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Visual Novels Community Thread | A Little Something for Everyone

cj_iwakura

cj_iwakura

Member
Uh, do you all consider Silver Case a VN? If so, enjoy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhG1Di6OCUc
(Audio kicks after a little ways)

tumblr_oa3504xVwz1skns5ho1_540.jpg
 
A

aravuus

Member
I'm not surprised people are down on ZTD. It did have some pretty dumb reveals, but overall I still really enjoyed it. Lots of fun character interactions from teams C and D.
 
R

R_thanatos

Member
I loved ZTD from start to finish.

while i admit that some things could have been handled better , the only explanation i can think is that some players had their expectations too high.

For more discussion about ZTD , thankfully there is a thread for that already.
 
P

perorist

Unconfirmed Member
R_thanatos said:
the only explanation i can think is that some players had their expectations too high.
Click to expand...
People who liked it keep saying this as a catch-all, but all I expected was something on the level of VLR. It far undelivered in comparison though. And as you said, there's already a thread for ZTD spoiler discussion, which contains many well thought out and articulated responses as to why people specifically didn't like ZTD as much as the previous games.
 
T

Taruranto

Member
Yuuichi said:
Sounds like I never have to play ZE since I know ever17 backwards and forwards then.
Click to expand...

999 is more solid than many novels, and even if you know Ever17, there is a lot of fun to be had. (It's also basically auto-conclusive)

It's that with VLR that thing go full MGS2.
 
K

KuwabaraTheMan

Banned
Yeah, I think 999 holds up very well on its own. Even if you already know the twists that are coming (or can guess them due to familiarity with Uchikoshi's work), the story itself is very well told, the characters are enjoyable, and there's a great tension that is kept up pretty much throughout the whole game.
 
B

Basileus777

Member
I'd wait for the new port of 999, if that fixes some of the repetition/pacing issues of 999 it will be a much much better experience. It's a good game, but feels archaic in terms of basic usability features and it'd be much easier to appreciate its sound and music when it's not on the DS. It'd probably be Uchikoshi's best work outside of Ever17 if that stuff is fixed.

Though some of the novelty of 999 is going to be lost on people familiar with the genre (or at least it was for me). Stuff like the axe ending or most of the routes/bad endings that a lot of people reacted to are nothing to even blink at.
 
Y

Yuuichi

Member
How long is 999? I'm currently trying to dig myself out of a two year deep backlog of imports, so if it's too long I just won't have time (though I will wait for the new port as suggested, esp. because it's probably coming to pc).
 
J

jonjonaug

Member
Yuuichi said:
How long is 999? I'm currently trying to dig myself out of a two year deep backlog of imports, so if it's too long I just won't have time (though I will wait for the new port as suggested, esp. because it's probably coming to pc).
Click to expand...

Somewhere around 15 or so hours. Virtue's Last Reward is about 30, ZTD is around 22-25. Since the new port has voices it'll probably be a bit longer, although I think it'll probably have a built in flowchart/scene selection that'll make things faster to make up for that. In the original release you had to restart from the beginning of the game every time you reached an ending.
 
A

afreaknamedpete

Member
The Silver said:
been a while since I played umineko, is there a really good indepth video or something that tries to explain all the mysteries?
Click to expand...

Umineko doesn't explain enough of itself to have a clear "explain all mysteries" type of analysis, especially considering the sheer mass of mysteries and quite a few deliberately ambiguous answers.
There is a pretty infamous 10-hour long youtube series that tries to explain almost everything with a somewhat fringe theory. I wouldn't recommend it though, its pedantic and very, very long.


On an unrelated note, Steins;Gate is SO AMAZING. Its so good I couldn't help but immediately spoil the shit out of S;G 0. There's sometimes alot of works that I wish weren't as steeped in Otaku culture so I can recommend them to everyone I know, and this is definitely one of them. I looked up the writer, and was surprised he did Bravely Default which I did not care for. Which got me thinking, was Steins:Gate popular enough to suddenly cause the glut of time-travel and dimension hopping games that came out of Japan these last couple of years?
 
J

jonjonaug

Member
afreaknamedpete said:
Umineko doesn't explain enough of itself to have a clear "explain all mysteries" type of analysis, especially considering the sheer mass of mysteries and quite a few deliberately ambiguous answers.
There is a pretty infamous 10-hour long youtube series that tries to explain almost everything with a somewhat fringe theory. I wouldn't recommend it though, its pedantic and very, very long.
Click to expand...

It's also very, very wrong about almost everything.

afreaknamedpete said:
On an unrelated note, Steins;Gate is SO AMAZING. Its so good I couldn't help but immediately spoil the shit out of S;G 0. There's sometimes alot of works that I wish weren't as steeped in Otaku culture so I can recommend them to everyone I know, and this is definitely one of them. I looked up the writer, and was surprised he did Bravely Default which I did not care for. Which got me thinking, was Steins:Gate popular enough to suddenly cause the glut of time-travel and dimension hopping games that came out of Japan these last couple of years?
Click to expand...

Eh...probably not. It's not even the only thing with those sorts of plot points developed at around that time, Steins;Gate was being developed at the same time as Madoka Magica was being written for instance.

Fun fact though: The lead writer of the science adventure series previously worked as a sub-writer for Remember11 and 12Riven. So that's another way the Infinity series went on to influence a bunch of other sci-fi VN stuff.
 
J

JulianImp

Member
Saya no Uta

Well, that was okay, I guess. Creepy and a bit awkward at times, I've got to commend it for its H-scenes being in tone with the overall narrative (as in, overly twisted and ominous rather than just eye candy put in for the sake of titillation). The story was okay for the most part, and pretty in line with its genre, but there were three pretty glaring plot holes that let me down:
  • First of all, the fact that Fuminori's condition
    which made him reject the world and accept Saya happened by sheer chance, rather than actually having his mind messed with by the mysterious professor (either directly or through some stuff he had left at the clinic) or even Saya herself. Making such an important plot point happen by luck felt like a really cheap narrative trick, IMO
  • Second, the neighbor's
    breakdown after Saya makes him see the world like Fuminori does, and how he ends up killing his family and raping Saya. Given that she was constantly portrayed as a nigh-unkillable being able to freely mold herself and other living organisms, why the heck was she so powerless against a middle-aged man? Also, how could he pin a blobby mess of flesh down in the first place, even?
  • Third, professor Ougai's
    discovery of what Saya had shown up for, and how the human construct of romance put her off of fulfilling her biological duty of reproducing... the fact that he somehow came to that conclussion appeared to come out of nowhere, and felt like a really cheap trick to throw in an exposition of how Fuminori's acceptance of Saya is what helped her fullfill her duty in one of the endings

All in all, it was okay for a love
craftian
story, but the third person narrative kind of hurt the narrative a bit since I kept knowing way more than the rest of the cast, making me wish I could call them out on the stupid stuff they kept doing over and over due to their lack of information. Narrative-wise it did manage to make me sympathize with the cast's plea a fair bit, but it never got all that enjoyable for me.
 
A

afreaknamedpete

Member
Shizuka said:
Not really, there are Steam titles that you can play offline. Maybe "DRM-free" wasn't the best expression, but that's what I mean with that.
Click to expand...

Well it's probably best to just download games from the developers or publishers directly. Still if you have a Steam game you already bought and want to play it offline you can jump through an absurd series of hoops to enable Steam's offline mode. Google it if you want, it's needlessly difficult.
 
T

TonkatsuAddict

Member
afreaknamedpete said:
Well it's probably best to just download games from the developers or publishers directly. Still if you have a Steam game you already bought and want to play it offline you can jump through an absurd series of hoops to enable Steam's offline mode. Google it if you want, it's needlessly difficult.
Click to expand...

1. Steam->Go Offline
2. Play game

Or if you're already offline

1. Launch Steam
2. Click on "Start in Offline Mode"
3. Play game

Some games may need to have been launched at least once while online before you can launch them offline, but that's hardly a difficult step or one that you're commonly going to need to consciously account for. It's hardly what I'd call an "absurd series of hoops."

And I think what Shizuka is asking about are Steam games that don't require Steam to be running in order to play them, i.e. games that don't even use the basic SteamWorks DRM. I know there are some, but I don't know which games specifically.
 
J

jonjonaug

Member
afreaknamedpete said:
Well it's probably best to just download games from the developers or publishers directly. Still if you have a Steam game you already bought and want to play it offline you can jump through an absurd series of hoops to enable Steam's offline mode. Google it if you want, it's needlessly difficult.
Click to expand...

