We Aren't Playing Enough Visual Novels

[Asceai]

As part of the latest discussion to arise from that 'Piracy flaming goes here' thread, which was split off from the Elitism thread, which in turn was split off from the AnimeNorth thread (and possibly could be split off YET AGAIN), I came to the possibly erroneous conclusion that we don't really play enough visual novels. Or we play too many crap visual novels, and not enough good ones.

Naturally, they are expensive things, and people want to avoid buying rubbish. However, while things like erogamescape are one measure of determining how good a game is, it's typically not quite good enough at telling the relative quality of games within certain 'tiers'.

So I'm going to rattle off some games I know very little about, except the fact that they probably don't suck and could be interesting:

Nitroplus' "Hello, world"
Light's "Ganjou no Sora wo Koete"
Studio Ryokucha's "Katakoi no Tsuki"
Tarte's "Katahane"
Overdrive's "Kira Kira"

And in exchange:

minori's "ef -the latter tale-"

Vast improvement on -the first tale- while mostly sticking to the same formula (relaxed-pace storytelling, short-but-sweet script, beautiful graphics) Has THREE reasonably-lengthed stories as opposed to the two in -the first tale-, and the third (basically Yuuko/Himura backstory) is my favourite of the lot. Quite neat. If G-Senjou no Maou hadn't come out, this would definitely be my pick for May.

Lapis Blue's "BIFRONTE"

To be honest I wasn't mega-excited about this one. The story, in general, is a lot more predictable and less interesting than I was hoping for. Dark-themed game, but not a super-interesting one.


You know, I have to go to work. I might come back and edit this one, adding some more entries later.

[KaioShin]

So these are all new games released this/last month?

I'd say I'm interested in the Nitro+ game, but just because I'm a fan of their work in general since Gekkou no Carnevale. From light I only played Dies Irae which was pretty nice, but I never heard of any of the other studios. Well, I'm still new to this stuff :)

Since I can only rely on AGTH for Japanese I'm usually more looking for character designs and optics I really dig and not good writing. Couldn't tell anyway which is a damn shame :(

[Asceai]

These aren't new games - they aren't (necessarily) old games, but I was just picking things I was interested in. I don't think any of the first list I gave were that new. Of course, the two games I gave some information about ARE new games, if you were talking about them.

[drmchsr0]

I claim no knowledge of Japanese.

Therefore I can't play them as much as I like.

[Agilis]

Well, because of some minor project occupying my life... over the past 13 months, I've fully completed 1 game: Palette's Sakura Strasse.
Recently Light's Sakashiki hito ni miru kokoro can be added to that since it's only 1 scenario

The list of games where I've played 1-3 or so scenarios on (< a weekend of play time... before I go back to work) is much longer...
Cotton's Reconquista and Nagisano
etude's Soshite ashita no sekai yori
Yuzu's Natsusora kanata
Age's Altered Fable
chuable's Sugar+Spice
Leaf's TH2AD
ef...

and there's always that list of games I have that I want to play someday but never have time to... and games I started but never finished due to time constraints... totaling some 50+ titles long......

Upcoming there's Hiqual's Sakura sakura... has fun characters even though the writing is somewhat rough.
Sumikko's Nidaime wa mahou shoujo just looks fun on a rainy afternoon,
Lump of Sugar's Tayutama might be pretty good

and it's already been over a month since 11eyes came out and I haven't even finished the demo... -_-

[Asceai]

11eyes' demo IS pretty long =P I might get around to writing about some other games that I haven't nrcessarily otherwise recommended, when I get a bit of time.

Originally Posted by Asceai

11eyes' demo IS pretty long =P

The entire game is pretty damn long as well. Scenario folder's roughly 4.3 MB, though still gibberish because ExtractData can't handle the files correctly yet. So that might or might not be its real size. Either way, it's really, really long.

[Asceai]

ExtractData doesn't handle that particular form of encryption, huh? Weird.. maybe the author just hasn't encountered it yet. It's extremely easy to break.

