Visual Novels

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Do you play visual Novels?

  • No, because that’s fucking gay

    Votes: 83 15.7%

  • Yes, because I read them for the plot

    Votes: 195 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 21.9%

  • No, but I think about playing them

    Votes: 68 12.9%

  • Yes, but I do it ironically

    Votes: 33 6.2%
  • Total voters
    529
ShitLurker said:
OK, Finished Ever17. And fuck me, yes, sacrifice indeed, though is this fanart? No image like this exists int he game.
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Its not fan art. Its official box art you can find on VNDB. I'm glad you enjoyed it! The plot twist, when it happens, really just blows your mind with so much emotions. So much shit happens, and its a roller coaster.. I don't know if you're similar with Steins;Gate (which is considered probably the best VN of all time) but KID's employees (the people behind Ever17) worked on that too. That's why they are so similar with twists and themes i.g. science fiction and conspiracies. However, I'm not sure what you mean by Ever17 BW route? There are two versions of Ever17, and I haven't read the one released on steam which apparently is the remastered version that changes the story a lot. A lot people recommend avoiding it but its up to you.

Otherwise, Tsugumi reminds me of Yumiko from Grisaia. Just a well-written, wonderful kuudere.
 
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If you like horror VNs and like CYOA book style choice systems, you'll probably like Apathy - Midnight Collection ~Vol. 1~

It's an anthology VN with 3 different stories inside of it by 3 different artists. If you like choice variety and your choices mattering, this one of the best for that. There are an absolute fuckton of different things that can happen depending on your choices. This is easily the most variety I have seen in a long time, and I've read a ton of VNs. Further, it can go a bit crazy with things you can do. Like eating an old lady's eyeball, cooking a dog you find on the street or raising it back to health, or getting abducted by aliens because you slacked in your security guard duties.

I wrote a review for it that I ended up canning, and I never posted it anywhere, so I'll post a snippet here to illustrate just how much variety there is:

Let me give one specific example from each story slightly more in-depth. Keep in mind, there are hundreds of choices with different plots in most, so this is nowhere near exhaustive. It’s just one example for each story. (Note the 3rd story has no choices, so this is only for the first 2)

Story 1: There is a choice in the first story that has 3 options. Your friend is inviting you to a speed dating event.

Option 1: You can choose to join in the speed dating event. Then the plot becomes centered around the protagonist and her new love interest with many, many different routes from there (such as being a normal girlfriend only to be abandoned as it was only a one night stand and killing him in revenge, or recruiting your stalker to kill other women who may get close to him, or him cheating on you and becoming a single mother, or him killing your stalker and you live happily ever after, or getting alone with him and him killing you for a snuff film. There are just 5 examples of many that can stem from this one choice. There’s like 20.).

Option 2: You could also choose to go work instead of speed dating. If you do, you will discover a stray puppy (who you can choose to take care and go through many trials and tribulations with and many different endings await from here or you could choose to eat this stray dog for dinner. Yes, you can choose to eat a dog in this VN).

Option 3: Do something else for fun. The protagonist finds a pachinko machine, but wins big and sells her strategy to millions at pachinko, making her an instant TV idol.


Story 2: The protagonist, her friend, and the friend’s crush are in the protagonist’s room trying to create a Novel/Doujin hybrid for Comiket. Now they are here, you have multiple choices (but I will only highlight two of them):

Option 1: Poison your friend’s crush because you want reference material on how someone acts while dying for your novel. If you pick this, you need to concoct the poison yourself (with a set of 5 separate prompts with various choices to make the poison leading to 15 separate choices to mix and match) and depending on if your poison was effective or not, you need to decide what to do next. For example, you could stab him to finish him off if it failed or gaslight your friend into believing it was suicide if the poison was effective.

Option 2: Decide to recruit the friend’s crush into your Comiket plans. With this, your group makes the deadline, becomes extremely popular, and you become one of the most successful Manga Circles ever.

