What's Your Favorite VN Feature?

[Eclipsed]

Every time I play a new VN I tend to miss a few gimmicky features that were present in other VN's I've played.

 

Edit @Zaka: Leave it to the editor in chief to gank me on word choice xD. that was actually on my mind the whole time, but I chose gimmick cuz I like the word. Sue me~

Common Features:

• Name-able/Delete-able saves: Helps with remembering what the hell that save point was for & organization
• Voice playback on click (continues): Personal favorite. This is probably my biggest gripe when playing older VNs- that voices get cut off when you click to the next line.
• Replay voice/Jump to previous line: Replay voice is common, but jump to line (via backlog) is pretty rare.
• Skip Read Text/Skip to next choice: Saves you that valuable 10 minutes of holding Cntrl to skip to the next choice xD. Pretty gimmicky but, why not.
• BGM decrease during voice playback: Ok now we're really in gimmicky territory
• Color coded font/Change font: Mhmm. Definitely in gimmick territory.
• Unlockables: Y'know, all the goodies you get for completing a route/the game: CG gallery, Music Playlist, OP/ED Replay, H-scene Replay, Scene Replay/Chapter Select, etc. 

Some of those features I can live without, obviously, but if I ever play an older VN without voice playback on click, I will be a sad person. It's liveable, but I will still be sad .

 

​~~~

Other Features:

Current Date/Time: Whenever I read VNs I like to create a timeline in my head of the events that happen so the little calendars in the corner are always nice to have, especially for SoL. Otherwise sometimes I lose track of time and when a character goes "Yada yada yada yesterday" I'm like "Wut. It's been a day already?"

• Symphonic Rain gets a special mention for having an actual friggen' clock in the corner showing the exact time instead of just a calendar.

~~

Close up CGs: CG's are meant to be appreciated in all of their CG-ified gloriness. Being able to zoom in allows one to enjoy the... uh... finer details

• Some VNs I've read that have this feature include Hoshizora no Memoria and Koiken Otome

Hoshi Memo

 

 

Fuwaconfession #1: I was going to zoom in onto Komomo's panties to go along my earlier lead on of "appreciate the finer details ;)", but I ended up not doing it.
 

~~~

Koiken Otome

 

 

 

~~
Character Sprite Animations (eyes blinking, lip sync, etc.): This is one of my personal favorites. For me, there's this charm to sprites if their eyes blink and/or have lipsync. It makes them feel alive (or at least less 'static' than sprites that do not utilize such features)

• Examples include Symphonic Rain(eyes blinking); Steins;Gate(lip sync); Chaos;Head (eyes blinking AND lip sync). I will admit though I that found the lip syncing of both the Nitroplus titles a bit distasteful since it's horrifically off sync xD. Eyes blinking is cool though.
• Yuzusoft titles (Dracu-Riot!, Noble*Works, etc.) deserve a special mention for having their character sprite expressions change throughout a line rather than after a line.
• SCREW EVERYTHING ELSE. The king of this is Neko Para for utilizing Windmill's E-mote system to create fully animated sprites. Yes, even H-scenes are animated. 

Dracu-Riot!

 

 

 

 

Yup. Miu had THREE expressions going on just for this one line. Seriously, anytime I play a VN after playing a Yuzusoft VN the character sprites all of a sudden feel very, very lifeless xD

But even Yuzusoft pales in comparison when it comes to real animated sprites such as Neko Para. Play the game to find out~ Hint: H-scenes are animated as well~

 

 

---

What are some of your favorite VN "gimmicks" and/or features?

 

[Ariurotl]

Skipping to next choice/scene is the only one from the list I care about. It's really useful in many cases, especially when "regular" skipping in the VN is slow

[Zakamutt]

Very few of these can be considered gimmicks rather than minor features... Anyway, in the minor features department voice playback after click is important, and voice playback lowering BGM is nice too. I also loved the voice/text sync feature in Ever17 and am sad it was removed in the r11 patch (though I can't remember how well it worked in e17 any more...). For an actual gimmicky thing, the animated sprites in nekopara are nice as well I guess.

[bluethunder91]

I'd have to say the skip directly to next choice. I once accidentally deleted my Grisaia saves and that saved me probably over an hour of the skip button.

 

Otherwise I'd say character animation, such as Majikoi (even if it's a bit clunky there) and customisable color text depending on who's talking (Majikoi and G-Senjou).

[melo4496]

I'd have to say the skip directly to next choice. I once accidentally deleted my Grisaia saves and that saved me probably over an hour of the skip button.

 

Am i the only one who did not noticed this feature in Grisaia? *facepalm*

 

Voice playback is definitely my favorite. Specially when the character is saying something funny. It's a shame that Clannad doesn't have this feature (or does it?).

[Tyrael]

Am i the only one who did not noticed this feature in Grisaia? *facepalm*

 

Voice playback is definitely my favorite. Specially when the character is saying something funny. It's a shame that Clannad doesn't have this feature (or does it?).

 

Nope. I was searching for that feature as well. Considering how long it took for the Full Voice version to come out there's really no excuse for not including it. Clannad still rules though of course.

[wyldstrykr]

"non cut voice during click" was the best, i wish every vn has one.

the zoom function and a full body sprite was cool though.

the name-able save (save state) is a must since i called for choir everytime.

color aided font is also cool if it can differential read to unread text.

i dont use bgm since the setting i used is bgm oriented (bgm=sfx>voice)

 

 

also:

i dont remember the game but when the camera zooms, the background become blurred...........

it is also counted as a gimmick ( i dont use this feature though, my eyes aches because of that)

[edwd2]

- Skip back to scene when clicking dialogue in backlog rather than voice replay

This is quite rare but I recall some game engines have this function, makes it easy to capture a missed screenshot.

 

- Collectable character sprite and voice in game menu

Just like those in the Baldr Sky series.

 

 

- Plot flowchart

Self explanatory, also very useful to track progress and missing ends without having to rely on a walkthrough.

 

- Built in Smartphone

I recall there's one in Hoshi Ori, though its mainly used for text and screenshots, there's also one in N+'s Kimi to Kanojo to Kanojo no Koi.

[Funyarinpa]

Virtue's Last Reward had a flowchart and I'm honestly surprised the flowcharts are not the norm in VN's with numerous endings. The flowchart made VLR a hundred times better. (Otherwise you'd have to replay the game nearly 30 times and that does not bode well. At all. *glares at Remember11* )

[TexasDice]

Settings -> Sound -> Voice -> [X] turn off all

[Fiddle]

Whichever Yuzusoft member came up with background voice during h-scenes deserves a Nobel Prize in Literature. -_-

[Eclipsed]

Skipping to next choice/scene is the only one from the list I care about. It's really useful in many cases, especially when "regular" skipping in the VN is slow

A man of practicality :thumbs up:

 

Very few of these can be considered gimmicks rather than minor features... Anyway, in the minor features department voice playback after click is important, and voice playback lowering BGM is nice too. I also loved the voice/text sync feature in Ever17 and am sad it was removed in the r11 patch (though I can't remember how well it worked in e17 any more...). For an actual gimmicky thing, the animated sprites in nekopara are nice as well I guess.

Yeah, that was on my mind the whole time. But "fk it, I like the word gimmick, and I don't think anybody will give a damn enough to nitpick me on termino-" *gets ganked by editor-in-chief Zaka*

 

 

I'd have to say the skip directly to next choice. I once accidentally deleted my Grisaia saves and that saved me probably over an hour of the skip button.

Grisaia even has scene selection once you complete the game. That's friggen' OP.

 

Settings -> Sound -> Voice -> [X] turn off all

B-b-b-b-but...

 

Whichever Yuzusoft member came up with a background voice during h-scenes deserves a Nobel Prize in Literature. -_-

That emoticon. I can't tell if sarcasm or not -_-.

I thought the background voice during H-scenes was a very nice "cherry on top" feature xD

~~~

Seems a good amount of you also consider the 'voice-not-cutting-off-when-clicking' feature a must-have. *Hi five*

[Darklord Rooke]

Skipping to next choice/scene is the only one from the list I care about. It's really useful in many cases, especially when "regular" skipping in the VN is slow

 

Same, it's the only one that seems to have an actual purpose. I'm perfectly happy to go without everything else listed.

[Nerathim]

Scenario Select, I'm not asking for the moon but I don't see that feature often...unlike h-scenes replay.

[B0X0R]

Having a warning on when a character with voice is about to speak. I found this feature on a VN called Eroge!.

[Katatsumuri]

this is a minor thing (Okay, IT'S PRETTY DAMN IMPORTANT TO ME), but:

 

I want the save/load menu to have room for at least one or two saves per route on every page, since for me, there are few things more annoying than splitting up my saves, or having them unordered. While name-able saves help, I prefer the saves to be ordered in the first place.

 

Then there's also my pet peeve with VNs where there is no handy "delete save"-button...

 

Favorite thing is probably (surprise surprise!) skipping to the next choice, due to reasons already mentioned (and I am too lazy to re-tell them)

[Tyrael]

Being able to bring up the text history is a huge bonus for me as I tend to forget a lot of stuff I just read (concentration issues)

 

[Mr Poltroon]

Being able to delete save slots is probably my favourite feature. 

 

Skipping read only is a must. A VN without this or where it doesn't work properly is the most painful thing...

I also like to be able to replay voices on the backlog, though it isn't a must.

[Snowtsuku]

All I care about is the skip. Either the skip is fast or you skip to the next choice

[Lambda]

Skip fast, skip to next choice... those are nice. I also cut of the voices a lot, so voices in the backlog are valuable resources! If we're talking about features in VNs in general and not necessarily during gameplay, I'll name something I really like in VNs: music menus you can actually listen to like playlists. Like, you can listen to a particular song as many times as you like by clicking the repeat button once. And then it can move on to the next song if you click the repeat playlist button. So far I've only read Da Capo II and Fate/Stay Night with that great of a music menu, though.

[EldritchCherub]

Backlog for those moments when my mind wanders and I press the mouse a little bit quicker than I meant to. Also useful for writing down important plot elements which may arise later on in the story. The ability to listen to the VNs OST after completing it would also be nice. As others have said the skip function is by far the most useful feature, especially in VNs like Sharin no Kuni where you have to re-read vast portions just to get to the new stuff.

[Zalor]

Ever play Quartett! or Period by Littlewitch? Those were the only times I actually had fun with the user-interface and gimmicks. When ever you changed a configuration or saved the game it would make a cool clicking sound. I felt like I was getting rewarded just for saving, lol. Both games also had a handy feature where you could conveniently alter the speed of auto-play. 

 

Aside from that the only features that piss me of when they are not available is when you can't delete saves, and when you can only skip text that you previously read. 

[Ezeefreak]

I've never really paid any attention to Gimmicks like that. I think the most useful for me is the Name-able saves. Especially when you have Vn's with a bunch of Routes and endings.

[hydro]

Hmm. In-game flowcharts are nice. Too bad the best one I've seen came in the worst VN I've read (Gimai - Hitomi).

 

Skipping to the next choice is also super convenient. So long as it can manage without skipping unread text. I also appreciate backlogs with voices. I can live without the voices, but a backlog is very important to me. I occasionally skip forward without properly reading a line, sounds strange but it happens. Colour coded font is gimmicky but I like that too. Obviously not a must, but I prefer having it to not having it.

[XReaper]

definetly the option for adjusting the chest bounciness

hail to the eroero god!