What are you playing?

[Ryleona]

10 hours ago, Leonor said:

I wonder how bad Tomoyo After is... yikes :x

Read Kyou after if you can be arsed to have standards

[Inorin]

Completed the final route in Dive 2, and with that, I have finally completed Baldr Sky after 2 months. Honestly, I could have completed it much sooner, but due to other commitments, I had to stall it for a long time (I was in Nanoha's route in Dive 1 before I stalled). Only managed to get back to it this week, and boy was it well worth it. Each moment didn't feel dull (except for Reminisce, since that was ,for the most part, slice-of-life), and my eyes were always glued to the screen. 

At first, I felt like Baldr Sky was slightly similar to Guilty Crown (Gray Christmas vs Lost Christmas), but as I went on further, I started to see similarities to Yuno and Evangelion (especially the latter). I'll discuss more on the reasons in the spoiler review below.

Anyways, what I liked about Baldr Sky is that it explores the possiblity of AI and humanity coexisting with one another, something which I have not seen being done in other visual novels. I also liked the pacing here, which is surprising considering that many >50h VNs have terrible pacing. Last but not least, I really liked the openings for both Dive 1 and Dive 2. When either opening was playing during the final few battles in the final route, I actually stalled killing the enemy because both openings were just that good. However, one thing which I didn't really like is how the antagonists were treated: One of them is a sadist who has an inferiority complex with the only motivation behind his actions being the typical "abused from childhood" story, while the other doesn't even that much of a presence until the very last route. 

Spoiler review:

Spoiler

 

First things first, since Sora's route is the one which provides the most plot points, what I say below is based on her route only. 

I had my suspicions that the Kou in World 0 (Sora's route) was actually the simulacrum, since pretty much everyone around him was telling him that he was supposed to be dead. Therefore, I wasn't really surprised when the revelation came. Additionally, before Sora's route, I knew that there were 2 higher existences controlling Father Gregory and Agent in the other 5 routes, and I suspected one of them to be Sora, but never really knew who the other one was, so I'm glad that cleared up in Sora's route. I also never would have guessed that the scale at which Sora and Neuzehn played their "multiverse" game was this huge. There is where I got those strong Yuno vibes when Sora started showing the world tree map thing, with multiple branches and divergence points. Additionally, the fact both Yuno and Baldr Sky have their first 5 routes be 5 possible worlds and the final route be considered the "True" world, further strengthening my conviction that Baldr Sky was slightly influenced by Yuno. 

I mentioned earlier that besides getting Yuno vibes, I also felt Evangelion's influence here, and the reasons are simple:

1. The "collective human mindset" aim of the Ark Project in Baldr Sky is very similar to the Human Instrumentality Project in Evangelion

2. Aki is a clone of Kou's mother in Baldr Sky. This is similar to Rei being a clone of Shinji's mother in Evangelion.

And finally, before I forget, when Rain started to die, I really felt like it was going to end up like a certain visual novel famous for killing people off. Instinctively, I knew that Nanoha would be the one to die next, and everyone else would later die off one by one for dramatic effect. That actually turned out to be the case, but then I certainly didn't expect them to revive all of a sudden (especially the Fenrir members; they had an extremely minor presence in Sora's route so I didn't expect them to revive too). I have mixed feelings about this tbh; on one hand, I'm glad that everyone's alive and well,on the other, I'm wondering just how much emotional impact it would have left me if they had stayed "dead" in the Es.

 

Overall, a 9/10 for Dive 2. Thought I wouldn't like it that much since Dive 1 wasn't particularly outstanding, but I'm glad this wasn't the case for Dive 2.

On a side note, the OP for Dive 1 has some parts which sound like some parts from the Schwarzesmarken OP. 

On another side note, I just realised I've only completed 2 VNs this year. If only my schedule this year wasn't this packed...

Edited April 13, 2020 by wei123

[Silvz]

2 hours ago, Seraphim88 said:

It's not bad per se, but... [omitted for spoiler reasons]

I mean, there are two versions of Tomoyo After. The original one, with the bad ending, and a second one with a new ending.

[Seraphim]

The only one I've read is the one on Steam, meaning the all ages release.

Spoiler

From what I can tell, the 18+ version is the original one, so you're saying that one's even more depressing than the one I've seen? (Which is sort of inconclusive, but it's strongly inferred that Tomoya either died from the operation or was left with permanent brain damage.)

 

[adamstan]

Yeah, apparently in original version

Spoiler

it is more obvious that he dies - they made it somewhat vague/indirect in Memorial Edition, which has been translated. It is also said that this version has generally expanded scenario compared to h-version.

 

Edited April 10, 2020 by adamstan

[Acrylic7]

I have just finished playing Tokyo Babel. It was really fantastic and made me cry. Now I am playing Shadow Pygmalion but I wonder whether I will like it like I love Tokyo Babel. 

Edited April 10, 2020 by Acrylic7

[BookwormOtaku]

Been playing more of Sengoku Koihime X and have gotten to the character interactions before the Echizen battle and I am liking how a lot of the character interactions are building up the harem arrangement Kuon puts together and Yuina managing it

Spoiler

though the revelation she had superpowers all along and the only reason she didn't use them back in rescuing Shino was because she just didn't feel like it is a tad annoying.

About the only complaint I have is out of all of them Karasu and Suzume's stand out from the rest; basically for characters that just showed up it feels a little too early for them to suddenly want to be in the harem (though even Kensuke points that out) while another new character Shizuku seems to be more properly built up into it.

On the English end I'm giving Fureraba a try...and it took me several tries to get through its prologue as the comedy in it was horrible mainly in the dialogue somehow being too over the top even for a comedy, like it was trying way too hard to land a joke. Thankfully it gets better after the prologue where it tones things down so the humor fits with the characters better so the scenes can actually be funny. I'm doing Himari's route first and I am liking the in story scenes between them, though the conversation bits are pretty bland so far compared to those.

[OdaNova]

Finished Chuuostu! First Graduation Time after Time today;

 

Spoiler

Did not expect the 'legal child prostitute' twist... at... all. Yikes.

 

I thought it was good overall, if you can get beyond the zany writing. 

 

Really interesting concept about the P3 Law - that everyone is given a compatible job etc upon. However... I felt the VN didn't make use of its 'Chuuostu' = unemployed and therefore thick as bricks premise to its full extent, and in fact, was pretty much ignoring that whole concept, because the three girls were churning out some fairly intelligent discussion for people too thick to understand what they're talking about... 

 

Not sure if I'll continue with the sequels, but I enjoyed it in anycase.

 

[Dreamysyu]

7 minutes ago, OdaNova said:

Finished Chuuostu! First Graduation Time after Time today;

 

  Hide contents

Did not expect the 'legal child prostitute' twist... at... all. Yikes.

 

I thought it was good overall, if you can get beyond the zany writing. 

 

Really interesting concept about the P3 Law - that everyone is given a compatible job etc upon. However... I felt the VN didn't make use of its 'Chuuostu' = unemployed and therefore thick as bricks premise to its full extent, and in fact, was pretty much ignoring that whole concept, because the three girls were churning out some fairly intelligent discussion for people too thick to understand what they're talking about... 

 

Not sure if I'll continue with the sequels, but I enjoyed it in anycase.

 

To be honest, I feel like there's probably some unreliable narration there or something, and they aren't really as thick as everyone believes them to be. But I see your point. [\spoiler]

[ChaosRaven]

Time for a little update on my reading progress I think.

I tried another otome with Psychedelica of the Black Butterfly, but unfortunately this was the weakest one I've read so far. The VN tempts as a mystery thriller with several young people trapped in a mysterious mansion, but while art and soundtrack are actually quite decent for that type of VN, the same can't be said about the story. This is actually slice of life in disguise and the slice of life is presented in probably the most boring way possible.

Imagine this: you're reading the VN, the teens wake up in a strange house wondering what's going on, and then you suddenly get a message that you can't progress with the story before reading X random episodes which are locked in the flow chart. To unlock them, you have to earn points in a very crappy shooter game with horrible controls where you have to kill black butterflies. Fortunately, you can resign the game and at least get some points. But the real problem are the random episodes. Beniyuri cooking with the guys, Beniyuri chatting with the guys about random stuff, etc. If there would have been at least some context for the slice of life, but I guess the writer was too lazy for that. It goes without saying that this drags the flow of the story down to an almost unbearable degree.

I think I only managed to finish the neutral ending because I liked the soundtrack and the background art. The characters sprites could have been better though, too flower-boyish for my taste. The few parts of the actual plot that were left buried between all those random slice of life episodes weren't that great either. And Beniyuri pretty much confirms all bad prejudices against otome protagonists: helpless, dull and plain. The neutral ending I got probably just revealed the basics what actually happened, with more to come in the actual hero routes, but I decided to call it a day - enough for me.

Final rating: 5/10

I also dropped Raging Loop somewhere in the second iteration. While this has an interesting story premise and at least a semi-competent protagonist, it suffers from simply too many issues. The VN freely admits at the start that it's inspired by a certain werewolf game I personally never played myself. There are a few werewolfs randomly selected at the start and the players have to find out who they are during the day and can try to eliminate one of them hoping they judged correcty, while the werewolves kill one player during the nights. The players win if all wolves are eliminated.

