Visual Novels

Do you play visual Novels?

  • No, because that’s fucking gay

    Votes: 72 14.8%

  • Yes, because I read them for the plot

    Votes: 182 37.4%

  • No, because they’re not really video games

    Votes: 34 7.0%

  • Yes, because anime girls are better than real women

    Votes: 107 22.0%

  • No, but I think about playing them

    Votes: 61 12.6%

  • Yes, but I do it ironically

    Votes: 30 6.2%
  • Total voters
    486
Just finished Paranormasight. It was a fun short-ish (around 10 hours) VN that successfully combines mystery and magic without getting retarded. I really have nothing bad to say about it, it has pretty well closed off plot, likable characters and some nice reveals. Well two things... I always hate when the game ends with everything solves in a new "first" choice making a clean slate good future, it's not even a case where the bad future had some horrific shit happen. Also in some cases in the plot characters were well justified in trying to kill assailants with curses but that gave you bad ends.

It's always funny when you have those mystery/horror games done by some tourism board for some nowhere japanese town. I guess the town from Higurashi is doing big bucks at tourism money.
 
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wtfNeedSignUp said:
Just finished Paranormasight. It was a fun short-ish (around 10 hours) VN that successfully combines mystery and magic without getting retarded. I really have nothing bad to say about it, it has pretty well closed off plot, likable characters and some nice reveals. Well two things... I always hate when the game ends with everything solves in a new "first" choice making a clean slate good future, it's not even a case where the bad future had some horrific shit happen. Also in some cases in the plot characters were well justified in trying to kill assailants with curses but that gave you bad ends.

It's always funny when you have those mystery/horror games done by some tourism board for some nowhere japanese town. I guess the town from Higurashi is doing big bucks at tourism money.
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I think the bad end is pretty well justified. Two of the ending had Nejima murdered like 300 people and the only one that end on a slightly positive note is Harue resurrected her son at the expense of Ayame's life. However the true ending has the storyteller basically spell it out that the best thing to do is do not use the rite at all. It fucked up the fisherman's entire family and it's going to fuck up a lot more if it weren't for Seiman's telling the characters what to do throughout the game.
I do agree that games that pull the "going back in time to undo the entire story for the golden ending" kinda annoy me too, but it keeps my man Okiie alive so worth.
If you like this kind of mechanic, I'd strongly recommend 9-nine. The story structure is similar to this game minus the horror in exchange for a lot of high school romance and supernatural battles.
 
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Namesarehardtocomeupwith said:
I think the bad end is pretty well justified. Two of the ending had Nejima murdered like 300 people and the only one that end on a slightly positive note is Harue resurrected her son at the expense of Ayame's life. However the true ending has the storyteller basically spell it out that the best thing to do is do not use the rite at all. It fucked up the fisherman's entire family and it's going to fuck up a lot more if it weren't for Seiman's telling the characters what to do throughout the game.
I do agree that games that pull the "going back in time to undo the entire story for the golden ending" kinda annoy me too, but it keeps my man Okiie alive so worth.
If you like this kind of mechanic, I'd strongly recommend 9-nine. The story structure is similar to this game minus the horror in exchange for a lot of high school romance and supernatural battles.
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I'll take a look at that. Back to Paranormasight, the issue is that all the character development gets reset by the ending (though the game does the usual "people dream of it") which is the worse part of those endings. Plus it's not like the rite was used in the last bad end.
 
wtfNeedSignUp said:
I'll take a look at that. Back to Paranormasight, the issue is that all the character development gets reset by the ending (though the game does the usual "people dream of it") which is the worse part of those endings. Plus it's not like the rite was used in the last bad end.
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The one where Yoko killed Erio and Mio? I thought her entire motivation was getting her hand on the rite and use it to resurrect Ashino?
As for the character development, I see it as it has to be done kinda deal. If the events of the game really did happen, then Yakko have to go to prison for a crime she didn't really commit, and Ayame only learn the meaning of Christmas after beating her father (both of them in fact) to death. The only one getting worse off is Harue. She finally came to term with her son's death and even gave up the rite at the end of the game and then the ending just have her think it's a dream.
I guess you can say everything up to that point is just solely for the purpose of awakening Seiman's memory, and once he remembers he just goes "fuck this bitch" and kills Yoko, plot be damned. Maybe I'm getting to that age of getting tired of tragedy in fiction and prefer stories with happy ending even at the expense of the story.
 
