What are you playing?

[Jun Inoue]

3 hours ago, snowbell55 said:

Currently reading Utawarerumono: Mask of Deception, and absolutely loving it. It's so much fun to read. I don't know how they keep introducing characters and giving them enough time, effort, and uniqueness to be memorable, but it seems to be working really well. Almost everyone (and certainly the team members) I've come across has had some sort of quirk that makes them interesting, and I find that I'm greatly enjoying the slice-of-life moments as a result. Spoilers below. 

  Hide contents

 

I was initially a bit concerned about Haku, for example, since he seemed bland, but he's become one of my favorite characters. I really like how he tries to be serious but situations (or people) wind up making that impossible. "wait a minute!" and "what!?!" are my favorite phrases in Japanese, and Haku ends up saying (or, incidentally, being cut off while saying) both of those really often :D. It helps too that the VA delivers them well, too. Kuon too, is really funny. The way she's constantly scamming Haku, and smiling but meanwhile using her tail to attack people is hilarious. Then there's Nekone who seems like a complete tsundere and barely seems to even want to give Haku the time of day meanwhile fawning over Kuon. Thus far though my favorite has to be (without a doubt) Anju who is absolutely hilarious :D. 

As an example, I got to the point where you walk into the hotel room and there's a girl lying there and eating, and commanding you around, and Haku is trying to get her to leave, only for Kirwu to show up and start freaking out, and of course it turns out that she is actually the princess but behaving like a complete slob :D. Then Ukon shows up (giving a really great "what the heck!!?!?") (bear in mind the whole Ukon bit from a few scenes before is hilarious too) and she has to get escorted back to the palace, only to return. I really like how that bit then escalates to her pretending to be kidnapped so that Oshtor can come and save her, and how that winds up just causing even more problems for everyone (except her).

It's just way too funny! And the best bit is that now that she's here it's almost guaranteed that when she shows up, other people are going to pitch up *because* of her, and chaos is going to ensure. I really feel like I'm now expecting something messed up as soon as her song starts playing :D.  

It's not even just the main characters, too - it's more minor characters, like the candy seller (I can't quite figure out why he dislikes Haku so much :D) or Moznu (Him + Rulutieh + Cocopo are hilarious together :D)

 

I haven't laughed this hard at a VN since Majikoi, and I'm really enjoying it. It's such a fun read. I do wish it had a bit more of the fighting sections, since the battles are quite fun, but it's really good even so. 

Like some other JRPGs, it kind of divides itself into 2 games. The first is generally more chill, then ends on a climatic cliffhanger, and the second game is the "true" development. So you'll get quite a bit more fighting on Mask of Truth! (while still having chill sections, do not fear)

[Eclipsed]

AA3 Trials & Tribulations final case: Did I say the writers really like them Fey girls in my last post? Well I spoke too soon, the last trial is ALL ABOUT them Fey girls, bejezuz

Having good ol' Miles defend Iris for the first part was great, maybe I should check out AA Investigations...

Iris herself had some nice twists, especially towards the end you're just like d'awww Phoenix . 

Really surprised they were able to get so much mileage out of Dahlia's character, thought she was just fodder since she was in the first trial which is usually set aside as the tutorial trial, man that gal ruined or attempted to ruin so many characters' lives its unbelievable

I said Ema > Maya a while ago but after spending so much time with Maya now I take it back, Maya's irreplaceable <3

 

~~
AA4 Apollo Justice: Wtf where's Nick? Who's this prick named Apollo and his wannabe Mia Fey mentor Kristoph Gavin? *Finishes case 1* well that was quick student-teacher relationship ._.

WHOOA WHOA WHOA WHOA WTFFFFFF 7 years passed AND NICK LOST HIS ---

WTF DAUGHTER TRUCY?!?! She makes a great companion btw~

I spent the entire game more interested in wanting to know what's up with Phoenix so I wasn't really invested in the new characters and cases but they were enjoyable nonetheless

Klavier is really meh prosecutor, had his moments but eh. So far my ranking of them would be Miles > Godot > Franziska > Manfred > Winston > Klavier. Yes Even Winston Payne > Klavier

Ema is back! And 25! Her munching on Snackoos animation is <3

Maya is gone! I saw a lot of complaints about her complete nonexistence in this game, even when it comes to the last episode's flashback trial, it's like ????? 

