The House in Fata Morgana – Dreams of the Revenants Edition (Switch)
A flower growing through a crack in the concrete has a beauty more profound than one bloom among many in a field. A hard earned smile warms the heart because the joy has a deeper meaning to it. The finest blades are forged by the metal at its most vulnerable bearing the many strikes that shape it. The House in Fata Morgana – Dreams of the Revenants Edition is a visual novel teeming with brutal tragedies, but because it digs its nails into your heart, the moments of release bring with them beautiful emotion. In lesser hands some of its deepest darkest points could read as needless sadistic cruelty, but this is a story shaped not to provide you easy catharsis, but instead the kind of robust and layered satisfaction that comes from emerging from the other side of a story that spares no blows and delivers each new hit with remarkable purpose. This is not a visual novel about finding the oasis at the end of a trek through the desert, but a narrative like scaling a mountain, the hardships giving the journey its shape rather being obstructions on the path to the finale you strive for.
The House in Fata Morgana – Dreams of the Revenants Edition begins with the perspective of a spirit who has lost any sense of self, awakening in a dark manner attended to by an enigmatic maid. The Maid, in an effort to help you recover the memory of who you are, takes you to different doors in the mansion, each one containing a tragic tale from a different point in this manor’s history. Initially, the shape of The House in Fata Morgana almost feels like an anthology tale, the early stories mostly separate save some key connecting elements like the maid that start laying the groundwork of the game’s late more involved plot. This is not just a place to serve as a window to the pains of the past, but a deep centuries spanning tale where each principle character plays far larger a part than you might first perceive and has hidden depths that take hours to uncover. There is a supernatural bent to some of the journey, the mansion itself is said to be under the curse of a witch and your ability to view the past is something explicitly engaged with in some otherworldly manner rather than some form of reminiscing, but despite the fantasy elements facilitating the broader narrative, the tales make a point of emphasizing the sometimes brutal realities of life.
Not that the game will throw you right into the deep end and attempt to hurt you without purpose. The stories you hear can have lovely, downright beautiful moments as the cast members feel the pull of love, fight to do what is right, or most important of all, try to find themselves again even after some terrible tragedy threatened their very soul. At first the anthology format does make for some painful dramatic irony, you can watch lovely and sweet moments build up and become attached to these characters through the time you spend with them, all while knowing you march towards an inevitably dark conclusion. The game hardly makes it fully clear where the story will go, and not only are there moments of hope and reconciliation, but just because there is an unhappy end to a specific section of the story, The House in Fata Morgana is not interested in sharing these tales just to create a misery parade and plunge its players into doomed endings. To say too much would ruin the cleverly weaved connections that make each window into the past so valuable, but each of the early stories also works fairly well as something standalone, the emphasis on tragedy clear but the themes and messages giving them elements worth sinking your teeth into.
A great deal of The House in Fata Morgana – Dreams of the Revenants Edition’s plots tie to some form of struggle for identity. Be it trying to fight your own, struggle to form a new one, to try and reclaim one lost through harsh experience, or even just find out who you are at all, the struggles with the sense of self are a consistent factor and what leads to so many trials and tribulations. Can an evil man fight who he truly is on the inside to grasp for the peace he desires? Can a woman abandon the only life she’s ever known to try and appreciate the simpler life within reach? The game will not grab you and force you to consider each element but so many characters find the tragedy in their tales as there are no clean answers in life. Acceptance, love, power, comfort, who we are determines how we can achieve our desires and the sacrifices we might be forced to make or, conversely, the ones we make as we struggle with that realization of self. It’s hardly the only theme though. Our first tale focuses on a pair of well-to-do siblings with an almost sickeningly sweet relationship, yet we learn the toll of isolation through the building issues that are too often brushed aside and left to fester. Quite often The House in Fata Morgana will not allow us a hollow look at the human condition, even the best people able to make mistakes or have their own moments where they aren’t so perfect. At the same time, even those who seem vile and cruel unfortunately have reasons behind their actions, the story able to make you sympathize with a monster because it treats its cast members not as parts to be played but complex individuals who have motivations that especially become clear when you become privy to their thoughts.
