What VN are you playing? What do you think about it?

Continuing on Whirlpool's 竜翼のメロディア -Diva with the blessed dragonol.

So the story's really good (for a pure love one). The main heroines Meru and Flora has some pretty amazing song scenes, and Meru is less annoying than I initially thought. Her voice actor still irks me though, because they could definitely do away with that deliberate kawaii~ tone and go with a more normal one instead. Once again, Flora's voice actor is really, really amazing and fits the character perfectly.

Cynthia's route is rather short - still have one route I haven't finished yet, but possibly the shortest one out of all - but overall it was pretty well done. The problems are not overly decorated and the characters true to their personalities, so all is good. The only thing I feel dissatisfied about it is that they could've used her parents as a discussable topic in her route with all the foreshadowing and all, but they didn't.

Which brings me to Selphie's route. For the first 2/3 of her route everything was very well written and detailed, but near the end everything was unveiled way too suddenly and short. Granted, I have great respect for the writer and scene animators because of how well they managed to handle the displays despite the sudden cut - suspected time constraint and shit - but the near ending definitely could've been written much better. I feel poor for the villain because the person was presented to be subtle and smart, and yet suddenly the villain decides to be stupid just because.

EDIT: Finished everything. Chloe's route is definitely my second favorite after Floria's. Her 'researcher' outfit is probably the first one ever to open my eyes; I'd really like to see it made on real life if possible.

The True Route was, well, haah... Disappointing. Even if I don't mention the weird bug that rotates a few particular CGs 100 million times per second, the true end felt rushed, cliched, and incomplete. Sure, the duet was beautiful to listen for the ears, but the scenes are just... too rushed.

Onto the next VN, 催眠遊戯. If you're wondering why I'm suddenly going through these with lightning speed, it's just because I'm trying to tell myself the end isn't coming and I don't have 2 tests at the morrow at 8am morning and I haven't studied shit and my project's deadline is coming up etc etc etc. Escapism to its max. Ahem.

So first impression. For what seems to be a short H VN, it has some AMAZINGLY GOOD interface. The whole interface design must've been made from scratch, because it's unlike anything I've seen before and follows a much, much, MUCH cleaner format. It's worth going through this VN even if the story might turn out shitty (which I haven't go through so don't judge it just yet) just to enjoy the new, clean, beautiful interface.

EDIT 2:

Uh wow, 催眠遊戯. Psychologically brutal is all I can say. I went through my favorite girl's route and was treated to one helluva show. How to put it? The psychological torture through Hypnosis - so evil yet so irresistible - here is absolutely amazing. First, the protagonist here had an amazing personality. Yes, if you try to go on a 'love' route with a specific girl, you'll notice that he truly respects and loves the girl he chose to train his hypnosis with. And, as a man, he can justify clearly that using his hypnosis to maximize a girl's affection for him is the same as how a normal guy tries everything he has to hit on a girl (which btw, I agree). The only difference here is that his actions are seen as criminal. He does make sure that his girl is happy, so depending on how 'wide' your morality view is, this guy can either be good or insanely terrifying.

He also plays fair, to a certain extent. When trying to decide whether to continue hypno-loving a girl, he put down to suggestions into the girl: 1, he maximizes the sexual desire and affection of a girl towards him. 2, he emphasis that the girl will use her own will and judgment to decide whether she wants to take a step further and seal their 'love' once and for all. Obviously the cheating elements are still huge here, but it is true that he never tried to work against the girl's wishes.

The hypnosis techniques and theories worked here all sound extremely believable and pretty goddamn logical honestly, for a stranger to hypnosis. Details were spelled out painstakingly, and this makes the sex scenes er... how to say, brutal. That's the only word I can think of honestly. SCARY AS HELL is another good description. After how he broke a girl's heart, implanted fake memories and 'live happily ever after' with her was so... WRONG that I can't help but grimace-skip through the next girl, and finally could not stand it and simply downloaded the save file. I don't think I can take the evil honestly. >_>

There are still some logic holes of course: 1) A hypnosis show should be done on total strangers (and in this case, his friends) to make the hypnosis believable, and the idea of hypnotizing just one specific person will always be seen as 'fake'. Next, the protagonist had promised at a certain girl's route not to humiliate the girl with his hypnosis, and yet almost every technique they trained - something as simple as tricking out an emotion - can be seen as humiliating, which is weird.

All in all, one helluva epic hypnosis VN and the absolute BEST in its theme. Man I need the toilet.

[color=red]Zolnir. Well Saimin Yuugi is pretty much the MOST REALISTIC hypnosis VN so far. The method he use is based on real life (believe me, I have experienced stuff like that few years ago. And the chair - girl body - chair CG is possible irl)

The one thing that I couldn't understand is, from what I've heard, most people won't tolerate negative suggestion and will wake up from hypnosis trance. Well I need to read more now.

Oh yeah, by the way, I haven't FINISHED IT. I'm just posting a quick review lol. I might finish it in 1 week. I'm downloading this because of Sayori-sama artwork lol

edit : This VN sounds more evil than NTR VN honestly lol

Yeah, like I say, there are a little plot holes in the VN if you scrutinize at it closely. One would be the, "you're not capable of resisting it because subconsciously, you want it to happen" logic. It sounds probable but actually was just hentai logic; while I'm lazy to look up real facts to support my words, I'm pretty sure the conscious mind will be able to override whatever subconscious commands that were given to them, IF they know exactly what the hypnotic suggestion is. Especially when faced with a crisis - the protagonist wasn't even using hypnosis at the end of some heroines and was just plain giving commands! Notice it! If it was exploiting natural routine then it's still barely acceptable, but to render people immobilize and force them to orgasm until near death (and completely broken) is just unrealistic. -_-"

I also remember that as soon as the 2nd and 3rd hypnosis, the protagonist was working to render the 'negative suggestion resistance' useless with simple, repeated and completely subtle suggestions (Ex: For the black hair beauty, her 'wake up' routine, that is to raise both her hands up in the air and stretch, is a way to gain her subconscious' approval and make her susceptible to hypnosis). Ultimately hypnosis forcefully induces the mind to execute certain routines again and again until it happens as naturally as breathing, and I do believe that there are certain things that the magician would be able to force no matter how much the subject tries to refuse. It's impossible for most people to control let's say, their internal organs right?

Although hypnosis' effects are of course way too overhyped, and while theoretically it's possible to force someone to er, orgasm against their will, that'll probably take at least years of continuous hypnosis.

Okay, now that's done and over, review for 999 Hours!

So, number 1: As usual, I envy the author's capabilities to shamelessly pick apart and construct false theories from loose facts and make them sound so goddamn convincing. I envy even more how they had managed to put so many puzzles - INTERESTING puzzles - and make them fit perfectly in the game. You just don't find such level of puzzles anywhere else.

Most of the major plot twists did not come as a surprise to me because I went through every other ending (except Coffin) first before unlocking the true end. Unfortunately I did fail to foresee the final major plot twist, even though I have played games like Ever 17 and Never 11.

The epilogue twist is funny as hell, that's for sure. It gave me the biggest surprise AND smile for the game. xD

My only gripe for 999 is that the last puzzle was just a fucking


ROFL XD

and like a certain user said in the past, the writer sure loves "water".

Indeed, that last puzzle totally killed the supposedly serious mood for me, I mean like, wtf right? XD

[color=red]Done with black haired girl route (Saimin Yuugi). Just brutal. Specially the H-scene at Prep Room (after dog act H-scene). I tried my best to be a "good guy" yet this MC personality is really fucked up at the end. What a terrifying personality.

I bet the scenario writer experienced real life hypnosis before. Because it's so fucking detailed, about how he describes the method and hypnosis trance. Yet about hypnosis for sex life, I haven't heard about it in real life. So it's hard to me to believe it. Some doesn't make sense for me, like climax with hypnosis only and such.

And, this game really makes hypnosis sounds so EVIL.

I think I'm gonna need some generic love-ero nukige after I finished this.

Well people say that overwhelming power always corrupt. Given that he had resisted his desires for quite some time (before giving in to evil logic and worked out a way around his 'promises'), we can say that he at least tried lawl. But yeah, this is one of the most evil H VNs I've ever read yet.

Been reading Hoshizora no Memoria -Wish upon a Shooting Star- from the beginning once again. Ahh, why do I love so much this VN =P coughmoegecough

I cleared all routes with exception of the misterious girl and Mare's.
In some minutes I'll start Hoshizora and will clear the misterious girl route in one go. I'm also thinking of clearing Mare's route while I'm at it to completely finish the VN.

Let's see... it's about 11PM around here so I should just go to sleep when it's about 6AM or later. This should be good lol
I just ate and have some juice by my side so I won't leave my computer in the next hours xD

Ah, the life of a VN reader. Day or night makes no difference for us. XD

Anyway, just finished Bible Black: Infection. A horrendous disappointment lol, it's so goddamn short and the protagonist acting so stupid!

Have a couple of games in store like Skyprythrem, Tomoyo After, Rewrite, Hotogisu, etc etc... But not really sure or want to play them for some reason. I wonder why. >_>

Don't you ever get bored of Visual Novels, Zolnir? Outside of work and/or school and basic human needs, do you do anything other than play them?

If you liked 999 and have a 3DS or a Vita, then try Zero Escape. It's more or less a sequel to it, supposedly.

So... just finished Hoshizora no Memoria and the current time is about 8:30 AM
Since I started around 11PM I was reading for at least 9 hours. Man, it's been quite a while since I spent so much time reading a VN in one go. I think the last time I done something like this was when I was reading Umineko. I really got hooked into it.

I already said previously what I think about it so I will just say that Mare and the misterious girl must be my waifus! lol
From all the VNs that I read until now, they are two of the best heroines I've seen so far.

Now if you'll excuse me, I seriously need some sleep.

[color=red]Da fuq was wrong with IB. Oh yeah VN talk...

Finished Tsukihime - Hisui's route. Didn't expect the switching part. But makes sense,
[color=red]
Now, onto Kohaku one, since I can't take Saimin's evilness for this week (lol weak)

About Saimin Yuugi, ugh... I guess I can't take the pettanko girl route for now.

OOT : E-mote system from Witch's Garden (upcoming November eroge wave) captivated me. Will it be the sign of Eroge's future games?

Playing 魔王と踊れ！2.

So far it has been a rather good (although slightly generic) fantasy game. I still hate dungeon crawling, but this game manage to minimize that tedious and annoying exploration with See-All-Map items (usable for one floor) and rather easy (if not non-existent) puzzles.

Will play Phenomeno as soon as my roommate turns off the light and goes to sleep. That should be around 3am, and the best time to play horror games. =3

EDIT: I have changed my view about 魔王と踊れ！2 completely. This is a hidden gem. This is a RPG that could very well compete with masterpieces like Eushelly's Ikusa Megami (And a lot less tedious to be honest). I underestimated it because the story started rather slow, but now that I'm halfway through, there is clearly a significant amount of work put into this. Innovative scene transitions, beautiful music videos, significant character development and even strong tie-ins to its prequel's protagonists. This is awesome. This is great. I'm definitely looking forward to Arcana when it comes out this 22 November.

EDIT 2: Completed 魔王と踊れ！2. Pretty good alright, except that on Normal difficulty - the hardest it could offer on normal playhthrough - it is still a little too easy. You barely ever need to use items (except See-Whole-Floor-Map item) and your magic skills are just plain overpowered. However, That's what makes it fun to play the game =3 I'LL BURN YOU FROM OVER HALF THE MAP MUAHAHAHAHA!

After a TON of time I finally played Saya no Uta again, finished with the first ending. Still one of the most f*cked up visual novels I've ever seen, but also one of the best ever.

Since Phenomeno thread dude seems to be missing I'll just be putting that here in instead.

EDIT: God playing this without lights at 3am in the morning is so bloody nerve wracking. Even though the:



EDIT 2: Okay, I've finished everything. Now to talk about impressions.

One, I started out with the English patch, but I later find that the font they use are utterly jarring and completely disregards the spooky atmosphere, so I chose to read it in Japanese (with the help of my ever trusty little TA) instead. It was a good decision, not only because the text is much more comfortable but also that I have an excuse to look away from the fucking screen and at the translation tool instead.

Next, spooky. As. Hell. Whoever did the sounds and musics are genius, and everyone involved in making this VN deserves a goddamn medal. Perhaps it's because I never read a horror VN before, but this one scared the hell out of me even though the flow is pretty generic (as in horror -> saved at the nick of time -> horror has not ended). It makes me wonder why the hell people aren't making more of these types of VN, but then again, it takes a strong heart to write such stuff and an even stronger one to make these things. Given Nitroplus' reputation to make bloody, evil VNs I'm pretty sure this was business as usual, but what the hell.

Three. The characters are fantastic. Maybe a little too unique to be true (Drunk old lady and the terrifying Yashu), but still excellent. For the former, she gave the idea that she was so very experienced that nothing short of the apocalypse would scare her. Yashu (the main female character), well, was just, yeah. I can't find a proper word to describe her. In a sense, she's like a mysterious gateway. Once you get to know her, there is no turning back, and she will drag you into 'that' world whether you like it or not. She is of course written to be the most interesting element in the story, but these could-be-rotten hidden potentials are made of superb quality.

I love this so much, that I'm going to check out the website and read the rest of the novel. I can read Japanese after all - though with some difficulty, but it's no problem getting the general idea of what a sentence mean - and there's no way I'm letting this gem fly away from my hands. Even if it means I might not see tomorrow.

So. Guess who I am?

EDIT 3: Finished the latest chapters. There are only four in total, and including the VN one only two stories all in all. The second story is less scary and is slightly more technical (in terms of spiritual talking), so everything's fine and all. How to say, it's not as interesting as the first one, but then again it's totally not enough for me to make a verdict on... something. It's definitely good enough that I'll bookmark it and wait for the next chapter though.

Thread is here

Man, I'm definitely reading Phenomeno after Amaranto.
You don't know how much you bumped me into reading Phenomeno lol

Regarding Amaranto, so far I just finished one route but the game is very mediocre. Stuff starts to happen before you get that "feel" for the characters and you don't enjoy as much as you want some scenes because of that. Directly related to this is the fact that the story seems pretty rushed. Also to mention the voice acting. Man, after Hoshizora no Memoria I kind of suffer with the voice acting on Amaranto but it's still bearable.

Let's see if I'll have my mind changed by the time I finish Amaranto.

What I meant was that the Phenomeno thread guy wanted to discuss something, but since my post was the last I can't exactly double post to make contact and my edits there were most likely missed. so I just moved them here.

Play it at midnight with the lights off. It's one of the rules I abide to (well reading books are different unfortunately) when reading these kind of stuff; it makes the atmosphere so much more indulging. =3

Yume Miru Kusuri is truly incredible, I'm playing Aeka's path 1st. On the side I have sexy demon transformation.

A talk on poor introduction of a Visual Novels. So I can list right off my head three VNs in my stock: Skyprythem, Rewrite, and Gurenka. Let's start with Skyprythem.

So Skyprythem is a musical themed Visual Novel which would supposedly present wonderful music and sound throughout your read. To put things shortly, it has a rather generic interface and a cool-looking clock popping up at the top right corner during the start of the scene, which was fine and everything. The character's okay, the drawings are okay, the opening lines didn't feel as generic as most VNs, so the experience was supposed to be good.

Except for one, single, most devastating element they forget to fix. The sound.

So right off the bat, you're going to be extremely irked by the sound because the BGM and voices fits each other horribly. The BGM-volume-down-when-voice-speaks feature is pretty common out there, but this VN has managed to screw this up to the point it's unbearable. So what did it do.

1) No sound effect. I'm not sure whether my version's buggy or something, but I can't hear any sound effects from this VN (no punch sound when being punched, no alarm ringing and stuff), and no, I did not turn off the sound effect volume. It's just not there.

2) This one's the worst. Immediate effect (no delay) in between the changes of BGM volume. So a character is talking something, and I'm a fast reader, so I didn't bother waiting and clicked for the next line. BGM immediately goes loud as the protagonist replies since he has no voice. If it was once or twice it would've been bearable, but in a conversation the switching is bound to happen extremely frequently, so basically the BGM brain fucks you as it goes loud and soft, loud and soft, again and again with every line you read. And there's no available settings for you to turn off the goddamn feature.

Just imagine it. A sound problem in a goddamn musical-themed VN. I'm surprised the company hasn't gone bankrupt yet. It was such a turn off that even though I tried to play the game a couple of times, slightly motivated by its pretty good OP song, in the end I just had to give up.

Second, Gurenka. Interesting settings, mystical mystery, man eating demon girl. Looks good. Oh look, you have half the demon girl's power because of that accident in the past. Mm hmm. Oh wow, you go on a berserker's rage and lost your consciousness, actually fought the demon girl on equal footing. Mm hmm! This is starting to get really interesting. Oh shit, saint-looking new powerful enemies you barely held off together with the demon girl. Oh gosh, one of your friend gets trapped in the other world and thank the gods you all made it back safely. Omigod one of your friends turn out to be a horrible snake demon and smacked you right off the cliff. Oh what the hell the other world suddenly appears with incredible frequency and you have to shut them all away or your town would vanquish. Oh Jesus the demon girl draws the snake's attention off you and fight it herself to let you do your job of shutting off the other world.

Happy End.

...

...

What? Wait a second. Let me recap. Demon girl fights snake, saint-looking enemies temporarily helps you to shut off other world, you run all over the town to do just that... End? What happened to the demon girl? What happened to the snake? What happened to your temporary allies? Why the fuck is this the ending already?

What. The. Hell?

Needless to say, I didn't bother with the other routes. When you're throw such - ahem! - feces to the face and the VN didn't even offer a True End or something, you just, don't, expect me to kiss you back on the cheek. More like bite you in the neck, but whatever.

Lastly, Rewrite. Anyone who actually reads my random rants would find this a couple pages back already, but I'm just going to make it short and simple here.

So, gameplay in Key! Omigod it's so awesome! And ten minutes into the game you're introduced to what must've been the most retarded, pointless map movement gameplay I've ever seen from my 200+ VN experience (I just updated my entire VN list on vndb, so I can be SURE). So, exactly what offense Key had made to make me hate Rewrite with such burning passion that I didn't touch it once since the first 10 minutes I've played it?

1) Over 10 GODDAMN red balls to click on the first few maps (walkthrough OP) to read events.

2) GODDAMN HIDDEN red balls that only pops when your pointer goes over it, so you have to scroll your mouse careful and painstakingly through every goddamn pixel to make sure you didn't miss one. Note that the map is so much bigger than the window size so you have to scroll all over to find red balls.

3) Said events include swimming in the lake, fooling around with random people, pranking on your neighbors, and if I remember correctly, talking to a dog.

4) Did I mention that you can repeat up to 5 times of each red ball? To the point the protagonist himself feels silly for swimming in the lake 3 times just before school?

I apologize with all my heart to Key that I am unable to read or enjoy their greatest, latest epic of all time Visual Novel because of this one simple, stupid mistake they've made, but if this is how I have to read through their epic >50 hours long VN I'd rather shoot myself in the stomach and suffer five months in the hospital.

After Gurenka, I probably won't touch any "Escude" VN without a gameplay, at least I can still "play" even when the story is just so-so.