Not really fond of people having "powers", I guess they wanted to spice things up but I liked the game when it was just all about hard facts and deductions, not this "I CAN SEE YOU'RE LYING BECAUSE YOUR NOSE TWITCHED, TELL DA TROOTH!!!!!" or Magatama psyche-lock crap

Game ends with the biggest "everybody is related" trope ever to explain all of the questions the plot build throughout, by the end of it you'll stop being surprised that X is related to Y who is related to Z who is related to Zelda who is related to Sephiroth who's related to Donald Trump.

 

~~
AA5: Dual Destinies. Hm. The 3D animated sprites are actually new enough, aka alpha-stage looking, aka look, idk, worse, than 2D sprites? Maybe I'm just not used to them. It's the same level of trauma i had going from Zero Escape 999's 2D sprites to Zero Escape VLR's 3D sprites >.>

 vs 

They also threw in some anime-style cutscenes too which is appreciated, though I'm not used to ENG dubs and hearing Phoenix say anything other than Objection / Hold It / Take That xD

Other than that, I'm on Ep 2. No other significant impressions so far

 

 

 

[adamstan]

Just finished Hikari route in "A Sky Full Of Stars". The epilogue was really cute :-)

I love "family" epilogues

[snowbell55]

3 hours ago, adamstan said:

Just finished Hikari route in "A Sky Full Of Stars". The epilogue was really cute :-)

 

  Reveal hidden contents

I love "family" epilogues

 

How is this? Would you say it's worth a purchase, or? Most of the comments I've come across don't seem to be very positive towards Moenovel but that seems to be due to their policies and not necessarily because of the VN itself so I'm a little torn...

4 hours ago, Jun Inoue said:

Like some other JRPGs, it kind of divides itself into 2 games. The first is generally more chill, then ends on a climatic cliffhanger, and the second game is the "true" development. So you'll get quite a bit more fighting on Mask of Truth! (while still having chill sections, do not fear)

Awesome - thanks! I'm going to snag it ASAP. Just waiting to see what goes on sale during Golden Week before grabbing a copy. Between this and the bits of Tears to Tiara 2 I've tried, Aquaplus are really making themselves one of my favorite VN developers. I also really want to grab a copy of ToHeart 2. I'd made a thread a couple of weeks ago asking for recommendations and that was one of them. 

Edited April 18, 2018 by snowbell55

[Jun Inoue]

1 hour ago, snowbell55 said:

Awesome - thanks! I'm going to snag it ASAP. Just waiting to see what goes on sale during Golden Week before grabbing a copy. Between this and the bits of Tears to Tiara 2 I've tried, Aquaplus are really making themselves one of my favorite VN developers. 

 

Happy to hear that! And I very much recommend to have Mask of Truth ready, because the moment you finish Mask of Deception... you're not gonna want to wait and see what happens. Good luck with the epic journey!

[Fred the Barber]

3 hours ago, snowbell55 said:

How is this? Would you say it's worth a purchase, or? Most of the comments I've come across don't seem to be very positive towards Moenovel but that seems to be due to their policies and not necessarily because of the VN itself so I'm a little torn...

Generally speaking, MoeNovel gets good licenses and then does a shit job with them from a translation perspective. They also remove adult content, by varying degrees, which gets a lot of people riled up, especially around here, but make no mistake: their translations range from merely bad to utterly abysmal. From what I've seen, A Sky Full of Stars is far and away their least bad release, so if you don't mind missing the adult content, and you don't mind merely kinda lousy writing, give it a try. But check out some fine screenshots from their latest masterpiece, Cross Channel (be sure to click through for more WTF):

A lot of this stuff is completely incomprehensible. Don't play Cross Channel. Don't play If My Heart Had Wings. A Sky Full of Stars might be kinda okayish.

[milkteebaby]

11 hours ago, onorub said:

The Letter was such a frustrating VN to rate. The branch system would make it worth a 10, but the story and characters dragged it down. Just try to experiment with your choices, because it was very worth it for me.

I'm glad I'm not the only person to feel this way! And you're totally right. I think the branching system is super cool, but I find the characters to be incredibly unlikable.

[adamstan]

7 hours ago, snowbell55 said:

How is this? Would you say it's worth a purchase, or? Most of the comments I've come across don't seem to be very positive towards Moenovel but that seems to be due to their policies and not necessarily because of the VN itself so I'm a little torn...

 

3 hours ago, Fred the Barber said:

A lot of this stuff is completely incomprehensible. Don't play Cross Channel. Don't play If My Heart Had Wings. A Sky Full of Stars might be kinda okayish.

Konosora/IMHHW is total mess, and it absolutely requires retranslation patch to be readable. Miazora/ASFOS is nowhere near that level. There are some grammar errors here and there, and some sentences may sound awkward, but it is readable, and I actually enjoyed it. As for all-ages version - this time the only thing removed are h-scenes themselves, but they don't try to hide that the characters had sex - they just don't show it, but it's implied that it happens off screen. All other things are left intact.

But, I just read one route - we'll see, how the other three turn out.

If you're not in hurry, you might want to wait for +18 restoration patch that @Infernoplex is working on, but I dare to say that steam version still can be enjoyable as-is (unlike IMHHW, in which only Kotori route was somewhat readable).

[Ranzo]

On 4/16/2018 at 11:07 PM, milkteebaby said:

Anyone played The Letter? I'm going to dive into that tonight, after work. 

I played a bit of it and I thought it was really quite decent, I definitely will pick it up again at some point

 

So I have finally finished Koi to Senkyo to Chocolate, and I really enjoyed it! I am especially glad that I decided to finish it on Satsuki's route because hers was the real icing on the cake. I'm definitely going to review the whole thing once I get a chance.

I think the next vn I play will be Sekien no Inganock -What a Beautiful People- as @MaggieROBOT suggested. She should be so thrilled.

Oh and finally

 

[adamstan]

I enjoyed Koichoco too. Surprisingly - I didn't find Chisato annoying at all. Maybe I'm too softhearted, but I cried a little with her everytime she got rejected. Also it was nice to watch how her attitude somewhat changes between routes.

 

And how she was supporting Michiru in her route - which I played last

Actually I liked all heroines. And I must agree - Satsuki was great.

 

Edited April 18, 2018 by adamstan

[Jun Inoue]

@RanzoWhere's Oboro's route though 

[MaggieROBOT]

5 hours ago, Ranzo said:

I think the next vn I play will be Sekien no Inganock -What a Beautiful People- as @MaggieROBOT suggested. She should be so thrilled.

Awawawawawa, I really hope you enjoy it!!! Their world was supposed to be so harsh, but seeing Gii and Kia's morning was always so chill~ And god, that art was so refreshing and cool! It have some problems with the last chapter and the fights, but it's a very good VN in the Steampunk series!  

[Plk_Lesiak]

Is double-posting stuff here and on Reddit in bad taste? I don't really know how to look at it... Anyways, I'll do it this time:

I'm playing through Sunrider Academy (what am I doing with my life? :s) and so far it's... Not that bad, to be honest. It has exactly the trashy feel you would expect from an ecchi spin-off, but the dialogues and character development are done better than in the main Sunrider games. I've always thought that the heroines, other than Ava, were the weakest part of the whole series but here devs skipped the more irritating parts of the cast altogether and made the rest fairly appealing (apart from Asaga who I will never like because I hate the hyperactive/baka archetype). I've only started Ava route so far and I can't say I hate it - it's not at all serious, just like the whole game isn't, but it's fun to read and I like where the romance is going. Also, surprisingly enough, the game doesn't only rely on throwing blunt references to main games in your face, much of it is quite subtle and (borderline) smart. ;]

The dating sim mechanics are extensive and time-consuming at first, but they go much quicker when you get the hang of it (and even quicker once you max out the affection meters and don't get random encounters anymore). You probably spare more time on managing numbers than with the actual story content, but the amount of story the game offers is actually pretty impressive. The one problem I have with it (but it's the case with most DSims) is that there's no way to completely skip the busywork when replaying for other routes, I will probably just end it at two playthroughs, finishing Ava's and Sola's arcs - I don't care about Chigara and Asaga anyways, neither here nor in the main games.

Edited April 18, 2018 by Plk_Lesiak

[Mr Poltroon]

13 minutes ago, Plk_Lesiak said:

Is double-posting stuff here and on Reddit in bad taste? I don't really know how to look at it... Anyways, I'll do it this time:

I'm playing through Sunrider Academy (what am I doing with my life? :s) and so far it's... Not that bad, to be honest. It has exactly the trashy feel you would expect from an ecchi spin-off, but the dialogues and character development are done better than in the main Sunrider games. I've always thought that the heroines, other than Ava, were the weakest part of the whole series but here devs skipped the more irritating parts of the cast altogether and made the rest fairly appealing (apart from Asaga who I will never like because I hate the hyperactive/baka archetype). I've only started Ava route so far and I can't say I hate it - it's not at all serious, just like the whole game isn't, but it's fun to read and I like where the romance is going. Also, surprisingly enough, the game doesn't only rely on throwing blunt references to main games in your face, much of it is quite subtle and (borderline) smart. ;]

The dating sim mechanics are extensive and time-consuming at first, but they go much quicker when you get the hang of it (and even quicker once you max out the affection meters and don't get random encounters anymore). You probably spare more time on managing numbers than with the actual story content, but the amount of story the game offers is actually pretty impressive. The one problem I have with it (but it's the case with most DSims) is that there's no way to completely skip the busywork when replaying for other routes, I will probably just end it at two playthroughs, finishing Ava's and Sola's arcs - I don't care about Chigara and Asaga anyways, neither here nor in the main games.

I believe there is a VN mode where the actual work you need to put in is negligible.

[Plk_Lesiak]

8 minutes ago, Mr Poltroon said:

I believe there is a VN mode where the actual work you need to put in is negligible.

Well, the problem is that the "waifu mode" (sic!, they even kept that name for the lowest difficulty in Liberation Day, while the game basically had no romance - such a brutal lie :C ), while it makes the game more or less unlosable, leaves you with tons of mindless clicking through activities. That's probably even more boring than the normal routine TBH. And after the second playthrough, there's very little chance to stumble upon some non-route-specific event or anything interesting in general... So, yeah, I'm definitely not putting myself through more than two runs. :>

[snowbell55]

23 hours ago, Fred the Barber said:

Generally speaking, MoeNovel gets good licenses and then does a shit job with them from a translation perspective. They also remove adult content, by varying degrees, which gets a lot of people riled up, especially around here, but make no mistake: their translations range from merely bad to utterly abysmal. From what I've seen, A Sky Full of Stars is far and away their least bad release, so if you don't mind missing the adult content, and you don't mind merely kinda lousy writing, give it a try. But check out some fine screenshots from their latest masterpiece, Cross Channel (be sure to click through for more WTF):

A lot of this stuff is completely incomprehensible. Don't play Cross Channel. Don't play If My Heart Had Wings. A Sky Full of Stars might be kinda okayish.

Ah thank you very much - especially for the example pics...

19 hours ago, adamstan said:

 

Konosora/IMHHW is total mess, and it absolutely requires retranslation patch to be readable. Miazora/ASFOS is nowhere near that level. There are some grammar errors here and there, and some sentences may sound awkward, but it is readable, and I actually enjoyed it. As for all-ages version - this time the only thing removed are h-scenes themselves, but they don't try to hide that the characters had sex - they just don't show it, but it's implied that it happens off screen. All other things are left intact.

But, I just read one route - we'll see, how the other three turn out.

If you're not in hurry, you might want to wait for +18 restoration patch that @Infernoplex is working on, but I dare to say that steam version still can be enjoyable as-is (unlike IMHHW, in which only Kotori route was somewhat readable).

Thanks!

Well, it seems like it'd be a case of waiting to see what happens with the fan TL/restoration and then deciding from there. Will read something else in the meantime.  

[littleshogun]

Still playing Subahibi. As for my current progress right now I'm already finished with both of Kimika's branch, and already begin with Jabberwocky. What I can say is that too bad that both of Zakuro and Hasaki can't be get their own Wonderful Everyday at the same timeline, because of the spoiler reason that I'll explain later (You can already guessed what I want to talk about if you already finished Subahibi).

Edited April 21, 2018 by littleshogun

[Eclipsed]

Finished AA: Dual Destinies.

I eventually got used to the 3D sprites so they don't look too weird to me anymore

The game's A LOT more handholdy now, I didn't need to use a walkthrough at all- they literally give you a "Notes" tab that tells you where you need to go and what evidence you need to present to peeps during investigations so that saves some hassle. Trials are much easier too, the lead character will usually have a giveaway inner monologue on what to do.

They took away the free-examining of the various backgrounds of locations and now you can only ever examine specific areas, usually the crime scene. Makes the world feel a bit more bland. You can also jump from one location to any other location (a -> d) instead of having to move linearly (a -> b -> c -> d)

Blackquill's a decent prosecutor. Liked his presence and story.

Detective Fulbright is a major flop though. Insanely massive downgrade from the likes of Gumdrops and Skye

Trucy just legit downgraded to background character, goddamn i felt sorry for her, she's only there to provide one-two liners if you even bother to visit Wright Anything Agency during your investigations 

Maya's still gone, wtf. At least Nick does take a moment to acknowledge her existence at least once this time around, last game there was absolutely no mention whatsoever. There's another Fey girl that makes a cameo as compensation though, and holy sheet she's so adorbs kyaaa

~~
Ep. 5 Turnabout for Tomorrow misc. comments/spoilers about Trials in general:

Spoiler

Maybe I'm just getting Ace Attorney fatigued, but while I overall did enjoy this last trial, throughout the game I constantly felt like the writers always came up short with what they were trying to do

All of the cases in general had plot twists you could see miles away, and relied too much on 'turning the trial around' once the protagonist realizes the whole case had a false premise (ie. Mayor Tenma is the Nine-Tails, not the victim) or proving the existence of a third person

Which is only natural I'll admit; if the defendant is not guilty of killing the victim, then there simply has to be a third person involved. The problem is you usually have a pretty good idea of who the culprit is and so the trials lose a lot of their flair when you're just going back and forth with the Objections just waiting to be able to call out this person to the witness stand

It's just a fundamental flaw with Ace Attorney's gameplay really- Finding out who the culprit is was never meant to be the main focus of these trials like it is in Danganronpa, there's really no mystery of whodunnit to be had here. It's about helping these characters find out the truth. Yes there's a difference. Danganronpa could get away with building their cases around finding the culprit because literally anybody can be the killer out of 16 students. Ace Attorney has to focus on building their cases more on finding the truth because there's only 1-2 people who can be the killer.

 

~~
Which is why Dual Destinies' Ep. 5- Turnabout for Tomorrow was damn right enjoyable, because the writers did a pretty good job with setting up the Phantom so that this time you have absolutely no idea who the culprit is- it could be anyone- even...Athena???, the current prime suspect??????

I kinda wanted to slap Apollo for his rather disgusting lack of absolute trust in Athena, unfortunately I couldn't sympathize with him going Yugioh no-arms-in-cloak emo style at all during this case because I knew jack shit about Clay and consider him fodder. Apollo's Clay dying has no effect on me as a reader compared to say, if Wright's Trucy died. Writers' fault for not at least putting Clay in AA4 for proper personal characterization.

But even I have to admit there were a few moments where I had just a TINY bit of "...what if she really IS the killer.......?" just a tiny bit...

Especially when you had to duke it out with Blackquill's Mood Matrix to find out wtf he was hiding, and then BOOM, you hear the dreaded "Mommy's broken, so I'm taking her apart to fix her" HOLY SHIT I GOT UNBELIEVABLE GOOSEBUMPS FROM THAT 

 

And getting to see the animation for Athena's Black Psyche Locks was so hype: 

 

But yeah, Thena not the killer after all, in fact the Phantom was actually Fulbright, that actually did surprise me for once but yeah blah blah blah

 

Whoa, I'm on the last current game in the main series, time for AA: Spirit of Justice! I hear Maya's finally gonna backkkskdwjkl;fa1@#

[TexasDice]

Oh my lord, Eclipsed is alive!

Good post, because you reminded me that I am completely out of touch with the Ace Attorney series. I didn't watch the anime, I didn't play the fan-tl'd Investigations 2 and I completely forgot they made Spirit of Justice.

[Riku]

Yeah, DD is a little disappointing, you should like SoJ far more!

[Inorin]

9 hours ago, Eclipsed said:

Whoa, I'm on the last current game in the main series, time for AA: Spirit of Justice! I hear Maya's finally gonna backkkskdwjkl;fa1@#

This gal too!

Edited April 21, 2018 by wei123

[☆Ayase☆]

Trying my skills in Wagahai (´･ω･｀)

[Plk_Lesiak]

33 minutes ago, ☆Ayase☆ said:

Trying my skills in Wagahai (´･ω･｀)

You mean... Your English skills? There's only one other "skill" that could be trained with WagaHigh and it was my first thought before I saw your introduction and realized you're Japanese.

 

...I'm not jugding if it's that other meaning after all, of course. 

Edited April 21, 2018 by Plk_Lesiak

[☆Ayase☆]

1 hour ago, Plk_Lesiak said:

You mean... Your English skills? There's only one other "skill" that could be trained with WagaHigh and it was my first thought before I saw your introduction and realized you're Japanese.

 

...I'm not jugding if it's that other meaning after all, of course. 

I'm sorry but I don't understand (;・∀・)

[Plk_Lesiak]

4 minutes ago, ☆Ayase☆ said:

I'm sorry but I don't understand (;・∀・)

I meant that there's no gameplay in WagaHigh but there is a ton of hentai there, so the main "skill" people reading it "train" is fapping.

Sorry for my crude "humour". 

Edited April 21, 2018 by Plk_Lesiak