The House in Fata Morgana – Dreams of the Revenants Edition may make you sometimes beg for catharsis, but while there are moments that can dip right into horror at times, it is not a tale that oppressively revels in it. There are difficult stretches indeed, but there are light-hearted moments and because this visual novel is so long, it can spend a good deal of time relishing in the calmer and heartwarming moments too. When you see characters in love, you get to feel it, watch it grow, see it overcome hardships, and cheer for it to defy the tragedy ahead. Were it only a cruel display of constant pain, it could not bring you those tearjerker moments where the building tension pays off. Certainly the story-telling is helped by the beautiful realization of its artistic side, the artist Moyataro creating gorgeous refined illustrations with an almost Renaissance feel, the main cast members realized in a way that allow them to have subtle charming quirks but also help to nail in the brutality of the darkest moments. The visual novel will go for surprising stretches with nothing but textboxes and a background image, but the music lends its own elegant touch to the affair as well. The song that plays for the young siblings for example matches the effervescent naivety of the sheltered Nellie, the young girl’s isolated world view having an unnerving air beneath the joyful singsong quality. Meanwhile, Pauline, the woman who worries for her lover who has not returned from sea, has a song that matches that hopeful longing. Some tracks do have lyrics in a range of different languages, some even a bit on the nose if you care to listen closely, but besides being a little distracting at times, they come to be so integral to the emotional baseline that merely playing the associated theme at the right time can bring tears to the eyes for those who remember the emotional scenes they accompany. Sound effects are even put to powerful use, uncomfortable accompaniments bringing to life scenes that would otherwise be realized only in words thanks to the game’s conservative efforts in illustrating its events.
The House in Fata Morgana – Dreams of the Revenants Edition is mostly a linear narrative meant to be experienced in a set way, there being a few points where you make a choice but mostly to see an alternate bad ending or to engage in a bit of levity when the outcomes instead allow you to see characters behave a little differently. Flexible saving makes it easy to pursue each little branch with no fuss, although some are timed choices, the game thankfully offering an autosave at these rare moments so you can always indulge your curiosity later. That does mean The House in Fata Morgana – Dreams of the Revenants Edition is nearly just a kinetic novel, but considering it’s likely to take most people over thirty hours to just read the main story, it’s not too surprising it chose to keep its format fairly rigid. Rather than fretting over choices, you get to witness a carefully crafted work of art unfold, and while you need some faith that it will be worth taking the emotional gut punches, you come to appreciate the way the broader narrative makes sure most every step along the way had a true point and appreciable value, especially when you dive into the extra stories included in this package.
While I do feel it incredibly necessary to preface the darker and more depressing sides of the story exist, when the story comes to an end, you instead find yourself aching to spend more time with the characters because they are not defined only by their suffering. The extra stories in this Dreams of the Revenants Edition end up granting you that though, a handful of extra tales ranging from only taking a few minutes to read to being a full 8 hour long epic on its own. The most substantial of the bunch is undoubtedly A Requiem for Innocence, a tale that helps flesh out some of the more difficult to sympathize with characters to good effect. Not only does it inject more time to examine individual actions but also build up their humanity and relationship more, and while it feels perhaps one good sentence short of assuaging some unsavory implications of their close bond, it is otherwise an important potential rehabilitation that adds that remarkable depth to characters who sometimes sink to the lowest lows in the main story. It actually exists as an individual release on Steam rather than part of a package and while it does mostly feel like it works best as supplement since it brushes past some key events expecting you to know them, it still provides the most poignant look at one character’s ongoing issues with his sense of powerlessness and where trying to defy such things too strongly can turn out just as painful.
