No One But You Review Discussion

[TexasDice]

18 minutes ago, Decay said:

Oh, sorry, I missed it. Multiple times. My bad! So, I guess I had some enjoyment in expressing how bad it was, but really, it's just a painful and tedious experience. I don't usually find much entertainment value in bad media anyways, though, so maybe I'm not the best equipped to make that kind of judgement call. 

Guess I'll have to bite the worm, in this can of worms which was supposed to be an apple, myself to find out. But that can wait, first things first, I need to finish my now-deleted recommendation challenge.

Nice review, from what I can tell at this point by the way.

[Valmore]

Depending on what you're looking for you can probably find something in there, but you'll likely have to overlook many things to enjoy it, which kind of defeats the purpose of enjoyment. The game should be delivering the enjoyment, not making you hunt for it. It's not a case of something being so bad it's good, it's something just being pretty bad. I found Yui and Chinatsu's routes to be okay but certainly nothing earth-shattering and not without their problems. And Decay actually found a way to describe the Shiro route that I couldn't. It's just ... there. I felt nothing for the character at all. And the one gay route was just WTF? I've got nothing against a gay route but it should make sense in the story-telling and this one really didn't. It was like they felt forced to include a gay route and didn't put any heart into it to make it interesting at all.

[CeruleanGamer]

@Decay has saved 200+ Fuwanovelians from going insane reading this crap.

You are a hero and you deserve a medal of Fuwawesomeness. 

[Okarin]

Having played the demo, I saw it coming, didn't want to touch this trash. Also the same studio did an atrocious game before, "Written in the sky". I just figured they would amplify the shit.

I found this hilarious review:

http://diehardgamefan.com/2016/01/22/review-no-one-but-you-pc/

[Decay]

22 minutes ago, Okarin said:

Having played the demo, I saw it coming, didn't want to touch this trash. Also the same studio did an atrocious game before, "Written in the sky". I just figured they would amplify the shit.

I found this hilarious review:

http://diehardgamefan.com/2016/01/22/review-no-one-but-you-pc/

He writes about the route system as if it's some novel idea. He admits it has some rough storylines, and the way the review is written looks like it's for VN noobs, so he's basically saying "If you don't care about the story and just want to click on options and see words come out, this game is for you!" Which, I suppose is an entirely accurate and fair assessment for those who are content with just that.

[Okarin]

There are some reviewers incapable of saying a given game is bad.

[Nimbus]

I feel legitimately bad that you had to sit through this pile of hog-wash. Anything we can to to relieve the inevitable PTSD?

[littleshogun]

Poor Decay. Anyway, my impression from your spoiler about Megumi route

Spoiler

I think I must slightly defending the teacher. For money, I think probably he still live with his parents and therefore his parents may provided money for his freedom from prison. Just fyi, there was many cases like that in TV Drama. Also I just played Free Friend 2 recently and I kinda agree with 1 review that asking how the MC got the money for buying the girl while he was still student teacher. Just want to emphasize once again, I only defend his freedom because I'd saw many thing like that, and personally I think it could still get through imo. But the biggest question was indeed how Megumi could recover within one month from the heavy angst (And unless the setting was Megumi and MC in 2nd year, and her sister got killed in Megumi's 1st year, I think it could still get through). And also how the school could accepted the killer to teach at their school within a month, even if we ignored the reality they should at least reject the teacher, and Megumi was giving the testimony against him (Unlike with infamous headmistress cases in Ruriko and Ayaka route back at Evangile which the heroine and MC decided not continued the cases, and the involved party was only both of MC and heroine anyway iirc) in the court, and they had the biggest proof for the murder, dead body. So I think I had 2 options, either banging my head or praise the school and Megumi for recover and forget about the major incident very fast (The 2nd option was more like sarcasm though). 

For Katawa Shoujo, comparing to this game it was definitely the winner in term of production time (1 year for NOBY vs 5 years for Katawa Shoujo), and longer production time meaning that the writers for Katawa Shoujo had time to refine the routes. So, if NOBY was given same time as Katawa Shoujo, does it mean that it will be as good as Katawa Shoujo? Maybe, but I think even with longer time in Katawa Shoujo development, there was still some divisive one (Shizune route for example). But I agree that Katawa Shoujo team was more successful to deliver the game compared to this one (And I think to make Katawa Shoujo even better was to add famous Japanese voice actor, but that just me. And please don't turn this thread to Katawa Shoujo discussion, okay). Sorry if you didn't agree, and I just want to express my opinion here.

