Visual Novels

  • Want to keep track of this thread?
    Accounts can bookmark posts, watch threads for updates, and jump back to where you stopped reading.
    Create account

Do you play visual Novels?

  • No, because that’s fucking gay

    Votes: 84 15.8%

  • Yes, because I read them for the plot

    Votes: 196 36.9%

  • No, because they’re not really video games

    Votes: 34 6.4%

  • Yes, because anime girls are better than real women

    Votes: 116 21.8%

  • No, but I think about playing them

    Votes: 68 12.8%

  • Yes, but I do it ironically

    Votes: 33 6.2%
  • Total voters
    531
Jewthulhu said:
That's my main problem. If you're going to do the bare minimum in terms of "gameplay," there should at least be a great story (or really fucking immersive/mind-blowing atmosphere). While having a "choose your own adventure" type story works in RPGs, it feels like a crutch for general storywriting and typically results in weaker stories. And if you're going to have no gameplay and a meh story, you can at least make good visuals.
Then again, I am fairly picky in terms of stories.
Click to expand...
The Choose Your Own Adventure stuff had the same problem when it was published in real books as well. The genre mostly died off because CYOA type stuff was very weak narratively, and some required you to hunt through the book for the real ending or timeline by using methods like trying to find the pages that were never mentioned at all in any of the choices.

The sense of choice these books provided didn't match the sense of adventure that a singular narrative can provide that authors wrote in regular books. All possible scenarios choices usually turned into a much weaker story overall and you couldn't get things like proper character arcs. What stories that these titles tried to tell were often compared to dime store romance novels or other things of very low tier. It was deemed a gimmick and the titles were segregated from normal Fiction or Fantasy.

Part of writing is being able to transport your audience to your world and have them imagine it successfully, for example Harlan Ellison was one of the most prolific short story writers in science fiction and could do more with less. Many of his works do not take hours and hours to read but they stand the test of time due to their quality.
 
That's what I mean though. Aren't the characters in Shuffle and stuff like...high schoolers?
 
Jewthulhu said:
That's my main problem. If you're going to do the bare minimum in terms of "gameplay," there should at least be a great story (or really fucking immersive/mind-blowing atmosphere). While having a "choose your own adventure" type story works in RPGs, it feels like a crutch for general storywriting and typically results in weaker stories. And if you're going to have no gameplay and a meh story, you can at least make good visuals.
Then again, I am fairly picky in terms of stories.
Click to expand...
While I admit that I'm not too difficult, I think it's futile to expect everything to be some kind of 'masterpiece' as it's fine to enjoy things even if they can be flawed, and that goes for other game genres as well. But it's also fine to say visual novels/japanese ADV games aren't for everyone, even more so for certain sub-categories: such as moege or chuunige (which LOVES to use uncommon kanji jukugo just to screw with the reader or unfortunate translator).

I suppose the more old-school japanese ADV games may be more up in your alley, like Kamaitachi no Yoru:

Source is episode 113 (season 14) of Game Center CX, in case anyone is curious to see more of it. Arino does several old-school detective VNs in the TV show.
As far as I recall only the PsVita/PC remake (which is less of a sound novel due of full drawn illustrations) got an english fan-translation.
 
Another VNcel checking in. I'd like to finish Kanon and Air this year; I've been putting those off for ages.

Think I'll finally get into Type-Moon too, now that Mahoutsukai no Yoru is being localized. Is that Switch version of Tsukihime worth checking out? I see a fan translation is available.
 
