What are you playing?

[Vorathiel]

Are routes in Grisaia long? In comparission to this infamous common?

 

4 hours ago, Canicheslayer said:

I got a 'hypeboner'. What is it? And please tell me this is high quality vn.

[Decay]

The routes are indeed long, usually around 6-8 hours to read for an average reader, probably closer to 8.

[littleshogun]

@Vorathiel In case you wondering, the VN name was I/O. If you ask me if it's good or bad, I would said good, because GundamAce back at 2013 said that it was 1 of 5 his favorite VN (The other one were Steins Gate, Fate/Stay Night, Root Double, and Ever17). Oh GundamAce was I/O and Root Double translator. Although to find out if I/O is good for you, my suggestion is that find out by yourself.

[Fred the Barber]

So I landed in Sachi's route and have been reading that for an hour or so. Being a chronically nice guy, at least in my own mind, my first time through when I'm just making whatever choices feel right, I tend to fall into the lap of the first girl to whom I'm given choices of the nature of "be nice" vs. "be callous", which was Sachi during the common route. I think I nonetheless got a choice to pursue Amane instead, which I declined. Sorry, Amane, but these are my honest feelings right now.

I'm liking the character route so far - there's clear romance going on now, which is a pretty big change of pace from the comedy in the common route. Maybe I'll get lynched for saying this, but GnK is actually following the Key formula pretty faithfully: it started off with a long, SoL- and comedy-oriented common route, and now it's cleanly pivoted to a gentle romantic character route. The inevitable drama is starting to loom a bit larger already, but isn't yet really casting a shadow over the sweet romance phase. Good stuff, at any rate - there's a reason the formula is popular.

Naturally, I'm expecting things are going to go off those particular rails by the end of the whole VN, though maybe not during the character routes. That's usually my favorite part anyway - certainly for both Little Busters! and Rewrite, IMO, they were at their strongest when they broke out of the formula. So I'm looking forward to the idea of that that, too, off in the distance ahead. In the meantime, I've got a whole lot of juicy character route ahead of me still to go.

[Xenrir]

I just finished Evenicle a day or two ago, and I'm reading/playing Rance 01 at the moment.

Would very highly recommend Evenicle to anyone that likes JRPGs - it has a very fun cast of characters, great battle system, and a pretty decent story.

[spademan]

just started princess waltz, not to bad so far

[FinalChaos]

Finished Demonbane a couple of days back.

Of all things, Master Therion was undoubtedly one of the best things in vn.
Between all the endings I liked Al's good end the most.    

All in all I decided to give it a 7/10 

[Vorathiel]

Slowly finishing Majikoi S.
Why is Benkei without a route? Why must I wait till A? This is painfull, she's great.

But overall quality of Maji S is really poor, only Future without relationship and Tsubame route (before future with her), and Myiako route were good. It seems like they can't go wrong with Myiako, one of the best characters ever. ^^ And Fushikawa Kokoro was really nice. Still Monoshiro, Childhood and final route before me.
Also - I kinda liked infamous Margit route. It was just empty, shitty porn, but making her submissive was a nice twist on her character (maybe bacause I don't liked her that much).

[LoganW]

Just started Beat Baldes Haruka, It's okay so far

[MrBanballow]

Been going back through eden*, but had to take a quick break to work in some Estival Versus, now that amazon got me my games.

Was able to use my JP save data, and interestingly enough, the last character I used was...

... Minori. What a coincidence.

[Kawasumi]

Playing moon. Its really good so far.

[XReaper]

still slowly reading shin tanteidan until the advent of maitetsu, which i definitely prefer over ntr´ing my most beloved shigeno by start playing with myself out of pure boredom.
she, who´s already suffering quite alot, deserves better. shigeno is no tomoe & i´m no chinese geezer, so yeah that´s that.

[Getsuya]

Well I'm going through my collection of PS2 games I bought way back when I first studied abroad in Japan. At the time I just grabbed a bunch of high-rated PS2 VNs to save for when I could actually read them, so now I'm actually reading them. The one I'm currently playing is:

https://vndb.org/v2312

A very un-known game that even so was pretty well received. Kid is a very decent VN company that mostly only produced all-ages stuff for consoles with a few rare PC ports (they're most famous series is probably the Infinity games, followed by Memories Off, but they did a ton of stuff during the Saturn/PS/PS2/DC eras).

Anyway there are many things that make it worth playing. The art is very adorable, and reminds me of Kage Donbo's style. It also deals with a full cast of characters much younger than normal VNs (everyone is in middle school except 2 older girls) so the characters (including the main) are all still very childish and are dealing with issues that face a younger generation than most VNs set in academies for older youth. The music is also very good. And the characters are so expressive! This was still the era where even having lip-flaps was a luxury in VNs, so Kid definitely delivers with lots of pose and expression changes as well as lip-movements.

Also the main character has a name and definite personality, unlike many VN protags. Unfortunately his personality is that he thinks and worries too much. The game even pokes fun at how long his internal monologues are. Personally though I find it nice when I'm reading a VN -about- a guy and his story with these girls rather than the VNs where you're supposed to kind of assume the role of the main character and pretend that it's you in there.

I played through one route of this quite a few years ago and I remember it being very surprising in the directions it chose to go, so I'm excited to see what else the game has to offer. The description given by vndb is definitely selling it short. There is a lot of plot and twists in this game beyond just a boy trying to pick a girlfriend.

 

Anyway I'll post up a full review when I'm done, and keep moving through my collection. Some of the other PS2 games I have on hand are Haru no Ashioto (one of Minori (of ef fame)'s early works), the Mai-Hime VN, and some other random games. I'm also thinking of buying a bunch more and making a collection of PS1/2 era VNs, since I really like the styles from this era and the fact that it's all all-ages. Plus most of it was made directly for console so it's not like they're cutting stuff out.

