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

Got to replay Cartagra and the first Kara no Shoujo, working on the second KNS right now.

Replaying the games with a more healthy mind made me notice and appreciate several details I've missed in previous playthroughs. Still curious if Yukiko's condition (those who played The Second Episode will know what I'm talking about) exists IRL.

Currently playing AliceSoft's new Game, Beat Valkyrie Ixseal.
It's legitimately on the hard side. Gonna come back to this after I finish the game.

LOL nah, you just need to save at the right places, unlock the right skills (especially the one that prevents your enemy from doing anything for 1 turn) and hit away. It's false difficulty since the game mechanic is ridiculously simple. Budget cut design choices everywhere.

It's still harder than Escalayer or Haruka though. Didn't have to think long and hard for those 2 lol.

Okay, haven't made a post here for a very long time. Today I want to talk briefly about the RPGM game 'Little Bravers' by Anmitsuya.

I've recently awakened a taste for RPGM H-games since the SLG types that I really like such as Eiyuu Senki, Sengoku Rance, Big Bang Age etc takes way too long to come out. I've also finished almost all recent Visual Novel RPGs like the recent Venus Blood Brave, so I've been looking to play some RPGM games to satisfy my desire for actual gameplay in such H-games. Meltys Quest was a good surprise, but most other games of the genre turned out extremely disappointing and did not nearly have a battle system as complex as MQ's (and MQ's battle system isn't complicated at all).

Little Bravers is a recent RPGM game that I find sits equal, if not above Meltys Quest. It talks about a young girl who sets out from her village to find work at the guild.

As usual, the most important element of a game to me is the story. Little Bravers has a far, far better story and writing than Meltys Quest. The first choice you get when setting foot in the first city is whether to allow the city guard to sexually harass the MC. Regardless of what you choose, a female commander shows up at the entrance with a troop of soldiers and saw the scene, which results in the soldier being dragged away in a most hilarious matter. You later find out that the city has been stamping hard on the way of lolicon recently, and such sexual offenders were being carted off left and right. So of course, it's up to the MC to save all the lolicons in the world map (by letting them fuck her! XD)!

This may sound like a common scene, but the way the game cries out its theme, 'lolicon' is surprisingly satisfying. There's a house with the brazen title of 'Lolicon Association' located at the bottom left corner of the city. Its three residents were about to hang themselves because of the recent crackdown on sexual offenders until the MC shows up. The item shop has a scene where the shop owner has a fetish for loli armpits. The second time the scene triggers, you can choose whether to allow the shop owner sexually harass the MC's armpit. If you did, however, the wife comes back from outside and saw the scene. Those who use the idiom 'hell hath no fury like a woman scorned' could probably guess what's going to happen next. For an RPGM game, the presentation of a rage-induced woman sending her husband flying across the counter and hitting the wall is satisfying to say the least.

The monsters of this game do not discriminate gender. Women gets fucked in most, if not all holes (of course) if they lose, but men gets the same treatment too. There's literally an anal treatment center in the game where men and women who were rekt by monsters are provided treatment for their anals. Rape equality to all genders! This sounds minor, but it's a surprisingly appreciable touch. It's not just a one time thing to, as there's a mini quest where you can offer a rekt man an anal treatment medicine, and later on a soldier commander who complained that his butthole is cracked. I should probably insert a South Park joke here, but I haven't played that game so. *shrugs*

Plot wise? It's simple, but satisfying. Very satisfying. In general, it is a story about a young girl who does her best to complete the missions she accepted in her guild. It's the story of a budding Brave who is completely oblivious that she's growing up as one. While getting fucked a lot along the way unless you're doing a virgin run, I guess. It is extremely well written, with great dialogues and great character interactions here and there, considering that it's an RPGM game. I've gone through enough to tell you that most RPGM games are absolutely shit in the writing department, and this isn't one of them.

Speaking of Brave, the battle system is your simple RPG, but with a slight twist: one, you don't get to change a weapon. You're stuck with one from the beginning to the end. However, you can use magic stones to upgrade its stats, which really isn't all that much really (You need 5 magic stones to +1 stat, so you may as well just level up really). I haven't tested it on normal monsters, but you can lose to pink monsters or bosses and get ero-scenes. Almost every monster has the ability to hypnotize too, and since there are no ways to prevent hypnosis you'll have to be especially careful against certain types of monsters since they can and will literally screw you out of a virgin run.

The rest of the battle system more or less plays out like your standard ero-RPG game. You can change clothes with better stats or cuter looks. Frankly speaking there are waaaay too many accessories and only 2 slots to make use of them, but they are of critical importance. You can buy spells from certain shops and learn them, but since our MC is a pure warrior she can only heal, cure and buff. She has 0 offensive spells, and all of her damage lies on her twin swords.

