What are you playing?

[Funyarinpa]

Playing subahibi. 

 

Jesus fucking Christ 

[Turnip Sensei]

Yeah, Subahibi is uh.. quite the experience.
Down the Rabbit Hole I, especially nearing the end of it was the kind of writing/storytelling I really enjoy. Beautiful, inspiring and encouraging to explore oneself, at least for me. It's been a while since anything has inspired me to hit the library and start perusing poetry, philosophy and children's fables.
Where as Down the Rabbit Hole II was weird but interesting, It's My Own Invention made me straight up feel physically ill for a good part of it, on top of being generally unsettling. I was so mentally exhausted after that I need to take a break from the whole VN.  

...Which conveniently happened almost exactly when Utawarerumono: Mask of Truth came out. Hurray!
I previously predicted that it could be "BEST SHIT EVER(TM)", and while it's too soon to say how true that is I'm enjoying it immensely. Oh, how I missed to whole cast... Without any spoilers, it's heavier, more serious and tragic, but the lighter parts aren't completely gone. Like people grasp for happiness even in the darkest times, Slice-of-Life has its place in every story. One could even say it shines even brighter in these circumstances.
Utaware3 is pretty much more of the same, which is exactly what I wanted. I'm also really glad the localization has kept it's quality. It's a rare pleasure reading as joyful and lively text.

[akaritan]

Just like everyone else and their grandmothers, I've spent the last week or so playing Subahibi. Juuuuust kidding. Subahibi is not the VN to play with your grandmother. Anyway, well... I absolutely loved it. At this point I tend to be skeptical at best when the Japanese side hypes up a VN to this extent, especially after Himawari and Dies Irae (neither of which were awful per se, but I would take the time spent reading them back if I could). But thankfully, Subahibi was right up my alley and I couldn't have been happier with it. Even knowing that I don't understand it on a deeper level or have the background to do so, there's so much I appreciate about this VN. On a surface level, the music is beautiful and the art is quite good - everyone looks cute, but I never got that sense that they were "moe" or that the style didn't fit the VN. And the clothing looks incredibly light and floofy, ahaha. The pacing and atmosphere, barring the first chapter, were so on point that it would be a damned good VN on that merit alone. It also had a great sense on when to roll out information. At any point in Subahibi, I both felt as though I was learning more and that more questions were popping up. It was incredibly thematically dense- it left a lot to think about even after it was done. At the beginning, or even in subsequent chapters, I didn't feel that the characters were great, but by the time the game was over I felt that I had gained new perspective on almost every last one of them. My complaints are really minimal, but I'm leaving them in a spoiler tag.

Spoiler

I really, really wish this VN had more subtlety in regards to its explicit rape. While much of the time those scenes are important, I don't think that they necessarily had to be that long and tiring. I can very understand people saying that this made them physically nauseous, and to a certain point I think it's admirable when a game can do that, but I don't think this is how it's done... I think the scenes with Kiyotaka, for instance, could be gotten rid of entirely, and I think the one with Kagami should have been far shorter.

Anyway, Subahibi is fantastic and I'm glad I got to read it in my native language (though, I may reread it in Japanese down the line). My favorite chapter was Jabberwocky, Yuki best girl, Yuuki best guy. And I would highly recommend this one to anyone who can stomach it's content. It's not for everyone, but I certainly think that it's worth a shot if it looks up your alley.

幸福に生きよ！

[littleshogun]

Well, Subahibi just like everyone else here although I'm still in the prologue though lol.

Anyway, as for the interface at least it's pretty standard so no complaining here, although to register the change in Config you must click OK first though which could be slightly inconvinience. Other than that, the graphic was okay with me here. As for my impression of prologue, it was more like Ikikoi only with all the cast were girls (And less violent obviously). I said this because Zakuro said that she had the maid role, while Tsukasa said that she had the role of younger sister and she also stated that her older twin (Kagami) did had role childhood friend - which is exactly like the role that 3/4 cast of Ikikoi's heroines take (It help that the same seiyuu was return in Ikikoi, with the exception of Zakuro's seiyuu).

Other than that, I like that Zakuro was talking about the division of the role in society and take an example in regard of her acquaintance who like to work on all of VN important aspect by himself so much that it caused delay for the release is like SCA-DI mock himself - because from what I gather he was like that especially in regard if Sakura no Uta, in the bathroom while wearing school swimsuit nonetheless when she was about to was Yuki's front. Other than those events, there's also the plot which is searching for Summer Triangle which would be important in prologue end but of course it would be irrelevant to the overall plot of Subahibi.

