Eclipsed

Ah, CLANNAD being a "hunting VN" Tiago mentioned makes sense, along with his recommendation to just watch the anime. There's a lot of fluff to the VN in general, and the gamey route trial and error yo-if-you-got-nothing-else-better-to-do,-especially-back-in-200X,-then-you-might-as-well-just-grind-this-VN doesn't really hold up by today's standards. Ryou+Kyou's routes actually highlight the hunting-ness of this VN quite well. I spent the longest time ever trying to get Kyou's end. Ryou's was easy enough, because Kyou literally spoonfeeds you everything and if turns out you gots the hots for Ryou you can climax so quick it feels anticlimactic. WAIT, REMOVE THE R, I WANT TO PAIR UP WITH YOU, NOT RYOU!! ...But should you listen to your heart and lust for Kyou during the Pairing You Up with Ryou Plan... ~~ Yukine Miyazawa. Who the heck is this nice girl, just chilling around the Reference Room like a side character but actually having a dedicated route if you harass her enough?? She totally is a symptom of VNs trying to bump up their route/heroine count back in the day! Yes. The other day I tried to get together with this girl- Kyou, but it turns out she was trying to get me together with her twin sister, Ryou, and then there was this rodent whose problems completely overshadowed my relationship with Nagisa... But she's nice enough. Apparently she's so nice, she has amassed a sort of following- a bunch of well-meaning delinquents who would come visit her in the Reference Room every now and then to just vent about their problems while she would just stand there and listen. Tomoya also gets enthralled by her pleasant charms, and finds himself coming to visit her more and more... ~~ Mei Sunohara. Huh? Sunohara?! -SHUTS THE DOOR- NOPE. I'M TURNING OFF THE VN NOW. ANYTHING SUNOHARA-RELATED BY DEFAULT MUST BE TOXIC- Huh? You're telling me you have the same VA as Rinne from Island? NICE TO MEET YOU!! This is the writers' "Hey let us finally make you appreciate the bro side character" route where they bring out the big guns and throw in his kawaii little sister where you're like, there's no way these two are related! The lengths Mei goes to to bring Youhei back to his glory days was touching. ~~ Idk all the available routes, but uhhh Nagisa, Tomoyo, Kyou, Ryou, Kotomine, Fuko, Mei. Probably gonna try to do Kotomine->Tomoyo->Nagisa. Overall VN's looking really subpar-average, I still can't fathom just wtf can happen come lategame to 9+/10 tier this.

Very interesting. I'll definitely check out the anime after I finish the VN. Out of curiosity though, did you watch the anime or read the VN first? ~~ I'm slowly but surely making progress with Clannad. I went for a "see as many scenes as possible" playstyle for the common route, which btw can I just rant that I absolutely HATE the numerous blind choices? As a completionist that wants to see everything, this just makes things infinitely more tedious. ...Aaand I landed straight onto Fuko's route. I'm assuming she's supposed to be the starter route heroine of sorts, because I totally went ham with pro-Nagisa choices in trying to help her set up her damn Drama Club. And Tomoya totally confesses to her, and the two officialize their relationship, but then all of a sudden this timid mousy girl appears, and it's let's drop everything we're doing and help her?! Like, I even opted to NOT help Fuko and that just resulted me in getting the default common route abrupt "yo you didn't lock onto a heroine trololol back to title screen" end! YOU'RE A WIZARD, HAR- I MEAN RODENT, FUKO! Fuko's cute enough, but sadly that's all she really has to offer, and probably why it took me almost a whole goddamn week to finish this sleeper route. She's this very shy first year who runs away from scary strangers and utters few words, though when she's around Tomoya she's comfortable enough to be snarky. For some reason though, she is always seen carving these wooden stars and trying to give them to people... And so cue SPOILERS: ~~ Kyou seems like a fun heroine, based on her common route banter. I'm gonna try to do her route next. Your sister's hot.

