What are you playing?

[Funyarinpa]

3 hours ago, ChaosRaven said:

I guess I must be some of the rare people who like Ever17 because of its overall atmosphere and character routes (mainly Sora's) and not because of its true ending. Sure, it was certainly 'creative'. But I don't know, if you have to pull almost every fantasy and science fiction trope in existence to explain your story, then it gets a bit hard to believe. At least I would have preferred a more down to earth explanation instead of the whole pseudo sci-fi mumbo jumbo. 

3 hours ago, ChaosRaven said:

I guess I must be some of the rare people who like Ever17 because of its overall atmosphere and character routes (mainly Sora's) and not because of its true ending.

3 hours ago, ChaosRaven said:

character routes (mainly Sora's)

We are now friends.

Re: Ever17- I do agree that the first four routes get tedious, but for me Sora's route was utterly incredible though I played it before I played Tsugumi's, and I actually like it even more than the true route. However, although E17 is one of my all-time favorite VNs I do think that the four primary routes could really have used some differences amongst themselves (the calm atmosphere doesn't help, for the most part, either). 

[littleshogun]

Finished Mayuri's route, and for next route I'll play Sakurako's one. As for playing order, I think you should play Mayuri's first no matter what. I forgot to state this beforehand, but Mayuri's here was one of two student council vice presidents there.

I think it's understandable that many people out there didn't pleased with how Mayuri's route came out. As for Mayuri herself, let's just said that she was had some sort of secret there. About the seiyuu, hers was Suzuki Keiko although she was using her alias here though as Suzumori Chisato. Suzuki Keiko herself was had many roles in Key's VNs recently here, and those roles were Haruka Kanata twins from Little Busters, Nakatsu Shizuru from Rewrite, and Hoshino Yumemi from Planetarian. As for more commentary, it'll be a spoiler there.

 

Well, we knew that Mayuri's there was appear as some sort of gentle lady there. But apparently it was sort of her fake personality, while her real personality was more blunt there. As for her problem, she had two. One of that is that she hate flower because of her traumatic past, that's also caused she had trauma with very loud voice. Her past is that she was had her bodyguard was shot and her bodyguard was fallen into the flower. Her second one was that apparently she was facing some sort of arranged marriage with student council president (Who I said like to play Higurashi too much), and her family was very strict. Her route here was only solved one problem, while normally most people will expected that Mayuri's route here also resolving the marriage problem. Her solved problem was her trauma, and it's also the source of the drama because her fatally injured bodyguard there was MC's (Shou) father, which caused Mayuri's more uncomfortable to be around Shou because she will remember of her traumatic incident.

I think that's all I could write for now.

[Soulless Watcher]

OH MY FUCKING GOD!!! The bosses in Seinarukana are punishing as hell! I'm really getting sick and tired of all vn/game hybrids that are not made by alicesoft. In alicesoft games the gameplay compliments the vn aspect, the decisions you make in the game influence the vn story. In all the other vn-game hybrids the gameplay just feels like a road block that has very little to do with the vn itself.

[Suzu Fanatic]

8 hours ago, Kurisu-Chan said:

Called Walkthrough, i've never seen anyone get banned on youtube for that. 

Walkthrough of what? How to read moving text? There isn't exactly any kind of gameplay or other interactions that a viewer is missing out on, unlike more traditional Lets plays. In a rare twist of fate, I agree with Decay.

It's no different then downloading the game via torrent, only this is stored on Youtubes servers instead of needing to be d/l'd.

[Decay]

8 hours ago, Kurisu-Chan said:

Called Walkthrough, i've never seen anyone get banned on youtube for that. 

Youtube doesn't ban very often. I have however seen youtube videos get taken down for it. In fact, most VN publishers here have specific guidelines on how much of their games you can show in youtube videos because it's a problem for them. It's basically giving people a way to experience the VN without paying for it.

[Vorathiel]

Ever 17. You route:

Spoiler

I didn't finished Sara route yet, but I won't till like day after tomorrow[EDIT: God bless my manager at work - day off! ^^], so quick update on Yous'.

On 8/22/2016 at 10:10 AM, Eclipsed said:

Overall Kid x You is pretty meh, You had 300% more entertaining banter and dynamics with Takeshi imo.  Hell in general Takeshi >>> Kid so far.

Different strokes for different folks.  Yous' route was a MASSIVE improvement over both Takeshi routes. You (energetic and funny girl) and Sara (intelligent and little sarcastic one) are also more likeable than Tsugumi (just a bitch) and Sora (bland empty AI. I couldn't look at her as a person at all. Maybe if I started with her and not Tsugumi... but the milk is spilled, nothing to do).

Quote

Everything's been answered...for the characters. Readers will have to wait for True Ending. Oh well, least I got to see You with longer hair  Dat bowlcut don't do her no justice.

I'm ambigious on that troll ending. It would be better without that epilogue at all. But You with short hair>>>You with long hair.  Somehow she looked younger with longer hair.

Quote

Only saving grace was that there was no chicken sandwich BSOD this time  

Actually I'm kinda surprised by your reaction. For me it was pretty reasonable. Day fifth or sixth of being closed with bunch of weirdos in underwater, sinking facility, with a lots of water on the floors, nothing ever dries, no sign of incoming help, no communications with outside word, only thing to eat are the same sandwiches over and over... He just broke down. Understandable. Those sandwiches were just a spark to ignite his despair.

On 9/11/2016 at 6:39 PM, Eclipsed said:

best to save your breath until the very end though, cuz you're literally only getting a tiny piece of the puzzle with every route

That's... not true. Takeshi routes fails to even ask any questions. I don't expect revelations and answers in first routes of the game, but they failed to even lay any questions, to start any mysteries (maybe except for very late Himmel). But with You's route, there was a lot of. Lot of unanswered questions, lot's of interesting plot points, lots of mysteries I'm now dying to find out about. And a lot's of hints to answers as well, so I can came up with some sort of theory about what's happening. I love it. That's why You route is much much better than Takeshi routes. With mr T. NOTHING ever happens, with Kid there is a lot. Whole searching for access restricted data in LeMMIH was a great plot thread.
Then I looked up and found up the answer to a question 'why this feels familiar to me'. You route is written by Nakazawa Takumi, man behind I/O, which I love.

