Seraphim
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Posts posted by Seraphim
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Am I correct in assuming that I'm on track to the good endings as long as I don't get these so called "humiliation scenes"? If so, how do I know if I've triggered a humiliation scene? There's plenty of humiliation and bad stuff going on in some of the regular scenes as well, so I'm not sure I'd be able to tell them apart unless there's some obvious indicator.
I'm asking all this because I want to pick up all the good endings right away in order to unlock the scenario skip function. -
So how do I know which battles actually affect the endings? Being told by the walkthrough to finish "3rd stage" within 2:15 doesn't really help me when I have no idea what "3rd stage" even is. I've checked everywhere I can think of in-game (preparation screen before battles, UI and pause screen during battles, etc), but I've not found a single mention of any "stages". The only things that are numbered are the chapters, but that can't be what they're talking about either, because I just finished Nanoha's route and there aren't enough chapters when compared to the stage list in the walkthrough.
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Does anyone have any idea what "stages" is referring to in this walkthrough? It's obviously not battles, since there are way more of those, so are they actually talking about the story chapters but calling them "stages" instead for some weird reason? (meaning chapter 10 in Rain's route would count as stage 1, chapter 11 as stage 2, and so on)
If so, how am I supposed to interpret the timings for the respective endings? Do I need to finish the final battle of each chapter within the listed time limit, or every individual battle within the chapters?
I also have no idea what they mean by "[First priestess prompt]" in Nanoha's route (which is the one I'm currently reading), although I should already be past that point in the game.
This all seems overly complicated for no reason whatsoever. -
Finished the first route yesterday and I'm currently halfway (I'm guessing) into the second one. Can't say I enjoy the gameplay very much, but since it's not that time-consuming, it's not really a big deal.
By far, the biggest issue with Baldr Sky is that content is flagged as read/unread based on scenes rather than individual lines of text. This means that now that I'm in the second route, I have to wade through a ton of dialogue I've already read in the first route, just because there are some (often very minor) alterations that marks entire scenes as unread, thus rendering them unskippable. There is a force skip function, but using it would mean I run the risk of missing out on the new content that's been added here and there, so it's not exactly an option.
Will I have to keep repeating these same scenes over and over again whenever I go down a different route? If so, I'd have to say this is one of the worst VN experiences I've ever had, despite me loving the story, characters and music. -
There's really no cause for concern here; it's not like it invalidates any of the stuff that happens in the routes. It's just an epilogue to the core story and fits into the grand scheme of things no matter which route you went down.
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6 hours ago, adamstan said:
I have it in my backlog. Question is - do I need to read Grisaia before to enjoy it? (It also sits in a queue, but it's huge trilogy, so it will take some time)
Since this is a spin-off, it's fine to read it without any prior knowledge, but you might not appreciate the characters as much, and, as wyldstrykr said, some references will go over your head.
I still think you should read the original trilogy first though, simply because it's awesome (or at least it was to me). Grisaia no Kajitsu is by far the best out of the three, but the sequels are still worthwhile reads, although they're not nearly as good as the first one. -
Ah, I figured using the punch button several times should result in a punch combo, consecutive kicks in a kick combo, and so on, but I guess it doesn't work like that here then. Gotta admit though that it makes the whole system of allocating attack skills to specific skill slots seem a bit redundant if the game is just automatically gonna shuffle them around without any regard to attack range in the end. Kinda feels like they overcomplicated things for no reason, but I guess it might make more sense later on when I have more attacks at my disposal.
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Getting the good endings right away definitely seems like the best idea then, so I'll go with that!
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Got started on Baldr Sky a couple of hours ago. The combat is making me pretty confused, honestly.
Is it normal for completely different types of attacks to occur inbetween the ones you're actually using? I thought I was going to be able to chain together attacks of the same type, but so far, I've been unable to do so. Whenever I punch in melee range, the character switches to the handgun after my first punch, despite the fact that it's set to dash and I'm not actually moving. (And yes, the enemy is within the circle.) Likewise, when I'm trying to low kick, the whatchamacallit energy orb follows after the first kick, although it's set to long range and I'm actually in melee range. Is this really the way it's supposed to work? Seems kinda weird to me to mix in long range attacks in melee range.
Another thing.
I checked out a walkthrough for the game, and according to that, the routes (or at least the first one) have both a normal and a good ending. Which ending you get is apparently decided based on if you take less or more than two minutes to finish fights in a certain chapter. What I want to know is, will I have to replay the entire game if I want 100% completion, or can I just save at the start of the chapter, go ahead and get the normal ending, replay the fights to get the good one and thus keep the progress from both of them? Or should I just go for the good ending right away? -
I think we'll leave it at that for now then.
In any case, I'll go ahead and put this on my "to do" list! -
I've been a bit curious about this VN since you first mentioned it. I'm awfully tempted to click on that spoiler box, but I'm afraid it might lessen my own experience if I decide to read it. Any chance you can give some vague hints that don't give away too much?
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I read so much good stuff last year, it's pretty much impossible for me to just choose one favorite in particular.
When it comes to VNs actually released in 2019, it's a battle between AI: The Somnium Files, Chaos;Child, Damekoi and Bokuten. I considered putting Aokana here too, but it didn't quite live up to my expectations so I'm choosing to omit it from the list.
If I have to to pick one of those, I think I'd go with AI: The Somnium Files. It's the only one out of the four that I went into completely blind, and it turned out to be a really great experience with a well-balanced mix of both humor and seriousness.
As for VNs that were released earlier but I read in 2019, it's even more difficult to pick a winner. I'd say it's either 999, Chaos;Head, Kazoku Keikaku, Symphonic Rain, Narcissu, YU-NO, Little Busters or Acting Lessons. I'm kinda leaning towards Symphonic Rain, because that was the first one that came to mind when I started racking my brain over this. The soundtrack is amazing, and there's something special about the overall ambience of the game. I have yet to reread a single VN, but Symphonic Rain is one of my top candidates for when it eventually happens. -
Thanks! Yeah, that definitely fits the bill, although it wasn't nearly as PTSD-inducing for me as chomp, which I still have vivid memories of to this day.
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19 hours ago, GXOALMD said:Spoiler
The other scene the post mentioned was "Twizzlers" which I assume I haven't gotten to yet. It said that this scene was censored to not include gore or sexual assault.
Minor spoilers:
SpoilerFrom what I recall, there was no gore in that scene, just sexual assault (if you can possibly use a word like "just" while talking about a scene like that).
Actually, I can't remember there being any gore in MLA at all other than in the chomp scene, unless you consider blood spatter to be gore, which I don't. -
If I'm to list VNs that were actually released in 2019, I have two candidates off the top of my head:
1. Majo Koi Nikki
It's mostly due to the fact that I found the male protagonist utterly unlikeable, but it also felt kinda unfocused due to all the jumping back and forth between different stories. There's also the fact that the way to reach the true end was so ridiculously obscure, I imagine many people could outright miss it without even realizing it. I actually had to write a forum post and ask what to do, because I wasn't able to figure it out for myself and even the guides didn't mention it for some reason. It's a good example of bad game design, considering that ending contains one of the most important puzzle pieces of the story.
2. How To Date A Magical Girl
I honestly had fun with this, but it was all ruined because of an immensely cliché and unsatisfying ending. If it wasn't for that, this would have been one of my better experiences of the year.
As for VNs that were released earlier but I read in 2019, I think Rewrite takes the cake. Don't get me wrong, I think it's a good VN; just not as good as I was hoping it would be. My expectations were rather high, and when the actual experience fell short, it ended up as a disappointment for me in the end. -
48 minutes ago, devilfox said:
Hello,good-bye
There's already a walkthrough for this one. You can find it here.
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Did you go with the original version or the one on PS4 in the end? If it's the latter, I'd love some comments on the new content once you've read it!
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14 minutes ago, alpacaman said:Spoiler
Yeah, the only trio whose arc wasn't obnoxious was the one with Sigma and Phi imo, and even that one wasn't great.
SpoilerAgreed. I think the most interesting stuff that happened in terms of character development was when Sigma and Diana got stuck together in the shelter, which ended up with the birth of Phi and Delta. Not even Akane and Junpei, who played major roles before, felt like necessary parts of the story, if it wasn't for the fact that several shifters were needed for that resonance shift at the end.
Eric was the worst character by far, though. He's just a nobody with a minor connection to Mira, and the only real purpose he seemed to have was to act as an instigator of violence to progress the story at certain points; something Mira could've probably done herself considering her identity.41 minutes ago, alpacaman said:SpoilerThat twist was actually quite heavily foreshadowed. There were a few references to an old and blind man being part of the crew and several scenes where the camerawork made it seem like characters were talking to the boy or the dog but the way they were adressed didn't fit (meaning it was actually adressed towards Zero). I still think the reveal felt rather jarring and out of nowhere and was pretty stupid imo but it wouldn't be an Uchikoshi game without the main twist being about perspective. The main twist in each Zero Escape game only works in its respective medium. In 999 it relies heavily on the use of the two screens of the DS, revealing that that the narration on one of the screens is actually told by past Akane. In VLR the use of a VN format causes you not to question the protagonist not being voiced because it's pretty common in the medium. It also allows the direction to restrict your vision in a way that keeps you from looking into mirrors or reflecting surfaces. The use of FMV in ZTD allows to always keep the culprit out of frame without you ever noticing, which wouldn't have worked in a VN. And as far as I know, Ever17 has a meta twist as well.
SpoilerIn any case, the fact that the game actively omits visual information, logical dialogue between characters and whatnot, just for the purpose of concealing that there's another person among them, means that his entire existence throughout the game is basically just a plot device implemented for this one twist. It's one of the most disappointing and boring plot twists I've ever seen, honestly.
42 minutes ago, alpacaman said:SpoilerI read somewhere that the creators ran out of money so they had to rush the ending. I don't know how much truth there is to this but to me it certainly feels like this could be the case.
SpoilerYeah, it wouldn't surprise me. I'm generally not a fan of open endings, and this is another example of one I don't like.
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Okay, I'm done with Zero Time Dilemma, and what a disappointment it was.
Spoiler1. Character development was awful compared to in 999 and Virtue's Last Reward, and all the jumping back and forth between different characters and events, combined with the vast amount of death scenes in different timelines, made it hard to really care about what happened to them.
2. I was expecting to see more loose ends wrapped up. One example:
What happened to Aoi from the first game? He escaped with Akane during the cliffhanger ending, but while she's part of the story in both sequels, it's not mentioned once what happened to him.
I had been thinking since Virtue's Last Reward that maybe he was actually Brother and that that title was a reference to him being Akane's brother, but no, he's just randomly erased from existence. Am I supposed to assume he died from the Radical-6 outbreak or something like that? Killing off major characters off screen without any explanation isn't exactly good writing in my book.3. What's the deal with the reveal about Zero's identity? He just suddenly showed up in the middle of a room during a scene and turned out to be a character that had not been neither seen nor mentioned before. All the other characters were acting like he had been together with them all along, yet none of them ever talked about him or took him into account in a single situation over the course of the game.
4. The ending was terrible. Sure, all the characters are alive (including the serial killer who just kills whoever she wants whenever she feels like it), but nothing is really resolved other than them feeling a bit more motivated about stopping the extinction of humanity. Problem is, they have no information whatsoever about who the person that will cause it is or how he or she will make it happen, so how exactly are they supposed to stop it?
For a conclusion to the trilogy, the ending sure feels inconclusive. It's a cheap way to keep the door open for another sequel at some point, I guess.
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Here's an answer from a few years back:
There might have been some developments since that reply was initially posted, but considering how complicated it seems to accomplish, I wouldn't get my hopes up. -
Just reached the first kiss CG in Ann's route in SakuSaku. This is the one:
Spoiler
While I appreciate that they actually touch each other, unlike some of the atrocities I've seen in other VNs (like this one in Hoshi Ori), I have to admit it looks pretty awkward when they open their mouths to that extent. It made me think of this scene from Ace Ventura:
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15 minutes ago, Silvz said:
t's also coming to the Switch
That's even worse then! Releasing it on several formats but ignoring the one where it all started makes no sense to me. I actually have both a PS4 and a Switch and could buy the game if I feel like it, but stuff like this doesn't sit well with me so I feel like I should boycott it. I don't know if I'll actually be able to do that though, since I would very much like to read the new content at some point.
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I'm feeling quite ambivalent towards the PS4 release. On one hand, Fata Morgana is one of my favorite VNs and I would love to experience the new content, but at the same time, the fact that they made it PlayStation exclusive kinda feels like being spat in the face, as a supporter of both the original PC version as well as Requiem for Innocence.
Baldr Sky (Out now!)
in Visual Novel Talk
Posted
I haven't dared looking further into the walkthrough before (since I want to avoid spoilers at all costs), but I just did a Ctrl + F search for "humiliation scene" and it actually seems like only Rain's and Nanoha's routes contain those. In other words, will I not have to worry about battle timings in the remaining routes? That would be a load off my mind.