I will give you my verdict on the Japanese Visual Novel: not guilty…of being good.
I’ve played most of the big names. They’re almost all garbage. They are too long. They are poorly written. They’re for fuckin’ nerds.
The one good thing I’ll say about Steins;Gate is it’s so bad I kept playing it just to see if anything interesting would ever fucking happen. I think I hit like 30 hours which is…I’m not proud of that. But I think it taught me an important lesson about valuing my time, and also about making art.
Untagged spoilers for a game you shouldn’t play: I quit after all your friends are murdered and you leap through time determined to rewrite history…by accompanying a maid cafe hostess who thinks she’s a cat to a CCG tournament. Also at one point they use the time traveling microwave to send an email into the past to the trans character’s then pregnant mom. The email says “drink more Ovaltine and eat more veggies”. The mom follows the directions of this email from a stranger, and boy…you won’t believe the results! Because they make no sense. Fuckin game drowns you in tech babble but the writer doesn’t even know how babies are made.
OK, sorry, every time Steins;Gate comes up I have to write 200 words about how dumb it is. Don’t play Steins;Gate, and don’t trust anyone who praises it.
I played Fata Morgana briefly. I intend to go back to it soon, but from that brief time it was clear it’s cut above everything else in the genre.
Hatoful Boyfriend was cute but I got more out of Angie Gallant’s old LP than I did actually playing it, which I guess means the game’s a bit of a failure. Everything else from Japan…kinda sucks real bad?
I tried playing Higurashi but never got past the intro. It was a bunch of ugly kids meeting up and talking about walking to school or some shit. I learned my lesson from Steins;Gate: there was no way this was going to be worth the time investment. So I quit.
Night of the Sickle Weasel/Banshee’s Last Cry got a localization on iOS. I didn’t finish it. I hate playing games on my phone. It’s probably one of the better games but I remember finding it fatiguing and not being too into the prose.
Western VNs are better. They’re not as long for one thing. VA11-HALL-A was fun, and Ladykiller in a Bind made me think “Well, ok, I should make a game” which is pretty high praise. That one game where you’re a pigeon detective (edit: Aviary Attorney) was cute and I really need to get back to it. There’s also this game in the works called DDD: PICTURES AND WORDS, DIAMONDS AND PEARLS that’s gonna redefine digital entertainment and redeem America but who knows when it’ll be fuckin’ finished. Dude’s been working on it forever.
I suspect the ska lesbians game doesn’t have enough ska lesbians but I look forward to reading a let’s play or at least seeing like 3 screenshots of the lesbians riding dune buggies or meeting a jackalope.
But Japan can go take a hike.