Clephas

I think choices should be few and if the gameplay overpowers the story, it shouldn't be present in VNs.

A few more. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFiSb9SBOW0 For some reason they totally screwed this up in Episode 2... one of the eeriest themes in the game. Also, in my opinion, Nier and Chrono Cross have the best rpg music of all time, regardless of era, limitations, etc.

What are your favorite game (non-VN) soundtracks? What broke your heart, or uplifted your spirits after a horrific scene? What scared the beejeebus out of you, for that matter? A good game story is as much the sum of its music as it is that of its dialog or visuals. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J46RY4PU8a8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hllbwq8ElMc&list=PL15D2BF2A0C9D112C&index=37 I remember how this one gave me delicious chills when I first encountered it, haha. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfCV1bVOiGc Magus' theme, of course... and just imagine... they had virtually nothing to work with when they made this music, hahaha.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_f4eGQ9MIWM

Looking back on the jrpgs of the distant past, I have to shake my head in astonishment about how well they did their stories with so many limitations on what they could do with the hardware at hand. Take Chrono Trigger, for instance. For all the somewhat comical look of some of its characters (Frog and Robo), it was an intensely emotional story, that could draw tears and laughter from anyone who played it, even people who didn't like role-playing games. If anything, modern storytelling in games has... degenerated since most of the limitations present in old games were removed. Look at music direction, which was once a profession responsible for creating most of the emotionality and atmosphere in a given game (especially role-playing games). Do you think you would even recall the themes for half the games you've played years ago if you were to play them now? Even big names like Final Fantasy or Star Ocean don't manage to have memorable music direction (as opposed to composition) anymore. Chrono Trigger, Chrono Cross, Suikoden, Dragon Force, and others all spoiled me when it came to the usage of music. Heck, I literally can't remember ANY of the themes from any Final Fantasy after X. People, especially game makers, really do underestimate the sheer power of a well-used bit of music these days. Edit: I should clarify. There are games that only need one type of atmosphere (such as the 'Souls series) where it is easy to set the atmosphere simply by running a bunch of similarly-themed tunes. It is games with stories that contain many complex emotions and themes where a good music director will shine. I'm mostly complaining about the fact that even big name rpg and VN companies seem to have lost this art to an extent.

Sharin no Kuni is a bit different... for one thing, the plot's conflict is resolved no matter which heroine your choose. For another, it makes sense regardless of which one you choose. Another game that uses G-senjou's structure and is even more inconsistent is Aiyoku no Eustia *Clephas unleashes hate-beams at Eustia*. (worst true heroine ever)

G-Senjou is structured the way it is so that nothing gets resolved if you choose any heroine other than Haru. This is also why I loathe this type of story structure.

Dark Souls II's method is not new or unusual. It was used for most survival horror and mystery puzzle type games on the old systems, due both to a lack of writing talent they could use and the limitations of the hardware. To be honest, I don't really enjoy the series' story at all. I never really feel involved with the game's story at all in Demon Souls, Dark Souls, or Dark Souls II, despite all the effort I make actually playing the game. This is an inevitable result of the fact that the series is basically a modern version of the old roguelikes, where fighting monsters and bosses was better than 99.9% of the game and the story was just an excuse for uglier monsters. VNs, on the other hand, basically hand you the story on a platter, with text and pictures. Considering that I'm a bibliophile before I'm a gamer, I generally prefer this method for storytelling, when possible.

I do like story-focused (rather than heroine-focused) VNs to have a true or grand route. In a normal charage or moege, it doesn't make much sense to have one, though. With nakige, it depends on whether there is an over-arching plot, rather than being focused on the romantic elements or the heroines. Most chuuni games have true or grand routes because the overarching story is more important than the individual heroines. This is also why story-focused games tend to have longer individual routes that split off earlier from the common route. 'True heroines' are a bit more questionable... It depends on whether the heroine is worth it. Heroines such as Eustia from Aiyoku no Eustia are unworthy of being the focus of a true route, but ones like Kagome from Comyu most definitely are. There are some games, like Rewrite, that would be unworthy of mention without their true routes. Others, such as Eustia, are actually harmed by the presence of a true route or a true heroine. Shizuku from Evolimit is a decent true heroine, but her path as the true path is what makes sense, because it ties up most of the loose ends that were left dangling in the other paths while giving the character a definite sense of choice about how things turn out (there are three endings in her route... and they are definitely distinctly different).

Edit: Simple answer for the Kotori route personality issue: I'm curious now... just how bad is the Rewrite translation, anyway? If people are missing so many of the subtle issues of Kotori's route and their situation, it can't be good.

