Toranth

Too many quotes. Pool of Radiance, released by SSI in 1988, had a 35 person development team. It was a major product by a well funded company, and it basically set the standard for that generation of RPGs. It's right there on Wikipedia, the first Google link. If you had bothered to do the slightest bit of actual research before spouting off, you would have seen this yourself. And when you disagree with me that RPGs changed in 1990-ish, why do you keep bringing up games from a decade or two later? I mentioned that ADV/VNs did not cause RPGs to change because you had just in the previous post accused me of a post hoc fallacy, so I was pointing out that I had never made the claim you attacked. And, one final time, I will point out that cRPGs do storytelling to the player. Tabletop RPGs make the players develop their own story. cRPGs are not following their tabletop ancestors when they do something completely opposite! Games that do try to imitate the open world and free play of tabletop games are few, and usually unsuccessful. Skyrim, which you brought up, is an excellent example of such a game. It was wildly successful, beyond even the developers expectations, selling roughly 10 million copies worldwide. Final Fantasy 13, which is considered one of the worst in the series in terms of quality and sales, has also sold 10 million copies worldwide. That's why I say that JRPGs (and other fixed story driven RPGs) are more popular than free-flow sandbox style Western RPGs. If you had bothered to do any research, you would see that there are actual numbers behind these claims, and not that I just "make this stuff up". So, since you've stopped actual trying to be a polite conversationalist and instead resorted to insults, I'm done. Your aren't worth responding to if that's how you are going to behave.

Pool of Radiance, since you have fixed on that one game, had a major dev team. In fact, just checked - a 35 person development team. That's not a minor 2 man team that couldn't do any better. It was a major production by a well funded company. It had very little structure and narrative because cRPGs were based on tabletop RPGs, and the assumption was that unstructured was better. As time went by, cRPGs began to limit the player's choices (anathema to tabletop RPGs) in order to present a better story. This was done because a better story was preferred by customers. Many of the storytelling elements, including style of presentation, matched those storytelling styles that already existed in the ADV/VN world.Also, I never claimed that ADV/VNs caused RPGs to adopt. I said that those elements already existed, and that the cRPG genre began to adopt them. Storytelling, as in presenting a story to the player, is NOT an inherent part of the tabletop RPG experience. The players develop the story themselves, through their actions, because the DM can react to those actions. It is NOT a case of the DM controlling the story, forcing the players to react in fixed ways, deliver scripted lines, and hold predetermined personalities.Modern RPGs, both Japanese and Western, have turned against that old-school tenet. Instead, even games likes Baldur's Gate or Dragon Age, much less games like Final Fantasy 13, put the player into a very structured world. The player has a limited choice of methods to interact with the environment - not because of technical limitations but because by imposing these limits, the developers can force the story to proceed in a controlled direction. These two concepts are not only not the same, they are distinct opposites. Free flowing, player developed story, using player developed characters with player developed personalities doing player decided actions vs Fixed structure storyline, featuring developer fixed characters with developer fixed personalities doing things determined by the developer for reasons the developer has decided. At best, players get a choice between developer fixed path A and developer fixed path B. Tabletop is player based story development. Computer is developer based telling of a story. Not the same. JRPGs dominate the modern RPG market. Their primary Western competitors are those that imitate them. When's the last time there was a successful Wizardry game on the market? Finally, I'll say this again. You are thinking of "Visual Novels" as a subset of "Novels". Don't. They don't fit there at all. They developed mostly out of Adventure games rather than novels, and thus have a different background. Treat "Visual Novel" as a genre all its own, without your book-based preconceptions interfering, and you'll be much more likely to reach common ground with others in the community.

Sooo.... Main Char: "So, you killed my cute classmate because you thought she had a crush on me, and you wanted to prove that you loved me more?" Yandere: "That's right, sempai!" Main Char: "That's so awesome! You're the best girlfriend ever! Here, let me help you dispose of the body." (Audience: O_O) Something like that?

