What are you playing?

[Ranzo]

I finished playing Steam Prison and I liked it quite a bit

The protag was good, the world building was pretty solid, and I enjoyed playing through all the route, well, except for Valentine's.

 

I think the true route was the best out of the bunch

Also,

Spoiler

being Fin is suffering. I'm glad Cyrus didn't end up with him

 

[Ranzo]

On 6/20/2019 at 3:23 PM, Hakunon said:

So, I just finished a route on Yandere. I can't understand how people can enjoy this and say that it's good unironically. 

Yeah, Yandere was pretty fucking garbage. That scumfuck deserved everything he got.

Crimson Gray and it's sequel is actually very enjoyable however.

[Mr Poltroon]

20 minutes ago, Ranzo said:

I finished playing Steam Prison and I liked it quite a bit

The protag was good, the world building was pretty solid, and I enjoyed playing through all the route, well, except for Valentine's.

 

I think the true route was the best out of the bunch

Also,

  Hide contents

being Fin is suffering. I'm glad Cyrus didn't end up with him

 

I really loved how the game let you play out the same scenario in so many wildly different ways.

[Kosakyun]

Finished KARAKARA and Analogue: A Hate Story.

Nothing much to say for KARAKARA. It was what I expected it to be. Although the plot would have been more engaging had it been given more emphasis, the shortness of the game and its understandable focus on its moe aspect dampen its significance. Would probably take people at most 3 hours to finish? I did it in less than 2. Well, at least the art was cute. Special mention for its music tracks though. Was really catchy, especially the one that plays when Leon drives in his car.

Analogue: A Hate Story was as fun as I heard it to be. Been a long time since I played a VN with its own kind of gameplay, so going through this one was refreshing. The way it told its story was also really nice to the point that I'd call it pretty appropriate for the kind of story it was telling.

Spoiler

You being the judge of how far you want to go before ending the playthrough (via interactions with the two AIs and the logs you show them) is pretty damn nice considering the kind of story it's telling is one of hate. The two AIs represent sides in conflict about a horrible event that transpired on the Mugunghwa, and you choose which side of the story you want to hear more. Either way, hearing only one person's side of the story breeds hate for the other, and honestly, it's pretty well represented by the feelings *Mute had for the Pale Bride.

I'm not into its romance aspect too much, but it was nice working together with two cute AIs.

Go buy it if you ever have money to spare.

Specific note for Analogue: I couldn't take the game seriously at times because I couldn't get it out of my mind how much *Hyun-ae reminds me of @Fiddle and Christmas hats.

[Mr Poltroon]

7 hours ago, Kosakyun said:

Analogue: A Hate Story was as fun as I heard it to be. Been a long time since I played a VN with its own kind of gameplay, so going through this one was refreshing. The way it told its story was also really nice to the point that I'd call it pretty appropriate for the kind of story it was telling.

  Reveal hidden contents

You being the judge of how far you want to go before ending the playthrough (via interactions with the two AIs and the logs you show them) is pretty damn nice considering the kind of story it's telling is one of hate. The two AIs represent sides in conflict about a horrible event that transpired on the Mugunghwa, and you choose which side of the story you want to hear more. Either way, hearing only one person's side of the story breeds hate for the other, and honestly, it's pretty well represented by the feelings *Mute had for the Pale Bride.

I'm not into its romance aspect too much, but it was nice working together with two cute AIs.

Go buy it if you ever have money to spare.

Specific note for Analogue: I couldn't take the game seriously at times because I couldn't get it out of my mind how much *Hyun-ae reminds me of @Fiddle and Christmas hats.

I think I'm one of the few people who prefer the sequel, Hate Plus, but I will recommend it nevertheless. I preferred the events they depicted there.

[Kosakyun]

Just now, Mr Poltroon said:

I think I'm one of the few people who prefers the sequel, Hate Plus, but I will recommend it nevertheless. I preferred the events they depicted there.

I'm honestly looking forward to the sequel. I'll pick it up soon, maybe at the start of next week. I do love me a story that establishes coherency between the different events that transpire within it.

Excited to see what kind of things make civilization go back to.... that.

[Seraphim]

Bah, I just had to replay quite a bit of YU-NO because the Fuwanovel walkthrough for some reason has a save indicator after a choice you're supposed to save before. I guess I'll have to stay more ahead in the guide from now on (rather than read one line at a time, like I usually do) in order to avoid running into this issue again. I really wish this VN had more than one save slot.

Edited June 23, 2019 by Seraphim88

[Seraphim]

The walkthrough is wrong one way or another, apparently. Later on when I was told to load the save mentioned above, the guide used the Mansion entrance, which I was asked to save before going to, as a starting point. In other words, I'm guessing you're supposed to save after going to the Mansion entrance (as is also suggested by the line order of the guide), rather than "before going to the mansion entrance", like it actually says.
That's what I'm going with, at least. I hope I've interpreted this right and that I haven't screwed up the rest of the playthrough in some way by presuming this is what the guide is telling me to do.

[adamstan]

I just finished first route (Airi's) in Mashiro Iro Symphony.

W O W

It was great - if it will maintain similar level for remaining three routes, it's clearly aiming for 8+ score. For a moege it is indeed amazing. Nice humor, great romance, likeable characters, great art, music... I also loved SDCGs that appeared here and there. かわいい...

I'm truly impressed.

On to the next route (but tomorrow... )

Edited June 23, 2019 by adamstan

[Ranzo]

On 6/21/2019 at 4:34 PM, Mr Poltroon said:

I really loved how the game let you play out the same scenario in so many wildly different ways.

Yeah, that's why I loved the ending so much because I felt that they seamlessly blended the routes together for the most part

 

 

I also finally finished Amane's route in Hearts Wings after like 600 years

It was a good ending to a decent enough route

Edited June 24, 2019 by Ranzo

[Dreamysyu]

So, after finishing another 100 hour long behemoth recently, I decided to play several shorter and less well-known VNs.

 Cryste: the Faith of Fire Volume 1 is a Chinese VN that I've seen in recommendations on Fuwa some time ago, and it looked like something that I could enjoy so I decided to play it. The basic premise is that some random hikikomori guy gets isekaied into the body of a silver-haired loli princess, but the whole gender bender doesn't really matter that much in the end because The Mind Is a Plaything of the Body . Overall, this feels like a lot more typical story for a gender bender light novel (just why is it always silver haired lolis, I wonder?) rather than a visual novel, so I wasn't really surprised when I learned that it actually is an adaptation of a Chinese light novel.

Overall, it's a bit hard to talk about this VN since it's supposed to be only the beginning of the story. The first 80% of the plot mostly consists of just character introduction and some basic world building. There isn't really much "plot" in this part at all, and, while predictable, but still works pretty well as an enjoyable light read. The characters are more or less generic, but I wouldn't call them bad or boring. Overall, their motivations make sense if you stop to think about it, and it didn't feel like they were there simply to push the story forward like in many works like that. I'm really interested to see how they will interact and develop in the future. What I didn't like, however, is the story structure and the general writing quality. Many scenes that would be pretty important for the characterization were skipped, and, though it's technically not very difficult to guess why the characters acted the way they did, it still felt like something was missing. There also appear to be some factual mistakes, and I'm not sure if they were made during the translation or existed in the original work.

However, in the last 20% the story makes a complete U-turn, and it actually did manage to surprise me. Definitely didn't expect the plot to go this way, even though the hints were there, and I feel very excited to see what happens next. Unfortunately, the novel ends right at the most interesting moment, and we are forced to wait for the next volume for the continuation. And here we come to the worst part - this VN is unfinished. While it has "Volume 1" in the title, I don't really expect the continuation to ever come out. It's been two years after the release, and it doesn't look like there is any news about the next volume. And even if it does come out eventually, the original light novel is pretty massive, so I doubt that we will ever see it fully adapted into the VN format. And the novel isn't translated (I hoped that there could be a fan-translation available somewhere on the Internet, but no, doesn't look like it), so there's no way to experience the full story if you don't speak Chinese.

Still, it wasn't a bad experience. The first 80% of the story mostly work on their own even without the continuation. I definitely enjoyed it overall, and I will play the next volume if it ever comes out. And also, the production values are surprisingly good for an amateur work. Both art and music are quite pretty, and it's fully voiced. Overall, if you're okay with reading an incomplete work and feel like you might enjoy it, I recommend giving it a try (it's quite short anyway).

I'm giving it 6/10 for now. I'll most likely raise it the the sequel ever comes out.

PS. And now I realized how many Japanese loan words are Chinese in origin.

Last Purify is a freeware doujin VN written by Insider. It doesn't have an English translation and isn't very well known, but someone translated it into Russian, so I was able to read it.

And, you know, this VN turned out to be unexpectedly good! It's set in the future after a nuclear war that destroyed a big part of humanity. In order to avoid another war, humans decided to move one step further in the evolution away from their animal nature and completely get rid of their emotions and everything that could cause them, including art and religion. The whole world is currently under a single country called Ethics, with the exception of the city of Tokyo that still manages to fight back against them. The story starts when our protagonist, the boy called Tohru who lives in the colony of Tsukuba in Ethics, appears in front of the defenders of Tokyo. He doesn't remember what caused him to leave his colony and go to the enemy territory. He is taken as a prisoner of war and now has to live in Tokyo, among these people who still have emotions and for some reason he doesn't understand would rather prefer to die rather than letting go of everything they hold dear.

Overall, it's essentially a slice-of-live VN, set in the dystopic future, with some political commentary and "feelz". I'd say, the drama is what I enjoyed the most. Unlike the previous VN, this one isn't voiced and has a minimal amount of CGs, but is surprisingly well written. And I don't see any major flaws at all, other than that the second ending feels a bit rushed. It's a big shame this isn't translated. I definitely recommend to read it if you have a chance.

8/10.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

And now I honestly don't know what to read next. Maybe I'll give another otome a try or something.

[Dreamysyu]

I started Katahane. And, you know, I'm enjoying it more than I expected. I'm still at the very beginning, but I have a feeling this might actually end up being my first 9/10 in a while.

[Seraphim]

Picked up Death Mark from Steam's summer sale. I like the art and sound production, but I really hope they up the ante with the scares soon. These "something pops up in the darkness along with a sound effect while you're scanning with the flashlight" moments are gettings pretty repetitive.
The gameplay is godawful overall. Searching every inch of every room with the flashlight isn't fun in the slightest, and moving around on the map feels really clunky.
It's also kinda weird how the side characters as individuals are referred to as "them/they" rather than "he/she". I'm pretty sure they're not all gender neutral, so this is most likely a case of lazy programming.

Edited June 29, 2019 by Seraphim88

[Stormwolf]

No one is gender neutural. Otherwise i completely agree. I especially disliked how you couldnt make the text go faster.

I do think the epilogue case was the best one though. Was dlc in japan i think.

[adamstan]

4 hours ago, Seraphim88 said:

It's also kinda weird how the side characters as individuals are referred to as "them/they" rather than "he/she".

Are they referred to as such in dialogues, or are you talking about "name tags" for unnamed characters?

In Japanese it is pretty common to refer to 3rd persons as "あの人 (ano hito)" - "that person", when speaking politely, cause "彼女/彼 (kanojo/kare)" - "she/he" - are considered to be too direct and thus may be interpreted as rude. It has nothing to do with "gender neutrality". But that would apply just to some dialogues. And in translation it is usually converted into "he/she" (except when used in another way, to show coldness/distance/anger etc - like, you know, tsundere girl is angry at her friend and "not speaking with them"/"doesn't know them at all", so they carry all conversations through another person, with lines like "Please tell that person over there that I'm not talking with them" ).

If speaking about name tags for "unknown" characters, yeah, probably lazy programming, they made single "character" for all of them instead of separate male/female ones.

So it may be programming issue, original writing issue or translation issue.

Edited June 29, 2019 by adamstan

[Seraphim]

4 minutes ago, adamstan said:

Are they referred to as such in dialogues, or are you talking about "name tags" for unnamed characters?

It's during the protagonist's narration. Like "they are crying" instead of "she is crying" or "<insert name here> is crying". It looks pretty strange.

[adamstan]

Ah, the narration. Then it indeed feels weird. Could you check how it is in JP version? (It seems that Steam version is bilingual)

I'm really curious if it's the case of original writing or the translation.

Edited June 29, 2019 by adamstan

[Stormwolf]

There really is no excuse for this. It's been used because the dialogue probably might include a man or a woman, so it's the easy way out, even if it looks ridiculous.

[Seraphim]

9 hours ago, adamstan said:

Could you check how it is in JP version? (It seems that Steam version is bilingual)

Yeah, that's what it says on the store page, but there are no options in-game to change the language so I'm not sure how to go about doing that. There are barely any options at all, actually. The only stuff you can do is change volume and resolution (up to a maximum of 1920 x 1080), toggle windowed/fullscreen and remap controls.
Even if I find out how to change language, there's still the issue of only being able to save at certain points, so I might be forced to replay quite a bit (since there doesn't seem to be an instant language toggle) and then replay it once again when I change back to English.
Still, if I'm able to do it all without too much hassle, I'll make sure to grab a couple of screenshots somewhere.

