Rockmandash12

great review thus far, and I'm glad to see more people try to do VN reviews. Keep up the great work! (btw you sold me on cartagra, I want to play that now...) If you don't mind, if you aren't able to hit the quota, would you be willing to allow me to post some of my reviews? Mine is mostly the more popular VN's, but I think I do a decent job. http://rockmandash12.kinja.com/rockmandash-reviews-ef-a-fairy-tale-of-the-two-visu-1646035015 http://rockmandash12.kinja.com/rockmandash-reviews-ever-17-the-out-of-infinity-vis-1626111485 http://rockmandash12.kinja.com/rockmandash-reviews-fate-hollow-ataraxia-visual-novel-1612260148

That post with VNDS is pretty much the best way to get VNs on android, but other than that there's an android version of If my heart had wings, and a really borked version of narcissu.

I finally got the time to listen to episode 11, and I was disappointed with it. I expected more discussion about story structure, art quality, different styles, and technical fidelity, but that wasn't really talked about. I'm glad you guys talked about how interactiveness with mini-games have changed, but so much has been ignored. VN's in the past had a lot more choices, some of them feeling very arbitrary. Choices now feel more impactful and less arbitrary, and there's a lot of kinetic novels nowadays, or just long stretches without choices. Compare something like IO to something like Zero Escape and you'll really see that difference. Art Quality has improved quite a bit. Compare Tsukihime -> Mahoyo, and Kanon -> Rewrite, and the quality in art and style has improved quite a bit as these companies got bigger and VN's got more mainstream. Styles have really changed. Compare something like Ever 17 to it's remake, or old 90's vn's like never 7 and yu-no to stuff like ef and chaos head and you'll see the huge stylistic difference. Also, VN art has gotten a lot more experimental in art, with things like Saya no Uta having it's art being a core part of the game with tons of gore, danganronpa with it's picturebook style art and steins;gate with its watercolor pixely look. VN's nowadays have a lot more movement before, and some are even complete FMV (School Days)! To me, the big difference is in resolution and aspect ratio: we live in a world with 16:9 monitors, and newer games are higher resolution and 16:9, which is something I really appreciate and enjoy. No more black bars! I was really surprised to hear nobody talk about that. Well, that's my thoughts about the episode, sorry about the rambling.

Ahh... this is what I get for only occasionally going onto fuwanovel. I'd love to do reviews here, but I guess I missed the deadline :/ I really should come on here more, but I find that I don't really have much to say because everything i'd say already has been said :/ I'm just going to leave a bunch here just in case you guys reconsider, or if anybody's interesting in reading what I write... I spend too much time making reviews http://rockmandash12.kinja.com/rockmandash-reviews-fate-stay-night-visual-novel-1613176306 http://rockmandash12.kinja.com/rockmandash-reviews-fate-hollow-ataraxia-visual-novel-1612260148 http://rockmandash12.kinja.com/rockmandash-reviews-tsukihime-visual-novel-1614282097 http://rockmandash12.kinja.com/rockmandash-reviews-clannad-visual-novel-anime-1609437459 http://rockmandash12.kinja.com/rockmandash-reviews-rewrite-visual-novel-1609445042 http://rockmandash12.kinja.com/rockmandash-reviews-steins-gate-visual-novel-1557340615 http://tay.kotaku.com/rockmandash-reviews-always-the-same-blue-sky-visual-n-1568079967 http://tay.kotaku.com/rockmandash-reviews-i-o-visual-novel-1563212529

just got to ch7 of ef - a fairy tale of the two... OMG... I DID NOT EXPECT THAT... WHATasfdsfadls'f;dskfz'lfjasl;f..... ...fwga whatttttttt Wow... wow... wooww........ Geez... If you want your soul to be destroyed... play this... woww... did not expect those plot twists... came expecting a nice romance similar to WA2... did not get that.... woowwwww I gotta say though, as shocking as it was, the story itself wasn't nearly great as I was expecting it to be, and the writing could have been better. if they made a latter tale a continuous story instead of the movement parts they did, which essentially broke the entire momentum of the story, it could have been much more enjoyable... and so much mood whiplash... and a lot of stuff... :/ mixed about this one.

