Too much sex

Visual Novel Community Archive, 2000-2009
#1

Recently I have found myself irritated with the ammount of sex in b-games, at least those translated into english so I can play them. Don’t get me wrong, games like “Hitomi”, or “Gibo” are designed around the idea, and even “Sagara Family” (though that game is a great deal less disturbing than the other two listed here) and games in that genre are meant as a fantasy fulfillment sexcapade … but when you start getting into games with stronger stories the sex seems out of place more often than not.

In games like “Snow Sakura” or “Yume Miru Kusuri” it feels as though the designers are forcing the sex scenes in despite the story, rather than as a means to enhance it. In “Crescendo”, for example, you spend most of the game building toward your possible sexual encounter, while getting to know and appreciate the characters before sex becomes involved. In this way the event comes to mean more for your character and not merely something you do along the way. The sense of accomplisment is greater and the excitement more tangible when you only get 1 or 2 sex scenes with your chosen girl. In games like SS or YMK I find myself speeding through the scenes after the first time - I’ve already seen the girl naked, after all, and once that’s done a great deal of the mystery is lost.

This also cheapens the romance … it gets to the point that - when the protagonist suggests the two characters go somewhere you want to roll your eyes and hang your shoulders - so if one of them suggests forgoing sex, you’re ready to stand up and applaud.

There are a few games I’ve seen recently which have no sex in them at all, and I’m strongly leaning toward purchasing those when I have the money. Though that is taking the game in the other extreme and I have to wonder if I won’t feel cheated … I guess that will depend on whether the games still have romance. (if anyone has some good suggestions for this type of game let me know)

So, anyone else sick of the overabundance of sex in some of these games? (mind you, I’m no prude, I enjoyed “Hitomi” for what it was, but this problem struck me recently when I realized I was bored with the reoccuring sex scenes)

#2

I understand your point of vue, but I can’t agree because you mention games like YMk and SS which are definitively not sex romps.

In YMK, there aren’t so many sex scenes (when you compare to other games) and I don’t think those scenes are useless.
Of course there are more H-scenes in YMK than in Crescendo but the aims of those games are different. In Crescendo, you have to build a relationship, so the H scene is the acomplishment, but in YMK it’s different
Furthermore in YMK, you can see a different kind of developement in the relationship you have withe the girls. For ex with Aeka, at the beginning the main protagonist and Aeka start with a mere “physical” relationship and it evolves into love.

in SS, of course I won’t say that the 3 H-scenes per character were necessary, but… in fact I like H-scenes :mrgreen: and since it’s only 3 scenes for such a long story…
but even so I’m not really attracted by sex romps. I only have two games like that : Sagara family and come see me tonight 2.
I’ll always prefer games with a more developped story but still I want H-scenes ! I was quite disspointed after finishing Hourglass of summer since all the H-scenes were removed (same for amusement park…).

To conclude, there are 3 kinds of games :
The sex romps
The non H visual novels
and those in the middle with a good story and H-scenes.

The problem is that, since there aren’t a lot of those games translated in english, you have to try games in a category you don’t really like.
I prefer games with a story and H-scenes, but since I don’t read japanese, I have to try sex romps too…
So the solution is to learn japanese, go in Japan, buy 500 visual novels and send them to myself by airmail :smiley:

#3

Kaphewt… Gawd this is just amazing. Someone actually complains about the sex in Bishoujo games.

Ah well, i can’t fault you about it since yes, a lot of it does seem random. But many of these games puts you into the shoes of the main character. So wouldn’t it be rather out of place to not give in to temptation when it is flat out in your face?

However, sex romps aren’t all that bad. They tend to get ranked lower but damnit dude, some people buy them because they ARE sex romps LOL. But word to the wise though, if you are getting stuff like COme see me tonight and do you like Horny Bunnies, pick one and forget the other one. They are essentially the same game.

#4

My problem with the h-scenes in the better games is usually that the h-scenes themselves can be terribly written… :slight_smile: Maybe just because I’m a girl and have different standards of eroticism, but it’s quite jarring in, say, Figures of Happiness to go from meaningful romantic plot to sex scenes worthy of mystery science theatre style mocking. And I can’t even volunteer to step in and write sex scenes that don’t suck because people would complain it wasn’t a proper translation…

My copies of YMK and SS haven’t reached me yet, so I can’t comment on those.

#5

Yeah, I have a hard time comprehending this complaint. Too much sex in an H-Game. Admittedly, I get the point, but you have to also admit, its an odd point to be making about an H-Game.

#6

I find the appropriateness, and integration into the plot, of the H scenes to be more important than the mere quantity of them (for the most part). Yukizakura (Snow Sakura) and Yume Miru Kusuri had H scenes that were at least integrated into the plot, and I found that they didn’t really lessen the story. I found this marginally better than the H scenes in, say, every Key game, which are basically minute long totally pointless inclusions into the game that can be cleanly removed with no noticeable effect on the story whatsoever.

In fact, the only eroge that I’ve personally felt had too many H scenes (note that I don’t play sexromps, so =p) was Koibito Doushide Surukoto Zenbu, which has 33 H scenes with the main heroine. I just started CTRLing through them after the first few. The game was still good enough to make the sheer number tolerable, though =p

#7

I would love to read a sex scene that doesn’t suck. I know some well developed characters that really deserve better, and I find their H-scenes anti-climatic…
If only there were mods for these games… [add an extra scene or scenerio; finally give that sense of finality…]

#8

I think this may be at the heart of my problem - you can move from such beautiful scenes of caring and meaningful interaction to crass, poorly conveived sex scenes right out of some bad 70’s porno. If the scenes were handled better I might not be so bothered.

You know something else which bothers me though … and I might have already mentioned this … the random and sudden use of the word “love”. Here your protagonist barely knows the object of his affections - generally no better than someone he’s just begun dating - and he’s proclaiming his eternal, undying love and devotion … maybe they should try dating awhile first … kids these days are in such a hurry. (this doesn’t happen in every game, but when it does it seems so odd)

#9

i have to admit, i agree with that fully. there are games out there where the main character says that he loves the girl, when they don’t ever really build it up. like my most recent experience was the girl who smokes (pardon, bad with names) in snow sakura. he apparently loves her when they didn’t spend a whole lot of time with just the two of them. and when they did, it was only two or three times out of a several hour long game. not to mention that the first H scene between the two was horrible. i found it lacking in basically every way possible. the dialogue was extremely poor, and the love scene itself was bad all around for two reasons. first one being the fact that the girl barely seemed to enjoy it. granted she was a virgin but she seemed more annoyed and not joyful at all about it. the other thing that bothered me (this is sort of off topic) was that the artwork they use in the H scenes was vastly different from the main game screens. that bugged me to no end.

#10

That’s why you need to do you own h-novel papillon.

#11

hentai novel? that doesn’t sound too exciting…

#12

Oh … my god. Don’t even get me started. I was a proofreader for the fannotated version of Tsukihime, and at least, the hscene I edited was hideous and vile. It wasn’t even that it was a rape scene, it … just was … wrong in a disturbing kind of way. I had to struggle to resist the urge to completely scrap the scene, and write something less repulsive.

#13

I meant like a ADV game. I don’t think papillon would like stat raising games or I’d suggested that.

#14

Hey Jinnai, totally off topic but, where’s your avatar from? Assuming it’s a magical girl series, is it available in English … and not god-awful?

On the main topic, Snow Sakura really is a game in which the “sudden love” problem stands out.

#15

I like the h-scenes when they fit with the story, which happens on occasion :slight_smile:

What I’m trying to figure out, is why JAST sent me a pack of tissues with Hourglass of Summer? :?

#16

LOL…so you know it’s becuase guys write all the material (I hesitate to call it that) for the h-scenes, and don’t have a clue what goes on in a female’s head during dinner, let alone during sex.

#17

I think this is all a matter of what you are in a mood for…

#18

I can’t, though - at least, not with graphics that would be better than scribbles. Look at the sales figures for even the top games on eng.dlsite… there’s no way I could afford to finance a full-scale h-game. (Also, most customers there aren’t really going there looking for great erotic writing, either. They want jiggly animated boobies.) I can’t sell h-games on my own site, because I’d lose my livelihood for doing porn, and I can’t sell them through Jlist because I’m not Japanese. :slight_smile: So I can’t afford to pay an artist.

Keep an eye out on eng.dlsite for things with dreadful art but good writing and you might have found me lurking there in disguise :slight_smile:

#19

Nasu sucks for writing ero-scenes, that’s no news (for my part, I think his writing skills are horrid anyway, but…). As for ero-scenes in erogames, the main problem stems from them being an expectation in such games, therefore a necessity in order to succeed. As a proof, Key’s writers always admitted they hated putting explicit ero-scenes in their games but had to, because the way the market is. It’s only when they became famous that they tried releasing an all-age edition first, Clannad.
Simply put, bishoujo games on PC are expected to have ero-scenes when bishoujo games on console do not. This has nothing to do with the writer intending or not to have some in his story–no matter how Westerner fans claim that the PC edition is always “how the game should be” (read the hirameki quits thread to see about what I’m talking). As such, the ero-scene may indeed feel awkward --especially in ren’ai games-- because they were just thrown in, for market’s expectation’s sake. In such games, just ignore and skip them.

Not at all: it’s a perfectly valid question when it concerns ren’ai games.

#20

That’s not the main problem: that’s THE problem. Period. Of course I assume we’re talking about eroge with actual story content, and not sexfests here, because sexfests are supposed to have 50+ sex scenes. Nowa days 100+ is becoming the new standard.

I like to use Black Cyc and Type-Moon for these examples, because both deal with “supernatural” elements. When Black Cyc makes an eroge, it’s designed to have sex in the plot. The whole factor of what sex means and how it affects the core fundamentals of the plot, are well laid out and planned. When Type-Moon makes an eroge, the sex was thrown in as an afterthought. Thus the quality of erotic material in the two greatly differs between the companies, yet under no means should define that one company is better at sex than the other. Type-Moon really just doesn’t give a damn about it, and Black Cyc wallows in the filth. That’s why Type-Moon title make great non-hentai conversions, whereas Black Cyc doesn’t even bother.

I really feel sorry that Leaf and Circus suffer these kinds of woes. For example the To Heart 2 twincest ending made everything feel cheap because it happened too soon. That such divine magnificence was going to happen eventually was pretty much inevitable… but not at the time it occurred. They just threw that in there, to make twincest fans happy… which just felt half hearted. The original non-sex ending, was far better, because it made Ruri’s refusal to accept the inevitable of future twincest even that much cuter and realistic.