What are you playing?

[Eclipsed]

Gonna slowly slog my way through FataMorgana: Requiem of Innocence

I'm a major Jacopo hater but so far he's doing decent 

 

[Wiz]

Two members for the Jacopo Haters Team.

[Dreamysyu]

2 hours ago, Wiz said:

Two members for the Jacopo Haters Team.

I, in contrast, quite like him exactly because of how hateable he is.

[snowbell55]

Despite what my signature says, I'm... Well, I'm rereading To Heart 2 - the Tama-nee route, and it's kind of ironic as I'd planned to reread it at some point, but definitely not now, but have been yanked despite myself into doing so . I kind of feel like I *should* be focusing on reading something I haven't read before, but, well, I paused Grisaia to read eden*, and I've somehow paused eden* to read To Heart 2. I'm not entirely sure why that happened, but I'm really enjoying rereading the route. It's one of my to favorites from the VN (the other being Konomi's) and the character is hilarious, but also really sweet, and it helps to have a great VA as well. It's amazing how much foreshadowing I'm picking up on now that I know how things'll turn out. Plus, I'm a sucker for childhood friend routes of most varieties, and I just realized that Tama-nee would count as one. 

I really like it though, and think it's To Heart 2 at its best: comforting, relaxing, and easy to read while inviting you to do so and making you not notice the time go by. I think I've said so before but that last portion IMO isn't always the case, so I appreciate it whenever it is. I keep laughing and smiling at the hijinks going on (Yuuji vs Tama-nee especially). I'll most likely polish off eden* soon, and then go back to The Fruit of Grisaia, but for now this is a fun and welcomed detour.

[adamstan]

28 minutes ago, snowbell55 said:

Plus, I'm a sucker for childhood friend routes of most varieties, and I just realized that Tama-nee would count as one.

Yeah, me too. Two such heroines in one game? That's almost too good

[r0xm2n]

Finished Muv-Luv Alternative yesterday.

Yeah, that was a ride and a half!! I was even more emotionally invested in it then Clannad. I'm just glad I don't currently live in a cosmic horror timeline like that.....

 

Welp! Next up is ....... Steins;Gate. Another VN with parallel timelines eh?

...... is it just me, or is the music, REALLY intense?? Holy shit.....

[Thyndd]

10 minutes ago, r0xm2n said:

I'm just glad I don't currently live in a cosmic horror timeline like that.....

You never know where you'll wake up tomorrow  Suddenly isekai adventures seem a lot worse huh?

Congrats on finishing MLA! I glad you enjoyed the ride and I hope you'll eventually get over your newly adquired PTSD. 

Have fun with Steins;Gate 

[Stormwolf]

Indeed, hope you enjoy steins gate. Truly a masterpiece if you ask me!

[ChaosRaven]

I started reading Flowers -Le Volume sur Été- yesterday, and its undeniably a Jast game. Meaning, that it's a technical mess with more bugs than an ant hill.

When I started the title the first time I got sound stuttering in the title screen. Then I tried to switch to fullscreen, just to have the game crash straight to desktop.

With my second start the sound stuttering fortunately vanished, but when I tried to switch to fullscreen again the game hanged itself up and didn't react anymore.

With my third start I somehow managed to succeeded to switch to fullscreen. But unfortuantely the text width calculation seems bugged since the text goes out of the text box on the right side. It's not too much, so it's still readable, but yeah it gives me feelings of nostalgia - that's just good old Jast! 

The font choice also seems weird - it looks like taken from an old MS DOS command line panel from the 90ties.

[Stormwolf]

Started umineko and holy shit how good the writing and voice acting is. Only started it a few hours ago and i simply love it. The characters are pretty damn great as well

[bogdankl]

 

 

[littleshogun]

Played Hoshiori, and as for the common route I think it did good enough job for introducing the heroines while at the same time established the story for the heroines route, especially in regard of Marika. Also since the opening didn't play until the end of the common route, we can say that the common route here would amount to the prologue in any VNs because the timeline for the common route was only eight days, which if this is any VNs would be equal to the prologue. What I can say is that apparently tone work's here decided to adapt this style as their attempt to improve their writing for HatsuKoi, because in HatsuKoi they still use prologue and common route separation like usual VNs (Understandable seeing that they'd test the water back then).

For heroines impression, I think the prologue here was definitely in favor of Marika because in there we got some scenes showing of how Ryousuke (The MC) and Marika bonded before the former moved from Shionagi, although the other girls were got their share though (Natsuki did also quite well to establish herself as Ryousuke's friend). Other than both of Natsuki and Marika, honestly I think the other four were didn't quite getting close to Ryousuke but then again it's still to early for them so I would say that Ryousuke himself will have a lot of time to bond with the other four girls. Or to put it nicely, in prologue here currently Marika here was the closest to Ryousuke here following by Natsuki, then Touko, Sora, Rikka, and Misa. Keep in mind that it's just based on my observation though, so perhaps some users out there might be disagree with me.