Pretty sure that none of Mangagamer's games use Steamworks. You can just go to the EXE file directly on your hard drive and start it up without starting Steam.
 
StereoVsn

StereoVsn

Gold Member
So Muv-Luv Extra and Unlimited released on Steam today. Started playing Extra (never played Muv-Luv, kickstarted PC/Vita version) and I have to say, it's boring as hell (at least the Extra part). I am a few hours in and it's like any other Slice of Life high school anime one have seen with the requisite childhood friend.

I really hope shit hits the fan in Unlimited or something, but not sure if I can make myself go through this. If I start at Unlimited would I miss a lot of queues/backstory?
 
J

JulianImp

Member
So I'm slowly progressing through Higurashi Kizuna 1 and finally managed to get out of the Onikakushi branch. Still, I stopped reading the walkthrough and ended up in Tatarigoroshi instead of Watanagashi like I intended, but it's still fine by me since I haven't read through that branch yet. I'm slowly improving with my kanji recognition, but I'm still wishing I knew more words to get a clearer picture rather than just a general overview of what's going on at any given time.

One thing that's becoming apparent to me is that I'm don't enjoy branching paths in VNs all that much, even more so if the conditions for getting into any particular story branch happen to be opaque and hard to derive from any given choice you get to make. Kizuna's particularily nasty with how I kept getting shoved into the Onikakushi branch until I looked up a walkthrough, started the whole story over and followed things to the letter.

I've also started Fata Morgana, but then I got sidetracked with Saya since I heard it was really short, so I'll probably be back to it sometime soon.
 
F

fertygo

Member
StereoVsn said:
So Muv-Luv Extra and Unlimited released on Steam today. Started playing Extra (never played Muv-Luv, kickstarted PC/Vita version) and I have to say, it's boring as hell (at least the Extra part). I am a few hours in and it's like any other Slice of Life high school anime one have seen with the requisite childhood friend.

I really hope shit hits the fan in Unlimited or something, but not sure if I can make myself go through this. If I start at Unlimited would I miss a lot of queues/backstory?
Click to expand...

You will miss a lot, just bear with it, surely you can made harem cliche an guilty pleasure once in life.
 
cj_iwakura

cj_iwakura

Member
StereoVsn said:
So Muv-Luv Extra and Unlimited released on Steam today. Started playing Extra (never played Muv-Luv, kickstarted PC/Vita version) and I have to say, it's boring as hell (at least the Extra part). I am a few hours in and it's like any other Slice of Life high school anime one have seen with the requisite childhood friend.

I really hope shit hits the fan in Unlimited or something, but not sure if I can make myself go through this. If I start at Unlimited would I miss a lot of queues/backstory?
Click to expand...
I've heard when it finally goes boom, it's atomic.
 
StereoVsn

StereoVsn

Gold Member
fertygo said:
You will miss a lot, just bear with it, surely you can made harem cliche an guilty pleasure once in life.
Click to expand...

I guess. It's just so damn generic. I'll download it to my tablet and persevere I guess. At least graphics are decent and you can resize the window.
 
B

Basileus777

Member
StereoVsn said:
I guess. It's just so damn generic. I'll download it to my tablet and persevere I guess. At least graphics are decent and you can resize the window.
Click to expand...

What matters from Extra is to get a feel for the characters. Do one route, scrub through the Lacross shit, and you'll be ok.
 
A

aravuus

Member
Muv-Luv Extra is probably the dumbest shit I've ever gone through, but at least the Steam version won't have the incredibly random sex scenes. So that's a plus.

But yeah, what Basileus said.
 
T

Taruranto

Member
I like to think the reason they'll never make MUV-LUV anime (Extra to Alternative I mean) is that they don't want to boost the suicide rate in Japan with the Lacrosse Arc.

The MUV-LUV Wiki entry about it is pretty funny tho'


StereoVsn said:
So Muv-Luv Extra and Unlimited released on Steam today. Started playing Extra (never played Muv-Luv, kickstarted PC/Vita version) and I have to say, it's boring as hell (at least the Extra part). I am a few hours in and it's like any other Slice of Life high school anime one have seen with the requisite childhood friend.