[Kanbe]

The western VN community is fkn cancer. cancer! Except fuwa citizens u guys r kewl

[Okarin]

5 hours ago, littleshogun said:

For Katawa Shoujo, comparing to this game it was definitely the winner in term of production time (1 year for NOBY vs 5 years for Katawa Shoujo), and longer production time meaning that the writers for Katawa Shoujo had time to refine the routes. So, if NOBY was given same time as Katawa Shoujo, does it mean that it will be as good as Katawa Shoujo? Maybe, but I think even with longer time in Katawa Shoujo development, there was still some divisive one (Shizune route for example). But I agree that Katawa Shoujo team was more successful to deliver the game compared to this one (And I think to make Katawa Shoujo even better was to add famous Japanese voice actor, but that just me. And please don't turn this thread to Katawa Shoujo discussion, okay). Sorry if you didn't agree, and I just want to express my opinion here.

Bioware syndrome... I don't know if you'll follow, but since being purchased by EA most Bioware games are little polished and tend to mess up, they have put out games within 2 years, the point being that a long development time indeed helps the game (and any kind of project). But there's just no need to rush... maybe Unwonted will pull a polished game in the future, but with these antecedents it's hard to hope for it.

[Diamon]

Looks like Decay got some sort of an article that commented about his review : http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1so8l7k

While it doesn't exactly address the issue of bad writing since it has little to do with money, I think he does have a fair point. It doesn't excuse all the mistakes the creator of NOBY made, but it gives you a slightly more forgiving pov about it.

[Nosebleed]

25 minutes ago, Diamon said:

Looks like Decay got some sort of an article that commented about his review : http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1so8l7k

What a post filled with salt.

I agree that there's some unfairness from people when it comes to the Western VN market, but badly written things will always be bad regardless of their origin...

The problem is that in the West developers try to mimic Japanese VNs, and then get called out when they fail at doing so, because most VNs in the West tend to be written by amateurs who probably don't know any better.

To complain Decay's review is unfair when he clearly analyzed all the elements that the game had and didn't enjoy the game one bit just screams self entitlement. Decay also never touched on the price tag, he just analyzed wht the game had to offer.

The price debate is somewhat fair, but again bad writing will always be bad writing.

Also NOBY has had tons of positive reviews on Steam so I don't know where the salt's coming from.

[littleshogun]

Okay, so I read the counter review, and to be very very very honest for get VN I usually using torrent or erxxxdoxxxxad.com, but of course it's actually better if the people want to buy the vn to support the developer.

But, I think while many people choose the way to get vn was same as me, I'd like to KO the counter review with one sentence. The sentence was "Katawa Shoujo was originally EVN and it was freely available at the site". While maybe the staff was amateur, some of them not from western, didn't get paid and took their time, it was got quite many attention from vn fan and got quite nice score on VNDB (Around 7.85 as of now). And it was free of charge. Although there was some people think it was overated of course.

The problem with NOBY was short time development, it was not years like the counter review said (I knew he was extragaratte it), only less than a year if we count kickstarter, while Katawa Shoujo once again need 5 years including planning to make it complete. Although the counter review had some point of how hard to make the game though.

About Bioware syndrome, didn't understand much about it. But I think I agree with yours that longer development time will help to refine the game. I think that's all I could thinking of.

[Nosebleed]

I also think a major problem stems from these kickstarters that fund games that don't have a complete storyline set in stone. I always see kickstarters where it says X percentage of the funds will go to writing. You mean you still don't have the full story down yet?

It's a recipe for disaster when you're trying to fund a game and you still haven't at least gotten a solid outline to write on.

Once you get the funds though, you're on a time schedule, and you're forced to keep up with the demands you imposed on yourself, which can often result in a rushed finished product when you don't have a good layout of what you want to do yet.

[Decay]

Well, I'm not going to write up a lengthy counterpoint right now, but my feelings are 1) You can do better with $10 than NOBY, MUCH better, 2) there are also better EVNs than NOBY, like everything from ebi-hime (I'm aware she wrote a route for NOBY), christina love, and many Hanako Games products, 3) If you don't want us to compare your product to Japanese VNs, don't make your product exactly like them. If your budget and talents don't match up to those of the JVN creators, then you'll inevitably create something that's just one of those but worse. Is this really something we should be supporting?

edit: Twitter is bad for responding to criticism. Maybe I should have used Twitlonger, too. My response on Twitter.

[Darklord Rooke]

Ignore him and let him rant. Taosym's arguments on Twitlonger miss the point, and his responses on the story/writing on twitter are either laughingly ignorant or he's being intentionally dense.

[Kanbe]

I love the salt coming from this guy. This is why EVN devs are utterly pathetic

[Valmore]

OK, to sum up this guy's point:

"Critics shouldn't rag on a cheap VN." Or something like that.

Hell, Decay actually offered up an alternative for $10 - buy a Sakura game. One could take it as a joke, but honestly, you probably would get more enjoyment out of one. Yeah, in Sakura the story is weak and the characters obnoxious, but they at least have consistently good art and fanservice. NOBY doesn't even offer that.

Hell, I wish I could rip a game like that when it deserves it. I honestly don't have the balls to. But I have played the entire VN as well, and on pretty much most points I would have to agree with Decay, and I paid for the pleasure of that agreement. If anything, I should be even more critical of it since I invested my money - Decay can laugh at me and feel good about saving his wallet. 

And really, the counterpoint to his argument about budget is right there in the top of the review. For their Kickstarter, they only asked for $1300. They felt they could deliver a quality VN by having a contribution of just $1300, and they got $18000. That's over 13 times what they asked for. If their group felt they could do so great on $1300 in contributions, then they should of knocked Decay's socks off with $18000 backing them up.

[Darklord Rooke]

21 minutes ago, Kanbe said:

I love the salt coming from this guy. This is why EVN devs are utterly pathetic

Don't generalise, please.

[Eclipsed]

" ...but I review for consumers who don't and shouldn't care. "

-Decay

We need a "I review for..." statement by all y'all; bats would be like "I review for the salt. Lots and lots of salt" etc

 

[Darklord Rooke]

2 minutes ago, Eclipsed said:

We need a "I review for..." statement by all y'all; bats would be like "I review for the salt. Lots and lots of salt" etc

I'm looking forward to Bats scoring Angel Beats 1/10 purely for the salt ...

[Chuee]

If you're going to complain about budget restrictions, then actually figure out what works with the budget you have. There's no way in hell you're going to make a decent plot for 5 routes in a game only 2-10 hours long, plain and simple. If the norm for OELVNs stays as bad as it currently is, they'll never reach the point where they have sizable budgets to work with when creating their games. 

[Kanbe]

3 hours ago, Rooke said:

Don't generalise, please.

I have yet to see anything decent come out of any of them. 

[Darklord Rooke]

10 minutes ago, Kanbe said:

I have yet to see anything decent come out of any of them. 

Then you're not looking hard enough. There are professional authors that are EVN devs (there's a very nice, short adaption of a classic Russian fairytale, for example) and there are EVN devs that make sims of the complexity which exceeds those which come from Japan. Obviously the best stuff are products which take a different route than traditional Japanese VNs, but there's good stuff there if you know where to look.

But even if they aren't yet of the quality of AAA Japanese VNs, generalising them all as pathetic is more than a tad harsh. It takes a lot of money to fund stuff with AAA qualities.

[Okarin]

There is a term for this, it's "shovelware". Shovelware is ushered into the market to create a flood of products, so inevitably someone will buy them. That's the scheme with Sakura games, and was just the thing happening with Bioware for some time, as Electronic Arts was milking them for money, money, *money*. The burnout is inevitable. It's a tendency we see a lot today in modern videogames. Games hitting the market almost broken with bugs, or generally incomplete. You may deceive a customer or two but in the long term you're gonna lose.

Oh, and another thing: it's worth noting that this was a Kickstarter project. In videogames, KS has failed spectacularly (the new Torment game will be almost certainly shit), but not only in videogames... most projects on KS fail miserably. I guess it's hard to keep every backer content. If anything I think that the thing that matters for KS is the money grab... but for devs, not customers, of course.