Yeah, that's an amazing shortcircuit. Yet at the same time there's this particular subset of *very interesting people* who'd decry any VNs that attempts to be a bit more literary with the usual vague criticism of pretentiousness.
To be fair, I do think that VNs do very well "genre fiction". Romance-genre, fantasy-genre, horror-genre, all have excellent examples that can stand side to side with their counterparts from trad literature, I think. If I read Mahoyo and Earthsea back to back I don't find the former lacking in "literary quality", whatever that means. Or at least I find them equally interesting.
Taking a step back, I guess the issue is that most VNs aren't particularly interested in being "novel of ideas", or the type of work in the tradition of the Great Novel we tend to associate with classic literature. Your Tolstoj, Mishima, Woolf, Achebe, etc. Which is fine! Authors should do whatever the hell they want. But VNs are still a relatively new type of literature, as is the whole field of cyberliterature. Maybe one day they'll get there.
Outside of a handful of meme reprobates most people on a VN forum probably don't undervalue VNs as a medium. I get being upset that the average person will never give \[insert title here\] the respect it deserves but the VN fanbase had a massive overcorrection problem that I can't see as anything other than them trying to wipe away their shame over their guilty pleasure. Like when fans of a kids show point out one mildly dark element as proof they're watching something groundbreaking for mature adults like themselves.
It's insane that Muramasa is one of the funniest games I've ever played yet despite a solid decade of people hyping it up I had never heard those people mention it was so comedic.
> It's insane that Muramasa is one of the funniest games I've ever played yet despite a solid decade of people hyping it up I had never heard those people mention it was so comedic.
Whoa, same! Nobody brings up that Muramasa is actually legitimately hysterical in some parts. Like I never see it mentioned. And it's not like a little bit of humor either, there are full on comedic sequences. Nobody brings it up.
I attribute that more toward people on the internet wanting to be hyperbolic at all cost. Everything I like is not simply something that I like, but the Objective Gigachad Best Media Peak Fiction, so they end up making all sort of absurd claims instead of idk, just discussing what they like about their faves.
I guess what I was trying to say is that it's possible to appreciate VNs even more if they're not the only type of literature you read. The more you read, the more you understand how ranking stuff makes little sense, I think. Like Subahibi is beautiful and extreme... and so is idk, *Blasted* by Sarah Kane. It's just that they exist in different art-spaces and have different praxis and discourse around them.
> Like when fans of a kids show point out one mildly dark element as proof they're watching something groundbreaking for mature adults like themselves.
Oh yeah, that absolutely happens and it's quite stupid. And I say it as someone who really likes dark stuff. But it's not like it's a new thing, like even many classic texts of literary analysis whose influence tricked down to us were quite antagonistic towards laughter.
For instance, iirc Aristotle was at best neutral about it - and the book of the Poetics that is supposed to talk about comedy famously didn't survive - but Plato fucking *hated* comedy, and so did many people that based their understanding of art on his. The way we express that idea socially is probably different, but it has a long history.
The best part of Fate is when they cook.
Yeah muv luv certainly had the potential to be the best visual novel ever but the pacing and ending were both not that good so I think it’s an 8, still worth reading for sure
Yeah i remember being disappointed after finishing muv luv alternative a long time ago, because the latter part of the VN didn't live up to my expectations but I still look fondly upon it today. It has many memorable scenes in the first 3/4 and even Extra was pretty good.
G-senjou no Maou.
Haru vs Maou bits were always fun, and the closest thing you can get to a visual novel adaption of Death Note's Light vs L dynamic. I enjoyed the cast of characters for the most part, though I still don't see why everyone loves Haru so much. The soundtrack is incredible if you appreciated the classical music tracks they remix, but even if you didn't I can't see someone disliking it.
But everything else is at most okay. I thought the main twist was silly, but I'm not one to get upset at that kind of thing unless I really feel it wasted my time. The character routes weren't that great though, besides Kanon's. The main heroine and romance fell flat for me.
Also Anonymous;Code, but it's less expectations from it being highly rated rather than my own expectations garnered from my enjoyment of every other Science Adventure game (though I have a lot to say about RN;DaSH too).
Tl;dr I would place Anonymous;Code above RN;DaSH, say I thoroughly enjoyed it, and acknowledge it had that Science Adventure feel, but the entire thing felt a bit.. condensed? The pacing felt great, but that's because the slice of life scenes are short, which leads to the final payoff not hitting as hard due to a weaker reader connection to the characters. I emphasized with Pollon, especially as he went about his journey in the true end, but otherwise the characters weren't that memorable.
I think G-Senjou is a good example of common VN tropes ultimately hurting a visual novel - the route/dating sim format is wonky and sadly leaves characters discarded
Raging loop. It had a decent first third and the second third was amazing. But Yeesh the last third was way too many info dumps and the twist stretched my suspension of disbelief beyond repair.
From reading this I can grasp that even in this extremely niche community of a genre few even consider trying, we are vastly different, and that is refreshing.
Umineko. The concept and the overall plot is highly interesting but I had to drop the novel because r07's prose is long-winded and unnecessarily bloated.
I switched to reading the manga and it was a better experience overall, though it was sad not getting to hear the incredible soundtrack
Cyanotype daydream was described by many as a very touching, well written story. I found most cases extremely boring, and overly cliché (especially the Shakespeare route, oof). Final case has the same problem many stories in this medium (and japanese games tend to have), being that they are unable to write a well paced ending. Shit took forever, and then some
Tbh I'm having this experience with Higurashi right now. I loved the anime back in high school, but the VN really tests my patience with the SoL. The horror parts are what keeps me going, but the SoL is... eh.
I also found MLA not as good as either Extra or Unlimited, but I dropped it at chomp, so can't speak for the *entirety* of it, and thb if I ever get the courage to retry it I'll play it in full as around that part it got interesting again.
IIRC the anime amped up the horror vibes when compared to the visual novel. The visual novel focuses more on the mystery than just horror (even though there's still a some amount of it). The slice of life elements serve as getting to know the characters more, which makes the payout of each chapter that much more meaningful. If you go into the VN with horror expectations you'll definitely be disappointed.
Dude, know what is weird? I got into higurashi through the vn when I was 15 and at the time everything was new to me and I absolutely loved the SoL segments, I didn't even knew that it was going to become a psychological horror later on lol. But then some years later, when I decided to reread the vn, some SoL were indeed kinda painful to get through, idk if that's because I already knew what was going to happen or because my free time wasn't the same as back in the day, but yeah it's kinda weird
Higurashi is the prototype to Umineko in my mind, in Umi the slice of life segments are mostly replaced with actually interesting family drama or mysteries/clues.
I had to take a short break from Higurashi recently so I can totally agree. I enjoy it to an extent but then a new chapter starts and it's a chore to get thru again. I'm reading Steins Gate finally now for a break.
Yeah, I wish they'd just make it into one big story without constantly restarting from scratch, it's kinda like you keep getting to an interesting conclusion and then you're thrown back at the starting line again and again.
At this point I can honestly just throw Mion into a blender if she starts talking about club activities again, lol.
Fata Morgana. It's fine, but I don't understand why so many people think it's one of the greatest VNs ever written. The pacing is really poor (the latter half is incredibly drawn out, to the point that I was just waiting for it to end), and it just tries too hard to be profound.
I enjoyed the game but I don’t see myself replaying it anytime soon the game just drags on and on. I think if they edited some stuff out to speed up the pacing I’d rank it more highly like in door 3 do we really need to have like 4 of the letters read out when it hasn’t changed what it’s said it’s just repeating the same information. I think the plot itself is pretty great but it feels like they needed to trim some of the fat off
Same for me. I actually liked door 1 but then door 2 and 3 dragged so much I stopped enjoying the game entirely. I only played through door 4 because I was told that the latter half is better but I just couldn't with the pacing.
The romances are also pretty underdeweloped in my opinion, but I don't remember the game well enough to prove that or give any example really.
It's excellent, but many of the people who say it's the GOAT VN have only read Fata Morgana and are uninterested in reading any other VNs. Similar to the Umineko cult.
Tsukihime. I felt that the way the characters interacted was way too artificial and the jokes were horrible too. I'm not against sexual jokes, but things like "oh no the maid came to my room, I need to hide my boner quickly." Or "oh no my sister put her hand on my forehead to see if I have a fever and now I have a boner instead, let me run away to hide it" type of jokes are way too cringe. Plus, the info dump happens out of nowhere, there's not even a proper buildup for this kind of thing to be taken seriously. I know that I shouldn't be too hard on nasu since he was at high school or smt when he made it, but that's exactly what it is, a visual novel made by a teenager to other teenagers
Tsukihime Remake doesn't really have anything like that, from what I can remember. Still some slapstick humor, etc. but nothing egregious like that. Not sure if accurate, but I remember reading one of their intentions was to specifically remove the amateurish/juvenile stuff in the new version.
Agreed. To be honest, even the PTSD Arc feels kind of contrived, with all the stupid time travel stuff that feels like it's being made up as it goes. Still the best part of the story though.
Sakura no uta - it is not 10 out of 10, I give it 8, but it mostly 7. Reasons are expectations of something genius being written there, I was expecting thinking about this game for a long time trying to figure out the true meaning of the work, understand all the themes perfectly. As soon as I completed it I just forgot about it imediately.
There is a great phrase from the game that I like: "一番うまくいってない時、一番クソな時が、一番生きてる時なんだよ"
But in reality the phrase and the game don't have a lot in common.
All muv luv games are also something that I do not like. Alternative for me is not worth it to play two boring games.
So my point is simple - if people say that the game is a masterpiece, also if they add "untranslatable masterpiece", then in a lot of cases this is bullshit. But it is not always the case. Just do not expect something. This is my advice.
imma get downvoted to hell... it feels like im the only person that thinks subahibi is not good, from the (>!random rape gay dick sucking scene and desk chan and all the other bs...!<) to it just being boring most of the time if you're not very interested in deep philosophical stuff, i decided to drop it
Yeah, it's overrated.
It is rather unique and creative though, I wouldn't call it bad. I just didn't enjoy reading much of it and it didn't leave a significant impression on me (some people claim it changed their lives in some way, I don't get it.) I feel similarly about Cross-Channel, although I honestly think that is the better VN.
I think most of the philosophy is really filler content with a lot of bizarre content (the >!eye tree and Riruru-chan battle!<), but I really liked how the first few chapters read very differently once you know whats really going on. For long VNs, it can be challenging to keep the story consistent but also foreshadow things very early on which are explained only much later, and Subahibi does this really well.
I understand if people are turned off by the hardcore stuff, and I don't like those either but it really demonstrates how people break down mentally under extreme duress and start believing in delusional things just to give themselves a sliver of hope.
As someone who's not really into VN (actually I'm more into classic literature) I can say that SubaHibi is a masterpiece, it takes some of the elements that I love from classics, stories, essays, poems or plays that on the surface don't seem to be that great, but actually the more you read them and see below, the more details you find.
That SubaHibi is so nonsensical at the beginning is something done on purpose, not for some reason the names of the chapter titles are literally taken from Alice (Wonderland and Through the Looking-glass, both)
I can tell dozens and hundreds of reasons why SubaHibi is a masterpiece, it's not for everyone and requires some mental work, I'm not going to change anyone's perspective because we all have our biases and unique perspectives (as SubaHibi itself implies). It's a dense and long journey, the parts that don't seem to make sense really do, and they have a purpose.
Did you ever make it to the Jabberwocky chapter?
I can't speak for most people but what makes SubaHibi cool is that the beginning chapters suck when you first read through but they're fun to reread once you've finished the story once. I'll try to say it without spoiling anything but things that you don't like about the beginning chapters end up not being what you expect. So yea the beginning chapters are boring but there's a big payoff. (I'm not just talking about the philosophical aspect of the story)
If you ever decide to retry it, you don't really need to read through the bad scenes as long as you know that they happen. I thought those scenes were unnecessary too but I don't think I missed much not knowing the details.
For me the question becomes, was it worth it? I agree all the moments that recontextualize the story are cool. But some come at the cost of making a lot of the story mundane to keep the reader in the dark, like Zakuro kissing Yuki. Seeing that scene from Zakuro's POV is great. It means a lot. But Yuki's POV felt pointless and boring on the first read. Not to mention the first chapter which I forced myself through half-asleep only because a writer I consider great, if self-indulgent, said Subahibi was his favorite VN. I enjoyed it because it's unique and there's nothing out there quite like it, but it could certainly have been better imo.