In terms of actual text size, it's, like, 2/3 of that, anyway.

[Starchanchan]

I've always loved Frontwing's "Azrael" ._.;; though no one else I know has ever played it, or even heard of it. It was one of my first h-game experiences, so it's special to me :[ I keep meaning to go back and replay it now that it's years later and I can understand a lot more of it, but oh man, so, so many things to play/watch... it's not even funny.

[jyuichi]

Originally Posted by Agilis

Well, because of some minor project occupying my life... over the past 13 months, I've fully completed 1 game: Palette's Sakura Strasse.

I saw some art for that it looked very cute :3

How was it?

[Serrklieth]

I personally manage to play a few ... I only recently (last month or so) managed to complete the good route for Discipline - Record of a lost Crusade, and simply loved Yume Miru Kusuri... and I've played through a handful of others before that. But all the games I can play are somewhat limited by my inferior knowledge of the Japanese language, so I can't really play it properly unless it's in English :(

[luckyovermind]

Light's "Ganjou no Sora wo Koete" should have a demo with a decent length on its website. Basically a friend warned me "don't go and play it JUST BECAUSE you like airplanes and dogfights, it's not like that" -> therefore I didn't get the full version XD. As you can see the character design is not that pretty, and apparently the battles are not as hot blooded as most of the other games in the same genre. I think it's a story about how a group of youngesters grow up in the war, maybe you could get that historical feeling because of the extrodinary effort done on the background setting.

[zalas]

Originally Posted by Asceai

Overdrive's "Kira Kira"

Heh, wait until TakaJun finds out about this thread...

[Asceai]

Originally Posted by luckyovermind

Light's "Ganjou no Sora wo Koete" should have a demo with a decent length on its website. Basically a friend warned me "don't go and play it JUST BECAUSE you like airplanes and dogfights, it's not like that" -> therefore I didn't get the full version XD. As you can see the character design is not that pretty, and apparently the battles are not as hot blooded as most of the other games in the same genre. I think it's a story about how a group of youngesters grow up in the war, maybe you could get that historical feeling because of the extrodinary effort done on the background setting.

Yep, I know of the demo. I just haven't really set aside the time to check it out. Eventually. Once I've finished furufuru full moon =P

[GreatSaintLouis]

One game that doesn't get nearly enough recognition is NekoNekoSoft's swan song Scarlett. For one thing, the game is brave enough to break away from the far too cliched high school romance plot that I'm rapidly becoming tired of in the genre. Which isn't to say that the game doesn't feature protagonists who are in high school, but it plays a very very minor part of the story. Besides, living here for a while has taught me that real Japanese high school students are far too shallow and vapid to approach the character depth implied in even the most cliched of high school romance eroge, so the suspension of disbelief in those kinds of games is even harder now.

Wait, that was a meaningless digression.

Did I mention that Scarlett also has no childhood friend, no sarcastic-but-otherwise-useless male best friend, and no touching memories from 7/10/xx years ago that have been magically repressed? Instead you have a kid sick of his normal boring every day life who wants to find a world more 'real' and ends up getting tangled up in global intrigue with a group of extragovernmental mercenary/spy/James Bond types. Who knew trying to break into Kadena Air Force Base in Okinawa would lead to such cool things?

For whatever reason (not enough high school?) the game didn't sell terribly well and is rather common here in Japan at this point--I've seen it as low as about 2500 yen for the first edition, with 3500-4000 being about the usual price. You should be able to get it for not too much more through a proxy on Yahoo! Auctions, and Paletweb's got the first edition (which comes with a very catchy soundtrack CD as well as a nice visual guide to all of NNS' games) for $49.99. It's well worth getting, especially if you're looking to go a bit beyond the usual eroge.

There is also a PS2 edition (likely including some fun first edition extras) coming out sometime in September if you want the game without the (small amount of) ero, or if you just like VNs on a console system.

There were a couple of demos released; while I don't think the game's page is up on the NNS website anymore one ought to be able to find at least one of the demos on Holyseal and the like.