What are you playing?

[Deniz]

I finished the Michiru's route in Chrono Clock.I like incest and Michiru was cool but all that forced drama was boring.It remind me Fuuko route of Clannad.I guess it's a common thing for vns.Now time to go for D.D. route.

[ChaosRaven]

26 minutes ago, Mr Poltroon said:

Notably, I have read Aoi's is, in fact, a bonus route, which is why it's locked. I have not, however, gotten to confirm if this is true.

Which makes me wonder where all that 4 MB of text is actually hidden...

[Canicheslayer]

Reading Air. I finished Misuzu's route. Whaow. I'm impressed. One of my best VN moments in 2017. The girl (a sort of Nayuki 2.0) is unquestionably cute and sweet (normally, airhead and/or childish girls are not my type). Her route is solid, sadly beautiful, and poetic (probably two times better than the best route in Kanon).

[onorub]

On 2017-6-16 at 3:25 PM, onorub said:

Starting the sixth chapter in Gahktun of the Golden Lightning. I may be sounding harsh, but reading it feels like the Demonbane writer read Shikkoku no Sharnoth and decided to write a story in the same style.

Finished it and i may change my opinion after some time, but right now i'd say i liked Sharnoth better. I liked the atmosphere, the female lead AND the finale in that better. I will say the writing is less repetitive in Gahktun and the "main opponents" are more developed as well.

[Jun Inoue]

Finished Utawarerumono: Mask of Deception and well underway towards the path of post-game depression.

[MarcoCorvus21]

Finished Kara no Shoujo a week ago. Still don't know how to react to the true end though. Currently trying to finish Kara no Shoujo 2 without the walkthrough. So, any advice for me, please? 

Edited June 23, 2017 by MarcoCorvus21

[Mr Poltroon]

@Fred the Barber's request, here are my thoughts on the first chapter of monster quest, all I've played thus far.

Short, no spoilers at all version: I really like everything but the H-Scenes. It's a puzzle-like game, and you can just skip the ones you don't like. And if you're good, unlike me, you won't even get to see 80% of them. The story is also my kind of thing: Saving the world, uniting humans and monsters, etc. etc.

 

I talk about rape repeatedly in the spoiler below. Please do not open if you're going to complain to me about it later.

Spoiler

 

I was tempted to play this one because I'd recently played other such games where "rape for love" and such was a thing. Furthermore, said game (titled "The Dungeon of Lulu Farea" or some such -- which, by the way, is a pretty good puzzle game and I recommend anyone who does not mind rape in their games to try) also involved monsters, so I thought this was a good a time as any.

Monster Girl Quest does various things I like, but the H-Scenes are not one of them. In fact, they're probably what I like the least. The protagonist is this shouta lad who -- when we, the player, lose -- has many horrible things befall him, all of them with some correlation to rape. The problem I have with this scenario is that there's no "love", whatever that is, involved. It also seems as if the ones raping take no particular pleasure in the act most of the time, and just enjoy tormenting. In other words, not my kind of rape, if that's a thing that makes sense.

But otherwise, I really like the game. The premise is good: the youngster who aspires to be a hero but doesn't so as manage to meet the minimum requirement to be one, and his travels with the Monster Lord, his ultimate target. Because of his puniness, every battle feels like a real struggle, and our companion, the monster lord, has an acidic tongue coupled with a depressing cynicism that hits me right in the heart, attempting to kill off all my idealism. What makes these travels so good are the way that the protagonist has his own beliefs, struggles with them, but continues to move forward despite being riddled with contradictions: I'm a Hero, why do I have the Monster Lord as a companion? The Goddess I follow tells me to hate monsters, but I don't...
And yet he moves forward. It reminds me of a quote I once read about humans and machines, in that what differentiates us is our ability to move forward even when our beliefs and thoughts are contradictory.

Furthermore, a good deal of the protagonist's goal is to unite humans and monsters or just generally being good, which is just up my alley. I like stories about this sort of thing, even when they have extras or things which are seemingly in opposition to 'being good'. You can read more about this messy logic here.

Occasionally it gets dark, reminding me of some of the experiments in Full Metal Alchemist, with the main difference being that things generally end well in this story, thankfully.