It may sound like a simple battle system, but it successfully does what many far more complicated battle systems fail to do: induce a sense of growth and absolute power/power overwhelming. The first thing the developer did right is to give the MC twin swords. Dual wielding has always been satisfying, and I guarantee the gameplay wouldn't feel as fun had the dev chosen to give her 1 sword only that deals the same amount of damage. The second thing they did right is to give her the Ougi technique that doubles her action for 3 turns. This means I can attack boost for 5 turns, double my action, then Asura (8 hits strike skill)X 2 and take 3 quarters of most bosses' health in one strike. Over time she grows so powerful that she can one shot most enemies with the right skill. The third thing they did right is to NOT have magic for the MC. Too many chefs spoil the dish, and in this case the addition of a magic system would've been too many choices. I was perfectly content to Asura tonnes of damage to multiple targets or AOE one shot them with my second greatest skill. Finally, the way the monsters behave and the limited set of skills means that you're actively using skills to kill them (the unstoppable hypnosis effects are prevented only by RNG, and over time it can be annoying, so you want the monsters dead ASAP). I absolutely don't mind using skills that induce a great sense of oomph and power in me.

It has a total of 5 endings, the first 2 you can grab already by doing a virgin run. It also allows you to carry over all levels, items etc on your second playthrough barring key items. Now that's incentive to give it a second playthrough!

In conclusion, Little Bravers is an RPGM game that stands equal or better than Meltys Quest. It clocks in at least 8 hours of gameplay (possibly more, I didn't keep track exactly) and that is just on a virgin run. Pretty sure it can offer a lot more hours of entertainment if you do all the sexual side quests! The only thing I'm said about this game is that it didn't stop at what I thought was the ending and push that REAL final boss into a sequel instead. Don't hesitate to give it a try!

How about trying "[BlackTrain] Huntress of Nipurheim -Branded Azel-".
A short but well polished RPGM H-games. It has a monster hunter-esq based quests system where, you choose your quests and then get transported to a closed off area.
It has nice illustrations and looks like custom made battle sprites (not the free sprites you see in many of these kind of games)
Every aspect of the gameplay feels like a Monster Hunter game, even on the crafting part, where you need monster parts.

the only negative aspect is just that the game is VERY short. At least it's not another RPGM-H games that bombards you with story and exposition while ignoring a good gameplay.

Hey, haven't seen you in a while! Branded Azel did fall into my attention; I just wasn't sure from the few images it sported if it was what I wanted. Maybe I'll download it and give it a look.

Speaking of which, not sure if you've heard about it but I know an English demo that's been in production for 3 years but have almost nothing (the dev doesn't take money unless he releases a major update, which he hadn't in 3 years so I personally don't care *shrug*). What it has, is probably the funniest and most interesting goblin I've seen in a while. The title is Aylia's Story. You can interact with a lot of objects and it successfully made the world look alive in just 10 minutes, in my opinion at least. It also has a custom made battle system and UI. Maybe worth checking it out?

I'm so sad there aren't much VNs to play. I'm also sad Rance 10 won't be coming out anytime soon, also it's probably not going to be SLG looking at the screenshots. VNs also seem to be a dying art in terms of creativity these days, sigh. >_>

I'm always here, just didn't feel like posting much. Even in the FGO thread, it just feels like we're the only 3 people left in there with LordSparda (I now post more in Gamefaqs NA Iphone board).

Yeah not really interested with this years current release of VNs. VNs that have gameplay like Rance is getting scarce every year. Heck, VNs with SLG elements is now really rare, it's so rare that I resort to searching for those cheap doujin games to play just to scratch the itch. Beelzebub's "Spotlight Cinderella", Beelzebub's "Jitaku Keiibin", "UrareTown" by GameColon and the always updating "Live with a Slave"
Personally, Utawarerumono 2 was the latest I dive in to (Got Uta 3 and Steins;Gate Zero on the Ps4, but I haven't started playing those 2)

There wasn't really much to post. There is Discord to make random comments these days, lol.

That genre of VN is dying because it's getting less and less profitable to do so (if it's even profitable) I guess. I randomly checked the cost to make Kira Kira by Overdrive, and it apparently took $460,000 to produce. That game was made like, 7 or 8 years ago? Holy shit man, if a game that doesn't have gameplay can take that much to make I can't imagine sinking the cost of one with gameplay.

The Letter is the only Western visual novel I know of this year that can outmatch a quality Japanese VN. Everything else out there are either not up to par or are split into several parts that kill your interest by the time you come back to it. Sigh.

Eushelly's dying, Alicesoft's PROBABLY dying, Overdrive announced a 'Final' project which I'm still unsure if means 'our final project' or just a project called 'Final', Eiyuu Senki's company released the same game 8 years straight and the companies that actually make SLG games on the Three Kingdoms or JP wars are boring as hell. Venus Blood is thankfully still as popular as ever, but they've rehashed their gameplay system that they probably have to seriously consider something completely new very soon. I'll admit that I kinda fear for the future of gameplay VNs.

EDIT: Oh, there's Fate/Grand Order which is a VN at its roots. But that's a mobile game, so...

EDIT 2: Just finished another great RPGM game, and I'm not waiting until the next person makes a post here in a year or two to type this.