As for the renaming feature, Clephas did mention that it took away the enjoyment of MC's character, and the reason I bring this because we could rename our Ryousuke there. What I can say is that the feature itself was more or less just a gimmicky one considering that we could hear voiced Ryousuke's name (Quite often at that), and I think it should be the norm that default name (ie Ryousuke) should be voiced unlike in Dal Segno. I understand that the company couldn't make the characters called MC with the name that the player gave because there's endless possibility of what name that the player might give to the MC, but at least they should make the default name was always voiced in case the player keep the name default. Even Imopara is better than Dal Segno in that departement because one of the heroine managed to call MC's default name voiced (Only once though), and Imopara here is just a nukige whereas Dal Segno is a charage with some routes was in nakige direction.

I think that's all for what I can write in regard of Hoshiori for now.

PS - Forget to say that you didn't need the walkthrough for Hoshori here, because there's only one choice that will determined the route and that choice did have the hint in form of SD graphic that will float (ie if you chose 'Shinozaki', then Marika SD will float at that choice and you'll enter Marika's route).

Edited October 25, 2018 by littleshogun

[Mago Ivo]

I recently dropped Tsukihime. I started Katawa Shoujo and now I'm thinking of dropping it too.                                                                                                                                    The reason in both instances is simple : They're not deep and it's very hard to immerse myself in them.

I don't know how to describe it better, for example : comparing Tsukihime and Katawa Shoujo to the likes of Fata morgana, Swan Song, Ever17 is like comparing Tom & Jerry to Angel Beats or Naruto.

Am I too spoiled or impatient? Can someone please tell me if Tsukihime or Katawa Shoujo become more interesting towards the middle?

P.S. : I've invested around 6 or 7 hours in Tsukihime and almost 9 hours in Katawa Shoujo.

Edited October 24, 2018 by Mago Ivo

[MaggieROBOT]

7 minutes ago, Mago Ivo said:

I recently dropped Tsukihime. I started Katawa Shoujo and now I'm thinking of dropping it too.                                                                                                                                    The reason in both instances is simple : They're not deep and it's very hard to immerse myself in them.

I don't know how to describe it better, for example : comparing Tsukihime and Katawa Shoujo to the likes of Fata morgana, Swan Song, Ever17 is like comparing Tom & Jerry to Angel Beats or Naruto.

Am I too spoiled or impatient? Can someone please tell me if Tsukihime or Katawa Shoujo become more interesting towards the middle?

P.S. : I've invested around 6 or 7 hours in Tsukihime and almost 9 hours in Katawa Shoujo.

I'm reading Tsukihime right now (I'm on the third route) and I can agree that it starts quite slow. But things does pick up after you met Arcueid in the hotel. You mentioned Naruto, so if you like fights and lots of powers, do wait until the hotel part. The plot also really starts going after that.

[Dreamysyu]

36 minutes ago, Mago Ivo said:

I've invested around 6 or 7 hours in Tsukihime

All people have different reading speeds, so at what part exactly are you right now?

36 minutes ago, Mago Ivo said:

comparing Tsukihime and Katawa Shoujo to the likes of Fata morgana, Swan Song, Ever17 is like comparing Tom & Jerry to Angel Beats or Naruto.

Tsukihime is deeper than Ever17 imo. Also, you know, directly comparing one work of fiction to another is never a good idea, because all of them have different good points.

I'd say, Tsukihime is mostly good for its very well developed fantasy world, engaging action and nice characters. Actually, from what I recall, I didn't particularly like Arcueid's route (and almost dropped it at this point), but the routes after that appealed to me a lot more. On the other hand, it seems like some people fell the opposite way, that Arcueid's route is the best, and the later ones don't really compare to it, so, I don't know.

Edited October 24, 2018 by Dreamysyu

[alpacaman]

I finished Umineko episode 3 and Battler describes just how I feel about the plot ("Dammit! More weird things are happening!") and the mystery ("...I...I-I don't have a clue what's going on anymore...!"). In other words, the whole VN is amazing. I know they are completely different but somehow Umineko constantly reminds me of Twin Peaks in the way everything is always kept kind of vague and further obscured by tons of weird stuff happening that probably adds nothing to solving the mystery but is very entertaining nonetheless. I also picked up some Kate Bush vibes but maybe that's just because the OP sounds a lot like her music. 