Story-wise, it is both more traditional and more out there. The battle system is significantly more refined, but the overall story does suffer somewhat in comparison (from an experienced reader's point of view, Aselia is unique in its beginnings amongst VN stories, with the protagonist starting out as a slave soldier drawn from another world). It is also a bit harder than the original, heh. Also, it is based off of Aselia's ending as the canon ending of the first game, so yes Euphoria is a playable - and powerful - character in the game. One downside of the way it does the story is that it will confuse those who played the original, at first, because the world they are in differs drastically from that of Aselia's in terms of structure (I won't spoil it). For those who are worried by this statement, just sit back and relax when you don't quite understand what is going on with the setting, as it will be revealed later. Other than Euphoria, there are no other appearances from characters from the first game. Edit: I will clarify points in PMs for those who finish reading the prologue, but until you have, you won't know what I mean.

No, I thought Rewrite was average at best, and it was only redeemed by Terra, whose writing and scenario quality was higher than the rest of the game. To me, the heroine paths were only redeemed by their weak connection to the Moon/Terra true ending. Also, genre-switching refers to the sudden shift from a certain type of story to another type of story. Rewrite starts out like a moege/charage and ends up like a chuuni game toward the end of each path. While the early part of the story hints that there is something shadowy/dark behind the scenes of the city, Kotarou's attitude and manner of speech during those scenes makes taking it seriously difficult, and so the sheer difference in atmosphere between the heroine paths and the common route seems abrupt and poorly planned. The map minigame that appears frequently in the common route also serves to weaken the story, simply because it feels like an interruption whenever it pops up, not to mention that it is annoying enough that even when I managed to get into the common route, it popped me right back out. That killed the common route, at least for me. As for my opinion of the heroines... they would have been better off in a normal Key game, and it is obvious that the writers were trying to draw in the normal Key audience, who love the quirky females that generally define their games. Oddly, Shizuru's character is not out of place in low-quality chuuni (there is a heroine similar to her in ExE by Yuzusoft), but Chihaya, Kotori, and Lucia all feel distinctly out of place, at least to me. Akane... could pass for a 'haraguro' heroine with a weak heart in just about any VN, so it is impossible to call her out of place in any genre, lol. It is also why her path is so surprising in its strength. I could go on all day about the heroine problems in the game (at least some of which were caused because Key didn't keep the story to a single writer, which would have been best in a game with a strong true path/ending, because of the necessity of 'connecting the dots'). Edit: Shizuru's path was just badly done, aside from whether her character fit in with the game's atmosphere.

lol... as a message for those who hit hooking problems in the future, feel free to ask me in a PM, rather than posting in the forums. If there is one thing I became accustomed to over the years, it is troubleshooting ITH.

Also, considering Key's target audience (fanboys of its earlier works), Rewrite's genre-switching and the excessive gaps in quality between its various routes and the story flow greatly weakened it as a game. To be blunt, the common route feels like 'Key if Key sucked donkey turds' and the heroine routes feel like 'second rate chuuni' in most cases. The degree to which the writing and scenario quality explodes (in a good way) in Terra in the Japanese version made it feel as if it really were a completely separate game, made at a separate time, with only vague linkages with the rest of the game. I honestly didn't have a problem with dropping the heroines as they existed in the rest of the game, but I know that Key fanboys might have trouble with that kind of thing, so I don't blame them if they developed a distaste for that aspect of Terra.

Whenever you run into this problem, check the agth database (search Google, it will pop up) or Hongfire's AGTH thread (if it was only recently released). Sometimes other sites will have the info you need, but most are at those points. Also, for the most recent games, generally kind-hearted people will post help info if you ask in the torrent threads on Anime-sharing.

Yeah... being able to have all the games in the main series permanently installed on my ps3 would be nice. I don't want anything to do with the crapfest of the DS and 3DS games, though.

Incidentally, there is also a joint fandisc for this game and Bullet Butlers that links the two worlds and stars Kuki and Alfred (twin brother of the Bullet Butlers protag), with a real and interesting story of its own. *Clephas smiles innocently* It is called Chrono Belt, hehehe

My scores for the routes Common 2.9/10 Chihaya 7.1/10 Lucia 6.8/10 Shizuru 6.6/10 Kotori 4.7/10 Akane 7.7/10 Moon 7.2/10 Terra 8/10 FINAL 6.8/10 This game suffers from IPS (Idiot Protagonist Syndrome) throughout the entire common route, the heroines are overall slightly weaker than is preferable in a story like this, and the entire map-filling feature of the game would drive anyone who hates meaningless minigame activities insane.

Borderline worth it. The Moon route is incomprehensible without the heroine routes, and the Terra route is based off of the end of the Moon route. However, some of the heroine routes are downright painful to read, at least in Japanese.

I want the Hounan route on a reverse-port, lol.

I have finished playing two of the five paths of Tsuyokiss NEXT, one of the games others requested I try. As it looks like I need to switch over to the April releases for my game of the month thread, I thought I'd give a bit of a preliminary on it. First, for those who didn't already know this, Candysoft is a related company to Minato-soft, the game company that made Tsujidou and Majikoi. However, the Tsuyokiss series, while it retains some of the 'nori' that makes Minato Soft's games so funny at times, is quite different in nature. For one thing, the first game in the series is such an obvious love-comedy moege that I dropped it after eight hours of play, just as I was exiting the common route. It wasn't funny enough to make up for the somewhat obvious setting and the fact that I saw and hated the anime, which was told from the point of view of one of the heroines. Later Tsuyokiss games supposedly added more power and depth to the characters, but by that time I had no interest in the series whatsoever. I hadn't intended to play this game at all... ever. Some of the complaints I had about the original game are still valid. The game is a bit too plain at times (this is despite the unusual way the school is run), and the humor is of a type that is only funny the first time you see it (I found this true of all the games by this company and its relations). This company's bad habit is exporting its basic character archetypes between games in the same world, and it shows. There is even a mini-Tsujidou heroine with the same voice, just to make the connection a little more obvious. Tsuyokiss doesn't have Majikoi or Tsujidou's conflict focused scenario, and as a result, it falls a little flat in the two heroine paths I played so far (Neko and Kohane). Neko's path, in particular, is resolved so easily I felt cheated. As soon as the protagonist gets the girl, things resolve way too smoothly and quickly for my taste, and most of the story seems to about the fall in love aspects of things. Considering the internal and external conflicts are a large part of what made Majikoi and Tsujidou so interesting (with the contrast between the daily interactions and character dynamics aiding in this), I felt let down. Anyone who played Majikoi and/or Tsujidou will probably feel this way, because this game succeeds in reminding the player about them without managing to provide the same type of entertainment. That's not to say that it wouldn't be a good game to play if you haven't played those games... it would be. There are far worse options in the moege and charage genre, and if I were able to cut out all relations to the Minato soft games, I would have probably managed to enjoy it moderately, if not greatly.

April's releases that are worth playing are relatively few, due to some being delayed and the fact that there weren't many in the first place. I'll be playing the new Eushully game (remake of the original Ikusa Megami), the new game by AXL, and one or two other games. There aren't any others available, so this isn't going to be that exciting of a month, unless you are a fan of Eushully's games. AXL does good work on the stories, but they mix and match all of their characters' features and tachie so obviously a five year old used to playing Where's Waldo? could figure it out.

That was because you had to have a larger number of characters than a single party leveled up, and it is still incomparably little grinding when you put it up against the average jrpg, lol.

With Suikoden, most of the characters are only there to provide laughs or a face to the conflict and the soldiers involved. There is usually a core group of about thirteen characters who create the emotional basis for the player to be involved in most of the major actions in the game, with about half of them met during the prologue. In addition, some characters like Luc or Jeane get formed over the course of multiple installments. One of the protagonists' mother in 3 is also an antagonist in 2, for instance, as well as a major character in 3. Jeane really only comes to life in V, where her backstory (and why she has been alive for thousands of years and is the runemaster in every main-series Suikoden game) is revealed. Some of the characters own stories are only understood by playing them across multiple installments (one of the major characters in V is also a minor character known for his grim demeanor in the first game, and in V you get to find out why he is like that). To be blunt... Suikoden games are meant to be played like one grand chronology and it shows. Last, Suikoden regular battles are ridiculously easy if you keep your weapons upgraded and level up your characters. In most cases, just pressing the auto-battle is enough. In the first game, all that is needed is to use the protagonist's death magic, lol. In the second, one or two AOE spells are usually enough to clear out a group of monsters... and if you play the loopholes of the game, even the third one can be made ridiculously easy by hitting hard areas early and obtaining certain characters early. Heck, in II, if you sit there repeating that one fight on the cliff's edge with auto-battle, it is quite possible to max your protagonist out early in the game, as well as netting you a nice bundle of cash (about level 15. you can switch from using the protagonist and Joey's unite tech to just auto-battling and win without taking damage, lol). That will net you lots of healing magic from the protagonist, making it easy to power through some of the 'can lose' but 'winning is better' fights early in the game, haha. Also... complaining about grinding in a normal jrpg makes sense, since lots of grinding is generally required. However, with Suikoden's rapid leveling and 'let go' button that appears when your party is slightly more powerful than the enemies, you have no reason to even worry about it. Once that button appears, you won't gain anything useful from the enemies there, in any case. It is a 100% success run away function and probably the best idea that series creator had in terms of battle functionality.