Hopefully Sara roue will be as good.

Overall for now:
Graphics - 4/10 Nothing is good, but I like this You facial expression. She looks 'monkeyish', but nice.
Music - 5.5/10 It's... kinda okay. But it's badly getting old, just like Vangelis soundtrack to Blade Runner. Children of their respective eras, nothing timeless.
Characters - 6.5/10 I wrote about them higher.
Tsugumi route - 5.5/10 Boring, nothing happens, Tsugumi is a bitch.
Sora route - 6/10 Same as above, but Sora is better girl, I like interactions with her. Although 

Spoiler

possible sex with Tsugumi in this route was completly WTF and why this even happened.

 You route - 8/10 Maybe a little too high, but much better protagonist (in first half), much better heroine, much better written, and much, much better story made this route fairly enjoyable.


PS - I remembered one more thing. Kid in You route. At the beginning he was smart and knowledgable. Answering all questions, knowing laws of physics, etc. But in the second part they're turned him into an idiot. Come on. Not knowing what a login/password security system is, or how dimensions works. That's like elementary school knowledge. But that's a problem of whole VN. Treats reader too much like an idiot. Every little 'science' bit is thoroughly explained, even if it's obvious. Steins;Gate and I/O with their mini-encyklopedias were much better. Story flows, and if you didn't know something you could just look it up.

And once again my 'quick update' is a two Word pages long magapost. See you all after Sara route.

 

Sara route:

Spoiler

 

EDIT: I read through Sara route. It was like...2 hours of reading + skip. This VN is really, really short. 20-25 hours tops.

Anyway, her route. Different writter... and it feels. I liked the revelation they made in this route. But that backstory... This trope is beaten to death I hate it.
 

Spoiler

Bullied little girl and her hero who is taking every punch and nnot telling anybody about it. Sigh.

also whole sudden 

Spoiler

Oniichan, oniichan, oniichan and oniichan. FFS. She just couldn't stop using these words. 

And the song, by god, the song. It wasn't awful, but I still didn't like it. But fact that this song sung by Sara wasn completly not skippable and I was forced to lsiten to whole lines of her singing was terrible. What was even more terrible is a fact, that this song was sung FOUR TIMES in a span od 20 minutes of reading. Who the hell though that this will be a good idea?

Also sound editing is terrible. Different loudness levels from the same one character in one conversation, one scene, a lot of background noises in whispered parts, etc. Hard to listen to with earphones.

The worst of the worst things was a scene right after the ending. I liked bad ending better because of this. This is why I'm saying that characters in VNs almost never acts like normal human beings, they're always exagerated, always hanging onto one stupid thing i ntheir live, unable to move on.

Spoiler

Sara risked her life, and anybody elses, who obvoiusly would came back to search for her, by coming back for a small piece of mirror. 'Because it reminds me of how much you cared for me oniichan'. It was painfull to read. She deserved to die. And she did. I was glad.

Somehow it was 'rescued' from pits of cancerous-vn-tropes by good ending, but pain I felt will never be erased.

Okay. Off to late afternoon nap, coffe and time for True Route! I hope I will love it.

EDIT  3: Nobody answered? Ooh well. Time for true route then.
 

 

True route:

Spoiler

 

MAIN SPOILERS ALL OVER THE WAY.
Positive things first.

1) Takeshi was one hell of a handsome beast.
2) I liked few revelations. Whole 'families' theme was nice. Also it made sense why Tsugumi was totall bitch in Kids routes.
3) ... nothing else? Oh well.

And then the rest.
What a ride it was. 
1) Localisation. FFS I hate localisations. You is telling a story, I hear 'Urashima Taro', whos legend I know quite good from mangas and other VNs, but I read "Rip van Winkel" who is a character from John Irvings book, and whom I do not know at all, I had to google that. Ugh.

2) Pacing. Was... no better than first 4 routes. Still a lot of boring, repetetive unnecessary shit. A lot of emphasize was on Coco character, which was understandable. Point is, Coco as a main focus point is just not working. From cute energetic kid (14yo my ass) she became annoyed spoiled brat. No, no brat. Bitch. I mean... She was calling Takeshi 'papa'. Cancerously annoying. She was calling Tsugumi 'mama', which was iritating. But when she acted 'play with me or else' she was frustrating. I mean - middle of the night, Takeshi is asleep and then she comes, pullig on his eyelids (!!!) and 'come on papa lets play some reterded shit'. That was incredible. What's even more incredible was that everybody was spoiling her even more, to the point when one day she was waking up her 'papa' by INJECTING MUSTARD INTO HIS NOSTRILS. Literally. yeah. Really 'cute', right? Of course Takeshi didn't mind, because VN logic.
She also had voice that was really annoying if listen to for a long time, but fortunatelly I'm too fast reader and her voice was cut off at the begining of her every sentence.

3) Pacing part two - two protagonists. Good idea. But execution? That was horrible. Every single time when Kid or Takeshi was almost getting new piece of important knowledge, perspective was changing to other guy and some silly scene in his story. Like when Kid was getting knowledge who his father is, there was abrupt cut to Takeshi and Coco yelling 'papa'. I wanted to stay with Kid, to know his feelings, his reactions, but no. Lets watch Coco doing dumb shit. Cause it's fun, righ? Spoiler warning - no, it isn't.

4) Facepalming. Three times. In no route before did I facepalming, but here I was doing it hard. Hardest, literally 30 second of facepalm was at the very ending. When the reason why this all was happening was revealing.

Spoiler

Because stupid little girl went to search for her little stupid toy.

It was even worse than Sara coming back for a part of mirror in her route.

5) Mumbo fuckin Jumbo. Oh god. Whole VN was establishing hard laws of actuall physics with addition of some sci fi theories. It was good. But then came true route and literally throw it all away. Amount of plot holes was unbelievably high. They even made a major mistake in their own theory of Blick Winkel. Maybe in japanesse it was properly, but in english version it was said, many times,

Spoiler

that he is from 4th dimension.

Which is totally wrong, because it was said before that human beings

Spoiler

are living in 4th dimensional spacetime, and to see that as a whole you must be dimension higher. So BW must have been from fifth dimension.

