Community The Visual Novel Council | All Choices Lead To Here

Exzyleph said:
  • The dark yurige Sutekina kanojo no tsukurikata released yesteday and caused out-rage among yuri fans (just check the Steam reviews, though beware of spoilers). But it sounds interesting and the translation is supposedly better than the MTL tier store page, but it also seems to contain disturbing content
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Holy moley, you are not kidding. It has over 633 reviews sitting at mostly negative after just releasing. The content does sound distributing from what little I read. That said, not sure what else to expect since it says it features yandere character.
 
ExistentialThought said:
Holy moley, you are not kidding. It has over 633 reviews sitting at mostly negative after just releasing. The content does sound distributing from what little I read. That said, not sure what else to expect since it says it features yandere character.
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The following is a bit spoilery (and is based on second-hand information), so read at your own discretion, though I'll try to be vague about it:
From what I gather, the MC is or has been sexually abused by a man at some point. This is not suggested by the description or content warning, so naturally some people were shocked. However, it is apparently also completely unacceptable to some yuri fans, for whom yuri must not involve any male contact whatsoever. And apparently the developer claimed that this was a "pure" yuri story, so those people feel mislead. But I haven't read the VN yet and I had to rely on Google Translate regarding the developer statement, so I cannot really comment on how accurate any of this is, yet.


Jawmuncher said:
Planetarian is on sale if you somehow haven't played it.
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Planetarian is a great VN.

And I'd strongly recommend listening to the Kazamatsuri book club after you've read it:




It adds a lot to the experience, IMO.
 
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Exzyleph said:
And if you are OK with some older releases
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Oh boy, more than okay. I meant recent as in the last very few years. I just didn't look for big huge classic rec like Steins;Gate.
In fact there are several ones that I missed that looked nice, like Ley Line, Chrono Clock, Raging Loop, World End Syndrome etc. So not RECENT! just no intemporal classics I won't be able to finish :cryblob:
 
Li Kao said:
Oh boy, more than okay. I meant recent as in the last very few years. I just didn't look for big huge classic rec like Steins;Gate.
In fact there are several ones that I missed that looked nice, like Ley Line, Chrono Clock, Raging Loop, World End Syndrome etc. So not RECENT! just no intemporal classics I won't be able to finish :cryblob:
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Here are a some VNs from the last couple of years that I really liked.
Most of these VNs have been mentioned before in this thread, though:

  • Heart of the Woods: A yuri supernatural horror EVN set in a winter landscape. Tara, one of the main charactes, ended up being one of my favorite characters in a VN. A recent free update added English voice acting.
  • Sankaku Renai: Love Triangle Trouble: A love triangle comedy and one of the funniest (if not the funniest) VNs I've read, though the routes are a bit uneven. My user-title is taken from this VN, that's how much fun I had with it. One of the heroines is the protagonist's blood related sister, but that is also the weakest route and it can totally be skipped if that's not something you can look past. Nekonyan recently announced another VN by this developer (Ren'ai, Karichaimashita aka. KoiKari: Love for Hire) and I'm pretty damn hyped for it.
  • Nanairo Reincarnation: A supernatural mystery/nakige VN. The art and cast are both great, it is very funny a lot of the time, and the story also hit hard. I'd recommend getting the Steam version, since that gives you access to both the 18+ version (via a free patch) and the console version (which has alternative scenes). Be sure to read the true route (Kotori) first, since the other routes are side-routes that mainly exist for extra h-scenes (that's my impression at least) and spoil the central plot.
  • ATRI -My Dear Moments-: A sci-fi nakige by Frontwing. Back when ANIPLEX.EXE announced this and Adabana, I mainly looked forward to the latter. However, it was ATRI that ultimately ended up completely and utterly exceeding my expectations. The plot is predictable, but it was just such a charming read and one that still managed to hit me right where it hurt.
  • Jiangshi x Daoshi is a really fun super-natural action/comedy doujin VN, with an unusually high degree of animation. The soundtrack is shockingly good despite consisting entirely of royalty free tracks. The biggest issue is that it isn't complete yet, though all current chapters are translated.
  • Ryuusei World Actor: A sci-fi/supernatural detective story set in a world where multiple races coexist. It has a banging soundtrack (so much so that I imported the collectors edition of the OST) and a great cast of characters. The biggest issues are the fact that the MC is a colossal asshole, which can easily be a big turnoff, that all routes ends on cliff-hangers (a sequel was recently announced), and that the only place to buy it is Johren, which is by far my least favorite storefront for buying VNs.
 
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I recently bought Meteor World Actor and was pleasantly surprised because it's actually rendered in 1080p native. Main menu music is pretty good. I'm still reading through Majikoi! (which is pretty funny -- but I can't take any screenshots because Steam overlay refuses to work with it) so I'm saving my playthrough for later.
 
Li Kao said:
Kinda in the mood to try it. Your positive feedback is intriguing and the shorter nature of the episodic release may work in my favor as I seemingly can’t finish a VN :loudly-crying-face:
And yeah, the first episode is kinda cheap.

Do people have recommendations for some other recent VN ?
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For somewhat older games that have just been recently translated and released in the west, Baldr Sky 1 and 2 (released as one whole game in the west) is one of my all time favorites. It's massively long and can feel like a slog at times, but if you want a well crafted sci=fi cyberpunk world with some really customizable and great action gameplay, you can't go wrong with it. The soundtrack is also varied and excellent as well.

For recently released, the Utawarerumono trilogy is another favorite of mine, especially the latter two games. At times it's a comical SoL narrative and at others an extremely emotionally driven story with excellent world building that improved with each subsequent entry and some pretty fun SRPG gameplay put over the top by the fantastic OST.

A couple other recommendations for some newer stuff that I really enjoyed is Aokana, 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim, and AI: The Somnium Files

This is also the part where I also recommend the Rance franchise as despite the extremely problematic content, holy hell are they really incredibly fun and enjoyably written games.
 
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Exzyleph said:
  • Nanairo Reincarnation: A supernatural mystery/nakige VN. The art and cast are both great, it is very funny a lot of the time, and the story also hit hard. I'd recommend getting the Steam version, since that gives you access to both the 18+ version (via a free patch) and the console version (which has alternative scenes). Be sure to read the true route (Kotori) first, since the other routes are side-routes that mainly exist for extra h-scenes (that's my impression at least) and spoil the central plot.
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Thank you Exzyleph and skLaFarebear for the interesting recs !

About Nanairo, which I have had in my wish list for some times. I have been spoiled the gore cgi, or part of them, but a trigger I have to see clarified :
does the puppy die ? :cryblob:
 
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Li Kao said:
Thank you Exzyleph and skLaFarebear for the interesting recs !

About Nanairo, which I have had in my wish list for some times. I have been spoiled the gore cgi, or part of them, but a trigger I have to see clarified :
does the puppy die ? :cryblob:
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It's not a big spoiler: The puppy dies very early in the story :negative-blob:
But you don't read/see its death, if that is a concern.
 
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The horror VN CORPSE PARTY got a store page and a demo.
The demo was pretty promising, so I'll be keeping a close eye on this:




Apparently the developers are also doing a Kickstarter campaign at a later date:

 
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AHA-Lambda said:
No relation to Corpse Party?
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None that I am aware of.
Though it is kinda funny how few VNs have "corpse" in their title.

The developer previously released the Learn Japanese To Survive! games, but this seems like a big step up from those.
 
World End Syndrome is 10 on the US eshop.
Tempting. But money is sparse, to say the least.
 
I need some kind of Britney Spears' type intervention.
I picked up way more than i planned to during the sale including STEINS;GATE, STEINS;GATE 0 & CHAOS;CHILD, then ROBOTICS;NOTES ELITE & DASH, then Root Letter Bundle, then finally STEINS;GATE: Darling's Embrace.

... because i needed those new VNs despite not having read much further in "Wonderful Everyday" and having a ton of other long VNs in my "library" already.

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EdwardTivrusky said:
I need some kind of Britney Spears' type intervention.
I picked up way more than i planned to during the sale including STEINS;GATE, STEINS;GATE 0 & CHAOS;CHILD, then ROBOTICS;NOTES ELITE & DASH, then Root Letter Bundle, then finally STEINS;GATE: Darling's Embrace.

