Title: God Slaying Blade Works
Author: Marcus Galen Sands
Rating: T
Genre: Adventure
Status: WIP
Fandom: Campione!/Fate
Pairings: Shirou/Sakura (but it is complicated)
Summary: A Heavens Feel Shirou finds that himself and Illya have been pulled into another world by a corrupted Grail. There his actions lead to him becoming the Eighth god killing Devil King. Now he has to deal with becoming someone who rules where he walks, even if he doesn't want to. That and trying to find a way back home.
Rating: 5/5
Link

This is how you do a crossover... The author truly manages to capture the essence of both worlds and merge them into one without losing too much. It can be a bit longwinded but the LN has the same style so I had no problems with that. Grammar, writing and update rate are more than ok.


Not sure what else to say.

 

For those of you needing a link: http://www.fanfiction.net/s/8560965/1/God-Slaying-Blade-Works

I've been following this for a while and I rather enjoy it. It's one of the better FSN stories that I've read, and definitely deserves the time to look at it. It's got a few issues, mostly insofar as the author is clearly a fan of Gabriel Blessing and his work, but the writing is generally of high mechanical quality and the characters are both interesting and varied.

My only real complaint with it is that the pacing feels a bit slow at times. It's ~350k words in, and the overall plot has only barely taken shape. There's clearly things going on, but they're all just as clearly in the opening stages. There's been signs that things are going to be speeding up in the near future, so I'm hopeful that will come through, but for now, it's still fairly slow.

 

How well would I need to know Champione? I have no clue what it even is.

 

Ah damn... thx Agayek.

Champione is a Light Novel ( link ) and I think that you should at least read a summary because the story plays mostly in the Champione Universe.

 

I went in knowing precisely nothing about Campione, and I was able to follow events just fine. The author skimps on details of certain canonical scenes (or at least, I assume they're canonical scenes, I still haven't actually read or watched it), but there's plenty of explanations on the various things that happen.

 

I think it's actually "Campione!". That's how it seems to be spelled everywhere.

And to answer your question, not at all. I'm enjoying the story and I'd never heard of Campione. The fic itself is a decent introduction to the world of Campione.

When you come across some of the major players, a glance at the wiki wouldn't be bad, but then this is Shirou's first introduction to them too, so things are explained fairly well. I haven't felt the need to touch the wiki yet.

The "other Japanese Campione" shows up, and I suppose watchers and readers of the source material will have a much better grasp on those characters... but all you really need to know is that it's a typical shounen harem anime. The protagonist is a teenage boy who's scared of sex, as useless as tits on a bull, and a complete doormat who can pull lucky wins against more powerful opponents. His gaggle of girls seem to be your usual harem assortment of idiots from 'please fuck me, master' to 'I hate perverts... but secretly I might love you'. They're everything I detest about harem anime. It's not like Fate/Stay Night doesn't have some of those elements too, but they're less aggravating.

Thankfully, the canon protagonist and his harem don't have too much prominence in the fic -they're overshadowed by Shirou and co-, and when they do show up they're easily ignored.

The fic is well worth reading if you're familiar with Fate, and it's a decent introduction to the Campione! universe.

 

I think some knowledge in Campione is definitely good. No need for full deep knowledge though, as the fic is long and detail enough to write it out. There's a 13 episode Campione! anime, that's not too bad. I actually watched that anime because of this fic

 

I thought the bloody thing was just a guilty pleasure. Basically like In Flight. Way to many words for what it is, characters being general off, but durpy things happen so the story is amusing but that is it. This thing should go no farther than the Almost Recommended.

 

I am kinda suprised no one mentioned how OOC Shirou is. This Shirou is comparable with GB's HoS Shirou, which is really not like Shirou at all.

Although I must admit that Marcus characterization on the Campione!verse characters is spot on.

 

You're right. He's very unlike the Shirou at the end of the Heaven's Feel route, and much more like the Hill of Swords version.

 

The guy pumps out 20,000 words in a week.

I think he might be related to Charles Dickens or something.

 

I'm also following it for a while - and the story got better reception here than I expected. I'm subscribing it to 'guilty pleasure' category myself.

While characterisation is well done, and story premise is interesting, the way that several motifs are written is just too simple. For example, last chapter and negotiations. Yes, I was laughing while reading it, yes I enjoyed it, but it required for me to set my level of suspension of disbelief much higher than usual. Simply put, I'm not negotiator, not I'm that good with peoples, but even I can point at least five things that Koizumi could do. The way he was overwhelmed and his conclusion strikes me as simply ridiculous.

