Impressions: Tsukihime (Game)

Tsukihime. Is. Awesome. Period.

No smart-alecky comments. No witty, fun-poking repertoire. No doubt. It is awesome. Go buy it. Then go download the English patch here. And while your order is being processed and your patch is downloading, sit your ass down and listen to me rant about how awesomely awesome this game is.

And yes, I know this is filed under “Hentai”. Trust me, it does not matter. More after the jump.


Before we move on to the game itself, allow me a moment to carry out the necessary introductions. If you’re into anime, chances are you’ve heard of Fate/stay Night. The Fate/stay anime/manga are based on a game of the same name by TYPE-MOON (yes, all in uppercase!), a Japanese doujin-soft company founded by writer Kinoko Nasu and artist Takashi Takeuchi. Fate/stay is the company’s third or fourth project. TYPE-MOON’s very first work was a novel by the name of Kara no Kyoukai. Originally published online in 1998 on Nasu and Takeuchi's website, it was commercially released in 2004 by Kodansha. The series was extremely well received and sold over 500,000 copies. However, at the time of its ’98 release, TYPE-MOON hadn’t yet been officially formed.

Then, in 2000, TYPE-MOON’s first official project saw its release. That game’s name was Tsukihime. The game is an interactive, erotic visual novel, which places a very, very heavy emphasis on plot. Not only that, Tsukihime features outstanding writing; quite possibly some of the best I’ve seen in a game to date.


The game is about Tohno Shiki, a boy who is victim to a life-threatening accident at a very young age. Shiki wakes up in the hospital, only to find out that, although doctors say his recovery is miraculously complete, not all seems to be right. Shiki can see strange lines around him everywhere. Lines in people ... lines in objects ... on the floor, on the walls ... everywhere. Furthermore, he realizes that he can destroy any of these objects, simply by tracing along the lines with a simple knife. After an “incident” at the hospital, the doctors conclude that Shiki’s brain was damaged in the accident and that he is hallucinating.

But all is not as it seems. The lines aren’t a mere hallucination. They threaten to drive Shiki crazy as he comes to the realization that there isn’t a single spot around him – no matter where he goes – without the lines. Shortly thereafter, he meets a lady who gives him a pair of glasses that hide the lines as long as he wears them. After healing Shiki emotionally over the next week, the lady disappears from his life forever.

Cut to eight years later. Shiki is ready to leave the home of his adopted family and return to the Tohno family mansion, the residence of his real family. With both his parents dead, Shiki’s only real remaining family is his sister, Akiha. However, once he starts living at Tohno residence, strange incidents begin to take place.


On the way back home from school, Shiki notices a beautiful girl. He doesn’t know her name or where she’s from. All he notices about her is her undeniable beauty. Her golden hair … her crimson eyes. Falling into a trance, Shiki follows her to her home and takes off his glasses. He then proceeds to cut her up along the lines on her body into several pieces, making the entire apartment look like a blood bath. He doesn’t know why he did it. He doesn’t know how he did it.

But more importantly, he doesn’t know who she was...

BAM. That’s the sound of Tsukihime’s very first plot twist hitting you square in the face. The first of many, I might add. As I said earlier, Tsukihime features some of the best writing I’ve seen in an interactive novel in ages. The game is extremely heavy on dialogue and the game’s interface practically forces you to pay attention to what is being said. Mirror-Moon, the group that translated the entire game, has done an outstanding job of remaining faithful to the source material while making the game accessible to people outside of Japan. Dialogue is deep, insightful and sometimes, it really makes you think a lot about the game in relation to the real world. Playing Tsukihime is like reading a book, only on the PC and with hauntingly beautiful music playing in the background, accompanied by still pictures.


Personally, I found the visual style of Tsukihime to be very appealing. The character designs are all beautiful and crisp. They’re not very different from any standard anime character designs, though. No, Tsukihime’s visual appeal stems from the fact that it mixes these sharp, well-defined anime characters with blurry, beautifully coloured – sometimes to the point of looking painted by hand – backgrounds. The style works wonderfully for the story the game tells, and keeps you from getting bored, despite the fact that you see these backgrounds several times during the course of the game.

Couple that with the fact that Tsukihime features a beautiful soundtrack, and you have a very kickass interactive novel on your hands. The track list comprises only of 10 tracks, most of them being variations of one another. However, since nearly every single piece is so beautifully appropriate to the scenes unfolding onscreen, you tend not to notice their repetitiveness.

Tsukihime features 5 different girls, which means you have five different paths you could end up on. Furthermore, some of these girls’ paths split up into two different endings towards the end of the game, so you’re looking at a reasonably long playtime. And this is without the use of a walkthrough, mind you. I’d best warn you in advance ... Tsukihime is tough. I found myself dying a fair number of times throughout the game, having to re-load a previous save file and start over from there.

Luckily, the game provides you with around 20 save slots, so you have plenty of room to save at various choices. Ending up with the girl of your choice can also be a fairly trying task.

Tsukihime can be a very touching game at times. I found myself especially attached to Arcueid and proceeded to play through her ending first (the recommended order is: Arcueid, Ciel, Akiha, Hisui and Kohaku). By the time I made it to the end of the game, I was pretty much in love with her. However, just because it’s touching, doesn’t mean Tsukihime can’t be downright spooky at times, too. This game isn’t necessarily about love or friendship or any of that. It’s about suspense. It’s about incidents that date all the way back to Shiki’s childhood ... incidents that scarred him for life.


It’s about the Tohno mansion and his sister and her two maids. But at the same time, it’s also about the girl he killed and his senior at school, Ciel. It's about a secret society, living in the shadows. While some of Tsukihime’s scenes and stories intersect, each girl’s path offers a ton in the way of new information. In order to gain a total and complete understanding of just what is going on, you would have to play through each ending. However, you can also just play through one ending and leave it at that. Each ending provides a good sense of closure, a significant amount of information and a very touching experience along the way.

Bringing it all to a close, I highly recommend you give this a look if you’re into interactive novels and/or hentai games. You can download the English patch for the game here.