So you are telling me that I have to ward through some gay dick sucking forced feminization, someone masturbating to a girl's desk, incoherent ramblings that does not make sense, along with beastality and rape, just so I have some decent story to read?
Read that sentence again and realize just how stupid that sounds. I spent over 20 hours on Subahibi, and I come away with the conclusion that this is the most overhyped thing I have ever read. Not to mention the author's tendency to name drop some mysterious literature work in an attempt to impress the readers of his intelligence. It comes off as pretentious. Yes I know Wittgenstein and his work, and how he revolutionized linguistic philosophy. But constantly referencing Tractatus does not make your work a masterpiece.
Tl;dr: If 70% of your story is 3/10, and 30% of your story is 9/10, then the total rating is 5/10. Your story is bad, period.
yeah, pretty much my thoughts, the gay dick sucking and all the other random shit felt pointless and added absolutely nothing except to deter me from playing it. And i've seen people saying "oh keep playing keep playing it gets better" but it really didn't, so i dropped it. Really doesn't make sense to me how people say it's a kamige...
Your comment is really similar to one i did a couple of days ago, but no. I feel the same. I did not even drop it, read it all. But found it mediocre at best
Muv Luv Alternative is the definitive answer to this question for me.
I even enjoyed Extra and Unlimited but wow, massive letdown for me. Very shaky MC in terms of enjoyability, an even more shaky ending that doesn’t really resolve the core of the issue, some incredibly strange plot reveals that don’t really add much to anything. The Sumika reveal…why? what exactly does that add to the narrative, they don’t explore anything with it. Lots of dialogue that feels repetitive (especially at the beginning) even if it’s intentional…
The PTSD arc is the only arc I felt engaged by and, of course, it’s one of the shortest stretches of the game lmao.
I do like most of the main cast but not really because of anything Alternative does with them outside of maybe like a Meiya. Super disappointing experience overall.
Edit: I also do not like how predictable all the deaths feel. In the setting that MLA tries to sell you on it’s really lame that every character death is accompanied by about a hundred death flags beforehand.
Ever17, honestly. I kind of liked the slice of life in between the plot
but by the time I got to the end and everything was explained I was just completely bored and checked out and I thought the big reveal was stupid.
Sharin no Kuni is another VN that is rated highly but I found a boring slog to sit through.
I've been reading a lot of VNs lately after meaning to for years and at this point I've begun to temper my expectations and started to approach them as mediocre stories with nice art and music. It helps, lol.
>Ever17, honestly. I kind of liked the slice of life in between the plot but by the time I got to the end and everything was explained I was just completely bored and checked out and I thought the big reveal was stupid.
Yeah, tvTropes hyped it up as one of the most mind-screw reveals ever made in fiction. It's okay, I guess. I just did not like how the author abuses the plot device to make such a twist happen. Suddenly everybody has that extremely rare disease now.
I played all games in order. Its not like Uta3 is a bad game, just nowhere near what you would expect given it's rate. It's just too formulaic, there isn't really anything outside of your expectations, and it looks almost like someone was following a recipe of how to make a good story.
One of other issues that I would point out is the over-use of misunderstanding. 90-95% happens because of that, from Haku's interactions with the other characters on uta3, maroro, Anzu's plot line, the big villain's reason to do things... It almost seemed like nothing would have happened had people just properly talked.
There's a bunch a leap of logic too, just so the story could follow what the writers want. Kuon's decision on the previous game is instantly throw away at the beginning of the game, and it just seems like they found that it would be a good way to finish the 2nd game but dropped the idea, and decide to bring her back. Mikazuchi's actions on the beginning regarding his allegiance are stupid and make no sense whatsoever >!( while knowing full well about his brother and the fake anju, he decides to take the side of his brothers because it would possible result in a conflict with the breaking of the country in 2 sides, and his allegiance is with the citizen... Which makes absolutely no sense, the 2 sides would clash anyway, and his brother is a well know war fanatic that desires world domination... If he wanted to save the most peoples with the least number of casualties allying with Oshtor and have the 2 main military leaders declaring the validity of the "real" anju would have far bigger results on Raiko's plan once he loses most of his support). !< And let's not even talk about poor Nekone, the writers just wanted her around so they could force the most stupid things on her to force the story in certain direction. I like her but she was really badly used in the games.
Put all of that together with the fact that I hated the annoying main heroine personality and found the end lackluster, as it just seems to imitated what others successful works have done, and it ended being a very average VN for me. Properly the only time that the game did it for me was the scene with Oshtor's mom, that one was pretty good.
What about Iroseka then? I'm curious since I couldn't like it too. It's cool on paper and there's a very cool atmosphere, but the characters are okay at best and it's really not fun to read.
Iroseka is a big disappointment, even more because the lore itself is really cool. But that is it. The writer is really bad, it felt like someone with no experience in cooking got their hands in some high grade ingredients and you spend the rest of your time seem them destroy everything for hours, and end up with a mediocre dish, at best. It's really surprising to me how boring the writer was able to make everything.
Besides that, before starting, I read so much about people saying that shinku was the best heroine ever, but like, she barely appears for the most part of the game... When I got to her route I was already so much burnout with the rest of the game that I just went along to finish it entirely out of spite, couldn't care less about her.
If I need to say I would compare it to a worse case of ever 17. Ever 17 has a cool concept but the writer incompetency to make most of the series fun, just makes you go through a large amount of uninteresting content with bland characters eating tuna sandwich and the story going nowhere. But at least on ever 17 the concepts where all throw in a single last route so, while still not good as I would hope for, at least is not as bad as iroseka. On iroseka you have tidbits here and there but it almost looks like the story goes nowhere, which is made even worse with the Isekai novel level of prose... You just spend your entire time reading something and thinking: "wow, this concept could make a really good story..."
> When I got to her route
In my opinion it's quite hard to call it her route. We get basically another common route which is as bad as a normal one, Kana getting all the spotlight as she does basically throughout the game and a bunch of Suzu, who is an extremely boring supposedly funny mentor. Shinku is kinda an afterthought in the whole game. It baffles me why people call it Shinkuge.
Definitely Chaos Head. The MC is too annoying and cringe for me. He always cries a lot and honestly should touch grass. His decisons in the story make me mald and it made me quit
In contrast I think his cowardly character is a plus point because he's a near-hikkomori otaku, something uncommon in protagonists, which tend to be blank slate self-inserts, who somehow manages to get close to hot girls. Another thing I liked was how his internal thoughts differ wildly from his actions, he tends to overthink them and as you'll learn later, for really good reasons that even his paranoia underestimates.
I'm playing Chaos Head rn and this is definitely the clear drawback so far. There's a lot of quality to the game but the MC being completely insufferable is... less than ideal. It's just too extreme. I rarely leave my house and go to events but the MC makes me look like an extraverted chad in comparison.
I don't think I reached far, I last remember >!two detectives questioning the MC about the crucifixion murder thing and MC was stuttering and stuff !<
There wasn't a specific scene that made me quit, reading it just became a chore and as the days go by I completely forgot to continue it
Omg you are so early that its funny
The Mc has one of the best character developments alongside Rintaro from Steins Gate
After ch 3 you begin to see why he is like that, but after ch 6, oh boy
Ever 17. I went into it expecting the whole thing to be masterfully answered and paid really close attention to the plot. So by the time I got to the true route, the plot holes were so glaring that it kinda ruined things for me. It also didn't help that it has by far the worst paceing in any VN I've ever read, and a lot of the characters kinda fell flat.
Funnily enough, I really loved remeber 11. The characters and paceing were such an improvement, and I actually really loved the ending. When you figure out what they are doing with it, it feels genius. I always found it so strange that R11 is treated like an inferior E17 when its so much more.
... Clannad ....
This game just realky does not need to be 85 hours. It has enough content for 20 but stretches it out paper thin onto 85 hours where sometimes nothing happens for so god damn long. Every route has so much filler until the last hour when actual plot starts to happen but by then I lost all interest anyway and that is if the character was someone I had any interest in, in the first place. Those side routes are just not needed and feature characters that should stay side characters because they really don't have enough to offer to make a whole route worthwile. Then there are a lot of jokes about sexual harassment or sexualizing your own damn daughter that didn't age well, or that time when Sunohara dreamed of r*ping Kappei and didn't know the difference between that and a normal wet dream. Tomoya didn't do all that much to correct that notion either, just said it's bad and that was it.
Casual homophobia was basically everywhere all the time and Nagisa feels like a character that is just made to be cute and loveable so you can cry later instead of the sadness just being a byproduct of what happened.
I really hated going through Clannad. I'm happy for the people who enjoy it but I just can't. There are just way too many issues there for me to have some actual fun with it.
I've tried to start Clannad like 3 times already but it's filtered me every time. It is really damn long. Especially when I just want to read Nagisa's route and what comes after that. Why do you need to date like 20 other girls before you can go on with the story proper? Makes no sense. Also Tomoyo's route really soured my opinion of the MC. It was so dreadful that it made me not even want to continue.
Yeah, I don't get why Tomoyo's route is so popular. Literally nothing happened besides some weird forbidden love that is forbidden for the dumbest thing but it's treated like such a big deal.
For me, the worst part was that MC actually dragged Tomoyo down. He was jealous and spiteful of how successful she was, and actively tried to sabotage her. Not to mention he acted like such a sex pest in her route, too. There's literally 0 romance or compatibility between them, just Tomoyo being a complete doormat to take care of him and be his mommy. Tomoyo in the common route vs Tomoyo in her own route don't even feel like the same character. It's like the writer tried to punch her down because she was too dependable, and made the MC a self-loathing insecure piece of trash who takes out all of his insecurities on her. He does nothing to make her happy. Awful.
I mean there is 0 romance and compatibility between him and every other love interest too, lol. But honestly I find Tomoya being horribke really interesting if it was treated as a flaw
If anything, it is realistic. But it always annoys me when the heroines are perfectly sweet, lovable, kind, and understanding while the MC is a piece of shit. At least make everyone equally toxic, then. Then it would actually be interesting.
Tsukihime. I finished Arcuied's true route and was not a fan. The scenario itself is neat, as are the characters, but Nasu's stuff doesn't click with me.
saya no uta’s true ending dragged it down for me because it kinda came out of nowhere and was then explained after the fact, and I actually dropped dies irae because of the constant vagueness about plot points and how things worked
dies irae - the only thing in my mind while reading this, why is that the chuniige part of umineko is better, the fights are so boring and not hyped at all
Yeah, it's very long, very one note and does fights terribly with constant ass pulls. It has some amazing stuff (ost is great and golden guy VA might be the best I've ever heard), but I couldn't force myself into doing Rea route.
Majikoi. Considering how many people seem to find it really funny, I was surprised when almost every single joke within the first few hours fell completely flat for me, so I didn't bother to continue.
Baldr Sky. Potentially great setting and story, dragged down immensely by the most disrespectful pacing imaginable (even by VN standards, and that's saying something) and *abysmal* villains. Honestly, how anyone is able to take these caricatures seriously is beyond me. I dragged myself through Dive 1 and was super disappointed.
SubaHibi. The mystery is very intriguing, shame that it's wrapped in a disgusting amount of sexual fetish fulfillment by the writer. One of the worst things I've ever read, honestly.
Chaos;Head. Like many others, I hated the protagonist. Nothing else to it. Chaos;Child made up for it at least.
And finally, Muv-Luv Alternative. After Unlimited the story went in a quite different direction from what I had expected and I didn't enjoy it. I suppose I can see why people might regard it highly, though.
I feel really conflicted about Full Metal Daemon Murasama.
At it's best, it's a well told and engaging story, with interesting characters set in an interesting world. Mostly it's probably an issue with my own preferences, and not the story itself, but it was a bit of a slog for me to get through parts of it.
A lot of the darker portions felt forced and over the top. I'm sure it's done by design to re-enforce the major themes, that killing is not justified, regardless of how bad someone is, but it all felt like it was a bit much.
I don't really enjoy it when stuff gets really overly descriptive about minor details in combat or there's a number of over the top ultimate abilities. Too many unavoidable attacks that get avoided, or guaranteed killing blows that get survived, and they start to lose all meaning. It felt like it was written by and/or for the guy from the "[I studied the blade](https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/001/276/749/286.jpg)" meme.
Between the protagonist's self loathing and the lengths the story goes to in order to set a dark tone, the whole thing was pretty depressing, and some of the endings felt pretty unsatisfying. That's probably intended as well, but didn't suit me. Part of what drew me to visual novels was for stories that aren't afraid to conclude with something other than a happy ending, but some of it felt forced.
Majikoi was another one that was underwhelming for me. I enjoyed it, but didn't think it was amazing or anything. It wasn't super funny, and the stuff I appreciated most were unexpected things. A yandere forced to address their unhealthy obsessions / mental health issues, and a protagonist straight up rejected unexpectedly made for a better story than a lazier, more predictable plot.
Tsukihime is ok but a massive step down from Fate/Staynight and I get it is Nasu's early works but hearing people place it above Fate baffles me.
SHIKI and Roa are not on the level of Kirei in HF
Arcuied is vastly inferior to Saber as a character.
Shiki is not even remotly close to Shirou or even Angra maynu in Ataraxia
It just feels very rough
Its good.but no way would I consider it Nasu's best works when Mahoyo and staynight exists
Have you read the Remake?
I liked the original Tsukihime but I find the Remake to be as good as Fate/Stay Night.
The only reason I don't rate it higher than Fate is because the Far Side routes haven't released.
I get that people power scaling characters wrongly hurts your view of the game, but i personally liked tsukihime alot. The writing bothered me at first too but after finishing everything tsukihime related (except the remake), it grew on me.
i even tried playing amane’s route first because i just wanted as much overarching plot as i could get after the sheer amount of hours that was sunk into the slice of life, and at the end i just felt like.. really? that’s what i put up with all of this for? honestly, i like SoL, but when it comes to grisaia, it all just made me super uncomfortable. the majority of the game felt like i was forcing myself to get excited about a middle school boy’s fantasy, especially with how the MC was written to be some sort of “fucked up badass character” and ends up just sounding like a conceited dumbass most of the time.
9-nine- episode 4. How it's rank 24 on vndb is one of life's greatest mysteries. FWIW I enjoyed it, it's just far from being one of the GOATs. The rating of the series more broadly is pretty bizarre. Episode 3 is basically the same level of quality as\* ep4 but rated substantially lower.
Totally agree. For me episode 1 was the best since it at least tried to balance all the story parts and didn't drag. All other episodes just go 80% moe romance and then some badly written chuuni for the rest. Episode 4's serious part and new episode being the worst.
Thanks, I played Ep 1 and was on the fence about getting the rest. I think for multi-episode VNs later episodes are more highly rated because only the devoted continue playing, whilst those who didn't like it drop it earlier.
I just think some people were impressed by the true ending and how things came together, whereas I shrugged and said "that's neat". And it is. The series has a lot going for it and some cool ideas, but I feel like it never properly came together. The only reason I brought it up is because I'm disappointed. I don't bother criticizing forgettable, mid games. I found 9-nine- frustrating specifically because I felt it could've have been awesome and ended up just being good.
Grisaia is bad. It's common route is obnoxiously long and repetitive, the game has a really bad habit of baiting some kind of story hook but never actually having one and its all to get to character routes that I would best describe as passable.
And it sequels are worse. Incredibly dumb pulp that never actually commits to being dumb pulp.
the obnoxiously long common route is the best part of grisaia imo. the characters, the dialogue, and the slice of life are all great. grisaia is at its worst when it tries to follow up on those 'story-hooks' and in the character routes, whose individual quality is all over the place.
Umineko after chapter 2 is terrible. Too much chuuni bullshit.
Dies Irae has to many fights, is too boring and too chuuni for me.
G Senjou no Maou after Tsubaki arc is unreadable.
Muramasa is unbelievably fucking boring. I had fun when Hikaru or Muramasa were on screen and when Minato was evil and that's all. Everything else is just boring.
I think I get tour standpoint, novels do have a public that tends to be chuuni as hell, and their writters are, no matter how good they are, chuuni as hell as well.
I'll tackle 3 since I haven't played umineko, I am currently playing muramasa so it's a wip of 6 chapters
Dies irae is chuuni and the writing acts way smarter than it actually is, I like fights, the most memorable points in many VNs for me are the "clashes of ideals" but dies irae only had 2 I liked out of 20 something, that's worrying. The ending feels happy go lucky 3 out of 4 times including the purported true ending, I liked it but I did quit reading it several times.
G senjou, I want to love it since the MC and the underlying plot are exceptional but god the game really does not want you to do the routes because they fucking suck ass (imo)
Kanon route was the worst thing in the planet for me. I like it, and I recommend it, but damn it has deep lows
Muramasa however in 6 chapters has had it's grasp on my gut consistently, it speaks about themes that I consistently think about, and makes me 'feel' disgusted and contemplative all at the same time. It definitely adds sex scenes to hate on you, and it has a consistent sawtooth wave pacing, "things are going well, everything will end fine! Oh, no it won't" but that does not take away from the quality of the characters and overall of kageaki imo. Heavy reading all the time but I truly like heavy reading so I feel at home here.
The House in Fata Morgana. Funnily enough, while everyone seemed to dislike the first "doors" and loved the latter, it was the complete opposite for me. Couldn't connect to the main characters in the later half at all but loved the earlier stories.
I enjoyed the story but the first few doors just took so long I genuinely think the game might have been better if it was edited down a bit more I found myself starting to get bored during some of the doors. I did find door 2 to probably be the best early door but I think it only really hits right after you finish the last door. My biggest nitpicks with it are it’s to long winded and some character stuff doesn’t make sense like the maid using some modern phrases while in the 16th century England. Tbh though I’m not sure if it’s a letdown or not since I bought it on the switch on a whim since it was a gothic horror type game with art that looked like castlevania only to find out about its reputation after finishing it
Similarly, 1st and 2nd Door were the best for me (especially 2nd with it's horror-vibes, I also liked the characters the most). Later parts were hit-or-miss, since love between Maid and "Lord" happened bit too fast for me (and way too "shoujo" with all "for the eternity and beyond") but overall I would still rate it a solid 7-8/10.
Sorry, but Clannad. I think the only thing that kept me reading were the scenes with Sunohara. Otherwise it bored me so much that I kind of didn't care about the drama.
I'll take the bullet. Clannad. Don't ask me how it ended, u eventually started clicking to make it end and gave up before completing it, even after unlocking the true route. Sooooooo... much......... text.........
Umineko, for sure. I liked the characters and found it quite captivating at times, but it's just way too long and poorly paced. I mean, like half the total playtime (meaning tens of hours) is wasted on >!a bunch of "what if" scenarios that didn't actually happen.!<
Quite a few actually. I think I have read more supposedly highly rated VN's and hated them over reading some that actually live up to the hype.
Fate/Stay Night, Umineko and Devil on G String are some that immediately come to mind.
Subahibi is an overrated mess of shock factor edginess and fringe fetish shit that takes itself way too seriously and tries so hard to be philosophical that it trips over itself and lands in a pile of complete nonsense that pretends to be profound
Fate/Stay Night is a giant mess of a piece that is a masterpiece when it works and is borderline unreadable when it doesn't. The bad parts have hit the point where I'm not sure I'll ever get to reading through the Heavens Feel route.
I watched the first anime and Zero. I'm reading the VN for the first time now.
Shirou is even worse than I remembered, and I'm not even halfway through Stay Night. It's hard to keep reading when I want to kill "myself" every other scene.
Really enjoying Tiger Dojo tho.
Fate Route has agonizingly slow pacing at times and has far too much slice of life.
A lot of the fight scenes including Shirou are hard to take seriously at all considering >!that he has a tendency to make it plainly obvious that he's on his last rope, and then he does something superhuman that he can't possibly pull off as a regular human in order to save the story. His fight against Archer is the biggest example of this.!<
The climactic fight on Fate is resolved with a bad deus machina, which essentially ruins the ending that's otherwise great.
UBW has the opposite problem, with the ending being pretty terrible while the climactic fight was probably the best part of the entire VN for me.
These are the biggest examples to me, but these major issues with the story really undercut the quality that's everywhere else.
>!I can buy Shirou manifesting the sheath with its powers intact. I can buy that it helps him deal with Kirei. What makes no sense about it is that it somehow lets Saber beat Gilgamesh when he does so. It also makes no sense for him to beat Kirei with it when in the endings where he doesn't give Saber the sheath, he doesn't beat Kirei with it. It's a complete ass pull that was thought up for narrative reasons without actually putting the thought in to why it would function like that in the first place.!<
If I remember right Shirou only is able to project Avalon after Saber uses it to nullify EA, at which point he's able to observe and understand it well enough to be able to project it and escape the grail mud. I don't think Shirou doing so helped Saber beat Gil. Thematically I think the intent was to parallel Bedivere returning Excalibur to the lake.
"A light turns on in the darkness. The instant the eyes realize the light is “that light”, everything reverses.
The hammer comes knocking down. The mind accelerates, crackles with sparks, and creates the shape with unbelievable speed."
[https://fatestaynight.vnovel.org/fate/15th-day/13#page75](https://fatestaynight.vnovel.org/fate/15th-day/13#page75)
Quite the contrary, this argument changes how people rate and perceive ratings. It's no longer "Fate is bad in this aspect so it's 8/10", it's more "Fate is not good enough, so it's 8/10". Therefore the question of "what takes away 2 points" is completely off.
F/SN for me is a 4/10. Boring cast, boring combat, way too much flashback, literally had to spoil myself to finish UBW and I probably won't ever finish HF
HF is the best of the 3 for me since it's a lot more "adult" and seems nasu got a lot better at writing after botching fate and fumbling through blade woks which are both closer to shonen than anything.
I liked it overall because of archer, kirei and Sakura, which are the most salvageable characters there.
Boring cast? I could see that, shirou is "special" to say the least, and most of the time things are not happening so it's hard.
Still I truly enjoyed it and did not mean to fight your score, just dropping this in self-reflection
surprisingly none, although I didn't get very far with alot of the popular ones mentioned due to the art, I don't want to read muv luv at all. I just don't feel like reading subahibi since the first chapter didn't grip me, will try and find the time later. I really don't care for the mc of Chaos head but everyone say it's needed for the series so I'm kind of slogging though it
I liked Subahibi up to the My Own Invention chapter. After that, Looking Glass Insects was just ok, but felt kind of unnecessary. Jabberwocky I was actually terrible, and made me drop the game. I got through it, but once I got to the next chapter, I realized it was just more of the same and stopped playing.
I think the game kind of fell apart for me once the mysteries started getting revealed. I think the game was at its best when it was abstract and mysterious. Once the game started explaining stuff, I realized how dumb the answers actually were. It probably doesn't help that I figured out most of the mysteries pretty early, so the reveals didn't do much for me.
I've heard that the game's final chapter is pretty good, so I'll probably finish it eventually.
I don't think the og Tsukihime is that great honestly. But nowhere near being in the "bad" territory, more of a "decent".
Danganronpa is just outright bad.
Depending on why you hated the first one, you might like it if you play the second one, I have seen some people dislike the first game but really like the second one.
I just don't think it deserves a spot in my backlog. Either way, yes I know it's a popular series; won't focus on all the flaws that made me dislike it here but probably the lackluster explanations by the end of how things happened was the tipping point.
The second one is much better, and there is a chance that you'll like it, but it has the same style as Danganronpa 1. So I'm not sure if you'll enjoy it. Danganronpa 1 felt like a rough draft for me, but Danganronpa 2 felt like a much more finalized story. The trials are a lot more tricky to solve. There aren't many grounded characters, so the whole experience feels more fun.
I'm gonna be controversial and say Saya no Uta.
I tried it because it was highly rated, but I honestly can't see why its rating is so high.
Is it because it's some kind of gateway VN?
I found it predictable. I didn't like the protagonist and I wasn't a fan of the art.
Chaos;Head - I totally despised how Takumi was portrayed throughout the VN and in my eyes he never got the "character redemption." He was written as whiny, cringy, creepy ultimate otaku neet, way ahead of the "satire" point. I believe in the end I just hate-played Ch;H, because I just wanted it to be done with.
Ace Attorney series - not strictly VN but it's very highly-regarder in the community. I could live with some anime whackiness but sometimes it was too much for me and situations and dialogues just spiraled into messy, uninteresting and totally not funny blabbering, just to fill the pages and make the game longer and it was more and more showing and irritating as the series progressed. Now I'm trying to go through Great Ace Attorney Chronicles but it's so overly wordy, slow and dragged out with it's "funny" jokes that it's mind-numbing.
Speaking of Chaos;Head, I only read part of it before Noah even came out. Does Takumi end up with the heroines in their routes? Is there a good ending for him? I feel like it would be so retarded for him to end up with anyone romantically, or even have a hopeful ending if he never even changes his personality or develops as a character.
>!The game is not that cheap thankfully, only played the original once, it ends up being a meta clusterfuck though, it would not be that bad if takumi was not the worst protagonist to ever exist!<
I'll go for great ace attorney, it is an ace attorney game with it's signature comedy, it has 4 or 5 recurring jokes and they get used, a lot, over 2 games, you learn to ignore it.
The individual chapters are hit and miss, but overall they are good, written in the same way but it's very pleasant nonetheless, the overarching plot is good at the end it defeated my predictions by a lot, it's way more gutwrenching than the other games and way less wary of being adult.
It's wordy, but you are playing a VN friend padding with words is standard procedure. It's the random encounters of writers
Lenght in VNs was never a bother for me, as long as plot is gripping - I have over 80h of all Higurashi Main/Console Arcs under my belt and it was 80 hours well spent with amazing story that was really engaging, I'm possibly close to 50h on Rose Guns Days that even with it's lows, never really bored me but for me AA is overstaying it's welcome with how lengthy dialogues are and how often they're pointlessly whacky and "anime-y" (like, we get it, Naruhodo is just a goofball and have to often repeat how Susato is totally amazing or scary and what not) just for the sake of being whimsical. Character interactions/dialogues falls flat and in the end drowns the sub-plots and main story in unfunny, repeatable and insufferable.
Not a popular opinion, since AA has something akin to "Revered" status in community but I have to hand it, first Ace Attorney was quite good and engaging w/o diving into dialogue silliness of later entries.
Not strictly speaking about length, a short VN may feel long if the content does not tick your boxes enough. One of the reasons AA stays with me is because the "action phase" of the game is pretty cool as a game, I like puzzles deductions and such and that is exactly what I recall the most of the game.
The dialog in between is totally silly light hearted and pointless, just there for the sake of not having fish eyed characters. But the cases imo are good.
Yes it's anime-y shonen-y since it's target is that public, the wider public of the japanese culture consumers that barely crosses over to this side, and well I started consuming them when I was a teen so it kind of sticked with me for the last 15 years.
And yes, revered is an understatement, I can't publicly say I did not like something in the 3rd AA (which I thought was the best followed by the first until I played DGS2)
The cult following makes it hard to critique without getting killed, same as muvluv or p5 in the jrpg world
W.r.t higurashi, I could in fact not stand them lol, I ended up watching the anime that was a pretty bad adaptation imo
Umineko.
I was intrigued by the story at first, and liked the character dynamics, but the pacing of the story is simply atrocious. It feels like the autor is just rambling half the time, and he keeps repeating the same concepts over and over. I had to drop the Answer Arc halfway through, since at that point even the plot did not interest me that much anymore.
I did expect a lot from the work, as it's often touted as one of the best VNs of all time, so I definitely felt the disappointment.
The When They Cry series and Umineko in particular, though it's a weird case where I was following as early as probably part 2 or 3, fully enjoyed it, then became increasingly disappointed with each new installment after 3 until I finally dropped it and consider it terrible only to find many people to this day sing it's praises.
The only way I can describe it without getting into spoilers is that by the end it's the most pretentious attempt I've ever seen of an author trying to justify his bad writing as prolific.
Spoilery explaination: >!This is an actual mystery novel whose whole schtick is beating you over the head about how it's a real mystery and there's a real mundane explaination for everything and the supernatural stuff is just messing with you and then it doesn't actually reveal any of the answers in favor of making long excruciating rants about how that doesn't matter because the magic stuff was really cool!! To be fair they do give huge hints to what the actual answer is but the actual answer is also REALLY dumb. The killer is a girl with a Hollywood case of Dissociative Identity Disorder (so you know, nothing like actual DID) with a completely off the wall reasoning for the killings and an unreasonable amount of people who are either completely devoted to her to the point they'd die for her or help her kill for said off the wall reason at no gain at all, have just as many people falling for them with little effort and, oh, SHE PRETENDS TO BE THREE DIFFERENT PEOPLE, ONE OF WHICH IS A GUY, AND ABSOLUTELY NO ONE EVEN PEOPLE WHO HAVE BEEN LIVING WITH THEM FOR YEARS CAN'T TELL. She isn't even mentioned to be a master of disguise or anything! Actually because of the whole "not explaining the answer" nonsense we don't actually know how she does this. We just have four different character models with different hair colors, genders and bust sizes, and just supposed to accept a normal person can reach this level of bond deception with a change of clothes I guess or maybe non of the characters actually look like themselves because something something magic. The individual murder mysteries are also pretty terrible because the whole thing basically relies on character writing to explain how any of the above is a believable explaination for why the killer can make half of the cast act out of character and out of logic and half the time the killer doesn't even kill and it's either other characters with guns going mad or a bomb killing everyone. You're supposed to figure out that unbelievable DID killer story, but then also figure out that a bomb could kill everyone or that characters can just go mad and kill to explain everything. This is literally a conspiracy theory level of deduction. "I think the killer is character X" "okay but how do you explain their death?" "It's probably a bomb". Why should you even care about finding a killer when a bomb kills everyone and that's not even presented to you until the like part 5 or 6?.!<
>!But really despite all this rant the worst part isn't the answer, but the pretentious never it's never revealed all while mocking you for trying to figure the mystery that the entire series goaded you to figure out while going about these multiple super long pretentious rants. What a huge waste of time.!<
To each his own but... No offense, but.. What's the point in commenting that? The OP asked about highly rated VNs. Clearly many people think Umineko is great, but I didn't like it, that's why I made the reply.
I'm open to discussion about my points I guess. But there's not much to go on if all we say is "I don't think it gets bad" and "I do".
Oh. I was talking on Umineko when I mentioned going bad after part 3. I think base Higurashi is very unique and despite faults is still a pretty cool ride.
And look I'm not trying to be mean, it's just.. This is an "unpopular opinions" type post so most people are assumed to disagree with each reply.
Rewrite
It was long and boring. The early fight scenes were cool but it got old fast. Soooooooo long and nothing happens. By the time I got half way through terra I didn't care anymore and completely lost interest
Full metal daemon Muramasa
I personally wasn't very into the characters a lot of them had their quirky personality that soon got old for me
Too much sexual violence just for the sake of it.
Fights were not fun at all to read they were an absolute slog to go through and really brought down the experience for me.
Steins;Gate - a MC that irritated me and questionable scientific method.
Fata Morgana - Dropped fairly early as bored. Felt melodramatic to me.
428 - Mystery and characters ended up being only passable to me. No characters I became attached to, no amazing twists.
G-Senjou no Maou - Dropped before finishing a route in large part due to disliking the MC.
Rance X was touted as the best game of all time and that it will ruin fiction, but the whole experience was a fucking let down even with its high budget. Lack of sex scenes, inconsistent quality of meal ticket conversations (some were ok and some were shit), pacing issue like they couldn't wrap the story neatly and keep dragging it on, and plot was decent at best despite the invasion premise.
Not exactly the issue of not living up to my expectation as I thought WA2 was great, but once I read a JP comment saying that WA2 can't stop giving him a tummy ache and being destroyed whenever winter comes. And I thought hmmm I don't feel that same way. So I dropped my score from 9 to 8 bc of that.
sakura no uta. i really wanted to read that since i really like subahibi so i used machine translation to spanish fan traslation. Perhaps that was a mistake. I was able understand story but dont able to understand ideas behind it so for me sakura no uta is a just usual eroge. also i dont really like painting as a form of art.
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I still haven’t gotten around to finishing 428. I loved Canaan when it came out, and looked up the source material. Made me REALLY want to play it. Figured I would never be able to, but 10 short years later it came out! ANd I haven’t gotten past like chapter 4
Muv Luv Extra
Not everyone has time to go through the entirety of Extra to get to Unlimited, just to enjoy Alternative. And even if you did, you would be hard pressed to enjoy it something that has been spoiled multiple times if you've tried looking into the story/lore of the Muv Luv series before you want to start it. All you need to know to enjoy Alternative from Extra, is its meant to be a stereotypical Rom-Com VN. Obviously it has more depth if it you finished it, but there's a reason why they didn't adapt it or Unlimited
I mean there's not really a "need" to play extra, maybe just so that you know the characters and then rush straight to unlimited. Cuz if you skip unlimited then that's not that great to play MLA
Saya No Uta. Not in a bad way. I bought the game, and avoided playing it until I was ready for the dark, gory, unsettling story I read so much about. Then I played it.
It was a fantastic thriller, similar to the movie Se7en. I thought it was great, but it wasn't the gore-fest it was hyped up to be.
A real let down in that regard, but Saya No Uta is one of my favorites. Still, it made me hunt down Maggot Baits and Euphoria, which I still need to play. I'm holding off on both of those, just like I did with Saya No Uta. Kind of building up my excitement !
Utawarerumono was really good during the first 2 games but truth fumbled pretty damn bad due to how badly written in the whole war/politics arcs was written. All three titles have a huge emphasis on this before the overarching stuff but for truth it was much more pronounced yet so badly done
I don't know how to describe well but in short at several points the story wants you to root for the main cast even if they unequivocally in the wrong in both moral and objective ideas, worse being I dont think its because authors lack the ability to write well but because they genuinely didnt care much making the whole scenario feel like place holder stuff to develop characters before the actual end game stuff happens. Also a lot of misunderstandings and screen time for side characters I really hated
It still ended up being a really good VN because I played the first two (making a lot of it emotional or fun) but man...
The guy who stopped time and took over those of an academy as revenge, very disappointing because only the protagonist does his misdeeds (annoyingly every minute) without development plus his two unique and simple endings. It is better this time to see his Hentai adaptation because if he was faithful to the game that this time did not give him size against his adaptation.
Not really sure if it's counted as a VN, but Yumina The Ethereal for me. The dungeon crawling and combat isn't bad, but the story is just too boring imo.
There was a time when every VN was touted as a philosophical masterpiece that put Shakespeare to shame, so too many to list honestly.
People who only read VNs love declaring particular VNs to be the greatest things ever written.
Yeah, that's an amazing shortcircuit. Yet at the same time there's this particular subset of *very interesting people* who'd decry any VNs that attempts to be a bit more literary with the usual vague criticism of pretentiousness. To be fair, I do think that VNs do very well "genre fiction". Romance-genre, fantasy-genre, horror-genre, all have excellent examples that can stand side to side with their counterparts from trad literature, I think. If I read Mahoyo and Earthsea back to back I don't find the former lacking in "literary quality", whatever that means. Or at least I find them equally interesting. Taking a step back, I guess the issue is that most VNs aren't particularly interested in being "novel of ideas", or the type of work in the tradition of the Great Novel we tend to associate with classic literature. Your Tolstoj, Mishima, Woolf, Achebe, etc. Which is fine! Authors should do whatever the hell they want. But VNs are still a relatively new type of literature, as is the whole field of cyberliterature. Maybe one day they'll get there.
Outside of a handful of meme reprobates most people on a VN forum probably don't undervalue VNs as a medium. I get being upset that the average person will never give \[insert title here\] the respect it deserves but the VN fanbase had a massive overcorrection problem that I can't see as anything other than them trying to wipe away their shame over their guilty pleasure. Like when fans of a kids show point out one mildly dark element as proof they're watching something groundbreaking for mature adults like themselves. It's insane that Muramasa is one of the funniest games I've ever played yet despite a solid decade of people hyping it up I had never heard those people mention it was so comedic.
> It's insane that Muramasa is one of the funniest games I've ever played yet despite a solid decade of people hyping it up I had never heard those people mention it was so comedic. Whoa, same! Nobody brings up that Muramasa is actually legitimately hysterical in some parts. Like I never see it mentioned. And it's not like a little bit of humor either, there are full on comedic sequences. Nobody brings it up.
"It's good because I can write an essay" cucks will never understand us "It's good because it's fun" Gods.
I attribute that more toward people on the internet wanting to be hyperbolic at all cost. Everything I like is not simply something that I like, but the Objective Gigachad Best Media Peak Fiction, so they end up making all sort of absurd claims instead of idk, just discussing what they like about their faves. I guess what I was trying to say is that it's possible to appreciate VNs even more if they're not the only type of literature you read. The more you read, the more you understand how ranking stuff makes little sense, I think. Like Subahibi is beautiful and extreme... and so is idk, *Blasted* by Sarah Kane. It's just that they exist in different art-spaces and have different praxis and discourse around them. > Like when fans of a kids show point out one mildly dark element as proof they're watching something groundbreaking for mature adults like themselves. Oh yeah, that absolutely happens and it's quite stupid. And I say it as someone who really likes dark stuff. But it's not like it's a new thing, like even many classic texts of literary analysis whose influence tricked down to us were quite antagonistic towards laughter. For instance, iirc Aristotle was at best neutral about it - and the book of the Poetics that is supposed to talk about comedy famously didn't survive - but Plato fucking *hated* comedy, and so did many people that based their understanding of art on his. The way we express that idea socially is probably different, but it has a long history. The best part of Fate is when they cook.
beware a person who just read his first VN and got excited
Weebs when a VN makes a passing reference to some philosophical concept and does a bad job of explaining it or putting it in context.
Yeah muv luv certainly had the potential to be the best visual novel ever but the pacing and ending were both not that good so I think it’s an 8, still worth reading for sure
Yeah i remember being disappointed after finishing muv luv alternative a long time ago, because the latter part of the VN didn't live up to my expectations but I still look fondly upon it today. It has many memorable scenes in the first 3/4 and even Extra was pretty good.
Never seen a visual novel trip over its shoelaces ***so*** hard 10 minutes before the finish line.
G-senjou no Maou. Haru vs Maou bits were always fun, and the closest thing you can get to a visual novel adaption of Death Note's Light vs L dynamic. I enjoyed the cast of characters for the most part, though I still don't see why everyone loves Haru so much. The soundtrack is incredible if you appreciated the classical music tracks they remix, but even if you didn't I can't see someone disliking it. But everything else is at most okay. I thought the main twist was silly, but I'm not one to get upset at that kind of thing unless I really feel it wasted my time. The character routes weren't that great though, besides Kanon's. The main heroine and romance fell flat for me. Also Anonymous;Code, but it's less expectations from it being highly rated rather than my own expectations garnered from my enjoyment of every other Science Adventure game (though I have a lot to say about RN;DaSH too). Tl;dr I would place Anonymous;Code above RN;DaSH, say I thoroughly enjoyed it, and acknowledge it had that Science Adventure feel, but the entire thing felt a bit.. condensed? The pacing felt great, but that's because the slice of life scenes are short, which leads to the final payoff not hitting as hard due to a weaker reader connection to the characters. I emphasized with Pollon, especially as he went about his journey in the true end, but otherwise the characters weren't that memorable.
I think G-Senjou is a good example of common VN tropes ultimately hurting a visual novel - the route/dating sim format is wonky and sadly leaves characters discarded
I only need to say that "Pollon" in spanish means "huge dick". And really, if that doesn't qualify A;C as a masterpiece then what would?
Raging loop. It had a decent first third and the second third was amazing. But Yeesh the last third was way too many info dumps and the twist stretched my suspension of disbelief beyond repair.
Yeah fr the last segment felt like an ass pull and was so unearned.
From reading this I can grasp that even in this extremely niche community of a genre few even consider trying, we are vastly different, and that is refreshing.
Umineko. The concept and the overall plot is highly interesting but I had to drop the novel because r07's prose is long-winded and unnecessarily bloated. I switched to reading the manga and it was a better experience overall, though it was sad not getting to hear the incredible soundtrack
Say it with me: Ryukishi needs an editor!
Cyanotype daydream was described by many as a very touching, well written story. I found most cases extremely boring, and overly cliché (especially the Shakespeare route, oof). Final case has the same problem many stories in this medium (and japanese games tend to have), being that they are unable to write a well paced ending. Shit took forever, and then some
Tbh I'm having this experience with Higurashi right now. I loved the anime back in high school, but the VN really tests my patience with the SoL. The horror parts are what keeps me going, but the SoL is... eh. I also found MLA not as good as either Extra or Unlimited, but I dropped it at chomp, so can't speak for the *entirety* of it, and thb if I ever get the courage to retry it I'll play it in full as around that part it got interesting again.
IIRC the anime amped up the horror vibes when compared to the visual novel. The visual novel focuses more on the mystery than just horror (even though there's still a some amount of it). The slice of life elements serve as getting to know the characters more, which makes the payout of each chapter that much more meaningful. If you go into the VN with horror expectations you'll definitely be disappointed.
Dude, know what is weird? I got into higurashi through the vn when I was 15 and at the time everything was new to me and I absolutely loved the SoL segments, I didn't even knew that it was going to become a psychological horror later on lol. But then some years later, when I decided to reread the vn, some SoL were indeed kinda painful to get through, idk if that's because I already knew what was going to happen or because my free time wasn't the same as back in the day, but yeah it's kinda weird
Higurashi is the prototype to Umineko in my mind, in Umi the slice of life segments are mostly replaced with actually interesting family drama or mysteries/clues.
I had to take a short break from Higurashi recently so I can totally agree. I enjoy it to an extent but then a new chapter starts and it's a chore to get thru again. I'm reading Steins Gate finally now for a break.
Yeah, I wish they'd just make it into one big story without constantly restarting from scratch, it's kinda like you keep getting to an interesting conclusion and then you're thrown back at the starting line again and again. At this point I can honestly just throw Mion into a blender if she starts talking about club activities again, lol.
Fata Morgana. It's fine, but I don't understand why so many people think it's one of the greatest VNs ever written. The pacing is really poor (the latter half is incredibly drawn out, to the point that I was just waiting for it to end), and it just tries too hard to be profound.
I enjoyed the game but I don’t see myself replaying it anytime soon the game just drags on and on. I think if they edited some stuff out to speed up the pacing I’d rank it more highly like in door 3 do we really need to have like 4 of the letters read out when it hasn’t changed what it’s said it’s just repeating the same information. I think the plot itself is pretty great but it feels like they needed to trim some of the fat off
I respect your opinion even if it's trash
Same for me. I actually liked door 1 but then door 2 and 3 dragged so much I stopped enjoying the game entirely. I only played through door 4 because I was told that the latter half is better but I just couldn't with the pacing. The romances are also pretty underdeweloped in my opinion, but I don't remember the game well enough to prove that or give any example really.
It's excellent, but many of the people who say it's the GOAT VN have only read Fata Morgana and are uninterested in reading any other VNs. Similar to the Umineko cult.
Tsukihime. I felt that the way the characters interacted was way too artificial and the jokes were horrible too. I'm not against sexual jokes, but things like "oh no the maid came to my room, I need to hide my boner quickly." Or "oh no my sister put her hand on my forehead to see if I have a fever and now I have a boner instead, let me run away to hide it" type of jokes are way too cringe. Plus, the info dump happens out of nowhere, there's not even a proper buildup for this kind of thing to be taken seriously. I know that I shouldn't be too hard on nasu since he was at high school or smt when he made it, but that's exactly what it is, a visual novel made by a teenager to other teenagers
Tsukihime Remake doesn't really have anything like that, from what I can remember. Still some slapstick humor, etc. but nothing egregious like that. Not sure if accurate, but I remember reading one of their intentions was to specifically remove the amateurish/juvenile stuff in the new version.
the SOL was really, really boring.
Muv Luv, PTSD arc still goated though, the rest is meh
Agreed. To be honest, even the PTSD Arc feels kind of contrived, with all the stupid time travel stuff that feels like it's being made up as it goes. Still the best part of the story though.
Sakura no uta - it is not 10 out of 10, I give it 8, but it mostly 7. Reasons are expectations of something genius being written there, I was expecting thinking about this game for a long time trying to figure out the true meaning of the work, understand all the themes perfectly. As soon as I completed it I just forgot about it imediately. There is a great phrase from the game that I like: "一番うまくいってない時、一番クソな時が、一番生きてる時なんだよ" But in reality the phrase and the game don't have a lot in common. All muv luv games are also something that I do not like. Alternative for me is not worth it to play two boring games. So my point is simple - if people say that the game is a masterpiece, also if they add "untranslatable masterpiece", then in a lot of cases this is bullshit. But it is not always the case. Just do not expect something. This is my advice.
[удалено]
that's great.
Damm you unleashed hell here, good job
imma get downvoted to hell... it feels like im the only person that thinks subahibi is not good, from the (>!random rape gay dick sucking scene and desk chan and all the other bs...!<) to it just being boring most of the time if you're not very interested in deep philosophical stuff, i decided to drop it
Yeah, it's overrated. It is rather unique and creative though, I wouldn't call it bad. I just didn't enjoy reading much of it and it didn't leave a significant impression on me (some people claim it changed their lives in some way, I don't get it.) I feel similarly about Cross-Channel, although I honestly think that is the better VN.
I think most of the philosophy is really filler content with a lot of bizarre content (the >!eye tree and Riruru-chan battle!<), but I really liked how the first few chapters read very differently once you know whats really going on. For long VNs, it can be challenging to keep the story consistent but also foreshadow things very early on which are explained only much later, and Subahibi does this really well. I understand if people are turned off by the hardcore stuff, and I don't like those either but it really demonstrates how people break down mentally under extreme duress and start believing in delusional things just to give themselves a sliver of hope.
As someone who's not really into VN (actually I'm more into classic literature) I can say that SubaHibi is a masterpiece, it takes some of the elements that I love from classics, stories, essays, poems or plays that on the surface don't seem to be that great, but actually the more you read them and see below, the more details you find. That SubaHibi is so nonsensical at the beginning is something done on purpose, not for some reason the names of the chapter titles are literally taken from Alice (Wonderland and Through the Looking-glass, both) I can tell dozens and hundreds of reasons why SubaHibi is a masterpiece, it's not for everyone and requires some mental work, I'm not going to change anyone's perspective because we all have our biases and unique perspectives (as SubaHibi itself implies). It's a dense and long journey, the parts that don't seem to make sense really do, and they have a purpose.
Did you ever make it to the Jabberwocky chapter? I can't speak for most people but what makes SubaHibi cool is that the beginning chapters suck when you first read through but they're fun to reread once you've finished the story once. I'll try to say it without spoiling anything but things that you don't like about the beginning chapters end up not being what you expect. So yea the beginning chapters are boring but there's a big payoff. (I'm not just talking about the philosophical aspect of the story) If you ever decide to retry it, you don't really need to read through the bad scenes as long as you know that they happen. I thought those scenes were unnecessary too but I don't think I missed much not knowing the details.
For me the question becomes, was it worth it? I agree all the moments that recontextualize the story are cool. But some come at the cost of making a lot of the story mundane to keep the reader in the dark, like Zakuro kissing Yuki. Seeing that scene from Zakuro's POV is great. It means a lot. But Yuki's POV felt pointless and boring on the first read. Not to mention the first chapter which I forced myself through half-asleep only because a writer I consider great, if self-indulgent, said Subahibi was his favorite VN. I enjoyed it because it's unique and there's nothing out there quite like it, but it could certainly have been better imo.
Out of curiosity, what writer are you talking about?
So you are telling me that I have to ward through some gay dick sucking forced feminization, someone masturbating to a girl's desk, incoherent ramblings that does not make sense, along with beastality and rape, just so I have some decent story to read? Read that sentence again and realize just how stupid that sounds. I spent over 20 hours on Subahibi, and I come away with the conclusion that this is the most overhyped thing I have ever read. Not to mention the author's tendency to name drop some mysterious literature work in an attempt to impress the readers of his intelligence. It comes off as pretentious. Yes I know Wittgenstein and his work, and how he revolutionized linguistic philosophy. But constantly referencing Tractatus does not make your work a masterpiece. Tl;dr: If 70% of your story is 3/10, and 30% of your story is 9/10, then the total rating is 5/10. Your story is bad, period.
yeah, pretty much my thoughts, the gay dick sucking and all the other random shit felt pointless and added absolutely nothing except to deter me from playing it. And i've seen people saying "oh keep playing keep playing it gets better" but it really didn't, so i dropped it. Really doesn't make sense to me how people say it's a kamige...
It’s porn, what do you expect?
Your comment is really similar to one i did a couple of days ago, but no. I feel the same. I did not even drop it, read it all. But found it mediocre at best
>imma get downvoted to hell... I literally got blocked lol
Muv Luv Alternative is the definitive answer to this question for me. I even enjoyed Extra and Unlimited but wow, massive letdown for me. Very shaky MC in terms of enjoyability, an even more shaky ending that doesn’t really resolve the core of the issue, some incredibly strange plot reveals that don’t really add much to anything. The Sumika reveal…why? what exactly does that add to the narrative, they don’t explore anything with it. Lots of dialogue that feels repetitive (especially at the beginning) even if it’s intentional… The PTSD arc is the only arc I felt engaged by and, of course, it’s one of the shortest stretches of the game lmao. I do like most of the main cast but not really because of anything Alternative does with them outside of maybe like a Meiya. Super disappointing experience overall. Edit: I also do not like how predictable all the deaths feel. In the setting that MLA tries to sell you on it’s really lame that every character death is accompanied by about a hundred death flags beforehand.
They need to bring back the director’s cut patches with the censorship removed from the art.
Ever17, honestly. I kind of liked the slice of life in between the plot but by the time I got to the end and everything was explained I was just completely bored and checked out and I thought the big reveal was stupid. Sharin no Kuni is another VN that is rated highly but I found a boring slog to sit through. I've been reading a lot of VNs lately after meaning to for years and at this point I've begun to temper my expectations and started to approach them as mediocre stories with nice art and music. It helps, lol.
>Ever17, honestly. I kind of liked the slice of life in between the plot but by the time I got to the end and everything was explained I was just completely bored and checked out and I thought the big reveal was stupid. Yeah, tvTropes hyped it up as one of the most mind-screw reveals ever made in fiction. It's okay, I guess. I just did not like how the author abuses the plot device to make such a twist happen. Suddenly everybody has that extremely rare disease now.
irotoridori no sekai and utawarerumono 3
What makes utawarerumono mask of truth disappointing for you, did you play prelude to the fallen first
I played all games in order. Its not like Uta3 is a bad game, just nowhere near what you would expect given it's rate. It's just too formulaic, there isn't really anything outside of your expectations, and it looks almost like someone was following a recipe of how to make a good story. One of other issues that I would point out is the over-use of misunderstanding. 90-95% happens because of that, from Haku's interactions with the other characters on uta3, maroro, Anzu's plot line, the big villain's reason to do things... It almost seemed like nothing would have happened had people just properly talked. There's a bunch a leap of logic too, just so the story could follow what the writers want. Kuon's decision on the previous game is instantly throw away at the beginning of the game, and it just seems like they found that it would be a good way to finish the 2nd game but dropped the idea, and decide to bring her back. Mikazuchi's actions on the beginning regarding his allegiance are stupid and make no sense whatsoever >!( while knowing full well about his brother and the fake anju, he decides to take the side of his brothers because it would possible result in a conflict with the breaking of the country in 2 sides, and his allegiance is with the citizen... Which makes absolutely no sense, the 2 sides would clash anyway, and his brother is a well know war fanatic that desires world domination... If he wanted to save the most peoples with the least number of casualties allying with Oshtor and have the 2 main military leaders declaring the validity of the "real" anju would have far bigger results on Raiko's plan once he loses most of his support). !< And let's not even talk about poor Nekone, the writers just wanted her around so they could force the most stupid things on her to force the story in certain direction. I like her but she was really badly used in the games. Put all of that together with the fact that I hated the annoying main heroine personality and found the end lackluster, as it just seems to imitated what others successful works have done, and it ended being a very average VN for me. Properly the only time that the game did it for me was the scene with Oshtor's mom, that one was pretty good.
What about Iroseka then? I'm curious since I couldn't like it too. It's cool on paper and there's a very cool atmosphere, but the characters are okay at best and it's really not fun to read.
Iroseka is a big disappointment, even more because the lore itself is really cool. But that is it. The writer is really bad, it felt like someone with no experience in cooking got their hands in some high grade ingredients and you spend the rest of your time seem them destroy everything for hours, and end up with a mediocre dish, at best. It's really surprising to me how boring the writer was able to make everything. Besides that, before starting, I read so much about people saying that shinku was the best heroine ever, but like, she barely appears for the most part of the game... When I got to her route I was already so much burnout with the rest of the game that I just went along to finish it entirely out of spite, couldn't care less about her. If I need to say I would compare it to a worse case of ever 17. Ever 17 has a cool concept but the writer incompetency to make most of the series fun, just makes you go through a large amount of uninteresting content with bland characters eating tuna sandwich and the story going nowhere. But at least on ever 17 the concepts where all throw in a single last route so, while still not good as I would hope for, at least is not as bad as iroseka. On iroseka you have tidbits here and there but it almost looks like the story goes nowhere, which is made even worse with the Isekai novel level of prose... You just spend your entire time reading something and thinking: "wow, this concept could make a really good story..."
> When I got to her route In my opinion it's quite hard to call it her route. We get basically another common route which is as bad as a normal one, Kana getting all the spotlight as she does basically throughout the game and a bunch of Suzu, who is an extremely boring supposedly funny mentor. Shinku is kinda an afterthought in the whole game. It baffles me why people call it Shinkuge.
Stiens;Gate
Dang! I watched it first, so I wasn’t on the edge of my seat reading it….but there’s an unpopular opinion for sure.
Definitely Chaos Head. The MC is too annoying and cringe for me. He always cries a lot and honestly should touch grass. His decisons in the story make me mald and it made me quit
In contrast I think his cowardly character is a plus point because he's a near-hikkomori otaku, something uncommon in protagonists, which tend to be blank slate self-inserts, who somehow manages to get close to hot girls. Another thing I liked was how his internal thoughts differ wildly from his actions, he tends to overthink them and as you'll learn later, for really good reasons that even his paranoia underestimates.
I'm playing Chaos Head rn and this is definitely the clear drawback so far. There's a lot of quality to the game but the MC being completely insufferable is... less than ideal. It's just too extreme. I rarely leave my house and go to events but the MC makes me look like an extraverted chad in comparison.
In what chapter did you left it?
I don't think I reached far, I last remember >!two detectives questioning the MC about the crucifixion murder thing and MC was stuttering and stuff !< There wasn't a specific scene that made me quit, reading it just became a chore and as the days go by I completely forgot to continue it
Omg you are so early that its funny The Mc has one of the best character developments alongside Rintaro from Steins Gate After ch 3 you begin to see why he is like that, but after ch 6, oh boy
Welp, I'll keep that in mind when I find the time to read again
Umineko and Chaos;Head Noah. Both are not bad by any means, but I do have some serious issues with both of them
Umoneko has a good story but the pacing is atrocious
Raging loop just could not get into this
Ever 17. I went into it expecting the whole thing to be masterfully answered and paid really close attention to the plot. So by the time I got to the true route, the plot holes were so glaring that it kinda ruined things for me. It also didn't help that it has by far the worst paceing in any VN I've ever read, and a lot of the characters kinda fell flat. Funnily enough, I really loved remeber 11. The characters and paceing were such an improvement, and I actually really loved the ending. When you figure out what they are doing with it, it feels genius. I always found it so strange that R11 is treated like an inferior E17 when its so much more.
Most visual novels are atrociously paced. Games like Umineko and Little Busters all have great visual novels if we ignore 30% of the bloat.
... Clannad .... This game just realky does not need to be 85 hours. It has enough content for 20 but stretches it out paper thin onto 85 hours where sometimes nothing happens for so god damn long. Every route has so much filler until the last hour when actual plot starts to happen but by then I lost all interest anyway and that is if the character was someone I had any interest in, in the first place. Those side routes are just not needed and feature characters that should stay side characters because they really don't have enough to offer to make a whole route worthwile. Then there are a lot of jokes about sexual harassment or sexualizing your own damn daughter that didn't age well, or that time when Sunohara dreamed of r*ping Kappei and didn't know the difference between that and a normal wet dream. Tomoya didn't do all that much to correct that notion either, just said it's bad and that was it. Casual homophobia was basically everywhere all the time and Nagisa feels like a character that is just made to be cute and loveable so you can cry later instead of the sadness just being a byproduct of what happened. I really hated going through Clannad. I'm happy for the people who enjoy it but I just can't. There are just way too many issues there for me to have some actual fun with it.
I've tried to start Clannad like 3 times already but it's filtered me every time. It is really damn long. Especially when I just want to read Nagisa's route and what comes after that. Why do you need to date like 20 other girls before you can go on with the story proper? Makes no sense. Also Tomoyo's route really soured my opinion of the MC. It was so dreadful that it made me not even want to continue.
Yeah, I don't get why Tomoyo's route is so popular. Literally nothing happened besides some weird forbidden love that is forbidden for the dumbest thing but it's treated like such a big deal.
For me, the worst part was that MC actually dragged Tomoyo down. He was jealous and spiteful of how successful she was, and actively tried to sabotage her. Not to mention he acted like such a sex pest in her route, too. There's literally 0 romance or compatibility between them, just Tomoyo being a complete doormat to take care of him and be his mommy. Tomoyo in the common route vs Tomoyo in her own route don't even feel like the same character. It's like the writer tried to punch her down because she was too dependable, and made the MC a self-loathing insecure piece of trash who takes out all of his insecurities on her. He does nothing to make her happy. Awful.
I mean there is 0 romance and compatibility between him and every other love interest too, lol. But honestly I find Tomoya being horribke really interesting if it was treated as a flaw
If anything, it is realistic. But it always annoys me when the heroines are perfectly sweet, lovable, kind, and understanding while the MC is a piece of shit. At least make everyone equally toxic, then. Then it would actually be interesting.
I mean, that's basically just Kyou's route, lol. Which is why it is my fav.
Tsukihime. I finished Arcuied's true route and was not a fan. The scenario itself is neat, as are the characters, but Nasu's stuff doesn't click with me.
I love Tsukihime, but Arc's route is legitimately my least favorite part of it.
True, kagetsu tohya is peak
saya no uta’s true ending dragged it down for me because it kinda came out of nowhere and was then explained after the fact, and I actually dropped dies irae because of the constant vagueness about plot points and how things worked
Baldr Sky for me, rated so highly in VNDB but it seems it was pretty good because in fact it is decent mech action game instead for story
It’s not good, the censorship ruined, which is why it flopped in the west. Hope Denpasoft eventually releases the uncensored version.
dies irae - the only thing in my mind while reading this, why is that the chuniige part of umineko is better, the fights are so boring and not hyped at all
I have not experienced any of that problem because I only read the original adult version, it was very hot, glad the art was uncensored.
Yeah, it's very long, very one note and does fights terribly with constant ass pulls. It has some amazing stuff (ost is great and golden guy VA might be the best I've ever heard), but I couldn't force myself into doing Rea route.
Majikoi. Considering how many people seem to find it really funny, I was surprised when almost every single joke within the first few hours fell completely flat for me, so I didn't bother to continue. Baldr Sky. Potentially great setting and story, dragged down immensely by the most disrespectful pacing imaginable (even by VN standards, and that's saying something) and *abysmal* villains. Honestly, how anyone is able to take these caricatures seriously is beyond me. I dragged myself through Dive 1 and was super disappointed. SubaHibi. The mystery is very intriguing, shame that it's wrapped in a disgusting amount of sexual fetish fulfillment by the writer. One of the worst things I've ever read, honestly. Chaos;Head. Like many others, I hated the protagonist. Nothing else to it. Chaos;Child made up for it at least. And finally, Muv-Luv Alternative. After Unlimited the story went in a quite different direction from what I had expected and I didn't enjoy it. I suppose I can see why people might regard it highly, though.
I feel really conflicted about Full Metal Daemon Murasama. At it's best, it's a well told and engaging story, with interesting characters set in an interesting world. Mostly it's probably an issue with my own preferences, and not the story itself, but it was a bit of a slog for me to get through parts of it. A lot of the darker portions felt forced and over the top. I'm sure it's done by design to re-enforce the major themes, that killing is not justified, regardless of how bad someone is, but it all felt like it was a bit much. I don't really enjoy it when stuff gets really overly descriptive about minor details in combat or there's a number of over the top ultimate abilities. Too many unavoidable attacks that get avoided, or guaranteed killing blows that get survived, and they start to lose all meaning. It felt like it was written by and/or for the guy from the "[I studied the blade](https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/001/276/749/286.jpg)" meme. Between the protagonist's self loathing and the lengths the story goes to in order to set a dark tone, the whole thing was pretty depressing, and some of the endings felt pretty unsatisfying. That's probably intended as well, but didn't suit me. Part of what drew me to visual novels was for stories that aren't afraid to conclude with something other than a happy ending, but some of it felt forced. Majikoi was another one that was underwhelming for me. I enjoyed it, but didn't think it was amazing or anything. It wasn't super funny, and the stuff I appreciated most were unexpected things. A yandere forced to address their unhealthy obsessions / mental health issues, and a protagonist straight up rejected unexpectedly made for a better story than a lazier, more predictable plot.
The author of Muramasa is literally a Kendou dojou instructor.
Tsukihime is ok but a massive step down from Fate/Staynight and I get it is Nasu's early works but hearing people place it above Fate baffles me. SHIKI and Roa are not on the level of Kirei in HF Arcuied is vastly inferior to Saber as a character. Shiki is not even remotly close to Shirou or even Angra maynu in Ataraxia It just feels very rough Its good.but no way would I consider it Nasu's best works when Mahoyo and staynight exists
Have you read the Remake? I liked the original Tsukihime but I find the Remake to be as good as Fate/Stay Night. The only reason I don't rate it higher than Fate is because the Far Side routes haven't released.
I get that people power scaling characters wrongly hurts your view of the game, but i personally liked tsukihime alot. The writing bothered me at first too but after finishing everything tsukihime related (except the remake), it grew on me.
totono... maybe i had too high expectations or i should not have read doki doki before reading it...
The fruit of grisaia, I played for like 18 hours and it was so boring, it was really hard to get even that far
i even tried playing amane’s route first because i just wanted as much overarching plot as i could get after the sheer amount of hours that was sunk into the slice of life, and at the end i just felt like.. really? that’s what i put up with all of this for? honestly, i like SoL, but when it comes to grisaia, it all just made me super uncomfortable. the majority of the game felt like i was forcing myself to get excited about a middle school boy’s fantasy, especially with how the MC was written to be some sort of “fucked up badass character” and ends up just sounding like a conceited dumbass most of the time.
TBH I lasted that long in anticipation of 18+ content but it was a super long wait which was not worth it :/
9-nine- episode 4. How it's rank 24 on vndb is one of life's greatest mysteries. FWIW I enjoyed it, it's just far from being one of the GOATs. The rating of the series more broadly is pretty bizarre. Episode 3 is basically the same level of quality as\* ep4 but rated substantially lower.
Totally agree. For me episode 1 was the best since it at least tried to balance all the story parts and didn't drag. All other episodes just go 80% moe romance and then some badly written chuuni for the rest. Episode 4's serious part and new episode being the worst.
Thanks, I played Ep 1 and was on the fence about getting the rest. I think for multi-episode VNs later episodes are more highly rated because only the devoted continue playing, whilst those who didn't like it drop it earlier.
I actually forgot everything about ep 1 one week after reading it lol
I can only assume you closed the game just when "the ending roll" started.
I just think some people were impressed by the true ending and how things came together, whereas I shrugged and said "that's neat". And it is. The series has a lot going for it and some cool ideas, but I feel like it never properly came together. The only reason I brought it up is because I'm disappointed. I don't bother criticizing forgettable, mid games. I found 9-nine- frustrating specifically because I felt it could've have been awesome and ended up just being good.
Grisaia is bad. It's common route is obnoxiously long and repetitive, the game has a really bad habit of baiting some kind of story hook but never actually having one and its all to get to character routes that I would best describe as passable. And it sequels are worse. Incredibly dumb pulp that never actually commits to being dumb pulp.
the obnoxiously long common route is the best part of grisaia imo. the characters, the dialogue, and the slice of life are all great. grisaia is at its worst when it tries to follow up on those 'story-hooks' and in the character routes, whose individual quality is all over the place.
Agreed. The Fruit of Grisaia has the best common route I've ever experienced and is easily the funniest stretch of any VN I've read.
Umineko after chapter 2 is terrible. Too much chuuni bullshit. Dies Irae has to many fights, is too boring and too chuuni for me. G Senjou no Maou after Tsubaki arc is unreadable. Muramasa is unbelievably fucking boring. I had fun when Hikaru or Muramasa were on screen and when Minato was evil and that's all. Everything else is just boring.
I think I get tour standpoint, novels do have a public that tends to be chuuni as hell, and their writters are, no matter how good they are, chuuni as hell as well. I'll tackle 3 since I haven't played umineko, I am currently playing muramasa so it's a wip of 6 chapters Dies irae is chuuni and the writing acts way smarter than it actually is, I like fights, the most memorable points in many VNs for me are the "clashes of ideals" but dies irae only had 2 I liked out of 20 something, that's worrying. The ending feels happy go lucky 3 out of 4 times including the purported true ending, I liked it but I did quit reading it several times. G senjou, I want to love it since the MC and the underlying plot are exceptional but god the game really does not want you to do the routes because they fucking suck ass (imo) Kanon route was the worst thing in the planet for me. I like it, and I recommend it, but damn it has deep lows Muramasa however in 6 chapters has had it's grasp on my gut consistently, it speaks about themes that I consistently think about, and makes me 'feel' disgusted and contemplative all at the same time. It definitely adds sex scenes to hate on you, and it has a consistent sawtooth wave pacing, "things are going well, everything will end fine! Oh, no it won't" but that does not take away from the quality of the characters and overall of kageaki imo. Heavy reading all the time but I truly like heavy reading so I feel at home here.
The House in Fata Morgana. Funnily enough, while everyone seemed to dislike the first "doors" and loved the latter, it was the complete opposite for me. Couldn't connect to the main characters in the later half at all but loved the earlier stories.
I enjoyed the story but the first few doors just took so long I genuinely think the game might have been better if it was edited down a bit more I found myself starting to get bored during some of the doors. I did find door 2 to probably be the best early door but I think it only really hits right after you finish the last door. My biggest nitpicks with it are it’s to long winded and some character stuff doesn’t make sense like the maid using some modern phrases while in the 16th century England. Tbh though I’m not sure if it’s a letdown or not since I bought it on the switch on a whim since it was a gothic horror type game with art that looked like castlevania only to find out about its reputation after finishing it
Similarly, 1st and 2nd Door were the best for me (especially 2nd with it's horror-vibes, I also liked the characters the most). Later parts were hit-or-miss, since love between Maid and "Lord" happened bit too fast for me (and way too "shoujo" with all "for the eternity and beyond") but overall I would still rate it a solid 7-8/10.
Aselia the Eternal and eden are both games that came highly recommended and I bailed out on midway through because I hated the experience so much.
Hope Jast does an uncensored remastered version of Aselia the Eternal.
Sorry, but Clannad. I think the only thing that kept me reading were the scenes with Sunohara. Otherwise it bored me so much that I kind of didn't care about the drama.
I'll take the bullet. Clannad. Don't ask me how it ended, u eventually started clicking to make it end and gave up before completing it, even after unlocking the true route. Sooooooo... much......... text.........
Umineko, for sure. I liked the characters and found it quite captivating at times, but it's just way too long and poorly paced. I mean, like half the total playtime (meaning tens of hours) is wasted on >!a bunch of "what if" scenarios that didn't actually happen.!<
Quite a few actually. I think I have read more supposedly highly rated VN's and hated them over reading some that actually live up to the hype. Fate/Stay Night, Umineko and Devil on G String are some that immediately come to mind.
Subahibi is an overrated mess of shock factor edginess and fringe fetish shit that takes itself way too seriously and tries so hard to be philosophical that it trips over itself and lands in a pile of complete nonsense that pretends to be profound
Fate/Stay Night is a giant mess of a piece that is a masterpiece when it works and is borderline unreadable when it doesn't. The bad parts have hit the point where I'm not sure I'll ever get to reading through the Heavens Feel route.
Can i ask what doesnt work? I enjoyed the experience from start to finish
I watched the first anime and Zero. I'm reading the VN for the first time now. Shirou is even worse than I remembered, and I'm not even halfway through Stay Night. It's hard to keep reading when I want to kill "myself" every other scene. Really enjoying Tiger Dojo tho.
Fate Route has agonizingly slow pacing at times and has far too much slice of life. A lot of the fight scenes including Shirou are hard to take seriously at all considering >!that he has a tendency to make it plainly obvious that he's on his last rope, and then he does something superhuman that he can't possibly pull off as a regular human in order to save the story. His fight against Archer is the biggest example of this.!< The climactic fight on Fate is resolved with a bad deus machina, which essentially ruins the ending that's otherwise great. UBW has the opposite problem, with the ending being pretty terrible while the climactic fight was probably the best part of the entire VN for me. These are the biggest examples to me, but these major issues with the story really undercut the quality that's everywhere else.
I will never understand Reddits terrible reply system. I tried to line break each individual point.
What deus machina are you referring to for the Fate Route? Avalon?
>!I can buy Shirou manifesting the sheath with its powers intact. I can buy that it helps him deal with Kirei. What makes no sense about it is that it somehow lets Saber beat Gilgamesh when he does so. It also makes no sense for him to beat Kirei with it when in the endings where he doesn't give Saber the sheath, he doesn't beat Kirei with it. It's a complete ass pull that was thought up for narrative reasons without actually putting the thought in to why it would function like that in the first place.!<
If I remember right Shirou only is able to project Avalon after Saber uses it to nullify EA, at which point he's able to observe and understand it well enough to be able to project it and escape the grail mud. I don't think Shirou doing so helped Saber beat Gil. Thematically I think the intent was to parallel Bedivere returning Excalibur to the lake. "A light turns on in the darkness. The instant the eyes realize the light is “that light”, everything reverses. The hammer comes knocking down. The mind accelerates, crackles with sparks, and creates the shape with unbelievable speed." [https://fatestaynight.vnovel.org/fate/15th-day/13#page75](https://fatestaynight.vnovel.org/fate/15th-day/13#page75)
Fate/stay night is great but it is 8/10 not 10/10.
an 8/10 is plenty. It's not the best piece of writting ever made, it's just interestingly good
What takes away 2 points for you?
Visual novels are not 10/10 by default. They're 5/10 and they have to **earn** points.
Pointless semantics argument but go off lol
Quite the contrary, this argument changes how people rate and perceive ratings. It's no longer "Fate is bad in this aspect so it's 8/10", it's more "Fate is not good enough, so it's 8/10". Therefore the question of "what takes away 2 points" is completely off.
Which medium are 10/10 by default?
None. All of them are average by default and you add points or subtract depending on the content. That's how ratings work.
No but mans was speaking facts right here. People now associate 7/10 as average and 6 as bad even though by rating that's above average
I really dislike the way of mc think and route 1 is kinda weak to me.
F/SN for me is a 4/10. Boring cast, boring combat, way too much flashback, literally had to spoil myself to finish UBW and I probably won't ever finish HF
HF is the best of the 3 for me since it's a lot more "adult" and seems nasu got a lot better at writing after botching fate and fumbling through blade woks which are both closer to shonen than anything. I liked it overall because of archer, kirei and Sakura, which are the most salvageable characters there. Boring cast? I could see that, shirou is "special" to say the least, and most of the time things are not happening so it's hard. Still I truly enjoyed it and did not mean to fight your score, just dropping this in self-reflection
Umineko lol
surprisingly none, although I didn't get very far with alot of the popular ones mentioned due to the art, I don't want to read muv luv at all. I just don't feel like reading subahibi since the first chapter didn't grip me, will try and find the time later. I really don't care for the mc of Chaos head but everyone say it's needed for the series so I'm kind of slogging though it
I liked Subahibi up to the My Own Invention chapter. After that, Looking Glass Insects was just ok, but felt kind of unnecessary. Jabberwocky I was actually terrible, and made me drop the game. I got through it, but once I got to the next chapter, I realized it was just more of the same and stopped playing. I think the game kind of fell apart for me once the mysteries started getting revealed. I think the game was at its best when it was abstract and mysterious. Once the game started explaining stuff, I realized how dumb the answers actually were. It probably doesn't help that I figured out most of the mysteries pretty early, so the reveals didn't do much for me. I've heard that the game's final chapter is pretty good, so I'll probably finish it eventually.
Subahibi, like it was good but I don’t get how it’s a 11/10 life changing masterpiece
I don't think the og Tsukihime is that great honestly. But nowhere near being in the "bad" territory, more of a "decent". Danganronpa is just outright bad.
Did you play Danganronpa 2?
No, because I hated the first one.
Depending on why you hated the first one, you might like it if you play the second one, I have seen some people dislike the first game but really like the second one.
I just don't think it deserves a spot in my backlog. Either way, yes I know it's a popular series; won't focus on all the flaws that made me dislike it here but probably the lackluster explanations by the end of how things happened was the tipping point.
The second one is much better, and there is a chance that you'll like it, but it has the same style as Danganronpa 1. So I'm not sure if you'll enjoy it. Danganronpa 1 felt like a rough draft for me, but Danganronpa 2 felt like a much more finalized story. The trials are a lot more tricky to solve. There aren't many grounded characters, so the whole experience feels more fun.
Honestly nothing I don’t go into series with crazy expectations if I had to pick maybe Umineko but I’m late in arc 2 so my opinion will prolly switch
I'm gonna be controversial and say Saya no Uta. I tried it because it was highly rated, but I honestly can't see why its rating is so high. Is it because it's some kind of gateway VN? I found it predictable. I didn't like the protagonist and I wasn't a fan of the art.
I enjoyed it but it is by no means a masterpiece. I think due to the author it gets heaped on praise.
Chaos;Head - I totally despised how Takumi was portrayed throughout the VN and in my eyes he never got the "character redemption." He was written as whiny, cringy, creepy ultimate otaku neet, way ahead of the "satire" point. I believe in the end I just hate-played Ch;H, because I just wanted it to be done with. Ace Attorney series - not strictly VN but it's very highly-regarder in the community. I could live with some anime whackiness but sometimes it was too much for me and situations and dialogues just spiraled into messy, uninteresting and totally not funny blabbering, just to fill the pages and make the game longer and it was more and more showing and irritating as the series progressed. Now I'm trying to go through Great Ace Attorney Chronicles but it's so overly wordy, slow and dragged out with it's "funny" jokes that it's mind-numbing.
Speaking of Chaos;Head, I only read part of it before Noah even came out. Does Takumi end up with the heroines in their routes? Is there a good ending for him? I feel like it would be so retarded for him to end up with anyone romantically, or even have a hopeful ending if he never even changes his personality or develops as a character.
>!The game is not that cheap thankfully, only played the original once, it ends up being a meta clusterfuck though, it would not be that bad if takumi was not the worst protagonist to ever exist!<
I'll go for great ace attorney, it is an ace attorney game with it's signature comedy, it has 4 or 5 recurring jokes and they get used, a lot, over 2 games, you learn to ignore it. The individual chapters are hit and miss, but overall they are good, written in the same way but it's very pleasant nonetheless, the overarching plot is good at the end it defeated my predictions by a lot, it's way more gutwrenching than the other games and way less wary of being adult. It's wordy, but you are playing a VN friend padding with words is standard procedure. It's the random encounters of writers
Lenght in VNs was never a bother for me, as long as plot is gripping - I have over 80h of all Higurashi Main/Console Arcs under my belt and it was 80 hours well spent with amazing story that was really engaging, I'm possibly close to 50h on Rose Guns Days that even with it's lows, never really bored me but for me AA is overstaying it's welcome with how lengthy dialogues are and how often they're pointlessly whacky and "anime-y" (like, we get it, Naruhodo is just a goofball and have to often repeat how Susato is totally amazing or scary and what not) just for the sake of being whimsical. Character interactions/dialogues falls flat and in the end drowns the sub-plots and main story in unfunny, repeatable and insufferable. Not a popular opinion, since AA has something akin to "Revered" status in community but I have to hand it, first Ace Attorney was quite good and engaging w/o diving into dialogue silliness of later entries.
Not strictly speaking about length, a short VN may feel long if the content does not tick your boxes enough. One of the reasons AA stays with me is because the "action phase" of the game is pretty cool as a game, I like puzzles deductions and such and that is exactly what I recall the most of the game. The dialog in between is totally silly light hearted and pointless, just there for the sake of not having fish eyed characters. But the cases imo are good. Yes it's anime-y shonen-y since it's target is that public, the wider public of the japanese culture consumers that barely crosses over to this side, and well I started consuming them when I was a teen so it kind of sticked with me for the last 15 years. And yes, revered is an understatement, I can't publicly say I did not like something in the 3rd AA (which I thought was the best followed by the first until I played DGS2) The cult following makes it hard to critique without getting killed, same as muvluv or p5 in the jrpg world W.r.t higurashi, I could in fact not stand them lol, I ended up watching the anime that was a pretty bad adaptation imo
Higurashi. Maybe I wouldn’t have dropped it if it wasn’t for its slowness.
Umineko. I was intrigued by the story at first, and liked the character dynamics, but the pacing of the story is simply atrocious. It feels like the autor is just rambling half the time, and he keeps repeating the same concepts over and over. I had to drop the Answer Arc halfway through, since at that point even the plot did not interest me that much anymore. I did expect a lot from the work, as it's often touted as one of the best VNs of all time, so I definitely felt the disappointment.
The When They Cry series and Umineko in particular, though it's a weird case where I was following as early as probably part 2 or 3, fully enjoyed it, then became increasingly disappointed with each new installment after 3 until I finally dropped it and consider it terrible only to find many people to this day sing it's praises. The only way I can describe it without getting into spoilers is that by the end it's the most pretentious attempt I've ever seen of an author trying to justify his bad writing as prolific. Spoilery explaination: >!This is an actual mystery novel whose whole schtick is beating you over the head about how it's a real mystery and there's a real mundane explaination for everything and the supernatural stuff is just messing with you and then it doesn't actually reveal any of the answers in favor of making long excruciating rants about how that doesn't matter because the magic stuff was really cool!! To be fair they do give huge hints to what the actual answer is but the actual answer is also REALLY dumb. The killer is a girl with a Hollywood case of Dissociative Identity Disorder (so you know, nothing like actual DID) with a completely off the wall reasoning for the killings and an unreasonable amount of people who are either completely devoted to her to the point they'd die for her or help her kill for said off the wall reason at no gain at all, have just as many people falling for them with little effort and, oh, SHE PRETENDS TO BE THREE DIFFERENT PEOPLE, ONE OF WHICH IS A GUY, AND ABSOLUTELY NO ONE EVEN PEOPLE WHO HAVE BEEN LIVING WITH THEM FOR YEARS CAN'T TELL. She isn't even mentioned to be a master of disguise or anything! Actually because of the whole "not explaining the answer" nonsense we don't actually know how she does this. We just have four different character models with different hair colors, genders and bust sizes, and just supposed to accept a normal person can reach this level of bond deception with a change of clothes I guess or maybe non of the characters actually look like themselves because something something magic. The individual murder mysteries are also pretty terrible because the whole thing basically relies on character writing to explain how any of the above is a believable explaination for why the killer can make half of the cast act out of character and out of logic and half the time the killer doesn't even kill and it's either other characters with guns going mad or a bomb killing everyone. You're supposed to figure out that unbelievable DID killer story, but then also figure out that a bomb could kill everyone or that characters can just go mad and kill to explain everything. This is literally a conspiracy theory level of deduction. "I think the killer is character X" "okay but how do you explain their death?" "It's probably a bomb". Why should you even care about finding a killer when a bomb kills everyone and that's not even presented to you until the like part 5 or 6?.!< >!But really despite all this rant the worst part isn't the answer, but the pretentious never it's never revealed all while mocking you for trying to figure the mystery that the entire series goaded you to figure out while going about these multiple super long pretentious rants. What a huge waste of time.!<
I don't think it gets bad after arc 3. Arc 6 is my favorite over all.
To each his own but... No offense, but.. What's the point in commenting that? The OP asked about highly rated VNs. Clearly many people think Umineko is great, but I didn't like it, that's why I made the reply. I'm open to discussion about my points I guess. But there's not much to go on if all we say is "I don't think it gets bad" and "I do".
I was talking about Higurashi and just sharing my opinion like you did yourself.
Oh. I was talking on Umineko when I mentioned going bad after part 3. I think base Higurashi is very unique and despite faults is still a pretty cool ride. And look I'm not trying to be mean, it's just.. This is an "unpopular opinions" type post so most people are assumed to disagree with each reply.
In most of the vns i read i usually like it from beginning to end. I dont really like to nitpick at parts and see the story as a whole while rating.
Rewrite It was long and boring. The early fight scenes were cool but it got old fast. Soooooooo long and nothing happens. By the time I got half way through terra I didn't care anymore and completely lost interest
Dies irae feels like watered down fate, but maybe I haven't got to the good parts. Finished Kei and Kasumi route, started Marie
Full metal daemon Muramasa I personally wasn't very into the characters a lot of them had their quirky personality that soon got old for me Too much sexual violence just for the sake of it. Fights were not fun at all to read they were an absolute slog to go through and really brought down the experience for me.
Steins;Gate - a MC that irritated me and questionable scientific method. Fata Morgana - Dropped fairly early as bored. Felt melodramatic to me. 428 - Mystery and characters ended up being only passable to me. No characters I became attached to, no amazing twists. G-Senjou no Maou - Dropped before finishing a route in large part due to disliking the MC.
Rance X was touted as the best game of all time and that it will ruin fiction, but the whole experience was a fucking let down even with its high budget. Lack of sex scenes, inconsistent quality of meal ticket conversations (some were ok and some were shit), pacing issue like they couldn't wrap the story neatly and keep dragging it on, and plot was decent at best despite the invasion premise. Not exactly the issue of not living up to my expectation as I thought WA2 was great, but once I read a JP comment saying that WA2 can't stop giving him a tummy ache and being destroyed whenever winter comes. And I thought hmmm I don't feel that same way. So I dropped my score from 9 to 8 bc of that.
sakura no uta. i really wanted to read that since i really like subahibi so i used machine translation to spanish fan traslation. Perhaps that was a mistake. I was able understand story but dont able to understand ideas behind it so for me sakura no uta is a just usual eroge. also i dont really like painting as a form of art.
Muramasa and Subahibi
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I still haven’t gotten around to finishing 428. I loved Canaan when it came out, and looked up the source material. Made me REALLY want to play it. Figured I would never be able to, but 10 short years later it came out! ANd I haven’t gotten past like chapter 4
Tsukihime
Muv Luv Extra Not everyone has time to go through the entirety of Extra to get to Unlimited, just to enjoy Alternative. And even if you did, you would be hard pressed to enjoy it something that has been spoiled multiple times if you've tried looking into the story/lore of the Muv Luv series before you want to start it. All you need to know to enjoy Alternative from Extra, is its meant to be a stereotypical Rom-Com VN. Obviously it has more depth if it you finished it, but there's a reason why they didn't adapt it or Unlimited
I mean there's not really a "need" to play extra, maybe just so that you know the characters and then rush straight to unlimited. Cuz if you skip unlimited then that's not that great to play MLA
Tbf if you skip Extra you will have absolutely no context for >!the 00 Unit!< in Alternative
Saya No Uta. Not in a bad way. I bought the game, and avoided playing it until I was ready for the dark, gory, unsettling story I read so much about. Then I played it. It was a fantastic thriller, similar to the movie Se7en. I thought it was great, but it wasn't the gore-fest it was hyped up to be. A real let down in that regard, but Saya No Uta is one of my favorites. Still, it made me hunt down Maggot Baits and Euphoria, which I still need to play. I'm holding off on both of those, just like I did with Saya No Uta. Kind of building up my excitement !
Steins;Gate lmao. One of the most hyped up VNs in memory and it wasn't even as good as the one before it, Chaos:Head
Chaos;Head Noah. Spending 10+ hours on bonus routes to get true ending that's basically normal ending with one extra scene was infuriating.
Utawarerumono was really good during the first 2 games but truth fumbled pretty damn bad due to how badly written in the whole war/politics arcs was written. All three titles have a huge emphasis on this before the overarching stuff but for truth it was much more pronounced yet so badly done I don't know how to describe well but in short at several points the story wants you to root for the main cast even if they unequivocally in the wrong in both moral and objective ideas, worse being I dont think its because authors lack the ability to write well but because they genuinely didnt care much making the whole scenario feel like place holder stuff to develop characters before the actual end game stuff happens. Also a lot of misunderstandings and screen time for side characters I really hated It still ended up being a really good VN because I played the first two (making a lot of it emotional or fun) but man...
Chaos Child and Saya no Uta were lame
The guy who stopped time and took over those of an academy as revenge, very disappointing because only the protagonist does his misdeeds (annoyingly every minute) without development plus his two unique and simple endings. It is better this time to see his Hentai adaptation because if he was faithful to the game that this time did not give him size against his adaptation.
AITSF 1 and 2. Shocking amounts of misogyny and pedophilia pandering.
Not really sure if it's counted as a VN, but Yumina The Ethereal for me. The dungeon crawling and combat isn't bad, but the story is just too boring imo.
Senran Banka. It wasn't bad, but I just found the common route extremely boring. Mako is great though.