This game depicts the full range of the most noticeably awful of human driving forces. While in principle it's a tale about a spooky house that is reviled to such an extent that on the off chance that you exist inside its dividers you are ensured a hopeless end, by and by it's an investigation of the constraints of human degeneracy. Outlined in a very Dickens-like excursion through history (for example A Christmas Carol-like depiction of three distinctive time spans and individuals that lived at that point), you will get a perspective on inhuman viciousness, honesty lost, interbreeding, class fighting, irreverence, fixation, xenophobia and scorn. Characters are developed as colossally thoughtful, just for the account to destroy them in the most marvellous manner conceivable. The story plays on numerous work of art and recognizable stories, like the sentiment of Romeo and Juliet or the glow of Beauty and the Beast, and afterward undermines them completely. This game is dull, is the point. Wonderfully dim, similar to the most impressive gothic books, yet it in any case delights in investigating the most distressing sides of the human condition, and in doing so it addresses a perfect, raised sort of misfortune.
Backing this up are some of the most beautiful examples of visual novel art I've ever seen. There are some moments where it's not as cohesive as I might have liked (like where the key art CGs are clearly drawn by a different artist, to the point that characters have different hair colour), but every background, character portrait, and key art design all angle towards taking the kind of fairy tale aesthetics that we're all so familiar with, and subtly disrupting them so that they're faintly sinister and a portent of the much more overtly sinister stuff that is to come. It's all very static and the characters aren't given voices, but I think that actually enhances Fata Morgana in reinforcing the picture book-like motif. Given that it's also backed up with a soaring soundtrack with some of the best music I've ever heard in a visual novel, the overall impression is still very much "premium," even without the Live2D and other modern visual novel tricks. It's just premium via the sheer, distinct, original quality and creative energy.
There are moments where Fata Morgana becomes very uncomfortable to witness, and a little like when I played Saya no Utah, I did need to put it down from time to time. This game is nowhere near as explicit or extreme as that one, but thematically it is, if anything, more demanding of the player. It's a little like how the real Grimm brothers fairy tales are deeply uncomfortable to read, though it's certainly not of the extreme, overt violence of a Marquis de Sade novel. If you want to see how a visual novel could be elevated to something approaching "high art," you owe it to yourself to play The House in Fata Morgana. The fact that the Switch release comes with even more stories and features as a "complete" edition just makes it all the more essential.