Oh, if you want short summary of Subahibi here I would say that I enjoy this so far, although I rarely had time to play it fully though. I'll try to see through of this VN even if it take months.

Edited November 2, 2017 by littleshogun

[Canicheslayer]

Finished Quartett! (Yes, I'm on fire)

As I expected It, I REALLY loved this VN. One of my best readings of 2017

+ Ooyari's work is stunning and awesome.

+ Excellent OST.

+ Memorable presentation (comics style...or something like that).

+ The casting is great too. And the girls are very cute (even if Charlotte is physically too loli or too childish for me).

+ The final (after you finished the three routes) is poetic and very beautiful.

- Charlotte's route is clearly the best. The other two are correct but not as polished or interesting.

- No route for May, Klarissa or Signina

- If you hate Slice of Life style, You shall not pass (because the global story is not very original and/or full of twists)

Edited September 9, 2017 by Canicheslayer
1.1

[Limerence_]

15 hours ago, Turnip Sensei said:

Yeah, Subahibi is uh.. quite the experience.

Now I'm at the part where 

Spoiler

he fucks a dead girl's table. 

I actually found that pretty funny. 

[onorub]

Reading Nocturnal Illusion and it's a perfectly standard 90's horror VN. It's cool that each girl has a character arc giving a episodic feel to it, but it's funny how conveniently the MC gets items.

Edit: Finished it and the ending might be where the novel's age show the most. It wouldn't be accepted today.

Edited September 10, 2017 by onorub

[Dreamysyu]

Subahibi. Still at the prologue, but so far nothing really annoys me, which is definitely a rare plus recently. Nothing interesting really happened so far, but the foreshadowing is clearly there, and it looks interesting.

On the other hand, I already managed to spoil myself a bit (I'm being me, yeah), though it's probably pretty light. I mean, after I watched one or two playthrough videos because I wasn't sure whether I installed the patch correctly, YouTube suddenly started showing me related recommendations on the main page, and one of them, I think, might have a pretty spoilerous thumbnail. Well, I'll have to be more careful from now on.

[Deniz]

Reading some Majikoi A-1.Oh man, this is hilarious.Even more than the original one.

Spoiler

 

[Nandemonai]

So I recently beat Shadows of Pygmalion and Tokyo Babel.  I saw both of them get flak from people here, and they definitely both had issues, but I enjoyed them both quite a bit.  I'm really hoping we get more Propeller games licensed officially.  I also beat SonoHana New Gen (which was much better than I'd expected it to be, but still had issues).  And I finished the prologue for Majikoi (which is as far as I said I would get before waiting for the updated version from Jast).  And I beat Nekonin Ex-Heart, which is ... not good.  At all.

Of the games I've been recently playing that leaves only Gahkthun, Chaos;Head, and Princess Evangile/W-Happiness.  I think  that I've had enough serious deep plots for awhile, though.  Not sure what I'm going to start; Chrono Clock or Kindred Spirits or Fashioning Little Miss Lonesome seem likely.

 

On 9/9/2017 at 4:34 AM, onorub said:

Reading Nocturnal Illusion and it's a perfectly standard 90's horror VN. It's cool that each girl has a character arc giving a episodic feel to it, but it's funny how conveniently the MC gets items.

Edit: Finished it and the ending might be where the novel's age show the most. It wouldn't be accepted today.

The original translation does not do the game any favors.  And yes, the game suffers because of its reliance on old school game design, to its detriment.  There's a reason the old adventure game style went out of favor; and the lack of a real route structure also does not work very well.  (In fact the only thing that affects endings is having to choose between [2 girls]; if you 'can't decide' then nothing happens, but if you pick one or the other, then only the bad ending for the other girl is accessible.)

But I think it's still an exceptional example of a good story, especially from the era.  If there are other horror games like it, I want to know about them.

[Heinrichk.05]

I'm currently playing Rui wa Tomo wo Yobu's fandisc. Hooray for traps!

Where's my Tomo route?

[WinterfuryZX]

Subahibi:

Finished insects and

I now want to read Rabbit hole II again, shit I'm fucking slow, I realized Yuki is a personality of Mamiya Takuji only at the very end of insects, in retrospect it was clear since RH2, I must be stupid, lol.