... because i needed those new VNs despite not having read much further in "Wonderful Everyday" and having a ton of other long VNs in my "library" already.
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If this can make you feel better... According to steam I have 58 VNs in the backlog :face-with-stuck-out-tongue-and-winking-eye:
 
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I just quickly went through my uncategorized games and now have 95 in my Visual Novels category according to me but my dynamic Steam AVNS list says 166 but that includes Persona, Telltale Batman and Azure Lane so it's dodgy at best.

Seeing World End Syndrome reminds me i have World End Economica, Muv Luv, Date-A-Live, Utawarerumono, Zero Escape, AI Somnium and Pillars of the Earth in my collection. All nice and short experiences i'm sure.
 
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Speaking of MG, do we know if they are currently working on some of those bonus Higurashi episodes? Currently going through the series (finished EP3 yesterday, probably gonna take a break after EP4 since pacing at the start of each episode is a bit too much for me, especially after just finishing Cold Steel 4) and well, any news would be nice.

Also:
 
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tetel said:
Speaking of MG, do we know if they are currently working on some of those bonus Higurashi episodes? Currently going through the series (finished EP3 yesterday, probably gonna take a break after EP4 since pacing at the start of each episode is a bit too much for me, especially after just finishing Cold Steel 4) and well, any news would be nice.

Also:
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According to the old Definitive Higu arc chart, they are planning to do Rei and Hou, but I've personally seen or heard nothing about it since they released Episode 8.

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they aren't even updating their status updates with higurashi atm

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tetel said:
Speaking of MG, do we know if they are currently working on some of those bonus Higurashi episodes? Currently going through the series (finished EP3 yesterday, probably gonna take a break after EP4 since pacing at the start of each episode is a bit too much for me, especially after just finishing Cold Steel 4) and well, any news would be nice.
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I recall they announced doing 14 episodes in total back when the very first ep was released, but its been quiet since then; perhaps sales figures have changed their mind :anguished-face:
 
Nekonyan also just did a progress update:
Kinkoi is supposed to release this month and it looks like Koikari will be released after that, judging by its current progress :blobeyes:
 
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I mean, he's a massive AliceSoft nerd, so maybe he's the only one in the industry willing to work for breadcrumbs with Mangagamer?
 
I’m about to wrap up Higurashi ch.7 which means I’ll only have one chapter left (kind of). While I generally like it, sweet baby Oyashiro is this series overlong. I appreciate the characterization and whatnot that takes place before shit hits the fan every chapter, but there’s a slimmed down version of this that would be significantly easier to digest.

Having said that, I am still somewhat interested in Umineko. How does it compare to Higurashi in terms of pacing? I imagine because it’s a made up of only two distinct chapters it would at least have more of a gradual build than Higurashi’s sine wave structure :thinking-face:
 
beep boop said:
I’m about to wrap up Higurashi ch.7 which means I’ll only have one chapter left (kind of). While I generally like it, sweet baby Oyashiro is this series overlong. I appreciate the characterization and whatnot that takes place before shit hits the fan every chapter, but there’s a slimmed down version of this that would be significantly easier to digest.

Having said that, I am still somewhat interested in Umineko. How does it compare to Higurashi in terms of pacing? I imagine because it’s a made up of only two distinct chapters it would at least have more of a gradual build than Higurashi’s sine wave structure :thinking-face:
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Umineko I recall being longer than Higurashi (I don't have total hours between the two to compare, although I did play more of Umineko at once so maybe that's where I'm getting my impression from)
Imo, I felt Umineko was better paced than Higurashi, as I thought it was more effective at having the slower elements still add to the tension and dread. Whereas Higurashi too often repeats the slice of life element in each chapter to no real benefit.

PS: Umineko isn't only 2 chapters, that's just how its sold. It's also 8 episodes long.
 
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beep boop said:
I’m about to wrap up Higurashi ch.7 which means I’ll only have one chapter left (kind of). While I generally like it, sweet baby Oyashiro is this series overlong. I appreciate the characterization and whatnot that takes place before shit hits the fan every chapter, but there’s a slimmed down version of this that would be significantly easier to digest.