The gameplay is also good, and is utilised well. Being a fan of eroge I don't particularly dislike the theme they carry (the opponent's attacks are basically all centred around making the protagonist ejaculate and give in to them), but what I like are the... free-form, puzzle-like way in which they work. Flavour text serves to give us hints into what the monster's weakness is or when they're going to make their big attack or how to counter it, and you get flavour text by doing normal attacks; essentially, spend a bit gathering information until you figure out what kind of approach you need to take. Sometimes you need to rush them, other times you need prepare for a marathon and heal up, and occasionally you need to stop being an idiot and be still for a while.
I realise that sounds like everything else out there ever, but apparently I don't play games much, because I found it decently unique. Essentially, it's based around losing and figuring out what to do differently. And of course it's based around losing! Each loss nets you an H-Scene, and since they bothered to write some couple hundred of them over the course of the whole game, you might as well read some. Sometimes you don't even need to lose, if you interpret the vague hints well and metagame it (I just got this power, so obviously the next enemy I face can only be beaten with said power!).

 

 

[yelsha57]

I am reading Steins Gate,Clannad,Dies Irae,and Himawari A Pebble in the Sky.I have more visual novels I am reading but these are my most current ones I am currently reading.

[Vorathiel]

Reading Ef, I'm, basing on the youtube playthrough playlist, around 17parts from 32, from First Tale.

And while I really dislike both heroines, annoying, clingy, violent lifedestroyers, I like this tittle. Romance is really subtly written. Well, it's actually "written" and not like in most of the VNs "protag suddenly realizes he's in love". Of course, abrupt h scenes and unfunny humour dimnish the overall enjoyement, but it's still a nice read.

[yelsha57]

On 6/25/2017 at 5:56 AM, Vorathiel said:

Reading Ef, I'm, basing on the youtube playthrough playlist, around 17parts from 32, from First Tale.

And while I really dislike both heroines, annoying, clingy, violent lifedestroyers, I like this tittle. Romance is really subtly written. Well, it's actually "written" and not like in most of the VNs "protag suddenly realizes he's in love". Of course, abrupt h scenes and unfunny humour dimnish the overall enjoyement, but it's still a nice read.

I was reading some of that too but I got real busy with other visual novels. I really love the anime and visual novel so far. I need to also finish reading Eden.

[Eclipsed]

It's that time of the year bois, the last thing i read apparently was Root Letter way back in like January, and then I expired going into Fate Morgy, jeebus the VN drought was real.

 

My supposed plan this Summer is to finish Fata Morgana for the mysteries, then dive into S;G0 for the sci fis, and then from there maybe pick up a charamoege though idk if just want pure moe like Chronoclock based on Fred's Fuwareview or a drama moe like ef. We'll see, if i even get that far 

 

[Canicheslayer]

While I'm still reading (slowly) Air, I'm about to pause Libra of the Vampire Princess (all these stories about major crashes on several routes, seriously scared me...I'll resume it after some fixes). And so I started DS: Dal Segno.

Spoiler

Oh my ! I'm already a fan of her craziness

 

[littleshogun]

Instead of created another milestone thread for my 2000th post, I decided to just share my little story in regard of Evenicle because I just tried it earlier in Japan language (Duh).

As for Evenicle, I'd heard that apparently the battle system was improved from Rance Quest. In a way I would say yes because skill at Rance Quest did had number of use which couldn't refilled until at inn, while back at Evenicle each skill did had a cost which called BP (Each character did had maximum BP 5, while skills usually did had BP costs ranged from 1 to 5) which would be regenerated by 1 if characters get a turn. As for the exploration, unlike Rance VI in Evenicle we didn't need to worry about SP anymore whenever we're in dungeon, but in exchange you still need to worry about HP because the healing item were expensive if you want to stock those up.

For the story, apparently Asterix here was far more nicer than Rance (Not a hard accomplishment really) although he was still pervert. As for my choice, I think I prefer Evenicle for now because at least the girls feeling toward Asterix was concluded imo, while Rance did need 10 games to conclude that matter and that's not counting of how massive Rance lores were (I didn't mean it was bad because the lores were actually quite interesting. It's just quite overwhelming).

Well, that's all for my first look at Evenicle, and I'm looking forward to the release if you want to knew my feeling in regard of Evenicle.

PS - By the way, Kathryn combat role was remind me of Urza from Rance VI, in which she did had some buff and using crossbow as her main weapon (Not as big as Kathryn's though). Quite interesting to me here especially knew that old design for the older Karma Atranger was used for Kathryn, and Karma was one of the children that Urza helped in the past.

Edit (7/26) - Now that I checked some older Final Fantasy, I would say that Evenicle there was did had both of elements from FFIV (The five party member with assigned role) and FF 4 Heroes of Light (BP System). In fact, I think Evenicle here was getting many influence from 'Heroes of Light' although I couldn't talk about that for now though.

Edited July 26, 2017 by littleshogun

[ChaosRaven]

Just started ChronoClock and my first impression is pretty much: Man, the kawaii level is almost off the scale! Pretty much every heroine I've met so far is a must play route - even Miu who is basically the loli. But what do you wanna do - you almost want to carry her around everywhere just to make sure that nothing happens to her. 

I was also surprised about the many background animations, it's an incredibly pretty game on almost every level. The voice acting is also stellar and the story is both funny and interesting so far. Although I should probably keep my enthusiasm a bit more in check since I didn't progress very far yet, I'd still say that this VN has the best chances to get my moege of the year. Though, that'll probably also depend on if MangaGamer manages to release Hapymaher - the other PurpleSoft title - this year or not, since Hapymaher is considered to be even better than Chrono Clock.

The only negative thing I noticed so far was the text font. I mean they chose a white text color... on white background. And the dark edges were hardly enough to decipher the text. Anyway, I managed to get my text almost black now, so it's pretty much a problem of the past. Still I usually vastly prefer a white text color on a darkened text box. No idea why they chose that combination. Well, Dies had similar problems with its dark red text color on dark background where I also had to made some changes first to be able to read anything.

[Nandemonai]

On 7/2/2017 at 3:20 PM, Canicheslayer said:

While I'm still reading (slowly) Air, I'm about to pause Libra of the Vampire Princess (all these stories about major crashes on several routes, seriously scared me...I'll resume it after some fixes). And so I started DS: Dal Segno.

  Reveal hidden contents

Oh my ! I'm already a fan of her craziness

 

She's the main reason I'm actually interested in Dal Segno.  I did recently beat Sonohana New Gen, but I still have six other games I'm working on, so I'm not quite ready to queue up a new one.

I'm still working on Princess Evangile (at least the common route so I can play W Happiness), Chaos;Head, Tokyo Babel, Shadows of Pygmalion, Majikoi (I want to at least finish the common route before deciding whether I want to wait to see if Jast's translation is better), and Gahkthun.

[Deniz]

Finished Comyu.I really enjoyed it a lot.Yes; writing is repetitive, battle sequences are unnecessarily detailed and most of the time protagonist simply makes things worse than before but epic final route and satisfying closure made these flaws trivial.Soundtrack is great.Mostly lovable cast especially Izawa, Itsuki and Kagome.

[LemiusK]

Finishing up the final episode of Umineko Chiru. It's been a long and bumpy ride. This emotional rollercoaster has been exhausting, constantly shifting from happy moments to sudden tension (no thanks to a certain troll of a witch). Still, despite my problems with the jarring shifts in tone, I'm impressed that even in these two final episodes that were deemed "unnecessary" by many Umineko fans, I'm still able to discover some inspiring life lessons. It truly exemplifies Ryukishi07's talent.

Regarding the characters, I'm really not too fond of Ange, even though I could relate with her bitterness and pessimism.

Spoiler

Her stubbornness being the root cause of the conflict for episode 8 is rather contrived and utterly annoying.

I suppose her character did require closure, but I could now see why people were satisfied enough with the tale ending at episode 6. Personally, I would've been satisfied if it had ended at 7 (even though I was a bit sore that the "truth" about Beatrice's actual motive for the murders was still hinted rather than explicitly explained). 8 felt like it dragged the story on just to throw in a happier outcome. I guess I can see why Ange was pissed at such sappiness.

Nevertheless, in spite of all the flaws, this has been a great journey. God, this was one amazing VN, easily ranking up among the likes of Fate/Stay Night and Steins;Gate.

After my trip to Rokkenjima has concluded, it's finally time to begin the juicy parts of the Muv-Luv story...

Edited July 12, 2017 by LemiusK

[Canicheslayer]

Finished the Minagi's route in Air (yes, finally). The route is not perfect (It was fairly good but not as strong as the two others. Maybe a bit too long.) and the H-scene in the Bad End was just...one of the worst I have ever seen However all is forgiven because Minagi is soooooooooo irresistibly cute. A Top 20 Character

[Riku]

7 hours ago, LemiusK said:

Finishing up the final episode of Umineko Chiru. It's been a long and bumpy ride. This emotional rollercoaster has been exhausting, constantly shifting from happy moments to sudden tension (no thanks to a certain troll of a witch). Still, despite my problems with the jarring shifts in tone, I'm impressed that even in these two final episodes that were deemed "unnecessary" by many Umineko fans, I'm still able to discover some inspiring life lessons. It truly exemplifies Ryukishi07's talent.

Regarding the characters, I'm really not too fond of Ange, even though I could relate with her bitterness and pessimism.

  Reveal hidden contents

Her stubbornness being the root cause of the conflict for episode 8 is rather contrived and utterly annoying.

I suppose her character did require closure, but I could now see why people were satisfied enough with the tale ending at episode 6. Personally, I would've been satisfied if it had ended at 7 (even though I was a bit sore that the "truth" about Beatrice's actual motive for the murders was still hinted rather than explicitly explained). 8 felt like it dragged the story on just to throw in a happier outcome. I guess I can see why Ange was pissed at such sappiness.

Nevertheless, in spite of all the flaws, this has been a great journey. God, this was one amazing VN, easily ranking up among the likes of Fate/Stay Night and Steins;Gate.

After my trip to Rokkenjima has concluded, it's finally time to begin the juicy parts of the Muv-Luv story...

Actually just finished Episode 6. Didn't know that people said that about 7 and 8. Oh well, I'll see that when I'll read them.

[Vokoca]

Finished Kasumi's route in Dies Irae. I should probably first say that this is not the first VN by Masada I've read. I've read Senshinkan before, and that left me with pretty mixed feelings on the author. I consider myself a fan of chuuni, and the darker (even edgier) the story is the more I'm likely to enjoy it. As such, I was pretty excited when I read Senshinkan at first - Masada's works put on the airs of extremely edgy chuuni... but unfortunately, that is all they seem to do, as on the core they're nothing more but extremely cliched shounen. I was baffled by the stark contrast between the grimdark text and the "Friendship power!" kind of story in Senshinkan, but I just chalked it up to the main theme, given the main character's disposition towards virtues. I did like the story (there was some impressive layering going on), the (villain) characters, but I did have my doubts with the actual chuuni, getting bored to death with never-ending re-matches.

As such, I was more scared of Dies Irae than excited, really. I did want to read it, but I was worried that it might be exactly what I disliked about Senshinkan - but in the end, curiosity won over, and the hyper-edgy Nazi aesthetic made me pick up the game. And, to put it shortly... I was right to be worried.

The prologue didn't sell me on the VN, in fact, it almost made me drop it. It was full of Masada's flashiness for the sake of flashiness, with action scenes serving no other purpose but to show you how damn cool everything is... only I didn't buy it. When I read chuuni, I want infodumps. I want battles that get their rules laid down and thoroughly explained, and have crazy things happening according to these rules. While Masada does this sometimes (Senshinkan had some scenes like that, albeit not many), the prologue exemplified everything I dislike about his writing of fight scenes. It's like he is trying to convince you how amazing everything is with words alone, without actually giving you any reason to be impressed in the first place. It all comes across as pretty... flat.

Luckily enough, the VN turned around immediately as the actual story started. Crazy pseudo-philosophy dialogues, edgy protagonist with clearly defined character that promised an interesting and entertaining point of view, some nice twists, it was great! And then... then the shounen tournament arc happened. The main character that was supposed to be unique, as the VN and the villains would want you to believe, quickly devolved into an insufferably cliched shounen protagonist. I won't go into any details to avoid spoilers, but the amount of shounen cliches in this route was driving me against the wall. What was even worse was Masada's attempt at being clever and self-aware - but making fun of things like friendship power and relying on it only seconds later doesn't make it any better, it makes it downright obnoxious. The actual chuuni was probably by far the biggest disappointment. The only fight scene that was actually exciting was the very first encounter, after that it just got boring. Masada just sticks to describing cool things for the most part, so there's not much to enjoy about the scenes other than mindlessly going with it - it's not like any of it really matters, because the main character just wins by some bullshit every single time in a true shounen fashion, and to make things even worse almost none of the wins even feel deserved. I get that this is the first route, but watching the main character fall for the same shit over and over and in the end be unable to do anything cool at all in a story about crazy battles isn't fun whatsoever - at least there are better characters than him that make the battle scenes at least somewhat exciting.

Anyway, it's not like I hated the whole thing. I enjoyed the characters (maybe except Ren... and Kasumi, to some extent, even though I wanted to like her), I liked the story that got hinted at (as I mentioned above, the first half of the common route actually got me really hyped, hopefully there is more of that kind of stuff here), and I liked the route ending. At the very least the last battle was pretty cool, and so was the way it turned out. I can only hope that the VN gets better from now on, but so far, I'm not impressed.

