Game Thoughts: The House in Fata Morgana
I finally got to the end of The House in Fata Morgana on Friday; a widely celebrated visual novel about love and tragedy and a big ol' house with a witch.
It was a good visual novel with a pretty wild story that definitely cranks the tragedy (read: fucked-up-ness) to 11 while still keeping you attached to the main characters. I'd definitely recommend it to those into visual novels that want to avoid the harem/smutty titles that tend to crowd the space.
That said, it's a great visual novel, not absolutely not actual novel quality. Going into it I had unrealistic expectations of this being literature-grade writing based on the reviews, and it most certainly wasn't that. Despite the interesting threads and mysteries running through this story, it has a lot of dips in quality and questionable design decisions throughout.
Be forewarned that this is a 30+ hour long "game" that consists almost entirely of dialogue with no gameplay elements other than a handful of choices that either continue the story or terminate immediately with a bad ending. That is, there aren't any "branches" to be found in this tale.
If you're new to visual novels I definitely recommend starting with something like "The Nonary Games" or "Raging Loop" to get a feel for the medium before trying to swallow this one!
(note, expand post for detailed thoughts on game. Spoils basically everything, won't make sense if you haven't played)
-The Art
I think the art style suited the game wonderfully. The character portraits dripped with melancholy and were generally good with a couple minor exceptions involving strange jaw mechanics.
I do wish there was more art, however. A few more backgrounds, more character art for Michel's story, etc.
The Music
I think my opinion on this one might be the minority. I didn't like the music at all. While it definitely felt like it suited the story and setting, there were points that the absolute wrong song was playing in the background.
I really wasn't fond of the signing. Maybe I'm just not into the particular brand of voice on display here, but half of the time it just sounded like a woman randomly wailing in the background. I ended up muting the game or keeping the volume very low for a lot of my playthrough.
The Mystery
The game starts out with some excellent mysteries that slowly resolve as the story progresses. Key questions arise pretty quickly:
- Who's the protagonist?
- What's up with the maid?
- What's going on with the white-haired girl?
- Who is the witch? Is there one?>
I do feel, however, that the writers were too heavy handed in pushing the "everyone thinks Michel is the white haired girl" idea, as well as the "Giselle think's she's the witch". These conclusions are easy enough for the reader to make independently, but it took some weird heavy-handed dialogue gymnastics to have the story directly have Giselle and Morgana making incorrect deductions. Some things are better left unsaid in a mystery game, and the indirection felt needlessly forced.
The Characters
I think this is where Fata Morgana is the most interesting. Every character in this story is subject to varying levels of tragedy and torment, and some of the characters were quite unique for this kind of story.
I absolutely adored Michel and Giselle (and their relationship) once they both regained their memories. Both having been through hell, you could feel them healing when they finally reunited. One of my favorite moments in the entire game was the two of them being able to almost joke about their trauma with one another. The idea that being capable of sharing your trauma with someone who can accept you can lighten a seemingly unbearable burden is a good one, and it's conveyed well through their interactions.
The really interesting characters in the story are the 3 targets of Morgana's curse: Mel, Yukimasa, and Jacopo. I found it novel that the writers included completely irredeemable characters as part of the cast. Yukimasa (Bestia/Swordsman) and Jacopo (Lord) are a literal psychopath and enormous piece of shit respectively. These characters were very untraditional and we got to explore their motivators and downfalls from several angles.
I do think it was a mistake to try to cast these two particular characters in an empathetic light in the end. While Mel was complicit in Morgana's confinement, his sin was being selfish, cowardly, and young. These were things he could overcome, and while he was capable of awful things, it was always external pressures that drove him. There was a lesson we could extract from Mel. Mel could be better.
Yukimasa, on the other hand, kills and tortures for pleasure. His desires are beastly. He admits to not even loving Pauline (he simply wants to be near her to keep him "tethered"). What is the lesson from trying to humanize him? Apparently "hey, try to suppress these urges and maybe don't tell Pauline you don't love her and may kill her if you can't control yourself"... What?
And Jacopo? Jacopo fell in love with a 12 year old girl at 22 years old, then later on locked her in a tower and drained her of her blood until she died even after he found out is was the same girl. There's no redemption for Jacopo. It doesn't matter what got him to that point. Somehow the story tries to milk some kind of empathy from his situation but it fell flat for me. The two honestly deserved eternity being cursed.
These complaints, however, only pertain to the narrative's attempt to elicit empathy from the reader -- the characters themselves were very interesting brushed with which to paint this picture.
The same can't really be said for the most female half of the cast. Outside of Giselle the primary women of the story really only existed as tools to better tell the mens' stories. Morgana herself, while a driving force of the story, is pretty bland as far as personality goes. Nellie is one-dimensional as hell (with a thankful touch of development near the end). Pauline is about as interesting as a brick in both of her lives.
Marie, however, had some spark! She was a completely unhinged asshole with her monologues in Jacopo's story, and was a badass in her past life. I kinda found her monologues and plan behind Door 3 a little stupid, but as a character she at least wasn't a step-ladder that existed solely to prop up her male counterpart.
I want to throw in a quick word for the supporting characters in Michel's story. His brothers, his mother, and his tormenter were all super interesting, even if they didn't get as much screen time. Honestly, the biggest tragedy of this visual novel is we didn't get full character portraits for Michel's chapter.
.The Writing
This was the most disappointing bit of the game. While I liked the story, the writing was weak. I went in expecting professional-grade dialogue, but got anime-grade dialogue. Perhaps this is simply a side-effect of being fan-translated, perhaps I was expecting too much from a medium that so heavily anime-inspired.
Firstly, the dialogue often can't decide whether to use modern slang or ye olde language. I decided to chalk this up to: "time is strange in the mansion, and language is being translated automatically to modern times, as that's where the story will end". It was enough to suspend my annoyance.
The writers frequently had terrible timing, lazy and forced dialogue to progress story elements, and a lot of awkward moments that completely fell flat.
Entire portions of the game (read: Paulina's side of Bestia's story) were unnecessary or just executed so poorly that they would have been better left out, and the amount of ellipses used in the game was quite silly.
The Story
It's good! Interesting stuff happens, there's twists and turns, there's tragedy and love and an ending that was maybe too good for all involved. There's definitely something unique here, and I was engaged for the majority of the content.
It's always exciting to read something new, and as someone who doesn't frequently read love stories, mysteries, or tragedies, this was all very new to me. I found a lot of things happening I didn't expect, and many of my expectations turned around. Yes, some of it is stupid, but it was good enough as a whole to keep me reading.
I wasn't particularly happy with one aspect of the story -- the reveal about Jacopo and Morgana. Jacopo (22) fell in love with Morgana (12) while he tended to her face which was rotting off in chunks. This was kind of a revulsion moment that knocked me right out of my immersion.
HOWEVER, I gave myself some time to think before chucking my switch out the window -- why did I have such a visceral reaction to this, but was totally cool reading about the same 14 year old Morgana having her arm chopped off then being locked in a tower and bled to death? Societal ideals, obviously. I feel like it would be unfair to criticize the game for the inclusion of this, but then be totally fine reading all the absolute horrors that happen to everyone else in the story.
The ending of was a little sappy and convenient, but I was rooting so hard for Michel and Giselle that it got me anyways and I was happy with the results.
In Conclusion
I enjoyed my time in the House in Fata Morgana. Obviously this isn't an "I loved seeing everyone suffer", but rather a "this is all very interesting, what happens next" kind of enjoyment. I come away a little disappointed in the writing, but I'd not say no to reading more works by the people who made this game.
That said, there does appear to be some additional content to the game with extra stories. I was ready to dive in, but discovered the first one is a full-blown extra visual novel about Jacopo and Morgrana's relationship... While I'm willing to accept the inclusion of that nonsense as part of the original story, "Grown man falls in love with 12 year old girl with rotting face" isn't exactly the tagline for the kind of story I want to willingly engage with, so we'll leave this story where it ended.