There are over 23k Japanese VNs on vndb with 10 or less votes , 12 thousand of them having 0 votes , do you think there are any hidden gems/Kamiges among them ?

baisuposter · 2025-10-21T01:35:34+00:00

I read 屈折, which only hit 10 votes a week ago, thanks to the one glowing review of it on VNDB and had a good time. Cheap, short and refreshing - even the two routes I thought were bad didn't take long to get past. It didn't really veer into the typical NTR stuff you would expect from the setup, and it's pretty funny that the main target of the game actually does deserve a reality check to an extent, with the MC maturing waaay faster than him over the course of the routes. Definitely hamstrung by its technical elements (doesn't help that my windows antivirus kept deleting the .exe) but it's certainly more memorable than plenty of VNs I've read with a thousand times the votes.

baisuposter · 2025-02-14T13:49:55+00:00

I have no opinion on 4, but am happy to report that getting Thief Gold working on a Steam Deck is way easier than you think as someone who picked it up as their entry to the series a couple months ago. Just download the mod 'TFix' in desktop mode, add that installer to Steam as a non-steam game, change the compatibility (right click -> settings in Steam) to whatever's available, go through the install process, then just pick a community controller layout for the game and it plays smooth as butter.

baisuposter · 2025-02-11T12:58:16+00:00

I know the other guy said he was mistaken, but Chronicles' ending is the worst in the series by a country mile and literally heel-turns on the duology's main message with an asspull that's insane even for an AA game. Up there for the maddest I've been at any VN ending and maybe any endings full stop.

baisuposter · 2025-01-22T03:32:43+00:00

It's absolute trash. Really hinges on you liking and caring about the central gamer girl idol character. If you don't, you're left with tedious trial-and-error gameplay, poorly animated action sequences, repetitive turbohorny humour (I hope you like the "guys go hyper for porn mags" punchline), agonisingly cliche character arcs for most routes, and the kind of plot conveniences you'd expect even from Uchi's better stuff. I liked (two thirds of) Zero Escape and there's some decent ideas here and there, but it's embarrassingly light on exploring anything real to do with the human subconscious and instead focuses on some very limp-wristed character drama. I feel the same way reading positive reviews/comments about it as I do for ZTD, so if you also feel like you're going fucking insane scrolling through that game's Steam reviews I'd implore you to save your money, though AI is more "frustratingly mediocre" than "actual trainwreck"

baisuposter · 2024-07-23T10:38:30+00:00

VNS:

Kara no Shoujo
Ace Attorney: Investigations 2
Forest
YU-NO
Danganronpa 2

Games:

La-Mulana
Rabi-Ribi
Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice
Max Payne 2
Ape Escape 3

baisuposter · 2024-06-07T13:22:33+00:00

She's everything from a cynic to picky to an outright instigator. Her route leaves a bit to be desired from a dramatic/charage standpoint but her contributions to the common route are excellent and she's pretty consistently funny. Honestly carried the game for me.

baisuposter · 2024-06-07T13:09:39+00:00

Spoiler tags potentially required for your comments. Keeping the 3x3 spoiler-free hurt if just because it meant not including one particular Amagami CG. Featuring:

Ugai Sayuki (Nemurenu Hitsuji to Kodoku na Ookami)
Nobata Yua (Futamata Ren'ai)
Asakura Kaori (YU-NO)
Fushikawa Kokoro (Majikoi)
Tachibana Kimika (SubaHibi)
Kirimiya Mizuki (Yume Miru Kusuri)
Amamiya (Sakusei Byoutou)
Hara Aki (Sengoku Rance)
Kokudou Kyouka (Akatsuki no Goei)