The other included stories can sometimes be some little bits of fluff or a new layer to a scene that would have slowed it down had been part of the original plot, although even in yet another nearly 8 hour story that almost sounds like it’s going to be the softest and sweetest of all the game will still take its time to address the issues it needs to in order to make a story that feels real but can get you closer to that beautiful joy that comes from a bright light breaking through the darkness. The emotional ride is definitely the most pronounced part of the adventure, but we get many interesting small struggles through the entirety of the experience, like the way religious faith can both deny us peace but prevent us from deeper mistakes or how the small moments that at first may seem inconsequential can build into something truly beautiful and marvelous. The writing may understand how to evoke pain, but it also can construct the most powerful of romances and the tightest of bonds, with close examinations of difficult emotions where ideas of forgiveness, love, and self-worth feel more than simple ideas amidst the various contexts they find themselves in.
THE VERDICT: The House in Fata Morgana – Dreams of the Revenants Edition is a lengthy and impressive collection of related stories that tell an immensely deep and impactful tale thanks to its understanding of how far to go not just for pain, but for love and beauty. The stories told here are complex and moving, the narrative mostly set in stone but that allows it to carefully construct each person to feel like a living breathing human who makes mistakes but never acts without cause. It is a full length novel with themes to explore, ideas to ruminate on, moments that make you love its cast and mourn for them. Its music and art bring it to beautiful life, the segmentation of the story even allowing you to get multiple smaller digestible tales of value and interest before it reveals how expertly it all ties together through the truly moving back half, the additional stories included in this package just the icing on an already enchanting cake.
And so, I give The House in Fata Morgana – Dreams of the Revenants Edition for Nintendo Switch…
A FANTASTIC rating. The House in Fata Morgana – Dreams of the Revenants Edition could very well be deserving of my more involved Quality Time review format meant for the excellent games I have the deepest thoughts on, but to reveal its mysteries to those who do not experience them through the proper tale would do them a disservice. I have pussyfooted around deeper details a bit in service of preserving its quality, but despite the game’s size, it also is built superbly to hold your interest. The initial anthology format makes it easy to build up your early investment, each tale standing on its own but with connecting threads that tie back to the initial mystery of the mansion that transcends time and your own identity. You get to see tales of different stripes, be it a rich family’s tale in the Baroque period or a man of new money in America during the rise of locomotives. You get to see love has many faces, be it romantic, protective, possessive, or more, and you are asked to look at the decisions of characters you come to know so well and consider what drove them to that point. The presentation, while sparse at parts and even shifting to a more basic anime style for one of the extra stories, does a good deal in giving it a classy air, something that reinforces your faith and allows you to stomach some of the tragic parts without it feeling gratuitous. Even if you aren’t going to more deeply ponder the tales and the inner depths of the main characters, the stories still present enough outright that can make for easy emotional resonance, especially once it has laid all the groundwork for a romance so powerful and effective that even typing about it now brings tears to my eyes. It is truly a novel in that it expects that degree of thought, attention, and even fortitude to reach its conclusion, not spending time going for easy appeals when it knows it has the depth that makes those willing to see it through truly appreciate its masterfully woven tale.
The House in Fata Morgana – Dreams of the Revenants Edition does make the interesting choice to sometimes use words that aim for authenticity of emotion rather than period authenticity, no one was saying “super” or “weirdo” in 1099, but it brings to life a character whose vivacious and air-headed nature is best exemplified through phrasing we’re familiar with for such a character rather than making the narrative difficult to penetrate. The game has its focus and intent on crafting intricately realized characters who shouldn’t be lost behind frittering with details outside the scope of the emotional plot, and while there are little bits that maybe could be tightened up, considering its length and even the additional tales included in this package to put even more meat on what bones had been left uncovered, it feels like the canvas was used properly and without much waste. It may be hard to recommend this particular visual novel to most, it is a commitment, it is difficult at times to weather the emotional turmoil, and it basically is just a novel but with the video game format helping it dole out certain events in controlled forms better than words on a page. For those who believe themselves able to engage with a literary work on an intimate level though, The House in Fata Morgana – Dreams of the Revenants Edition provides a beautiful, challenging, meaningful, and captivating examination of love, humanity, identity, reality, and perhaps appropriately enough for how long it takes to fully ingest and consider all that is offered here, perseverance.