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

Just finished replaying Saya no Uta. Incredible game, no matter how old it is.

don't eat during that one. I made that mistake, I won't spoil anything, but it is the first and only VN to make me throw up. the quiet one is...yeah. don't eat and play this one.


OT: playing Littlewitch Romanesque atm. I'm mixed. part of me loves it, part of me is annoyed with it. I have a perfection sort of deal, and you can't complete all quests. also the way they do train/story/quest/story/...basically anything and cramming story in between gets annoying. sometimes I just want to sit and learn my spells but I have to sit through a bunch of dialogue, but this is not really a horrible thing. If I had to say whether I like it more or not, I definitely like it

I just finished reading muv-luv alternative.
I read the translated version of extra and unlimited maybe 2 years ago but then realized I was capable of reading stuff using an assisted method which got me hooked on the rance series. Finally returned to finish it up this winter. I was skeptical after playing the previous game, but it definetly lived up to the hype. Despite having a 20 page essay due in a week I couldn't stop playing. I have some mixed feelings about the ending and the overall execution but the middle part of the story was absolutely devistating. Loved it. Anywho, I should really get started on this essay now..

Two week update. I just finished playing Bunnyblack. It's the first softhouse chara title I've played. I look forward to trying some more of their titles in the future. Wasn't anything special plot wise but the gameplay set up was interesting. scratched my dungeon crawler itch.

What's with people translating the games I play a month after I finish them. Bunnyblack translation is out if anyone is looking for a dungeon crawler to play.

Finished Mahotsukai no Yoru. For the 100% CGs I copied a save because I was not going to sit through Potete dormire, ma nessun rida and it's troll choices. So I'm crossing my fingers that Nasu didn't hide anything plot relevant behind Potete.

I'll be taking it's soundtrack and lovely CGs with me, the story and it's relation to the nasuverse are also keepers. Shame about the english translation, this one was very competent as a VN.

Just finished replaying Yandere. Even though it was my second time around I still had a pretty decent laugh, it's not that great of a vn but still it's a nice little time killer. Cook some food, sit down and enjoy the game (unless you have a weak stomach and can't eat during such a vn).

i finally started playing stiens gate. so far im really not that impressed, its okay, but not as good as the hype led me to belive.

Finished all routes of Symphonic Rain.

I have to say that out of all the visual novels I've played, this one stands out in terms of story and osts.

If you want a visual novel with some pretty good plot twists and eargasmic songs, then I highly recommend Symphonic Rain.

Just played the bonus rance version of evenicle today. Was pretty great. Had me grinning and laughing most of the way through.

Excited to play the actual game now. The use of the rance quest map and battle system to make an overworld type rpg makes sense and I like what I've seen so far.

Also finished bb 2 and got stuck on the final boss of 3 and have yet to finish. They were both alright plays.

Finished Muv Luv Alternative Chronicles 02 a couple days ago.

Despite its episodic nature I like TDA more than Alternative, prologue was good, this was also nice though only a gigantic cocktease for what's to come in the next episodes.

Been playing Verethragna.

As a card game, it has a lot of problems. But it's kinda fun and M&M art.

Just gone through ゾンビのあふれた世界で俺だけが襲われない (Zombie no Afureta Sekai de Ore Dake ga Osowarenai).

It is a web novel turned kinetic visual novel about a man who is the only one who's apparently immune (and hence, not attacked) by zombies. You can imagine this as the Walking Dead Japanese version, except that the zombies are actually more interesting with some pretty decent developments.

Graphic and UI wise, surprisingly good even though I've been out of the scene for a while. Simple, elegant, does the job well. I think they could use a bit more CG than just that, but still pretty impressive especially considering its length.

The website's shown characters can be a little misleading though. Some of the characters can use no sprites at all, but since some of them have it you feel as if they might as well have sprites for every shown character.

About the story. Not much to say, since this counts as Episode 1 of the show. I like the distinct difference the MC's personality showcased as compared to most zombie stories out there. This is a cold, somewhat broken man who after getting over his initial stage of fear towards the zombies, can keep a zombie girl (speculated one of the many Patient Zero who was infected through something, but not zombie bites so in perfect condition) as his pet and fuck her. Devilish I know, but understandable. I think I probably share some common ground with this dude, although an apocalypse will have to happen before I know whether I'll act the same as him.

The zombie girl will probably be critical in future chapters, btw. There may be actual choices to make too, and turn this into an actual visual novel. I personally don't mind. This feels like the type of story that necessitates only a few major choices, and doesn't need the who-is-going-to-die-next-no-matter-how-you-choose kind of style to make an emotional story. In fact those kind of choices dilutes a story's focus.

So as the only man who didn't need to fear about zombies at all, his actions and thoughts are remarkably true to his situation. Every time he takes a corner around an unknown area, the thing he worries most about is not a zombie, but a living human being. If you think about it that is utterly logical, because in a apocalyptic world if I do not need to worry about the zombies, then the greatest threat automatically reverts back to human being themselves, and one unleashed from the chains of morality too.

He's cold. He can kill without remorse. He can be kind - although the reason why he purposely tries to help people is somewhat a mystery; it's as if he simply thought that since he could help, he might as well help, like doing a side quest or homework or something - and although he doesn't seem to realize it, he seem to yearn the little peace a small family can bring.

The current female MC is also interesting. She's distraught. Tries to make a crazy move after deluding herself into thinking that there can't possibly be a world with zombies (after seeing the protagonist walk in and out like it's nothing), and nearly made a mistake she could not take back. Despite hating the protagonist for asking sexual favors in return for supporting their lives, she eventually warms up to him after her mistake. The short few days they spent together was even peaceful as it seems that things will stay the way, and the zombies will eventually die out from the town (since there's no food, they'll hunt somewhere else).

But then one strange night, something happened. I shall not spoiler anything since this is the climax of the story. Let's just say that it's interesting, so interesting that I really look forward towards the next chapter.

Music wise, it's simple but appropriate. It's neither cheap nor overly rich, and I believe it is for the best.

Length is about 2 or 3 hours at best. The sex scene kind of bores me (and the ones with zombie girl... well, disturbs me a little. She is dead you know) so I just enjoyed the graphics, but it's actually pretty well written in my opinion. There's a kind of whimsical feeling that reminds me of Katawa Shoujo's sex scenes. I won't say realistic, but it's... whimsical.

Worth a try. Took me out of my real life hut to play it out a for a couple hours.

Soukou Kijo Iris. Pretty good overall. The H-scenes are fantastic, great art by zol and a crazy wide variety of fetishes covered. Great if you love alien sex. Downsides are that it is short and the 5 endings have absolutely no clues on how to obtain them.

Littlewitch Romanesque. Great characters and a good story. Also some of the best art I've seen in any game period. Background and world art is amazing and the character design is great. The gameplay is a bit boring at times, but overall it's not bad. It's also extremely long which gives a lot of time to get to know the characters.

Finished evenicle. It was... long. I enjoyed the Rance append far more than the actual game I think.

It wasn't bad per say, just overall somewhat bland. The story was what you would expect so no complaints (or praise) there and there were several likable characters (Kas and Ramias were the best girls) but the way the gameplay was set up was just really unappealing to me after a bit. It was mainly the battle points system that annoyed me. Having to wait several turns to refill a meter so you can use skills just slows the combat and game down. There were many times where I had to get in a random battle purposefully and then wait multiple turns with one enemy left to refill my bp before fighting one of the game's many bosses. They should have thrown in a full bp regen fountain similar to the hp ones or something because it just makes the game tedious otherwise.

Aside from that, the character management systems (skills,equipment,levels) were just too basic and stream-lined for my liking. I never really had to think about what I was doing with the characters, except for when I switched the main character to magic skills perhaps.

So yeah, I would say skip it and play something else unless you're really interested. It has its moments but there are far better ero rpgs.

Yeah Evenicle was pretty underwhelming overall, append was hilarious service though. It felt like it was standing in Rance's shadow the entire time with the way the protagonist was acting, how it ended and how you ran around collecting women. If it wasn't for gems like Cass who seemed to have grown up just a little bit, Ramias(too damn lewd), Ramias's brother(http://puu.sh/ikAW2/f907890535.jpg) and goddamn Natal I might not have played this. I was content with what I got would probably be accurate.

I would still probably try an Evenicle 2. Probably because of the potential for a Natal route.

I just finished Umineko, and started on reading Higurashi Onikakushi-hen. I am thoroughly enjoying both of them, and Umineko is probably on my top 10 VN of all time list.

Finished World End Economica Episode 1. If anyone can provide a torrent to the Japanese version (since the original is titled in English too, and all the Googling only brings up the English version) for later Episodes I'll be very grateful.

Story wise, really really interesting. I've read annother investment/economical Visual Novel before, though I forgot what the title is (review's probably somewhere in this thread, surely). This follows the formula of a basketball manga I read where the protagonist literally slumps at every critical point of the story (for that manga, this went on for 150+ chapters before they finally started winning LOL).

True to the formula the protagonist is forced to go through great pains and even suffers a massive shock that portrays exactly how much his passion means to him. It also shows you that there are no two paths can guarantee success (picked the wrong choice out of two at the first junction, then met the same junction again and picked the other one thinking it was right - but it was wrong, again). The pitfall and similarity of stock investment to gambling is portrayed enough that despite some very eye-rolling moments, they could scare a common person into staying away from those kind of investments forever.

Moreover, this is surprisingly lengthy. I don't remember the exact time, but it took me about 4 to 6 hours I think? To finish the whole playthrough. Very satisfying for an Episode 1.

That being said, everything else about this visual novel is shoddy at best.

Speaking of system, the Ren'Py default UI is better than this piece of shit system they have honestly. The option menu is bare. You cannot control the transparency of the dialogue bar. You can't even dismiss the dialogue bar to admire at the graphics (this is usually achieved by right clicking or clicking an X button present in the top right of the dialogue bar, but nope, it's not even there). It's horrendously disappointing and neigh unbelievable that a Japanese-made Visual Novel can achieve such low quality of work.

Graphic wise, I must say that this is too terribly lacking. If we talk about the assets alone they are fine actually - the sprites are good-looking, Hagana looks awesome despite the boyish outfit. The CGs are well made too, honestly.

But the handling, my god. When I say my years old final year project - you guessed it, a Visual Novel - handle graphic/animation transitions better than this VN did, I mean every word. Simple gestures - sprite transition so to speak - like patting the protagonist's head or bowing etc, happens instantaneously despite letting the dialogues run naturally in auto or manual mode. Disclaimer: maybe the original version is fine and only the translated one somehow screwed that part up, but my god it looks SO bad I wanted to fix them myself. It only takes simple scripting that even a half-ass or beginner can do it without problems, so I'm not sure what the bloody hell happened here.

Because of the problem above movement is non-existent. While having the characters stand still never felt unnatural - until they fucking move, that is - obviously this should be done better. But even then the poor transition of scenes are terrible, with a majority of the problems contributed by the lack of assets (or pure laziness, which I hope isn't the case). When the character moves from one scene to another, it almost always feel like they're lacking. Even background to background transition felt awkward, and one of the animations I disliked the most is the 'on the train' scene. They basically skipped a background scene altogether and have some vertical black bars running by once per every dialogue, which is mind bogglingly dumb. Even if you're dead poor surely there are some free assets you can download from the internet free?

I can't say with certainty since it was quite long, but I'm sure that throughout the VN no more than 2 character sprite appear in the same scene at once. When there are 3 people having a conversation with each other, the creator outright removes the sprites altogether and you're just staring at a background while words fly by at the bottom. It's poor production value.

CG-wise it's also lacking as well, although I understand each one of these can cost quite a fair bit of money. For example there was a scene where the protagonists walked into a friend's room, and you'll get the CG of a man sleeping with his porn running on every screen. Guy wakes up, turns it off, then has a serious conversation with the protagonist and Haguna. In my mind I expected the same CG to show the screens all turned off and the guy awake, facing towards the player with a smile or something. Instead, they never change the CG throughout the conversation, so there's a distinct feeling that the visuals do not reflect the story at all.

This happen a bit too many times throughout the VN to be ignored, and perhaps the most offending ones are the complete black screens when there's quite the long dialogues running at below. Even the climax scene was poorly done - not because it's lacking in assets this time; although it certainly can use some; but because they're too lazy or in a rush to put it proper transition effects. This is all in all a poor, poor, poor visual that does not support its awesome novel at all.

Sound wise, lacking in assets as well. My 1 hour homemade VN has more sound effects and music than this one (like seriously!?), so you get the idea how terribly lacking it is. At least the OSTs do fit the atmosphere, or I seriously cannot crunch through this without feeling a slap on the face.

So overall, with exception to its excellent storyline and slightly below average music score, everything else is rated with a piss poor 2 out of 10 since any cheap EVN out there can easily beat this VN in terms of production quality. Which is a shame, because I totally want to read this VN all the way to the end, but I'm just not sure whether I can stand the same poor quality again through the rest of the episodes without quitting halfway. I hope I won't be disappointed when the new translated Episode (or a Japanese original, provided there's a download link) comes out.

During this year I picked up Kamidori Alchemy Meister from the beginning, since i had not finished it before. But this time i took my sweet time and completed the game at least 3 times if i recall, pursuing the ending for Yuela x2 and Serwari. As for gameplay itself i enjoyed it a lot, and going through a challenging NG+ with lots of high level dungeons is fun and enjoyable. But the only thing to note here is the GRIND, OMG THE GRIND. I'd never played a VN with so much grind, even Sengoku Rance had less GRIND if you knew what you were doing. In Kamidori each monster (and there are a lot of them) have a least 3 items to lot, and they only drop one. SO if you are aiming for a particular item that spawns from 1 unique creature (that disappears after you take it down), get ready to reload a bunch of times.
As for plot wise, I have to say it's a pretty nice story and its exposed really well throughout the 9 chapters.

PS: During the last week I breezed through Bunny Black and finished it already. It's fun but some of the situations that spur from you being on the Demon side are not that great, regardless of your choices the protagonist keeps raping women for his enjoyment (THIS GUY IS EVEN WORSE THAN RANCE)
BTW If i had not found a community post on BUNNY BLACK explaining how the system worked i would never be able to play it.

Recently played through Tsukihime.

Far Side routes are best routes.

Slugging through Muv-Luv (Not Alternate). Its okay but Damn, Alternative should be worth it if the first game is kinda slow imo.

Been searching for Fate/Stay Night VN on the forum but no luck, the thread got deleted. Not even sure if it was worth the read, but willing to try it out if somebody managed to reup it.