What are you playing?

[Stormwolf]

Many vn's are somewhat ruined by misplaced comedy.

[Mr Poltroon]

1 hour ago, Stormwolf said:

Many vn's are somewhat ruined by misplaced comedy.

Comedy is the ultimate quality in anything!

[Stormwolf]

23 minutes ago, Mr Poltroon said:

Comedy is the ultimate quality in anything!

Comedy is good, but as for everything else, there is a time and place

[Phantom]

Just about to start playing Sanoba Witch again after finishing Meguru's route and taking a break, I'ma go with Touko next. I hope it is interesting as she had some pretty funny moments.

Edited January 4, 2019 by Phantom

[LoganW]

Newton and the Apple Tree! It struggled at first for me, but once you get to know the characters and it gets into the time travel nitty gritty it really gets good! Just started the first route so we'll see how it goes...

[EntireInternet]

Just finished Sakura Sakura, looking to start If My Heart Had Wings or A Sky Full of Stars.

[LoganW]

52 minutes ago, EntireInternet said:

Just finished Sakura Sakura, looking to start If My Heart Had Wings or A Sky Full of Stars.

I haven't played A Sky Full of Stars yet, but I would highly recommend If My Heart Had Wings!

[EntireInternet]

4 minutes ago, LoganW said:

I haven't played A Sky Full of Stars yet, but I would highly recommend If My Heart Had Wings!

Thanks, I'm getting ready to check it out now. Any other recommendations?

[Inorin]

Just now, EntireInternet said:

Thanks, I'm getting ready to check it out now. Any other recommendations?

I think you can ask this in the recommendations section.

[EntireInternet]

Just now, wei123 said:

I think you can ask this in the recommendations section.

True, my bad.

[adamstan]

ASFOS is good too, while we're at it. But IMHHW is better (just remember to apply retranslation patch).

Edited January 5, 2019 by adamstan

[EntireInternet]

30 minutes ago, adamstan said:

ASFOS is good too, while we're at it. But IMHHW is better (just remember to apply retranslation patch).

Yeah I got the retranslation patch all set, thanks for the heads up. I only read the first line without it and I could immediately tell the quality difference lmao. Hope I like it as much as you guys.

[LoganW]

2 minutes ago, EntireInternet said:

Yeah I got the retranslation patch all set, thanks for the heads up. I only read the first line without it and I could immediately tell the quality difference lmao. Hope I like it as much as you guys.

Feel free to PM me your opinions if you wanna talk about it with someone! I could talk about it for hours!

[EntireInternet]

11 minutes ago, LoganW said:

Feel free to PM me your opinions if you wanna talk about it with someone! I could talk about it for hours!

Will do, seems like a lot of people do so maybe I'll type up a review of my thoughts and open a new thread to talk about it when I get there.

[adamstan]

Now I'm starting Dare ka ga Koi Shita Hankagai (A butterfly in the district of dreams)  - it seems to be rather obscure VN, that got translated by Sekai in 2017. I stumbled upon it while clicking on random screenshots at vndb front page

I see that its vndb scores are all over the place. Wonder how will it go for me...

Edited January 5, 2019 by adamstan

[ChaosRaven]

So, I finally finished The House of Fata Morgana, and that was quite the ride. Probably the most powerful VN I've read in years emotion-wise - I was literally in tears at the end. I think the last VN that was able to achieve that was Minori's Eden. I had the VN stalled for almost a year or so after the 4 - 5 introductory chapters as I'd call them. Their main purpose was to set up the stage for the real story, but after several short stories that were just loosly connected I got a bit impatient to see the big picture and therefore stalled it a while. But when I picked it up again last week, the VN unleashed its full potential and I almost couldn't stop reading anymore.

Overall, there were several aspects that really impressed me about this VN. First, it's really well constructed - pretty much every chapter is an essential mosaic of a big tale. That's not to say I liked every chapter, especially the third and to a certain degree also fourth and fifth didn't really capture me that much. But nevertheless, every chapter had a meaning that allowed the following chapters to build up on it. They wouldn't have been as strong without the introductory chapters. After some initial doubts, I was extremely relieved that in contrast to some other witch VN out there, this wasn't just 80% meaningless filler text and characters.