Anyway I'll keep y'all updated.

(Here's a better look at the characters/art style:Picture! )

[Leaf]

Well so far so good on Steins;Gate the MC is funny enough and the way it's going has immense build up, I get the story is about time travel, but I didn't understand most of anything in Makise Kurise's speech back there, science makes my head hurt man, I curse me for not being smarter!

[Vorathiel]

My last post with excel sheet contain my Majikoi grades was fairly popular, so I will post same thing for Majikoi S, which I finished today.  What a strange VN it was.
All plot heavy routes like Tsubames' and Yukis' were really great, especially Tsubame. Yuki was slightly over the top, even for Majikoi.
Also - character driven routes like Monochiros', or MyiakoAfter were top tier as well. The rest of this VN... oh well.

Spoiler

Final grade - 7.3

And Majikoi one, just for comparissions:

Spoiler

 

[Eclipsed]

On 3/17/2016 at 9:04 PM, Leaf said:

Well so far so good on Steins;Gate the MC is funny enough and the way it's going has immense build up, I get the story is about time travel, but I didn't understand most of anything in Makise Kurise's speech back there, science makes my head hurt man, I curse me for not being smarter!

Wasn't her lecture just AWESOME

 

5 hours ago, Vorathiel said:

My last post with excel sheet contain my Majikoi grades was fairly popular, so I will post same thing for Majikoi S, which I finished today.  What a strange VN it was.
All plot heavy routes like Tsubames' and Yukis' were really great, especially Tsubame. Yuki was slightly over the top, even for Majikoi.
Also - character driven routes like Monochiros', or MyiakoAfter were top tier as well. The rest of this VN... oh well.

Hidden Content

Final grade - 7.3

And Majikoi one, just for comparissions:

Hidden Content

 

How long does it take for you to do these grading things 

[Vorathiel]

6 hours ago, Eclipsed said:

How long does it take for you to do these grading things 

Few minutes I guess? Every grade is fast-noted on my phone while I'm reading, an dhen in few seconds I just put numbers to Excel. Not so hard, but so much fun.  

[kingdomcome]

Currently reading Princess Evangile. I like how it some cases it's quite easy to relate to, the way some of these characters act is very easy to imagine in real life.

Finished Rise's route, twas decent. Started Chiho's just now, I'm definitely have a soft spot for the whole childhood friend thing. 

Uhhh.. I really dislike seeing two of the main route girls fighting over the protag, coz I know one of them won't be chosen. Hate to see them heartbroken.

 

Tip of the day. If you're using auto skip and really want to skip through a large portion quickly, MINIMIZE the VN! I spent ages skipping through chapter after chapter to only realize that it goes 10 times faster minimized. I have no idea how a VN can be so hardware intensive on a good PC.

[Eclipsed]

The love triangle b/w Rise & Chiho was a one time refreshing deal for me. I wouldn't want to read anymore of those types of conflicts cuz it'll definitely be annoying, but it was nice to see heroines fighting over the protag for once instead of them being all graceful in defeat and whenever another heroine snags their guy.

~~
PS Vita NA has a flash sale goin' on, so I splurged 20 bucks on Code: Realize ~Guardian of Rebirth~ and Norn9: Var Commons.

They're both Otome games

Well, supposedly it's not like they're moege Otome where it's just cutesy high skoo girl gettin' it on with 9 dudes, 'specially since its on the Vita. There's plot. Mystery. Special powers. So it'll be more in line with like Shikkoku no Sharnoth's Mary. 'Cept there's 9 dudes the protag will hang around with instead of just M. But yeah.

Then again it's Idea Factory AKA Neppers so gg me

[FinalChaos]

It's been quite a bit of time, but I got back to Euphoria.

Doing Rinne's route now, after which I'll get to the final true route.      

[Leaf]

In the middle of chapter 2, still reading Steins;Gate right now, like the dynamic between Okabe and Kurisu, it's fun to watch.

[pual]

Steadily advancing Coµ and Cross†Channel (volume is higher during auto advance ), probably going to finish them in a week or so. It's refreshing to read something that isn't about school life or post-apocalyptic world filled with eldritch abominations.

Spoiler

not really, anything with parallel worlds / time travel is interesting no matter how plain..

 

[spademan]

Just finished princess waltz, loved the music and the story was good, however the ending was pretty lame. Still haven't gone back to cross channel or ruri route of demonbane, but going to start up ef now

[Suzu Fanatic]

23 minutes ago, spademan said:

Just finished princess waltz, loved the music and the story was good, however the ending was pretty lame. Still haven't gone back to cross channel or ruri route of demonbane, but going to start up ef now

When I first played it, I was underwhelmed - but in hindsight PW was actually pretty decent. It's weakest point however is the kinetic style (being only minor differences between the "routes"). If each girl had a genuinely unique direction, it would have scored much higher with me.

[Getsuya]

Still playing Iris and... I'm pretty sure this game has the most adorable character art of any VN I've played up to now, and I might have a hard time finding cuter art after this. I mean Symphonic Rain had some cute character designs, and I've played a few others with cute characters but... not like this. I said it reminds me a lot of Kage Donbo's style but even hers seems a little too simple compared to this. The characters have a lot of personality to them so they're not as simple as Kage Donbo, but the faces and just the cute way they look is similar. It helps that they all have really cute personalities too, and their outfits and expressions really help as well. I don't think I'd notice their cuteness quite as much if they weren't so animated. I wish Kid had gotten more popular so they could have remade this game with whatever that stuff they did for To Heart 2 is where the characters look fully animated.

 

http://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm28775

There's the OP for more of an idea how cute these girls are. Also one of them is Rie Kugumiya (and her route is really weird).