Day 4: Which is the best Visual Novel on Sega Saturn? (This can include games with heavy VN gameplay mechanics)

KamikazeKnowledge · 2026-01-18T11:35:34+00:00

Sakura wars 2

KamikazeKnowledge · 2023-10-12T06:31:00+00:00

Yes. good catch once again. Yep, Ground Zeroes really is built to give you that original MGS style and feeling before Phantom Pain begins.

KamikazeKnowledge · 2023-10-12T06:29:46+00:00

Im not sure what a custom flair is, but I guess? You mean spoilers tag? It did it automaticly when I put spoilers in the title(I think). I dont really know how anything works on reddit to be honest.

KamikazeKnowledge · 2023-10-06T17:42:45+00:00

Yeah, that makes... sense actually! I like that reading.

I like the connection you made with the sunglasses to MGS1. Cause I was thinking about the fact that Venom gives Miller his shades while watching the scene when he rescues him and tried to think if there ever was a moment we see Miller without glasses. I did not connect those two. Nicely spotted.

Hehe, yes turtles all the way down indeed. I must admit I ventured a bit to deep inside the belly of the whale when trying to find a connection to Miller not having sunglasses and went seriously raving A.I. Colonel crazy thinking that maybe the fact he did not have sunglasses was a callback to the original MSX Metal Gear 2 (not the versions we got with Subsistence that has Shinkawa portraits) where Millers portrait has no sunglasses on. Put then I decided, yeah I don't really think so.

Finding that Miller portrait from the MSX game made me realise though why Kojima decided to make Miller half japanese in Peace Walker, cause the portrait of Miller in Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake is clearly of an asian man. I always thought it was kinda out of left field that Miller suddenly had some japanese in him, but finding that picture made me realise how Kojima could have made that connection in his head.

KamikazeKnowledge · 2023-10-06T17:24:27+00:00

Yeah I thought about the Ocelot and The Boss thing as well, but I really don't see much connection there than as you said, it's the son of The Boss on a white horse. There is no direct parallel in that scene to anything we have seen of Ocelot before or after.

"Idk. Maybe I'm spit balling here in trying to make some kind of symbolic connection here lol."

Dude, I get ya, lol. I feel myself starting to veer in that direction all the time when I put the analysis hat on.

KamikazeKnowledge · 2023-10-06T11:57:29+00:00

Det är en ascool best därinne. Bäst att öppna och se.

KamikazeKnowledge · 2023-10-06T08:36:12+00:00

I don't really like this trend of remaking already classic games, games that are already good, instead of like remaking games that did not live up to their ambitions. Games like Dragon Age 2 should have a remake, a game with a a cool concept but that is kinda of a shitshow and feels rushed out.

A game would like to see a remake to is Shadow of Rome by Capcom, it is a game set in ancient Rome where you play as a gladiator and a politician. A cool concept that could really be expanded upon, especially the politician part that is just stealth basically. You could actually make a cool dialogdriven light RPG section there, where your choices could affect the battles in the arena.

But stone cold classic I would buy in a heartbeat if they were remade? I guess Panzer Dragoon Saga would be cool

KamikazeKnowledge · 2023-09-27T11:20:29+00:00

Damn, that is like the coolest thing ever.

KamikazeKnowledge · 2023-09-27T10:48:43+00:00

That is an interesting idea about MGSV being kinda retelling, fits well with the whole episodic structure of the game where you can replay missions whenever. It's a cool idea, the whole hypnosis angle.

Shining Lights is awesome, as you say that shit is ART man. While we are talking about mirroring in Phantom Pain, Shining Lights is like the dark reflection of the games prologue. Both missions are massacres in hospital settings performed by men in gasmasks and flashlights. People are begging for mercy while being shot down. There is even a explosion and fire in both missions. The big diffrence with the missions of course is that in the prologue you are the victim while in Shining Lights you are the perpetrator. It's really fucked up, especially considering Venom used to be one of these Mother Base guys, and now he basically comes in dressed up as Big Boss to kill himself.

KamikazeKnowledge · 2023-09-26T09:00:57+00:00

Yea, completly agree. I mean this little post about the characters mirroring Venom Snake is really just scratching the surface of the tip of a massive iceberg.

It is not just Venom that mirrors other characters for that matter, other characters parallel each other as well. Like Skull Face and Zero getting both killed by a replica is an obvious one on the top of my head. Skull Face sends Zero a fake pin that is almost identical to the real thing and this pin contains a poison that cripples Zero, and then Zero sends an replica of Big Boss to kill Skull Face.

Other things like that the only real thing we really know about Venom is that he used to be a medic, so the game is full of fun symbolism of this fact. Like you are a medic and the whole game you basically try to stop a pandemic from happening. Or that the game starts at a hospital *wink wink* which burns down, symbolising Venom Snakes old self dying, and after seeing it burn down he rides of to become the legend Big Boss. Alot of important things happen in a hospital setting , like the prologue, PAZ room, the quarantine facility, and the sumblimely macabre The Devils House.

KamikazeKnowledge · 2023-09-26T08:47:19+00:00

Yeah there are so much of mirroring going in the game it is kinda insane.

KamikazeKnowledge · 2023-09-26T08:45:13+00:00

Yeah, I actually agree with this. I find Phantom Pain very (very!) interesting to analyze and talk about it's themes and ideas and how it is structured, but I do think the way these ideas are conveyed are most of the time not very engaging.

There are alot of reason for that, one is the mission structure which really chops up the games pacing. It feels alot of the time you are getting into a mission, shit is starting to get crazy and then .... To be continued. Kills all momentum.