[Eclipsed]

Making good progress in XBlaze: Code Embryo. It's an aight VN, the overall atmosphere of it kinda reminds me of watching Saturday morning cartoons, you got a bunch of high skoo peeps living in a semi-futuristic science-fantasy city setting where there's magic and the plot is centered around a supernatural anomaly where people can get infected (then dubbed 'Unions') which makes them gain a destructive power but they turn batshit insane 

Of course, Touya Kagari is just an everyday high skoo nice guy living a normal life with childhood friend Hinata Himezuru before his life is changed forever as he meets and is attacked by the first Union of the story which then sucks him into being involved with the Mitsurugi Agency which specializes in dealing with these Unions. They assign Es, a kawaii loli with the typical robotic personality to be his protector, much to Touya's dismay. Blah blah blah, we add more girls to the harem; Mei Amanohokosaka, another Mitsurugi Agency agent and classic tsundere hailing from the prideful Amanohokosaka clan; and Kuon Glamred Stroheim, a hot-headed mage apprentice from the Magic Guild from the the Magister's City of Ishana. What a mouthful.

I'm being literal when I say the girls are added to harem; they end up moving in with Touya and Hinata and transferring to their school, l0l. The crew go about their days pretty leisurely as the exposition reveals more about their world and the Unions-and-the-science-behind-them; by the way, xBlaze is set in the same setting as that 2D fighting game Blazblue which I never played so I'm probably missing a lot of the lore; meanwhile a group of rogue mages from the fabled 'Ten Sages' from Ishana visit the city with clearly up to no good intentions, and a serial killer dubbed the "Ripper" is rampaging around killing Unions.

Eventually all the players on the board will end up butting heads with each other all over our poor little Touya because naturally as the protag he has an inner, secret power hidden within him related to Unions that they all desire Naruto-nine-tails-jinchuuriki style.

So yeah, Saturday morning cartoon atmosphere xD

~~
I like the art direction. One thing I dislike from most VNs is that they can be EXTREMELY static with how they use and place their sprites; they're usually lined up at the same spot at the same distance from the protag's field of view, give or take the once in a while situation where they are zoomed in because they wanted to whisper something to the protag or are out in the distance waving goodbye. 

xBlaze actually is seen in the 3rd person rather than through Touya's eyes, so maybe that's why they actually took the time to 'choreograph' the sprites more but it's really appreciated and makes the interactions feel much more lively; they have front/side/back views of character sprites, their eyes will actually transition to look at another character, yada yada yada, yes this seems like a silly thing to praise but give me a VN where the character sprites aren't always front and centered and equidistant - aka static for 99% of the VN - and I'll concede ;p
 
(Middle) Kuon's eyes were looking to the right before she looks left once Elise pines. 


Usually you don't see a group of characters looking at each other like this unless it's a CG


You get to see (left) Es's cute(?) antennae thing from behind, and oh look, distant sprites!

~~
A con(?) of the 3rd person: Touya, the protag, is also 3rd-personified. Just another character in this story; you don't see through his eyes, you don't hear his inner thoughts and monologues. He's actually voiced, but they gave him a wimpy ass voice so for the first time in my VN history I actually muted just his character, lel.

 

[onorub]

Finally playing Muv-Luv Alternative and i'm pretty hooked so far. What a contrast from being bored in Extra and annoyed at the MC in Unlimited.

Update: Alright, episode 7 just make me go from "this is pretty alright" to "this is top 10 VN material". I wonder how i'll rank it when it ends.

2nd Update: Got to episode 9 and i didn't expect the infodumps to be THAT bad, holy shit. Completely fucked up the momentum from ep. 7.

3rd Update: Ended episode 9 and unless this has one of best endings ever, it's not even making to my top 10.

Final thoughts: Really liked ep. 10 and overall it barely misses my top 10. IMO the only amazing episode was 7 and the only great ones were 6 and 10, with everything else being just good. Favorite VN i've read this year so far.

Edited September 21, 2017 by onorub

[WinterfuryZX]

Just finished Subarashiki Hibi

Down The Rabbit Hole 1: 6/10
Down The Rabbit Hole 2: 8/10
It's my own invention, Kimika Route: 8/10
It's my own invention, True Route: 9/10
Looking-Glass Insects, Kimika Route: 8/10
Looking-Glass Insects, True Route: 9/10
Jabberwocky I: 7/10
Which Dreamed It: 8/10
Jabberwocky II: 8/10
Hill of Sunflowers: 6/10
Wonderful Everyday: 8/10
End Sky 2: ????(WTF???)

overall: 8/10

[littleshogun]

I'm playing Subahibi as well and just finished Chapter 0 of Down the Rabbit Hole - including the twin route, and of course I'd started the real Rabbit Hole here and it's definitely the start of the story. As for my VN here, guess I'll try to find the time to continuing Chrono Clock later - still stuck at Makoto's route.

[MarcomiX]

I WAS playing Hatsukoi.
...
If you want to know what I think about it, go and check my thread about the "School life VN suggestions" and open up the spoiler section on one of my last posts

[Funyarinpa]

DANGANRONPA V3 TIME, BAAAAAAAAAAABYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY

[Strike105X]

Since things went so nicely with Majikoi A3 through 5 i'm giving Youkoso! Sukebe Elf no Mori e a try XD.

[ittaku]

I'll tell you what I'm NOT playing - To Heart 2. After translating it and playing it endlessly and QC'ing it for a decade, I'm never touching it again unless some company wants to do an official localisation.

[Eclipsed]

Aight boys n' gals, I finally got my limited edition copy of Danganronpa v3: Killing Harmony, excited as hell for this stuff, time to stall everything else I'm playing/watching and let the killing games begin 

e: FK me, first I gotta download the JP voices off of PSN cuz it didn't come with it built in, and it's a 1.5GB download gg, gawd i hate english dubs 

[Funyarinpa]

On 9/26/2017 at 4:28 PM, Funyarinpa said:

DANGANRONPA V3 TIME, BAAAAAAAAAAABYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY

I'm in the fifth chapter's Free Time Events. I think that averages to around 5 hours daily. Vague spoilers

Spoiler

chapter 1: boring investigation, best-of-all-time trial (one particular SDR2 case still stands out)

chapter 2: my favorite character killed my second favorite character... ;_;

chapter 3: great investigation, perhaps the shittest trial in the series (seriously. incredibly telegraphed killer, most interesting stuff about the whole case is dismissed as distractions, they bring up the idea of there being two killers for like 20 fucking minutes (including a Debate Scrum) only to go "hmm it WAS him all along actually". greatest wasted potential the series has had after Case 2-3.

chapter 4: that was abrupt but shit is feels man. didn't really feel all that bad though because despite wanting to feel bad for that person, their translation's so grating I feel relieved

PS: Oma is definitely a self-insert for the whole fanbase imo.

 

Edited September 30, 2017 by Funyarinpa

[Eclipsed]

Aight I'ma be invading this thread over the next few days or w.e spamming my WTFUXXORS!@# on Danganronpa v3 because I just finished Ch 1 and as any DR fan should know, Ch 1 will ALWAYS gank the best characters so while I'm dying a bit inside, that was a pretty awesome 1st ClassTrial

The prologue is nothing new, though it does feel pretty long, easily 1-2 hours of having to explore the entire campus and meet-n-greeting all 15 other SHSL/Ultimate students before the Killing Game is even announced. And then of course you gotta slog around for another hour or two as the cast naturally claims that they'll never participate in such a game, yada yada, this and that happens, First Blood finally happens, and we finally get to have our first trial

We're led by a female protagonist this time, le gasp, the bright and sophisticated Ultimate Pianist Kaede Akamatsu. The writers are quick to pair her up with the soft-spoken and unconfident Ultimate Detective Suichi Saihara, and the duo move quickly with their schemes to try to unearth who the mastermind is so they can hopefully end the Killing Game before it can even begin, but what fun would that be if everything ended so quick and painlessly ?
  
jEZUZ yOU Guys mOve WAy quiCkeR THAN makotoXsayaka/Kyoko and hinata/chiaki maNG 

~~
Obviously won't speak much of the actual trial because spoilers, but it's done extremely well and is easily one of the best trials in the DR franchise mainly due to the plot twist at the end. You start off knocking out easy peasy accusations because Tutorials before having to take down some pretty evidently-plausible attractive-distractor suspects and will even have to resort to LYING when the group all begins to home in on someone you just know isn't the culprit but they are too stubborn to desist. Then BAM, when you finally shed some light on who the culprit really is, it's just like Ho. Lee. Shit. No way. No Way. NO WAY. DSKFJSDKKSDKFJEJAKFJWEIRUT48323WHYYYYYYYYYY

Lying is just another mechanic to make Nonstop Debates more colorful, just like how they added the Agree mechanic in DR2. But it's nice to have another layer of stuff to keep you thinking, looking forward to see how future trials will carry out.
Hangman's Gambit v3.0 was thankfully revamped to be less tedious, since you can just point-and-click the required letters rather than trying to line-them-up-and-click.
Logic Dive didn't make an appearance, good riddance i hope, that surfboard minigame was so meh.
Panic Talk is still its usual rhythm game
Debate Scrum sounded cool in theory, since it's half the students with one opinion vs the other half, but it's really just a simple matching game of lining up your side's arguments against the other side.
Panic Debates are the one that's probably my favorite, it's just a standard Nonstop Debate...  multiplied by 3. Makes things feel pretty chaotic and intense having three people going off at the same time:

 

~~
My best girls atm are Maki and Kirumi. Maki because she just looks great aesthetically (i luv me some black and red) and Kirumi because Ultimate Maid, was wondering when one would appear (closest we got was Yukizome's Ultimate Housekeeper). The dudes are whatevers, that one guy what's his face Supreme Leader is a wannabe Nagito, fk his annoying ass.

 
I swear if these two die and leave crap like that Ultimate Supreme Leader live, I'ma-

~~
Eyyyyy, ULTRA DESPAIR GIRLS 2 COMING SOON XD

TAKE MAH MONEHY

 

[onorub]

^Be sure to post your reaction to the very end of the game, it's fun to see people reacting to that.

Reading Sharin no Kuni. Really liked Sachi's arc while i had mixed feelings on Touka's. In one hand, Touka's arc had a good first half and ending, while on the other hand the rest either felt like Persona when you beat a boss too quickly or had drama that was as dull as Yuzusoft's.

Edit: Finished, liked it but the ending confused me a little.

Spoiler

Did Houzuki knew Ken was faking the drug withdrawals or not? I have no idea how he just unlocked his chains like that and didn't just caned him once he said "i love you, mr. Houzuki" otherwise.

Also, it's more of a ideological thing, but it bothered me how Ken said that a politician should change people on the sister ending. A politician is meant to work for the people by preserving their rights, if your main objective is changing the ones you work for you're gonna eventually fail.

 

Edited October 2, 2017 by onorub

[ChaosRaven]

I finally finished Chrono Chlock. I really enjoyed the common route and Makoto's route and in retrospect it would have been the best to just leave it at that and walk away as a happy man, since the other routes were unfortunately not quite up to that standard.

The main strength of the VN were certainly the charming characters. Especially in the common route when the plot around the clock was still strong, the character interactions were engaging and funny. Makoto's route then showed how it 'should' be continued, with a slow transition to nakige and a dramatic heartwarming ending.

Unfortunately, for whatever reasons, the other routes turned out as low effort filler routes at best where the core plot was largely abandoned. And without any plot or at least the minimum tension the inclusion of the H scenes would have brought, there was just never ending, repetitive sweet talking. And the route I was mostly looking forward to, Chronos' route, was pretty much the worst of them. Taking such a beautiful and interesting character, and coming up with a complete bogus plot twist, just to turn her into a loli with all measurements halfed including IQ for the sole purpose of making a cheap and boring imouto route, was borderline heresy. Changing a character for a route is a big no-go anyway. If they wanted a loli Chrono, then why didn't they created her that way in the first place?

Anyway, the VN had certainly good parts, but most of the routes felt like they desperately wanted to keep their annual release date. But if they wanted that, they would have been better off skipping some routes to be able to flesh out others. Or just make one main route with optional romance choices for all heroines.

Character ranking: Chrono (true) = Makoto > Misaki > Miu > Michiru > D.D. > Chrono (loli)

Overall rating: 6.5/10

I would have still given the VN a 7 despite the weak routes because of its likable characters and at least the common route and Makoto's route were solid. But turning Chrono into a loli demands for some additional... punishment. 

Regarding other translated VN's I'm currently reading, I pretty much stalled Dies for the moment in favor of Fata Morgana. I still finished Kei's route though. Wasn't too fond of it - it mostly resembled a bunch of Street Figher videos with Nazi posers on Youtube in slow motion. Fata Morgana has its weaknesses too, but the plot feels a lot more engaging and interesting.

Besides that, I started reading Wagamama HighSpec. It was this or Hatsukoi and Wagamama just won for the sole reason that it was already play-ready and I was too lazy to install game & patch of Hatsukoi. 

Edited October 1, 2017 by ChaosRaven