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Too many choices will never ruin my VN experience, provided some walkthroughs exist out there. Even if guides do not exist, I will only become exasperated with the visual novel if the game does not give me feedback and the choice system possesses a lot of complexity or too few acceptable choice combinations to progress. But I find that the question is too vague. There are many kinds of choices, and the way they affect the reading experience is what actually makes their frequency relevant. Let's take CLANNAD as an example: There is a high number of choices, but this is only a problem because you need an exact combination of choices to access the routes, and these choices aren't clear. Getting into the routes and endings you want is as easy as checking some 15! combinations of choices. Contrast it with Majikoi: The number of choices is still high, but these do not affect the route you are on (except for extraordinary circumstances or well-signaled bad ends). Getting into the routes and endings you want is as easy as selecting your preferred character's portrait. So yes, some games do choices wrong: One ~To the Radiant Season~ or Canvas 2, where all heroines share space in the common route in such a way that you could be halfway through someone's route when you notice you missed a choice 3 hours back and get stuck on the default bad end. But this is a problem with how the choices affect the game, not their number (though, admittedly, the problem only becomes evident when you have high numbers of choices). Here are a few examples of systems in Visual Novels where a high number of choices shouldn't ruin the experience: Fate/stay night has a high number of choices, but not only are they relevant to the story, their consequences are immediate (in most cases). You don't have to wait until you reach the default ending 5 hours from that point; you immediately know you failed and, more importantly, where you failed. Their fail-safe system, post bad end hints, isn't even necessary! In Steins;Gate, the true route is only accessible through a mindbogglingly precise combination of choices. It is figurative hell without a walkthrough. Here, the very setup of the choices supports the narrative: The actual chance of getting the True End is supposed to be infinitesimal. It makes for a poor player experience but... is it truly wrong? Sometimes, the game simply doesn't let you progress until you make the correct choices. The existence of these tends to have a narrative purpose, or is part of a minigame involving the choices. Lucid9 comes to mind, as, at certain points, you must reach the correct answers before advancing with the story. There are some visual novels that play it safe even when there's little need. SakuSaku has a tie breaker in case you are nice to every single girl, and a second tie breaker (where you literally select the name of your preferred lass) in case you still manage to not opt for a girl through the well-telegraphed choices. But even with a lot of complicated choices, external systems may help make the experience quite bearable. School Days has a bar indicating your affection points with each of the two girls, for instance. It also happens to be a horrible example because that bar is horribly broken and there's still quite a few endings outside the realm of that bar, like with other girls or bad ends. And do not forget the visual novels that are meant to be choice-mazes. Despite their high number of choices and unique combinations necessary to get into certain endings, they are designed so that you see or learn something new every time you play. In Crimson Gray your ultimate objective is to, uh, not get a crappy ending. Light spoilers for the structure of the game: Over the course of the story there are a number of bad ends, which generally occur shortly after you make the wrong choice, and a number of unique ends. On your first few playthroughs, these unique endings are accessible through avoiding all of the other bad ends - reaching the end of a path, essentially. And there are a couple of paths as a result of your choices early on. Each time you reach a unique path, the game triggers some flags behind the scenes, which make it so that, once you replay the game, not as many choices lock you into a bad end, and makes it so that some of the choices start helping you get to a good ending. It's more intuitive than I'm making it sound, and tied to the narrative. Reaching these unique ends will give you information that informs and affects the choices you make, getting you on paths more likely to reach a good ending. And then you should consider how a high number of choices can also serve other purposes, like comedy or facilitating replays. Majikoi, Key games, and One ~To the Radiant Season~ have provided me with a lot of laughs as a result of their choices. At least half of them are for the sake of comedy, and are there specifically so replays always have something new to offer.

be best part of the game

First, I should mention that this VN, despite having a different writer, is in a style that is very similar to that of Oni Uta, a VN made by 130cm using the same artist back in 2009. I say 'the same style', because the character dynamics are eerily similar. First, there is the ponkotsu oneechan who is open about her desire to reverse-rape the protagonist (though she prefers it the other way around). Second, there is the stalker osananajimi, who casually steals his underwear, toothbrushes, and chopsticks. Third, there is the little oni-goddess who appears and serves as the game's true heroine. Now, first I should say that this artist has a style that is greatly differentiated from the current industry standard... mainly because he has nothing against chubby faces, heroines who make unattractive expressions, and old art cliches like heart-mark eyes, lol. Story-wise, this game moves back and forth between emotional scenes and old-fashioned cat-fight filled slice-of-life (the osananajimi and the oneechan are constantly at each other's throats), and the protagonist is about as dense as they get (though part of that is that he is simply numb to anything more subtle than Haruko's blatant attempts to get him into bed with her). Though the game's title proclaims that this game is about his sister's disease, the reality is that, once it goes onto the heroine paths, it generally ends up being about his personal hangups when it comes to matters of affection and family. This isn't necessarily a bad thing. His parents rank up with the ten worst monster parents I've encountered in a VN (currently the twin tops are the father of Kaito from Akatsuki no Goei and the father of Suu Sasamaru from Kitto, Sumiwataru Asairo Yori mo ), and his past experiences definitely explain why he and Haruko are so interdependent (it is actually as bad as the twins from Yosuga no Sora that way... almost worse, really). Kohime's path is the exception to the rule... by her very nature, Kohime is a free spirit, and she easily overcomes his relationship limitations... but in exchange, the conflict in her path is definitely a tear-jerker. Of course, it is also a familiar one to those who have played numerous VNs with Shinto kami heroines. Koihime's path falls into one of the classic tropes of such heroines, but it is executed pretty much perfectly. I honestly spent the last hour crying almost constantly... which is a good thing, because that is what I wanted. Overall, this VN was highly emotionally satisfying, even if some aspects (such as Haruko's apathy toward anyone and everyone outside her small circle of people she met through Haruto and her insane jealousy... not to mention Haruto's denseness) were annoying as hell. At times, this game feels really 'old' to someone who has played most of the good VNs made in the last ten years (because it uses tropes like the constant catfights), but it was generally an enjoyable read.

choices in vns go hand in hand like socks and shoes, or hammer and nails or poorly handled pr from trumps team. These are usually present in a vn to branch off from the common route and onto a girls route or to take the story in another direction. but sometimes i find that a vn with too many and/or choices that need to be precise to kind of ruin the experience for me. take for instance clannad or kara no shoujo. tried reading both but both require some precise choices in order to continue the stories or get on the true route. nothing wrong with these vns really, just that i find having my reading experience kind of ruined because im constantly checking a walkthrough to continue on. what about you?

Hello everyone, I'm Bunnypop, 17 yo from Europe. I got a huge interest in games, manga and anime. My dream is to create a visual novel (you can see an example of my art in my avatar)! Thought I mostly create cute, girly and cozy drawings, I can do gore and horror art too! Hope we all can be friends!

Only if the choices add next to no replayability, only changing a few lines of dialogue. The choose-your-own-adventure aspect is what i like the most about VNs, so a lot of choices leading to lots of endings is to my liking, especially in cases like Clannad (like 10 different routes) and Fate/Stay Night (few routes, but a ton of bad endings).

Literally every recent anime...

I've actually posted on this before... but I'll give you a summary of my thoughts on the matter. First, the question you have to ask is if the questions actually have meaning. To be honest, most charage only really need one choice (the choice of which heroine to follow), but they include numerous choices in order to give you the illusion of player agency... which is fairly meaningless in a medium where player agency is nonexistent save in picking which heroine to go after in most cases. More story-focused VNs are often different, though. For example, Tasogare no Sinsemilla has numerous choices, but this is because the main story changes dramatically on how you approach the game's mysteries and your interactions with the characters, to the point where there are actually three independent paths through the games with multiple heroines branching off from each and several bad endings. With this kind of story complexity, it actually makes sense to have a lot of choices. There are, however, numerous games out there where only one choice will actually have meaning to the story, but, despite this, there are nine or ten choices included, none of which have any effect whatsoever on the story progression. All this does is break up the progression of the story and weaken the presentation as a whole, in my opinion. Edit: Incidentally, this wasn't the case in the past, but nowadays most VNs with more than four choices that aren't story-focused are kusoge.

Yeah, hopefully that's not what you have (and agreed it doesn't sound like it, if you don't have the "whooping" part of it). Just saying: coughs that last forever suck and sometimes actually do need medical attention, so, take care of yourself!

All recommendations are in bold~ Criteria -> School-life Light hearted vibes As you want something light hearted it immediately eliminates stuff like yume miru kusuri or grisaia. Most of the pure school life VN's have been recommended, so the ones I am recommending have bits of chuuni/magic/fantasy type settings in them. Majikoi -> One of the best casts I have ever seen in any VN. Incredibly well developed and believable group with both male and female cast members getting plenty of screen time. Several light hearted moments, plenty of comedy and above average storyline. Further the protag is not useless. Even at its darkest it does not really get overly harsh. My Girlfriend is the President -> Another very enjoyable VN. It doesn't take itself too seriously, and is chock full of references related to literaly everything. Absolutely hilarious. Probably what you are looking for. Koi ga Saku Koro Sakura Doki-> I've only played one route, and don't really think its great, but that's mainly because nothing really happens. A very casual VN that is pretty much completely slice of life/school life. Ourai no Gahkthun -> Set in a school, does not ever get very dark. However it is not completely light-hearted either, though it has its moments. Told in an episodic format, the best comparison I can think of for it is the anime mushishi. I would also recommend you play KiraKira, skipping kirari's route which is very dark (not what you would like). The slice of life/drama/comedy is increadibly good though so don't miss out on it. DearDrops is pretty much exactly what you want without the school life. Sorry for the late answer. Happy reading!

I don't run FuwaReviews anymore (That's Palas), but as somebody who used to run it, I can at least shed a little light on what's going on, and explain why I stopped doing reviews in the first place: So, for those who aren't aware, I work for quite a few different companies in the localization industry in various different roles. I won't provide that list here because you can find most/all of them by looking around. Some of these companies I started working for in the past couple years. Before that, I had a ton of connections with a lot of different devs, and I was able to get us signed up for review keys from something like a dozen companies/teams/groups/whatever you wanna call them. Some of those connections are still around today, while others have pulled out for various reasons (none of which were our fault—at least not that I'm aware of). During that time, we had pretty consistent reviews, a great set of reviewers (many of whom are still on the team), and it was 20% thanks to our reviewers and 80% thanks to Flutterz (seriously, he edited everything for us and is amazing—10/10 would recommend) that we were able to be that blessed. Thanks to our connections, I was usually able to just be like "Hay [company] can I get key for x?" and then divvy out the keys to whoever wanted them. Then, everybody started getting busy. A few reviewers, including myself, fell off the face of the Earth/peaced out/couldn't spend time playing VNs. It sucked. I put out a call for new reviewers and got basically nobody (except Decay—love you bae). I got slammed with school and life and official stuff, so I stepped down. Bats took over and tried to keep the ship afloat, but during this time we lost roughly half of our connections for various reason (not because of this swap, just bad timing). We attempted to pick up more reviewers, but nobody fit the bill. We have a general process for our reviewers, which is why we had to turn down quite a few people. We try to remain unbiased (though, like any review site, it happens), and we write enough to justify our reasons. A lot of our posts are on the longer side, follow a pretty straightforward format, and give people a good idea of what to expect. We also anticipate that our writers have some mastery of the English language, so that we can get reviews edited in a timely manner. Not much to ask for: you spent two to 40+ hours playing a game, hopefully you'll be willing to spend thirty minutes to an hour writing a solid review. So we were having problems finding reviewers. And while I say "We," I mean Bats. Later, some "things" happened. At the time, we had a rule in place (mostly for me) that we cannot review any title we worked on. For the record, I never reviewed a title I directly worked on, and any titles I did work on had a disclaimer, especially when I was the one who got the key. It's the ethical thing to do. But, because that wasn't enough, we had to strengthen the rule to "We can't review games from a company we work/worked for." I understand why that rule is in place, but the number of companies I can do reviews for is fewer than the number of companies I can't do reviews for, so I was finished. Bats left the VN scene completely shortly after this, and Palas stepped up. He's doing what he can, but there are a lot of roadblocks. The fact that a couple other reviewers also had restrictions placed on them caused a bit of a dead space that we still weren't able to fill because nobody applied and met the basic requirements to be a reviewer. We still have a strong team, but virtually all of us are involved with something (official, unofficial, or non-VN related) in one way or another, and it's difficult to make it work. Would I love to run FuwaReviews again and get it back to the glory days? Yes, of course I would. But I can't. I'm too involved in the community for that to work out. Instead, I'll have to depend on somebody else, and I look forward to seeing if we can make it work out. And maybe, one day, I'll do a JAST game review. Maybe.

I've been playing video games more or less constantly for over twenty-five years. That's a very simple statement that holds a surprising amount of meaning, considering how much video games have changed since I first began playing them. It began with the NES, for me... with Mario, Luigi, and the ducks. I shot ducks out of the air, I jumped Mario across gaps and on top of turtles, without ever really understanding what was going on. As a kid, this was fun, seriously. Understand, this is the biggest point I am going to try to get across here... the difference between addiction and fun with video games. I played rpgs, primarily jrpgs, throughout most of my first ten years as a gamer, starting with Dragon Warrior (Dragon Quest), eventually reaching levels of true love with Final Fantasy II and III (IV and VI), Chrono Trigger, Secret of Mana, Secret of Evermore, and Ogre Battle. When the era of cd-gaming came, I played D&D dungeon-crawlers on a shitty dos computer setup, and I played every jrpg I could get my hands on, with a lot of shooters, strategy games, and sports games mixed in. Throughout all of that, I was still having fun. Fun was my reason for continuing (I've always been a story-centric player, so I tended to stick with jrpgs, but I did play a lot of other stuff) and my reason for playing in the first place. It was in the PS2 era that I first came to recognize the difference between taking pleasure in playing something and merely being addicted to it. I picked up FFXI and started playing it on the PS2 (yes, it was possible to play it on the PS2), and for the first time, I knew addiction... for the first time, I poured hour after hour, day after day, into a game that I wasn't having any fun at. I was constantly irritated, constantly driven to continue, whether for social reasons (friends I'd made in-game) or simply because I felt like I was 'almost there'. Then, one day, I suddenly looked up and realized... I was immensely depressed and not enjoying anything about the game. The sense of having wasted my time... sent me into a funk that lasted the better part of a year. I still played games, but the color seemed to leech out of the screen even as I played them. I realized that I was seeing bits of FFXI in other games, and that was enough of a reason for me to actively hate them. No game hit me this way more than FFXII... because FFXII's battle system is essentially that of FFXI with some tweaks. Visually, it was a nightmare, and the weak story and characters only made it worse for me. Ironically, it was the realization that I honestly didn't trust Squeenix to provide pleasurable games anymore that led me to start playing a lot of the weirder stuff out there... such as Eternal Darkness for the gamecube and the SMT series. Ultimately, because I'd become very much aware of the difference between pleasure and addiction, I lost interest in games that I would once have jumped onto simply because they were jrpgs or done in a style I found interesting. I started abusing Gamestop's used game 'seven-day return policy' to demo games, and I slowly but surely came to realize that I honestly and truly hate multiplayer games that aren't played in the same room. I am now an unabashed solo gamer, even outside of VNs. I won't play most multiplayer games at all, and I hate games where the social element is as or more important than the actual gameplay or story. Of course, if a game has an interesting concept, I'll try it... but if I feel that sensation I used to get from FFXI, I drop it immediately, cancelling all subscriptions and discarding all related materials without a second thought, even if I paid a good deal of money for them. To be blunt, life is too short to waste on playing something that is merely addictive (this coming from a VN junkie, I know). That sensation of false social interaction you get from online gaming and the high you get from winning in competitive games is highly addictive... but are you having fun, really? I wonder, how many younger gamers actually know what it is like to enjoy a video game, rather than simply being addicted to one? This is a question that seriously bothers me, as I saw my young cousin playing Call of Duty (whatever the latest one is) online, unsmiling, for two days straight while we were staying at their place a few months back. He really, really wasn't enjoying himself. He was angry, depressed, and frustrated, but I never saw even a hint of a smile when he won, only this vague expression of relief he probably thought was a smile. Was that relief that his team-mates weren't treating him like a worthless noob or an incompetent, or was it simply because the match was over and he could relax? I don't know, because I didn't ask. I know from experience that the difference between addiction and fun is fine enough that most people don't even recognize it is there until they are forced to. What are your experiences, gamers of Fuwa?