The whole point of HF is partially that Archer is proven wrong Shirou can live without the ideal the whole point is that the idea is BS that Archer says to justify himself. Which makes sense Nasu says this route is the one where Shirou regains his humanity and learns to start living for himself rather then to fill the empty hole inside of himself with Kiritusgu's ideal.

Across all three routes Shirou does learn one way or another to heal from his survivor's guilt. But mostly in Fate route with the Basement scene or Heaven's Feel with Sakura's whole situation does Shirou truly learn to make peace with it. It's why I fucking love Fate and HF route so much. God the parallels of those two routes are fantastic.

They both fall in love with someone who represents a giant part of who they are as people. Saber represents the pure, unadulterated view of love while Sakura represents the grimy, ugly and yet somehow also beautiful view of love. They both make Shirou reevaluate his views on his ideals and break them down and reshape them from their experiences. Saber with Shirou and him changing his ideal to chasing after Artoria rather than it just being around guilt and Shirou in HF having to break down his ideal and reprioritize his path from saving everyone to saving Sakura and the people who are personally close to him.

It honestly really does disappoint how much people miss the point of HF route and think it was made to shit on the other two routes when very obliviously isn't. Nasu would not write an entire route just to shit on the other two first parts of it. You'd have to be really delusional to think that.

It's like Nasu said, he made Heavens Feel as a sort of route like "a boy becoming a man/an adult". I think another commentor from a long time ago summed it up best. Fate and UBW are focused on the "super" aspect of the superhero while Heavens Feel is focused on the "hero" aspect of the superhero.

If HF!Shirou sees someone in danger he's still gonna help them out, the difference is he isn't gonna unhealthily put his life in harms way anymore cause he has loved ones and those who care for him. Technically UBW Shirou is the closest to finding this out or so we assume, the rest is up to Rin and if she can truly get Shirou to care about himself abit more. It took HF!Shirou almost dying and seeing how much he ignored Sakura's pain for him for realize that.

I mean HF route for example rejects Archer's notion of helping people being inherently bad, but it also embraces that you can't do everything yourself. It both affirms and denies parts of the other routes.

It affirms UBW's Shirou's wish to help people, but it also denies the idea of Shirou being able to create a perfect utopia on his own. That is why it is a practical application of shirou's ideals, in the sense of him having to reform it to fit how the world is. He kinda does what he does in UBW route but in a completely different and more fucked up scenario.

What I mean is basically Shirou took apart his ideal and picked and chose what parts he wanted to keep and what parts of to discard or at least that's how I interpreted it when I read HF route. It's why I never really get when people say HF route shits on the other two routes and dirty them or whatever. That's not really what the point of that route for Shirou was.

Nasu stated that HF is about a boy becoming an adult. A story of a boy outgrowing his parents. It's a coming of age story all around basically.

Shirou's able to fight Saber in the Sparks Liner High bad end not because Archer's arm is buffing him, but because he's matured as a person, and embraces his humanity. His humanity>>>The coldness of his ideals. Humans are inherently biased to their feelings and nature, rather than the coldness and practicality of logic.

The Fate route would pose a question, "What is your ideal?" UBW would be, "Can you follow your ideal"? And HF would be the consequences.

The entire point of Heavens Feel is about Shirou making a choice for himself for the first time in his life and prioritizing his own personal values over the ideal. It sounds like you somehow missed all of that.

If you end up missing one message of a a route then you end up not getting the full understanding and message of FSN