A new respect for visual novels

Visual Novel Community Archive, 2000-2009
#1

If you had asked me up until today what I liked about H-games (and by extention bishoujo games) I would have replied with an enthusiastic “TENTACLES!” I even recently bought a bunch of games on J-list for a summer diversion. But little did I know that one of the games I got for free (and one without any H in it at all!) would give me a new respect for the genre.

I don’t need to tell any of you how amazingly deep Hourglass of Summer is, but I’d like to ask are there any games that compare to it in scope of story? I’ve been bitten by the otaku bug! I’ve got a collection to build! :smiley:

#2

Nocturnal Illusion (will be hard to find, as it’s out of print and rather old) - you can get it in the Milky House Memorial Collection, if you can find that.

Ever 17 (also out of print, though you may be able to find it because it’s much more recent) is totally badass.

Crescendo is really good as well. Familly Project (which is just about to be released) is one of the games the Japanese rank as one of the best ever (they have thousands to choose from, so this says a lot).

I hear good things about Princess Waltz, but I haven’t gotten around to it yet.

#3

Hourglass of Summer is amazing to you? Oh, be prepared to die of shock from some other games. :lol:

WIthout some examples of games you like or what kind of game you want, I can’t really give many recommendations. Except Ever 17. Go play that. It’s still available at Jlist.

Edit: Actually, I’m going to list some doujin games because they’re free, so I can recommend them easier than games that cost money. True Remembrance (where my avatar comes from if anybody ever wondered) and Narcissu.

Someone really needs to make some chart or something that lists games and what other games you’d probably like based on that. It’d save a lot of repeating.

#4

Don’t forget Yume Miru Kusuri

#5

YMK, Crescendo, Kana, Private Nurse.These are the bestof what I have payed :slight_smile:

#6

I had the same type of impression of visual novels [or as I called em, H-Games]

The one that broke the ice from that impression was…
Phantom of Inferno
that led me to Hirameki’s games non-adult rated games…

[I knew of JAST, G-Collections, Peach Princess games etc but didn’t pursue them since they had H content…]
Hirameki’s games led me to getting Hourglass of Summer, Animamundi, Yo-Jin-Bo, and of course Ever17
(some lesser ones of interest being Exodus Guilty Part 1 [the first DVD was the best in my opinion, 2 was just alright, and 3 was a little better; 1 still was the most fun], also played uh Tea Society of a Witch lol… that was interesting, a little fun weekend diversion in my opinion])

Then Peach Princess and friends released…
Yume Miru Kusuri and X-Change Alternative’s professional art, and higher looking budgets along with good reviews convinced me to make the leap into games with adult content…

From there I bought Crescendo, Kana -little sister-, Figures of Happiness, Chain the Lost Footsteps, Fatal Hearts (oops Fatal Hearts snuck in here even though it’s not made by JAST and friends :P), and others…

Also at the same time I had been following fan translation projects which led me to buy the retail Japanese versions (woot for awesome boxes, wahhhh for high prices :()
Planetarian, Fate/stay night, Tsukihime, Utawarerumono, and many many more… [so that’s where my money has gone :(]

Then MangaGamer came along with some good titles as well…
Da Capo, Suika, Kira*Kira, (Edelweiss might be good… but the sad translation has me sad… stopped halfway hoping for a new patch to bring it up to retail quality… still waiting…)

Still now, more than ever JAST and friends is the place to be for visual novels at great prices.
Princess Waltz and Family Project should be grabbed up methinks :wink:
(and nitro+ titles to come!)

EDIT: Also there’s a whole category of free games and demo/trials…

#7

As has already been mentioned, Kana, YMK, and Crescendo are all excellent choices, which I can personally recommend, having played them myself. (However, be warned that Kana is so moving, you may be depressed for some time after completing a play through. I still have yet to try and make it through one more time to get the “True Ending”. As someone else on the forum put it, “If you aren’t crying at the end, something is wrong with you.”, and I whole-heartedly agree.) While I haven’t played it (though am planning on grabbing this very soon), all I hear are good things about Ever 17. A game which hasn’t been mentioned yet in this thread, however, is Figures of Happiness. I’ve heard many people say good things about this game. I have it (was able to grab one of the last physical copies J-List was selling), but have yet to complete a play through, so my personal verdict is still out. While I don’t find them quite as good story-wise as Kana, YMK, and Crescendo, Snow Sakura and Princess Waltz are others you might consider. I enjoyed both quite a bit, but personally found them to fall just shy of greatness.

#8

There must be something wrong with me. Kana is among the lowest ranked games I have. I think I’m one of the few people on this board that openly dislikes the game. :lol: The main problem with it for me is I simply don’t like Kana. She has a very uninteresting personality (nor does she have any looks to make up for some of it), and if I don’t like the characters, I simply will never like the game, no matter how good the story is. This is probably why Snow Sakura is one of my favorite games released by Jast. It pretty much has a non-existent story (it’s really just a slice of life), but the characters make it an enjoyable experience. It’s probably also why I can’t bring myself to finish some games, like FSN. I simply don’t like Sakura enough to invest 20-30 hours into it. For me, my favorite character pretty much defines the game, which is also why I always play my favorite character’s route first.

#9

Narcissu has a really good story, and it’s completely free.

As other people said, I would suggest you also Princess Waltz, Yume Miru Kusuri, Kira Kira (especially if you like jrock) and Snow Sakura.

if you don’t mind going for fan-traslated stuff, you definitely don’t want to miss Fate/stay Night.

And obviously, keep an eye on the upcoming Nitro+ titles translated by Jast. There’s only good stuff in there :smiley:

#10

When I first started posting on these boards, I said something in the lines of “You’ve pointed me in the direction of a ton of games worth playing in the past, and some lesser good but thats besides the point.” the comment about “lesser” good games for me was with kana in mind, and for the exact same reasons as the ones you pointed out. I somewhat liked Yumi (as the only character I might add) but she wasn’t enough to pull the entire game up, but yeah… it wasn’t exactly ment to be that sorta game.

Man, seems like I’m sharing your taste regarding characters not to play… as I’ve been meaning to finish off the game for a while now, but I just can’t seem to get myself through that path… she just has such a weak personality, and is hardly able to talk half of the time due to either being embarresed or sulking, which will never be appealing to me… so yeah, maybe someday I’ll bite the sour apple and go through it, but it’ll definately have to be a dry period for english translations out there then. :roll:

#11

This. This is something I don’t understand at all. But, for some reason, a lot of people do this.

Ever since I first started playing VNs, I’ve always played the character routes in inverse order to how much I liked them. In short, I played the worst one first and the best one last. This is so I can 1) keep up my motivation to play the game and 2) experience a gradual improvement in the experience of playing the game as I spend longer on it, ending with the game at its very best.

The obvious inherent problem in this is that, well, the amount you like a character at the start of the game might not match at all the amount you like said character at the end of her route - some characters can greatly mature over the course of a game. For example, I didn’t think much of Miku (from A Profile) originally… including through my entire playthrough of Rizu’s route, but by the end of Miku’s route I thought she was fantastic.

The other problem is that how much you like a character does not necessarily match how much you’ll like her route. With something like Fate/stay Night, where the stories offer reduced emphasis on the heroines compared to the average VN, the disparity is going to be much larger than in a straightforward ‘pure love’ VN.

Fate/stay Night, I’d personally order the characters and routes somewhere like:

Characters:
Rin > Sakura > Saber

Routes:
Sakura > Rin > Saber

Thankfully, the latter order works fine with the order the game forces on you, meaning I got the best experience out of Fate/stay Night possible.

On the other hand, to a lesser extent, the VN Hoshizora no Memoria misordered the final two routes - the second last route is much better than the last route. They should have been swapped around. This doesn’t have much to do with the characters - both heroines are great, but the second last route is so much better, so much longer and feels ‘canon’.

#12

Ever 17 had no cuts. It never had any h content to begin with that needed removing anyway. The sex in the game is all only described or implied. The translation is not the greatest in the world, but there are worse.

Nocturnal Illusion was also not translated very well. But the Milky House version had the censored scenes restored (I believe - I have not played it myself to check) and even if it did not, the game is awesome enough that the < 5 % of the game that got cut (and it was only the images - the text of the events is still there) is not that big a deal.

The others … this is more of an issue. Hirameki games had a considerable amount of content removed from the adult-only versions. Hirameki did not remove it themselves - they licensed a version of the game that the Japanese had already made, with the content removed - but yes, some content was removed **. In some cases, large amounts of the game were stripped out. However, most of the games that were most significantly affected by this were not that great to begin with. Hirameki is a dead company now anyway, so there are no new products coming from them, and the stock of their old ones is dwindling fast.

Crescendo is not censored in any way. Some bonus scenes from the Japanese special collectors-edition rerelease were not included in the US version, that is all. (This kind of sucks, but the game is awesome). Princess Waltz did not have anything cut either.

As a general rule, nothing G-Collections or Peach Princess or J-List puts out has been censored !. Some exceptions exist for very old games. Nocturnal Illusion was originally released by another company; they censored two characters for being loli. The characters are still in the game, the scenes even still happen, but the graphics were cut out. I believe the Milky House version uncensored the game entirely. (The original version has been out of print for perhaps a decade.)

** - Some of the purists will say the Japanese removed it, so Hirameki didn’t censor anything – from the perspective of the topic poster’s question, however, it doesn’t really matter who removed it; it was removed, and Hirameki’s dead now, so arguing over who exactly is responsible is somewhat moot.

! - See also XChange 3 controversy - a scene involving someone too obviously a toddler was edited because PP did not feel it was safe to release the title with the scene intact.

#13

The problem is that many eroge have a long common route. If I go in the inverse order, I’d either have to replay the same part many times or jump right into the middle of a path, which greatly worsens the experience of subsequent paths. The first playthrough is when everything is new, and it’s always the most enjoyable to me. I often actually stop playing the game once I finish the paths of the character(s) I like unless I know playing all the paths is crucial to the game. I consider my time more valuable than getting all the value out of a game (which is why I pretty much never try to 100% any game, eroge or not). If I’m not enjoying a game, I’m not going to force myself through it. I’ll move onto another game that I’ll enjoy. I have a large enough backlog anyway.

And I’ve never encountered a character that I disliked in the beginning and ended up loving. The biggest change would probably be from disliking her to tolerating her. There are certain types of characters that I simply never like, and unless they have a complete personality change, I would never like them.

#14

I’m pretty much the same way. If it’s a game that I like, I’ll generally complete one path. If it’s a game that I really like, I might do the paths of all the characters that appeal to me. Fate/Stay Night and Tsukihime were notable exceptions; I got into the story so much that individual character appeal became less of a factor. As Reikon notes, repetitive “common routes” generally kill my urge to play through a game multiple times. Even if you can skip right over repeated text instantly, it hurts the replay experience. Fate/Stay Night diverged early on and the paths stayed entirely separate, keeping the experience fresh. Of course, the problem with games with a set path order like Fate/Stay Night is that if you run into a path you don’t like, you might lose motivation to continue playing. This happened to me with Triptych. I played the game for the gothic lolita cover girl, only to find that I had to plow through 2 other girls to get to her, 1 of whom I couldn’t stand. Suika also seems to be structured like this, although it hasn’t bothered me at this point. Structuring games with a set path order is a gamble; the developers are gambling that their story/individual characters are interesting enough that you’ll keep playing, and in exchange for this leap of faith you get nonrepetitive and sequential playthroughs.

Summary of the general plot structures I’ve encountered so far in bishoujo games:
Single lengthy route (many Leaf games, including Tears to Tiara and Utawarerumono)
Multiple overlapping routes (probably the most common)
Mutliple routes, little or no overlap (Fate/Stay Night)

The multiple route categories can then be subdivided based on whether there’s a restriction on play order of the routes: unrestricted (common), somewhat restricted (Tsukihime), or restricted (Fate/Stay Night)

I play a lot of RPGs, and these tend to branch late in the game, if at all. Most of the time having to redo the same battles as before is a huge factor discouraging me from completing the other paths. Even with shortcuts provided, I usually only play a single path. Softhouse Chara is one of the few RPG developers who make me actually want to replay multiple times. Their gameplay is addictive, the playthroughs are short, and you carry stats over from each playthrough. Notably, you’re missing out on most of each game if you only play through once; the first ending is often incomplete as well, with the better endings requiring more powerful characters / more time to unlock.

#15

At least a few people in this thread have admitted they wouldn’t have tried ren’ai games (or H games) without someone else’s recommendation. Yeah, that was true for me. Back when Geocities/Tripod anime fansites were still current, I read a bunch of them. I got the impression from galge were just trash… and something that was holding back anime/gaming fandom. If I had just purchased Three Sisters Story (my first eroge) and nothing else, then I might’ve agreed. But then I actually tried Season of the Sakura…

There’s still plenty of fans out there who automatically dismiss 1) visual novels, and 2) boy x girls harem games (especially if their favorite genres are shoujo or BL). I guess that’s inevitable.

I had the same experience with comics fandom, basically. Ever read Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics? The first page, in which the author admits he assumed that comic books were for not-quite-literate people who couldn’t appreciate prose… yeah, that’s what I assumed too.

#16

Buy the games. Play them. Tell your friends how awesome they are.

You came; you breathed the air. The change is … inevitable. Don’t worry, it’s usually painless 8D

Perhaps you already know how few games are released in anything but Japanese? It’s a crying shame, how many really good games of this type never get out of Japan. I am convinced lots of people would enjoy these games (if only they played one of the good ones) but don’t know they exist. You’re a perfect example, actually :slight_smile:

The short version: games in English commonly are sold for half the Japanese price, and they sell far fewer copies. So going after the English market is not usually a smart move for Japanese companies, almost always strapped for cash. But the market is still here, and it steadily expands. The market for more conventional Japanese-culture-heavy games, like those translated by Atlus, is increasing as well, and there’s a lot of overlap.

So you already did contribute something just by showing up. Welcome aboard!

I can’t think of anything as cool-sounding as that. We generally call them “n00bs” or ‘posers’. Generally, we have the same kind of problems with the same group of folks. There is a slightly more formal name, but hardly anyone knows what the Eternal September is anymore.

#17

I would avoid buying X-Change 3 out of principle if censorship is a problem for you. If I recall correctly, that had scenes take out/edited for content.

#18

You are right - though this is not the most important reason why I would advise against that game.

Instead of what was taken out, the things that still were left in made it for me the most horrible part of the series!

But then, I actually never reached those parts of the game that were touched - actually never even yet encountered Lipp and didn’t manage to trigger Asano’s route either!
Why?
Because I had an unpleasent encounter with a certain stepsister, which convinced me of immediately uninstalling this game for good!

#19

3 scenes were edited

In the maid bad ending, Lipp was removed from the sex scene
In the maid photography scene, the content was changed due to it being fairly…heavy ( if I remember right, it has urination and everything )
In Asano’s rape scene, blood was removed.

Theirs an official patch available to return the Maid photography scene and Asano’s rape scene to normal. But Lipp’s scene remains edited.

#20

Thank you, everyone who replied! I actually had ordered Kana and YMK a few days before I posted originally, but I’m glad to know that it was money well spent. As for the free visual novels Narcissu and True Remembrence those were AMAZING. In a way I’m very sad now that not only are bishoujo games not mainstream enough, and thus people miss out on some of the great games, but also that there are other simple yet stunning games just being given away that less than 25% of the population will ever hear about or read. :frowning: