Name: The plot was butchered by the movie format but it's good if you take it as a highlight reel of the novel.
Item: Fate/stay night [Heaven’s Feel] III. spring song
Rating: 85
Author: dogidogi

Waifra

The plot was butchered by the movie format but it's good if you take it as a highlight reel of the novel. · Waifora

(the title and some of the points apply to all three movies)
(has spoilers but will only be tagged as such tho)

I got into the nasuverse rabbit hole as most people do, saw a few cool clips from the anime, noticed some famous characters and wanted to see what it was all about. But, as most do, i did not know how to start it and the anime only order was a mess between people who said to start with Zero, UBW or 2006 Deen.
So instead (and to my future self's great pleasure) i took the ""easy"" route and read the VN.
And that was one of the best calls i have made since the VN is fucking amazing. It has all the same voice actors as the anime (but younger so better suited to their roles, specially Noriko Shitaya as Sakura and Jouji Nakata as Kirei sadly), coupled with amazing prose by Nasu, amazing OSTs and some goodie extras the anime don't have such as the bad ends and the Tiger Dojos (Taiga my beloved).
So when i got to Heaven's Feel i started watching the movies kinda alongside the VN to do some fresh comparisons. And i got to the conclusion spelled in the title of this review.
The movies are amazing on a technical level with a great score by Kaijura and some of the best animation ever. Also most of the added scenes like

Spoiler, click to view

Sakura and Rin buying the puppet body for Shirou and showing Kirei's wife suicide

were a good and welcome addition.

But the plot, all of the characters (literally no one is safe), some of the exposition and some of the weird changes they made to the story beats such as

Spoiler, click to view

Zouken's final death and the ending making it much more melancholic and serious than it should be (also Rider disrespect is unforgivable, they fucking removed her from the final shot!)

were butchered for runtime's sake and wanting to get to action quicker. The ending is actually awful, they just removed most of it but added some pointless scenes between Sakura and Rin and I don't even know what they tried to do since if they just did the novel ending the exact same way it would have been way better received and they would just need like 3 more minutes of runtime.
Shirou's development and

Spoiler, click to view

showing the betrayal to his old ideals

were done fine but other important things like the

Spoiler, click to view

fact that he was losing his mind and the actual pain Archer's arm caused him

were either glossed over or only shown visually to not-so-great success. Also, as it's pretty widely known even to people who did not read the novel Kirei and Illya got their roles, moments, dialogues and developments severly cut to the great disappointment to the people who were watching this movies as they released. Sadly all of these things and some more make this trilogy an inferior version to experience the story compared to the Visual Novel. But if you want to just view some eye candy with not much care for the intrycacies of the plot and it's characters or you are just here for the girls and doods then you are fine.
You can get the Visual Novel offically in a few months for Steam and on the Switch or download the fanmade Ultimate Edition, it's long, really long like it has more words than the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy long but if you are a newcomer that really wants to know the story and characters or someone who already watched the animes but hasn't read the Vn yet, do so, you won't regret it (hopefully, no hards feelings if you don't)

To end this i will show some of the best passages from the novel that were partially or completely removed from the adaptation to actually try to prove every piece of praise i've said.

Spoiler, click to view

fate route sad extra

Spoiler, click to view