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Is Needy Streamer Overload a good VN or is it one of those ironic shitty VNs?
 
Sanest school friend



Dude also scammed the MC (who can act like a jester) by borrowing him 10k yen, the excuse being a gift supposedly meant for a girlfriend.
The demo of Doukyuusei remake recently came out on the Nintendo Switch, and this console version has apparently exclusive events and CGs compared to the Windows version.

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Finished two games:
* Return to Shironagasu Island - Fun Murder mystery with Resident Evil esque twist. Nice overall and doesn't overstay it's welcome. Recommend for PC since you can then have the very good Japanese dub (why the fuck wasn't it included is beyond me). Hope to see the characters in more games since it's a good case of setting up protagonists without explaining too much about their backstory and only seeing their actions and personality.
* Witch of the Holy Night - It's great. Good main cast with good enough writing for them to have their personal faults. Goes dark but never too dark. Sadly it's only like 3 hours of action in 20 hours novel so if you don't like the cast you'd probably be bored, the optional chapters are especially bad with dragging on. Also has the usual Nasu sin of being very autistic about lore and world building only to throw everything aside when the action actually starts and people do crazy shit because just about everyone is 2 degrees of separation from a literal god. Alice is pretty adorable.
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Just finished Tokyo Necro and it was a blast. I thought the 3d model fight scenes were just going to be a random advertising gimmick but Nitro made them badass. I also thought I'd feel neutral about the main characters but they were both really well fleshed out beyond the tropes they initially appear to be.

Nitro did a fantastic job pairing everything with the right song at the right time. A couple of the final battles in each route were on a whole different level because of the music. I think the only thing I didn't like was that the "ghost in the machine" character was a bit too contrived and could have been explained better/more. She was more of a plot device than anything else so that didn't take away from my overall experience.

I feel bad saying this but Tokyo Necro retroactively made me like Dies Irae a little bit less because it did the edgy action shit so much better and with a more heart. Dies Irae is still good, but if you only had to play one I'd pick Tokyo Necro no regrets.
 
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I brought it up in the Gundam thread but after playing the demo I'm legit excited about a Western visual novel called

Stories from Sol: The Gun-Dog -​





It basically taps into the surprisingly empty market of serving on aboard a Gundam inspired spaceship and interacting with the crew. With a very nostalgic and cool looking PC-98 filter look.

You are a security officer onboard a small ship responding to a mystery signal on the edge of space. At first your job is to just confirm everything Is bog standard and going smoothly, but then everything goes wrong. You have to work with the volatile crew and temperamental ship systems to figure out and fix things

I really want to hear other opinions on it, It seems pretty ambitious for what it is.

There are unfortunately pronoun choices in the beginning ( you look like a normal human being if you pick male or female) and one of the crew pilots looks like a trap, but otherwise It plays solid and I had a good experience.
 
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Michael Wade said:
I brought it up in the Gundam thread but after playing the demo I'm legit excited about a Western visual novel called

Stories from Sol: The Gun-Dog -​





It basically taps into the surprisingly empty market of serving on aboard a Gundam inspired spaceship and interacting with the crew. With a very nostalgic and cool looking PC-98 filter look.

You are a security officer onboard a small ship responding to a mystery signal on the edge of space. At first your job is to just confirm everything Is bog standard and going smoothly, but then everything goes wrong. You have to work with the volatile crew and temperamental ship systems to figure out and fix things

I really want to hear other opinions on it, It seems pretty ambitious for what it is.

