Visual Novel Real Talk

Main question. Are they worth it?

We’ve been hearing about these legendary visual novels for many years, including but not limited to:

  • Muv-Luv
  • Higurashi yada yada
  • Clannad
  • Steins; Gate
  • House in Fata Morgana

Reviews and comments usually praise their stories and writing. Now many of them are available, officially localized, on Steam.

I’m curious. Do they hold up in the YOOL 2017? Are the stories genuinely good, or it’s more like “good, for an animu” kind of good?

For the record, I’m fine with “good for an animu”, as long as there’s not really awful stuff in there.

What’s the verdict, SB?

TBH the most interesting part of the entire franchise is also the first thing you hear about it now, which is that the pretty standard Date Girls in High School romance thing drifts into another dimension where Imperial Japan’s Robot Forces are on the front lines of a decades-long losing war against alien invaders and basically everyone dies. How much you get out of it is directly related to how much Fuckin’ Anime you are willing to take.

Extremely melodramatic time-travel plotline, which isn’t the worst, but it’s also pretty shitty to pretty much the entire female cast (shocking), and is especially shitty to the trans character.

I haven’t played Fata Morgana yet, but of the ones you listed I think it’s the only one that even has a chance of being well-written outside of a “for an audience playing erotica, or young adult novels written and sold like erotica” context.

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Va11-Hall-A is basically a visual novel except you also have a drink-mixing minigame that can modulate the progression of the story by inebriating your patrons sooner or later, affecting your tips and therefore whether you can afford all your bills, etc. It’s pretty engaging.

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Yes, I remember that thread. That’s what made me want to check out this game

Vallhalla is actually well-written, which is a strongly distinguishing trait in the world of visual novels.

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Most of the time because of how damn long they take I think maybe I’m better off just binging on a manga. Although I guess I like choosing who the protagonist falls in love with so they don’t wind up with someone boring.

Has anyone done a traditional print manga that’s also a Choose Your Own Adventure? There’s gotta be a market for that.

I have Va11-Hall-A. I haven’t finished it but played about 3 game days. I enjoy it a fair bit. It’s indeed well written. I don’t really know to what extent the text/story changes yet because I’ve been mixing drinks perfectly so far.

But this topic was more geared towards localized japanese visual novels.

As mentioned, some of these can take tens of hours. I’d like to know if they are as interesting as reviews make them to be

I’m making a visual novel. I think I wanna call it “Fat Gators” my buddy @HOBO helped me come up with the name. It’s about some literal Fat Alligators.

Don’t forget to support local talent and give @HOBO all of your money, cuz he sent me the Ska Lesbians game and he’s making his own Ska Lesbians game.

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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.

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Oh yeah I guess Analogue: A Hate Story was a pretty decent western VN. Maybe one of the only VNs I’d actually recommend a person check out.

Juniper’s Knot was cute, though I think it was completely non-interactive. It’s short, though.

Over the Hills and Far Away is steaming shit garbage and I’m mad I gave them my money.

Cinders is pretty cool if you can get past the oddness of the art.

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999’s real fun but it’s kind of Anime Saw, and it fits into a similar space as stuff like Ace Attorney. Depends on your tastes. I never played Danganronpa but I know the series get compared to each other.

I believe the 999 people previously made Ever17, which I sought out because I liked the former. Ever17 is hot hot garbage and I cannot recommend it at all.

I consider the 999 games and Danganronpa “real games” so that’s why I didn’t mention them initially, despite their reliance on visual novel formats

Ever17 might be good, but nobody will ever be able to find out beneath that atrociously-written translation.

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is Snatcher a VN or a real game

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Hmm, interesting question.

If I remember correctly, Snatcher has at least one or two puzzles that you can’t just brute-force by mowing through the menus, plus it has the shooting sequences, so I’d say it just about qualifies as “real game”

Sad but true

The food is still great though

GUESS IT’S TIME to make the circle come complete and start feeling Glam again then so I can write about these Ska Lesbians

Man, I’m stressin’ looking for this particular game that I might have mistaken for WVN using the original GameBoy pixel-palette for the art direction.

It came out last year… I think…

Was it about witches?

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