AND NOTE: These are but one scenario from Story 1 and Story 2. Story 2 doesn't even need to have you go to your room, and the plot becomes school centered instead with completely different plotlines than everything I said about Story 2 (in fact, what I wrote about is a side branch of Story 2). Story 1 is also more complex than I let on. Trust me.
 
wtfNeedSignUp said:
I'm looking around for downloads, the only I could find that looks legit is:

Or is there a new version?
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That's the correct VN. As for your question, well, this is an entire franchise with many different entries and remakes. This anthology is actually a remake of some super famicom entries like Gakkou de Atta Kowai Hanashi. This is the only one in English though. Although, if you also speak Japanese, it was redone with some new art and more backstory with Apathy - Gakkou de Atta Kowai Hanashi ~Visual Novel Version~
 
Boiled Pizza said:
I felt like Little Busters was shorter, but that might have been because I enjoyed it a lot more than Clannad. Compared to Clannad, its focus is more on friendship rather than family and is a very comfy/wholesome read. It isn't solely focused on female characters either, which is a plus since the male characters are such bros. Routes vary a lot in quality, but the overall theme of friendship stays constant throughout the entire VN, and they all provide clues towards the overarching plot/mystery.

If you're up for something heartwarming as a break from the shitty times we live in, I'd say go for Little Busters. Doing a route every now and then works fine for this one. I never really felt like I had to consume all of it at once to understand what was happening.

Also interesting is that after the "true ending", you actually unlock more routes rather than it serving as the finale.
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OK, I don't think I'll tackle it next, but I'll definitely just purchase it next steam sale to have it in hand and go slowly through it like I did Clannad.
wtfNeedSignUp said:
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!
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... Island just shot up a few slots of the list
wtfNeedSignUp said:
All of those are okay, I'd probably go with Utawarerumono just because I'm a huge shill of the franchise.
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Uta 2 is very tempting since the end of 1 really was great setup for future events, depends on how the steam sales pan out I'd say.
Frederica Bernkastel said:
Its not fan art. Its official box art you can find on VNDB. I'm glad you enjoyed it! The plot twist, when it happens, really just blows your mind with so much emotions. So much shit happens, and its a roller coaster.. I don't know if you're similar with Steins;Gate (which is considered probably the best VN of all time) but KID's employees (the people behind Ever17) worked on that too. That's why they are so similar with twists and themes i.g. science fiction and conspiracies. However, I'm not sure what you mean by Ever17 BW route? There are two versions of Ever17, and I haven't read the one released on steam which apparently is the remastered version that changes the story a lot. A lot people recommend avoiding it but its up to you.

Otherwise, Tsugumi reminds me of Yumiko from Grisaia. Just a well-written, wonderful kuudere.
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Steins;Gate I've gone through and loved to pieces, now that you mention it, not surprised there is some shared DNA there. I do think that the Science Adventure stories peaked at Steins;Gate and nothing else I've played from them as come close, so anything else that is worth playing from them? As for the BW route thing, if you peeked in the youtube link seems like it's a Takeshi + You route, looked cute, though I didn't like how the backgrounds looked.

What is Grisaia's deal? Not aware of that one.

And yes, Tsugumi is a great Kudere, her "fondness art" is absolutely charming and you really feel it once everything is on the table, and her reunion with her children was fantastic, I'm just sad we didn't get something similar with Takeshi.
 
ShitLurker said:
Uta 2 is very tempting since the end of 1 really was great setup for future events, depends on how the steam sales pan out I'd say.
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Uta 2 is a 10/10 conclusion on top of a 10/10 trilogy. I still get chills when some of the OST comes on. It's absolutely worth it full price but any discount justifies snapping it up.

Though you might want to pick up Prelude to the Fallen to lend some weight to what you see happen in Uta 2. Either that or watch the anime for Prelude. That's what I did and it still made the end so much more satisfying.
 
