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Visual Novels - What should we play?

Flub

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Alan Stock

Alan Stock

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I'm pretty sure it gets announced, I definitely had it by loop 12. Press the plus button on your controller and go to How to Play.

 

Still really struggling here, been playing on 15 crew with 3 gnosia and everything turned on. Just tried lowering it to 11 and 2 gnosia with no guards, and almost won but didn't realise 

Spoiler

That you have to find the bug first, I thought that only applied if the human and gnosia were at a draw. Damn, that makes it really hard!

 

At least I have unlocked a few new skills and I'm definitely getting targeted a bit less thanks to a few more points in charisma, logic and stealth. 

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StephenM

StephenM

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The guide did get announced, thanks. Interesting to get a feel for what’s going on behind the scenes. 
 

I’m in the 30s now; some interesting teases happening and loads of questions. Just turned it off though; realised I’d spent three runs just mindlessly picking stuff. Easily done when it’s by design so repetitive. 

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Alan Stock

Alan Stock

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Yeah I read through the guide now and I definitely need to pay more attention to the character personalities. I've just been kind of winging my way through and it all blurs into one after a while, I'm up to about loop 35 and haven't won a game since 12 yet! Almost entirely with 15 man crews. I tried being part of 2 or 3 man gnosia a bunch of times on 15 man crews but always get rumbled in the last few rounds no matter the role, I need to get better at eliminating the right people. And I did come close a few times as gnosia but got foiled by you know what. 

 

As crew I usually do decently until near the end when I invariably get voted out, often only by a single vote. Perhaps I spread my stats too evenly, I have a few at 15 or thereabouts but even with the extra skills like the vote ones no one wants to agree with me when I try to use them. I guess I need to pay more attention to who is acting out of character and vote accordingly. As gnosia we often lose one or two gnosia early on usually due to high perceptive characters spotting lies. As crew we lose too many loyal humans early on which scews the voting later in the game. The biggest pain is the you know what which is really hard to eliminate, I guess the best tactic if the engineer can't do it is to focus on deep sleeping suspicious individuals even as gnosia.

 

Anyway I need a bit of a break and to return with a fresh mind, I think playing continually on the max settings isn't good for the brain cells and plus I'm not getting much story stuff apart from the oddred exclamation mark here and there, I need to experiment with more setups.

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Jolly

Jolly

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I've decided to try and concentrate on winning with each role before moving on to the next to try and give myself a bit of structure. And also to just try and get a 'feel' for each of the characters and latch on to one or two traits (for example, Sha Ming is unlikely to put himself centre stage unnecessarily, Comet is good at spotting liars etc) 

 

I'm still really, really enjoying it. It helps that I find the fifteen minute mafiascum compelling in and of itself. The larger narrative is a delicious extra. 

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Wiper

Wiper

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999 is very good, and VLR is a masterpiece. I'm not such a fan of Steins;Gate (and not just because of its [ab]use of a semicolon), but I'm in the minority there; that's a good selection :)

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  • 3 weeks later...
Jolly

Jolly

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Finished Gnosia this afternoon. My interest did start to wane ever-so-slightly in the last handful of hours but my lasting impression is a positive one. A great little experiment mixing a elements of a fifteen minute game with a thirty hour narrative - even if it does struggle a bit with having to repeat individual lines of dialogue hundreds of times!

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mdn2

mdn2

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Raging Loop is definitely more of a straightforward VN than Gnosia. And it's very cheap. I enjoyed my time with it though.

 

I've been on a bit of a VN spending spree this week. Bought The House of Fate Morgana (has 100% metascore on Metacritic so far) and preordered Famicom Detective Club, both on Switch. 

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gossi the dog

gossi the dog

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Having largely ignored the genre after not liking Phoenix Wright and getting nowhere with the Silver Case, I played through 428 Shibuya Scramble a month or so ago. It was brilliant. Since then I played Catherine (arguably more of a block puzzler than a visual novel, but I think it counts) which was great, and picked up a cheapish new copy of Steins Gate Elite on Saturday. I thought it was slow going and then realised I’d played for over 3 hours straight, so must be doing something right.

 

Am I correct in thinking Danganronpa and Zero Escape are still regarded as the pinnacle of the genre or has some newer stuff surpassed them?

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Jolly

Jolly

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2 hours ago, gossi the dog said:

Am I correct in thinking Danganronpa and Zero Escape are still regarded as the pinnacle of the genre or has some newer stuff surpassed them?

 

Nothing has bettered Virtue's Last Reward for me yet (it's the second part of the Zero Escape trilogy). I'd go as far as to say it's my favourite narrative in the whole of videogames. If I could have my mind erased to play one game again fresh, it would probably be that one. Big fan. 

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mdn2

mdn2

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3 hours ago, mdn2 said:

Raging Loop is definitely more of a straightforward VN than Gnosia. And it's very cheap. I enjoyed my time with it though.

 

I've been on a bit of a VN spending spree this week. Bought The House of Fate Morgana (has 100% metascore on Metacritic so far) and preordered Famicom Detective Club, both on Switch. 

 

2 minutes ago, Rayn said:

I've not played it myself but a friend is raving about The House in Fata Morgana, which currently sits at a rather impressive 100 Metascore: 
https://www.metacritic.com/game/switch/the-house-in-fata-morgana---dreams-of-the-revenants-edition--

 

:quote:

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mdn2

mdn2

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Just now, Rayn said:

 

Sorry, I should learn how to read complete posts instead of just skimming the first sentence. My bad. 

Only joking. To be honest, I've only played it for half an hour so far. It seems interesting, but I got properly obsessed with Horace this past week and finished that this morning. House of Fate Morgana is next on my list. 

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Alan Stock

Alan Stock

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I must put a disclaimer on the house of fata morgana. I picked it up a few years ago due to the amazing reviews and played it all the way through. It is very much a romance based drama and it is very, very slow paced and looooong. It really wasnt for me, but I must say the writing is very good and it does have some deeply emotional bits that are excellent and even tugged at my bitter heart strings. However for me the romance focus, the setting and the sheer length of it means I can only recommend it for some people. I think a lot of people will bounce off it. If there is a demo I highly recommend trying before buying. It's very good at what it does - I'm glad I experienced it despite my overall feelings, as something I would never have tried, and it goes into some interesting and moving subject matter. The presentation is also top notch with lovely artwork and a haunting score. But at the same time I also found it incredibly slow, mundane and cringey and for me a lot of it was a big chore to get through.

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b00dles

b00dles

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3 hours ago, Jolly said:

 

Nothing has bettered Virtue's Last Reward for me yet (it's the second part of the Zero Escape trilogy). I'd go as far as to say it's my favourite narrative in the whole of videogames. If I could have my mind erased to play one game again fresh, it would probably be that one. Big fan. 

Kerblammo!

 

I've been wondering if I've forgotten enough of it by now but I'm sure I'll remember if I start again  :(

 

I can still remember exactly where I was when I had one of the big kerblammo moments in that game because I had to have a moment.

Bloody amazing.

 

I'm attempting to make my own flowchart/ visual novel game because of it. It's one of the best uses of the entire medium of video games in such a way that has a  narrative entirely unique to video games. Over and above an animated manga like a traditional visual novel and way more than an interactive movie like a David cage game. 

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therearerules

therearerules

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On 03/05/2021 at 08:00, Laine said:

Just spotted Raging Loop is £5.95 with free delivery on the game collection

Just to say this arrived yesterday, the day one edition with artbook and everything. Feels bad to buy the 'day one' edition, considering how late I actually bought it. Not got into it yet as I'm still partway through 428 Shibuya Scramble

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Alan Stock

Alan Stock

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Picked up Raging Loop on the PSN sale. Now I wish I'd got it on Switch, as being a more traditional visual novel its a reading marathon which would have been ideal for handheld. The first few hours are boring and poorly paced, but it eventually picks up - I'm now 4 or 5 hours in and into the game proper where the pacing is a lot better. The art and (Japanese only) voice acting is good, aside from a few weird looking 'cute' girl faces. Although the start is slow at least the dialogue is quite well written/translated. The main character makes a nice change from this type of VN in that his inner thoughts are insightful and intelligent, often voicing the things that are going through your own mind. He's pre-emptive in asking questions and raising discrepancies that protagonists in other games would be wilfuly dumb about and let the player stew over.

 

In terms of gameplay its simply making route choices at very few and far between moments. There is a simple 'key' system to lock off routes that you are lacking info for, which although removes some of the mystery of how to access routes, is quite welcome and just means you can sit back and enjoy the story.

 

One more thing that differentiates this from other VN's that I've played is the bizarrely indepth tutorial at the start which explains all about visual novels, how they work, and even has guidelines for streaming online. It would probably be a good starting game for someone new to visual novels, although I wouldn't recommend it due to the rather boring start. I wish that you could change the annoying to read text font, but thankfully the Auto settings are quite flexible so I just sit back and watch it like a TV programme.

 

Will report back once I'm further into the game.

 

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Jolly

Jolly

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The anniversary of my birth is coming up so I've treated myself to the Famicom Detective Club games, despite their rather ambitious pricing. The knowledge that Nintendo Life are going to run a guide tipped me over the edge as I've definitely not got the patience for some of the more obtuse sounding puzzles. Will dutifully keep you guys informed on my progress. 

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