Played two games:
* The Centennial Case : A Shijima Story - A mystery visual novel with live action scenes in it. I went in hoping it was like 428: Shibuya Scramble, unfortunately it's more of a soap opera than the wacky shit that game had, which makes it feel very slow and I found myself looking at my phone during the live action scenes that went too long. The gameplay itself is also slow and monotonous with it being split into a part where you fit in clues for theories (that never becomes too complex and always has a time wasting explanation and animation after every clue) and a "choose your answer" segments that you need to answer correctly. It is really annoying those segments force you to go through so many menus after you fail because a lot of the charm in those games is to purposely give shit answers and then see how the world reacts. The individual mysteries themselves are alright, but the final mystery that wraps them all together is underwhelming. At least the game is actually decent in not cheating and actually gives you the ground rules (which technically don't really apply in the final mystery but it's not that bad). The game is about 10 hours and is overpriced as shit. The acting and costumes are pretty good though.

* The Sekimeiya: Spun Glass - A mystery novel about a group of people stuck in a tower with a stone that can skip people through time and a killer(?) on the loose, with them needing to survive for 12 hours. I played about 10 hours of this and stopped. It might be getting better but it's just too wordy and convoluted to be fun or engaging, some of the reviewers argue that the characters are smart, but when a character needs to autistically analyze his situation every fucking scene it just gets tiresome. The idea with the time skipping stone (at least from my guess) is that after going back in time you basically put a new layer of reality, rather than any cause and effect, creating ridiculous situations and things to be way too convoluted. The big issue is that not knowing the rules of the stone, as well as adding teleportation and time travel, just makes things too complex for the reader to even begin to piece together, especially when it's new realities being formed. It might be getting better, but it just makes me think the game is designed for people who like to smell their own farts, being convoluted is not the same as being clever.
 
Seven Costanza said:
Another VNcel checking in. I'd like to finish Kanon and Air this year; I've been putting those off for ages.

Think I'll finally get into Type-Moon too, now that Mahoutsukai no Yoru is being localized. Is that Switch version of Tsukihime worth checking out? I see a fan translation is available.
Click to expand...
Yes, the Tsukihime remake is an objective improvement over the original in almost every way. I'm genuinely impressed with it since I was convinced it couldn't be released on the switch let alone in current year. Its only part 1 of 2 though, and only half of it is actually translated. Don't expect the actually really good part for at least 3-20 more years though.
I wouldn't really bother with anything else typemoon, pretty much everything else is meh or outright bad.
 
I recently finished Clannad and Tomoyo After and really enjoyed both, makes me kind of regret putting them off for so long.

Probably will read through Chaos;Head Noah now that CoZ has released their patch for the Steam version of the game.
 
Marissa Moira said:
The Choose Your Own Adventure stuff had the same problem when it was published in real books as well. The genre mostly died off because CYOA type stuff was very weak narratively, and some required you to hunt through the book for the real ending or timeline by using methods like trying to find the pages that were never mentioned at all in any of the choices.
Click to expand...
Choose Your Own Adventures died off because videogames ate their lunch. Hunting for pages was rare, and caused by typos and editing mistakes, not deliberately. You can see for yourself -- many popular books of the type, including all of Fighting Fantasy and Choose Your Own Adventure, have flowcharts published online.

I don't know what you mean by "very weak narratively". Choice of Games narration was no better than CYOA the series even back when playing those games wouldn't give your super AIDS (maybe only a bit of gonorrhea), and somehow those things took off. Fighting Fantasy was a good simulator of the classic sword and sorcery novelette. Many FF books were just as imaginative, some were masterpieces. (The one aspect -- prominent in visual novels -- where gamebooks were mostly failing was recurring NPCs and "character development", but sword and sorcery novelettes weren't exactly famous for that either.)

As solvability goes, visual novel players have it much, much worse; visual novels have invisible states, hidden choices, too many inconsequential choices in even small games for them to be mappable by hand. A one-month princess trainer with one choice and 4 options per day has 1,152,921,504,606,846,976 leaves before the plot even starts.
 
Last edited:
I finally got around to playing Stein's Gate and it fucking sucks.