Ok. So, I started reading VNs in 2014. That's like what, 7 years? And my VNDB lists 76 finished, which makes 10-12 per year average. You could say I'm a seasoned veteran now (not really, still a flippin' casual tbh). My first five VNs were If My Heart Had Wings, Little Busters!, Rewrite, Steins;Gate, Grisaia no Kajitsu. Y'know, all the common classic starter packs, so I rated all of them 9+/10 And what am I reading now? CLANNAD. This monster has so many 9+/10 ratings I have to wonder if it was all because it was one of the starter packs that everyone starts their VN career reading and then they get nuked by the late game Key Magickz and hail it as one of the greatest of all time I'll have the luxury of going into this with seasoned veteran status, so I am totally going to be critical and see what all the hype was about. ~~ Yes. Sometimes I wish I was back in my naive VN early days where I didn't realize how utterly butchered Moenovels' translation was for IMHHW and I still regarded it as a wonderful VN. Btw that's the obvious poster heroine above: (first) Nagisa Furukawa. The male protag Tomoya surprised me. Idk why, but I totally thought he would be another LB! bland nice guy Riki, but he's got some Rewrite's Kotarou delinquent sass to him so at least he'll keep me entertained I hope. The main heroine Nagisa also caught me off guard; when you're into idol rhythm games like Love Live / Bandori, and all the Honokas and Kasumis AKA orange/brown haired girls are the genki type, Nagisa totally throws a curve ball by being the innocent naive mellow type: LOL FURUKAWA WTH!!!! And then there's Sunohara: F*** me, I forgot Key loves them some male bro side characters. I got spoiled by ISLAND having no bros to deal with. I personally feel these guys only serve to deduct heroine screentimes. Their banter is usually always whatevers. ~~ Scariest thing so far: 7 heroines, jeebus! I felt overwhelmed with ISLAND having just THREE heroines and was glad they focused on ONE. I know, forgive me, I'm old. Idk if I gots the patience to go through 'em all, but I'll try. Right now I really like Tomoyo for being a former-delinquent-turned-model-student-badass (yay, so that leaves Tomoyo After something to look forward to). Nagisa is a bit too mellow. Ryou's aight, Kyou's where it's at though. Fuko just Fukos. And I don't even think I saw Kotomi or Yukine yet; damn these numerous blind choice mechanics. ^Best girl ~~ I'm so curious what will happen. So far this totally looks like just standard high school SoL, and then come lategame Key'll pull some uber QQ tragics that will me bawls like no tomorrow and 10/10 this VN. But wtf can they do...?

Just don't fall for the 'got overhyped, then was left disappointed' trap I TAKE NO RESPONSIBILITY But yeah I totally went into Island with 0 expectations and am still in the post-VN feelsies after phase. Prob will last until I pick up another VN but I'll take my time Yeah I getchu. I just blitzed the anime version, and for all the rushed ultracondensed yo Ne.-I.-is-literally-shoehorned-into-just-2-episodes-LOL it's still a 10/10 anime for me cuz: 1. You get to see Rinne without a hat more often. On a serious note it did end more in line with what you wanted, and now that I think about it yeah the VN didn't really do the 'final' confrontation much justice. ~~ Speaking of my next potential VN(s), I'm feeling pro-Frontwing atm for obvious reasons, so

....I finished Island. Goddamn, I haven't been this emotionally attached to a cast of characters in a looong time. Specifically the love tale between Setsuna and Rinne. It's just so fabulously romantic, everlasting love that transcends the boundaries of time... Sorry Sara and Karen, these two heroines get absolutely shafted in the grand scheme of things, but it worked in my favor anyways cuz I just ADORE Rinne. Unfortunately can't say much without instantly getting into SPOILERS, but yeah, once I got into winter I was hooked until the end. Random highlight reel (ULTIMATE SPOILERS) cuz I gotta rant about this stuff to get it out of my system or I'll get a real nasty case of post-VN completion withdrawal depression LOL:

I'm enjoying Island a lot more than I thought it would. I think that's the particular VN formula I enjoy the most- charamoeges with beautiful scenery that more importantly ultimately builds up to a greater plot. Probably why Rewrite is one of my top VNs. Island really keeps you guessing though. Is all the scientific hypothesis jargon really true, or is it all just some grand delusions from a bunch of wishful islander kids? The heroines are all great. Going off of my 5yearold Grisaia memories, Frontwing was always good at making heroines with top-notch-common-route-bantering-prowess-but-with-fundamentally-flawed-personal-issues-that-will-be-explored-in-their-routes: Karen, who longs to leave the island and its outdated traditions. Sara, who longs to uphold tradition and save the island. Rinne, who believes she and Setsuna are the same Rinne and Setsuna of legend. Btw, devs were generous enough to give her a whopping 1 CG without her hat: I CANT HELP IT! YOU LOOK SO GOOD WITHOUT THE HAT! Rinne is obviously my best gal, and so I bawled absolutely hard at her ending. Now, I would've been fine if things ended the way they did, but hoh boy, Island gains massive bonus points for:

Ok so, good first impressions on Island You play as Setsuna, an above average decent looking 5.3 rating guy who wakes up amnesiac on an Island. That's as cliche as it gets huh. Whew. Unfortunately, buddy, you ain't got nothing on Grisaia's Yuuji. Setsuna woke up feeling like he was in the middle of something important- a greater, save the world purpose perhaps- and there are immediate hints that this VN could be dealing with time travel and destiny and whatnot. Oo la la, didn't really expect that. Of course, this could all be a big ol' red herring and all the talks of future and time travel is simply a result of Setsuna's delusions. Cuz yeah the guy seems a bit out of it. But he is indeed fairly entertaining, Frontwing delivers with their male protags, as usual. The poster heroine is Rinne. I think she'd look better without the hat, but whatever floats your boat. Setsuna immediately recognizes/knows her name upon "first" seeing her so maybe there really is some destiny shiz going on here. Rinne a rich gal, from one of the three elite families on the island (the other two heroines are naturally from the other two elite families). She hires Setsuna to be her servant. TAKE OFF THE HAT LADY There is a built in flowchart and in general Frontwings' software development team got so pro at coding that you can literally skip or rewind the VN in realtime and jump to any particular scene no problemo. I wonder if they'll narratively make this a plot feature like YUNO's save points The BGMs are fantastic. I guess I have a thing for peaceful/tranquil/surreal/fantasy sounding types and Island would of course be stocked with plenty them. They really do enhance the reading experience indeed.