ShitLurker said:
What is Grisaia's deal? Not aware of that one.
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The MC gets enrolled into a school for those who cannot fit into society for various reasons. Despite how omnious that sounds, the story is comedy for a very large part of it and I actually enjoy the comedy in the story. The heroine routes are all great and depart for the jokey nature of the common route and the MC is a top tier protagonist even if he isn't voiced. If you don't like long common routes that are primarily SOL, you might bounce off it but if that's your thing there's hardly anything that does it better. Michiru is the best character. (vndb link)

Note: even if you don't like H-scenes you kind of have to install the 18+ HCG patch as a good amount of the jokes are just cut from the all ages release for some reason. I guess some of them are too raunchy but I never thought that type of stuff would be cut.
 
HexFag said:
Does anybody have any experience with running VNs on Linux? I'm tired of Microsoft fucking me over and I want to finally make the move for my Chinese Picture Books. I know games that use the Muramasa engine are a complete nightmare to run or require some library fuckery. I also already know that running some VNs on Windows is already a pain in the ass on it's own so I'm absolutely looking forward to having to do it for Linux.
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The only advice I have is to get good at using Wine. Things are generally much better nowadays for normal games but VNs (especially older ones from the XP era) often rely on obscure media foundation stuff that'll you'll need to setup a custom 32-bit prefix and use winetricks with. Japanese VN devs seem to really love relying on the built-in Microsoft slop instead of shipping redistributables for running the game.

Also always check to see if Proton can run a game first before manually configuring wine.

Oh, and I'd just recommend getting good at using Linux in general. Getting the most out of wine is going to require you to use the command line and it'll behoove you to get some basic competency with it so you can understand the commands people will suggest to you online and alter them for your own setup.

Some other key system-level things:
1) Set up CJK support (Chinese, Japanese, and Korean). Even when games are fully translated, they sometimes rely on half-width Latin characters that are a relic of old Japanese PCs. This will often be per-distro so google around for whatever your distro is.
2) Get msfonts on your distro. A lot of games rely on the Microsoft fonts being available and will lose their shit if you don't have them. These are technically proprietary but if you own Windows you can just get them from MS after accepting a license agreement. Again this is per-distro (every distro names their msfonts package differently and some will require you to opt-in to a special repo to get it).
3) Configure a ja_JP.UTF-8 locale for your system. This is as simple as uncommenting ja_JP.UTF-8 in /etc/locale.gen and running sudo locale-gen. You'll need this locale enabled because internal program logic in JP games often assumes JP locale and will shit itself if you're running a non-JP locale. Linux can set the locale at the process level (kinda like what old applocale did in Windows) but you'll still need to generate it.
4) The Arch wiki is helpful even if you're not using Arch.
 
ShitLurker said:
Have in m wishlist
Aokana - Four Rythms Across the Blue which I imagine is just slice of life
Slay the princess - oh so clever western writting but I imagine it will be fun for a while and sounds short
Little Busters - From what I'm getting here, it's a must read, but rivals with Clannad on word count
Island - I imagine just something nice and chill
Gnosia - Sounds like crazy time shenanigans again, which are definitely something I enjoy, but would rather let rest till I get into it
Utawarerumono: Mask of Deception - Just continue the story

Anyone of those in particular that people have strong feelings about?
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Slay the Princess is enjoyable IMO, don't think I'd call it a masterpiece though. You get a bit of what you expect. Bit more of a CYOA. I think one run took me around 4 hours, but there is much more to the game.
Gnosia I've played a bit and enjoyed, but it is single player Town of Salem/Mafia. You do get abilities to deal with the AI, but you are still playing a social deduction game with AI. The VN bits you get either before all the characters are introduced or when you win based on survivors. The game will nudge so that you are getting opportunities for more story. There is an anime coming out this year, although the protagonist is faceless to my knowledge in the VN and given a face for the anime.
The Strongest Haaton said:
If you like horror VNs and like CYOA book style choice systems, you'll probably like Apathy - Midnight Collection ~Vol. 1~
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Will give it a shot, sounds interesting.
 
