Vokoca

Just finished Ichijou's route in Muramasa. I absolutely loved how completely different it felt in structure and the direction in which the story went compared to Kanae's route, yet it stayed similar enough to not feel out of place. I have to say I was a little bit disappointed by the lack of ridiculous choice-dumps this time around, but that itself also made for a refreshing change. All in all, I've enjoyed the route a lot. Probably more than Kanae's, but that's not to say hers was bad. Really looking forward to the final one.

Ah man, was on Comiket yesterday, but missed it today. D: Is anyone going to pick this up? The OP looked kind of hilarious, but... I'm not a fan of Michiru. :x

I could relate rather easily to a lot of Chaos;Head's MC's views. I guess that's pretty sad.

I absolutely love the 'fast skip' button Nitro+ tends to add to their VNs, where instead of fast-forwarding through everything, it exits the VN and jumps right onto the next choice/unread text. More VNs should use this, it's amazing. Grisaia also had a very similar button.

I'm planning on picking up the japanese version to see how good the story really is. I'm kind of curious how bad it can really get, so I'll be playing without enabling any of the censorship options, but I'm worried, to say the least. Kind of glad I still have other things to read. If I stall it long enough, I might just as well go with the MG version, but I doubt I'll hold out until then. I hate my curiosity. :x

W...What? This really happened?

How about Akatsuki no Goei? The protagonist here might actually be a bit too proactive for what you're looking for, but man is it fun to read. Haven't seen such an overly badass protagonist in anything else yet. The sequel to the VN gets pretty dark and serious, but the first VN is mostly just hilarious comedy with some more serious parts sprinkled in - but they definitely aren't the focus in this one.

Satisfying conclusions, I suppose. I'm not even going to bring up moege since most of those almost don't even have what could be called an ending, but if a heavily story-based VN suffers from a bad ending, it ruins the whole thing for me. The VN that comes to mind first is MLA.If you're going to take it slow the whole VN, just please don't rush the ending...

Euphoria? Oh boy.

Ah, so it's not like there are several routes open at the same time? Sounds good, I'll read it blind then. I like the restricted order much more (be it a true route or something like this) than an open one, since you're much less likely to end with a lackluster route as the last one. Anyway, to actually get on topic, I'm playing Muramasa right now, making steady progress through Ichijou's route. Well, been reading that for almost two months now, but that's just because I took a break after completing Kanae's route to read something easier for a moment. That VN was Reminiscence... god what a horrendous pick. Loved AkaGoei, but Reminiscence was just mostly boring and unlikeable with very few good parts far in between. I'll be staying away from the sequel.

Can you elaborate a bit on this without spoiling anything, if possible? I am planning to read SubaHibi soon, and I'd like to get the best out of it. I generally dislike walkthroughs as they spoil the whole purpose of the choices for me, but I'm definitely okay with getting the route order/the equivalent of that. Unless the choices give you absolutely no chance to predict where they lead?

Too bad you can't actually enter the mansion though ;; It is an interesting feeling indeed. When I was visiting Kamakura, I felt like I was in Muramasa, which was both awesome and scary at the same time. I definitely wouldn't want to be in a story like that. And wow, that Rokkenjima! I would pay crazy money to get into that mansion, looks so good...

Finally! I was on a Fuwa withdrawal the past few days, it was horrible. Got into the fourth chapter of Corpse Party: Blood Drive. Not counting the terrible gameplay and ridiculously bad wrong ends, the VN (?) is pretty interesting so far. I'm just curious where they go with it, hopefully they will have the balls to kill off more of the main cast, otherwise it'd be just boring. I mean, this can't have a good ending, right? Also slowly getting back into Muramasa when I have the time. Man I love that VN, especially the atmosphere. Just in the second chapter of Ichijou's route or so, things are going in a very different direction than I thought they would. Awesome stuff. Good luck with Reminiscence, it was suffering going through it for me. So boring most of the time, and unlikeable.

Does anyone actually use the auto-mode while reading visual novels? Some of them have pretty neat settings specifically for that mode, but I always find it either going too slow or too fast. How about you?