Second, the VN plays with all shades of grey, including bright white and pitch black. It's literally impossible to simply order things in good and evil. Circumstances can massively change people either for the better or worse, and sometimes it's just a matter of perception. There are situations where every action will do a good thing for one side and a bad thing for another, and you'll simply have to make a decision what's more important to you. The writer showed a great understanding how life works.

Third, the VN doesn't get lost in grey. Not every character is just a result or product of his or here circumstances. There are still ones that stand out among the masses and refuse to just be a plaything of destiny. And sometimes the brightest light can turn into the darkest black.

Fourth, not every character starts out as the epitome of greatness - they need time to grow and develop.

Spoiler

The best example is probably Michel, whom I initially didn't like that much to be perfectly honest. *He* started out as a rather self-centered spoiled child and if you behave like a mad-man, you don't have to be surprised if you're treated as one. However, who can blame a teenager to be rebellious and stubborn, especially considering the rather special circumstances. But in his time of isolation and during the story, he showed a remarkable growth of personality and character. Especially considering what sacrifices it can cost to be the 'good guy'. At the end he was one of my favorite characters.

I also want to use that opportunity to emphasize how important a plot is to develop its characters - even for a moege. Maybe the deredere isn't as dull and boring if she gets into a situation where she's challenged a bit. And maybe the tsundere isn't just a bitch and shows really admirable virtues given the right situation. Fata Morgana has several characters that might even seem bland at first, but change and develop over time, because the story allows them to do so.

Fifth, the writer achieved to make the central tragedy 'special'. Given the time period the story plays in, you could find tragedies and suffering everywhere. Just having a character who experienced great misery isn't sufficient. You need an outstanding character who was victim of a great injustice for that.

Visually, the VN certainly hit the mark with its more classical western look, although I still consider the cheaply made blurred photo backgrounds a real downer. In some situations I wasn't even able to decipher what's supposed to be shown on it. In others, the proportions of the sprites didn't fit to the ones of the background at all. It was certainly my biggest gripe about the visuals of the title.

The music was pretty great, although I have to say that there were 1 - 2 slice of life tracks I wasn't so fond of - and unfortunately those were probably the most played tracks in the VN *sigh*. But pretty much all tense and dramatic tracks ranged from solid to great. It's a bit unfortunate that the VN didn't have voices though.

The VN also frequently seemed to be more expressive when it took a more classic book or novel approach with full images and NVL style. Some of the most engrossing parts were just text and a plain background like a simple book. Although I think they handled the ADV parts with sprites much better in the second half of the VN.

Favorite characters:

Spoiler

Female: Morgana > Maid-Giselle > Nellie > Maria > Michelle > Pauline > Giselle

Male: Michel > Mell > Didier > Beast > Georges > Jacopo

I wish Michel and Morgana would have gotten a couple - their relationship was so much more powerful than the one with Giselle. 
And yeah, mysterious Maid-Giselle was so much better than Plain-Giselle.

Final rating: 8.5/10

I would have even given an ultra rare 9, but the crappy backgrounds and the lack of voices were a bit of a downer. Still an amazing VN though.

I also finished Ann's route of Saku Saku... after more than one year of reading.  I also wanted to read Yuuri's route, but Ann's was so boring that I'm not sure if I should just drop it. I recently bought Sakura Sakura and I'd be more interested to read that one as a moege at the moment.

Regarding story VN's, Chaos Child will be next.

Edited January 5, 2019 by ChaosRaven

[Dergonu]

I decided to buy the PSvita version of ChuSinGura, as I've been really curious about how they'd handle an all-ages port for that game for a while now. (A proper one, and not that... abomination that's on Steam.) Since I am re-reading the game atm, I figured I might as well get the PSvita version now, and finally get an answer to my questions about this version.

I must say, I'm really impressed with how well done this is. So far I have only found a couple of small things that were changed, and those were... obvious ones. (I mean, a loli having sex with dogs isn't exactly all-ages material, lol.)

General overview of what I've seen from a good 6-7 hours ish into the game:

- All perverted jokes and refrences to sex are kept completely intact. I was very surprised by this, but yeah, it doesn't seem like they've toned this down much at all. A couple of examples:

Spoiler

- The scene in the beginning of the game where the three little sisters start poking and pinching Suguha's dick is left totally untouched. (A scene that the Steam version cuts completely.)