Now, there's nothing wrong with being inspired by a game, but it gets a problem if you're so obsessed with it, that you'll completely neglect how people would react in reality to such a situation. The story comes across as extremely artifical with countless extra rules and conditions, so the writers could 'enforce' the game on the denizens of a tiny village. Not only the wolves are randomly chosen and brainwashed into happily killing their own family, but there are also snake, spider and monkey characters which are mostly useless since they can't prove it to the others. In addition, there's a strange mist keeping the villagers from fleeing and a corruption that kills everyone outside during the night.

Spoiler

The whole party is organized by a resident shinto god and it gets clear very soon that the whole 'game' is just a glorified execution as punishment for some past sins. Now you might think they'd try to do something against it, but nooooo they all keep obediently playing a completely senseless game which only purpose is to cause infighting. They don't even try to seriously find out who the wolves are. They are active during the night when everybody should be at home. Then why not order the monkeys, who are the only ones who can confirm their roles, to restrain all others or lock their doors? Or try to spread marks around the houses, so it can be seen if anyone left their house during the night? And maybe one of the younger ones even has a web cam or a camera to observe the area during the night. There's a lot of things they could have at least tried, but they did... nothing. Overall, almost the whole cast are dumb as bricks.

And then there are more annoyances. The game has a lot of choices, but the writer reeeally wants you to read the bad endings and therefore locks the good choice until you finished reading the bad ending. Well, too bad that this makes the choices itself absurd since you can't choose anymore. And what's even worse is that it kills all the excitement if you made a good or bad choice if the VN already spoils it. And it goes without saying that the story flow comes down to a drag that way. And then the obligatory time-loop that forces you to repeat almost the same stupid discussions again and again, instead of progressing with the plot.

The VN is also very cheaply produced. Very few event images, and sprites and backgrounds are practical at best. The heroine cast was also pretty forgettable, so nothing to see here in that regard as well. The protagonist was kind of okay though and probably the main reason I didn't drop the VN earlier.

Overall rating: 4/10

Currently I'm iterating beween Senren Banka and Sakura no Mori † Dreamers. The latter in particular seems to turn out surprisingly good. It's a bit rough around the edges and especially at the start it's kind of obvious that both writer and artist are more rooted in the moe and slice of life genre, but there are definite improvements later on and the story itself seems surprisingly well thought out so far. I don't want to praise it too soon, since it could still turn into a mess like in Chaos Child, but so far it's the most entertaining VN I've read this year.
I've also tried Summer Pockets, but it seemed to consist mainly of meaningless choices and meaningless mini games with no plot in sight, so I stalled it in favor of the more entertaining Senren Banka for now. Heroines were likable though, so I might pick it up again when I'm finished with the other VN's i'm currently reading.

Edited April 18, 2020 by ChaosRaven

[Silvz]

38 minutes ago, ChaosRaven said:

I've also tried Summer Pockets, but it seemed to consist mainly of meaningless choices and meaningless mini games with no plot in sight, so I stalled it in favor of the more entertaining Senren Banka for now. Heroines were likable though, so I might pick it up again when I'm finished with the other VN's i'm currently reading.

What? What Summer Pockets has the most is plot. Each heroine has a unique story and all of them are well developed, besides the great true route. You've probably only read the prologue, which obviously would be only an introduction to the characters and the island lol

I was worried reading what you wrote about Raging Loop, as I've just started it myself a few days ago, but seeing your take on Summer Pockets makes me realize we share very different tastes

[ChaosRaven]

Yes, I didn't read that far into Summer Pockets yet to really judge it. That's why I just stalled and didn't drop it.

But for Raging Loop you'll better bring a lot of patience - you'll need it for all those iterations. 

Edited April 18, 2020 by ChaosRaven

[alpacaman]

58 minutes ago, Silvz said:

What? What Summer Pockets has the most is plot. Each heroine has a unique story and all of them are well developed, besides the great true route. You've probably only read the prologue, which obviously would be only an introduction to the characters and the island lol

I was worried reading what you wrote about Raging Loop, as I've just started it myself a few days ago, but seeing your take on Summer Pockets makes me realize we share very different tastes

I think Raging Loop is totally fine. It has its issues, but for me none of them had to with the things ChaosRaven mentioned as it does a pretty good job explaining the game, usefulness of the roles and character motivations (and how different setups in the roles completely change the character dynamics) imo.

[Dreamysyu]

3 hours ago, ChaosRaven said:

I tried another otome with Psychedelica of the Black Butterfly, but unfortunately this was the weakest one I've read so far.

Incidentally, I also tried reading this VN quite recently, and I effectively dropped after a few hours. The reason why I became interested in it in the first place is that I accidentally found an ending song on youtube and quite liked it, and after I looked it up on vndb, I liked the art and was intrigued by the story synopsis, so I decided to purchase it. Sadly, like you said, the game is just extremely boring. And I feel like the MC and all the heroes are just a combination of every annoying otome trope possible. Honestly, instead of continuing with this trash, I should probably just try reading Hakuoki. If I don't like it, I'll just assume that the otome genre is not for me and stop even considering playing them.

Edited April 18, 2020 by Dreamysyu

[ChaosRaven]

9 minutes ago, Dreamysyu said:

Incidentally, I also tried reading this VN quite recently, and I effectively dropped after a few hours. The reason why I became interested in it in the first place is that I accidentally found an ending song on youtube and quite liked it, and after I looked it up on vndb, I liked the art and was intrigued by the story synopsis, so I decided to purchase it. Sadly, like you said, the game is just extremely boring. And I feel like the MC and all the heroes are just a combination of every annoying otome trope possible. Honestly, instead of continuing with this trash, I should probably just try reading Hakuoki. If I don't like it, I'll just assume that the otome genre is not for me and stop even considering playing them.

Yes, too bad it was pretty much just eye and ear candy. Hakuoki should be a much better choice, provided you don't have a particular dislike for the samurai genre.

[ChaosRaven]

1 hour ago, alpacaman said:

I think Raging Loop is totally fine. It has its issues, but for me none of them had to with the things ChaosRaven mentioned as it does a pretty good job explaining the game, usefulness of the roles and character motivations (and how different setups in the roles completely change the character dynamics) imo.

Actually, there's a pretty good discussion on VNDB about it with some interesting pro and con arguments about it, and I think the things that I'd consider relevant and interesting might be addressed after the third iteration. Ironically, most people seem to hate that part lol. Still, the story is a bit too gamey and far fetched for me. I mean...

Spoiler

this god is obviously so fucking powerful that he could easily wipe out the whole village without any effort, so why not let the corruption kill them all? I prefer a weaker but smart opponent who's dangerous because he uses 100% of his potential any day over an omnipotent but dumb one, who only fails because he just uses 10% of his potential. If he just wants to let them suffer, there are way more efficient ways to do that. So the game doesn't really make sense.

 

Edited April 18, 2020 by ChaosRaven

[OdaNova]

Just started up Koihime Musou, which I picked up with the Easter Egg code sale on Mangagamer.

A 'timeslip' sends the protagonist into the Three Kingdoms era where all the famous generals are now women. Whey! 

I like it so far, only two minor issues;

Spoiler

1. The translation for the names are in Japanese-English. I'm so used to the names being Chinese-English (I'm not sure if I have the right terminology here). So, I'm used to say "Guan Yu" and "Zhuge Liang" or "Lu Bu" but in this novel they're in Japanese form so; "Kan'u" and "Shokatsryou" or "Ryofu" etc. The game does provide a pdf with the translation for the major characters, but not for the minor ones, so I have to play with a wikipedia page open to cross-reference the characters.

That's kind of slowing my progress a bit and sometimes confuses me when they talk about 3-4 characters all at once, lol. (I would have thought the translation should have gone chinese-english since most material on the Three Kingdoms uses that style for the names etc?)

 

2. The hero seems pretty level-headed, until the Hulao gate part of the game, suddenly he's starting to be more of the stereotypical 'raging boner', flirt-with-the-ladies type. It is a bit of a disconnect for me because initially he's presented as a kendo student, with a good head and kind heart. His friend is the one who is a slut for the ladies, and it feels like they were like "ah, shit, we need him to be attracted to the cute girls we have on offer..."

I'm also somewhat disappointed that initially they implied he'd be useful due to his knowledge of the history of the TK era, yet, so far he's been pretty oblivious to it except for the occasional "oh I know this person". I was genuinely expecting more of a reaction from him re: the Anti-Dong Zhuo alliance, or for him to try and get ahead with his knowledge at that stage, at least until Hulao gate when we get the reveal that history isn't applying strictly to this world.

I'm not sure I fully understand the battle system, the tutorial was fairly sparse about it. Am I supposed to go defensive when the enemy uses an attacking formation and vice versa? It's what I've been doing in any case, but I might be misunderstanding some finer point to the system?

I'm not that far in yet though; 

Spoiler

I just beat Yuan Shao, the 'princess'

but I'm looking forward to continuing with it, it's enjoyable all the same.

[Stormwolf]

On 18/04/2020 at 5:29 PM, ChaosRaven said:

Actually, there's a pretty good discussion on VNDB about it with some interesting pro and con arguments about it, and I think the things that I'd consider relevant and interesting might be addressed after the third iteration. Ironically, most people seem to hate that part lol. Still, the story is a bit too gamey and far fetched for me. I mean...

  Hide contents

this god is obviously so fucking powerful that he could easily wipe out the whole village without any effort, so why not let the corruption kill them all? I prefer a weaker but smart opponent who's dangerous because he uses 100% of his potential any day over an omnipotent but dumb one, who only fails because he just uses 10% of his potential. If he just wants to let them suffer, there are way more efficient ways to do that. So the game doesn't really make sense.

 

Japanese stories are great, but japanese writers are not known for their brilliant villains. Its quite rare seeing good ones as they come off as from the imagination of a child. Crackling laugh, extended laugh, licking a knife, only being evil for the sake of being evil, prennding they've been beaten only to now use their true power (or any kind of variation to this). All in all terrible villains.

[Seraphim]

2 hours ago, Stormwolf said:

Crackling laugh, extended laugh

This is a major issue for me in Sakuranomori Dreamers. There's this strange, extremely drawn-out laugh that you hear occasionally, and it's obviously meant to sound malicious/creepy but actually comes off as too unnatural to be believeable and thus loses its intended effect.

[Stormwolf]

On 4/20/2020 at 8:52 AM, Seraphim88 said:

This is a major issue for me in Sakuranomori Dreamers. There's this strange, extremely drawn-out laugh that you hear occasionally, and it's obviously meant to sound malicious/creepy but actually comes off as too unnatural to be believeable and thus loses its intended effect.

Doesnt sound like what i mean at all though. Just picked the first video i found on youtube to illustrate what i mean. It's super childish.

 

 

[littleshogun]

Read this nukige and overall it's not too bad here, although the story here is definitely lose from the well known Monster Girl Quest even though it almost have the same premise (It's a doujin VN that was derived from Monster Girl Encyclopedia). If anything at least the sex scenes was shown with the sprite instead of the CG like Monster Girl Quest, so that there's no need to view the badly drawn CG. While technically it's still pointless to get the bad ending directly like back at Magic and Slash, at least you can view the bad ending as soon as possible after refused to indulge in the corruption. By the way the VN was created by the RPG Engine, although there's no much RPG gameplay in there though other than walking and open the menu to see the item (Only three items though).

Edited April 22, 2020 by littleshogun

[Seraphim]

Finished Sakura no Mori Dreamers yesterday! My only real complaints are that the motives of the main antagonist were pretty uninteresting, and there were some major inconcistencies between routes (just like in Princess Evangile, which I also read recently). The one that annoys me most is the fact that

Spoiler

the main antagonist returns in one of the routes but not any of the others, despite the circumstances being exactly the same.

Other than these things, I think this was a nice read. The art and the general ambience of the game was great, and the pacing felt well optimized. I liked all of the main characters, and I'm also very happy that there weren't any tsunderes or other overly tropey/stereotypical characters in the cast.

Is the sequel, which is currently only available in Japan, considered a canon continuation of the story? I guess that would mean the heroine routes in the first game are only "what if" scenarios.
In any case, I'm looking forward to reading it. I have no idea if it's even going to get localized, so it looks like I'm leaning towards reading it in Japanese at a slowass newbie pace. (Well, at least there's less risk of burning out if it's a story I actually enjoy.)

[Silvz]

4 hours ago, Seraphim88 said:

s the sequel, which is currently only available in Japan, considered a canon continuation of the story? I guess that would mean the heroine routes in the first game are only "what if" scenarios.

It starts after "not picking any heroine"

[Seraphim]

Yeah, I know that part; I just don't know if what happens in SnMD2 is considered the true route of the story or if it's just another "what if" scenario. Kureha's route in the original game felt somewhat like a true route, since it had more chapters, actually had a "final chapter", and

Spoiler

it's the only route where the main antagonist returns,

but that's probably not the case.

I'm guessing the fact that Sakura no Mori Dreamers 2 is a sequel rather than a fandisc might be an indication that what happens in it is canon.

Edited May 4, 2020 by Seraphim88

[Daydreamer97]

Going to re-read The House in Fata Morgana after a long time of not playing VNs because dumb translation controversy just reminded me that this is my favorite VN of all time. Also, the chapter select after you finish the game is a godsend because sometimes, I just want to pick and choose which chapters to re-read.