Zalor

I do agree with you that it was wrong for me to generalize a whole media. And you are right that I wouldn't say that all Visual Novels are the same story just in different genres. I didn't mean to make it sound like I don't think any VN can reach the artistic value of a great book, what I rather think is that Visual Novels reach their artistic goal vastly differently then a book or play would. Rereading what I said and reflecting on it, I meant that while VN's are largely works based on text, they are still vastly different in style then conventional novels. I definitely respect the medium, (other wise why else would I have joined this site? ) But I am also very interested in deconstructing it and understanding what separates high quality VNs from the bad ones. That said I do think that because VNs tend to focus on narrative more then other genres of stories, they tend to be heavily involved with the life and relationships of the main characters in a way that most novels wont deal with. A huge compliment I have to give to VNs is that they emphasize the relationships in a way that most novels generally don't have the opportunity to. And I stand by the belief that even the story driven VNs tend to put special emphasis on relationships and first person thoughts, I mean have you even read a VN written entirely in 3rd person, I know I haven't at least. I think I addressed most of the issues you brought up in the paragraph I have above. Anyway, I'm sorry you don't enjoy the debate and defiantly don't participate if you don't want to. I honestly really enjoy sharing my thoughts about VNs and reflecting on them by reading peoples responses. This site is really the only place I can not only talk to people about Visual Novels, but talk about them on an intellectual level. I meant nothing personal when replying to you guys in this debate, I just get really excited and caught up in my own thought when I'm engaging with people intellectually.

I don't think you read what I said here, since the point you bring up I actually kinda agreed with. See: My argument is that unnecessary text is bad, this is true for both short and long works. Only including necessary content in a story is not going to force it to be short, it is only limited by the writers skills and imagination of successively deeming what is necessary for their story. Now in all honesty I have not read Ulysses by James Joyce, but it would not be considered one of the finest written books in the English language if it had unnecessary, chapters, paragraphs, or even sentences. And Ulysses is over 700+ pages depending on which edition your reading, obviously not a short story. Before I say more, I think Ulysses does a perfect job proving my point that a polished, well written story does not have to be short. Participating in this little debate I started really thinking about what separates Visual Novels from conventional books in terms of content. Now while I still stand by all the points I made, I have come to realize their is a difference between Life-stories, and Stories in general. Good stories should have deeper and more thematic content in them. A good story is a story you don't just finish once your done, but rather one you have to digest and analyze. A Good life story, (Which is the category I place VNs in) should serve as a magnify glass into a characters life and the characters around him/her. In general VN's progress chronologically day by day, and rarely will skip large gaps of time. For example you won't generally play in the perspective of a kid, and then suddenly the story skips to when the child is an adult or adolescent, (unless its a flash back). Good VN's generally also have a theme that focus around the monotony of life. So because VNs generally focus around the monotony of life it is natural for their narrative to be longer then most other genres of stories. However, even using this as an excuse I still think a well written VN should try to condense its content when it can, and should avoid scenes that don't serve to develop the characters or the overall theme of the story.

Meh, I feel weird replying to topics that haven't been active for months, "but I have a voice, too, and for good or evil mine is the speech that cannot be silenced"(Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad). Anyway, there are two visual novel reviewers I enjoyed watching on YouTube and feel the need to give shout outs to. I said "enjoyed watching" because both of them haven't uploaded anything in over a year, but the reviews they have up are good. their names are: PhantomZwei, and sifian. Ill link a my favorite review from both of them. PhantomZwei: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgeYwyx1EDE sifian: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqC-Q57eFLE Edit: I randomly found this post again 2 years after originally posting it. Anyway, the purpose of this edit is that sifian deleted his channel and has essentially disappeared.

I agree that a lot of text is needed to develop character, but that does not mean you should add unnecessary content just for the sake of having it there. The scenes that I felt were dragged on in G-Senjou were the action scenes, (not scenes where a character was getting particularly developed). For example, My point is not that a long story is bad if most words in it are crucial to the overall work, but when you add unnecessary dialogue or actions when something could have been ended much sooner and still have accomplished just as much, then that is nothing else but poor writing. I don't mean to sound like I hated G-Senjou, I thought that overall it was a rather good VN, but despite me overall enjoying it is not going to stop me from saying that some scenes were poorly written. You're basically arguing my point by saying it is a book. A book is to be judged on writing, and when you add unnecessary plot twists that didn't really change the characters situation or position by much, then that is bad writing. And if G-senjou is to be looked at as a book, (which I do treat it as) then I will criticize the places it had poor writing. Just to clarify one last time, a long story is not inherently bad or good; it is only bad if it had unnecessary and unpolished scenes, and is good if most of its content was necessary for character development, or the plot. I would also like to say before anyone replies to this. That I excuse all comedy scenes from my criticism. I though most of the comedy scenes served their purpose of lightening the mood at times, and usually succeeded at being funny.

Stole the words right out of my mouth. G-senjou no maou I felt had way to much unnecessary text. I really wish Visual novels would follow a more laconic writing style sometimes, it worked for Earnest Hemingway, I don't see why it can't work for a games narrative.

F*cking brilliant is all I can say about with out rambling on about its greatness for over 10 pages. If your willing to give it a try I recommend watching this video to see if it interests you. They start taking about Swan Song starting at 27:45, so just skip to that part. Played Da Capo II and really enjoyed it. Just recently I've been considering to start playing Da Capo I so I''ll probably start playing it soon.

Nice to meet you as well. Anyway, I played Kyou's route in Clannad and really enjoyed that, but I haven't played other routes besides hers yet. As for Little Buster I really tried to get into it, but I ultimately got bored with it and dropped it, no offense if your a little busters fan. What I really want to play by Key is Air, but the translation is only like 28% complete.

All of you are making me so jealous. D: I'm a huge fire emblem fan and would love to play this one. My main problem is that I can't really afford to cough up the money for a 3ds and the game. Well I've occupied myself with other games for the time being to fill in the void. Anyway, for any of you who recognize the character in my Avatar, (Lord Eltshan from Fire Emblem 4) I have nothing but compliments to say of you. By the way for all you Fire Emblem fans that haven't played 4, I highly recommend you do. You can patch the rom in English and play the game on Emulator. Fire Emblem 4 is widely believed to be the the best in the series by fans, and I would have to agree. Here is a really great review of it for those who are interested.

Like some people previously mentioned I think under the right hands G-senjou no maou could make a really interesting anime. However the VN I would like to see the most as an anime would be Swan Song. However, the problem I would have with a Swan Song adaptation is that no matter who got their hands on the rights, I would fear they wouldn't be able to adapt it well enough.

Greetings all! The first thing I would like to say is that this seems like an absolutely brilliant site. I'm not sure how long its been around, (I'm assuming its relatively new since I just discovered it) but its a shame I haven't encountered it sooner. Anyway onto the actual introduction. I first found out about Visual novels, when I learned an anime I really liked called Kanon 2006 was based on one. Kanon also was the first professionally made Visual novel that I played. However, the first VN I played was a lovely freeware one called Memo. Memo along with Katawa shoujo seem to be among the 1% of freeware VN's that are actually good. The last VN I played was G-senjou no maou, and my all time favorite VN is Swan Song.