Even though I'm pretty new to fuwa and don't have many posts, I'd love to be a part of episode 11, but probably won't due to the fact that i rarely post here and I've only played translated VN's. *crosses fingers*

999. It was the greatest experience of story telling i've had up to that point, and since. The atmosphere, music, writing, etc... they all added up to something that I fell in love with. Uchikoshi is an amazing writer. #OperationBlueBird

Is it OK if I snag this forum game and show it to some friends? It's a lot of fun. I'll mostly go over currently running shows this time. Valvrave: ETERNAL JAPANESE SPACE VAMPIRES, NUFF SAID. Ao Haru Ride: It's a shoujo. Bladedance of the Elementalers: THE TSUNDERES ARE EVERYWHEREEEEEEE Aldnoah Zero: It's a show that tries to be a mecha deconstruction, but then crashes and burns. Argevollen: The most boring mech show you will ever see. Persona 4 Golden: It's new game + White Album 2: The greatest serious romantic drama I've ever seen, and I can't wait for the VN to finish translation. Attack on Titan: An overrated Muv-Luv clone that's executed poorly. Angel Beats: An overrated feels show that has more plotholes than swiss cheeze. Golden Time:The good parts of Toradora, but with ghosts and a better ending. Fate/kaleid liner PRISMA ILLYA: A girlier Fate/Stay Night with magical girl elements, but it's better than you are thinking it is. Mahouka: Fun times with the Japanese Magical Batman Gary Sue who has no emotions (other than loving his sister). HaNaYaMaTa: cute girls doing cute things Invaders of the ROKUJYOMA!?: A show that started as a harem with a room as the thing everyone was attracted to, but then devolved into a normal harem show. SAO II: Better than you think it is.

I'm all for joining that YouTube team. I already have reviews and stuff on YouTube, and i'm not horrible at editing. The podcast NEEDS to go up somewhere else, that mixcloud's player is just god awful. As for educating people about VN's, I recently went through and made what I thought was a fairly comprehensive beginner's guide to VN's, you guys could use it if you wanted to.

IT IS A HAPPY DAY YAY WE ARE GETTING CLANNAD FOR STEAM! My go to recommendation for romance VN's can now be played by everyone. This is great news. Let's hope sekai project keeps up this momentum.

Yes. Yes. Yes.... YESSSSS! Both of them take quite a bit of time to get good, but when they get good, they are amazing.

Best aldnoah episode so far, but that's not hard to do when all the episodes so far have essentially sucked. At least the soundtrack is good.

The lack of Fate/hollow ataraxia in this thread makes me sad. Absolutely hilarious, it's like F/SN mixed with the comedy of carnival phantasm. It's great.

I just finished up Fate/hollow ataraxia, and i'm starting up tomoyo after.

Looking at this makes me jealous that you can actually understand this game... i so want to play mahoyo....

I know I'm going to get a lot of hate for this one, but Urobuchi. I know he's more known for anime, but he did write a few vn's for nitro plus, so he counts as a VN writer. He has great ideas, but he sucks at writing characters. What's the point in making an epic plot if you don't care about what's happening because you have characters more boring than cardboard? I did like saya no uta, but other than that, meh...

Here's the patch if you are still interested.

now we just need to moe-ify it and make it into reverie. Also... once again, this shows how robots are the prime example of the uncanny valley......

some programs act screwy with a japanese locale, or not at all. My recording program bandicam would not run on a japanese locale, and I had to get the japanese version to get it to work. I ran into one or 2 others, but I don't recall the names.

first reaction... meep... that's a lot... Well, I'm still pretty new with VN's in comparison to a lot of the people here, so I appreciate this help. I fixed the descriptions to the best of my abilities.

I keep forgetting about that because I played it on the 3DS. Fixed.

fixed

..... Fuwanovel. The place where all threads get derailed. ALL OF THEM. NO EXCEPTIONS. Traps are great. how can you say no?

