I had absolutely forgotten about that, thank you for pointing it out.
I don’t know.
When I look at the screens and the story it doesn’t look too bad.
https://www.androme.com/shop/archonia/index.php?page=article&aid=37903
Oh btw, anyone happen to know a good online US/non-Europe store which will ship to Singapore and carries visual novels?
That’s 'cos Phantom and some other titles are probably not carried by Jlist and would probably cost a bomb if shipped from some place in Europe. 
I looked at Amazon’s marketplace but… some of the shipping terms are really vague and don’t include Singapore, so I’ve no idea how much the shipping charges will be.
Man, shipping from overseas is really expensive: I spent almost 500 bucks on various goods within 1 month. And half of it was for shipping charges.
Heh… what the… lol. That’s a great suggestion. 
Btw, can you adjust the text speed? I heard you can’t? I tend to read at a much slower rate at times and if I’m going to have to reload an entire @#$@#$ scenario just to get at a certain line… …
Eh, I see… hmmm. Just get what you want to buy?
You could purchase from Transreality in Australia, although I’m not sure how much the shipping will cost (also, the games are more expensive than J-List). However, they do have a few games in stock that J-List has sold out of (Hirameki stepped out of the VN business at the start of this year, so they aren’t reprinting their games.)
There’s no way of adjusting the text speed, but the overall pace is quite slow, as every line is voiced. If you do miss something, you can just rewind it a few seconds.
Yuri → Dis you check this list of stores ?
http://www.jastusa.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=CTGY&Store_Code=JU&Category_Code=buy
whistles Some of the prices are even higher than purchasing from Jlist.
I guess that’s a last resort only if I can’t get said title elsewhere at a more competitive price.
Damn… as in, like Message speed 1? Oh okay, so you can rewind?
Darn it… why doesn’t someone just create a patch to give it more functionality? I’m sure it’s doable without breaking any legality issues.
Thank you. I was unaware of majority of these links.
Unfortunately, scenes are played back as video, so it’s impossible to improve functionality. Personally, I wasn’t bothered by the slow text speed since I enjoy listening to each and every line (the text changes once the voiceover has finished). Even on PC games, I don’t advance the text until a character has stopped speaking. However, many players like to skip over voices once they’ve finished reading something.
Yes, you can rewind, fast-forward, pause, etc (I’d recommend using a software DVD player). This comes in handy whenever you want to skip to the end of an event you’ve already seen.
Phantom has some violent scenes. However, it’s more of a character-driven drama than a mindless action thriller.
Yeah, Hourglass has plenty of flaws, but depending on your tastes, you might enjoy it in spite of that.
Hmmm… I usually take far longer to read since the Japanese voice-overs tend to be really fast at times. At least there’s the rewind option.
Anyways, that was a typo error about the patch: I failed to finish the rest of the sentence. Basically, I was wondering why you couldn’t add a “save” and “load” functionality to it. Was that not even possible?
Yes, you can rewind, fast-forward, pause, etc (I’d recommend using a software DVD player). This comes in handy whenever you want to skip to the end of an event you’ve already seen.
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Right, gotcha… I’ve got a 3 yr old version of Windvd lying around. That should probably work.
Great 'cos I generally trust few games to portray the violence artistically.
That’s good.
Btw, anyone knows a good horror visual novel with English translations? Someone I know, has got interested in visual novels after all my blabbering and wants to get one that’s really scary. Not sure if she will play the ones with sex, though since she’s got children around her house. On shii.org, I found a few titles that are listed as dark/horror like The noose, Night of the forget me nots… but is there any title that’s really scary? As a comparison: she played Bioshock and felt it was spooky but not that frightening.
Oh and is Exodus guilty any good? There’re some glowing reviews about this series and some which weren’t so hot about its’ story and other factors: some felt it was below par Eve Burst Error. I know Ai Yori Aoshi was a disappointment so I’m staying away from it. Yo jin bo sounds fun though I’m not sure how it’s going to be like: are the jokes really lame or something? I tend to steer away from stuff that tries too hard to be funny.
Eh, don’t know if she has but I’m looking for horror visual novel recommendations, not consoles or any other types of games.
If ero-content is okay, I would vote for Divi-Dead as having the best scaaaaaaary atmosphere of any VN I’ve played. Just the opening sequence of it is enough to get the spooks going.
It loses something by the end… it gets frustrating to play and the story gets confusing… but it’s still cool. Bible Black is fun dark evil magic stuff, but it’s not as scary (imo), and it has much more sex in it than Divi-Dead does, iirc.
For non-sex, there’s always Fatal Hearts. Which gets scary enough that parents have yanked it away from their children.
If you can afford it, there is also Tsukihime which you can install w/o the ero scenes.
Heh… Tsukihime is really expensive last I checked. Why didn’t they just reprint it or something? Let me guess: trying to hype things up so they can cash on it, huh?
And papillon: thank you for the recommendations.
MrBiggens: Well, probably 'cos I doubt she’s got an Xbox. And… since she wants to start on VNs, I don’t think it’s a good idea to let her move away from it. Once you’ve got a chance to let someone try out a VN, don’t let go of it. :twisted:
Actually…they did.
In the more expensive form of Tsukibako.
Anyway they can no longer cash in. Tsukihime and Tsukibako are OoP
But… what I mean is: there’s the internet and everything. Why aren’t they continuing to distribute it? Oh, probably 'cos most of the targetted audience has already played it?
Did you get e-mails from irate parents afterwards?
I guess there wouldn’t be much of a market for it even if it was re-released as is - it’s over 7 years old, and the graphics were a bit below par for their time too. If the game got a major graphical overhaul, there would probably be a market though :?.
Oh, and to answer your question on Yo-Jin-Bo: There are some corny jokes in it, some of which are replacements of the original Japanese ones that are probably untranslatable. A lot of the jokes/humourous situations are original though, and they are accompanied by great voice acting. The only downside would be the slightly small number of CGs… though I think that’s more than made up for by the great soundtrack, and the very large number of vocal songs (15 I think?).
So this means they stinted a little on graphics quality so they could work on other aspects of the game? Fine with me.
Btw, Tsukihime currently sells for about US$300 and above, right?
Hmmm… thank you for the explanation. frowns So now it comes down to this:
Hourglass or Yo jin bo?
The main problem with Yo jin bo is that of all the online retailers I’ve gone through, only Shop Anime DVD ships to Singapore using USPS. And from what I know, USPS sends ALL parcels right up to the MDA censorship board, meaning the game cds will be battered and stuff. And given how MDA seems to hate anime and manga, the package might not even make it through to me. :roll:
Unless I get someone to help me buy it and ship it to Singapore via another method… not an option, I think. So, this game is probably out as an option.
Personally, I’m not that much interested in non-ero games. I’m not going to stay up till three AM, reading screen after screen until my eyeballs ache without a reward, but I suspect that unless bishojo can make the leap to a broader (non-porn loving) audience, it’s not going anywhere. Of course, even if it makes that leap, it will still never be as popular as those shooter games. Maybe if there were a game about high school girls who steal cars…
I think that many shooter games are very popular mainly 'cos of all the hype and $$$ the developers and graphics companies pump into that genre. A lot of these games are basically recycled ideas. It’s past 10 years since I first heard about shooters and they still are pumping out shooters about marines/soldiers, aliens and killer machines. Although of course you get unique ideas like Portal(made by those who created Narbocular drops) and a few others whose names I don’t recall.
And with the hype about “special effects that do nothing for the gameplay”, lots of folks sure love to buy into the idea that they’re playing the Bestest game ever. Probably because after blowing a large amount of cash on an SLI/Quadcore/4gb ddr2/Azuntech Prelude/etc. setup, who would admit that said game is disappointing to them? :lol: So, I think for many of those shooters, it’s the hardware that sells them and not just the gameplay itself. I say this because many players just don’t finish most games: something distracts them and then they dump it aside, even though they’ve claimed to.
Actually, I suspect the lack of popularity of VNs outside of Japan has more to do with the fact that many don’t read these days. They don’t want to read text within a game, a movie or many other mediums. That is: they’d prefer to let someone tell them how and what to think, how to react, etc. Even with movies, games, media, etc. that relies heavily on graphics/pictures, quite a few would rather read a review and just assume that what’s said = true and parrot it blindly.
If they pick up a book or medium that’s generally wordy, it’s rather likely it’s because the item is popular or “hip”. But whether they actually read the book or simply flip through it, is another matter.
Perhaps I’m jumping at conclusions but the falling literacy rate in many countries might have something to do with this: many are able to read and write but are unable to comprehend words and language past a basic level.