0. Shit release. Doesn't run in fullscreen mode, and I had to install some insecure garbage to get it to launch at all.
1. Boring writing. Maybe it's better in the original, but I can't read Japanese without a dictionary and won't bother with the kanji for this. Inexcusable in an "overwhelmingly positive" VN, cheapass games like Defender's Quest and Immortal Defense (both tower defense) and Opus Magnum (puzzle) have better writing by far.
2. Dodgy muh tweeeests and no command of basic physics. Ooh, you expect a burly security guy, but it's a hot chick! Surprise! (I'd expected that chick, I'd read the fucking manual.) And do they not know what a gravity well is? Very low expectations for the time travel parts now.
3.1 Gross Down's syndrome girl.
3.2 Troon.
3.z Yes I get the protagonist is a loser and hangs out with other losers, but this is one of those VNs where I'm supposed to work toward a "good" ending, and I'm not motivated to, I wish they'd all die in sufficiently amusing ways. However, seems like it's not going to happen without the destruction of humanity -- if so, keeping the world hostage thusly is also a "bad writing" tell.
 
Artificial Pigeons has really captured my attention. I'm not too sure about how plausible the setting is. But, I do really like the general vibe it's going for. Feels kinda like a denpage without all the schizophrenic rambling.
 
The release date for ANONYMOUS;CODE in the west has been announced along with the further announcement that the VN will also be dubbed in English.
Personally I don't have high hopes for this release as Spike Chunsoft has already done a pretty shit job at translating the rest of the series. Throwing a dub in the mix sounds like a recipe for disaster.

Screenshot 2023-03-21 210239.png
1679442595576874.jpg
 
Marissa Moira said:
The Choose Your Own Adventure stuff had the same problem when it was published in real books as well. The genre mostly died off because CYOA type stuff was very weak narratively, and some required you to hunt through the book for the real ending or timeline by using methods like trying to find the pages that were never mentioned at all in any of the choices.

The sense of choice these books provided didn't match the sense of adventure that a singular narrative can provide that authors wrote in regular books. All possible scenarios choices usually turned into a much weaker story overall and you couldn't get things like proper character arcs. What stories that these titles tried to tell were often compared to dime store romance novels or other things of very low tier. It was deemed a gimmick and the titles were segregated from normal Fiction or Fantasy.

Part of writing is being able to transport your audience to your world and have them imagine it successfully, for example Harlan Ellison was one of the most prolific short story writers in science fiction and could do more with less. Many of his works do not take hours and hours to read but they stand the test of time due to their quality.
Click to expand...
Mhhh.

Yeah some gamebooks had horrible confusing gameplay and were full of gimmick.
Shout out to fire wolf in which turning left can kill you instantly and in which the combat mechanics are so weird and convoluted that no one even did the battle the right way.
The book locks you out the good ending if you go to your weddding. ;)
Some gamebooks are so cryptic that you can get stucked or be forced to cheat.
Some stories were goosebumps tier stories also.

However some gamebook series are near masterpieces.
Lonewolf, Sorcery and Quest of grail are all great series with good characters, universe and with quality and diversity of choices way better than 99% of Vns.

The final book of those feels like the culmination of all your choices, decisions and errors.
The genre had his flaws and kinda died because of it but some series are example of how great gamebook can be.
 
I started this free visual novel, A War of a Madman's Making. Overly sensitive Rightists were claiming it was Ukrainian propaganda, and it might be inspired by that in its timeliness, but it isn't, and that to me (along with some other things) highlights how fucking sensitive they've gotten over the years. But what it is is a visual novel where you are the general of a NaziCommie country assigned to lead a hopeless invasion by the deranged HitlerStalin you serve. The Soviet theming is heaviest, there's strong Stalin: Court of the Red Tsar vibes with the ministers being catty girls and drinking constantly, and it sometimes slips quotes and such from real figures.

Now, this was my first visual novel, and in principle I can be in favor of elitist choose-your-own-adventure books just like how I'll allow that some "graphic novels" (pompous comic books) have artistic merit. I do think the visual novel is more comparable to a novel than it is a game as long as its whole structure is just going down a decision tree.