Billy the Adult said:
Slay the Princess is enjoyable IMO, don't think I'd call it a masterpiece though. You get a bit of what you expect. Bit more of a CYOA. I think one run took me around 4 hours, but there is much more to the game.
Gnosia I've played a bit and enjoyed, but it is single player Town of Salem/Mafia. You do get abilities to deal with the AI, but you are still playing a social deduction game with AI. The VN bits you get either before all the characters are introduced or when you win based on survivors. The game will nudge so that you are getting opportunities for more story. There is an anime coming out this year, although the protagonist is faceless to my knowledge in the VN and given a face for the anime.

Will give it a shot, sounds interesting.
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There's also sakuranomori as a horror vn. It's nothing too special. But, the monster designs are really good, and the sound and music do a great job of building tension.
 
Billy the Adult said:
Slay the Princess is enjoyable IMO, don't think I'd call it a masterpiece though. You get a bit of what you expect. Bit more of a CYOA. I think one run took me around 4 hours, but there is much more to the game.
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Slay the Princess is way too much up its ass to be excellent. All the fun is seeing the consequences of your choices, but the conclusion to the game is a textbook case of trying too hard to sound smart and deep.
 
Has anyone here played The Silver Case? I’m currently on chapter 2 and I want to know if it gets better on the latter chapters, I enjoy other Suda51 games like Killer7 but this one seems to be his most abstract work, I have no idea what is happening. I might just be a brainlet, I want to know if all the things that happen will get explained in the ending, or if it’s some David Lynch shit where you yourself need to decipher its meaning and connect all the pieces.
 
AWarmToiletSeat said:
There's also sakuranomori as a horror vn
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Keep in mind, this VN is a horror and moege mix. The common route is the entire plot of the VN (where the horror is), and then after it's resolved, it goes into the individual routes. While I liked the idea of mixing the genres, it didn't really stick the landing. I liked it more than most as I like both genres, but it's a mixed bag. Plus, some are miffed they can't romance a specific girl, which was rectified in the second one, but unless you speak Japanese, you're stuck with the first one.
Terriermon said:
played The Silver Case? I’m currently on chapter 2
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You got much farther than me. I couldn't parse shit even in the prologue, but I get why it would appeal to people. I dropped it earlier than you, so I can't say.
 
Terriermon said:
Has anyone here played The Silver Case? I’m currently on chapter 2 and I want to know if it gets better on the latter chapters, I enjoy other Suda51 games like Killer7 but this one seems to be his most abstract work, I have no idea what is happening. I might just be a brainlet, I want to know if all the things that happen will get explained in the ending, or if it’s some David Lynch shit where you yourself need to decipher its meaning and connect all the pieces.
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EaR rApE TyPeWriTer SoUnDs
 
Okay I've decided to go into SciAdv next with Chaos;Head. I'm still in chapter 1 but I've noticed that a lot of people online seem to really hate the MC in this one. tbh I vibed with him immediately because he kinda reminds me of what I was like in high school.

Also half the discourse seems to be zoomers calling each other gooners but it just seems like a generic 2000s animu in terms of fanservice so far so iunno if I'm just out of touch or what
 
Looks like the Sakura no Uta translation got canned due to DMCAs. Looks like it's time to put the anki flashcards in the bag.
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I finished 5 routes in The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy so far which are Slasher, Killing Game, Retsnom, Coming-Of-Age and Box of Calamity. I'd say all of them were just alright but mostly because they just kind of a drag themselves out all for endings that just aren't very satisfying, I'd actually say that there are a hand full of bad endings that are better than any good endings because they actually have a sense of finality. I don't think any of these stories on their own are as good as any of the Danganronpa or Zero Escape games but now that I've satisfied the conditions for the story locks, I'm gonna go do those routes and see if the revelations can recontextualize the rest of the game and make it better in hindsight. I'll save my final judgement for when I have more done but so far, it's just okay. I don't feel like my time has been wasted but my mind isn't blown or anything, it's good enough that I've been consistently playing it for about 2 hours before going to sleep every day.
 
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