Finished Livestream and Root Film Livestream: was a decent horror experience. I was expecting a bit more SAW-esque horror scenarios for the heroines but outside of the first few flagship advertisement ones they got, it's been relatively tame. Kinda like Corpse Party. More focus on exploring the Hotel and gathering bits and pieces of information while avoiding the monster rather than back to back horror shenanigans. There are several (4) bad endings that you have to get to make your way to the true ending, and they add a bit to the mystery/suspense while you try to figure out just wtf is going on with Hotel Izanami and what you should do differently to avoid the current bad end you got. Ultimately there's nothing too grand though. Pretty straightforward explanations and reasons at the end of the day. But will these heroines live to see that day? ~~ Root Film was a good mystery/suspense adventure. It's only shortcoming is, you spend 80% of the VN building up this overarching mystery revolving around a decade old cancelled film with a supposed cursed reputation and its relation to the protagonists while you're doing all of your episodic murder mysteries and then it just... kinda falls flat when you finally start getting into the thick of things. The culprit confrontational scenes could've been done a bit better, it's probably the most simplistic/barebones out of the Ace Attorney/Danganronpa games. Basically a glorified multiple choice that you absolutely shouldn't fail if you paid the slightest bit of attention during your investigations. Everything by the end of it is wrapped up with a neat little bow, all the motivations are explained yada yada yada but man i actually felt unsatisfied with the conclusion. Also Riho was criminally underused. You can't advertise having dual protagonists and then have Riho only take 28.5% screentime while Rintaro gets 72.5%. That's some Danganronpa V3 Ch1 shit right there. But yeah, good read, but overall would've liked more Riho. lel. Also worth mentioning: the comicbook simplistic artstyle allowed them to litter this VN with CGs, there's probably an easy 75-100 CGs so presentation wise they did a stellar job. The world / Shimane Prefecture feels vibrant, colorful, and the characters are all quirky and distinct. It's something Root Letter kind of failed to do with its bland characters, empty world. ~~ Just did some Switch browsing. Island came out on the 8th this month, I think i remember being slightly intrigued by it esp. by that one shrine maiden gal with the fuzzy hair when i read Grisaia no Kajitsu 50 years ago (btw still need to read Meikyuu and Rakuen or w.e for Grisaia...) but uhh yup Island it is

Wow time flies. qureate's horror adv "Livestream: Escape from Hotel Izanami" is out. It's, naturally, about a group of three female streamers Nana(left), Mio and Azusa(right), who go visit an abandoned haunted hotel Izanami because streamers gotta stream and then they get trapped and subject to its horrors There's a giant bloody pig mascot thing that serves as the poster monster of this VN and it stalks the halls during the adv 2D side scrolling horror exploration bits. Pretty scary at first, but once you take a moment to learn the game mechanics the Oinker becomes more of an annoyance than anything since whenever its chasing you, you are unable to progress with the exploration/puzzle solving segments until you get him off your tail. Random nitpick: this is a supposed to be a survival horror adventure thingy, and it indeed is, but qureate just couldn't resist and they tossed in some typical ecchi stuff, though with a touch of horror. Even better (or worse), here's a screenshot of one of the 'features' they highlight in one of their trailers:

Picked up Root Film. It's apparently set in the same universe as Root Letter, set in the real life Japan's Shimane Prefecture. Seems the developers "Kadowaka Games" have really taken a liking to this place. Premise: mystery adventure. Two protagonists: Up-and-coming director (M) (first) Rintaro Yagumo, and Rising-in-popularity actress (F) Riho. These two protagonists are just doing their own separate entertainment industry shenanigans when they get caught up in Shimane Prefecture's murder mysteries and whatnot. Rintaro and his assistant Magari Riho and her manager, Manabe Structure seems to follow the same formula as other mystery/detective adventure games like Ace Attorney- a case happens, protagonist and their sidekick gets some time to free roam, banter and do the detective work, then you commence boss battle to unveil the truth. Pretty entertaining so far.