Having said that, I am still somewhat interested in Umineko. How does it compare to Higurashi in terms of pacing? I imagine because it’s a made up of only two distinct chapters it would at least have more of a gradual build than Higurashi’s sine wave structure :thinking-face:
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No, it's the same as Higurashi where it has both the Question and Answer arcs, with each arc split into four chapters and the end of each chapter kind of serving as a "reset point" for story reasons.

I think it's pacing is the worst part about the VN, with it being the most unnecessarily long VN I've personally read (and I say this as a Baldr Sky/Ever17/FSN fan). The highs of Umineko are incredible, but there is quite a lot of downtime and/or repetition that makes up a majority of the first half of the story, especially early on where the entire first chapter is dedicated to the setup of the premise of the VN. It's up to personal preference if you enjoy the moment to moment stuff of Umi more than Higu. Personally I didn't really care for it in comparison and found the Higu's characters much more engaging (which makes the downtime in Higu a lot more enjoyable).
 
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beep boop said:
I’m about to wrap up Higurashi ch.7 which means I’ll only have one chapter left (kind of). While I generally like it, sweet baby Oyashiro is this series overlong. I appreciate the characterization and whatnot that takes place before shit hits the fan every chapter, but there’s a slimmed down version of this that would be significantly easier to digest.

Having said that, I am still somewhat interested in Umineko. How does it compare to Higurashi in terms of pacing? I imagine because it’s a made up of only two distinct chapters it would at least have more of a gradual build than Higurashi’s sine wave structure :thinking-face:
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Umineko is 8 chapters + 3 additional short ones. Still way lower compared to Higurashi's 24.
Pacing-wise, I'd say Higurashi is better.
 
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Wow, thanks a bunch for the replies! :blobmorning2: That gives me some pause then. Based on what you're saying it seems like it would be better to at least put it off until I've let the experience of playing Higurashi settle a little.

skLaFarebear said:
No, it's the same as Higurashi where it has both the Question and Answer arcs, with each arc split into four chapters and the end of each chapter kind of serving as a "reset point" for story reasons.
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Is it a full "reset" like Higurashi then? That aspect of it and more specifically that the (big picture) connective tissue between its chapters didn't materialize until so late in the series did not sit too well with me. I enjoyed the mystery there, but the general lack of conclusiveness for such a long time made it difficult to press on.
 
beep boop said:
Wow, thanks a bunch for the replies! :blobmorning2: That gives me some pause then. Based on what you're saying it seems like it would be better to at least put it off until I've let the experience of playing Higurashi settle a little.



Is it a full "reset" like Higurashi then? That aspect of it and more specifically that the connective tissue between its chapters didn't materialize until so late in the series did not sit too well with me.
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oh yeah, definitely have a break in between, you'll burn out if you move on from Higurashi straight to Umineko imo, particularly given how long the latter is

as for the reset, yes each chapter is a reset but its manifest in a different way from Higurashi, which I won't go into any further for obvious spoilers
 
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AHA-Lambda said:
oh yeah, definitely have a break in between, you'll burn out if you move on from Higurashi straight to Umineko imo, particularly given how long the latter is

as for the reset, yes each chapter is a reset but its manifest in a different way from Higurashi, which I won't go into any further for obvious spoilers
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Gotcha. Thanks. I’ve been doing a chapter of Higurashi every few months and even then it wore me down! Next year for Umineko then, at this rate 😅

Edit: Also, wanted to mention that while Higurashi definitely has its share of issues (like what I find awkward otaku stuff), I do appreciate its very overt message of being proactive about mental health issues, depression and communicating internal struggles. I get the feeling that the author has personally gone through something like this himself, because the accuracy with which he describes certain thought patterns really resonated with what I've gone through as well.

In Ch. 7 especially this has been a strong central theme. It's coated in a larger than life story of course, but it retains a very human touch to its characters' motivations. In one of the previous chapters' "chats with Ryuukishi" I think he also talked about depression more directly as well as resources that help with that. Good stuff :blobmorning2:
 
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Fucking Nintendo.

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The SNES version of The Girl Who Stands Behind was a rather short game, probably about ~10 hrs or less. And there's no physical edition for the English version either. :flare_pout:





Someone is working on Loopers.

 
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