I wish I had never fucking watched the anime. It's boring as hell playing through the first route because I know what happens.

>The characters are good
The music was too, and those are the two most important things in my opinion. That's just my opinion though. I'm no expert by any means when it comes to VNs.

better than Tsukihime

I like it, looking forward to the UBW animation.

I just realized Type-Moon threads make up about half of /vn/. You guys need to read some more VNs.

>>18
I think the fact that this board averages less than one post per week is greater evidence of that.

>>18
>>19
I can't read Japanese, and I don't like reading dating sims. I've already watched countless bad harem anime, and it's all the same shit. Now you see the dilemma. Feel free to recommend some stuff though. Also, please avoid things that already have an anime adaption. It's boring to read the same mediocre story over again at a much slower pace.

>>20
If by dating sims you mean VNs with romance (dating sims are actually a completely different type of game) then the medium might not be for you since most do have romance. Even so, comparing them to harem anime is sacrilegious.

>This is the most overrated shit ever, /vn/.
The main problem is how people expect action to some kind of main element of it, and ironically it's not.
These kinds of people expect(ed) something more in line of Fate/Zero, Fate/Stay Night however, was never about that sort of thing.

Both of them comes with the premise of a "magical war with spirits of heroes of the past duking it out!", but the difference here is how Fate/Zero actually is more or less about what's mentioned above, wheras Fate/Stay Night is about how what's mentioned above affects everyone, and how the secrets and true nature of the "war" alters everyones correlation to it.

There is also thing about how Fate/Stay Nights war started prematurely, and how more or less all the capable adults died in the previous war.

But Fate/Stay Night isn't really overrated if you haven't been fooled into believing it's something it's not.
It doesn't live up as an action novel, because it kind of isn't one to begin with.
It is however a rather good novel about mental conflicts and convictions.
This however does make it into a rather nice adventure novel, but adventure does not equal action by a long shot, even though it's usually a part of the adventure somewhere or at several places. But even if that is the case, Adventure novels and Action novels are fundamentally different and focuses on different themes.

And yes, personally I would say that the characters of Fate/Stay Night are rather good, but another noteworthy thing about them is Shirou himself, the protagonist.
"Shirou's" archtype, while not exactly uncommon, it's really unusual for authors to take it as far as Nasu did with Shirou, and with correlation with Archer, that portrays their character even further in even more lights and perspectives, and that is kind of neat.

Fate/Stay Night might perhaps not be the greatest novel ever, but it does have things not readily found in other novels, and that makes it sort of unique, and sometimes being unique is good enough to become popular, even if the objective quality may or may not perhaps be as spectacular.

It's really polished and it has a lot of detail. You can really feel that a lot of effort has been put into the game and that the story is really well thought through.

But I really dislike the game. I personally always had difficulties with suspension of disbelief and the dramatic moments are way too exaggerated. And the drawing quality is really an eyesore. My god, learn to draw. Look at the Shirou. I mean, come on...

I find the magic and mythology content unbearable but at an younger age I can totally see myself get lost in it. The background is rich and it's simply well made. And the game is HUGE. I respect that and I can see the appeal in it.

Well it is definitely overrated but most introductory VNs are. I think there aren't that many people on /vn/ that have played more than several VNs anyway but still it wasn't THAT bad.
It was just pretty repetitive and in general wasn't worth the length.

Hell, I liked it. It was my second VN, though, and after Tsukihime (which I liked better actually.) The characters, music and atmosphere in general were enough to make up for the shortcomings.