How is Noble Works?

[mitchhamilton]

ooooooooooooooooh now i see why people compare it to PE. its the protagonist. they have the same voice actor. also they both have had every job imaginable, they both get swept away to a new school. i swear there was more but i cant remember them. i played noble works when the first translation came out. when it was just the common route that got translated, which was like 4-6 months ago? so yeah, my memory is fuzzy.

 

11 minutes ago, ChaosRaven said:

Btw, I kind of like how dynamic the sprites in Noble Works are. I can't remember another VN where the character sprites could turn around and look away from the protagonist.

 

i remember in muv luv they could do that. that was the first vn i saw a sprite do it. its cool when vn's have sprites do that.

[Decay]

They both have that "fish out of water" element where the protagonist is a poor kid thrust into a preppy school. PE and Noble Works are both basically moege but PE definitely takes its drama more seriously. Not like super deadly seriously, but NW kind of treats its drama rather lightly. Also, NW is just straight-up funnier, probably the most important aspect to a moege.

[CeruleanGamer]

24 minutes ago, ChaosRaven said:

Btw, I kind of like how dynamic the sprites in Noble Works are. I can't remember another VN where the character sprites could turn around and look away from the protagonist.

Yeah I hate when sprites are just static when they talk and are pretty much frozen until they finish the dialogue. Noble Works did 11 out of 10 in this department so I'll rate it highly just like Clephas did, maybe not 9/10 though but more like 8.3/10. 

[mitchhamilton]

7 minutes ago, Decay said:

They both have that "fish out of water" element where the protagonist is a poor kid thrust into a preppy school. PE and Noble Works are both basically moege but PE definitely takes its drama more seriously. Not like super deadly seriously, but NW kind of treats its drama rather lightly. Also, NW is just straight-up funnier, probably the most important aspect to a moege.

THATS IT!! theyre both poor. i knew there was one more.

[Vorathiel]

I youtubed Noble Works to check that dynamics of sprites and indeed. They're really active, which is really nice. From my point of view (check my vndb ) it's like crossing Muv-Luvs' sprites poses with Ikinaris' sprites movement during talking.

Still - no lip sync, which is sad. But we're going more and more into full animated territory. Animated h scenes, high sprites mobility... I wonder if we lived to day, when most of new vns will look like School Days.

Also thanks for answers everybody.

[Vorathiel]

2 minutes ago, mitchhamilton said:

THATS IT!! theyre both poor. i knew there was one more.

Basicaly the biggest similiarity is probably that both of them vere charage, that came out translated at the end of last year (4 days difference between them).  

[CeruleanGamer]

2 minutes ago, Vorathiel said:

I youtubed Noble Works to check that dynamics of sprites and indeed. They're really active, which is really nice. From my point of view (check my vndb ) it's like crossing Muv-Luvs' sprites poses with Ikinaris' sprites movement during talking.

Still - no lip sync, which is sad. But we're going more and more into full animated territory. Animated h scenes, high sprites mobility... I wonder if we lived to day, when most of new vns will look like School Days.

Also thanks for answers everybody.

I dread the day when visual novels become like Until Dawn or Telltale's The Walking Dead. Sometimes we don't need all that 3D crap and simplicity is better left alone. 

[mitchhamilton]

5 minutes ago, CeruleanGamer said:

I dread the day when visual novels become like Until Dawn or Telltale's The Walking Dead. Sometimes we don't need all that 3D crap and simplicity is better left alone. 

at least in until dawn you can kill the people you dont like. i would love this feature in some vn's

 

Whats that headmistress? you don't like the fact that a man has entered the academy? well fuck you! you get thrown out the window. oh yeah, sorry about your mother Ritsuko and Ayano.

[Mugi]

How long is this VN, by the way? VNDB says 30-50 hours, but which is it closer to?

[CeruleanGamer]

2 minutes ago, Mugi said:

How long is this VN, by the way? VNDB says 30-50 hours, but which is it closer to?

I'm at 27-28 hours on it with Masamune's route left to do. Takes me about 6-7 hours for each route roughly. 

[Fiddle]

20 minutes ago, Mugi said:

How long is this VN, by the way? VNDB says 30-50 hours, but which is it closer to?

It is in excess of 500,000 individual words, or about the length of Wallace's Infinite Jest.

[mitchhamilton]

25 minutes ago, Fiddle said:

It is in excess of 500,000 individual words, or about the length of Wallace's Infinite Jest.

dont listen to fiddle. he/she has no clue what theyre talking about.

[Clephas]

 

7 hours ago, CeruleanGamer said:

Noble Works is in a rich co-ed school setting. Princess Evangile is in a rich female-only school where the protagonist (Masaya) is basically like a "trial" student to decide whether the school should be co-ed in the future. 

Princess Evangile is more on a charage side and Noble Works is more moege. The difference between the two? Charage is more character interaction focused rather than overarching plots. Moege is basically slapping cute characters on a visual novel doing cute things to develop a cute atmosphere. I consider it more a subgenre of charage than a whole new classification hence you will see the two overlap all the time. 

That isn't quite correct... Noble Works has a more solid plot in the individual routes than Evangile, and it has more solid character development than Evangile... if anything, it would be more correct to say they are both charage.

Edit: Generally speaking, only a few (ten or so) 'pure' moege have been made in the last six years or so, so the genre (as it was originally defined) isn't really even produced anymore.

Edit2: The simple reason for this is that pure moege don't sell as well as charage do.  As a result, charage came to dominate in general.  If you want an idea of what a pure moege looks like, Nekopara is a perfect example.

Edit3: It is a lot like the same reasons lizards and birds outlived the dinosaurs... charage had an adaptation that 'pure' moege didn't that gave them a survival advantage, so pure moege were doomed to extinction.

[Eclipsed]

Yup yup, I like to go with moege = cute characters n' cute shenanigans ie. neks and paras, charage = character focused stories ie. greesai kajutsu, kanata shojo

Then there's stuff like KonoSora/HoshiMemo/PrincessEvangile/NobleWorks which are character focused but also imbued with the cuteness so I tend to call them charamoeges even though nobody uses that

And yeah I'd say NW is definitely more on the charage side than moege.

[Mugi]

A bit off topic, but I don't want to make another thread if I don't have to. How is KoiChoco? I was thinking of playing that next, and seeing as how i'm already done with the common route in NW, that will be in a few days. 

[Clephas]

"Good anime make bad VNs and good VNs make bad anime"

[Mugi]

1 minute ago, Clephas said:

"Good anime make bad VNs and good VNs make bad anime"

Not exactly sure which of the two came first. Are you saying the VN is bad? Or the anime?

[Clephas]

I didn't like the VN, but apparently the anime is good. 

[darknessintheway]

Well, finished Noble Works two days ago. A lot better than Princess Evangile (f*** that was horrible). Comedy and romance is nice but protag-kun can get overbearing. 7.3/10

Oh wait, Koi Senkyo now eh. The forced first route is a-n-n-o-y-i-n-g. That's what people hate about it. Currently trying to get on Michiru's(?) route. Apparently the anime isn't completely faithful to the common route and introduces some characters weirdly. Someone was screaming that in my ear about 30 minutes ago.

[Clephas]

Generally speaking, charage/moege suffer the least from transformation to anime, because their characters tend to be so... thin (development wise).  Koichoco is one of the least-interesting VNs I've tried to play (finished two routes then dropped it because I was bored out of my skull), but that very lack of anything unique in the heroine routes probably makes it easier to merge it into a single route.  A good charage is one that has fairly unique routes with detailed endings and character development, but generally-speaking, a good anime can't afford that level of detail.  As a result, VNs with a lot of interesting content tend not to transfer well to anime, whereas third-rate charage do so at least decently, because there is less to transfer.  On the other hand, most anime that become VNs are either rehashings of the anime story or short excuses for a bit of side-tracking from the anime's original plot.  A perfect example of this is the Ai Yori Aoshi VN, which was released in the US by Hirameki.  The anime is one of the best love-comedies of the early love-comedy era (1997-2003), but the VN is an eminently boring little side-story that adds nothing of interest for those who watched the anime.

[Funnerific]

6 hours ago, Clephas said:

 

That isn't quite correct... Noble Works has a more solid plot in the individual routes than Evangile, and it has more solid character development than Evangile... if anything, it would be more correct to say they are both charage.

Edit: Generally speaking, only a few (ten or so) 'pure' moege have been made in the last six years or so, so the genre (as it was originally defined) isn't really even produced anymore.

Edit2: The simple reason for this is that pure moege don't sell as well as charage do.  As a result, charage came to dominate in general.  If you want an idea of what a pure moege looks like, Nekopara is a perfect example.

Edit3: It is a lot like the same reasons lizards and birds outlived the dinosaurs... charage had an adaptation that 'pure' moege didn't that gave them a survival advantage, so pure moege were doomed to extinction.

If PE and NW are charage, what does that make character-focused titles with strong plot, such as heroine death or otherwise not fully happy endings? The charage classification ends up being way too broad. Even if moege was originally the VN version of moeblob anime, I believe the term describes both Princess Evangile and Noble Works quite well.

[Kirashi]

Noble works is fine with me. The characters are cute and the plot is good.

So far, the translation was great. 

[Clephas]

14 minutes ago, Funnerific said:

If PE and NW are charage, what does that make character-focused titles with strong plot, such as heroine death or otherwise not fully happy endings? The charage classification ends up being way too broad. Even if moege was originally the VN version of moeblob anime, I believe the term describes both Princess Evangile and Noble Works quite well.

Generally speaking, just like moege is an umbrella term, so is a charage.  While most charage fall under the moege 'umbrella', there are also some that don't (some OELVNs that would apply, charage that have a more action and/or story focus with chuuni elements like Libra, etc.).  Moege are just that... games where moe in visuals and characterization are the focus (things like the uguu~ monster in Kanon, classic tsundere patterns, archetypical deredere heroines are all things that would be considered to be moe characterization, as opposed to the more detailed, in-depth characterization necessary for a VN to be referred to as a charage). 

For a game not to be a charage, it has to have an overarching story that dominates all the routes at least to some extent, even if it is mostly in the background in some routes.  Noble Works and Princess Evangile, for all that they have a 'beginning idea' and a theme, don't actually have a stand-alone story that moves on independent of the characters in question.  'Convenient' plot path alterations are common in both moege and charage.  What this means is that, depending on which heroine you choose, even if there is a central theme or beginning idea, it gets twisted immensely to fit into the heroine's and the protagonist's own personal drama and/or issues.  This is the case in both Noble Works and Princess Evangile.  However, both have characterization that is just too involved and detailed for it be considered a 'pure' moege.  In other words, there is an actual attempt to represent the characters as 'people' rather than as 'symbols'.  Many 'pure moege' heroines (actually almost all of them) could be literally plugged into any other moege and you wouldn't feel like they were out of place.  While this didn't happen intentionally, it is how the moege umbrella genre came to be seen.

As a side note, the 'nakige' sub-genre mostly falls under both the charage and moege umbrellas, and it is defined by 'cheap catharsis', where a crisis is created in the heroine paths that leads to an emotionally stressful bit of drama that is then resolved with no real permanent loss to the characters involved (as in opposition to an utsuge, where the characters in question might die, suffer permanent crippling damage, go insane, etc).  Key's games before Rewrite would all fall into this genre, as well as under the charage and moege umbrellas. 

'Moege' is the single largest umbrella term in all of VNs other than 'nukige' (there being about ten nukige for every other type of VN out there).  Roughly eighty percent of all non-nukige VNs made since the year 2000 fall under the moege umbrella and about sixty percent fall under both it and the charage umbrella.  Does that give you an idea of just how wide a net you cast when you call something a 'charage'?

What are the remainder?  Mostly 'story-focused' VNs... VNs that have an overarching story which exceeds the importance of the characters/reduces them to tools to progress the story (though there is almost always deep character development and characterization technique involved).  Chuunige are my favorite example of this type, as characters are literally 'caught up in the events', rather than being the absolute movers and/or shapers of events they are in charage.  A more ambiguous type would be those like Ojousama wa Gokigen Naname, where there is definitely a strong central plot, but the story narrows down to an intense focus on individual characters in the latter third of the game.  It still wouldn't be considered a charage (because the original story/conflict still dominates in the background), but it comes close.  On the other hand, Otome ga Tsumugu, Koi no Canvas (by the same maker) would be considered a charage despite having numerous important unifying elements, because it is the characters (choice of heroines) that dominate rather than a central story.

[CeruleanGamer]

2 hours ago, Kirashi said:

Noble works is fine with me. The characters are cute and the plot is good.

So far, the translation was great. 

Agreed. Very decent translation for it and even has translator notes. I didn't know sekihan until that VN and now I'm curious what it tastes like.  

[gijimu]

10 minutes ago, CeruleanGamer said:

Agreed. Very decent translation for it and even has translator notes. I didn't know sekihan until that VN and now I'm curious what it tastes like.  

So Noble Works is better overall than Princess Evangile? I personally disliked PE because its heroines are stereotypical, lack of comedy, and uninteresting main and heroine's route.

Some senior readers gave it an excellent score. And it made me curious about this VN. If I disliked PE because of reasons above, do you think I will enjoy NW?