Before I get into dissecting this anime, you should know that before you watching this you will need to be familiar with the Fate series as a whole. I highly recommend watching Fate/ Stay Night (either version) before watching this so you aren't too confused as to whats going on (will elaborate more on this later).
STORY: 5/10
This story is the first of a trilogy and you can definitely tell. As this is an alternate timeline from the rest of FSN they spend the first half recapping up to the point where the story diverges. That being said the execution of this is actually terrible. They time-skip so many times for apparently no reason then they skip the initial fight between Lancer and Archer? Like I'd have much rather watched the fights then spend a bunch of time watching the home life of the MC... Which doesn't affect the story at all.... Then they decided it was a good idea to spend the rest of the time setting up the second movie by teasing villains, and trying their best to act like something was happening when in fact absolutely nothing happens the whole movie.
TL;DR Nothing gets accomplished at all, because like I said this was basically a 2 hour trailer for the second movie.
ART 9/10
As expected the art is fantastic. They use CG the right way, and the animation is as good as ever. The fight scenes are choreographed to perfection, but they have more cuts from character to character than the original FSN. So basically the art got better but the directing was nowhere near as good so that's why I'm giving it a 9 instead of a 10.
SOUND 10/10
The fights sound amazing and the sound design used is fantastic. Also the music played sets the tone very well. The voice acting in this is fantastic and the characters sound very realistic in the way they deliver their lines. Really great sounding movie.
CHARACTER 5/10
The characters in this are pretty basic and exactly like the original FSN. Nothing really innovative here. Although I know that they had to be, the characters felt secondary to everything else, and nothing really stuck out to me.
ENJOYMENT 8/10
I enjoyed it overall, because it was still interesting to see how different this one was compared to the other alternate timelines. The fight scenes were cool although very brief, and it did get me ready to watch the second movie so theres that.
OVERALL 7/10
This movie was actually pretty underwhelming, and you can definitely tell that this was a just a set up for the second movie. The execution of the story was terrible if I'm to be honest, but at least the fights were cool.