49 minutes ago, Stormwolf said:

It's been used because the dialogue probably might include a man or a woman

Yeah, that's my educated guess as well. It shouldn't be hard to make the game recognize which character you're with, so this seems awfully lazy to me. It actually wouldn't surprise me one bit if the developer's just copy-pasted the entire partner scripts during the investigations, so they wouldn't have to bother with unique dialogue depending on who you bring.

[Seraphim]

@adamstan

I have yet to find some way to change language to Japanese, but here's an example of "they" usage:



This is during an investigation with a male partner, when the protagonist gets grabbed by someone and tries to determine if it's the partner or someone else.

What's most weird about this whole issue is the fact that it's not consistent. As I've continued playing, I've seen characters referred to by name or "he/she" plenty of times, but then it just randomly changes to "them/they" out of nowhere. One prime example is this screenshot, where one character is referred to as "they", although her name was actually used earlier in the very same sentence:

[Speeny]

Playing through Shiori's route on Kanon currently. 

[Ranzo]

Muddling through Chaos Head

Man I remember all the time I spent trying to get this damn vn running back in the day

So far my impressions of it are pretty average

It's got some interesting things to it so far but I can't get behind the protag
He's pretty awful in so many ways

At least he's an actual character though instead of the typical blank slates

How many chapters is it anyway?

[Inorin]

56 minutes ago, Ranzo said:

How many chapters is it anyway?

10 chapters

[adamstan]

On 30.06.2019 at 2:03 AM, Seraphim88 said:

@adamstan

I have yet to find some way to change language to Japanese, but here's an example of "they" usage:

This is during an investigation with a male partner, when the protagonist gets grabbed by someone and tries to determine if it's the partner or someone else.

What's most weird about this whole issue is the fact that it's not consistent. As I've continued playing, I've seen characters referred to by name or "he/she" plenty of times, but then it just randomly changes to "them/they" out of nowhere. One prime example is this screenshot, where one character is referred to as "they", although her name was actually used earlier in the very same sentence:

 

It indeed looks weird. However, if, like you've said, there can be different characters in that scene, the devs probably didn't write separate text for each case, and instead opted for a generic one, with names possibly inserted by some kind of script based on your choice. (you know, something like %partnername% placed in place where the name should go)

So in that case it seems like a lazy programming/scripting. Or even not as lazy as it seems, as in Japanese you could probably write those lines without using any personal pronouns, just with name here and there - but that becomes problem in English, which requires subject in each sentence (or even part of compound sentence) to be explicitly stated and, contrary to Japanese, prefers pronouns instead of names.

Like, in Japanese, sentence with "Moe" in your second example wouldn't require additional pronoun when talking about disappearing inside the building. Name at the beginning would be sufficient to establish topic/subject, and after that you don't need it anymore until new subject/topic comes.

Actually, you could write that particular sentence using similar pattern in English too, something like "Moe shrinks away in the distance until disappearing inside the building", but maybe translator or editor decided that it sounds awkward to them.

Edited July 2, 2019 by adamstan

[Kosakyun]

Huh. I forgot to post about it, but I finished Hate Plus.

What can I say, @Mr Poltroon was right. That's hella good. Better than the first game. It was interesting how screwed-up things that led to the first game were.

Spoiler

I like how there isn't necessarily an objective good in the game. What's good (or in this case, better) is up for the reader to decide. Personally thought both regimes were pretty absurd. Also, definitely Mute's game in this case. I've grown to love her even more with this game. You feel the weight of things when reading it with her.

Also that thing that happened on day 3 in Mute's route... Complicated feelings from reading about these absurdities in a time far, far away from when they happened. The initial feeling of how these things couldn't hurt u because of being close to a thousand years away from Year Zero was blown away by Mute's sudden decisions. I guess the past really can haunt you in different ways, especially those that concern your very person.

Loved the hate stories. Probably more easy to imagine in our contexts compared to that of the first game. Hopefully our own societies don't devolve to such a high level of segregation between 'nobles' and 'peasants', especially with the rising anti-democratic sentiments in different countries. 

Also played the two LoveKami games on Steam.

Spoiler

It was cute, but I wouldn't play it again. Divinity Stage was better than Useless Goddess though.

tl;dr: tits