Vokoca

Oh, this one actually looks very interesting for a change. Thanks for pointing it out, I'll definitely check it out.

Thanks, I will definitely check these out. About the rape, it's sad that when you want to find one of the more specific things (fetishes in this case, I guess?), especially if it's something crossing into the weird territory, it almost always gets paired with the equally weird or ever worse things that you find rather disturbing on the other hand. This is a perfect example of that. Haha, it's probably strange, but I actually enjoy well written bad ends. I mean the ones involving death and the like - haven't encountered any of the sexual oriented ones, and I'd like to keep it that way. To give an example, I really liked the bad ends in Kara no Shoujo (man that VN was hell without a walkhrough, I think I accidentally got every single bad end possible o.O), or Grisaia had some really nice ones, especially Amane's. And well, Corpse Party is one big compilation of bad ends, some of which are kind of lame, but some are oh so amazing. EDIT: Haha, I've looked up the VNs and just realised that I've actually seen the anime adaptation of Otome wa Boku ni Koishiteiru.

Welp, I guess I'll be skipping these as well. Are there any better gender-bender focused VNs? I find the topic quite interesting, but forced rape and such definitely isn't what I want to see from it.

So much this. That whole scene was pure awesomeness, and that synced BGM... oh man it gets me even now. Most of the VNs have various sad moments that make me tear up, but Clannad definitely had the most of them. If I don't count After Story, Fuko's route got to me the most, for some reason.

B-But Tsugumi is a kuudere.

Glad I wasn't the only one disappointed with that last segment.

Perverted protagonists (Cross+Channel is the worst offender here) and h-scenes in general, really. I usually end up skipping through the h-scenes and just looking at the CGs, since they're usually ridiculously dragged out for no particular reason, and it's not fun for me to read at all. They're usually tasteless and out of place, and the more apparent this is, the worse. The only h-scenes I didn't mind that much were the ones in Saya no Uta (even though even these were there undeniably for faps, they at least had plot-related purposes), and the Grisaia ones, which even seemed to move the plot/relationship along, at the very least. In fact, Makina's h-scene might be the only h-scene I've ever enjoyed, simply because it was hilarious.

Oh, you made me really interested now. Was it a difficult read?

EDIT: welp you did. lucky maybe? Oo I personally locked myself out of Kurisu in like chapter 4 by going for mayuri, maybe my walkthrough was bad Well, I never got Mayuri's ending, on the other hand... so I guess that explains it. Though the rest of the endings I did get, and those only depended on one choice, or at least that's how it seemed to me. The message system definitely was confusing, especially with the way you never knew what each choice would actually do. :x

Yeah, I'll stick to ITH and TA, it runs smoothly with those. Tried VNR with Meikyuu and Muramasa, and while it looks great on fullscreen, the dictionary definitely seems to work better in TA. I've also been using JParser, as that seemed somewhat more organised with the colour-coding.

Sorry for bringing this topic back up, but I had one more question. I've tried the VN with VNR - and found out that it might just as well be translated there one way or the other. The only problem is that it runs really badly with VNR on, it periodically freezes about every 5 seconds, in regular intervals (even the OP!). I thought this might be because of my laptop being weak, though when I tried Muramasa, I didn't have that issue at all, so now I'm not so sure. Does anyone know of a solution, or am I just out of luck?

That's funny, I'm currently trying to read this as well. The translation is pretty bad at times, and the whole thing is just pretty unappealing from the start, though it's slowly catching my interest with the MCs problems and all.

My worst experience was when I tried reading something called "Let's Meow Meow", if I remember correctly. I have no idea what prompted me to do that, especially since I didn't even know much about VNs yet... well, let's just say it didn't leave good first impressions.

Wait, did a joke really prompt you into such a rant? No matter how I look at it, the Tunafish Man was a parody of a kids' show, which is precisely the reason why the propaganda jokes were in there. Why on earth would you take them at face value? EDIT: Whoops, I just now looked at the date of the first post. Now I feel dumb. ;_;

I'm running Win8.1 on a tablet/laptop hybrid, and I can confirm that the VNs I've tried work perfectly so far - that is, Tsukihime, Muv Luv, Muv Luv Alternative, KonoSora, Grisaia, Cross+Channel and Muramasa. The only one that has been giving me trouble so far was Kimi ga Nozomu Eien ~Latest Edition~, though I hear that one crashed constantly even on WinXP, so it's probably not the OS's fault.

Yeah, I would definitely like to read that, but I feel like Virtue's Last Reward spoiled it for me. Well, who knows, I will still check it out eventually, thanks for the tip! Oof, that's old school. O: I'll add that to my backlog, thanks. As an update on Cross+Channel, read some more of it and the character finally got more interesting (meaning messed up), which caught my interest. Still not quite there, but I feel like it could become really interesting soon. I'm starting to like how bizarre the whole thing is; it was kind of off-putting at first, though it might become one of its charms in the end.

