Common route enthusiast

[pandogawa]

I just recently realized that I seems to only enjoy common routes or prologue in most of the school life/slice of life VN.

For some reason, when I got to the main route, the enjoyment and enthusiasm seemed to deteriorate when the plot shifted towards individual romance and the rest of the characters got much lesser screen time. Sometimes the romance part became too heavy for my ADHD brain and I lost interest altogether.

(For example: the common route in Hoshi Ori Yume Mirai is beautiful and amazing but after picking the Rikkia's route and continued a bit, I kind of lost my enthusiasm)

Most of those common routes that fascinates me contain some sort of lighthearted stuff such as a group of friends hanging out, slap stick comedy during various activities, lots of side characters and developments among heroines. Sometimes It felt so good that I forgot to sleep. I believe that the common route in Majikoi and Little Busters influenced my taste the most.

If only common route can be longer.... I'm craving for some good and long common route.....

 

I sure hope to hear some suggestions or maybe perhaps some insights.

 

[Fiddle]

You should play Hoshimemo, which is about 100% common route.

[pandogawa]

Ahh, Hoshimemo. 

I completed most of the routes back in my early days with VN. First time I learned about Tsundere.

Prior to the main routes, everything was quite nice. Got pretty much every standard requirements for decent common route.

The artwork and character sprites however, truly pleased my eyes; probably what keeps me going and unlock other main routes. 

[Silvz]

Have you tried kinect novels? They are completely linear and even if they have romance, it's usually with only one character. It's basically an infinite common route.

[Clephas]

It is true that common routes are often better than the heroine routes in slice-of-life/charage.  It is the period when you are getting to know the characters and enjoying the group dynamics the most.  Sadly, a lot of slice-of-life VNs tend to be weaker in the individual routes due to what I call the 'character balloon deflation', where all of the sudden most of the characters other than the heroine you have chosen suddenly stop having personalities that don't adjust to aid in moving the romance forward.  Heck, in the case of Ensemble and Navel, it isn't uncommon for the protagonist's personality to dramatically alter or him to suddenly become stupid or incompetent to make the heroine shine.

[Riku]

I love common routes too, and that's why I started to play less VN since a few years, as I don't enjoy doing each girl's route anymore. To this day, Majikoi's prologue (which is quite long for a prologue lol) is the peak of what I love in common routes.

If you can read Japanese, I recommend Hikari no Umi no Apeiria. Single path and fun all the way to the end.

Edited November 4, 2021 by Riku