- The bath scenes with the lolis are still there, and the only difference to the 18+ version is that the girls are now wearing clothes. (But all perverted talk stays the same. These were all cut from the Steam ver.)

- The scene later on in the game, where Fuwa takes off her clothes and asks if Suguha wants to touch / lick her breasts is still there, and they simply zoom in a little so you don't actually see her breasts.

- The scene where Fuwa falls asleep on top of Suguha and grabs his dick in her sleep is also still there, and they've just removed the part where you actually see the dick. (And covered up Fuwa's nipples.) The text and the base CG is still exactly the same.

- The scene where Kuranosuke comes into the bath with Suguha and comments on how his dick looks "unused" is still there, and so are the other scenes from the cabin where she runs around naked etc.

There's a bunch more, but I think you get the point. I can't believe Sony let Inre keep the game this lewd, lol.

- The outfits for some characters have been altered a tiny, tiny bit. (Fuwa and Shinpachirou had their nipples hidden by adidng a tiny bit more cloth to their tops, and Matsunojou and a few others had the very obvious outline of their nipples toned down a little.)

- CGs showing nipples/ genitals are changed so that there's some convinient cloth just barely covering what needs to be covered, but the text etc still remains exactly the same, and the CGs are still plenty frisky.

 

Overall it seems like the only changes are:

- H-scenes being replaced by "all-ages" friendly scenes. (They do have new text and new CGs for these.)

- A handful of scenes that cannot be "covered", such as Tsunayoshi talking about having sex with her dogs have been changed to her just doting on her dogs in general instead. (Which honestly just feels more... natural. The whole dog sex thing was kind of pushing it, lol. For those of you who don't know, Tsunayoshi was known as the "dog shogun" for his law basically branding stray dogs as deities, and there were rumours about him being intimate with dogs as a result.)

- CGs showing nudity have said nudity covered, but the text and the rest of the scenes/ CGs remain the same.

 

I am curious how a few things that happen later in the game gets handled, so I'll make one post for each chatper. Chapters 3 and 4 in particular should be... interesting. Though, based on how well Ch.1 has been done, I'm sure they've done a good job with the rest of the game, too. Man, I'm really glad this game wasn't butchered by Sony's stupid policies. How Inre managed to get a game this lewd and uncut on the PS-store, I don't know, but god bless'em. I wish every all-ages version of eroge got handled like this.

[Eclipsed]

Okay, so I tried to read Muv-Luv on my Vita, and gave up. I just can't do HS SoL anymore  no way am I going to slog through extra and unlimited just to get to the alternate goodies

So instead I'm finally tackling my mountain of otomes:

Spoiler

Collar x Malice is the one I picked. It's another otome by the Otomate/IdeaFactory/DesignFactory/Aksys combo who made Code:Realize and others.

Simple premise, the heroine-protagonist is one cutie (first name) Ichika Hoshino who lives in city of Japan called Shinjuku which has been under terrorist attack by an organization known as Adonis who have been committing publicized mass murders on alleged corrupt people. After each crime they have been counting down the number of months until "X-Day", a day where they will supposedly enact a scheme so grand, so legendary it will purge Japan of all evil and enable an of era of 'Rebirth'. Damned cults.

Shinjuku has been quarantined from the rest of Japan as a result of the murders. So that civilians could protect themselves, the Swords and Firearms law prohibiting anyone from carrying weapons was repealed in Shinjuku. Great idea right, fight fire with fire.

Police reputation is at an all time low, with the public losing faith in their ability to stop the terrorism coupled with Adonis's heavily publicized murders claiming injustice and corruption.

Ichika is a rookie police officer, working for SRCPO (Special Regions Crime Prevention Office?) which has been formed in response to the 'X-Day Incidents' to gather intel from the public. Yes, this cutie is a police officer:



She looks waaay too badass for her own good in this CG, because she's actually pretty pathetic LOL. It's not like she's one of those shy types or anything, she has an average, normal personality for the most part.
She's just not really a fighter. Will be damsel-in-distressed quite a few times in the VN. Literally one scene early on is just her accidentally bumping shoulders with a thug and then they gang up on her so the male hero has to step in and save her. 

And even though she's a police officer working for a fancy sounding SRCPO they're actually more like a hotline for complaints division rather than a crime busting division. 