This, however, is piss-poor writing. So extremely amateurish, it comes across as something a person would write if they had never written prose before in their life. And I suspect, from what I've seen in Let's Plays and such, that this is what passes for a visual novel in even the top of the genre. Descriptions are short and choppy, dialogue is short and written directly at the player. I see what's intended, it's meant to feel like you're being talked to, but it is not good, it's driven entirely by high concept and nothing else. Something like Telltale's Walking Dead success at being choose-your-own-adventure TV better than this does a book.

What is supposed to be good stuff in this genre? I know the famous mass-appeal ones (Doki Doki, Song of Saya, le funny bird/gay dad game, that stuff), I know Over the Hills and Far Away, almost all of it looks like animu love stories.
 
Ughubughughughughughghlug said:
I started this free visual novel, A War of a Madman's Making. Overly sensitive Rightists were claiming it was Ukrainian propaganda, and it might be inspired by that in its timeliness, but it isn't, and that to me (along with some other things) highlights how fucking sensitive they've gotten over the years. But what it is is a visual novel where you are the general of a NaziCommie country assigned to lead a hopeless invasion by the deranged HitlerStalin you serve. The Soviet theming is heaviest, there's strong Stalin: Court of the Red Tsar vibes with the ministers being catty girls and drinking constantly, and it sometimes slips quotes and such from real figures.

Now, this was my first visual novel, and in principle I can be in favor of elitist choose-your-own-adventure books just like how I'll allow that some "graphic novels" (pompous comic books) have artistic merit. I do think the visual novel is more comparable to a novel than it is a game as long as its whole structure is just going down a decision tree.

This, however, is piss-poor writing. So extremely amateurish, it comes across as something a person would write if they had never written prose before in their life. And I suspect, from what I've seen in Let's Plays and such, that this is what passes for a visual novel in even the top of the genre. Descriptions are short and choppy, dialogue is short and written directly at the player. I see what's intended, it's meant to feel like you're being talked to, but it is not good, it's driven entirely by high concept and nothing else. Something like Telltale's Walking Dead success at being choose-your-own-adventure TV better than this does a book.

What is supposed to be good stuff in this genre? I know the famous mass-appeal ones (Doki Doki, Song of Saya, le funny bird/gay dad game, that stuff), I know Over the Hills and Far Away, almost all of it looks like animu love stories.
Click to expand...
Visual Novels are weird, and they definitely appeal to a specific demographic. But, if I had to pick a novel to recommend to a normie, I'd probably choose Planetarian, because it's basically just a simple picture book that you can read on the computer. However; if you want a more traditional ADV game, the Tsukihime remake is pretty good, but you have to be pretty comfortable messing with Nintendo Switch emulation to read it.
 
Just recently finished Baldr Sky. It was very good, though I think the way the twist was executed in the final route kinda took away from the impact of things.

I think things would have been more impactful if the final Kou wasn't an AI or whatever. I get that he had all the memories and stuff that effectively makes him the same as the real one but it's not really the same. I think the story would have been sweeter if Sora sacrificed herself to save the other Kou's in the other timelines and then the AI Sora and AI Kou stick around to become real people in the true end.

I also only just finished Steins;Gate and holy shit was it good. All the buildup was totally worth it.
 
Poop A Loop said:
Just recently finished Baldr Sky. It was very good, though I think the way the twist was executed in the final route kinda took away from the impact of things.

I think things would have been more impactful if the final Kou wasn't an AI or whatever. I get that he had all the memories and stuff that effectively makes him the same as the real one but it's not really the same. I think the story would have been sweeter if Sora sacrificed herself to save the other Kou's in the other timelines and then the AI Sora and AI Kou stick around to become real people in the true end.

I also only just finished Steins;Gate and holy shit was it good. All the buildup was totally worth it.
Click to expand...
The last route in Baldr Sky is weird and while the basic idea is neat, it doesn't make any sense considering the character relationships in the other routes. It's still a satisfying ending just for closing most plot threat and kicking tons of ass.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom