Visual Novels - What should we play?

[therearerules]

Completed Shibuya Scramble- a fun romp, but it's feeling its age. The slowness of the text being the worst offender. Loved the cat costume.

[Jolly]

Finished The Missing Heir portion of Famicom Detective Club and enjoyed it more than the reviews would suggest. Yes, there's a fair amount of spamming menu options to try and figure out what the game needs you to do (in one amazing section, I'd found a key and a locked door but couldn't figure how to combine the two) but it ticks along at a good pace and packs all its biggest revelations into the last hour or so. Looks truly beautiful too I thought, the subtle animations are really quite something.

 

8/10 for me and going to go straight into the other story. Kinda hoping that the unexpected revival of these deep cuts means that Nintendo are thinking of branching out into some new visual novels, which I would be very much on board for. If nothing else for the complete meltdown half the internet would have if Nintendo announced a new Detective Club before a new F-Zero 😁 

[deerokus]

Anyone played Kowloon High School Chronicle? It looks so weird, and being from the PS2 era of Japanese developers doing creative stuff, that it's tempting me. 

[Jolly]

Aaaaand finished the other half of Famicom Detective Club - The Girl Who Stands Behind - this afternoon. A slightly weaker narrative I would say that relies too heavily on characters suddenly remembering vital pieces of information from 15 years ago. Still, all good fun and I'm really pleased we've had the opportunity to play through these weird offshoots from Nintendo's history. The Girl... in particular has several really un-Nintendo elements, including a big neon sign flashing the word 'SEXY'. 

 

Recommend the collection when they're half price or something. £50 is pretty steep really. You can play the games in either order (The Girl.. . was released after The Missing Heir but is set before) but I'd recommend playing The Girl... first just because of the stronger story in The Missing Heir. 

[Let us measure]

Cheers @Jolly, definitely interested in playing both but yeah, £50 is too much for digital only one-and-done deals. Shame there was no physical. 

[Jamie John]

AI: The Somnium Files is currently less than £18 on the Russian eshop, which is pretty cheap as it's normally over £50. Would anyone recommend that for someone who doesn't play a huge amount of visual novels? It's by the same people who did Virtue's Last Reward, which I played years ago on the Vita and actually got the Platinum for, so that's probably a good sign that I'll like this as well.

[therearerules]

Yeah it's great. Also really enjoying Raging Loop. It helps that I've played numerous games of Mafiascum.

[mdn2]

Yep, big thumbs up for both A.I and Raging Loop. Although A.I isn't strictly a VN - there's a few puzzle rooms as well. There's a dedicated thread for it here @Jamie John

 

 

 

I'm playing House of Fate Morgana at the minute. It's... intriguing but I'm struggling to see why it's so well regarded. Granted, it's still early days at the minute (I'm about 4 hours in) but I hope it picks up a bit. 

[Alan Stock]

See my post further up the thread for thoughts on House of Fata Morgana (pro tip, it is very slow paced).

 

I started Raging Loop quite a while ago now, did one full loop and found it quite slow but I like the premise. I'm a bit further on now but the slow pacing really has made it one I've not really been thrilled to go back to. Its sitting there waiting to be played but I never feel like I want to dedicate an hour or two to it especially as the characters aren't that engaging, I just want to get past the fluff to the mafiascum stuff!

 

Definitely check out AI: Somnium files, its not as good as zero escape in my opinion but still a fun romp with some good twists and turns.

[Alan Stock]

Just finished Raging Loop. Conflicted feelings. The middle part of the game is great, proper Mafia stuff and some good mysteries. But - no spoilers - it all falls apart at the end in a way too long, overly complicated, confusing and wishy-washy ending. There's some interesting ideas but the tone and pacing is all off from the rest of the VN. I wish they'd made a tighter beginning and conclusion, plus included more loops of the Mafia stuff.

[therearerules]

I really enjoyed Raging Loop. Agreed the ending was overly long, with some pointless added complexity, but it was compulsive enough for me to play through again after finishing to read the bonus content and watch all the final vignettes. If anybody enjoys Mafiascum and VNs it's a great play. Happy to post my copy to anybody for the price of postage.

[Laine]

12 hours ago, therearerules said:

I really enjoyed Raging Loop. Agreed the ending was overly long, with some pointless added complexity, but it was compulsive enough for me to play through again after finishing to read the bonus content and watch all the final vignettes. If anybody enjoys Mafiascum and VNs it's a great play. Happy to post my copy to anybody for the price of postage.

Ooh I’d like it if it hasn’t gone please! 

[therearerules]

Just now, Laine said:

Ooh I’d like it if it hasn’t gone please! 

Absolutely- just pm me

[Flub]

I've been playing Steins Gate Elite on my Switch a bit. I'm not that far in and have no idea what's going on but I'm enjoying it so far. Nice voice acting and great presentation. Story seems interesting so far as well.

[Alan Stock]

Finally got around to finishing Root Double: Before Crime *After Days (40+ hours!). I picked it up years ago after finishing the Zero Escape series and seeing a lot of recommendations for it online as well as lots of good Steam reviews. Sadly it ended up being a massive slogfest with predictable twists, very anime trappings, and its emotional scenes never really resonated for me (unlike Zero Escape, Danganronpa etc). I guess it didn't help that I didn't really care about the characters either. Anyway, I wrote a review on Steam so I'll just post it here:

 

Quote

Online a bunch of people recommended Root Double as another game similar to Zero Escape to try. Unfortunately although the premise of Root Double is quite good, it has a bunch of issues which hurt it in the long run. There are massive issues with pacing , with the game being extremely stretched out and far, far longer than it needs to be, especially Route 2 which has a great deal of boring slice of life content. Also, the game takes place from multiple viewpoints, but as a result continually goes over the same events and memories with only slight variations. Many of the story's twists are heavily telegraphed and the route choosing system is really badly designed.

Although it does have its moments, especially in Route 1, it takes far too long to reach a conclusion and its mysteries take way too long to be resolved. The voice acting is good, the music is decent but very repetative for such a long game. The art style will be up to personal taste, I didn't like the Japanese big-eyed character designs but I did like the other artwork. The translation is decent but probably hampered by the source material. I ended up slogging this game to the finish for completion's sake, with most of the high points reached many hours before. Making wrong major decisions generally lead to a game over which can take a long time to reveal themselves, without really adding anything to the story or mystery.

Sad as it is to say, I can't really recommend this for a more mature audience looking for a Zero Escape alternative.

 

Your milage may vary but I suspect the audience that really loved this game are quite different to me. There are Steam reviews that talk about crying at multiple points in the story and that its the best visual novel ever made. Maybe you need to be of a certain age or emotional persuation to appreciate it, but even those reviews point out the same flaws I had - unfortunately I also didn't really appreciate the things they liked! And its not like I am some mindless monster, the Zero Escape games I've found very tense, surprising, clever and some moments geniuinely moving. This is like a poor-man's version trying to emulate Zero Escape's much tighter and cohesive vision.

 

The game does start out strong with a decent pace, cool setting and lots of intriguing mysteries, but ultimately manages to undo all of its good will over its overly long runtime and delving into minute detail into every character. From the reviews I feel like a bunch of people were blown away by the multiple routes from different perspective and how they all come together - but games like Zero Escape have done this much more elegantly.

 

Hurry up Ukikoshi and Kodaka and make another classic, save us from this visual novel medicority! 

 

In the meantime... thankfully I have discovered one visual novel worthy of your attention, coming up in my next post.

[smac]

On 07/07/2021 at 13:33, Flub said:

I've been playing Steins Gate Elite on my Switch a bit. I'm not that far in and have no idea what's going on but I'm enjoying it so far. Nice voice acting and great presentation. Story seems interesting so far as well.

 

I may be playing it wrong, but I haven't actually made any choices in it. It is literally a picture book story...

[Flub]

5 minutes ago, smac said:

 

I may be playing it wrong, but I haven't actually made any choices in it. It is literally a picture book story...

 

Rather than being presented with explicit, binary choices like in other visual novels, your interaction with Steins;Gate is entirely diegetic and performed through using Okabe's phone. The route you take through the game and the ending you get is determined by your responses to emails you receive, whether you make phone calls when given the opportunity and even whether or not you read incoming messages.

[smac]

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

 

OK, I may give it another go, then.

[Flub]

When I finally get back to playing it I'm just going to choose whatever I feel like and see what ending I get. I can always watch the others on Youtube.

[Alan Stock]

Doing some reading up on Root Double, I discovered the director, writer and some other staff previously worked on Ever 17 and Remember 11. That explains the familiarity with those titles, like being trapped in a dangerous setting, the intertwining character storylines, the amnesia, the twisting back stories, the slice of life stuff. Uchikoshi ultimately left that studio, although I believe he was a writer on Ever 17. But you can see how the director kept the Ever 17 style going through to today's games like Root Double, whereas Uchikoshi went off in an even darker and twisted direction with Zero Escape, ditching the slice of life stuff and introducing more puzzle and whodunnit elements. 

[Crhis]

The House in Fata Morgana on sale on the switch eshop - £22.49 down from £31.49. Picking it up knowing nothing about the story, which is the way I've heard you should go in.

[therearerules]

Tempted by that, but going to get Gnosia instead

[therearerules]

Man Gnosia is weird. I initially was sceptical, then loved it, but now find myself getting bored by it. Love the high concept, but I'm at the point where I don't really care about winning, just unlocking story, which means playing these mock werewolf games with no real purpose. Currently prefer the Raging Loop take on the genre, as the wheat to chaff ratio in this is just out of wack.

[Alan Stock]

I agree, I was hooked on it at first but interest started to wane after the first few sessions. I think its a great implementation of an AI mafia game but the ongoing hooks aren't really strong enough to keep me playing. I'm also pretty crap at it, if you look at the tutorials there's loads of stuff going on but its quite vague as to how influence and the stats work.

[Flub]

I've started playing You and Me and Her on Steam. It's very good so far. Not sure which direction it's going in but one of the reviews described it as DDLC on crack.

[Kayin Amoh]

Started AI: The Somnium Files on Game Pass a few months ago, and while I wound up getting distracted, what I played was very good and I intend to go back to it when I get the chance

 

[Alan Stock]

Talking of which, look, an AI Somnium Files sequel! Didn't see that one coming but I'm well up for it! I'm not going to watch the trailer cos of spoilers, and I don't recommend clicking this article link if you haven't played the original:

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2022-01-27-ai-the-somnium-files-sequel-nirvana-initiative-gets-new-trailer-june-release-date

 

Uchikoshi still on scenario writing duty. Hoping they improve the gameplay in this one!

[Varsity]

I loved Somnium Files, was kinda one I missed for ages and then was in the mood for a detective type thing. 

 

Definitely looking forward to a sequel.

 

Spoiler

Hoping to see some chars return. Imagine Date is doubtful considering the end of the first. Mitzuki was the best char in the first one anyway so so happy she's the main char this time. Secretly hoping for an A-Set return and another song though not gonna lie. 

 

[Alan Stock]

Yep (AI Somnium spoilers)

Spoiler

There's no reason Date can't be in it though. I'm pretty happy with the return of Mitzuki and Aiba though, they were the best two characters. I'm guessing this will be set quite a long time after the first so that'll be interesting. From the artwork it looks like Mitzuki might be a teenager or in college, maybe even older than that. I can definitely go without an A-Set song!

 

I am curious though about how timelines will work in this one. In the original it was just handwaved away how knowledge could go though the timelines, I wonder if they'll just stick with that tack again. And the plot, its quite exciting because with Ukioshi you never know what to except, will he go for a bonkers body swap type twist, or play it a bit more as a standard serial killer plot. In all honesty I don't think you need some mad sciency mindbending twist for it still to be good, we know the characters are good enough to carry any kind of story.

 

Ah wait, I've figured it out. At the end it will be Mitzuuki was Date all along!

 

[Jolly]

Finished House in Fata Morgana this afternoon and, eh, didn't do it for me. Commits one of my least favourite gaming sins of not knowing when to finish. Genuinely think the whole final narrative section - a good ten hours worth - could have been chopped off and the experience would have been improved. 

 

The story is admirably complex, literally covering hundreds of years with stories that gradually interweave with each other. In fact, the best quality of the game is watching it gradually drop each piece into place. But it can be relentlessly bleak. Genuinely some sections feel like they should have trigger warnings and it's obsession with endless, infinite torture sections reminded me a bit of my least favourite parts of Black Mirror. It's caught me at a bit of a bad time personally where I've been super-stressed at work, but reading repeated graphic mutilations and cruel humiliations wasn't exactly helping me unwind me after a day at the office. 

 

It's also not nearly interactive enough for me. Choices seem pointless as it's funneling you down a specific route with little reward or reason to explore the alternatives. 

 

Clearly has it's fans, but I'd find it very difficult to recommend to anyone but the most committed of visual novel fans. 

 

4/10