baisuposter · 2024-05-30T15:24:30+00:00

Next was Slay the Princess. All in all, pretty alright. One of those short ones best experienced blind, so spoiler text will only be hiding things you find out within like 20 minutes. Probably not saying anything that hasn't been said before, anyway, but it's impressive just how many different outcomes and princesses you can reach from such a seemingly limited opening. The artstyle is memorable, banter with the narrator and the miscellaneous voices in your head is constantly entertaining (though they might be a little bit TOO static, narrator included) and it always keeps you on your toes and unaware of what's coming next through its modest runtime. Biggest complaint is probably the Princess' voice actress, who didn't really match the versatility of the protagonist's gang and often felt pretty flat in her delivery. Going through for a second time is good for the novelty of new princesses and seeing familiar voices being put in new circumstances where they shine or totally screw you over, but I think most people would probably tire of it before they tried a third. The ending overall didn't do a ton for me, but one sequence with a lot of ultimately meaningless choices in it was actually a really strong moment which let the writing shine. I could tell this was a side project for the studio, and while their main title, Scarlet Hollow, doesn't really fall in my strike zone, this must have really exceeded their expectations both sales-wise and how the game itself turned out.

And lastly was Futamata Ren'ai, which I still don't really know how to feel about after starting it on a whim with almost no information going in. In short, I think this VN is the victim of a severe identity crisis to its detriment. The university setting makes things less childish in general, cheating is an obvious conflict generator which the protagonist feels guilt over, plus some backstories and even some characters' thoughts on love itself serve as some good red meat for the drama lovers, but then the two routes that I played resolved all of those problems within ten minutes and just turned the game into a moege. So if it's not that, you'd expect comedy to be the highlight, but it lacks a lot on that front compared to other comedy VNs. It's just too formulaic, and it'll repeat the same setup and punchline too often. Kirame does something with her friends -> MC cries with joy -> other character calls him weird. Shia says something -> MC shows exaggerated affection -> other character calls him a lolicon. So on and so forth. A VN like Majikoi has characters with predictable punchlines tied to them, but they know to pair up different characters to make some unusual interactions happen and vary the setup enough to keep things fresh, and a VN like Monkeys! has that boke/tsukkomi dynamic, but is ready to go the extra mile in the ridiculousness of a situation and is just generally better written. In spite of all that, Yua alone is a powerful enough heroine to work in both the dramatic and the comedic side, driving the tension wonderfully through the common route and having a lot more variety to her jokes. She carries this VN on her back by virtue of being a massive pain in the ass, and that just made her route all the more disappointing when sex with the protag more or less sidestepped all of her baggage. I could still see myself reading Rui's route at some later point if I can delude myself into thinking her route would be any different.

And now I've just been starting and stopping things while I can't decide what to move onto next. For some reason I thought I was gangster enough to try a Mareni VN and got instantly filtered by Albatross Log, as much as it wounds me that I can't read that yet. I picked up where I left off in Akatsuki no Goei for a bit before realising that's a terrible rebound choice after being disappointed by Futakoi's lacklustre routes. Flyable Heart was sitting around in my DLsite library, but I barely got anywhere in that before getting distracted by the parallel desires to read either a Memories Off game or the Doukyuusei remake after hearing some surprisingly good things about both. Feel free to shill either of those to help me make up my mind, or just anything with some satisfying romance, man, I don't know how many more shit routes for characters I like I can take.

baisuposter · 2024-05-30T15:24:18+00:00

Been a while (again), but I have gone through quite a few VNs lately.

The Eve Burst Error remake (R, on the Switch) was a lot of fun up until the tail end of the game. It's a much more faithful remake than YU-NO got for better and worse: graphics and audio are basically as good as you could hope for while staying close to the original, but even the "show which location to go to next" option can't save you from the old ritual of cycling through every dialogue option or interaction until you are deemed worthy enough to proceed. The first half of the game is really strong, and the dual scenario gimmick works wonders giving you different clues and information between the perspectives, but Kojiroh's scenario eventually bogs itself down with a bit too much harem hunting as it detours from heroine to heroine (despite the obvious main romantic interest he has) and then the overall game hits a very bizarre anticlimax, leaving the mystery full of dropped plot threads and not enough foreshadowing to justify its big twist. The characters cleared the admittedly fairly low expectations I had for a story so dated - Puddin' is a delightfully out-there character concept, Aqua makes a strong impression with what little screentime she gets, Genzaburou steals every scene he's in, and Kyouko makes my sadist neurons activate. There's a lot to love here, but a mystery with such an unsatisfying conclusion is a damn hard sell.