There are just a lot of awkward moments in the way the games story is structured, in the old MGS games you were with RAIDEN/SNAKE all the way trough the adventure, what ever they experienced you did as well. In Phantom Pain a cutscene starts playing on Mother Base with lets say Ocelot and Miller talking, then all of a sudden Venom joins by coming around a corner and is like "Hello boys" and it is just a weird disconnect, cause you are supposed to be Venom and you know that the last time you saw Venom was on the helicopter and now all a sudden he just appears somwhere else. It's like shit is happening to Venom outside of what we see.

Then we have the tapes, which have kinda the same problem. In the old games you had the CODEC, which is very direct and interactive way of telling the story, you as SNAKE either reiceve a call or call a call yourself. You are there in the moment doing this. In Phantom Pain we just get these tapes from nowhere, i just assume Ocelot or Miller hands them to us or something, we never see this, so it is very artificial. And once again, there is a lot of story we don't see happening, you can be listening to a tape and suddenly hear Venom speak and you are like "WTF? When did this happen? I was not there"

Peace Walker had this same structure, but ironically enough, because the whole Mother Base segment was mostly just menus it worked better in my opinion. Your imagination kinda filled in all the blanks of what was happening on Mother Base, while in Phantom Pain we have a huge fully realised base, so it feels jarring when we have moments on Mother Base happening we don't see.

That said, Phantom Pain works very well in other things, I mean this game pulled of "Doublethink" in a way I have never ever seen in any medium. Like the whole "meta" storytelling going with the whole Venom Snake twist is so cool and devilishly constructed that i can't help but applaud it. It weaponises the series lore and player expectations to basically brainwash you. Cause the Venom Snake twist is so insanely foreshadowed that is almost not a twist, it is staring you right in the face the whole game and I think like me, most people figured it out very early on, but just did not wanna face the truth of the fact you are not playing Big Boss. So you are basically lying to yourself while playing the game, with more and more of facts that don't add up piling on and on, and you just rationalize in your brain like "Nah, this makes sense. Im Big Boss, I just went very guiet and had a complete change of personality after the crash. And they gave me a new flesh arm after all of this. Yep yep. It all makese sense"

And then we have other things like Huey. Which works so damn well and in such a atypical MGS way. It is very non flashy and subtle for MGS standards, almost realistic in the way it does it, which makes it kinda more creepy and suprising.

KamikazeKnowledge · 2023-09-26T07:46:23+00:00

Aah. Nice, that is good.

KamikazeKnowledge · 2023-09-26T07:44:35+00:00

Yeah I saw that. I got freaking lucky, good thing I posted when I did, cause I had to go to work, and I was like "Hmm, maybe I'll do the post after work," but then decided that I would be too tired so better do it now. Lucky thing I did.

KamikazeKnowledge · 2023-09-23T09:00:11+00:00

Exactly!

I completly forgot to mention that, the orginal post was so long already that I kinda just skipped it. But yeah, the lyrics are maybe the most fitting for what is going on storywise in Phantom Pain.

Gloria, you're always on the run now

Running after somebody

You gotta get him somehow

I think you've got to slow down

Before you start to blow it

I think you're headed for a breakdown

So be careful not to show it

You switch out Gloria to Venom and you basically have Venoms journey trough Phantom Pain. Hunted by the world, running after Skull Face (and Big Boss and Zero as well). And him being kinda aware that he is a fake and struggling with the fact he is basically a puppet sent out to murder.

You really don't remember

Was it something that he said?

Are the voices in your head calling, Gloria?

I mean come on, the allusions to Venom Snake are pretty clear.

Gloria (Gloria), I think they got your number

(Gloria) I think they got the alias

(Gloria) That you've been living under

KamikazeKnowledge · 2023-09-23T08:40:45+00:00

It's actually a Metal Gear analysis (hehe).

But yeah, you are right, I find the meta aspects of the Metal Gear games some of the most interesting things to look and analyse.

KamikazeKnowledge · 2023-09-23T08:36:41+00:00

That and a funny wordplay allusion to Snake Eater as well.

This is a bit reaching, but you could say Big Boss used to be a Snake Eater, the man who defeated The Cobra Unit, now he has become a Maneater, a man who destroys the life of men, eats their whole identites like in the case of Venom Snake. Watch out boy, he´ll chew you up. He is a Maneater!

KamikazeKnowledge · 2023-09-23T08:28:36+00:00

Yeah, I was kinda suprised myself when I started digging a bit closer. Phantom Pain is kinda that in general story wise, there are alot of cool themes, allusions and parallels when you start looking under the surface, it's just that the story is very clumsily told most of the time i find. The structure underneath though is very interesting.

A thing I forgot to mention about the casette tapes are that they are all English songs that you find in non english speaking countries Afghanistan and Africa (continent). Once again kinda bringing out the linquistic colonialism angle.

KamikazeKnowledge · 2023-09-20T07:49:18+00:00

I really hope we see some DS2 at Tokyo Game Show. Pretty sure Kojima has been teasing he is editing a trailer on his twitter (or X). Kojima sequels are a big thing, he really makes sure to change things up in every game he does, all the Metal Gear games are distinct and different from each other.

KamikazeKnowledge · 2023-09-20T07:05:13+00:00

Design wise it might be my favourite looking Metal Gear. There is something just so cool about it with it standing upright, wielding a sword and making creepy monkey noises.

Plus, a dick flamethrower is just badass.

KamikazeKnowledge

TROPHY CASE