There are unfortunately pronoun choices in the beginning ( you look like a normal human being if you pick male or female) and one of the crew pilots looks like a trap, but otherwise It plays solid and I had a good experience.
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Looks pretty cool. Kinda like Ever7 with more point and click elements.
 
AWarmToiletSeat said:
Looks pretty cool. Kinda like Ever7 with more point and click elements.
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The writing is pretty solid. I haven't tried to break it yet, but there's a lot of things to look at and mess with. Music is very catchy. The final game is supposed to have a lot of consequences to your seemingly minor decisions. That's apparently what's taking so long for the writer to get it out.


It's a love letter to Gundam.
 
AWarmToiletSeat said:
Unless this is just a huge troll by the social media guy at Shiravune, it looks like we're getting Mashiro Iro Symphony in English. This game is one of the oldest white whales that the community had back in the day. There was like one guy who got 80% done with the common route back in the fuwanovel days, but there's been nothing since then. That being said, I haven't seen a whole lot of praise for straightforward moege here on the KF thread, so don't go in expecting a masterpiece. It's just a high school romance VN with REALLY good artwork.

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Following up on this now the game is out. The English script is a little weird, it's barely within my tolerance, your mileage may vary. Artwork holds up, but the presentation hasn't really been adjusted for 16:9 even though the cg and backgrounds have been redrawn. And, the story is... exactly what you expect. 9Nine this is not. It's just a standard Highschool romance game. Not even an exceptional one along the lines of Hatsukoi 1/1, it's closer to something like Hoshi Ori. It does do some fun stuff with character portraits. They all have a lot of poses, and sometimes they'll slip main character portraits into the background to show them doing stuff. It's cool and I wonder why I don't see more VNs do it.
 
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AWarmToiletSeat said:
Following up on this now the game is out. The English script is a little weird, it's barely within my tolerance, your mileage may vary. Artwork holds up, but the presentation hasn't really been adjusted for 16:9 even though the cg and backgrounds have been redrawn. And, the story is... exactly what you expect. 9Nine this is not. It's just a standard Highschool romance game. Not even an exceptional one along the lines of Hatsukoi 1/1, it's closer to something like Hoshi Ori. It does do some fun stuff with character portraits. They all have a lot of poses, and sometimes they'll slip main character portraits into the background to show them doing stuff. It's cool and I wonder why I don't see more VNs do it.
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This nigga's cool too.

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wtfNeedSignUp said:
* Witch of the Holy Night - It's great. Good main cast with good enough writing for them to have their personal faults. Goes dark but never too dark. Sadly it's only like 3 hours of action in 20 hours novel so if you don't like the cast you'd probably be bored, the optional chapters are especially bad with dragging on. Also has the usual Nasu sin of being very autistic about lore and world building only to throw everything aside when the action actually starts and people do crazy shit because just about everyone is 2 degrees of separation from a literal god. Alice is pretty adorable
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Actually finally finished Witch last night on Switch. I agree with your criticisms. That said, when it gets going, it gets going. Sojuriu vs Beowolf is still giving me chills. It took me about a year to finish it, and in the end, was it worth it? Yes. Despite the typical Nasu autism, the story and action was well worth it. And getting to see the 5th magic. Which was epic.
 
WelperHelper99 said:
Actually finally finished Witch last night on Switch. I agree with your criticisms. That said, when it gets going, it gets going. Sojuriu vs Beowolf is still giving me chills. It took me about a year to finish it, and in the end, was it worth it? Yes. Despite the typical Nasu autism, the story and action was well worth it. And getting to see the 5th magic. Which was epic.
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Pretty much. I liked the Disney Land segment most for being classic escalation with the giant beam cannon at the end. The Beowolf fight I'm torn over, on one hand there's the the cool factor of Sojuriu basically tanking an instant death attack to counter with basic ass martial art (which logically would be affective against something immune to magic), on the other hand it's still a stronger human vs. a demi god winning purely by being MC.
 
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