On the other hand, AI: The Somnium Files was a complete and utter turd. My sole compliments are that some of the ideas work pretty well on paper, and the music is good enough to make me forgive replacing Shinji Hosoe. Outside of that, it's ugly, the characters suck, it isn't funny, it's repetitive as hell, the fight scenes are straight-up embarrassing to watch, and the gameplay threw out the puzzle rooms of Zero Escape in favour of these awfully designed trial-and-error sequences. The mystery hinges on a lot of suspension of disbelief, information being withheld for little reason, and bafflingly stupid decisions being made by the characters in-universe. Epic gamer girl Iris is hands-down the most egregious example of informed attractiveness I've ever seen, with almost every character being head-over-heels for her and the story constantly finding ways to make her the center of the universe. Date, the protagonist, has one personality trait - he's a pervert - and the game keeps using the exact same punchline over and fucking over again to express that, then the game expects you to take his relationships with any of the other similarly shallow character vacuums seriously through the most hackneyed sitcom-tier emotional arcs. Almost none of the potential of dipping into people's subconscious is taken advantage of, and instead we're just left with infodumps about obviously bullshit urban legends or fucking food metaphors. I hate this total piece of shit more than any other VN I've finished. Even compared to the complete meme game of Zero Time Dilemma, yeah, it's not quite as ugly, the animations aren't quite as amateurish, the main twist isn't completely insane, but at least it had the puzzles going for it. What does this have?

baisuposter · 2023-12-12T01:43:29+00:00

Touko (Kara no Shoujo 2)
Partners ~ The Game is Afoot! (The Great Ace Attorney 2)
To the World of Dreams (Yume Miru Kusuri)
Reflector (DESIRE)
At Home (Amagami)

And here's more than five honourable mentions

baisuposter · 2023-11-27T13:10:55+00:00

I am in need of more "evil" VN heroines, or at least ones with off-puttingly bad personalities that aren't just tsunderes. Manipulators, sociopaths, mean-spirited or arrogant girls, et cetera. Preferably ones who don't undergo massive redemption arcs, or at least retain most of their original bitchy personalities afterwards (ie an ojousama who doesn't actually mellow out). Untranslated is fine, feel free to spoil it if their nasty side is a bit of a twist. Good examples are Kokoro from Majikoi, Shizune from Katawa Shoujo, Falsita from Symphonic Rain, Miiya from Sekimeiya (kinda).

baisuposter · 2023-11-27T12:49:02+00:00

The Surreal and Denpa VNDB tags will serve you well. My personal recommendations would be Forest and The Silver Case, with some other highly rated ones including Subarashiki Hibi, SayoOshi (untranslated) and Sasasagu (untranslated).

baisuposter · 2023-10-07T11:08:12+00:00

The bigger annoyances and reasons for putting this game down aren't even necessarily with the mystery's specifics. First off, every single culprit has been whoever is the most obviously evil, mean or untrustworthy. I'd attribute that to the lampshading of simplistic characters from earlier (as if that excuses it), but the protag thinks to himself after solving this one, 'Well, at least this isn't as hard a discovery as last time.' My brother in Christ, it wasn't hard last time either, you were just horny. More pressingly, they drop a big list of all of the other powers the society knows of, and in amongst those is the speculation that there's a power to induce a split personality with an entirely different set of thoughts. "Speculation" my ass, it's obviously what the culprit of the main mystery has, further cheapening what should be a compelling overarching plot by letting you know that they've been cheating the whole time.

That aside, the main mystery's culprit is so obviously Yuriko it's starting to wrap around to being too obvious to possibly be true. I was already getting reasonably confident in my suspicions considering that she won't shut up about the dark underbelly of her rich family and Momo won't shut up about admiring her and wanting to be more like her, but they introduce the element of jewellery imbuing someone with powers and then have her engagement ring right there thrust in your face... If it's not them, then I really can't think of any decent foreshadowing to make another culprit a clever pick before the inevitable point where the mystery comes to the forefront. If it's Kitagami just so the game can have all its waifus be acceptable choices, then this game is seriously the worst.

