The Heaven's Feel movies are super controversial among fans of the original VN, due in large part to being an adaptation of a 30+ hours visual novel story line into a 6 hour film series. For that reason, as a big fan of the VN myself, i went into this one with trepidation as to how much i would enjoy this one. Thankfully right out the gate Presage Flower is an excellent and beautiful feature and a strong start to the HF adaptation.
As is always the case with Ufotable adaptations, the film is shockingly beautiful first and foremost. the studio is supremely excellent in how it handles its various visual aspects and HF is no exception, and perhaps is there best outing to date. Particularly thanks to the gorgeous way in which the film's decided to portray winter in the setting, with light snowfall beautifully punctuating the film's climax. Visuals and direction overall are extremity stellar.
Story wise the adaptation is extremely efficient given its run time. Its starts out with a wonderful rendition of the scenes of Sakura and Shirou meeting each other and becoming close in the events leading up to the start of the story before smartly jumping over some of the early events of the story - as if your watching these films, you wouldve seen all this at least twice already. Going from their its extremely good at moving through the events of the novels in a way that allows sufficient enough breathing room and enough downtime to allow everything to hit properly. Only complaint i might have in this regard is Kotomine telling Shirou about Kiritsugu being trimmed down a bit (which mightve been trimmed down as a slot of people mightve already watched Zero which adds some interesting debates to how the animes are meant to be consumed) and Saber who couldve used more screen time, but alternatively this route in the VN and even as constructed in the film is and always was intended to be consumed after two other routes which give her more screen time so it chooses to rely on that rather than dedicate more screentime to her. Bit of a shame as a massive Saber fan but from a structural perspective i cant fault it too much.
The film also adds some lovely anime original scenes that enhance the story in their own way. Sakura waiting out in the snow for Shirou at the end was sad and adds a bit of foreshadowing (at least thats how i read it), the redone intro to Hassan killing Caster and her master is excellent, and the intro to Saber Alter in the end is haunting as adds a bit to the what that version of Artoria is meant to represent. The film not only adapts what scenes it does bring over fairly well but its new additions at least make checking it out more worthwhile to fans of the VN.
Not much left to say without jumping into the sequels, so ill finish off by saying Presage Flower is a good start to the Film trilogy and as a fan of the VN im very pleased.