Pool of Radiance had a tiny bit of narration, and a tiny bit of dialogue. The intro Diary thing that came with the came had more story and narration than the entire game combined. This was still a significant step up over the old-school Wizardy games, that didn't even have that. Pool of Radiance came out in 1988. Baldur's Gate came out in 1998, well after the 1990 point I described as cRPGs adopting VN/ADV storytelling. Baldur's Gate 2 was years later. At that point, both had abandoned the free-play sandbox style world of previous cRPGs (that were trying to imitate tabletop play) and instead embraced the fixed characters and structured storytelling of VN/ADVs. In traditional tabletop RPGs, the story was built by the players - their actions, their decisions. The DM performed the initial setup, but then spends the rest of his time reacting to the players. This is unstructured storytelling - where anything can happen, where characters are not fixed, and where the plot can be advanced, regressed, or tossed overboard at the whim of the players. This is the exact opposite of a novel of any sort, visual or not. Also, tabletop RPGs were all about the quality of your DM. A good DM could get a great story going over the course of the campaign, with recurring characters, interweaving storylines, deep world-building... but the vast majority of DMs weren't good. Most just read the adventure module they were given, described the environments the adventurers found themselves in, and rolled the dice for the monsters. Um... no? If it were accepted that any gameplay made a VN not a VN, then this thread wouldn't exist. Also, are you treating "Visual Novel" as one term or two? Because it seems like you are claiming that a VN is an instance of genre "Novel", with pictures added to put it into subgenre "Visual". If that is the argument you are pushing, then we can stop now. VNs are not Novels, not even a subgenre. Period. Trying to use the "Novel" to describe them is a waste of time. Instead, some other term needs to be used to describe them. Maybe we could come up with one... Assuming you mean "Honey Coming" ('Going Home'?), the idea that adding a half dozen extra mouseclicks to the tens of thousands that are already required moves the game from one genre to another is baffling to me. That's not what I said. In fact, if you read the very next sentence, you would have seen that I specifically said that NOT all RPGs are VNs.RPGs adopted the fixed characters and structured storytelling of VNs/ADVs, and abandoned the traditional free world of tabletop RPGs. This was a shift of the entire genre - not a case of a few games becoming hybrids. -- Toranth .

Well, historically, computer RPGs did not have much storytelling at all. More like 'premise-telling'. Think back to Dragon Warrior or Pool of Radiance or Bard's Tale or Wizardry. The Ultima games were considered unique because they DID have segments with structured storytelling.It wasn't until the same time that VNs began to drop the Adventure elements that RPGs began to adopt the ADV/VN storytelling styles (circa-1990). So, RPGs (especially JRPGs) picked up the structured storytelling of ADV/VNs and incorporated it so thoroughly into the genre that you basically can't find old-style premise-only RPGs anymore, except small releases from indie developers. Does that mean that all RPGs are also VNs? No, I don't think so. But it does mean that something can be an RPG without having storytelling. And considering the only difference between a Visual Novel and a Kinetic Novel is the presence of choices, I see no reason why you'd need to categorize it differently. Are you familiar with the game Honey Coming? It's a VN that allowed the player to play normally (choices determine the route) OR to activate the "Only One" mode, which removed all the choices and fixed the game onto a single heroine's route. Does Honey Coming suddenly stop being a VN if "Only One" mode is activated? Even though everything else is the same? VNDB is obsessed with 'narrative', but they aren't completely wrong. "The Walking Dead" doesn't use text, and has zero narrative. This means it is much more an interactive movie than any variety of novel. I think that trying to have a precise definition is always going to cause problems. Personally, I'd say that to be a VN, it needs to have: 1) Heavy structured storytelling 2) primarily through text 3) with a narrative format 4) with visual support. Gameplay (RPG, shooter, strategy, action, adventure, or otherwise) and voices/animation are optional. But no matter what definitions you try to use, it will always be a mess. -- Toranth .

Your obsession with gameplay as an exclusively identifying factor is absurd, as is your insistence that a game can only fall into one category. It's just as blind and narrow minded as the VNDB obsession with "narration" that you've insulted several times in this thread. Kamidori is a VN. It is also an RPG. It is also a sim. Does merely having story and text make something a VN? No, I agree with you there. But by the same token, merely having gameplay does not make something NOT a VN. The borders are always going to be hard to define, because of genre mix and overlap. Instead, you will need to use common sense and evaluate each edge case as it comes along. Not everyone will agree, and not everyone will be happy. But that's far better than hard and fast rules which no one, except you, agrees upon. -- Toranth .

I've read all of Leaf's main games (I usually avoid fandisks) except Shizuku, Kizuato, and White Album 2. Of those, I agree that Utaware is the best.TtT is very similar, but suffers from much worse writing and characterization for most of the game. It's got some excellent sections, but overall is meh. To Heart is classic, but if it were released today it would be just another game full of clichés and tropes. Just because it started many of them doesn't excuse the fact that the game is rather simple. Many of their recent products, especially Full Ani and Megiddo, were just not good. Leaf is still a decent studio, and anything they make is worth taking a look at. But their reputation, like Key's, is primarily riding on their excellent works from 10 years ago.

Eternal isn't a sub-brand of Xuse, it's just made up of former Xuse employees. The ones that made Aselia, in fact, that left when they couldn't make Aselia 2 the way they wanted. Eternal is a Will company.Also, I find your description of Xuse amusing. Xuse was mostly a low-to-mid quality nukige/moege maker, up until the mid-2000s. Eternal makes gameplay games, and is highly mixed in quality. Yumina and Corona are quality, Nega0 and TenKoi are bad. We'll see about the future.

They were certainly more interactive, but not at all more immersive. In fact, the interaction (frequently based on adventure games) breaks up the immersion by forcing the player out of the story in order to do something or solve a puzzle in order to proceed. That's the bigger problem - This seems pretty expensive. When done right, it can be great. I fear seeing what it'll look like done poorly. Probably pretty gruesome.

I agree. Witch's Garden does an excellent job of showing off the system. Even the minimal sort of motion, like characters moving around the screen in response to their actions, helps cut down a lot on the 'tell' part, and makes the game more immersive and easier to enjoy.If you find the bounce too distracting, Witch's Garden had a slider that could turn it down to almost nothing, but kept all the motion and expression changes and special effects that provide the real bonus.

If you haven't already, follow it up with the Rui Tomo fandisk. It's got good side stories, sub-character routes, and the main storyline is actually rather interesting.Not to mention Best Girl gets to be even cooler.

It was written by an entirely different staff than Aselia, I believe, and it shows. Aselia was significantly darker and more serious, whereas Seinarukana quickly cleans up any moral ambiguity or dark situations entirely in the protags favor, making it a more childish story over all.The battle system, I agree, is much improved. A lot more flexability and less grind (usually) also made it more fun in general. As for other characters from the first game:

I'll save you some time: Nukige. Utterly unremarkable in any way. Not bad, though, just bland. If you've got something else more interesting to play (which should be most games) go for those instead.

Did you ever play Clover Hearts? I'm curious as to how closely those two games are related.

So I was recently playing Base-son's Appare! Tenka Gomen. It's got a lot of character ends with a lot of repetiton, though, so I took a break after finishing and before moving on to the fandisk, and switched instead to ChuSinGura 46+1. OMG, quality whiplash. Appare is a kinda-humorous game about a normal guy sent to a super-large island in the modern era that deliberatly immitates Edo era Japan. ChuSinGura is the of a modern normal guy tossed into tale of the 47 Ronin - a famous story of revenge set in Edo era Japan. But the quality difference! Appare is shallow humor with an attempt to give a plot tossed on to the true(?) storylines, and some moe characters. The game proceeds by choosing character centric episodes, with some common story-type episodes interspersed. Unfortunately, the epsiodes were not well thought out or organized, as characters would frequently refer to events that player had not seen (by not choosing that episode), and thus made little sense. Also, because of the unconstrained choice structure, none of the character specific epsiodes could ever advance the character or plot at all - rendering 75% of the game meaningless. It jumped the third or fourth shark about the time the heroes learned that all of Japan's ills over the past century or two (including WW2 and the Bubble) were caused by jealous Western nations, and only this school of teenage samurai was keeping Japan in its rightful place as the greatest nation on Earth. When you toss the erratic voice acting and quality control issues onto the poor plot and mediocre characterization, even Base-son's usual good art couldn't pull this game above average. ChuSinGura is solidly written, with characters that have major development, it has lots of historical accuracy, and even though the tale is famous, the details can go all over the place, leading to some very interesting developments in the story. The episodic structure (it was originally published as three squential games) was deliberate used as part of the narrative, and each episode cleanly and clearly built upon the rest. Unfortunately, there was a bit of an issue with episodes 4 and 5 - They seem to have been added when the complete package version was released, and although they are a very good 'true' route ending to the entire sequence, it doesn't merge smoothly with the first 3 (especially the ending of ep 3) and suffers from some tone change issues. Good art, top notch voice acting, and plenty of high adrenaline combat scenes kept the story exciting and immersive. So, I played a meh-quality moe game about the Edo era, then a top-notch game about the Edo era, and now I'm supposed to go back the meh-moe again? Hell, no. Maybe later, but in the meantime, I think I'll move on to something more interesting. Like Daitoshokan no Hitsujikai - or maybe watching paint dry, that might be better, too. (あっぱれ? Not あわれ?)

Try searching for "コミュ 攻略", you should find a number of walkthroughs. Minor Try this fool walkthrough for details.

The main character is a pushover, and sometimes degrades into a whiny one. But he also sometimes acts cool and decisive, managing to do the right thing at the right time. Still, it took me two or three years to finally finish the game, after I bought it maybe a week after it was released. It just took that many tries to be able to ignore the protag. A lot of Iinchou is banter, puns, and in-jokes/references. I found it pretty damned amusing, but if a reader doesn't like that (or if they are using a machine-translator) they'll probably hate it. Unfortunate, in some ways. The older games, especially pre-2005-ish, are before the moege / charage standards were set. Because of that, there's a lot more creativity and interesting experiments in those games. Nowadays, it seems like most game companies decide first "Let's make a charage!" then fill in the blanks, rather than creating a good game and seeing where it falls.

I have some I'll add, but they all contain elements of your other lists, so their inclusion is somewhat debatable. Sore wa Maichiru Sakura no Youni - Old, but in my opinion the best thing Navel (then Basil) has ever produced. Dear My Friend - Old, but with good characters in well written, fitting stories. Iinchou wa Shounin Sezu! - Some chuuni elements. Blue-sky-Blues - Very unusual characters in a decent story that can make you think. The opposite of chuuni: Instead of special characters, the entire cast is the losers, people who have failed at life and given up. Yet they are well developed and their stories are (mostly) solid. Sekai de Ichiban Dame na Koi - Well written and well developed characters, some good humor, interesting storylines. If you can stand the main character, that is. Reconquista - Horror-ish, with mystical elements. Actually, I'd recommend a lot of the Neko Neko / Cottonsoft games. Some of them are quite old and haven't aged all that well (Mizuiro) but they are classics. Unfortunately, most of them include sci-fi or mystical elements, and don't belong on this list.

Doesn't VNDB remove translation projects that are known to be dead?

I'm pretty sure the Japanese creators want to make money, too Even anime, manga, and light novels will drag on well past their expiration date (Dragonball GT, anyone?). VNs, however, don't, which is part of why I like them.

I didn't mean to say that all chuuni games are shallow, but that their philosophical issues are treated shallowly. "Sleeping powers awaken!" can make for an exciting climax and wonderful fun story, but it completely escapes any attempt at addressing the greys of the real world. And in many cases, that's the point. The real world isn't much fun, so we go to stories for excitement. Why bring the dull parts in with you? Of course, some of us like those dull parts. I thought Psycho-pass was a damned good anime, and it did a wonderful job of stressing many of the issues that could arise in that world. On the other hand, Aiyoku no Eustia smothered its critical philosophical issue in whiny angst, then didn't even have the protaganist make the critical choice in the end, anyway! And I meant to address that seperately from any complaints about common tropes or the like. I have no problem with a story that is built entirely out of common storylines and characters. In fact, if you are familiar with the Campbellian archetypes, it's hard NOT to see all the classical story elements everywhere. But if they are well done, and the characters well developed, and the world well thought out - you get an excellent product. I'd say the biggest thing holding back American comics and cartoons from matching up to the best Japanese ones is rather simple. In America, the stories are never allowed to end. Captain America will never stay dead forever, the Powerpuff Girls never grow up, etc. Whereas VNs are almost always limited in scope, giving a solid beginning, middle, and end. The discussion of Western content with chuuni-like elements is enough for an entire thread of its own. I do agree with many of your recommendations. Good stuff there. I'd suggest Larry Correia's stuff (especially Monster Hunters), too.

My only problem with your definition is that it produces a genre so large that it becomes almost meaningless. For example, you include Trouble @Vampire up there. But the main character in that game isn't really at the heart of things. His 'specialness' doesn't drive the story, any more than the MC's specialness in your average moeblob game. At the same time, you don't include Aiyoku no Eustia - a game almost pure chuuni. Both include melodrama and fighting and stuff, but the focus is very different The heart of the Chuuni genre is "Screw you ordinary guys, I'm special!" It needs to feature a seemingly or formerly ordinary guy that is actually special, and his specialness needs to be a driving factor in the storyline. Without that, you've just got a typical shonen/seinen story with fighting. Would you consider something like Hunter x Hunter to be chuuni? Aaaand this, I've really got to disagree with. I find that most chuuni games, including almost all on your lists, tend to be very shallow when it comes to philosophy. Sure, it may mention issues that adults tend to no longer consider, but they get no serious treatment. Take the classic ethic dilemma of the runaway trolley - Do you kill one, or allow 5 to die? There is no right or wrong answer, it is the reasoning behind the final choice that is meaningful. But in chuuni, the answer is "I awaken my sleeping powers and save everyone!!!" The reason chuuni type stories work is because they ARE fun - you get to be someone special, the world does reolve around you, and you do win the girl/save the world/beat the baddie. I just think that applying the term so broadly makes it hard to use in any meanful fashion (chuuni in Air? Really?)

Although the phone system in Steins;Gate was enough to get me to drop the game early, my personal hatred is reserved for Himemiko: Sengetsu. That game had normal choices (one true end, lots of bad ends format), but it also had click-able words in the dialogue. Clicking on each word caused a pop-up to appear with a definition of the term, like a in-game encyclopedia. However, clicking on the words was also a secret route flag. And they were neither indicated nor clickable in the backlog, so if you went past one, it was gone. So when you got stuck in a bad end, you had to not only change your choices, you had to go back through the ENTIRE GAME, including previous bad ends, to see if you'd missed any clickable terms. If you hadn't clicked on the right words, you were shunted into a bad end, with no indication of why. But not all clickable terms needed to clicked - just some. And again, no telling which ones. One of these days I intend to go back to Steins;Gate. If I ever encounter a system like Himemiko again, I will run screaming.