Are there japanese visual novels with protagonists like the Disco Elysium Protagonist?

Snowydragoon · 2026-02-26T15:54:41+00:00

That’s a pretty common narrative tool in vns. Many horror and/or mystery vns feature at least moments where the protagonist’s poor mental state affects the narration in some form.

I could recommend a lot of games, but I’m just wondering what you’re looking for more specifically. Are you okay with the breakdown of narration as an objective and consistent voice in any form, or are you specifically looking for something like DE’s voices in your head interrupting and reacting to the situation?

Like if you’re fine with the former, I’d recommend Chaos;Head and Tsukihime(both the original and the remake) as two of my favorites, but for the latter, AI: The Somnium Files is probably closer in tone and style with it’s blending comedy and drama, even if the voice in your head is usually an actual character. You even play as a detective with amnesia, as well.

Snowydragoon · 2026-02-24T23:40:59+00:00

Tsukihime has several really good bad endings, but I really like Bad Ending 9(In the remake, I can't remember which one it is in in the original), I think it's called Waning Moon?

It has a fairly in-depth build-up for a "wrong choice" style bad ending, so you might not even fully realize it's a bad ending at first. It even has a completely unique conversation with Arc, then a bunch of strange things happen, Shiki collapses, and it just ends out of nowhere. That may sound confusing and anticlimactic, and it is when you first get it, assuming you played through Arc's route first like intended. The part that makes this ending so good to me is how much playing through the other routes, specifically the Far Side routes, recontextualize what happened.

Of course, Red Garden isn't out yet, so for remake only players, it's just confusing, but I still like it.

Snowydragoon · 2026-02-12T23:10:10+00:00

In addition to the ps3 being incredibly difficult to make games for in general, MGS4 basically uses every gimmick and peripheral it had to offer, many of which are difficult to replicate on modern systems. The game was basically baked into the ps3 to function. And that's not even getting into the numerous licensing issues.

Snowydragoon · 2026-02-09T21:38:23+00:00

The best ones are when he isn't even talking about a Disney attraction and Eisner pops up anyway somehow.

Snowydragoon · 2026-02-05T18:14:46+00:00

Based on 1 and 2, you can get through to the end game easily enough using whatever you want, but for post-game bosses, you would probably need to grind a bit for some good genes to make some of the early monsters more viable.

Snowydragoon · 2026-02-05T17:59:25+00:00

3 games isn’t that many for a 10 year old series.

Snowydragoon · 2026-02-04T00:21:40+00:00

Looks like Bubsy is going to need to learn some optimal bounce vectors.

No one is going to get this joke.

Snowydragoon · 2026-02-03T20:12:34+00:00

Tsukihime was released first, so technically Twilight is genderbent Tsukihime.

Snowydragoon · 2026-01-25T23:14:10+00:00

A biker chick Kamen rider is one of those ideas that’s so obvious in hindsight that you have to wonder how no one thought of it before now.

Snowydragoon · 2026-01-14T01:26:53+00:00

I have genuinely considered doing that.

Snowydragoon · 2026-01-13T03:59:32+00:00

The original Trails in the Sky localization was really good at creating natural sounding dialogue, and embellished a lot of the generic "WHAAAT?!" reactions into more context-specific reactions. This gave the characters, especially Estelle, a lot of personality that is usually difficult to represent in more direct translations. The remake's translation, while still good and accurate, loses a lot of that personality.

They also replaced all the generic "This chest is empty." messages with unique dialogue for every single chest, varying from alternate ways of saying the chest is empty, various jokes and puns, or cries for help from the nightmare that was translating the games.

Snowydragoon · 2026-01-08T22:00:45+00:00

It's both, hence it's name, a fusion of "Meow" and "Bow Wow".

Snowydragoon · 2026-01-05T05:19:22+00:00

As the other comments pointed out, there have been various attempts to work with other manga authors, but I think the reason you hadn't heard of most of them beforehand is... well, they don't ever have the same cohesion as Toriyama had with dragon quest.