I usually skip through h-scenes, but that second Makina h-scene was so hilarious it's probably one of my favourite parts of the route. It was so good, I couldn't stop laughing. More h-scenes should be entertaining like this.

Another one : +1, Kaito is still the best VN MC.

There are quite notable exceptions to this, though - in fact, I might go as far as to say that the whole chuuni genre relies heavily on its writing style. Sure, you will always get the story with the translation, but with chuuni, I feel like you're only getting its core, without all the flavour and smaller details. Sadly, this is not even the fault of translators, because no matter how good they are, there are some things that will just never work outside of Japanese - like playing with kanji and their meanings/readings, which can surprisingly enough add much more depth to the text itself.

Well, I went shopping today, and... it's finally time to continue! Woo~!

Do you want your protagonists to have siblings? If so, how many and what is his relationship with them like? Preferably not. No siblings = no incest, and that's a good thing in my book. What about his parents? Are they living, are they dead? How is his/her relationship with them? This really depends on the story. Having no parents allows for more freedom, but if they're used in a good way, perhaps to create some interesting drama/motivations, then I'm all for that. Do you prefer fantasy or sci-fi like add-ons to your protagonist's personal issues? Do you prefer your protagonist to be mundane? If the story is sci-fi or fantasy, there had better be some of those. The more interesting the protagonist, the more enjoyable the story is. The MC can even be interesting with some bad traits, as long as he just isn't boring. Do you prefer him to be poor or rich? Do you just want him to be normal? Whichever provides for more interesting situations. But if I had to pick, probably the poor one. Is he free to move about, or is he somehow restricted by circumstance? Being restricted by circumstances seems to allow for a more tense story, so I'm all for that. It can also lead to some interesting character development, which I love. How does society see him? Is he the child of a criminal or maybe that of a brilliant scientist? I like anti-heroes, so being seen in the negative way is certainly a plus.

Hot/Sexy/Gorgeous/Cute female and male... hm... how about all of them in one? Yes, all of them.

But is Reminiscence worth reading for that? Hell no. If anything, it will only disappoint you even further. It just made me wish Hidetaka wasn't the MC and it made the whole VN even more of a drag than it already was before. There's not enough in there for it to be considered a worthy sequel, spare yourself the frustration and skip this one - or at least read it expecting nothing but a boring charage with some decent story parts hidden in there.

Oh well, I guess I'll have to play the other routes to see more character development. But damn, Anzu is supossedly a main heroine and she didn't even appear once. I guess this game has something called "Unique Routes" right? Fun fact: I was going for Reika's good end first but for some reason I ended up getting the bad end instead and I was like "Why? I didn't want the bad ending...*finishing reading it*...wow those 30 seconds were really drepressing ._." The VN has a rather peculiar structure - there are several major story routes, each of which has a few of the character-specific endings stuck to it. To give you an example, Reika and Kaoru fall into a single route, the only different thing is the short ending there. Also, I am pretty sure you're forced into the Reika bad end your first time through her route, no matter what you do.

Finished Reminiscence yesterday... it's finally over! Aaaaah! I'm not even going to rant about it, I just didn't like it much, as simple as that. 6/10 Now I can finally go back to Muramasa. I hope I didn't forget much of it... time to do Ichijou's route, can't wait! Also making slow progress in Corpse Party: Blood Drive... man I wish that game would perform better, it really hurts the experience. Haha, the locked choices really hurt in Kaoru's case. As for 8/23, it really depends on which ending you're going for. It does get really crazy in some of the routes, but some of the endings are kind of anti-climatic.

Started Corpse Party: Blood Drive today. Played just around a hour so far, though I can already say it is a huge improvement over CP2. The art is properly 3D this time, without the baffling left-over pixelart, and the rendered enviroments and characters are used in much more creative ways - textboxes are accompanied by movement like "interactive" cutscenes, and the camera doesn’t stay static all the time either, zooming up to important things etc.. I still have to see how it holds up in the story and atmosphere departments, but the first impressions aren't bad.

My favourite would be Disorder6 on the PS3. Let's just say that heroines with DID make for a really fun read.