Decay

Man, the characters in Swan Song really love their monologues, don't they?

YU-NO, hands down. There are plenty of old VNs that look great, don't use Key art to say that old VNs are too ugly. YU-NO looks fantastic, for example. A lot of Elf games did. Key is special, because their art has been notably terrible compared to their contemporaries for the past 15 years. Both Snatcher and Policenauts are great. Maybe now that Kojima is freed from the clutches of Konami and their MGS factory maybe he can go back to making cool adventure games again. (disclaimer, I love MGS too, but it should have ended a while ago...)

Anyway, everything's been going great and I've been enjoying what I'm playing. Just started yesterday. I'm not that hot on reaching the fifth case, since, well, I've read that it uses the microphone feature of the NDS, and I have no idea how to use that in an emulator. Unless the normal microphone works. I see why the series has a lot of fans. Normal microphones work just fine with emulators. It would be kind of weird if they didn't program that functionality. Phoenix Wright was a lot of fun to read. The case complexity just ramps up from here. It resets at the start of each game but each game is more complicated than the last. At least that goes for the original trilogy, case 3-4 is fucking bonkers. I never actually finished AA4 (and I don't have a 3DS so I never played that one).

Well, for "interesting" VNs I'd go with Grisaia and Little Busters, they both offer things that not many other VNs offer, perhaps LB to a lesser extent. But I suppose the vote is already unanimous at this point. I kind of wish more people who posted these threads would offer their own feedback after-the-fact.

With each route they had events and scenes where he grew to be the person he ended up being by the end of it. It was a natural transition each time. In Terra, that's not the case.

Well you made the most positive option double as a comedy option, while making the most negative option sound like rabid lunacy. You could become a top level political pollster with that kind of bias. For real though comedy options are always the most popular option in any poll, and I think the results of that are going to be pretty much worthless.

My least favorite thing about Terra was how they completely threw out the protagonist for the rest of the game and invented a totally new character to be the protagonist for Terra. And almost none of the heroines had an important role. It probably affected me more because I cared a lot more about the characters than I did the stupid story they built around them, but they decided to throw out those characters and focus entirely on the overall story, which is the worst way to deal with a true route in a game like Rewrite, IMO. No, it doesn't, because that personality was nowhere to be seen for the entire rest of the game. It wasn't a development, there was no growth that lead Kotarou to become who he was. It was just a total personality shift. The Kotarou of Terra is a completely different person from the one in the rest of the game. That lack of connection between the two was really hurtful to the overal experience.

I don't know which opinion is the majority opinion but terra being kind of bad is a fairly popular opinion.

Great, chill music. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3FB43C742736DB47

Taking that ability doesn't grant you that skill, it only grants you the ability to use it if you happen to have it in your possession. And if you already have it, you can read the description by going into the skill menu. No save scumming required. Skills are basically special items that you either purchase from the shop or find in the VR world. This also means that you can acquire skills you can't actually use yet. By the end of your first playthrough, you can basically unlock every ability anyways so don't worry about it too much.

No, the h-scenes are pretty much pure fanservice. And yeah, the UI is a mess. Get used to it being awful.

Hideyoshi was an accomplice. So was Eva. They were lured in by the prospect of the island's gold by Sayo.

The actual dungeon crawling segments are super barebones and boring, but are largely optional. The battles are kind of needlessly complicated but not too bad or anything. I find it very difficult to imagine that someone would fall in love with Yumina's gameplay, though.

I used cheat engine to give myself infinite money. In retrospect maybe I shouldn't give strategy advice for Yumina.

"Not so long" "30-50 hours" So you want something that's really long, but not extremely long, gotcha. Ayakashibito.

On the double is a valid and somewhat common english expression. Hmmm, well... maybe Rewrite? There's quite a bit of comedy, some routes are heavier than others (akane, jfc), but it's not as dark as something like Comyu. It sometimes feels like it's caught between trying to be an action chuuni game and a Key nakige at the same time and it certainly never captures the best either world, but it's pretty entertaining overall, imo. Cross Channel, perhaps? It's funny, and also at times serious. It constantly switches between serious and funny at the drop of a hat, yet somehow is paced reasonably well so it never feels overwhelming. A lot of moege feel like half-assed nakige when it gets down to it, where they try to induce emotion but never get particularly heavy. This is often a bad thing but if you're looking for something light, that could be something you may appreciate. The english selection of moege right now is pretty poor, unfortunately. Decent ones in english may include Konosora/If My Heart Had Wings (but ugh, that translation), Princess Evangile, Deardrops, Da Capo 2, and My Girlfriend is the President. Only the latter one is outright goofy/slapstick like the games you like best.

There is some nuance to it, though. The most complicated part, which I forgot about until now, is the audience rating for each color. It's basically a shared mana pool between everyone on both sides of the battle, and it gets influenced by the abilities you use. An expensive red ability might spend a lot of the red rating to cast and then give rating to the other colors. I still don't fully understand how some of that stuff works, such as the maximum total rating (which is important to raise, I just don't know how...). Sometimes you get into situations where a lot of the audience rating for one color is drained and you have to switch the top spot out to a less optimal character so you should try to avoid this if possible, but sometimes it's beyond your control. Pay attention to the skills the enemy is casting and try not to get into situations where you would just barely have enough rating to carry out the lead character's actions because often it will get drained before they have a chance to act and they'll have to pass their turn. You can do this to the enemy, however. Doing this is key to some of the boss fights.

Umm it's hard to say from memory and without a starting point. What parts aren't you understanding? Basically, every character uses one defensive skill and one active skill each turn. The defensive skill is passive, and is usually strong to either spirit or logic. The character on top is the one who actually gets targeted by offensive skills unless they're special in some way (aoe attacks for instance, although they're very rare). So when fighting, you want to match the character in your party who is best suited to both attack into and defend against the top character in the enemy party. Then your support characters can cast buffs, debuffs, and sometimes their own offensive attacks. These support skills have specific times when they can be cast, and will pop up asking you if you want to cast them when they're able to be cast.

I will literally never get used to Kanon's art. It is awful from start to finish. Ryukishi's art is somehow easier to get used to.

That you're incapable of feeling joy from comedy is very pitiable. It just is. There is way too much tragedy and not enough comedy in the world. Good comedy is a very joyous thing that brings happiness to almost everyone.

You are a very unfortunate person. I hope you get better.

Well, YU-NO's h-scenes were nothing special, but more than that the ecchi in the CGs was extremely out of place. Practically every single CG had a panty shot or excessive cleavage or something else suggestive going on. There could be some really serious conversation going on between two characters, and the CG would be this super low-angle shot just to get an upskirt, it kind of breaks the mood they try to establish. At least by making it all-ages, that's the kind of thing that will be improved.

It's a good thing. Yumina's voice is great.

"non-pornographic" love scenes that can't be included on Steam (which only bans sex scenes that get pornographic) is a bit vague. Is there an equivalent example in VNs that can be pointed to?

There has been more of these generic request threads lately. If you don't have any specific requests, you should simply consult the pinned threads in this forum, they give you some good lists for the most popular/best VNs, and will pretty much tell you the same thing everyone here is telling you anyways.