I really hope shit hits the fan in Unlimited or something, but not sure if I can make myself go through this. If I start at Unlimited would I miss a lot of queues/backstory?
Click to expand...

Personally, I think MUV-LUV is not really worth the time investment it requires, even with Unlimited the pacing is pretty eeeeeeeh and the first half of Alternative isn't much better.

Though I think Unlimited also did some things better than Alternative despite the slog.

JulianImp said:
So I'm slowly progressing through Higurashi Kizuna 1 and finally managed to get out of the Onikakushi branch. Still, I stopped reading the walkthrough and ended up in Tatarigoroshi instead of Watanagashi like I intended, but it's still fine by me since I haven't read through that branch yet. I'm slowly improving with my kanji recognition, but I'm still wishing I knew more words to get a clearer picture rather than just a general overview of what's going on at any given time.

One thing that's becoming apparent to me is that I'm don't enjoy branching paths in VNs all that much, even more so if the conditions for getting into any particular story branch happen to be opaque and hard to derive from any given choice you get to make. Kizuna's particularily nasty with how I kept getting shoved into the Onikakushi branch until I looked up a walkthrough, started the whole story over and followed things to the letter.

I've also started Fata Morgana, but then I got sidetracked with Saya since I heard it was really short, so I'll probably be back to it sometime soon.
Click to expand...

Is Kizuna the one with
ALIENS?
 
StereoVsn

StereoVsn

Gold Member
Basileus777 said:
What matters from Extra is to get a feel for the characters. Do one route, scrub through the Lacross shit, and you'll be ok.
Click to expand...
Fair enough. I shall do just that. And yes, I am glad this is based on PS3 version and skips the random/dumb sex scenes.

I feel obligated to go through the thing since a)People have been claiming that this is better then Steins;Gate and b)I Kickstarter this thing with the collection edition :p.
 
T

Taruranto

Member
MUV-LUV doesn't have many sex scenes, though every element of the story felt like it had a coat of fanservice in it, it's especially obvious in Unlimited.
 
F

Funyarinpa

Member
MLE is the worst story I have ever had the (dis)pleasure of experiencing. It even made me hate Unlimited and Alternative, which weren't worth suffering through 20 hours of MLE.
 
H

hamchan

Member
Finished Zero Escape 3 and I see now people's issues with it. It just finished in an underwhelming way not really fitting in the way the last two games had mindblowing endings. Anyways, I'm at least glad that this series has an ending, that's something.
 
cj_iwakura

cj_iwakura

Member
I don't think ZTD had as many 'WTF!?' moments as the previous games, but it was still gripping all the way through, and the puzzles were wonderful(short-lived though they were).

I'd say it was a solid effort, and a nice send off, and definitely put a new spin on Free The Soul that I never expected.
 
C

Chairmanchuck

Member
Knurek said:
Poor Sharin no Kuni Kickstarter...
There's no way to salvage that anymore, is there?
Click to expand...

I dont know. I think there is not that much demand for the fifthhundred (what it feels like at least) VN Kickstarter of an 11 year old game, that also got a TL patch 7 years ago.

I also hate it when there is a physical edition tier, but you dont even get a Steam key.
 
J

Jazz573

Member
Chairmanchuck said:
I dont know. I think there is not that much demand for the fifthhundred (what it feels like at least) VN Kickstarter of an 11 year old game, that also got a TL patch 7 years ago.

I also hate it when there is a physical edition tier, but you dont even get a Steam key.
Click to expand...

Except there is a tier with both...

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Translation Status Update July 17 from /r/visualnovels

Originally from /jp/ on 4chan

Fuwanovel version
 
J

jonjonaug

Member
Chairmanchuck said:
I dont know. I think there is not that much demand for the fifthhundred (what it feels like at least) VN Kickstarter of an 11 year old game, that also got a TL patch 7 years ago.

I also hate it when there is a physical edition tier, but you dont even get a Steam key.
Click to expand...

Considering half the Muv Luv thread right now is "selling my Steam key" I can't really blame them.
 
H

hamchan

Member
Basileus777 said:
I'm not sure what there is to forgive or forget (this isn't some Japan Content type disaster), there likely just isn't an audience for this particular game to reach 140k.
Click to expand...

Well you read r/visualnovels. The reception there has been pretty toxic from the start and in the update posts too.
 
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