Funyarinpa

Well we already got a terrorist attack here in good ol' Turkey so yeah '17 will likely bring about no change from the norm. Happy new year! Don't worry, I'm not social enough to get bombed before 2018. Probably!

The House In Fata Morgana is exactly what you're looking for. I've also been in a major slump in terms of interesting VN releases in the last year, and Fata Morgana was the game that made the whole medium feel potentially incredible again. It is my favorite VN now. Fata Morgana is one of the very few VNs I have seen that completely discards the regular VN conventions and Japanese culture. There is no slice of life, there is no main heroine used as a marketing push. No slapstick humor. An art style that COMPLETELY deviates from anime art (perhaps you can make a case for exeggerated eyes, but the sprites are, on the whole, far more realistic, detailed and expressive than I am used to). 60 or so BGMs, at least half of them vocalized. A subject matter that majorly deviates from any common genre to become its own thing. 30 hours or so to boot. Its only flaws are no voice acting (though this one's open to discussion, I think it contributed to the game's atmosphere) and the 4:3 aspect ratio (the game was released in Japanese in 2012, though the translation was released this year). It's nigh-incredible on every front. Can't recommend it enough.

oh lol LOL

If this is on piano or something I would actually like to listen to something like that lol

On mobile and I haven't slept this year at all, so there isn't going to be much elaboration. Best: The House In Fata Morgana, it's pretty much as close to perfect as I have seen a VN come. It is now my favorite VN. Best OST, art and pacing I have ever seen. Top notch themes, characterization and story to boot. Worst: Zero Time Dilemma. Top 10 Anime Betrayals. The reason why Fata Morgana could top Virtue's Last Reward as my favorite VN.

Kara no Shoujo is decent. Don't go in without a walkthrough.

There's always MangaGamer :^)

Speaking for Umineko (haven't read the latter half of Higurashi since I'm waiting for the retranslation): It has one of the most varied (150+ tracks!) but consistently amazing soundtracks in the genre, its characters are wonderfully fleshed out, and the whole thing is one hell of a roller coaster (it makes you feel everything from peace to solitude to confusion to terror) overall, the story has layers upon layers of themes and possible interpretation, and you have some top-notch mysteries in it to boot. It just excels at everything it does. Pls Why? PLS Pls

DELETE THIS

Nice!

Translation from Reddit: "Yesterday, I heard from the personal that there were a lot of Umineko fans at the comiket booth... For seeing that much people cosplaying our characters even in the middle of the winter, I would like to thank you. The development for the next game from the "when they cry" series is scheduled to start in 2017. It is expected that this game will be completely different compared to "Higurashi" and "Umineko". I wish you a happy new year." This is real. This is happening. WTC5 is happening. Oh shit. Someone hold me. It has been years. Oh shit. O H S H I T. O H. S H I T. The hype is real.

This year is going out with a bzzt instead of a bang for you, it seems.

Just finished Route B. The last two hours were great.

Root Double spoilers (Route B) Edit: More Root Double spoilers (Route A and B)

I am all for anti-grinding stuff, but there's more to the meaning of levels than that. I'm not even talking about stats porn. I mean skills/player progression. As you increase in level, most RPGs let you expand your skillset and stats and XP bars serve to let you know how close you are to getting a new skill. Another center feature is that you mostly get XP -proceed in levels- by killing enemies and completing (side)quests. Levels are a very intuitive way of presenting that progress and they encourage the player to spend more time in the game, do more quests, kill more enemies, etc.: MMOs are the prime example of how leveling and the new skills that brings can be addictive. There are games that try to play with this formula, System Shock 2 has you gain skills only by finding "cybernetic modules" throughout the game's setting and using them up at terminals for example, However, no leveling system would mean that all games would have their own system for how to gain more skills/character progression, and that could go to shit real fast. So I'm pretty glad leveling exists, it's really useful in terms of skills. That said, I don't think level scaling done right is a bad thing. Making some (especially story) fights always difficult doesn't sound bad at all to me, sounds far better than overleveling and beating a supposedly climactic boss to a pulp in a few turns. That said, there's a delicate balance needed for that; you shouldn't get stuck due to the enemy getting even beefier than you do. So can't comment on how FF8 does it.

Root Double, spoilers for a full route

Final Fantasy VI. Spoilers for the first half of the game.

You have Virtue's Last Reward, though I'd personally wait until it's rereleased with a remaster of its predecessor 999 under the title "The Nonary Games", which should release around March. There are quite a few otomes. Besides that, though, I'm drawing a blank.

Flut Pls

Root Double. Big spoilers for one route.

Yeah, the OST lost me after a while. This game doesn't have its own Morphogenetic Sorrow, Karma or All or None yet. So I'd not be surprised if Abo didn't work on it. The tracks are decent but the nukige I also read yesterday had a few tracks more memorable than anything in RD so I'm kind of disappointed now. lol Read 3 chapters of Route A so far. Good shit.

Bought Hyper Light Drifter and I love its art. edit: And I'm now really salty because I don't have enough change left to buy LISA and/or Transistor. SALTYYYY

So, thanks to it being 50% off I forgot that I was waiting for it to come to Vita by March and ended up buying Root Double on Steam. Played for a little while. Pretty intriguing so far, but the cast feels a bit generic (Yuuri is the aggressively cliche shy heroine. zzzzzzzzzz). There also isn't much tension in its atmosphere so far. The music's good, I wonder if Takeshi Abo also worked on this one's OST (he did Steins; Gate, Ever17 and Remember11's music). Might even give I/O another try after this. That said, the whole "nine people stuck for nine hours in a life-endangering situation" is my favorite motif for VNs so this will be FUN. Edit: How to best go about playing this thing? First do Route A fully then move on to Route B or switch to B after a few endings?

The House In Fata Morgana is easily my VN of the year. In fact, it's just about my favorite VN now. A wonderful story, perfectly developed characters, original and expressive art, best OST I have ever heard of in a VN. I literally have no complaints whatsoever about this game except the fact that it is in 4:3 (normal for a game that was originally released by a doujin circle in 2012, though). Will have to make up you gifting it to me sometime, Bats. edit: Zero Time Dilemma gets my special, most-coveted "FUCKING FUCK YOU, YOU FUCKING WORTHLESS PIECE OF FUCKING SHIT" award. I've been obsessed with Zero Escape for years. It's the series that got me into VNs and I've wanted nothing more than seeing a good Zero Escape 3 to top off the trilogy with a bang since the moment I finished Virtue's Last Reward (ZE2). What we got was shovelware-tier shit that raised more questions than it answered and what it did answer was only worse off for it. It was an insult to everything I loved about the series and VNs. It was an insult to the characters, it was an insult to the previous games, it was an insult to the fans whose outcry and undying support brought this game about in the first place. I can't even bring myself to be happy that it exists, because if our outcry and wishes to see Zero Escape 3 become a reality was going to end up with Zero Time Dilemma, then we would've been better off sucking it up and moving on. ZTD killed Zero Escape, what was until then by far my favorite story in any medium, and spat on its grave. Fuck you, Zero Time Dilemma. Fuck you.

It used to be Morphogenetic Sorrow from 999, which is still a wonderful track, but my new favorite BGM (and overall OST) is from The House In Fata Morgana and it wrecked my fucking shit. Wouldn't really recommend listening to it without hearing it ingame. So have this song for compensation: