Been done before. I think its buried.
Naked! Seriously depends on the choices and which I think matches me best.
The moment I get to a choice, I type ‘{game name} ??’ into google.co.jp (less Chinese results with google.co.jp) and find a walkthrough. If that fails, I’ll try googling the game name with the text of each choice. Either way, I find a walkthrough or I don’t. If I find a walkthrough, I’ll work out a route order to complete the game in and pick choices accordingly. If I don’t find a walkthrough (rare and unfortunate) I’ll try to find other possibilities. First of all, if I am familiar with the game engine I may be able to glean the game structure from the script, especially if the game is nscripter/krkr and there are not too many choices involved. I did this for G-Senjou no Maou and for Toki-Hako -Time Capsule-. If this is not possible, I immediately save the game. I’ll then generally try and guess at the way things will be structured (the most common structure being trunk that branches into routes at varying points, with choices both branching temporarily and (sometimes) affecting favourability variables. I’ll then guess at the routes available, determine a route order and attempt to complete the first route. If something is either obviously a favourability choice or seems possible to be a favourability choice, I will take the appropriate choice for my current route. If it is not obvious, I will try and cover both to see what happens in each and determine when they lead back. This can be quite frustrating but in the long run it generally leads to me clearing the game faster and with less overall frustration than other methods I’ve tried.
The reason I don’t pick choices as if I were roleplaying the protagonist is that, while this allows me to see a certain fraction of the game once, if the game turns out to be complex (e.g. France Shoujo) I will have a tougher time clearing it later because it won’t be clear to me the path I originally took, and I may have to reread/skip a lot of text. Keep in mind some of these games contain megabytes of text and take literally hours of skipping at full speed and you can see why I would not see this as an enjoyable activity. I spent a huge amount of time skipping through ‘Doko e Iku no, Ano hi’ even though I HAD a walkthrough (because I did not understand the system). I likely would have been even worse off otherwise. Doesn’t help that the skipping in that game is pretty slow. Some old games have no skipping at all.
For the most part I pick the choices that will lead me to the girl I’m going for with some exceptions.
Well, I’ll just talk about the first route I cleared in se.kirara, since it’s typical of how I play the majority of my games.
When looking at the characters initially, Izumi was my first choice, because she’s stacked. I love my oppai. However as the game progressed, she didn’t really get much screen time, and to be quite honest, when she did get screen time, she wasn’t entertaining. Thus, enter Aya. I’d probably rate her 3rd out of the 5 girls available in looks, but she was the most entertaining…to be honest, she’s kind of stupid, but in an endearing, funny way. I wanted to see what the rest of her route was like, so I switched up from Izumi to Aya. ( I guess personality matters to me even in B-Games? Kind of sad tbh)
I’ve pretty much bumped Izumi to 4 out of 5 in my clear list just because I find all but one to be more entertaining. Sorry Yu, you’re just not my type…don’t even know if I’ll clear your route.
I also save at almost every decision point in any game I play, which can be kind of a pain, but gives me the ability to explore certain paths and then re-load if it turns out that I don’t like the way a choice I made progresses. It’s also nice for replays through paths, gives you the ability to auto skip the intro/prologue and get right to the meat of another route. Of course, this strategy backfires with games that have a New Game+ option, but I’ve only run into a few of those.
I try to only use walkthroughs when I’m stuck, or when I’m trying to get 100% completion on something that I’ve already gone through. Not because they take away from the game or anything, but because I’m too lazy to search for one most of the time.
Walkthrough from the start, combined with suggestions from anyone else as to a recommended clear order. For example, with MinDead Blood, even with a walkthrough you’re going to spend at least couple of hours skipping through text, so it’d cut down my enjoyment of the game if I spent even longer on it by trying to clear it without one. Time spent without a walkthrough = fewer eroges cleared overall = even larger backlog. I’ll generally stick to the order they suggest, unless I come across something in-game for a story-based title that suggests I should aim for a certain ending or route first.
http://kiisu.jpn.org/index.php Just search for the title, and it will give you a list of links to various walkthroughs/reviews/save files.
On my first playthrough, I play the game almost like I would “play” my life, making the choices I would make in real life, and eventually trying to get the girl I like the most from the cast. After that, I search for a walkthrough and clear any other route I find interesting enough to clear.
The major reason I don’t go for a walkthrough from the start is that if I’d so I wouldn’t feel like I enjoyed the game at all. It’s probably something reminiscent from back when I was an hardcore console player and didn’t like being told how to play a game, but still even in an eroge I don’t like being told which order should I stick to :?
Usually, I do the first playthrough on my own, and then find a walkthrough for remaining routes.
The first time I pick the choices I think are best! (rarely fails me) I only usually look for a walkthrough on later playthroughs, when I think I might be stumbling off the beaten path…
I always use a Walkthrough from the start - picking the girl I like and following the path to get her. Should it turn out later that she isn’t that great and I change my mind, I’ll go back to the walkthrough and see if it is possible to get the new girl I’m interested it from where I am or decide if I have to restart. Why? I have a difficult time playing through most games more than once or twice a year - I just can’t sit through the same story again and again to get every ending, so I need to be certain I get the ending I want from the start and then come back later to try those others which interested me. Not to mention the fact that while there are many predictable B game scripts, sometimes the oddest things will be important for whether of not you get a girl in the end, and I would hate for one or two obscure decisions to ruin the ending for me.
While going along I tend to save at every decision so I can go back and branch off or check the outcome of decisions later on without having to restart from the beginning. Typically, though, I will only use my saved games to branch or try different ideas with the girl I’m after - if I decide to pursue a different girl I will usually restart from the beginning unless the story is entirely the same up to some significant branching point. (such as in KiraKira for the most part)
I try to do exactly this, although I sometimes find myself tempted to fudge choices in favor of the girl I like the most, especially when I have a hard time figuring out what I would do in real life.
I usually try to figure it out myself at least the first couple of playthrus, then switch to a walkthru to make sure I’m not missing anything.
Some games, like the older Crowd releases (Tokimeki Checkin!) or Snow Drop I did need some help with just to get anywhere. TCI can be pretty random in figuring out how to get to a particular ending.
I usually tried to be nice to every single girl first time through, then saved when the game told me to choose among girls. This strategy helped me clear Come To See Me Tonight 1 and Idols Galore in short time.
While I do keep files of walkthroughs of the games I own (and a few that I don’t), I generally prefer to just fart my way thru a game and let it take me where it wants me to go. Who wants to pay $30-40 for a game and then play it all in one weekend? I’ll resort to the walkthrough if there’s a path I just can’t figure out or if there’s a harem in the game.
Me, me! In fact, if I pay $30-40 for a game I expect to finish it in a weekend.
Here’s a breakdown of my expectations of pricing to length. I’m pretty flexible though:
<2000? - 4-6 hours (day)
2000? to 4000? - 8-12 hours (weekend)
4000? to 8000? - 12-16 hours
9240?+ - 16+ hours
There are occasionally massive exceptions to the rule on either side. This is a 50+ hour otome eroge for 2,625?, while the original Downhill Night was 9,240? for something that seems to be less than six hours long, going by reviews.
Typically Japanese games are more expensive though. While its hard to equate exact numbers as there aren’t really any erotic games of the same type, I’ll substitute RPGs which are the closest to having “long gameplay”.
For an RPG I’d expect:
<$20 4-6 hours (day)
$20 - $30 6-12 hours (weekend)
$30 - $40 12-24 hours
$40 - $50 24-40 hours
$50 40+ hours
That’s the general breakdown, excluding SE/LE versions. Subtract $10 for handheld games. While these are my ideas, by and large they’ll be similar for other people and that’s the problem with charging high prices for the games. At the low end, you’re not going to get much and most people who play these games don’t want something you can finish in a day. That’s actually a turn-off for a large percentage of the market, even those who only casually play RPGs. I remember when Rise of Nations came out and said you could complete a game in about an hour it was a real turn off to a lot of people. Sure, some people liked that idea, but most people didn’t because these are solitary games you can play at your leisure, not party games and there is built-in expectation that such games should last longer and longer, even simple sidescrollers or fps games, but without increasing cost.
I try to make the choices I would make in real life and go afte the love intrest I find most interesting. Which seems to be a pretty popular way to go about it. Then on the second play thru I go after the second most interesting and will branch out with different decisions trying to get different scenes,etc.
I play this way for Bishojo, Otome, Yaoi, whatever.
Snow Drop is unplayable without a walkthrough but I found Tokimeki Checkin! really rewarding and enjoyable when I tried to find the right choices by myself…
I agree with every word. Only masochists can enjoy Snow Drop without a walkthrough, that game has a brutal and annoying choice system. Tokimeki Check-In! was one of my first eroge games, and I cleared every single ending by myself, it was very enjoyable.
Another game to bring up when talking about the decision to use a walkthrough or not is Casual Romance Club. I found it exceedingly difficult to figure out what kind of choices to make my first time through, but when I used a walkthrough the next time, the game lost much of what made it interesting. To give you an idea of how much I sucked the first time, I somehow managed to fail to get the one girl in the game who is already crazy about you. :? In fact, I think the walkthrough said it is almost impossible to screw up getting her. 
I had the same problem with that game. My first time through I got nothing, but with the walkthrough it seemed a bit tedious. I shudder to think how much trial and error must have gone into making a walkthrough for that game.