But who cares about logic and consistency, when we have...

6) Magic, miracles and shit thrown in readers face.
  * Takeshi miracoulusly

Spoiler

bringed back to life

  * Takeshi with

Spoiler

rebuilded, autohealing organism

after few hours instead of 5 years
  *

Spoiler

robot

fucking dog swiming few times to the surface and back to the bottom of the ocean
  * water pressure? What's that? You were explaining that 5 times in every single route? Well fuck this we need Kid and robot dog to came unharmed to the

Spoiler

bottom of the ocean

, so shut your brain and enjoy our mumbo jumbo you smartass.
  * fucking Coco. What the hell?

Spoiler

Appearing in 'Kids' timeline, while being asleep in cryochamber? Knowing much more about events occuring than she could? Wha?

7) Blick Winkel.

Spoiler

4th (5th) dimensional

creepy stalker looking over little annoying girl her whole life. Lolicons. Japanesse trademark plot point. 

Epilogue on the boat. That was dragging as hell. So boring. And additional minus for not including both Takeshis sprites at the same time on screen. There was no interactions between them at all. Which was really suirprising, if you consider who they were to themselves. Also, Tsugumi+Sora additional epilogue. What the hell it even was?

9) Main minus. Lack of explanation for most intersting things in previous routes. First - who the hell was kicking a can in tag game? Never even mentioned again. Second - life reading always saying '1' at the end of routes. Who it was? Why 1? Sensores wasn't counting even Himmel, let alone that bottom research facility, where

Spoiler

researcher was dying and Coco was left behind.

Also - why 7? Why 6? Why this lifereading was so fucked up? Why was it so important to literally show it at the end of every single one ending?
Third and last - Coco. What was she? Why was she a

Spoiler

psychic?

How does it work? 

And there is my spreadsheet with grades for different parts.



As you can clearly see I graded You and Sara routes higher than Coco. Why? Well, although few reveals was nice, nothing was mindblowing for me. I predicted

Spoiler

'two Yous'

I predicted

Spoiler

using the cryochamber.

What I couldn't predict was out of nowhere

Spoiler

dimensional magic,

which was a disappointment rather than mindblowing experience (I had the same problem with ultra stupid plot twist in Sharin no Kuni). So - a lot of dissapointing explanations, a lot of mumbo jumbo, a lot of unrevealed plot holes, a lot of typical VN stupidity. You route have nothing of that and Sara route have only a little. Also You and Sara routes were asking the right questions, and living them without answers, which was leaving me craving for more. Positive emotion. And last thing - both You and especially Sara routes have really great reveals about some parts of the story. They were cohesive, fairly "realistic", believable and simply good. True route was not as good.

Also additional minus 0.3 points for a stucr\ture and its repetiteveness and abundance of skip function. From whole 25 hours of reading at least 4 was spent on skipping.

 

So, yeah. I'm not an E17 hater (like I hate Sharin, Grisaia and Cartagra), but I didn't liked it. My hype for R11 and Zero escape series was lowered really really hard. I will say more - my faith in VN quality levels dropped very much. I don't believe in anything now. well, maybe in Umineko somehow. But I'm very sceptic about Subahibi, Baldr Sky, R11, DI, Muramasa, or basically anything. If E17 have 8.7 on vndb and the most popular grade is 10, then I have no more faith in this grade system. Shame, cause right now I have nothing to came to, when looking for quality VNs.

Thank you for reading this, and you're very welcome to discuss.

[havoc]

just finished reading Eden*,

I really liked the story, and the characters and was quite impressed with the attention to the pacing of the story.
personal favourites would be Maya en Elica in that order.
Maya, was a bit of a comic relief character but she managed to do it without being incompetent or annoying which you don't see often.
And overall i just really liked her character.

So 8/10 for me, but at the same time these kind of stories are not exactly for me.
I knew it was going to be a tearjerker from the start and that there was not really a happy ending to it, which left me impatient at some sports because i just don't like those endings.
They tend to make me mildly depressed and personally i would have wished to see a second slightly happier ending to the vn.
The CG were pletifull and wonderfully done which was enjoyable also the good use of antialiassing was nice to see as a lot of vn's in which you can change the screen size dont do that well.

 

And now i am in need of something a little happier, recommendation would be appreciated.
Mostly looking for something with decent pacing and no hyper active characters as I find those to get annoying rather quickly.
 

[Mr Poltroon]

Currently playing Ace Attorney: Spirit of Justice.
Its more vocal fandom is, as usual, divided in whether they love it or hate it. Shocker.

Thus far, I do believe I am heavily inclined to the 'love it' category. Shocker x2.

[akaritan]

On 9/16/2016 at 7:04 AM, Vorathiel said:

Ever 17. You route:

  Reveal hidden contents

I didn't finished Sara route yet, but I won't till like day after tomorrow[EDIT: God bless my manager at work - day off! ^^], so quick update on Yous'.

Different strokes for different folks.  Yous' route was a MASSIVE improvement over both Takeshi routes. You (energetic and funny girl) and Sara (intelligent and little sarcastic one) are also more likeable than Tsugumi (just a bitch) and Sora (bland empty AI. I couldn't look at her as a person at all. Maybe if I started with her and not Tsugumi... but the milk is spilled, nothing to do).

I'm ambigious on that troll ending. It would be better without that epilogue at all. But You with short hair>>>You with long hair.  Somehow she looked younger with longer hair.

Actually I'm kinda surprised by your reaction. For me it was pretty reasonable. Day fifth or sixth of being closed with bunch of weirdos in underwater, sinking facility, with a lots of water on the floors, nothing ever dries, no sign of incoming help, no communications with outside word, only thing to eat are the same sandwiches over and over... He just broke down. Understandable. Those sandwiches were just a spark to ignite his despair.

That's... not true. Takeshi routes fails to even ask any questions. I don't expect revelations and answers in first routes of the game, but they failed to even lay any questions, to start any mysteries (maybe except for very late Himmel). But with You's route, there was a lot of. Lot of unanswered questions, lot's of interesting plot points, lots of mysteries I'm now dying to find out about. And a lot's of hints to answers as well, so I can came up with some sort of theory about what's happening. I love it. That's why You route is much much better than Takeshi routes. With mr T. NOTHING ever happens, with Kid there is a lot. Whole searching for access restricted data in LeMMIH was a great plot thread.
Then I looked up and found up the answer to a question 'why this feels familiar to me'. You route is written by Nakazawa Takumi, man behind I/O, which I love.

Hopefully Sara roue will be as good.

Overall for now:
Graphics - 4/10 Nothing is good, but I like this You facial expression. She looks 'monkeyish', but nice.
Music - 5.5/10 It's... kinda okay. But it's badly getting old, just like Vangelis soundtrack to Blade Runner. Children of their respective eras, nothing timeless.
Characters - 6.5/10 I wrote about them higher.
Tsugumi route - 5.5/10 Boring, nothing happens, Tsugumi is a bitch.
Sora route - 6/10 Same as above, but Sora is better girl, I like interactions with her. Although 

  Reveal hidden contents

possible sex with Tsugumi in this route was completly WTF and why this even happened.

 You route - 8/10 Maybe a little too high, but much better protagonist (in first half), much better heroine, much better written, and much, much better story made this route fairly enjoyable.


PS - I remembered one more thing. Kid in You route. At the beginning he was smart and knowledgable. Answering all questions, knowing laws of physics, etc. But in the second part they're turned him into an idiot. Come on. Not knowing what a login/password security system is, or how dimensions works. That's like elementary school knowledge. But that's a problem of whole VN. Treats reader too much like an idiot. Every little 'science' bit is thoroughly explained, even if it's obvious. Steins;Gate and I/O with their mini-encyklopedias were much better. Story flows, and if you didn't know something you could just look it up.

And once again my 'quick update' is a two Word pages long magapost. See you all after Sara route.

 

Sara route:

  Reveal hidden contents

 

EDIT: I read through Sara route. It was like...2 hours of reading + skip. This VN is really, really short. 20-25 hours tops.

Anyway, her route. Different writter... and it feels. I liked the revelation they made in this route. But that backstory... This trope is beaten to death I hate it.
 

  Reveal hidden contents

Bullied little girl and her hero who is taking every punch and nnot telling anybody about it. Sigh.

also whole sudden 

  Reveal hidden contents

Oniichan, oniichan, oniichan and oniichan. FFS. She just couldn't stop using these words. 

And the song, by god, the song. It wasn't awful, but I still didn't like it. But fact that this song sung by Sara wasn completly not skippable and I was forced to lsiten to whole lines of her singing was terrible. What was even more terrible is a fact, that this song was sung FOUR TIMES in a span od 20 minutes of reading. Who the hell though that this will be a good idea?

Also sound editing is terrible. Different loudness levels from the same one character in one conversation, one scene, a lot of background noises in whispered parts, etc. Hard to listen to with earphones.

The worst of the worst things was a scene right after the ending. I liked bad ending better because of this. This is why I'm saying that characters in VNs almost never acts like normal human beings, they're always exagerated, always hanging onto one stupid thing i ntheir live, unable to move on.

  Reveal hidden contents

Sara risked her life, and anybody elses, who obvoiusly would came back to search for her, by coming back for a small piece of mirror. 'Because it reminds me of how much you cared for me oniichan'. It was painfull to read. She deserved to die. And she did. I was glad.

Somehow it was 'rescued' from pits of cancerous-vn-tropes by good ending, but pain I felt will never be erased.

Okay. Off to late afternoon nap, coffe and time for True Route! I hope I will love it.

EDIT  3: Nobody answered? Ooh well. Time for true route then.
 

 

True route:

  Reveal hidden contents

 

MAIN SPOILERS ALL OVER THE WAY.
Positive things first.

1) Takeshi was one hell of a handsome beast.
2) I liked few revelations. Whole 'families' theme was nice. Also it made sense why Tsugumi was totall bitch in Kids routes.
3) ... nothing else? Oh well.

And then the rest.
What a ride it was. 
1) Localisation. FFS I hate localisations. You is telling a story, I hear 'Urashima Taro', whos legend I know quite good from mangas and other VNs, but I read "Rip van Winkel" who is a character from John Irvings book, and whom I do not know at all, I had to google that. Ugh.

2) Pacing. Was... no better than first 4 routes. Still a lot of boring, repetetive unnecessary shit. A lot of emphasize was on Coco character, which was understandable. Point is, Coco as a main focus point is just not working. From cute energetic kid (14yo my ass) she became annoyed spoiled brat. No, no brat. Bitch. I mean... She was calling Takeshi 'papa'. Cancerously annoying. She was calling Tsugumi 'mama', which was iritating. But when she acted 'play with me or else' she was frustrating. I mean - middle of the night, Takeshi is asleep and then she comes, pullig on his eyelids (!!!) and 'come on papa lets play some reterded shit'. That was incredible. What's even more incredible was that everybody was spoiling her even more, to the point when one day she was waking up her 'papa' by INJECTING MUSTARD INTO HIS NOSTRILS. Literally. yeah. Really 'cute', right? Of course Takeshi didn't mind, because VN logic.
She also had voice that was really annoying if listen to for a long time, but fortunatelly I'm too fast reader and her voice was cut off at the begining of her every sentence.

3) Pacing part two - two protagonists. Good idea. But execution? That was horrible. Every single time when Kid or Takeshi was almost getting new piece of important knowledge, perspective was changing to other guy and some silly scene in his story. Like when Kid was getting knowledge who his father is, there was abrupt cut to Takeshi and Coco yelling 'papa'. I wanted to stay with Kid, to know his feelings, his reactions, but no. Lets watch Coco doing dumb shit. Cause it's fun, righ? Spoiler warning - no, it isn't.

4) Facepalming. Three times. In no route before did I facepalming, but here I was doing it hard. Hardest, literally 30 second of facepalm was at the very ending. When the reason why this all was happening was revealing.

  Reveal hidden contents

Because stupid little girl went to search for her little stupid toy.

It was even worse than Sara coming back for a part of mirror in her route.

5) Mumbo fuckin Jumbo. Oh god. Whole VN was establishing hard laws of actuall physics with addition of some sci fi theories. It was good. But then came true route and literally throw it all away. Amount of plot holes was unbelievably high. They even made a major mistake in their own theory of Blick Winkel. Maybe in japanesse it was properly, but in english version it was said, many times,

  Reveal hidden contents

that he is from 4th dimension.

Which is totally wrong, because it was said before that human beings

  Reveal hidden contents

are living in 4th dimensional spacetime, and to see that as a whole you must be dimension higher. So BW must have been from fifth dimension.

But who cares about logic and consistency, when we have...

6) Magic, miracles and shit thrown in readers face.
  * Takeshi miracoulusly

  Reveal hidden contents

bringed back to life

  * Takeshi with

  Reveal hidden contents

rebuilded, autohealing organism

after few hours instead of 5 years
  *

  Reveal hidden contents

robot

fucking dog swiming few times to the surface and back to the bottom of the ocean
  * water pressure? What's that? You were explaining that 5 times in every single route? Well fuck this we need Kid and robot dog to came unharmed to the

  Reveal hidden contents

bottom of the ocean

, so shut your brain and enjoy our mumbo jumbo you smartass.
  * fucking Coco. What the hell?

  Reveal hidden contents

Appearing in 'Kids' timeline, while being asleep in cryochamber? Knowing much more about events occuring than she could? Wha?

7) Blick Winkel.

  Reveal hidden contents

4th (5th) dimensional

creepy stalker looking over little annoying girl her whole life. Lolicons. Japanesse trademark plot point. 

Epilogue on the boat. That was dragging as hell. So boring. And additional minus for not including both Takeshis sprites at the same time on screen. There was no interactions between them at all. Which was really suirprising, if you consider who they were to themselves. Also, Tsugumi+Sora additional epilogue. What the hell it even was?

9) Main minus. Lack of explanation for most intersting things in previous routes. First - who the hell was kicking a can in tag game? Never even mentioned again. Second - life reading always saying '1' at the end of routes. Who it was? Why 1? Sensores wasn't counting even Himmel, let alone that bottom research facility, where

  Reveal hidden contents

researcher was dying and Coco was left behind.

Also - why 7? Why 6? Why this lifereading was so fucked up? Why was it so important to literally show it at the end of every single one ending?
Third and last - Coco. What was she? Why was she a

  Reveal hidden contents

psychic?

How does it work? 

And there is my spreadsheet with grades for different parts.



As you can clearly see I graded You and Sara routes higher than Coco. Why? Well, although few reveals was nice, nothing was mindblowing for me. I predicted

  Reveal hidden contents

'two Yous'

I predicted

  Reveal hidden contents

using the cryochamber.

What I couldn't predict was out of nowhere

  Reveal hidden contents

dimensional magic,

which was a disappointment rather than mindblowing experience (I had the same problem with ultra stupid plot twist in Sharin no Kuni). So - a lot of dissapointing explanations, a lot of mumbo jumbo, a lot of unrevealed plot holes, a lot of typical VN stupidity. You route have nothing of that and Sara route have only a little. Also You and Sara routes were asking the right questions, and living them without answers, which was leaving me craving for more. Positive emotion. And last thing - both You and especially Sara routes have really great reveals about some parts of the story. They were cohesive, fairly "realistic", believable and simply good. True route was not as good.

Also additional minus 0.3 points for a stucr\ture and its repetiteveness and abundance of skip function. From whole 25 hours of reading at least 4 was spent on skipping.

 

So, yeah. I'm not an E17 hater (like I hate Sharin, Grisaia and Cartagra), but I didn't liked it. My hype for R11 and Zero escape series was lowered really really hard. I will say more - my faith in VN quality levels dropped very much. I don't believe in anything now. well, maybe in Umineko somehow. But I'm very sceptic about Subahibi, Baldr Sky, R11, DI, Muramasa, or basically anything. If E17 have 8.7 on vndb and the most popular grade is 10, then I have no more faith in this grade system. Shame, cause right now I have nothing to came to, when looking for quality VNs.

Thank you for reading this, and you're very welcome to discuss.

Sorry to hear that you didn't like it. I disagree as a whole, but your points are all really valid (and all of those things bothered me on some level, though obviously much less than they did you) and like I said before, your opinion is incredibly refreshing. Even though I like it as a whole, it's still overrated. From what I can tell (and I don't think I'm wrong), you're a very  picky eater, and most VNs that I've read tend to be pretty flawed on some level, and fairly polarizing as a whole. So while I don't think you should place much faith in ratings in general, it's probably still not a bad idea to use them as a guideline? And you should probably try not to get too hyped over everything; as I said before, most VNs are pretty flawed on some level. And from personal experience, a lot of my favorite VNs came as surprises to me (Swan Song, Inganock).

 

tl;dr it was fun to read your impressions, maybe use ratings as a rough guideline but don't place much faith in them at all because that stuff's completely subjective.

[Eclipsed]

On 9/16/2016 at 4:04 AM, Vorathiel said:

Ever 17. You route:

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I didn't finished Sara route yet, but I won't till like day after tomorrow[EDIT: God bless my manager at work - day off! ^^], so quick update on Yous'.

Different strokes for different folks.  Yous' route was a MASSIVE improvement over both Takeshi routes. You (energetic and funny girl) and Sara (intelligent and little sarcastic one) are also more likeable than Tsugumi (just a bitch) and Sora (bland empty AI. I couldn't look at her as a person at all. Maybe if I started with her and not Tsugumi... but the milk is spilled, nothing to do).

I'm ambigious on that troll ending. It would be better without that epilogue at all. But You with short hair>>>You with long hair.  Somehow she looked younger with longer hair.

Actually I'm kinda surprised by your reaction. For me it was pretty reasonable. Day fifth or sixth of being closed with bunch of weirdos in underwater, sinking facility, with a lots of water on the floors, nothing ever dries, no sign of incoming help, no communications with outside word, only thing to eat are the same sandwiches over and over... He just broke down. Understandable. Those sandwiches were just a spark to ignite his despair.

That's... not true. Takeshi routes fails to even ask any questions. I don't expect revelations and answers in first routes of the game, but they failed to even lay any questions, to start any mysteries (maybe except for very late Himmel). But with You's route, there was a lot of. Lot of unanswered questions, lot's of interesting plot points, lots of mysteries I'm now dying to find out about. And a lot's of hints to answers as well, so I can came up with some sort of theory about what's happening. I love it. That's why You route is much much better than Takeshi routes. With mr T. NOTHING ever happens, with Kid there is a lot. Whole searching for access restricted data in LeMMIH was a great plot thread.
Then I looked up and found up the answer to a question 'why this feels familiar to me'. You route is written by Nakazawa Takumi, man behind I/O, which I love.

Hopefully Sara roue will be as good.

Overall for now:
Graphics - 4/10 Nothing is good, but I like this You facial expression. She looks 'monkeyish', but nice.
Music - 5.5/10 It's... kinda okay. But it's badly getting old, just like Vangelis soundtrack to Blade Runner. Children of their respective eras, nothing timeless.
Characters - 6.5/10 I wrote about them higher.
Tsugumi route - 5.5/10 Boring, nothing happens, Tsugumi is a bitch.
Sora route - 6/10 Same as above, but Sora is better girl, I like interactions with her. Although 

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possible sex with Tsugumi in this route was completly WTF and why this even happened.

 You route - 8/10 Maybe a little too high, but much better protagonist (in first half), much better heroine, much better written, and much, much better story made this route fairly enjoyable.


PS - I remembered one more thing. Kid in You route. At the beginning he was smart and knowledgable. Answering all questions, knowing laws of physics, etc. But in the second part they're turned him into an idiot. Come on. Not knowing what a login/password security system is, or how dimensions works. That's like elementary school knowledge. But that's a problem of whole VN. Treats reader too much like an idiot. Every little 'science' bit is thoroughly explained, even if it's obvious. Steins;Gate and I/O with their mini-encyklopedias were much better. Story flows, and if you didn't know something you could just look it up.

And once again my 'quick update' is a two Word pages long magapost. See you all after Sara route.

 

Sara route:

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EDIT: I read through Sara route. It was like...2 hours of reading + skip. This VN is really, really short. 20-25 hours tops.

Anyway, her route. Different writter... and it feels. I liked the revelation they made in this route. But that backstory... This trope is beaten to death I hate it.
 

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Bullied little girl and her hero who is taking every punch and nnot telling anybody about it. Sigh.

also whole sudden 

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Oniichan, oniichan, oniichan and oniichan. FFS. She just couldn't stop using these words. 

And the song, by god, the song. It wasn't awful, but I still didn't like it. But fact that this song sung by Sara wasn completly not skippable and I was forced to lsiten to whole lines of her singing was terrible. What was even more terrible is a fact, that this song was sung FOUR TIMES in a span od 20 minutes of reading. Who the hell though that this will be a good idea?

Also sound editing is terrible. Different loudness levels from the same one character in one conversation, one scene, a lot of background noises in whispered parts, etc. Hard to listen to with earphones.

The worst of the worst things was a scene right after the ending. I liked bad ending better because of this. This is why I'm saying that characters in VNs almost never acts like normal human beings, they're always exagerated, always hanging onto one stupid thing i ntheir live, unable to move on.

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Sara risked her life, and anybody elses, who obvoiusly would came back to search for her, by coming back for a small piece of mirror. 'Because it reminds me of how much you cared for me oniichan'. It was painfull to read. She deserved to die. And she did. I was glad.

Somehow it was 'rescued' from pits of cancerous-vn-tropes by good ending, but pain I felt will never be erased.

Okay. Off to late afternoon nap, coffe and time for True Route! I hope I will love it.

EDIT  3: Nobody answered? Ooh well. Time for true route then.
 

 

True route:

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MAIN SPOILERS ALL OVER THE WAY.
Positive things first.

1) Takeshi was one hell of a handsome beast.
2) I liked few revelations. Whole 'families' theme was nice. Also it made sense why Tsugumi was totall bitch in Kids routes.
3) ... nothing else? Oh well.

And then the rest.
What a ride it was. 
1) Localisation. FFS I hate localisations. You is telling a story, I hear 'Urashima Taro', whos legend I know quite good from mangas and other VNs, but I read "Rip van Winkel" who is a character from John Irvings book, and whom I do not know at all, I had to google that. Ugh.

2) Pacing. Was... no better than first 4 routes. Still a lot of boring, repetetive unnecessary shit. A lot of emphasize was on Coco character, which was understandable. Point is, Coco as a main focus point is just not working. From cute energetic kid (14yo my ass) she became annoyed spoiled brat. No, no brat. Bitch. I mean... She was calling Takeshi 'papa'. Cancerously annoying. She was calling Tsugumi 'mama', which was iritating. But when she acted 'play with me or else' she was frustrating. I mean - middle of the night, Takeshi is asleep and then she comes, pullig on his eyelids (!!!) and 'come on papa lets play some reterded shit'. That was incredible. What's even more incredible was that everybody was spoiling her even more, to the point when one day she was waking up her 'papa' by INJECTING MUSTARD INTO HIS NOSTRILS. Literally. yeah. Really 'cute', right? Of course Takeshi didn't mind, because VN logic.
She also had voice that was really annoying if listen to for a long time, but fortunatelly I'm too fast reader and her voice was cut off at the begining of her every sentence.

3) Pacing part two - two protagonists. Good idea. But execution? That was horrible. Every single time when Kid or Takeshi was almost getting new piece of important knowledge, perspective was changing to other guy and some silly scene in his story. Like when Kid was getting knowledge who his father is, there was abrupt cut to Takeshi and Coco yelling 'papa'. I wanted to stay with Kid, to know his feelings, his reactions, but no. Lets watch Coco doing dumb shit. Cause it's fun, righ? Spoiler warning - no, it isn't.

4) Facepalming. Three times. In no route before did I facepalming, but here I was doing it hard. Hardest, literally 30 second of facepalm was at the very ending. When the reason why this all was happening was revealing.

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Because stupid little girl went to search for her little stupid toy.

It was even worse than Sara coming back for a part of mirror in her route.

5) Mumbo fuckin Jumbo. Oh god. Whole VN was establishing hard laws of actuall physics with addition of some sci fi theories. It was good. But then came true route and literally throw it all away. Amount of plot holes was unbelievably high. They even made a major mistake in their own theory of Blick Winkel. Maybe in japanesse it was properly, but in english version it was said, many times,

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that he is from 4th dimension.

Which is totally wrong, because it was said before that human beings

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are living in 4th dimensional spacetime, and to see that as a whole you must be dimension higher. So BW must have been from fifth dimension.

But who cares about logic and consistency, when we have...

6) Magic, miracles and shit thrown in readers face.
  * Takeshi miracoulusly

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bringed back to life

  * Takeshi with

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rebuilded, autohealing organism

after few hours instead of 5 years
  *

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robot

fucking dog swiming few times to the surface and back to the bottom of the ocean
  * water pressure? What's that? You were explaining that 5 times in every single route? Well fuck this we need Kid and robot dog to came unharmed to the

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bottom of the ocean

, so shut your brain and enjoy our mumbo jumbo you smartass.
  * fucking Coco. What the hell?

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Appearing in 'Kids' timeline, while being asleep in cryochamber? Knowing much more about events occuring than she could? Wha?

7) Blick Winkel.

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4th (5th) dimensional

creepy stalker looking over little annoying girl her whole life. Lolicons. Japanesse trademark plot point. 

Epilogue on the boat. That was dragging as hell. So boring. And additional minus for not including both Takeshis sprites at the same time on screen. There was no interactions between them at all. Which was really suirprising, if you consider who they were to themselves. Also, Tsugumi+Sora additional epilogue. What the hell it even was?

9) Main minus. Lack of explanation for most intersting things in previous routes. First - who the hell was kicking a can in tag game? Never even mentioned again. Second - life reading always saying '1' at the end of routes. Who it was? Why 1? Sensores wasn't counting even Himmel, let alone that bottom research facility, where

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researcher was dying and Coco was left behind.

Also - why 7? Why 6? Why this lifereading was so fucked up? Why was it so important to literally show it at the end of every single one ending?
Third and last - Coco. What was she? Why was she a

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psychic?

How does it work? 

And there is my spreadsheet with grades for different parts.



As you can clearly see I graded You and Sara routes higher than Coco. Why? Well, although few reveals was nice, nothing was mindblowing for me. I predicted

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'two Yous'

I predicted

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using the cryochamber.

What I couldn't predict was out of nowhere

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dimensional magic,

which was a disappointment rather than mindblowing experience (I had the same problem with ultra stupid plot twist in Sharin no Kuni). So - a lot of dissapointing explanations, a lot of mumbo jumbo, a lot of unrevealed plot holes, a lot of typical VN stupidity. You route have nothing of that and Sara route have only a little. Also You and Sara routes were asking the right questions, and living them without answers, which was leaving me craving for more. Positive emotion. And last thing - both You and especially Sara routes have really great reveals about some parts of the story. They were cohesive, fairly "realistic", believable and simply good. True route was not as good.

Also additional minus 0.3 points for a stucr\ture and its repetiteveness and abundance of skip function. From whole 25 hours of reading at least 4 was spent on skipping.

 

So, yeah. I'm not an E17 hater (like I hate Sharin, Grisaia and Cartagra), but I didn't liked it. My hype for R11 and Zero escape series was lowered really really hard. I will say more - my faith in VN quality levels dropped very much. I don't believe in anything now. well, maybe in Umineko somehow. But I'm very sceptic about Subahibi, Baldr Sky, R11, DI, Muramasa, or basically anything. If E17 have 8.7 on vndb and the most popular grade is 10, then I have no more faith in this grade system. Shame, cause right now I have nothing to came to, when looking for quality VNs.

Thank you for reading this, and you're very welcome to discuss.

It's k, you're just at that age where you can't enjoy nice things in life as much anymore. It happens, sometimes I see people go into Steins;gate as their 50th VN, then they go 'wtf is this overhyped shit?! 2/10!!!!!'

Welcome to the land of old grumpy grumps  

~~
You should definitely at least check out R11 though- I found it's narrative to be more entertaining than E17's

[Vorathiel]

9 hours ago, Eclipsed said:

It's k, you're just at that age where you can't enjoy nice things in life as much anymore. It happens, sometimes I see people go into Steins;gate as their 50th VN, then they go 'wtf is this overhyped shit?! 2/10!!!!!'

Welcome to the land of old grumpy grumps  

~~
You should definitely at least check out R11 though- I found it's narrative to be more entertaining than E17's

Are there any familiar faces in this club?  And I'm only near 25yo, and it was my 51st VN! D: I'm not that old, aaaaaaa! (Also Steins;Gate is the best thing ever, pure 10/10. )
I will check R11, but not until I finished those few VN I already have on my disc. So, few months later. Also I heard that plot 'wow's are similair to E17, so break might be good.

Speaking of VNs I have on my disc - Yesterday I made a 7 hours eden* reading session. I loved the 'military' part, I was affraid I will not like the 'countryside' part, but it was good, isntead of fluff it was somehow 'solemn'. Also - fantasitc, very fitting OST.
But then came Maya, with her annoying, 'quyirky' attitude and horrible BGM, and all of that positive, great mood turned into cesspool  Oh how I hate mood breaking characters (Kazuna in Cartagra). ;p
Hopefully final will be better, bacause I really want to grade this VN high, it deserve it.

[akaritan]

Sooooo, I just finished ef -the first tale- and it was alright. The first story honestly made me pretty angry (there's a special place in hell for love triangle plot lines, in my opinion, probably contributes to my general dislike of Flowers), but I actually rather liked the second one, about Shindo Kei. It made me actually really like her, which is an achievement seeing as not only did I dislike her at first, but she fits in to some of my least favorite archetypes. Her development more than made up for that, though. The VN is cinematic in a way that I haven't really seen before. I could swear there are more CG than scenes with sprites and backgrounds, which is ridiculous (in the best way imaginable, of course ). The music is also really nice and it has a very good atmosphere; I have a soft spot for quiet, calm piano pieces, and I absolutely adore the track "wish". Now for prediction stuff:

Spoiler

I am borderline positive that Yuuko is some kind of spirit/ghost. The idea only popped in to my head towards the end of the VN, but all things taken in to account, I reeeeaally don't think I'm wrong. The big hints are how she pops in and out of places nearly instantly, and how despite looking really young, she claims to be much older than everyone else, but there are a bunch of little things too. Once she said, "My first love was my last", or something to that effect, as if there's absolutely no possibility with her ending up with someone else, and as if it's already over. Miyako says something really weird towards the end after looking through newspaper clippings, "everyone should have heard the name Amamiya Yuuko, I guess they forgot", and in the "op movie (ending movie?)" the man talking to her at the beginning was putting flowers by a grave. Also, sort of unrelated, but she never seems to talk to Mizuki and that's pretty spooky.

The second part of ef should be pretty great. For the most part I liked First Tale, and I hear it gets soul-crushingly depressing (which I do so enjoy ). And I know from experience that Minori actually

Spoiler

has the balls to kill their heroines, *cough* *cough* Key,

so I'm looking forward to this a lot.

[Vorathiel]

I'm suddenly out of my VN laptop for a week. So instead of reading Swan Song I'm reading Kanon, which I luckily had on my pendrive.
And I love translation style they made here. No localisation 'burgerjapan' bullshit, simple encyclopedia for japanesse things!


(this is backlog, originally Shoten was written in blue colour to show that it's encyclopedia entry).


And I love the laid back atmosphere, soundtrack, and even heroine with normally annoying traits (airhead, waking up protag through her noisemaking and saying that she should sleep more, etc) is great and I like her very much.

[Kurisu-Chan]

starting Grisaia no Kajitsu... the protag is cool, i admit it, the agent 69 looks neat as fuck.

And the famous waifu time...well, since danganronpa, i have to make this prayer.

 

Plz don't ded waifu plz don't ded waifu plz don't ded waifu!!! 

[Dergonu]

5 minutes ago, Kurisu-Chan said:

Plz don't ded waifu plz don't ded waifu plz don't ded waifu!!! 

*Deds waifu*

Hah!  

[Kurisu-Chan]

Just now, Dergonu said:

*Deds waifu*

Hah!  

I don't believe you! baka! 

[onorub]

Doing Azusa's route in Dracu-Riot and i think the wet dream about biting her neck was the first piece of YukuSoft humor to legitimately make me laugh.

[Ariurotl]

Finished Nekopara vol. 1. It was about as shit as I expected, tbh. Great production values though, it's a shame they were wasted on... this.

However, I did enjoy the completely unintentional and very sinister implications behind genetic engineering of a half-animal species who are basically glorified slaves.

[Barktooth]

Reading Euphoria currently. Thought the plot was a bit boring at first, but now a major development has taken place and I'm really curious as to what'll happen next. Already getting tired of the music; they really need more tracks (though, the few that the game does have are all pretty good).

[MrBanballow]

I put Steins;Gate on the backburner, as Flowers finally showed up. I had done really well to avoid any Spoilers, to the point that I didn't even know the main character's names.

It was a bit of a surprise when Mayuri showed up. She looks and acts a bit different, doesn't seem to have any memories of her time at Future Gadgets Lab. Not even one "Tutturu~" out of her.
I've landed on a strange worldline.

[Kurisu-Chan]

25 minutes ago, MrBanballow said:

I put Steins;Gate on the backburner, as Flowers finally showed up. I had done really well to avoid any Spoilers, to the point that I didn't even know the main character's names.

It was a bit of a surprise when Mayuri showed up. She looks and acts a bit different, doesn't seem to have any memories of her time at Future Gadgets Lab. Not even one "Tutturu~" out of her.
I've landed on a strange worldline.

Classic HanaKana, she's best girl everywhere.

...well nope, she's worst girl in steins;gate and second best girl in danganronpa.  

[Vorathiel]

What the hell happened.
Kanon. Simple little old VN by Key.
1) One of the best protagonists ever. Sarcastic, no bullshit, no pandering to stupid airheads, normal guy.
2) Humour on par with Muv Luv Extra (some similiarities in randomness) and Majikoi. I twice nearly cried of laughter and countless times laughed out loud (in only 3-4 hours of reading!)
3) Choices system. It's great. It works perfectly. I can choose if I want protag to be a meek asshole who only smiles to everybody, or I can choose him to be direct, honest almost assholish Greatest Protag Ever. Quick example. Girl is helping him unpack his boxes after he moved to a new house. Protag is saying in his narration that she abrely did anything. Girl is happily asking if she was helpful. Choice 'Yeah, you were' or 'No, you were more of a hindrance'. Sucha a great choice. Such an enjoyable system.
4) Awful, awkward, crooked art. And I love it. It's great. It's awful, but great. If it makes any sense.
5) Great 'just one more line' syndrom. It's 4:20 at night here I need to wake up at least at 10, but I just can't stop reading!

I love it. LOVE it. Haven't feel such a joy from VN (I felt a lot of incredible emotions, but dread or utter sadness from FataMorgana is not exactly 'joy') since I read Majikoi. ^^

[Decay]

While I find your comparison to Muv Luv Extra extremely questionable, you should read some other Key VNs after this. Say what you want about Maeda's nakige formula (and it is a finely honed formula at this point), his sense of humor is genuinely great and he writes some really good protagonists. Especially give Air a shot if you liked Kanon's protagonist. People also like to shit on Key common routes for being overlong but shit, they're way too entertaining for me to care about them not progressing the actual storylines at all.

[Eclipsed]

The phenomenon Vory's experiencing is the VN Rollercoaster effect, where he finally reached the upward 'ERMERGAWD, THIS SHIT IS THE BEST THING EVARRR' trend which typically follows the downward 'Old Grumpy Grump cannot Enjoy Nice Things Anymore' trend

After having gone through a disappointing E17 not being as godly as he was anticipating which resulted in his questioning the purpose of life and a myriad of other doubts, his expectations plummeted rock bottom

But, with lower expectations also comes a higher chance to enjoy. Hence the Kanon. and the loving of Awful Crooked Art. 

 

 

..I need to read something soon.

 

[Decay]

4 minutes ago, Eclipsed said:

..I need to read something soon.

What happened to ef?