Maybe i’m just a sucker for darker stories, but HF just appeals more to me. The only real problem I have with it are the 3 days where almost nothing happens besides sex and some interludes. But even then, it was necessary to make room for the climax.
Also, I REALLY thought Shirou’s ideal was… Well, stupid, so I preferred his mature self from HF. It’s better to fight for something which will actually take you somewhere than…Ending up like Archer. Yeah.
Once again, excellent review.

Such a disgusting victim-blaming.

Go read something about domestic abuse before you open your mouth again. Educate yourself. Specially when someone was subjected to it since they were five years old.

What would Rin do? Oh, fare worse than Sakura, because she’s much weak-willed as one bad ending shows it.

In fact, Nasu said: “Even if seems that many people voted pairing Shirou with Saber, I think that for Shirou, Sakura comes first.”

Either way, I think the girls fit Shirou in each scenario. Fate isn’t the ‘real’ one, they are all real, they are different dimensions.

Heaven’s Feel Shirou is COMPLETELY unfit for Saber. Hell, doesn’t he kill her?

Not sure if… serious?

Archer doesn’t love Rin romantically… Archer comes from a future/past where he loved neither Rin nor Saber (the ditched Illya route).

And well sorry if I wasn’t clear, I said that I wasn’t a fan of Sakura, not that I didn’t like her. She is not my favorite character but I like her, except her voice.

And yes about the luck of Rin and Shiro I was talking in overall term, since it’s the bad habit, in my opinion, of Sakura’s fans to always compare her life with the others. In that regard Heaven’s feel does the same thing: you finish this arc and you realise that in the two others arc, there will always be the problem of Sakura, no matter how well your story has ended.
(And I have no problem with that, I’m just observing facts)

As for Sakura’s voice, well, that seems to me to be a pretty trivial reason to not like a character, TBH. Personally, I like Sakura’s voice (it fits her well), but even if I didn’t it wouldn’t make me dislike her as a character. And, yes, she is extraordinarily strong.

And, yeah, I’d agree that Rin and Shirou aren’t particularly lucky overall, but in terms of their magical abilities, they are, in terms of both what they were born with and the way that they were brought up, which is what I think Altima was getting at there. Sakura was likely born with similar abilities to Rin, but whereas Rin’s was nurtured by her father (albeit at the expense of her humanity and childhood), Sakura’s was totally wasted by Tokiomi’s stupidity and unwillingness to train her and Zouken’s attempts to turn her into a Matou (and she didn’t get a childhood either).

*Edit* Hmm, I didn’t see Altima’s comment there before I posted mine. Ah, well, never mind….

Actually, she is really lucky. At least with her training, she got some kind of benefit from it, and proper instruction on not to hurt herself. Sure it was hard, but not above what you’d expect from someone trying to perfect an art. The game shows us that Sakura had none of that, and her magical alignment changed, which makes it even harder for her to use magic now than before. Rin had no such problem. It was pride and her trying to deceive herself into thinking she could even compare to the sufferings Sakura went through (for no benefit) in order to distance herself from the girl to escape the guilt she feels.

But yes, you’re right, she is really clumsy, the issue here is that this clumsiness has consequences.

Also, it is fine for you not to like Sakura, but I like to put things into perspective.
As for loneliness, I’ll give you that she lives alone, but she seems to have been active in school activities. She goes shopping regularly with Makidera, who has a comabtive relationship with her, she has Ayako, and a host of people

And well , I’m not a fan of Sakura. I think the main problem I have with her is her soft voice: a pain. But I agree that she is the strongest in her on way.

Howewer I don’t agree with Shiro and Rin being lucky honestly. If we compare with Sakura, yes definitely they are luckier but almost every character in FSN have an awful past. The Rin’s training was quite harsh(again, nothing as terrible as Sakura but harsh nonetheless), she has grown alone, Kotomine being her only regular social contact for many years. If she is clumsy when she interacts with Shiro in UBW or Sakura in HF, that’s not only because of her personality but also because of her childhood.