Such simple logical plot holes makes me place this story whole league below anything Gabriel Blessing has written.

In the end, 4/5 from me. It is a great, lighthearted, colorful story as long as you do not intend to take anything in it seriously. Quite a bit worse if you do.

 

I'd forgotten about that truly terrible scene between Shirou and the negotiator; it was complete garbage.

 

You actually read that? I ended up reading the first two or three paragraphs and then just skipped it to save myself the pain. Garbage would be giving it a compliment.

 

Ugh, it's pretty much all the mediocre elements of IF (doesn't have any of the godawful parts really, but the highs aren't that great either). Almost Recommendable, not library worthy.

 

I've been thinking about recommending this for a while now, but was pretty hesitant. I really like this fic and look forward to updates (which are pretty regular and lengthy). At the same time, it has MANY things wrong with it - from concept to execution.

As a concept, it's pretty weak. I haven't read/seen Campione but the mechanics of it seems broken. As if Shirou's magecraft wasn't complete hax already, now every God he beats makes him orders of magnitude more powerful. Everything is just so easy for him - he has an unlimited supply to wealth, he can summon the most skilled people to work for him, he has Ilya to deal with anything of a magecraft nature and his new skills augment his existing abilities (like Dragon Slaying Hero). Exactly who can be a threat to him now?

Implementation wise, there's more issues.

As many people have pointed out, Shirou comes across as a complete copy of Gabriel_Blessing's Hill of Swords Shirou. Somehow just having hung around Saber for a short time has given him a kingly, regal demeanor with a high level of political aptitude.

Anyone else's POV is basically just a complete wank for Shirou's character. As Yak pointed out, the negotiator scene was terrible. And this fic is filled with many like that.

There's many scenes that are executed poorly. I didn't mind the idea of the King's Feast, but did it have to be such a perfect copy of the Grail Dialogue (from Fate Zero) to the point where "Assassin" rocks up? Seriously? The only thing unique in that was the gifts! (And once again, everyone else's POV involved wanking Shirou through descriptions of the food or whatnot).

The scene with the dragon pissed me off. No more needs to be said.

His interactions with other Campione are a big let down too. There's no conflict. It'd have been much more interesting if he'd taken exception to Luo Hao's lack of concern for average people and fought with her - instead he basically kisses her ass as much as possible and everyone is happy.

It basically is a complete ROFLSTOMP fic, lacks conflict and lacks imagination.



Nonetheless, the Mordred battle was fantastic. It's one of my favorite battles I've read (despite the very...video game like nature of it) and I've found myself rereading it quite a few times. I loved the battle and the aftermath with Guinevere. It was also interesting because for once he actually used his own abilities rather than just his new Authorities.

And like In Flight, while I'm reading it, these issues don't seem to stand out to me. It's only when I look back that I realize how stupid it was - the writing style does a good job of pulling me in and making those things seem somewhat natural.

I'll give it a 3.5/5 rounded up to 4. Just too many issues - even for a roflstomp fic. Completely agree with Mutton. It has very In Flight vibes, where the bad parts aren't quite as bad, and it only had one great part.

 

This.

Thanks, Jarik. You've reminded me of some of the reasons the story isn't very good. It's like the fast food of fics. Seems alright at first, but later... regret. 3/5.

 

You know, Shirou's character isn't that hard to understand. Most people complain he's too shallow. It's easy to blame Gabriel for this, because there's no better explanation for it? Why do people just get it so wrong.

 

So, I haven't finished this yet, as I'm taking my time because there isn't many fics updating lately. But I have to ask, in the original work of Campione, is it really as common as this author makes it seem for characters to refer to themselves in 3rd person? Because it happens quite often, and it's kind of a (very) minor irritant.

 

I'm surprised this is as well liked as it is, considering how poorly written it is.
I don't just mean in terms of technical prowess, but the prose is flat and the dialogue is unnatural (and often poorly done).
The contest of kings was the last straw for me, everything about that scene blew. It was incredibly grating to see the author fail at applying the concepts that made the scene work in F/Z. None of them had any interesting bids at kingship either, and despite the author telling us about how majestic each of their 'presences' were, I never felt an ounce of majesty from anyone at that table.
The entire Campione! cast doesn't do this fic any favors either, and the author had the terrible idea to incorporate the whole lot of them, lame McSelfinsert and all his biddies.
Shirou's character is at it's weakest here too, considering that at the end of HF Shirou is a relatively normal person.
And to top it all off, the fights aren't even remotely engaging.
3/5 mediocre as fuck