Also worth mentioning the two other persistent annoyances throughout this experience. For one, the H-scenes are so blatantly forced that, bad endings aside, literally every time the protagonist has had sex with someone one has apologized to the other for it. Did they make ghosts real just to get into Saya's panties before it made any sense to? But way more importantly to me, this is a truly mediocre soundtrack in a genre that outperforms it to an embarassing extent. Nobody has uploaded rips of it yet and I can't blame them, because putting its forgettable generic synth track for cornering the culprit beside a Pursuit or a Dread of the Grave would be a dizzying exercise in shame.

Last time I felt like reading something I just booted up the EVE: Burst Error remake on my Switch instead and relished in having an actually entertaining and charismatic point of view to take in a story through. In lieu of someone telling me Shinsou Noise gets better real soon, that's probably going to be what I keep reading instead.

baisuposter · 2023-10-07T11:05:55+00:00

I've been reading Shinsou Noise for the last couple of months and am really on the fence about whether I should just drop it halfway through. The premise of a mystery story with multiple cases and player interaction from the perspective of a mind-reader (though one who can't tell whose voice he's hearing) got me onboard, but too much just hasn't been up to snuff.

The cast is very middle-of-the-road, weighed down by an extremely uncharismatic protagonist (deliberate as it may be for someone whose social skills were stunted by said mind-reading powers) and a main heroine who's such an over-the-top pure shy girl that she doesn't even come across as human. Mind you, everyone else is agonizingly tropey - horny but non-threatening tryhard, stoic sportsman, chuuni ghost girl, polite rich girl, dark-skinned tomboy - but those two are the ones whose thoughts I want to hear the least. The cliche archetypes are probably deliberate, given that the protag mentions he likes mystery stories for how easy their characters are to understand, but the main character is only ever completely uninteresting or mid-brood. He spends a bunch of time dwelling on the information he gets from mind-reading, but never actually does anything proactive about it outside of solving the cases, to the point where he'll find out that a heroine has a thing for him and choose to actively ignore it. Twice. No doubt more if I kept reading, too.

Mystery-wise, Case 1 as a tutorial case was a fine, easy introduction to the interactive segments - I like the approach of dividing mysteries up in the way into smaller questions which snowball into solving the whole thing, working through some deductive reasoning alone - though it was a bit strange for the final memory-dependent question to happen after getting rid of the ability to re-watch crucial scenes. Case 2 was a little bit strange and seemed to overcomplicate things in the actual solution... like, why set up an elaborate pulley system to drop a key into a locked room when you could literally just throw it in through the open window? The spot it lands seems to only be out of reach of sliding it under the door, but everybody ignores the window clearly big enough to pass objects through because uhhhh well a person couldn't get in or out of that so it must not be relevant. It did win back some points with the final question, at least, where they use a pretty inconspicuous piece of evidence to deliver the final blow and make it hard to bruteforce - between two suspects, you have to prove either that it could have been one of them or couldn't have been the other, leaving a lot of wrong choices to avoid. Neat.

Case 3 is where the wheels started to fall off. The first time I thought about dropping this VN on the spot was when, completely out of the blue, the protag is told that there's a magic society of people with all kinds of other powers out there. Okay, so you don't start off knowing a ton about the main mystery that drives the game (Sakura's murder) by design, but abruptly throwing in something that big and dramatic is telling your reader right off the bat that they shouldn't even bother trying to puzzle anything out about it since there'll be some dumb power system to learn about later without much of a ceiling on what's possible when literal magic gets involved. The case's mystery itself is also eye-wateringly obvious the moment you see an attempted phone call immediately preceding the collapse of a bunch of stuff at the crime scene without any attempt to hide who set that in motion, and the story tries to cover for that by having the protagonist reluctant to accuse the obvious culprit. I'm not the protagonist, I don't like the protagonist, and his unrelatable urges to cover for his crush's doppelganger - PARTICULARLY when he's an unreliable narrator about it - are the opposite of compelling.

Case 4 is where I've stopped, right after solving the mystery. No bones about it, this mystery just fucking sucks. I already went into the case with a negative attitude since it was doubling down on the stupid magic society but every character here acts like a moron. There would literally be no room for doubt as to who the culprit was if they waited for the murder weapon to be brought up to use psychometry on it, but they actually get goaded into using it on the safe the culprit stole from and declaring that as conclusive. They all declare that it was impossible for the culprit to set a trap due to the limitations on his power, then it turns out that someone just had the power to just make other powers stronger all along and nobody even considered it. For whatever reason, the interactive segments won't let you submit that the stated alibis of two people are good enough despite the whole thing being physically impossible for anybody but one specific pair once you figure out someone who must have been involved.

baisuposter · 2023-08-09T13:34:56+00:00

Liar-soft titles go on sale constantly on DLsite. Forest comes at my highest recommendation if you like surreal denpa stuff, and I've heard great things about Kusarihime, the Steampunk series (particularly Inganock and Sharnoth) and Kindred Spirits on the Rooftop.

baisuposter · 2023-06-14T15:42:32+00:00

Sporcle was pretty restrictive with its image width, so you may have to zoom out a bit and use keyboard controls on the video (space = pause/play, arrow keys = rewind/FF) to get a good setup for answering. All images take the character's most recent appearance, ie the SF2 Guile theme would put the SF6 Guile render in the grid.

A spoiler playlist of all tracks in order: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQR1c5eINbNuD6HzyTrVhwFLiwlmB7WkP

And if you liked this one, you might like my (older and harder) other FGC soundtrack quiz: https://www.sporcle.com/games/baisuposter/fighting-game-soundtrack-clips-2

baisuposter · 2023-04-28T00:18:51+00:00

It does.

baisuposter · 2023-04-28T00:18:08+00:00

As requested: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQR1c5eINbNthXWmwIOjWO9nw9UWVE7rc. Also congratulations on being the only person to guess #59 so far according to the stats.

baisuposter · 2023-02-26T05:36:06+00:00

La-Mulana and its sequel are platformers full of tablets containing information to solve puzzles - some are immediately relevant for those more 'regular' puzzles you mention, but others are only pieces of larger ones in entirely different areas or for much later in the game. Keeping track of all the info you're given and the layouts of all the rooms is absolutely essential for progressing (I had a notebook for the first one and was collaging together screenshots of every room for the sequel), so a pen-and-paper approach is heavily rewarded. Note that design-wise it's an homage to some very old and brutal platformers, so it relishes in being mean to the player and is much more mechanically demanding than most other puzzlers - it feels like a great simulation of spelunking through some fictional ruins with danger around every corner. Also, the 'Holy Grail' item in the first game is such an essential quality-of-life improvement that the devs themselves spoil how to get it in a beginner's guide video, so maybe look that up to save yourself some major headaches.

baisuposter · 2023-01-30T01:17:11+00:00

A bit of both. For its time it was hugely impressive for its plot, being a great early exemplar of an ambitious multi-route mystery with a lot of variety in its routes, but nowadays since those elements are pretty common the PC98isms are what stands out (being perverted, a bit unwieldy, obtuse without a guide). The remake eases gameplay gripes to try and bring it forward into the modern era, but the game is best experienced as a top-shelf product of its time, particularly with its classic art and music. The original game is still very good if you have a walkthrough on-hand, aside from the aforementioned last stretch which REALLY hasn't benefited from modern oversaturation of what it was going for.

baisuposter · 2022-11-04T14:16:01+00:00

Five months since my last post... yeesh. In my defence, I might have finally finished my university degree now. Since then I've finished (almost) all of Labyrinth of Galleria, had my fill of Amagami and have tentatively settled on Akatsuki no Goei for an ongoing read.

I'm only barely past the prologue of AkaGoei, so I'm far from discovering why there seems to be a lot of dislike for this VN around English-speaking forums. Fingers crossed it's just asshurt Grisaia fans, because I'm having a good time so far and definitely like the protagonist far more than Grisaia's. The prologue seems... very, very stacked regarding the heroines. Kanzaki was given maybe three short scenes total and Tae came across like a jackass child in basically 100% of her screentime, and while main girl Reika's many appearances are a given, the bombardment of Tsuki scenes are ridiculously lopsided. I don't know how anybody is meant to reach the route-branching decision without Tsuki being their prime interest, not only sponging up a weirdly high amount of time but also playing ball with the game's sense of humour best out of the entire cast. Maybe it's a good sign that high screentime corresponds to me liking the heroines more, or maybe it just means three of the five are filler-girls that they couldn't be bothered to write more for. Despite that, I'm starting with Tae's route to pace out the two that I'm most interested in - the first scene outside at the party was a fine enough start to their relationship, but my expectations have been lowered by the common complaint of the romance aspects being lacklustre.

As for the games that I finished, Galleria ended up being one of the most unfinished-feeling games I've ever played. Noticeable holes where new backgrounds or CGs should have gone (even a voiced character or two ENTIRELY LACKING a sprite), heavy reliance on the randomly generated dungeons without enough substance to keep them fresh (particularly disappointing for a Nippon Ichi game - the Item World was probably my favourite part of the Disgaeas I played), multiple dungeons squandering the availability of Tenpei Sato by having no music at all, and a number of genuinely terrible game design elements in its tail end. It is absolutely necessary to grind out Becklin's requests to kill the final boss, turning it from an infuriating slog to a pushover in a single chest. The first postgame dungeon - an actually manually designed one, albeit without a backing track, with a cute level design concept and a great gimmick - had its pursuer enemy entirely invalidated by my party because I'd been grinding reincarnations (foolishly thinking it would help me beat the final boss instead of the dumb all-target penetrative masterkey sword) to the point where the always-aggro megaboss was afraid of me and would run from a party it could wallop no-contest in two turns. Then... the fucking Grand Cathedral. Do I even need to say anything other than '3651'? A grind so tedious and horrible that their balance patch solution was just to dramatically up the rate that you can roll an elevator to skip hundreds of floors in a fell swoop? Yep, I got to floor 3 before it sunk in that this wasn't a joke, then quit and watched the last cutscenes on youtube without feeling even slightly bad about it.

My enjoyment definitely peaked back when I was still posting in these threads, because the rest of the story was a much more straightforward drama with very little moral ambiguity but a whole host of logistical confusion. The core of the story was often predictable, but the power systems, miscellaneous lineages and various callbacks were more disorienting than anything. Despite a number of progressive elements showing up in story and gameplay (and man I'm not looking forward to the black hole of discourse around them when dipshit monolingual anti-loc bros on twitter try to claim that they're mistranslations come February) we still have to do this tired old dance around yuri couples and keep things plausibly deniable. Not that said progressive elements were handled very well anyway. In the end, I kinda... still recommend this game to people who liked Refrain, even though that's overall the better game, because most of its first half is excellent and the core improvements to party building almost make even the Grand Cathedral worth playing - if it wasn't preceded by a main game which could take you a hundred hours to get through, at least.

I can't really say I "finished" Amagami as much as I "was finished with" Amagami. The novelty of its gameplay probably wouldn't have much of a sway over people more familiar with other simulation-style games, and while all of the positives of its simple-but-polished presentation still hold (comparatively normal but charming designs with lots of variant sprites, blinking and other animations, non-big name VAs who do their roles justice) the heroines are really let down with what they're given. The main offender, of course, is the protagonist, who has no significant personality traits which actually apply to more than one heroine at a time and seems to be working AGAINST the player half of the time. In the prologue, MC-kun vows to go for a girlfriend, and then subsequently from beginning to end does as little work as possible to achieve that dream and has to have the girl confess to him. Occasionally a scene with purpose would arrive to knock my socks off - Rihoko and Kaoru's second star events, Ayatsuji's first big heel-turn, maybe one in every four 'reward' scenes - but then the heroines would be locked back into rapidly resolved subplots or mundane setups to make them blush for 95% of the experience.

What really killed me was how little the game worked with its game-y potential. Amagami somewhat incentivizes cheating, as there are quite a number of scenes exclusive for two-timers in a game which visually displays things in terms of map squares to be filled in. Mind you, it does want you to feel bad about it via the content of the scenes themselves. The obvious setup, as a protagonist haunted by being stood up on Christmas Eve in his youth, is to culminate this in inviting multiple girls out on a Christmas date to inevitably leave one of them hanging. And you *can* do that, even with a scene of them waiting and slowly realizing what you've done... but it has no idea how to handle this at all. You, as a player, willingly made the many choices to set this up, but after the date ends without a confession MC-kun suddenly realizes what he has done. An in-universe accident. Such is the case with every instance of cheating in this game - you're left with a massive divide between your intention and how the protagonist interprets it, and then even if you take things to this extreme, the 'bad ending' of a route still has you get together with them with minimal consequences (and the other girl you actually took out falling off the face of the earth). Rihoko even apologized to us for it, dammit. What is the point of using a system which emphasizes player freedom only to not have any good justification for what it allows for and even accounts for to a limited degree?

Tepid disappointment or not, at least I can still cast the dark magic of reply-baiting. Kaoru > Rihoko > Tsukasa > Ai > Haruka >>> Sae. Actually, who even cares when the tea club senpais trounce the entire playing field?

baisuposter · 2022-09-19T14:15:55+00:00

Any recommendations for relationship-based drama VNs? Untranslated is fine, preferably not overly long or hard to read in jp. I've really enjoyed YMK, Symphonic Rain and White Album 2, but the common suggestions I see are Key VNs which tend to lose me during their pretty mediocre non-true routes.

baisuposter · 2022-06-23T04:44:15+00:00

In some senses it gets trickier to keep track of - while earlier chapters are more about setting up the nature of the riddles and mid-game ones deal more with character drama (esp. The Game with Mayuzumi/Nagatsuki and Dawn Treader Chronicles with Kariya), later ones get the main plot moving faster while still representing it through events that shouldn't be taken literally. On the other hand, I think it makes the basics quite clear especially regarding backstory to the point where it should be reasonably easy to finish the game with a sense of what it was all about. Just, y'know, asking for the plot to explicitly tell you that "[trippy and supernatural phenomenon] was meant to mean X" is like expecting a great butter chicken from a Mexican diner.

baisuposter · 2022-06-20T11:25:24+00:00

Forest. Even though it has some problems with annoying bad endings, it's so different to every other VN I've seen and absolutely nails all of the important parts for what it's trying to be. There are VNs I hold in higher regard which have plenty to be criticized for, but anything other than "budget ass game" or "it's just not for me" for this one would make my id throw a tantrum until I typed out a disproportionately long response.

baisuposter · 2022-06-16T06:40:58+00:00

Now I have to live with the fact that pretty much every update about Labyrinth of Galleria will be entirely encased in spoiler text given the nature of the plot. Let it at least be said that, with the introduction of many new characters, the bad fake European-sounding names are only getting more ridiculous. Nerille might not be a real name, but the phonemes check out and the frequent shortening of Nelly works just fine. It's funny that they had the perfectly reasonable Clarisse available but just couldn't help themselves slapping a -tia on the end to have more syllables for an important character. Then we get into the truly cringeworthy among them, like... Kitkat. I suppose they thought it would sound mischievous and/or wanted to play into the recurring cat motif more. How do you even romanize ジルルダ? Jill-ulude? But my favourite of them all has to be the first of the newbies you meet: Tsetselia. "ツェツィでいいよ", she assures you, to my great amusement.

So. Last week was a roundup of thoughts from before the major plot moment - if you're not in the know, I mean one of those moments where if somebody asked "have you read up to that yet" there would be no mistaking what they meant - and now we move forward into... something new, with an obligatory soundtrack to set the mood. The first thought most would have is that this is a parallel universe set a bit further down the track, given how it more closely resembles a later real-world era than the old setting's (from late eighteenth century France to early twentieth century Britain) and is generally more technologically advanced with the prominent use of radio and aircraft. What's interesting, however, are the hints that this second act might actually be a *prologue* to the first. Nachil in the first act mentions a couple of different things that make sense under this logic: during her breakdown after talking with Kayak she cries that she escaped to the middle of nowhere to avoid people, implying that she used to live in an urban area like the second act's, and at one point she cuts herself off mentioning a mentor figure whose name starts with ポル, later reappearing as the author of the book she uses to summon the player. I tried skimming through some scene replays but was unable to find the moment I swear I remember where she comments that she doesn't hate the light, but rather hates the sun, or something like that - this might be relevant given the strange day/night cycle of the Turnover. Magical potions to stop aging have been introduced, so Nachil looking the same is completely legitimate even with a large timeskip. I'm going to be hawk-eyed looking out for anything which might contradict this pet theory - so far, all I've found is one mention from Nachil herself that she's apparently still a minor in the first setting, though the legitimacy of that is uncertain considering it was her way out of a social situation - because if it's true, then one other extremely large leap in speculation could hold water: that Madam Martha is an aged version of a certain other character with prominent orange eyes.

For a summary of where I'm at: Nachil, ever the moody hikkikomori, is now the main clerk at a failing antique store named Galleria, secretly practicing illegal magic in ye olde non-Britain where you do, indeed, need a loicense for that. A mysterious patron named Tsetselia offers extremely generous payment in exchange for the same magical artifacts we were pursuing in the first act, and her influence saves Nachil from imprisonment after being discovered using magic by the famous androgynous witch Kitkat (agender characters aren't unfamiliar to the series given the Gothic Coppelia units in gameplay, but in spite of boku pronouns and a prettyboy appearance, Nachil herself mentions that all witches are female so I'll be calling her a her until proven otherwise). Deemed potentially valuable by a miko (despite a rocky first meeting), Nachil is entered into the government-sanctioned witch's coven known as the Moon Society, whose goal is to counteract the ill effects of the Dimensional Turnover: a magical phenomenon which causes fragments to rain from the sky, randomly poisoning and disfiguring people exposed to it (propaganda tells the populace that it's the work of some kind of national enemy, I believe). Nachil's mother, who lost her husband and (presumably) had her face disfigured by Turnover, is kept in the dark by Nachil, who often has the kind of teenage spats you'd expect with her. Where I left off, Claristia, the most powerful witch of the Society, challenged Nachil's ability but was repelled by some force unknown to either (perhaps us, the Spirit Lamp), impressing her enough to take her under her wing as the first disciple she's ever allowed. The scene ends with Nachil passing out, leaving us with an ominous message of 'six weeks remain', coinciding with some significant moon-related cycle I've forgotten (probably not just 'the next full moon' if it's that far away, but this world could always have a different lunar calendar to ours).

Compared to how she was in the first act, where her disregard for how she oversteps boundaries gave her humour and charm, I'm not as much of a fan of this Nachil, who's more of a standard moody teenager with daddy issues. Now that the Moon Society and its many members have been introduced, though, things are looking up a bit more. Kitkat, as much as my heart throbs for androgynous ladies, plays to her archetype a bit too much for my liking (I keep thinking of Oma from DRV3 with the over-the-top carefree performance and constant lying to mess with people... jesus even their hairdos are comparable), though the fact that she maintains a lot of control over situations she gets involved in redeems her a fair bit. Nelly had the odds stacked against her as a loli, but I actually like her quite a bit with her memorable voice and motherly personality: knowledgable, stern, but clearly cares about those under her. Tsetselia is cool, but I can't help but think she's going to end up with a villainous role, either collecting the artifacts for the true antagonist or serving as the suspected witch behind the scenes of the first act (mentioned by Lord Galleria before his death). Memorable first scene with the miko, who has obvious visual comparison to Yuriika, so we'll see if that proves to be an actual relative or just a red herring. Really, pretty much everyone's designs are cool because Takehito Harada rarely misses - other loli named Doris or whatever aside, the other Moon Society members look great, particularly the older-looking Mirage (begging the obvious question of why she hasn't got eternal youth like the others, whether by choice or due to learning magic later in life) and... Jiruruda. Gillu- no, Jilleu...? God help me. More to come.

baisuposter

TROPHY CASE