Hoh boy have I been dead Wtf was the last long length thing I've read? Abyss of the Sacrifice? That one all girls trapped escape sci fi thingy? Back in December 2020? LEL WEAK!! Then I tried to read Flowers in January and was like ehh I'll wait for the whole tetralogy to come out for Switch EN (it's already out for JP, plx hurry) Truth be told I'm just out of gas for long length (30+ hr) VNs. Last year I was on a roll, craving and blitzing through trilogies like Muv Luv, Utawarerumono, like no tomorrow, thanks stay at home orders Now what's the trend for me? SHORT LENGTH VNS From Jan 'til now I've settled on Qureate's many one off fantasy single heroine live2D short story romances. They literally pump these out every 3-4 months, faster than whoever the hell pumps out them Nekopara volumes. And let's be real, if I was in full power no life read mode, I'd consider these utter trash. They only take 3-5 hrs to go each through so if you just marathon these there'll definitely be less impact and wholesomeness and whatnot but luckily I'm horrifically nerfed and have been literally only reading like 30min-1hr a day so they can take up to a week for me to finish. Artificial inflated value ftw. NekoMiko - The Neko Para wannabe clone. Two shrine maiden nekogirls cling onto protag to cleanse him of his bad luck NinNinDays - Real life Naruto female ninja (kunoichi?) Sumire begins her journey on the path of ninja, but is totally clueless to social norms and eventually meets the Protag TroubleDays - Novice succubus Lovelia latches onto Protag as her first target to extract his "Technoforce" KukkuroDays: Saber meets protag. Fantasy Tavern Sextet. Ok, now Qureate's getting ambitious. They went from everyday normal protag meets out of this world heroine, to everyday normal protag GETS SENT TO out of this world to meet out of this world heroine. And they're making this a three volume short story series, with two star heroines each volume, cuz we gotta fulfill that sextet = six word play. That's like what, 6 games made in two years? (Neko Miko started in Jan 2019). Makes me wonder how profitable these 3-4month development $10 3-5hr games are vs spending a couple years to make a 20-30hr $30-40 game .. One last Qureate shilling: just next month Apr 2021 they're already releasing their next title: Abandoned. Looks like a survival horror entry? Jeebus that sounds delicious~ TL;DR- these 3-5hr short romance VNs only worked for me because I literally took a week to read each one because of my horrific reading slump. You can literally blitz through ALL of these in just a day or two and you'd just end up feeling "meh".

I actually enjoyed Danganronpa solely because of the loud, obnoxious, over the top characters and bombastic class trials , but can totally see how it can be off putting to some. Definitely think just watching the Class Trials is a bit of a disservice though, that stuff should be played! Aaaand there's another person who vouches pretty heavily for VA-11 HALL-A, I'm definitely gonna bump it up priority wise on my to read list, it's been on my backlog for years now. ~~ So I was supposed to read Flowers, but work started picking up again for me yay 2021 so I did jack all in terms of reading this month. Also realized that Flowers is not a trilogy, but instead a quadrilogy or w.e you wanna call four entries, so I've decided to hold off on it since the last entry le volume sur Hiver apparently isn't EN yet. I did pick up some really random short VN called Prison Princess. It was aight. Just like Neko Para you expected a short VN about cute cat grills and !animated! pr0n, Prison Princess is a short VN about helping two princesses escape a dungeon. Some of the puzzles can put the heroines in some pretty... provocative situations, and there's standard live2D animations going on and !touch support! so if you get tempted enough you can totally just say fk the puzzle and tap away on the heroines to hear all of their moaning goodness. Which, not surprisingly, will lower your compatibility with said heroine(s) and lock you into the bad endings. Escape first, play later! ~~ I also picked up Yumeutsutsu Remaster. I think this will be my first Yuri / girl's love VN? The protagonist is (first) Ai Ohtori, a 21 year old naive cutie country girl who moves to the city to work at a small game development company. You'd think this VN would thus be heavy game design jargon infodumpy and maybe Ai would be this genius programmer with mad skillz or perhaps SOMETHING technical, but unfortunately Ai's position is circumstantial: she has never worked a job in her life prior, has absolutely 0 game design knowledge, and she was mainly approached by the company's President, Honoka, to work as an Assistant Director under her younger sister, 19 y.o Director Kokoro Yanagiya who I guess has been in some sort of slump and so the President went out of her way to set this up to rectify things power-of-sisterly love-style. Unfortunately, Ai and Kokoro are not on the greatest of terms, and that seems to be the core conflict of this VN: Ai's a really nice girl, it's great to have a female protagonist with moege-tier / casual / first world problems inner monologues for once. Most of the otomes I've read were mature story based so the protagonists and their inner monologues often reflected that.

Ty for the heads up, Ill wait for Reflection Blue edition, bummer have to wait but yeah the changes are pretty substantial Guess I'll do...... uhh Flowers Le Volume sur Printemps+Ete+Automne I remember giving Printemps the cold shoulder because "pls Innocent Grey just focus on KnS3" but man they really pumped these out

Step 1: Get a Microsoft Surface Go2 Step 2: Profit I remember years ago when Summer Pockets was announced it's like "Lel, wonder when that will come to the West" Boy time flies. I hear KnS3 also came out in JP, Lel, wonder when that will come to the West