A few months ago, I figured that I knew enough about visual novels to post a Beginner's Guide to Visual Novels onto Talk Amongst Yourselves (Kotaku's user community) because I didn't really see a guide to the genre that was up to snuff. I've been working on it ever since, tweaking it to improve it and make it better, and now I'm currently working on a video version of it, which is in the process of editing. I figured, since i'm now on Fuwanovel and I think there would be a few people who would appreciate it, I'd go and post it here. I'm no pro to VN's in comparison to alot of people here and it's not perfect, so if you have any constructive criticism, please comment about it below. What exactly is a Visual Novel? Why should I care, and why do you care about them? The Visual Novel Genre is a confusing genre, especially if you have no idea what it's about. I'm here to try to help. This is is my Beginner's Guide to one of my favorite genres in gaming, Visual Novels. Before we actually get started, there is one thing I need to clarify; i'm talking about Visual Novels as a genre, not about dating sims. NOT ALL VISUAL NOVELS ARE DATING SIMS. Dating sims are a Sub-Genre of Visual novels, if that. A lot of them aren't even VN's. Get it? Ok, good. Let's move on. What is a Visual Novel? A visual novel is Genre of video games (Personally, I like to think of it as an interactive storytelling medium, as there isn't really much gameplay), that's similar to choose your own adventure books and adventure games. As the name implies, Visual novels are text heavy, but they usually have music, voice acting and stills of characters to help you get absorbed into the story. The biggest gameplay aspect of a Visual novel is choices; The player has to decide what the protagonist does in the form of options. The options can lead you to different story plotlines called routes, or they could just lead you to a bad end and you'll have to try again. Visual novels without choices are usually referred to as Sound Novels or Kinetic Novels. Why should I care? Visual novels are a very flexible genre, storytelling wise. Visual novels have very little restrictions, story wise, as they can go on and have a ton of exposition without making a book HUGE, they have the flexibility of multiple routes, they don't have to comply with arbitrary rules set by TV companies and using the genre to mess with you. The Fate Stay Night Visual novel is a good example of this, as it's 50+ hours, had 3 separate routes, and having Shirou as a narrator can skew your viewpoint. The flexibility leads to many visual novels to have amazing stories. Because of the excellent stories from this genre, many popular visual novels get anime adaptations. Some of the most well known adaptations are Clannad, Fate Stay Night, Steins;Gate, and Higurashi. Some of you may be asking, why would I play Visual Novels if I could watch the anime? There are many parts of the visual novels that do not get adapted, and sometimes the adaptation is kinda bad. Also, there are some great visual novels that have not been adapted, like Phoenix Wright, G-Senjou no Maou, 999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors, and Tsukihime that I'd recommend you check out. What is it like to play a Visual Novel? How exactly do Visual Novels play? It's like watching a really long anime, or reading a book that's kinda animated. It's easiest to describe as a mix between a book and an anime. On average, they are usually much longer than the anime counterparts, which give them time to flesh out the characters and the world. Usually, Visual Novels have branching routes, where stories have some similarities (known as a common route), but overall could be considered their own stories (ex: Heaven's feel in Fate/Stay Night). In any Visual Novel, usually you have to go on a path and stick with it. When you stray away from the route you are in, you'll probably run into what's known as a BAD END, where something horrible or pointless happens. Also, i'll insert the OBLIGITORY EROGE WARNING here; Many Visual Novels are Eroges, meaning they have NSFW content. Many have censorship patches, or none of this content at all, but if type of content is not up your alley, be prepared. How would I get my hands on a Visual Novel? The fact that Visual Novels are not popular in the west means that most of them are kinda hard to get over here. Many companies do not translate and make english versions, so you are pretty much have to rely on fan translations. If you know that the game has an official US release, I'd go and support the publisher, but if it's not, the best place to find a visual novel is at Fuwanovel. It's important to note that many Visual Novels do not find their way outside of Japan, which can be depressing if you found game or series really like. Terms used in Visual Novel talk: Visual novel - This is an umbrella term used in the west to designate a type of game which is particularly story-focused, or containing novel-like narration in its writing. In Japan, such games are generally referred to as "love adventure games" (恋愛ADV/AVG), or novel game (ノベルゲーム noberu gēmu, in short: NVL). Routes - The name that refers to a story line in visual novels. Non-linear branching story lines are a common trend in visual novels, and these branching story lines are routes. Kinetic Novel - Kinetic novels are visual novels without choices, so all you do is read. Sound Novel - Sound novels is a trademark from Chunsoft. The term is the original word referring to novel type games.However "Visual Novels" became prevalent due to other companies using it in order to avoid the company's trademark. This term later was known because of Higurashi, which used it because the sound was more important than the actual visuals, so they called it sound novels. 07th Expansion's sound novels are essentially kinetic novels with a focus on sound to create an atmosphere. Dating Sim - Technically, this term refers to simulation games focused on dating. However, this term is frequently used by English speakers to describe any romance-driven game, regardless of game mechanics used. Chuuni - An umbrella term for games that have melodramatic characters, and they are typically focused on the protagonist. Nakige - A game that produces emotional catharisis (touching your heart, making you cry, etc), with a good ending. Think of games like Clannad. Utsuge - games that are made with the intent of making you depressed, kinda like how nakige is to make you cry. Moege - A VN where the focus is on Moe (not even going to try defining moe....) Charage - Sub-genre of Moege where the focus is on character development Eroge - An eroge (エロゲー or エロゲ erogē); a portmanteau of erotic game: (エロチックゲーム erochikku gēmu)) or Ero-ga is a video game that features erotic content. AKA Hentai Game. This is a blanket term for any game that includes NSFW content. Nukige - A sub-genre of Visual Novels which focus on the erotic content. Harem - A trope characterized by a protagonist surrounded by three or more members of the opposing sex who are usually love interests. Harem usually refers to a male protagonist with female love interests, while stuff with females with male love interests are referred to as reverse harem. Occurs in manga and anime as well. Bishōjo game - This term designates any game involving a male lead dating pretty anime girls. The word "bishōjo" literally means "pretty young girl". "Girl game" and "gal game" are also used to describe this sub-genre. Not really used here in the west. Otome game - This term designates any romantic game involving a female lead dating pretty anime boys.... so the exact opposite. Translated literally, Otome game means "maiden game". They are also referred to as a "reverse harem". Boy's Love game - This term designates any game involving a male lead dating pretty anime boys in a homosexual relationship. "BL game" and "Yaoi" are terms also used to describe these games. This sub-genre is primarily geared toward a female audience. If I missed any terms please post a comment below and i'll update this post, or check out Fuwanovel's document of Lexicon​ that should have pretty much anything I missed. Recommendations A beginner's guide really wouldn't be that great of a guide without some recommendations, right? well, I have quite a bit of recommendations broken into sub-genres, so click on the ones you are interested in, or just watch them all. I'll be giving out one main recommendation per sub genre, with extra recommendations if you liked the main recommendations. If there's anything you think that's missing, that's probably because I haven't played them yet, or I didn't care for them too much. If these aren't enough for you, check out Kaguya's list of 50 translated VNs you should read before you die. Sci-Fi This is the same Sci-Fi you know and love, Science fiction; but the Japanese usage may skew more twords fiction than science. This is my favorite sub-genre of Visual Novels, I haven't played one of these I disliked. 999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors (DS,iOS) Why this rocks: This game has an amazing atmosphere, great writing, and it keeps you engaged with an interesting premise. This series has an atmosphere that is unmatched by any other game, and it's a must play. If you like this one, play Ever 17, Remember 11, Never 7, Zero Escape Virtue's Last Reward (3DS, Vita), Steins;Gate, Chaos; Head Romances Romances are all about relationships, dating included. This includes the sub-genres of Nakige, Utsuge, Dating Sims and many others. Clannad Why this rocks: All of the feelz ;-;. It's pretty much like the anime, but there are a few routes that are in the game that go further or are totally missing from the anime. If you don't know anything about clannad, it's a great story with excellent characters, excellent writing, and is just amazing overall. This game really impacts you with a great message, great charecters, and it floods you with feelz. If you like this one, play Anything made by Key: Kanon, Rewrite, Little Busters, Planetarian, Katawa Shoujo, and the fantastic White Album 2 (no English translation yet, but it's going to be great when it comes out. Check out the anime). Horror Horror is… well horror! These are games made to make you afraid. Pretty self explanatory. Higurashi - When They Cry Why This Rocks: It's a horror mystery. it has some of the most interesting scenes in any series ever, and is unlike anything you'll ever see. Personally, I haven't played the game so I can't speak personally about it, but I did love the anime. If you like this one, play Umineko, Corpse Party (PSP), Saya no Uta (on a totally different lvl of messed up tho....), Kara no Shoujo Mystery G-Senjou no Maou Why this rocks: I like to call this the Death Note of Visual Novels. If you want to learn more about this, check out my review Here. If you like this one, play Sharin no Kuni, Any Akabeisoft2 game, Higurashi, Hotel Dusk, Last Window Action Fate/ Stay Night Why this rocks: This, along with Clannad are pretty much flagships of Visual Novels. Fate Stay Night has a very well written plot If you want to learn more about this, check out my review here. If you like this one, play Tsukihime, Fate/hollow Ataraxia, everything Type-Moon... and Muv-Luv. Phoenix Wright Why this rocks: Some people may debate that these are actually visual novels, but personally, I think they are. If you've made it this far without knowing what Phoenix Wright is, i'm disappointed in you. You play as the defense attorney Phoenix Wright, and it's quite fun. If you like this one, play the rest of the Ace Attorney series, It's spiritual Successor, Ghost Trick (DS, iOS), Danganronpa, Hotel Dusk Weird Visual Novels Visual Novels usually come from Japan. You kinda have to expect stuff like this. I've never played a lot of these, but from what I've read about them, I'm very curious. Go! Go! Nippon! My First Trip to Japan- This one's about an okaku going to Japan. It has an interesting concept, but it's really not worth your money…. can finish in one sitting. Hatoful Boyfriend - YOU ARE TRYING TO DATE PIGEONS. AND GUESS WHAT? IT'S COMING TO THE STATES. Osananajimi wa Daitouryou: My Girlfriend is the President - This one is self explanatory. I'm very curious. School Days - A game that defies expectations with the most assholish protagonist ever. Edit: Thanks to our friend Richard Eisenbeis, I'd seen some pretty weird VN's as of late. Interested in dating Sushi or slabs of meat? Well, NOW YOU CAN! That's about it for the basics of Visual Novels. If you see anything missing, post it in the comments and I'll update this post.

I love tsunderes with an obsessive passion. Not that i'd ever want to live with one, but they make entertaining characters. Kuuderes are great charecters also.