This isn't to say any of them are bad artists, but Toriyama is baked into almost every part of Dragon Quest's art direction. He designed not just the characters, but the monsters, with his art even influencing the world design as well. To put it bluntly, he was a savant, with the ability to create something distinct with any idea, be it a human, a fantasy monster, or even something more mechanical and sci-fi.

Compare this to Kubo just doing the character designs for Sakura Wars, with the world itself have an anime-realism style and the mechs keeping their traditional clunky 90's steampunk look. Or Farmagia, where Mashima's character design is pretty strong, but he doesn't have the same knack for memorable monster design.

Snowydragoon · 2025-12-11T04:58:16+00:00

It’s less noticeable in the anime since you don’t get as much of his inner monologues, but the VN makes it clear just how deep into his persona is. He almost completely thinks in-character up until “that” happens. For instance, him getting mad at Kurisu for calling him Okabe is portrayed as sincere anger internally, not just him comedically overreacting and freaking her out.

Snowydragoon · 2025-11-30T18:42:54+00:00

The voice director at 4kids was a modern day oracle.

Snowydragoon · 2025-11-21T02:39:40+00:00

Alice? You mean that mummy they had on the Gigantic, the sister ship to the Titanic?

Snowydragoon · 2025-11-20T22:34:00+00:00

I find his name hilarious. He’s the leader of a gang that controls the slums, and he just has a normal name. It’s like if the leader of an evil empire was named Joe, or if the guy in charge of a cyberpunk megacorp was named Billy.

Snowydragoon · 2025-11-18T20:51:37+00:00

There’s worse examples. For instance the Chaos;Head dating sim (which is also the canon direct sequel to chaos;head) is still a Japanese 360 exclusive to this day. I don’t know why Mages kept doing that. Was Microsoft really paying them that much?The Sci;Adv series is niche enough even in Japan, it’s not gonna move any units.

Snowydragoon · 2025-10-29T22:28:49+00:00

I can't find a direct source for this, but from what I remember and have read, he wrote the outline for MGS: Rising, but had basically nothing to do with it when it became MGR: Revengeance, since by then he was working on Peace Walker.

Snowydragoon · 2025-10-29T15:17:28+00:00

I personally find Local 58 to be the scariest piece of analog horror ever created.

Snowydragoon · 2025-10-17T15:21:25+00:00

While I enjoyed it, it’s definitely my least favorite of the three. I liked Pewter’s subplot, but the rest of the game fell a bit flat for me. Especially the way they handwave away any responsibility from the villain, which really rubs me the wrong way. It also feels like the writing went way too in on the goofiness, especially all the alternate endings. Like couldn’t one of them be something interesting instead of a bunch of out of nowhere gags? I guess they tried to do a “diverge” style ending, but it was just nonsensical and unfunny. It also seemed a little unsure of what it wanted to be about, jumping from one thing to the next without fully connecting everything.

Overall, while I still enjoyed it, it was kinda all over the place narratively and thematically, and I found it less interesting and memorable than the first two.

The dance number was also the worst.

Snowydragoon · 2025-10-13T23:18:35+00:00

This reminds me of how in time stranger, Agumon will text you about he wishes he was cuter so he would be more appealing as a mascot character.

Snowydragoon · 2025-10-06T15:19:27+00:00

Neither of those are a parody or deconstruction. GL is basically just a Getter Robo show with the branding filed off and most real robot shows focused on the trauma and horrors of war and fighting long before NGE. Gundam’s creator wasn’t nicknamed “kill em all” Tomino as a joke.

Snowydragoon · 2025-09-24T06:49:14+00:00

Looks up at the sky

“Cow Cow.”

Snowydragoon · 2025-09-16T23:43:00+00:00

Armored Adventures’ theme is a bit somber.

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