Spoiler

TL;DR there's a lot to be desired if you came into this VN expecting badassery female protagonist and legit crime busting narratives. You'll mostly slog around in the dark, always one step behind.

More synopsis backstory, in the prologue Ichika and her supervisor go onsite to a distress all and then Ichika gets ambushed and gets a poison collar placed on her by Adonis. Collar x Malice yeee.
Adonis is able to spy on her via the collar, and they tell her to solve the mystery and truth behind the X-Day Incidents. They claim she was chosen because she is a sympathizer for them and that she'll have a very important part in the days to come. The collar is unremovable, and any attempts to get the police involved will result in her death. So she'll eventually meet and seek help from the heroes of this story, most of them being ex-cops who are investigating the X-Day Incidents for personal reasons.

There's waaay too many X-Day Incidents that you'll get lost really really fast when they infodump you on cases that happened months ago that supposedly link to today's case and all the suspects and motives. It's pretty overwhelming:

Spoiler

Luckily it looks like the VN is structured so that each of the male hero's route will cover specific X-Day Incidents and so you'll get a piece by piece revelation experience until you finally make it to the true route where everything will be revealed (hopefully.).

The heroes:



Ugly bunch aren't they 

The fine dude with the white hair is (first name) Kei Okazaki. I think the writers wanted you to experience his route first, because jesus they slam him in your face the most in the common route once he's introduced. Kei is a member of SP, Special Police, who protect VIPs with their life at all costs. He was apparently tasked with keeping an eye on the other four heroes who have banded together to freelance investigate X-Day and Ardonis.

Kei's route is like the Kotori route of Rewrite, you get glimpses of the big bad and plot going on but are left mostly in the dark the entire time, and by the end of it you get some bittersweetness between the couple and nothing plotwise really answered.

Spoiler

Kei is portrayed as this aloof easygoing somewhat ditzy nice guy with sleeper overpowered combat prowess

Originally tasked with keeping an eye on the other four dudes, his curiosity is piqued when Ichika starts associating with them due to her desire to solve the X-Day Incidents along with wanting to remove the Adonis collar.

The four dudes tell her to be wary of Kei, but Kei is just too nice and really really pushy and would walk her home under the guise of being her bodyguard. She would eventually warm up to him pretty easily.

Bitch pls, I'm a badass cop, I don't need no hero bodyguard!! 

Eventually while tagging along her as she is investigating the July-August incidents a scuffle happens between Ichika and a suspected Adonis member who sees Ichika's collar and freaks out. Kei intervenes and Ichika thanks him, but having heard the Adonis's outcry, Kei's personality instantly turns ice cold and lost any sign of his prior very friendly and supportive demeanor. He's an SP after all, an elite cop, and he was now face to face with the realization that Ichika could be an Adonis spy. It's a very tense standoff 

 

The collar speaks up: "Ichika is valuable to both Adonis and the police. She is a good person. If you don't want her to have a pointless death, keep quiet." Kei reluctantly obliges and keeps her collar a secret from his SP superiors. 

The two eventually bond some more: he buys her flowers, they watch horror movies together, some cute stuff in the midst of all this chaos.

I'M B-B-B-BADASS FEMALE COP! I CAN HANDLE SCARY MOVIES! 




The main drama between these two happens when all of Kei's "I want to protect you with my life" talk towards Ichika turns out to be an entitled self righteous "I want my death to have meaning" shtick. SP are tasked with protecting VIPs at the cost of their life. Kei had a partner who died protecting him 2 years ago and told him to find a death that had meaning. That kind of crap.

It'll take Ichika a bit of tsun tsun and avoiding/not talking to Kei before they finally confront each other and make amends. Kei wanted to die while protecting Ichika, someone he loves. A noble cause. But he erred in that he was going about it completely wrong by looking to die ASAP. No you fking idiot, you're supposed to find a way to protect Ichika AND yourself so that you can both live out your lives until you  one day die together of old age.

Spoiler

Smh Kei you baka.

More spicy romance:

The bad ending for this route is pretty good thematically with all the emphasize it had on these two protecting each other,

Kei'll fail to protect Ichika, and the resulting screenshot is pretty self explanatory. 

Don't cry don't cry don't cry don't cry- 

But of course we need our happy ends,

Spoiler

 

Ok, time to continue reading.

[ChaosRaven]

Some day, someone has to explain to me why otomes get all the cool action stuff while the VN's for dudes are just boring slice of life and drama. 

Kind of reminds me that I've still Hakuoki left on Steam to read...

[EntireInternet]

2 minutes ago, ChaosRaven said:

Some day, someone has to explain to me why otomes get all the cool action stuff while the VN's for dudes are just boring slice of life and drama. 

Kind of reminds me that I've still Hakuoki left on Steam to read...

It's an interesting question and one I don't really know the answer to... Of course there are a bunch of VN's for a male demographic that have action, but there are many more slice of life drama ones. For every Fate/Stay (which I did not enjoy, actually) there's a bunch of em like Clannad, Hatsukoi 1/1, and If My Heart Had Wings.

If I had to guess it's because the visual novel medium does not lend itself to action as much as other mediums. Especially combat based RPGs and what not like Persona or Kamidori or Bunny Black, they all translate combat much better than just text. Even more so anime communicates combat much much better.

[nihilloligasan]

As of now:

Cross Channel: only on the 1st week as of now. probably one of the weirdest protagonists i've ever read from. he's just so over-the-top. my headcanon is that the girls are pretending to be nice to him to avoid upsetting him or getting sexually assaulted.

euphoria: on the final route (kanae). i've heard a lot of praise for this game based on the psychology of the situation, but i feel the psychological aspect of it was underused. but i do appreciate it when writers attempt to reveal certain aspects of the plot/characters in sex scenes (which usually just consist of generic ikea action descriptions and onomatopoeia).

In the near future:

Katawa Shoujo: i usually don't care for romantic games, and i'm mostly checking it out as a reference since i'm currently working on a vn on the renpy engine

Dramatical Murder: mostly because i've heard of how weird the sex scenes get, but apparently the plot is also pretty engaging

[Mr Poltroon]

2 hours ago, ChaosRaven said:

Some day, someone has to explain to me why otomes get all the cool action stuff while the VN's for dudes are just boring slice of life and drama. 

Kind of reminds me that I've still Hakuoki left on Steam to read...

 

2 hours ago, EntireInternet said:

It's an interesting question and one I don't really know the answer to... Of course there are a bunch of VN's for a male demographic that have action, but there are many more slice of life drama ones. For every Fate/Stay (which I did not enjoy, actually) there's a bunch of em like Clannad, Hatsukoi 1/1, and If My Heart Had Wings.

If I had to guess it's because the visual novel medium does not lend itself to action as much as other mediums. Especially combat based RPGs and what not like Persona or Kamidori or Bunny Black, they all translate combat much better than just text. Even more so anime communicates combat much much better.

Otome make consoles their target demographic. Consoles mean no porn, and no porn means they need something else to attract a fan base.

All ages slice of life or drama cannot carry sales on their own, unless you're already an established player like Key or in the science; series.

[MaggieROBOT]

26 minutes ago, nihilloligasan said:

Dramatical Murder: mostly because i've heard of how weird the sex scenes get

Eeeerrr not really? 99% of the scenes are so generic vanilla IKEA that they are quite boring to read tbh maybe not in the fandisc, but the base game is your average gay sex

I mean, it's not that some scenes aren't weird because of some specific plot points and twist, but I think the implications are weirder than anything that's on the text or the CGs are

Edited January 6, 2019 by MaggieROBOT

[EntireInternet]

2 hours ago, Mr Poltroon said:

 

Otome make consoles their target demographic. Consoles mean no porn, and no porn means they need something else to attract a fan base.

All ages slice of life or drama cannot carry sales on their own, unless you're already an established player like Key or in the science; series.

I was unaware of this, thanks for sharing. I don't really know much about the numbers and sales of visual novels as a business so I could really only speculate as to why things were the way they were from my own knowledge of things.

[Larxe1]

Playing Tsuki ni Yorisou Otome no Sahou and the prologue is one of the best prologues I ever saw in VN's. I usually just skim through VN's but I was hooked with the drama. Stalled it though, planning to play it in the future. It was really heavy on text. I don't mind long text but I don't like novels that are verbose which Tsuriotsu is. It's also a Trap VN which I have may apprehensions about but I'll play it prob after Chusingura and some moege relaxation. Any novels that gripping and heart-wrenching like the prologue of Tsuriotsu?