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TIGSource ForumsPlayerGamesThe big visual novel thread!
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VDZ
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« Reply #20 on: October 09, 2012, 08:43:19 AM »

it seems that VNs in japan are mostly for the creepy-shut-in/sex-predator demographic whereas in "the west" (USA) it is becoming a woman thing and they are enjoying it mainly because it is becoming a medium for childish girly stuff (just like arcade games had become a medium for childish boyish stuff)
Am I right or am I right ?
You are wrong. While VNs in Japan are definitely a nerd thing, there is also a lot of stuff for female audiences, mainly romance games with a female protagonist and routes for male love interests and yaoi games.



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sublinimal
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« Reply #21 on: October 09, 2012, 09:33:09 AM »

Daily reminder that you will never experience Coco's route for the first time again.

For some less depressing reminders: the first Infinity series VN, Never7, was recently translated. As was the oldschool game YU-NO, which is like a crossover between point'n'click and VN that Infinity fans will surely love. Now if only I/O (from the mastermind behind Infinity) ever got the same treatment...

Oh, and 999 has a sequel called Virtue's Last Reward, of which an official translation is scheduled for next month.

Edit: actually October 23rd in North America. You know it's going to blow your mind.
« Last Edit: October 09, 2012, 09:39:44 AM by sublinimal » Logged
VDZ
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« Reply #22 on: October 09, 2012, 10:21:09 AM »

For some less depressing reminders: the first Infinity series VN, Never7, was recently translated.

I'll counter your non-depressing reminder with a depressing reminder: Never7 isn't nearly as good as Ever17 or Remember11. It's just a romance game with some interesting twists, and the final route is underwhelming and more of an asspull than a reasonable solution. Despite that it manages to be so predictable that I predicted almost the entire solution before even starting the final route. Still, worth reading for the additional information it provides on the infinity universe as well as the ability to read and understand the entire infinity timeline, if you're an infinity fan.

As was the oldschool game YU-NO, which is like a crossover between point'n'click and VN that Infinity fans will surely love.
Still need to read that some day. Apparently it's a classic.

Now if only I/O (from the mastermind behind Infinity) ever got the same treatment...
It's getting the same treatment as we speak. BlickWinkel (the guy who translated Steins;Gate) and GundamAce (who translated Never7) are currently translating it together. Also of note is that Roger Pepitone is doing the hacking; he's the guy who added, among other things, the 'skip read' function and the clear list in the Never7 translation (yes, originally it didn't even have a skip read function). Progress information is here, though note that the chart and percentage are inaccurate as the TIPs are much, much shorter than the scripts.
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« Reply #23 on: October 09, 2012, 10:41:25 AM »

Quote from: forwardresent
I think with the rise of tablet devices more visual novels should appear, it's definitely the right platform for them.

It's the right platform but unfortunately it seems that it's not the right marketplace. App stores are essentially casual portals. You either have something cheap/free and mass market that can raise to the top-10, or you may as well not waste your time. VNs are by definition niche and they tend to be pretty expensive, so chances for more of them appearing on tablets are very slim.

Dunno about tablets, but there are a lot of (very shallow afaik) visual novels moving into the mobile phone market. Mostly in Japan, although there are a handful of them showing up in English as well. Since the companies doing these little otome ports keep putting out more of them I can only assume they're making decent sales.

They're set up where you get the character introduction free and then purchase individual character routes. This seems to have a strong limiting factor on the kind of stories being told.
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« Reply #24 on: October 09, 2012, 10:50:04 AM »

Never7 isn't nearly as good as Ever17 or Remember11.

Yeah, and I don't think anyone was expecting it to be. But it's got the same charm as listening to forgotten releases by kickass bands, back from when they were just a couple of guys jamming in a garage.

Still need to read that some day. Apparently it's a classic.

Get ready for a lot of "holy fuck just tell me where I'm supposed to click ararararagh". Sometimes the logic behind in-game events occuring seems random, and I end up walking back and forth between places like a Pokemon trainer in tall grass. Or maybe I'm just bad at point'n'clicks. And many of the eroge scenes seem out of place.

Otherwise the story and presentation are neat, it's leaps ahead of similar games from its time. The "jewel save" gameplay mechanic that YU-NO revolves around is pure brilliance.


Spoke too soon then. I'm glad to have been wrong about this one.
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« Reply #25 on: October 09, 2012, 02:49:20 PM »

^ I know exactly what you mean. YU-NO is one half pure genius. The story is great. (I skipped through the ero scenes, too) The jewel save system and the way the game uses sound/visual effects to hint at points where the story can branch depending on your actions is a brilliant and fascinating way to marry adventure game mechanics with story branching that VN developers ought to have studied and emulated.

But the "guess-the-click-spot" problem in that game is worse than interactive fiction's "guess-the-verb" problem ever was since you very often cannot leave the room or do anything else until you read the author's mind. It's a problem I've seen repeated in countless first person adventure games made by the Japanese, especially from the 90's.

I suspect that the visual novel medium evolved into what it is today precisely because most Japanese are so horrible at making adventure games. It's as if they collectively realized that the facade of interactivity they'd been offering over and over to players is actually worse than minimal/no interactivity, so they reduced interactivity to all but its most basic form, resulting in a medium friendly to those who simply want to tell a story or draw pretty art.

Daily reminder that you will never experience Coco's route for the first time again.


Argghhh. Don't remind me of that.
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« Reply #26 on: October 10, 2012, 01:28:31 AM »

For anyone who wants to actually play a game and not a book, the following games are pretty challenging on their hardest mode:

Sengoku Rance - rape VN with turn-based RPG battles, character relationship building, and bits of grand strategy mixed in

Kamidori Alchemy Meister - SRPG in the same vein as Fire Emblem, but has a lot more meat to it. There's shopkeeping simulator aspects just like in Recettear, crafting, stages have multiple objectives and obstacles that require certain skills, and stats really matter, a single increase in a stat has a very visible effect on damage you deal or take. On its hardest mode, you really have to perfect the first stage to get past it, later ones can be dealt with through grinding, but you have to be careful due to money (it's hard to come by, and it's taken from you daily)

Monster Girl Quest - VN where every enemy you encounter tries to rape you in pretty different ways. Battles seem pretty simple and some are scripted, but it's still entertaining.
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TeeGee
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« Reply #27 on: October 10, 2012, 01:48:50 AM »

Quote
Sengoku Rance - rape VN with turn-based RPG battles, character relationship building, and bits of grand strategy mixed in
Quote
Monster Girl Quest - VN where every enemy you encounter tries to rape you in pretty different ways. Battles seem pretty simple and some are scripted, but it's still entertaining.


What the flying fuck!?  Droop
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Tom Grochowiak
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« Reply #28 on: October 10, 2012, 03:59:54 AM »

Quote
Sengoku Rance - rape VN with turn-based RPG battles, character relationship building, and bits of grand strategy mixed in
Quote
Monster Girl Quest - VN where every enemy you encounter tries to rape you in pretty different ways. Battles seem pretty simple and some are scripted, but it's still entertaining.


What the flying fuck!?  Droop
Basically, the Rance series is a series of games (mostly RPGs) with adult content. The excuse for the porn is that the protagonist, Rance, is a narcissistic jerk who only thinks about sex.


Average Rance thought process.

Sengoku Rance is a strategy game that's a parody of the warring states (sengoku) period in Japanese history, where the ruthless Oda Nobunaga and his successors eventually conquered all of Japan and merged it into one country. Sengoku Rance's story is that Rance is on vacation to JAPAN after the events of Rance 6, where he meets a relaxed hippy-like guy named Oda Nobunaga, who's in charge of a small country in the middle of Japan. He becomes friends with him and eventually becomes a military leader for his country. Nobunaga asks Rance to ensure peace in Oda, which Rance decides is best done by conquering every other country so there's nobody to attack Oda (which conveniently gives him the chance to travel around all of JAPAN to fuck all the beautiful women there).



Sengoku Rance is a game with grand strategy and RPG elements with some major flaws (mainly the AI being a complete and utter cheating bastard). It's very light-hearted and comedic, with lots of characters of various countries generally just being silly in their daily lives (in contrast to other grand strategy games where enemies are just countries on a map and everything's deadly serious).

The sexual content generally consists of the victory H-scenes where Rance goes around looking for beautiful women to fuck in the area every time you've conquered a country, and is generally of the comedy rape variety (which is a completely foreign concept to Western people, but yes, Rance proves that even rape can be funny). Rance's H-scenes are frequently funny enough that I actually read them (whereas I skip the H-scenes in almost every other VN).

As for Monmusu Quest, from what I heard it's the kind of game that isn't enjoyable on story/gameplay alone if you're not interested in the porn. (Contrast Sengoku Rance, which I recommend at least checking out regardless of whether or not you're into VN porn.)
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The Monster King
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« Reply #29 on: October 10, 2012, 04:32:00 AM »

this is, you see, because japan has immense respect for its history

either that or it is totally unable to make a game without nobunaga in it
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TeeGee
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« Reply #30 on: October 10, 2012, 04:40:33 AM »

Quote
is generally of the comedy rape variety (which is a completely foreign concept to Western people, but yes, Rance proves that even rape can be funny).

Again. What in the flying fuck?! What the fuck is comedy rape? How did it become a genre? WTF Japan. WTF! Epileptic
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Tom Grochowiak
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« Reply #31 on: October 10, 2012, 04:46:11 AM »

and is generally of the comedy rape variety (which is a completely foreign concept to Western people, but yes, Rance proves that even rape can be funny)

im gonna beat you up and call you names until you shrivel up into a small ball praying to your cartoon little girls and their oh so funny non consensual sex

your blood is my poetry

how did you summarize so well in one simple sentence what makes nerds nerds

kill all nerds
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moi
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« Reply #32 on: October 10, 2012, 04:53:08 AM »

you can't understand the subtelty, roundeye
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« Reply #33 on: October 10, 2012, 05:13:18 AM »

I think it's hard for most people to understand just how many visual novels are porn until they've wandered around Akihabara. The scale of it is kind of astounding. The West gets visual novels filtered through the language barrier and while you know that there's porn out there and run into it a bit, you at least have some grounds to defend the medium's merit. One trip through the rows and rows of porn games (and the two shelves of non-porn VNs) in an average store will shatter your illusions.
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ANtY
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« Reply #34 on: October 10, 2012, 06:02:58 AM »

Quote
is generally of the comedy rape variety (which is a completely foreign concept to Western people, but yes, Rance proves that even rape can be funny).

Again. What in the flying fuck?! What the fuck is comedy rape? How did it become a genre? WTF Japan. WTF! Epileptic
Quote
completely foreign concept to Western people
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« Reply #35 on: October 10, 2012, 06:08:42 AM »

I think it would have to be demonstrated how can it be. And you would have to explain that to rape victims too, "hey, remember your tragedy? lets lol about it"
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TeeGee
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« Reply #36 on: October 10, 2012, 06:19:14 AM »

I once read a really cool book about the problems of modern Japanese culture and economy (can't remember the title, sorry). Was pretty eye-opening. It started with a huge foreword about how the Westerners tend to dismiss troubling things about Japan, because they think they simply don't understand the culture, while in reality it just is pretty troubled, even for the Japanese.

And sorry, but rape is not funny. Certainly not in a country where misogyny is widely accepted, rapes are not reported because they aren't treated seriously, and women need separate passenger cars because groping is such an issue.
« Last Edit: October 10, 2012, 06:24:25 AM by TeeGee » Logged

Tom Grochowiak
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« Reply #37 on: October 10, 2012, 06:41:17 AM »

I always find it interesting how violence and murder and even male on male prison rape can be considered funny but male on female rape is totally and utterly out of the question. Seriously, people's values in the modern world are fucked up sometimes. When did rape become so much worse than murder?
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ANtY
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« Reply #38 on: October 10, 2012, 06:47:20 AM »

True, especially strange that I bet it's harder to accept if male gets raped by a male when he isn't gay than for a female that gets raped by a male when she's straight.
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TeeGee
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« Reply #39 on: October 10, 2012, 06:57:16 AM »

I've heard this argument before but it's a bit of a straw man. Violence is indeed widely accepted by our culture as something that can be fun, but murder is not.

For example -- look at how action movies handle their gratuitous shootouts. Goons are always anonymous and when shot/stabbed/exploded they instantly die in a non-realistic manner. If you would actually see close ups of their faces while they are in agony, scream in pain and beg for their lives, it would quickly take a very disturbing turn. Just compare Rambo to something like Saving Private Ryan. Or better yet -- watch Funny Games and tell me if murder is really so funny for us.

The thing is: murder and rape are very specific and very personal forms of violence and there's nothing funny about them. When they are used in media, they are used to shock or disturb, not to make fun of. A comedy involving murder or rape would have to be really great to pass (and it would still be a little disturbing). A story of a badly drawn dude who rapes a chick after every battle doesn't sound like it.

Quote from: ANtY
it's harder to accept if male gets raped by a male when he isn't gay than for a female that gets raped by a male when she's straight.
Jesus.
« Last Edit: October 10, 2012, 07:07:52 AM by TeeGee » Logged

Tom Grochowiak
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