The title of this RPGM ero-game is called 狂想のヴァルキュリア (Valkyria Fantasy). It is an RPG game that speaks of a Shadow plague that's slowly taking over the world, and a female knight (the MC) who was marked by as one such patient was exiled to an island where shadow patients run rampant. On this island, no one can die and will keep reviving if they're killed - at the cost of their sanity that is. How much deaths (or sexual actions, because for some reason it's considered evil on this island??) will it take before the Shadow changes you entirely?

So first things first, this game is quite inspired by Dark Souls. You probably know what I want to say when I bring the term 'Dark Souls' onto the table. Difficulty wise, this is the most difficult RPGMaker ero-game I've ever played. Healing items are scarce and expensive, equipment is pricey to upgrade, nasty surprises are aplenty and enemies are hard to beat. This is a game where you can grind to ridiculous heights and probably still lose to certain enemies.

First, there are four classes: Knight, Magic Knight, Dancer and Assassin. You can spend EXP to level up these classes and acquire new skills. You can then put these skills into Commands (Active + Passive skills) or Passive (Passive skills only). You get 3 slots at the beginning, and more slots in the future. The same goes with your equipment slot. Skills up to 3 or 4 levels ahead of your current level are revealed (there's only one skill per level) so you aren't leveling up blind, and there is also an 'Overall' level that calculates the average total of your level and grants you an 'Overall' skill. Every skill you get is absolutely critical in defeating future AND current enemies, and EXP and money can be quite difficult to get at the beginning considering that you can't kill 3 to 4 groups of enemies without spending money to heal.

You have to explore a dungeon again every time you reenter it, but it is small and does not change randomly so it's not a real issue. The enemies are difficult - the most difficult enemy you'll face at the beginning is an annoying plant in the first dungeon that will spray sleep gas and potentially stop you from acting. The next difficult enemy you'll face is a Wolfman boss that if I remember correctly, blinds you for the same effect. Before the Wolfman, there are also a trio of thieves (counts as boss) that you can choose to fight prior to the Wolfman boss. On that note, the same dungeon will contain multiple bosses from different side quests. It is impossible to clear them all in one go unless you go in knowing what you're going to face, properly leveled, stocked with healing items AND equipped. Despite reusing dungeons, the game never feels stale. In fact, it manages to instill the feeling of a cautious explorer carefully planning and fighting their way through a series of danger that are sure to destroy them if they're not careful.

The short version is that the game is hard. Real hard. The enemies are difficult and the puzzles are interesting to figure out. Some of the ero-scenes can be difficult to acquire, but it is never tedious and constantly challenge you to REALLY think what a certain hint/clue means. For example, you recently passed through a mirror that somehow created a doppleganger of you. Later when you get out of the dungeon, you can talk to a mysterious guy you never met asking when you want to hit it up again later. Of course the MC (and ironically myself, I didn't realize until I read through some forums later) wouldn't know what he's talking about, but perhaps the circle at the back of a house isn't just a one time event. These puzzles are pretty damn great and interesting considering the standards RPGM games usually go by.

The difficulty is not the only thing that made me think that it is inspired by Dark Souls. The story is bittersweet at best, and downright tragic at worst. All I can say without spoiling is that no result can appear without effort, and no victory can be won without sacrifice. There is no happily ever after, and there is only doing what's right because it is the only thing that can be done. At least it's not as bleak as the Dark Souls world where it's usually be damned or be damned even harder, but still, in an RPGM ero-game? It's sobering. it's bittersweet. It's tragic. And the music of the game reflects that. Silent, dull, sobering, and with only rare peeks of cheer here and there.

Options in this game is awesome. In game, you can change individual pieces of a costume. Generally speaking, you can carry everything through to the next playthrough. You can choose to maintain levels, equipment, skills, sanity points and so on. There are also options to customize various stats at the Omake section so you can start a new game with those numbers. The great thing about this game is that it does its best to prevent you from backtracking. Although some ero-scenes still require you to lose, the major bosses you can win and still get the defeat ero-scene.

狂想のヴァルキュリア is a fantastic game. It has the most challenging battle systems I've played in RPGM ero-games to date, a short but fantastic story that puts full blown visual novels to shame, and exciting ero-scenes. It absolutely deserves recognition.

Finished replaying Fate/stay night the other day, hyping myself for the upcoming Heaven's Feel movies. HF is still the best route imho.

So... is no one going to talk about Rance 10? You know, the final game of the most epic series in Visual Novel history?

Still in Progress lol.
It's not a simple and easy game .

Trying to play Hanahira in Japanese, its nothing special really, usual anime fluff. And I also started playing Danganronpa V3, finished the first trial yesterday. So far I'm not impressed with how they handled the first trial. I do like the cast tho.

Do RPGMaker games count?

Recent games I've played extensively were

Country Life Survival RPG ~making ends meet~

and

Ambrosia

There's a new ONEONE1 game out and I'm gonna be playing that soon.

Sure it counts.

I just finished my first VN, Blackberry Honey, and it figures that it would be a completely unexpected mindfudge for me. I thought I could never be turned on by some sort of interactive animation media, and for this title I was right about that for the most part, but I found that it was still pretty awesome.

Started watching Nekopara, so now I'm reading the VN for that. Suspecting so far it's not the same tone.