 

 

12 hours ago, LemiusK said:

Finishing up the final episode of Umineko Chiru. It's been a long and bumpy ride. This emotional rollercoaster has been exhausting, constantly shifting from happy moments to sudden tension (no thanks to a certain troll of a witch). Still, despite my problems with the jarring shifts in tone, I'm impressed that even in these two final episodes that were deemed "unnecessary" by many Umineko fans, I'm still able to discover some inspiring life lessons. It truly exemplifies Ryukishi07's talent.

There are people who say this? The Umineko "fanbase" really is the worst. Never before have I seen a story where so many people would ignore almost half of it just to make themselves feel smart via pathetic theory-crafting that just picks the convenient parts and dismisses the rest. It's even sadder that this is happening to Umineko of all things, considering its subject matter. I'm glad you were able to get something out of these two episodes; after all, Umineko is trying to get across a message, and the last two episodes are crucial for that. Any "fans" looking on it strictly as a mystery story are not only doing the story huge disservice, but probably can't read at all in the first place.

[Albedo]

24 minutes ago, Vokoca said:

I can only hope that the VN gets better from now on, but so far, I'm not impressed.

 

 

So, I'm also playing Dies Irae (except that I'm about to start the final route) and while it does get better, the shounen crap never goes away. Nor does the remedial high-school level philosobabble, sadly.

[ChaosRaven]

1 hour ago, Vokoca said:

It was full of Masada's flashiness for the sake of flashiness, with action scenes serving no other purpose but to show you how damn cool everything is... only I didn't buy it. When I read chuuni, I want infodumps. I want battles that get their rules laid down and thoroughly explained, and have crazy things happening according to these rules. While Masada does this sometimes (Senshinkan had some scenes like that, albeit not many), the prologue exemplified everything I dislike about his writing of fight scenes. It's like he is trying to convince you how amazing everything is with words alone, without actually giving you any reason to be impressed in the first place. It all comes across as pretty... flat.

Yeah, I had a very similar impression that the VN and its battles in particular are suffering a lot from 'style over substance' syndrome. And I think you nailed one problem of them with your statement about the 'rules'. Although the recent Chusingura I played didn't have as flashy battle sequences as Dies, I enjoyed them overall much more since I could follow them much better. I simply knew what was going on and what tactic one character was using to counter the other due to the somewhat clearer sword fighting rules. The fights were more focused, faster and the characters more concentrated and did less trash talking.

Dies uses an almost a contrary approach with lots of trash talking and unusual weapons like a guillotine arm where its harder to imagine how the battles are supposed to work. Not sure if I can criticise the VN for that since pretty much what makes it 'chuuni' I guess. Though I can definitely say that I like the former less chuuni and more 'substance over style' classical sword fights more.

Still, I don't want to make my usual mistake and judge the VN too soon. I currently stalled it for a while until I get motivated again, but if I pick it up again I'll try to finish 1 - 2 routes first before making a final judgement.

 

Anyway, meanwhile in Chrono Clock...

Seems like green is the new blue this year. 

Edited July 12, 2017 by ChaosRaven

[Fred the Barber]

3 hours ago, ChaosRaven said:

Anyway, meanwhile in Chrono Clock...

Seems like green is the new blue this year. 

Hahaha, that's a great one. I can completely understand how they could make that mistake at a language level, but when you're actually playing the game, damn, those eyes are definitely green. I feel like I need to make a list of these sorts of problems for QC people to look at, because for translators and editors, it's basically impossible to catch all occurrences of this flavor of mistake...

[littleshogun]

3 hours ago, ChaosRaven said:

Seems like green is the new blue this year. 

Well, if I may defend Chrono Clock translation the old people in Japan called green as blue because of cultural reason. But otherwise it was a mistake indeed because the translation was too literal, and I'd already watched two Japanese LPs to knew that the text was indeed said 'aoi' in the original language (Not 'midori'). Either way, I didn't remember too much about the mistranslation in the first place.

[ChaosRaven]

12 hours ago, littleshogun said:

Well, if I may defend Chrono Clock translation the old people in Japan called green as blue because of cultural reason. But otherwise it was a mistake indeed because the translation was too literal, and I'd already watched two Japanese LPs to knew that the text was indeed said 'aoi' in the original language (Not 'midori'). Either way, I didn't remember too much about the mistranslation in the first place.

Interesting, I didn't know that. I wonder if the original Japanese writer is some kind of traditionalist and wanted to call the eye color 'aoi' or if it was just a simple mistake. Not sure it the translator is to blame here, since it's not really his job to fix logical mistakes or plot holes of the original. Though, if 'aoi' can really mean green and blue in Japanese I wonder what a translator would be supposed to do if there aren't any images present to figure out what's really mean. Roll a dice? Guess it's probably left to the creative freedom of the translator.