Happy holidays peeps! I finished Abyss of the Sacrifice and did manage to somehow clock in 33 hours so I guess that's a relief. Though admittedly I probably lost 10 hours just getting absolutely hardstuck in some puzzles, so it's maybe more of a 20-25 hour VN depending on how gitgud you are. There's only 16 BGMs, but they've got some pretty catchy techno-y escape room themes going on so I never felt the tracks were too limited/stale: I enjoyed my time with it. Again, most puzzles are doable but there are some that are wtfmuxlogix-tier so I recommend if you are approaching 30minutes+ on any particular puzzle to just go look it up (I used this site which was for the 2010 game, and just google translate the page) to save yourself some frustration. The pacing can feel a bit off sometimes because every time you pick a stage you'll also get some background lore characterization flashbacks on that specific heroine, but in a story that mainly focuses on the isolated trapped mystery aspect you kind of don't need to know their backgrounds (ie. Zero escape did fine not knowing many of the character's backgrounds prior to them being trapped) and it can interrupt the flow sometimes when you just wanna get on with the story. But hey, it's 5 kawaii high school grills, so we gotta get some characterization goin' on. The overarching mystery is decent, but nothing too fancy if you've already played the likes of Ever17, ZeroEscape. Missed opportunity in that you'll probably have a good idea of what's going on maybe 50-75% of the way through and then it's just figuring out how to escape, no more mystery, no more twists and turns. The process to get the ends is in itself a puzzle, which I kind of thematically liked: there is an ending for every heroine, with one of them leading to the true ending, but it's based on what order you play the later stages in the VN. An enforced play order so to speak. So you'll have to pay a little bit of attention to what unfortunate shenanigans happens in the later stages so you can eventually pick the right play combination to victory. Of course, you can just walkthrough the play orders for the endings, but I think there is some narrative value in trying to figure it out yourself. Playing certain later stages will lock you out from playing other stages because reasons*. (Blue is a completed stage, Gray is a locked out stage, Yellow is a stage not yet played, and Blank is a stage you've played on a prior run but not unlocked on your current run because reasons. You can only play Stages on your current column). Jitka's "Zero" stage is the default game over btw, so I was screwed on the pic above, but thankfully the game lets you menu one way back to a prior stage completion point once you get an ending and try proceeding again from there. *reasons spoiler: ...Think you can make it to the True Ending? Or will you be doomed to eternal failure Raging Loop style? I for the record tried for about 30 minutes of play orders for the True End but threw in the towel cuz it just ain't fun having to skip through the stages lol Overall if you just wanna play another trapped sci-fi mystery escape room VN, Abyss is a solid choice

Ever since getting my Switch I've been pretty active in checking what the upcoming releases are and whatnot (on the console's news app itself, not browsing the web) And apparently they did like 0 marketing cuz I didn't see squat about Abyss of the Sacrifice meanwhile Sephiroth DLC for Smash Ultimate is making headlines everywhere Anyways it just released recently for Steam and Switch with a decently steep asking price of $39.99 (Steam has a 20% off launch deal for you PC masterraces) Abyss is a remaster of its 2010 PSP version and it's basically a trapped / escape room type VN involving 5 high school girls stuck in some sci-fi-ish underground facility and has typical mystery elements like why are they there, what the facility is all about, etc. I'm a big Zero Escape fan so I went ahead and jumped the gun, the scary thing though is that this VN is obscure enough that even VNDB doesn't list its length, so I pray this isn't some < 10 hr experience LOL but the game does take up a sizeable 6.2GB so hopefully they got a decently lengthy script to go with all those assets. The escape room puzzles themselves are nothing too special, typically take only 5-15 minutes, but have a huge quality variance, ranging from standard easy peasy just finding all the necessary items and applying them correctly to the various contraptions via trial and error, to headache inducing mindstopper decoding shit that basically require you be the developer to know wtf they were thinking when they made that puzzle (though I might just suck, for the record though I never had to use a guide for any of Zero Escape's puzzles and already ragequitted one or two of these LOL) IDK GIRL, JUST GOOGLE IT!!!! The VN plays in stages/chapters, with each chapter featuring an escape puzzle and heroine specific background lore, with a successful completion returning you to the main flowchart to pick from another heroine to playthrough as the group slowly but surely learns more about the facility and the state of the world: So far I'm about 5-6hrs in, the group is together and have a few quarrels but overall the atmosphere is neutral-positive. The intro PV does hint at some dark shenanigans happening later though, so that'll be something to (not) look forward to. Blood:

Got two routes done in Nightshade, Hanzo and Gekkamaru. So far this VN builds off of common ninja tropes such as "the client/mission always takes priority over everything else," even over your friends and family, hell, it takes it to the max in that if multiple opposing clients hire from the same ninja clan, they'll actually have no problem fighting each other: As Naruto's Kakashi once said, "Those who abandon their friends are scum, but those who abandon their mission are worse than scum." ............no wait- Naturally most of the drama in this VN will revolve around this outdated mentality, where Enju and co. will have to choose whether to follow their shinobi pride or screw it all and follow their heart in the name of friendship and love: Wait 'til Enju learns that the only reason Gekkamaru has been a loyal bodyguard servant to her since she was a baby was because offfffffffffsdafkjlsdfj The bad ends are tragically romantic. You kind of have to go out of your way to get them, since it requires you to be, uh, rather unreceptive, to the Hero for the majority of his route. I particularly liked Hanzo's bad end. He was the absolute badass perfect ninja type who slowly started to learn how to care, and to love: ...But if you don't max out them feelsies: ~~ A glaring weakness with this VN however is that, two routes in, it doesn't seem like the writers created different scenarios for each Hero route. You basically get the same core conflict scenario, and just copy paste the Hero to accompany Enju and change up the confrontations. Revelations about Enju's ninja clan, the mastermind behind the conflict, are reused although explained in varying degrees based on Hero relevancy, etc. Unfortunate.

Guess what I'm reading now! Hint: it deals with ninjas Hint2: it's an otome Hint3: It's Nightshade / Hyakka Hyakurou Sengoku Ninpou-chou It's actually fascinating how many otomes are getting localized in the west... I've read some big otome titles like Code;Realize and CollarxMalice and they've always excelled at having a mature, interesting story with high stakes and Nightshade looks to be another contender You play as female protagonist (first) Enju Ueno, a 16 year old shinobi who is the symbol of peace between two once long-feuding-but-are-now-united shinobi clans, being the daughter of the clan heads. She's the coming-of-age modest, naive, "I'm a princess but please treat me like a normal person" type who's eager to prove her worth, but everyone insists on pampering her: The first tag listed on VNDB is "Life and Death Drama", this oughtta be interesting...

Been years since I've done a walkthrough here, but World End Syndrome is legit a visual novel that should be played with one imo. World End Syndrome Digital NA Playstation 4 | Digital NA Nintendo Switch | Publisher Website (Arc System Works) Summary "I can't help but feel like you never say what's on your mind, and you keep a lot repressed. Like you've given up." World End Syndrome follows the story of a 17-year-old high school junior trying to escape his troubled past. After causing an accident resulting in his older sister’s death, he receives an invitation to transfer to Mihate High School. He takes it gratefully, hoping to start a new life and forget his past. But Mihate Town is not the coastal paradise it appears to be. It is home to the legend of the Yomibito, where the dead come back to life every 100 years. Once resurrected, the Yomibito attack the living to regain their sanity, but the dead’s thirst is never quenched. This year happens to be 100 years since the last known incident… As the protagonist navigates his new life with a colorful cast of new friends, a student at Mihate High suddenly dies. The murder sends shockwaves through the idyllic town as he finds himself caught in a string of strange incidents, romance, and unforgettable summer experiences… [From Arc System Works] Ending Guideline / Suggested Route Order There are five heroines: Saya, Hanako, Maimi, Yukino, Miu, and a final truth route. Yukino's route is unlocked upon completing Saya, Hanako, and Maimi's routes. Miu's route is unlocked upon completing Yukino's route. Truth route is unlocked upon completing Miu's route. Recommended play order: Saya -> Hanako -> Maimi -> Yukino -> Miu -> Truth Route Guideline Prologue: There is a rather lengthy "Prologue" that spans through 6/1 to 7/30. None of the choices matter in the prologue. Create a save on 7/29. Once the prologue is completed, you will receive Worst Ending and be returned to the main menu. Don't panic! That was supposed to happen! Resume the game and there will now be an unlocked choice on 7/30 "...you should wait a little" that will allow you to continue onto the month long Free Roam segment. These heroine walkthroughs will seek to MAXIMIZE the amount of scenes you can have for a heroine during the month long Free Roam by telling you which location they will be at on a certain time and day. You'll see right away that it would be very frustrating to play through this VN blind, because you have no idea where anyone will be and will have to trial and error / save and reload many, many times. The "Student Handbook" obtained from (date) event will add a menu option that displays your current "Aura" (compatability) with heroines. Failure to enter a heroine's route by 8/24 will result in the same Worst End that you got in the Prologue. Kamishiro Saya Yamada Hanako Kusunose Maimi Otonashi Yukino Amana Miu Truth Route Missions / Collectibles There are 10 missions that can be completed during the Free Roam month, along with XX number of collectibles. Attribution This walkthrough was created by me with lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and LOTS of trial and error. Changelog: 12/14/20 - got the basic walkthrough template up. Time to do mass trial and error~

Because obviously I'm a dumb dumb and that was a silly assumption to make. Everyone who read the VN already and then that comment of mine was probably like LOL Finished Raging Loops. Overall enjoyable. Here's the fav bgm: Honestly most of my enjoyment from this VN came from the Feasts, and that's mainly from my personal bias of loving group-battle-of-wits-discussion type scenarios ala Danganronpa. The endgame reveals were unfortunately kind of a big yawn. Waaaay too much last minute background history infodumping and kanji reordering wordplay reveals when you just wanna get the show over with. Getting the final 5 keys was about as tedious as Link having to fetch all of the Triforce shards in Windwaker. And it doesn't even ultimately end in with a big bang, just a matter of fact kind of resolution. Anticlimatic. (SPOILER) Random thoughts to various revelations (SUPER SPOILERS)

Yeah, Raging Loops is an Among Us / Mafia style VN. Protagonist ends up in desolate village, with it's own mafia ruleset yadda yadda. Would've been nice to read this before Among Us peaked in popularity, cuz now it actually feels too mainstream to be reading this LOL Wolves are the imposters, 2 off them, 1 kill per night, 1 vote/hanging during the day on the human side to attempt to weed out the wolves, extra side rules that result in supernatural death if disobeyed (ie. trying to run away, or do more than 1 kill etc). I'm not doing this VN any justice with my super generic bland description- it does, to its credit, get pretty tense and keeps you on your toes until the bitter end on who to believe and whatnot. For the record, I was 1/2 correct by the end of it. ~~ The first loop Haruaki is NOT a participant due to his outsider status, so you get to watch the villagers screw themselves over like morons. I really wished I'd hadn't played Among Us to death when it peaked in popularity. ~~ I'm on my second loop now, will be interesting what kind of plot twists the writers conjured up to keep things spicy (because obviously after the first loop, you know who the wolves are etc etc)

Wait a minute, I just finished World End Syndrome, which delved into Yomibito lore pretty thoroughly, and now I gotta deal with it AGAIN for Raging Loop? Is Yomibito a common folklore thing(I didn't even know about them before reading WES), or did I just supermassive coinkydinky read two VNs back to back that decided to involve them lol Pffft, I'm Takeru Umisho, a certified Yomibito expert, and I can definitely say that Haruaki Fusaishi ain't no Yomibito. Anyways, protagonist 24 yo. Haruaki Fusaishi gets into a recent breakup, takes a one way motorcycle trip to the middle of nowhere to clear his mind, gets into an accident, and eventually finds himself in a remote, desolate village called Yasumizu where the villagers are extremely cold to "outsiders". There is one friendly face though: Chiemi Serizawa, a 21 year old college student who returned here for vacation. She finds the lost Haruaki and vouches for him. Raging Loop already lives up to its name, as the game takes the time to explicitly tell you, "Hey, you'll run into a lot of necessary bad ends to progress the story, glhf" Without further ado, time to go die~

Finished World End Syndrome. The final few routes for Yukino and Miu were pretty fun, because they finally touch upon the murder mystery and Yomibito lore aspects of the VN that the prologue hooks you in with whereas everything else in between was just standard slice of life & world building & heroine personal baggage solving. So overall it's like 90% SoL and 10% murder mystery / supernatural lore lol. Btw, anyone wanna play Among Us? LOL It's a shame, because while reading their routes I constantly found myself going, damn, this VN would've been even more awesome if the entire thing revolved around the mystery aspect. But ultimately all the slice of life did serve its purpose and softened me well for going into: Yup, there's a truth route to look forward to by the end of it, yeee. It's nothing too mind boggling; a bit of a shame considering you have a title like WORLD END SYNDROME so you might be expecting the true route to have reality bending consequences (it doesn't), but nevertheless it was still a pleasant truth route. Hint: it deals with: Alright, detour over. Back to Raging Loop

I finished Hanako -> Saya -> Maimi routes in World End Syndrome. Apparently you need to do these three before you can do Yukino's and Miu's, and so far the supernatural lore regarding the Yomibito-undead-reviving-every-100-years thing hardly has any presence, so I'm guessing the final two routes will start touching base with that. Hanako Yamada / Rei Nikaido Heh, and I'm Takeru Umisho, from Muv-Notes Luv-Robotics ; Alternate DaSH This girl is great. She's the (true personality) socially awkward clumsy girl (fake alias) Hanako Yamada by day and the rising idol sensation (true name) Rei Nikaido by night. She comes to Mihate Town to film for her latest movie after being inspired by the Town's legends, and joins the Mystery Club under her incognito name out of desire to experience being a normal high school girl. Saya Kamishiro Honor student. Athletic. Rich. Talented. Gorgeous. The girl's got it all. That's a funny way of saying "Hey I like you, can we walk home together?" Maimi Kusunose LMAO! One of the rare times my boi Kensuke actually gets some good shots in. (Ironic, because she's actually his one true crush despite all of his fanboying for the idol Nikarei). Maimi is the hotheaded tomboy down to earth speaks her mind type. Unfortunately, even though Takeru was able to avoid having an uneventful summer leading to his prologue-demise by mingling with some heroines, it turns out:

I'm taking a detour from Raging Loop, tbh I just read all of the foreword stuff and then got randomly sidetracked, but I'll get back to this soon I swear But right now I'm reading World End Syndrome cuz it finally went on sale Switch digital for 12 bucks$$ The Protagonist is nameable, so I was like fk me, I don't know any decent names, and I'm hella not gonna self insert my own name, so here's what I named him LOL: Takeru from Muvluv and Umisho from Robotics;Notes. Yes, I literally could not think of anything better, and yolo'd, sue me. So Takeru moves to Mihate Town, a (fictional?) modern day rural seaside Japanese town, to escape some personal baggage. He's like the most indifferent, unemotional protagonist ever because of said baggage. The kind who just lives day by day with no goal, no purpose in mind. It's reflected well during the VN's Free Roam segment during Summer Break which I'll get into later. Mihate town itself has some supernatural lore, The Yomibito Legend, where supposedly every 100 years the dead revive and wreak havoc on the town. Hmm, okay, we're off to a good start. I like my moe slice of lifes to have behind the scene shenanigans to look forward to later. He lodges in a relative's supposedly vacant mansion, but unbeknownst to him he runs into an unexpected roommate: a distant cousin by the name of Maimi. She's not too happy about having some random unknown boy roommate show up, but she quickly lays down some house rules to compromise (Takeru is in charge of cooking, cleaning, basically all the house chores, gg ez). Uncle's...Wife's...lover's....mistress? Uhhhh- I lost track of the family tree at Uncle already, sorrz. Takeru eventually gets roped into joining his school's Mystery Club, which, by VN modern day protagonist standards, means it's a club that exists solely for Takeru to be able to mingle with all of the heroines. Unfortunately though, the writers of this VN made the fatal, fatal mistake of having the worst side-bro character ever by the name of Kensuke exist: a flamboyant failure playboy type whose only purpose is to get collectively shat on by the heroines repeatedly and relentlessly. It gets old FAST. Seriously less than 5 minutes of and this guy already won my award for worst sidebro character EVER. Doesn't help that he actually gets a SIGNIFICANT amount of screentime. The VN has a calendar-date day by day system, with the first two months June and July being considered the prologue which naturally establish the town's setting, characters, high school mystery club, and sparsely hints at some supernatural shenanigans, all in bread and butter slice of life format. Near the climax of this relatively lengthy prologue, a random student goes missing, and during one of the Mystery Club's outdoor trips they stumble upon said lost student's belongings. Uh oh. Unfortunately you won't get to learn much else regarding this case, because the prologue will automatically lock you into the VN's default bad ending as your reward for completing it. Upon resuming the VN you can pick an unlocked dialogue choice to avoid the prologue bad end and move onto the month long summer break free roam slice of life segment taking place in August, and this is where you really get to see Takeru's aimless no lifing as he just goes through the motions, living day by day, wandering around doing whatever he pleases (which mostly amounts to nothing). It's quite overwhelming at first, because as a completionist I kept wanting to reload saves to see what different scenes would occur if I picked a different location to go to, and a lot of the times you're left wondering "WHERE THE HELL SHOULD I GO? DOES IT MATTER???" It's exacerbated in that every day you can visit one place in the morning, one place in the afternoon, and one place at night. With 7 locations to choose from, with up to 3 times a day per location, and 30 days, it gets exhausting very quickly trying to see every possible scene (and there's many deadend scenes, where you visit a location just to get a one liner description and nothing else). 7 locations... 3 times a day (morning afternoon night), so basically every day has 21 potential scenes, times 30 days = 630 times I'm gonna have to reload my save to see all potential scenes, WTF GAME! It also doesn't help that this VN doesn't have a quicksave/load function, in fact you can only save AFTER or BEFORE scenes, not during. A really nasty technical limitation by today's standards. What's fascinating though is that, I think THAT'S THE POINT of this month long Free Roam segment, especially the first time you go through it blind. The VN seems to be aiming for a "if you could relive a moment of your life, how would you go about it differently?" theme of sorts. Takeru's summer vacation my first playthrough was just spent lounging and wandering around and making small talk with whoever I happened to bump into. Uneventful and wasteful. Takeru himself will admit he basically has no life, and heroines will nag at him to start being more open and active. But if you're ultimately unable to develop any connections with any of the heroines and stay a loner, you'll waltz right back into the arms of the prologue's bad end. So from a narrative standpoint I thought this was rather neat. But from a gameplay completionist standpoint though, fk this game. It's so tempting to just pull up a walkthrough and avoid the unnecessary scene grinding. GIRL DONT'CHU BE TELLIN' ME WHAT I OUGHTTA DO! Thankfully, upon getting the bad end a second time around, my initial month long of meandering gave me a good idea of where most of the heroines generally spend their month... Maimi the fiery redhead distant cousin seems to be at school for tennis, Yukino the bluehaired eager young adult journalist is investigating the supernatural Yomibito Legend so she's a wildcard, Miu the stoic softspoken greenhead is mostly working at her brother's cafe in the afternoon, Hanako/Rei is the ditzy pink haired only-the-audience-can-see-through-her-idol-disguise who's shooting a film in the forest, and Saya is I guess the starter route yellow haired ojou because you can literally just say yes to become her servant so she'll assign you your shifts where to go: We'll see if this develops into something interesting.