I still have a few thoughts on what's happening:

Spoiler

The loophole I noticed in the red statements is that all the statements regarding deaths of characters are in present tense so they could have been different at the time of murder. I don't really know the concrete implications but the statement "Kinzo is dead" and his corpse still always turning up burned beyond recognition (except for his toes which could just be a coverup) just seems weird. 

Also I'm still not convinced Eva is the murderer, at least not in the first two rounds, since she died early on in those ones. Either she has an accomplice who carried on killing people, or she could have faked both having a stake sticking in her brain and having her stomach sliced open, or even the culprit switches each game. I think Nanjo is suspicious since he survives until late on in all three games and every time he dies the VN doesn't explicitely show his death. The second and third game are especially weird in that regard since in the former his "death scene" doesn't fit the order of the stakes chronologically and in the latter you just hear a gun shot next door where he is supposed to be.

 

[adamstan]

Finally I got back to reading VNs - yay

As a warmup I read Yukino's afterstory for Hatsukoi 1/1. Sweet and nice. I really liked Yukino as a heroine (osananajimi!) despite her route's flaws, so this was nice addition. My only complaint is about h-scenes. They were okay-ish I guess, but overloaded with "technical details" for my taste. I don't need description of every single move and every single drop of bodily fluids It makes the scene tedious/awkward to read. I prefer more "romantic" approach to h-scenes - less technicalities, more feelings - like it was in Koiiro or PrincessEvangile (at least that's the impression I had). Scenes in Hatsukoi afterstories had some feelings in them as well, so they weren't utter crap, but IMHO were unnecessarily stretched by aforementioned details.

 

[Eclipsed]

Jacopo's actually a really decent / likeable guy in Requiem of Innocence, it makes no sense how he utterly fks up so bad in Fata Morgana other than the writers just demanded it. Kind of like how evil characters are evil for the sake of being evil, 'cept Jacopo ended up being a dumbass for the sake of being a dumbass 

Still slogging through, but uhhhhhhh i think i'm gonna take a break right here 

 

~~
But yeah, the very long term conclusion b/w Jacopo and Morgana has to be the most tragic thing I've ever witnessed 

Spoiler

Requiem of Innocence:

 

~CENTURIES OF TORMENT AND DESPAIR LATER~

RIP JACOPO.

 

[Larxe1]

Playing White Album 2 and I expected it to be good, but not this level of good. I couldn't stop reading it since yesterday. Played it straight from morning until I slept and then continued playing again. I finished Introductory chapter within 1 day and holy crap, knowing how it ends from the anime, the prologue hurt my heart. The actual ending in the IC then proceeded to crush my setsuna fan heart to bits. 

Also on CC right now and my setsuna fan heart wavered for Kouhai and Mari but I was not willing to see Setsuna rejected and have a sad ending because Haruki chose another heroine. Just that certain scene from Daitoshokan where you reject a certain someone made me stop playing for a while. Atleast it was just one scene of the game, in WH, it goes out of it's way to show how much you fucked over Setsuna and that doesn't sit well with my fragile heart.

[WorldofAI]

I'm just starting Pure Song Garden. It's by Pulltop, the same makers of If My Heart Had Wings and A Sky Full of Stars.

I'm still working on Cocoro@Function as well.

[adamstan]

Currently I'm reading Yoake (fan-translated all-ages version). For now I completed Feena's route, and so far I'm liking it. Will post detailed impressions when I finish it.

Edited October 29, 2018 by adamstan

[MirāNoHebi]

Well, not currently reading, but I read Flowers -Le volume sur ete- some time ago. I didn't expect to find the story so likable. Protagonist really clicked with me, just the right amount of snark.

Before that I read Demonheart, a western otome novel. I quite enjoyed it, I've always had a thing for settings which involve demons. Quite well written, has nice voice acting, and the art is just beatiful. Will definitely pick up the sequel even though it goes back to its roots as a RPG(Demonheart was originally a series of NWN modules).

[Bishounen-P]

Recently finished up Fureraba which was a nice little moege. Now I'm playing through Koikuma and it's pretty funny so far.

[HataVNI]

I finished Kara no Shoujo yesterday - still have to get some of the bad ends, but it was probably one of the best VNs I played so far. And that KnS 2 is even better...well that excites me infinitely. Currently/today I am planning to play through the Demo of Softhouse Charas new Koikuma Game (悪魔聖女) and later this one https://vndb.org/v21768

 

[WorldofAI]

Adding Fureraba and Loca-Love to my lineup. My Loca-Love LP uses custom BGM.

I would like to add Sanoba Witch, but backlog is just too overloaded to add anything else.