doo doo butter.

only good part is nero being hot asf and ig whatever servant there is because i only used nero (lmao i aint playing it all over again) she was funny at times

see shes hilarious at times... im sure CCC will change my mind... right? it has sakura what am i saying its PEAK

also fuck them for including arcueid in this crap

GARDEN OF SINNERS

i honestly dont have much to say about this one it never really clicked with me nor did i ever feel anything about it... BESIDES TOUKO

TOUKO IS SO HOT OMG

clears throat

that aside yea i genuinely dont have any opinion on this series of movies good or bad besides movies 3 and 5 which were my favorites

maybe i need to rewatch em one day and really try to get into it

FATE STRANGE FAKE

my favorite spin off in the whole fate franchise. it has some of my absolute favorite characters and GIL like what else would one even want in life amirite

some of my favorites are:

Richard: the absolute goat and one of my fav servants ever

Enkidu: i want a spinoff of gil and enkidu... is that so hard to ask??

Flat: my son

Jack: my uhhh child ig

alcides: the closest we will get to archer herc but just pure cool regardless

hansa: cyborg priest. nothing gets cooler then that

and many more im already too ti- FILIA - red to mention

i've only read up to volume 7 so i gotta get to reading the rest soon

its just pure chaos and is fun while doing so despite being slow as shit

FATE GRAND ORDER

ok this is the most complicated series here in a way since its so incredibly mixed.

there are some of the highest peaks in fate and then some of the lowest lows so lets see

Highest peaks:

babylonia

Camelot

lb5 (YES olympus and atlantis im tired of acting like olympus isnt peak NO heian kyo its mid)

LB6

the rest of the lostbelts are good but not that good

goetia is an incredible villain

lowest lows:

first five singularities

solomon im sorry the stuff with goetia was peak but the rest was average

gameplay

gacha

serious lack of male summer servants like cmon i wanna see them abs

overall fgo is alright but some parts of it is straight up incredible HOWEVER all of it is seriously held back by being a gacha mobile game and has to work around that limitation

also it has barghest whom i absolutely adore

also fuck fgo for forgetting medea...

WITCH ON THE HOLY NIGHT

now this is peak. the most gorgeous tm work by far i have to say its simply an incredible read all around. even tsukire did not look or work or sound as good as mahoyo did even tho it came out almost ten(?) years after

on the story front i loved it too with a special shoutout to soujuuro being one of my favorite characters in TM (i say this often not my fault type moon keeps releasing bangers)

however mahoyo has two issues for me:

the story is clearly incomplete: i dont mean its just nonsense or whatever but when nasu said its the first of a trilogy you can just feel that in the story with alot of things being left in the air. this wouldnt be an issue really if mahoyo 2 wasnt basically dead....

i didnt vibe with the slice of life scenes as much as i usually do in nasu works: this isnt a flaw in the story more so i just didnt like em idk how else to word that

mahoyo is a great read however and i highly highly recommend you read it or else

it also has touko enough said

TSUKIHIME (original version)

Greatest of all time. Zenith of the medium. Hallmark of media. Gold standard of storytelling. Apogee of creativity. Vertex of invention. Crest of ingenuity. Acme of imagination. Pinnacle of innovation. Epic of epics. Legend among legends. Peak fiction

ok fr tho its actually incredible and you should read it right the fuck now

all of the characters are simply chefs kiss. while the visual novel is incredibly dated and the art is even worse you have to understand this is nasu and takeuchis first ever visual novel made on a barely existing budget.

boy do they make up for that.

the vn is split into two with a near side and far side.

while the near side is really good with arcueid and ciels route (ignore how ciel was actually really fucked over even in her own route its laughable and my girl deserved better) the far side is so much more better and really is where the soul of tsukihime and shiki the main character lies

i cba to review it properly besides saying PLEASE READ IT RN or ill cry and you dont wanna see that do you....

heres my ranking of the routes btw best to worse:

hisui

kohaku

akiha

arcueid

ciel

shoutout to satsuki you finally are gonna get the route you deserved

KAGETSU TOHYA

um it has some cool lore and some really good short stories and... yea thats about it...

dont have much else to add...

play it with a guide because the structure of the game is abysmal

FATE STAY NIGHT

what is there to be said about such a masterpiece? what else could be written about fsn that hasnt been written before? i am but an ant in the shadow of the giant that is FSN only seeking some crumbs to feed and live off of. idk what that means but it sounds cool.