Haha, definitely! I mean, I'm not complaining that it was there - I'm actually glad that we got a happy end, it wouldn't feel complete without it. Who needs KEY miracles when you have boobs?! Enjoy Rewrite, Amano. The common route is hilarious, and the rest is refreshingly different from other KEY stuff. Plus, Ryukishi07 did one of the routes. Also, it has the best song ever:

I was referring to the ending where Wasn't a fan of how the true ending more or less erased all the character development.

Yeah, I did get the true ending, with the extra chapter and everything. As for C;H, yeah, there is a different ending based on the delusions - though since that's considered a bad ending, I would count that more as a bonus than something you really have to get, in which case it would make sense for it to be hidden. But yeah, I do agree that the C;H triggers were really confusing. NOAH makes the visual cues much more apparent at the very least... and it is even supposed to have routes, though I have absolutely no idea how that would work. I'll have to check it out eventually, it's sitting on my Vita.

I'm definitely seconding the whole, "forget everything and replay it" wish. I'm with you on that one! The final route in Rewrite is simply wonderful. It was so good that it'd probably leave me depressed for quite some time, if it wasn't for that equally genius secret ending.

Really? I might be conveniently forgetting the details, but as far as I remember, you could get the true end in C;H by simply finishing the game once and then loading near the end and watching the ending again. I mean, I got the ending and I never even knew about the triggers - though there was that weirdly complicated bad ending you could get, yeah.But that was more of a bonus, wasn't it? As for S;G, I got the true ending on my first try (not counting the Suzuha end, that finally made me aware of what the phone really does). I mean, didn't getting the true end simply mean you had to The only confusing things were the phone messages, since they choices were never really clear. And if that had any impact on the story, I again somehow missed that entirely. Maybe I'm reading this wrong, so sorry if I'm answering to something completely different, but I'm also a fan of well-written bad ends. Amane's bad end is still one of the most memorable endings from the whole Grisaia no Kajitsu VN for me, and I didn't even know it was a bad end until it actually ended. It was so well made I thought it was the real ending - I love that sort of thing. On the other hand, the "Oops, you made a wrong choice. You're dead, lol!" bad ends are extremely lame.

Sounds awesome! The only thing that came close that I've read was in Corpse Party: Book of Shadows, where the entire first chapter was voiced, including the narration. Since it was all told from the perspective of a single character, it was pretty damn awesome, if a bit unusual.

I enjoy branching VNs with a lot of choices, since that's what makes them so unique. The hint corner is an amazing idea, as it prevents getting you absolutely lost in all the flags, which is about the only thing that I dislike about it - having to replay repeatedly hunting for the choice that you just can't find can be quite annoying. The Grisaia choices are a welcome change of pace then, but it is too simple for my likes. As for the S;G phone trigger, I'm surprised people hated it so much. The SMS thing could've been a bit ambigious, but as for the actualy route choices, weren't they obvious? After I got Suzuha's end, it was really easy to spot the pattern. If I remember correctly, all the choices were practically the same thing, with clear results. Not to mention the VN even goes out of its way to show you how this works with the first day things go wrong: As for the Delusion triggers in Chaos;Head... I have to confess that I've actually finished the whole VN without knowing of their existence. Though from what I've seen, NOAH makes them much more obvious.

Uuu... That just makes me want to try to read them again, with my poor Japanese or not. Since you've read them already, how's the difficulty? I've only looked at the first few lines in Kajitsu and it looked really complicated to me, but maybe it actually isn't that bad?

It is also incredibly helpful when reading Japanese. On the topic of "putting yourself into the VN", does anyone actually do that? Even if the character is effectively just a blank slate and they even let you pick a name - or, to make an extreme example, even if there is a game that lets you even create your character - don't you just treat it as "your" character at best? When I make a character, I don't put myself in the story, it is just another member of the cast. Whether it's a silent protagonist in a game, or an unvoiced MC in a VN, it is always a character to me, not 'myself'. That doesn't mean I'm completely detached from the story, though. VNs usually do a wonderful job at making me feel exactly the way the main character feels, maybe even too well at times (Yuuji in Grisaia effectively ruined my fondness of tsunderes and twisted them into annoying and laughable beings for quite a long period of time ), though I wouldn't say that's because they aren't voiced - that's because they have their inner monologues written out. And there is absolutely no need to actually voice these, so I wouldn't say the main character necessarily has a higher amount of lines than anyone else by a large margin. But yeah, in short, I do feel with the main characters, but I've never even thought I'm him. I'm really curious if anyone actually does?