DescriptionThe House in Fata Morgana is a visual novel that was written by Keika Hanada, developed by Novectacle and translated and published here by MangaGamer.
Its impressively deep and tragic story spans a thousand year and has no less than 9 main characters.
Actually, make that 10 if you count
It is a gothic horror and love story full of twists and turns and enough tragedy to fill many gothic novels.
The game starts like a kinetic novel, with little to no choice, but do not let that fool you. While few and far between, the choices in this game are almost all very impactful, so much so they will often end the story right there. A bit of advice: save the game whenever you reach a choice and keep all those saves (you have way more than enough slots for that), especially if you want to later try to get all the achievements, as that will require you to
Trigger warning: while the visuals never get completely graphic, the text does describe many terrible acts and gory scenes in great details. Tread carefully.
Pros+ Astounding story, full of tragedies, mysteries and surprises
+ Amazing soundtrack that really helps the script move the reader
+ Beautiful art for the sprites and CGs
+ A vast array of characters, each of which has many secrets to reveal
+ Great writing (the style is always modern, regardless of the era, that is a choice made by both the original author and the translation team for the reader not to struggle with Middle Age speech and lose the thread of the story, having tried reading old texts in their original versions, I think it was a good choice on their part)
+ Impressive length for a visual novel
Cons- High chances that you will get depressed or want to curse all of mankind (or at least many of the characters) during the game
- Backgrounds are nothing more than photographs with a splurging of filters on them and it shows... I would not have counted that as a con if the sprites and CGs did not put the backgrounds to shame (or if I had other bad things to say about this game)
VerdictI sincerely regret that this is only a visual novel (note: there are a few drama CDs that MangaGamer might translate) and not a regular novel or an anime or a live action series... because I know that many of my relatives and friends who would tremendously enjoy the story will never give it a try in this form...
That said, reading this review, I can safely say that you are a gamer and interested in maybe buying this game, so that means you are part of the niche that visual novels target and thus part of the lucky few who will have the opportunity to discover this story.
If you love visual novels, horror stories, love stories, tragedies... in fact, if you enjoy reading a good story with three dimensional characters struggling against the odds and their own nature, you owe it to yourself to try the House in Fata Morgana.
But beware. The tragedies that unfold in this game, as the Maid would say, you will only be able to bear them because they are not yours... and if you have any empathy, then you will probably feel like some of those trials ARE yours. Even then, it is worth it.
5.0