FSN is simply tms best work all around. while i prefer tsuki over it and find the tsuki side of TM more interesting FSN overall is much stronger on most fronts but especially its main characters

Shirou emiya is simply the goat nothing else to be said tbh

heres my ranking of the routes:

issei route

heavens feel

ubw

fate

FATE ROUTE MUST BE REANIMATED RAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH SABER DESERVES TO HAVE A PROPER ADAPTATION RAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

we need more medea and kuzuki holy shit are they cute

FATE HOLLOW ATARAXIA

thank you type moon for making a good kagetsu tohya. its actually impressive just how much better this is then KT like seriously what the fuck did they take to drop this banger of a vn

KT had such shit comedy i didnt even giggle throughout it but THIS

THIS is a emotional rollercoaster of a whole different kind.

introducing the third (arc and medea are first and second) love of my life Bazett and angra we go through an incredible main story intermingled with hilarious and wholesome slice of life scenes that never overstay their welcome

this vn completely changed my opinion on some characters especially illya who went from someone i was kinda 50/50 on to adoring her overall

ALSO MEDEA SCENES YES I WON MOTHERFUCKERS I WO- huh? whats that? fgo basically replaced her with medea lily?

one hour of sobbing later

if you have read fsn and not FHA then i must ask you.. wtf is wrong with you psycho? you like missing out on good things? that wouldnt be me is all im saying

read it.

(in case you're wondering yes there is someone i deliberately didnt mention because my opinion on them is too complicated)

TSUKIHIME REMAKE

im not a fan of remaking classics on the level of tsuki. with all its flaws i still find the original to be good enough to not need a remake...

UNTIL I READ THE REMAKE

this is how you do it folks. the story was elevated on nearly every level and if it was the complete story id say its the best ever in existence ever forever fr. its just that good.

there are three things i really want to point out:

while maybe goin overboard i really liked the buffs all the characters received and in general the whole worldbuilding is so much better now with idea bloods and principles and vampire hierarchies and arcueid inflation scenes (heh) its just epic

ciel got a so much better route that actually feels like a ciel route and not just arcueid route 2 electric bugaloo (and getting fucking cucked)

noel is peak

this is peak type moon and when red garden comes out it will be even BETTER especially with satsuki route because satsuki deserves it

there are some other short stories i havent mentioned like garden of avalon, notes, MAGNITUNING (look it up you wont regret it) its all great and worth the time of reading

eventually i wanna play CCC and read some other stuff like maybe prillya DDD, fgo jp like lb7 traum and whatnot

i just wrote this for fun so dont really take anything i say seriously except for the teeny little part where im inherently correct.

uh if you are reading like or share or whatever tf it was idk

ciao

[samipekoe]

do you happen to be a fan of any other typemoon/nasuverse properties (Fate series, Witch on the Holy Night, etc)? I'd love to know who your favorite characters are, and see any fanart you have of them!!

I loooove fate and other than some spin offs and the mobile game I'm big on all of them...fsr is the first Ive played on release so it has a special place in my heart

I'll probably play tsukihime when it comes out on the switch. I've always really liked arcueid's design (only knew her from phantasm carnival for the longest time lol)

mahoyo I was planning to wait for the movies to see if I feel like reading it after 🤔

[xbuster]

Hey. Sorry, you probably talked about it already but I was wondering your opinion on mahoyo.

Haven’t played it yet, but I like Aoko.

Also

[miraclemaya]

You need to play Mahoyo (Witch on the holy night) and meet Aoko Aozaki. Same world as fsn

okay anon. i will put it on the list