What VN are you playing? What do you think about it?

I gotta agree with your feelings on this. I would consider myself to be very open-minded and "non-picky" and yet, still to this moment, it feels like there's only a certain and very specific category or genre of VN that I would play "enthusiastically". Everything else I play would be just entertainment to pass the time, really. It's mainly because I played something that set my expectations so high once... then anything else I find that isn't in the same "category" as this game is somehow not as good if looked at or would be as enjoyable if played. :/ At first it might seem this way but I suppose it's a temporary feeling that either goes away with time or goes away by playing another game that surpasses previous expectations. I don't actually think it has anything to do with being picky at all, though.

Although my feelings didn't have to do with Baldr Sky Zero, hearing you talk about it like that makes me want to play the entire Baldr Sky series now. Really badly. Maybe I should include it in the "5"?


OT: Erm. Finally got a bit through Chapter 2 of 'SubaHibi' now after some hardship and messing around in the previous chapter. >.< As for Chapter 1... it seemed to have a large amount of interesting dialogue/subjects for my brain to feed on and actually confused me a whole lot throughout. That's absolutely great. I especially enjoyed the beginning of the chapter, though. And even after all that... then there's the MC... I already love this VN, haha. Looking forward to reading more and more of this.

Well I just found this Ourai no gahkthun- what a shining braves-. I have not even tried it but the premise sounds interesting. However it apparently came out three months ago in regular format (four days in regular download) and my half-assed attempts at finding a pirated version have failed.

Meanwhile I discover this causing me to spazz in excitement then immediately become disappointed.

I'm going to shelf Baldr Sky DiveX for now, since the game refuses to recognize that it has been No DvD patched (I even saw the confirmation) for whatever reason I will deal with later.

Going to move onto Soukou Akki Muramasa, because Nitro+ with science fiction have shown promise.

Shining Braves? Yeah I know about the sequel. Haven't downloaded it yet for whatever reasons, but I'll do it... soon. The link's there.

At the very least I need to wait until after NaNoWriMo, or my concentration is just going to be fractured.

EDIT: Subarashi no Hibiki is highly philosophical and runs around on many different protagonists. It is ABSOLUTELY RECOMMENDED that you follow strictly to a playthrough, because that will give you the best satisfaction. I recommend G-Seeker, they really know how to get through a VN in the proper way. Unfortunately that also makes them rather slow at producing VNs, but Subarashi has one there if I remember correctly.

The ending btw, made me laugh bloody murder. It still remains as my Number One VN forever for that single ending alone... I absolutely love the mind fucks there. Some people can't appreciate it, and I admit certain parts are tedious as fuck, but the ending is all worth it.

Thanks! :) I'll take a look at their playthrough and make sure I won't get stuck or waste as much time as I did. It was mostly the linear format that I wasn't quite used to and probably had something to do with the nature of the first chapter itself, as well. But if it's to do with varying levels of satisfaction gained by picking certain choices throughout the story, then I most definitely seek to take advantage of a playthrough.

The ending is really that amazing, huh. Guess I will understand when I get there, haha. With that being said, 'SubaHibi' certainly does seem to have some rather deep themes and philosophy in it (at least, so far). And it's not even a problem at all as my mind tends to eat that stuff up rather fast. I'm actually very tempted to research some of the philosophy I've encountered on the web, even if doing so isn't the best idea. xD Plus, I love being utterly confused by stories. It may seem to fall under the niche category to most, but this is definitely a "niche" that has appealed to me in every form.

Baldr Sky Zero 2

I'm guessing a year or less WEE!

Oh god, now I have to finish zero, even though I really don't like the controls... >_>

Completed Soukou Akki Muramasa. Really bad parts. Most fight scenes were tedious staring contests, which was good for dueling but not for giant samurai robot fighting. Some plot elements like where characters went after the True Ending were unexplained (Raichou, Chief, etc.) some of them lacked information as a whole such as the result of Bartholomew and Bathory's fight (insinuated but not proved) and who the hell is this bomb? I am praying that the fandisc solves these issues. H is lamentable, if anything it's just tool to symbolize defilement/escapism because the "we continued sex" are aggravating for cock blocking when the content was only five minutes long. What is amazing about this VN is that it's willing to make characters step over moral boundaries and the steadfast theme that is not a story of heroes. I stress the fact that the best part is how unrelenting the VN is at brutalizing innocence and characters that are anything but perfect, their redeeming qualities always have something horrendous behind them. It's not a tale for the masochistic though; it has hilarious, cute and heartwarming (THIS) moments when not making humans look like the shittiest hunks of carbon in the universe. The art is amazing not just detail but just how well it fits the characters, Ichijou is the spitting image of a hero. This is a VN I would recommend to any intermediate VN reader, ones that are accustomed to the rough plot of a VN, have some amount of patience and are sufficiently desensitized (antipathy is a pretty good way to get clarity in this one, in fact I encourage the hatred of moral characters in this VN).

Soukou Akki Muramasa: Janen Hen and Sumaga, since I need to find an eroge that's actually erotic and tolerable by my standards.

It's not that bad once you get used to it Kaimax!

Even at Extremely Hard the Final Boss was a piece of cake after all! Although I don't think there's anyone who could beat Queen Bee at Extremely Hard when they were first starting out - shit's insane if you can't break through its defenses.

Kadukura Kou for obvious reasons.

The duo combi by Trap Master and Hentai Head is pretty good as well.

Even though the Simulakarum (or whatever it's spelled) are weaker in fire power, they are far more annoying than the final bosses themselves, if only because they're so mobile. To be honest, this final boss cannot compare at all to the Extremely Hard final boss of Baldr Sky Dive 2. That one is the REAL thing.

I finally caught onto Nitro+'s crackdowns and while I appreciate the good work they put into improving many VNs using JASTUSA, I am pretty pissed at the removal of the 100% Sumaga english patch.

Sumaga. Feels like The World Ends With You or Persona 4, but completely insane. I will enjoy this. Despite not having Atlas fully translate because there is no instant text (as far as I can tell).

Yay, Venus Blood GAIA is out!

And there are a bunch of new VNs who although has a rather classic (used to death) plot, seemed to have pretty good art.

Give me the arts. Not Venus Blood though, I dislike how the A-cups look like microwaved sunny-side up eggs with screws in them but they did put decent effort into the character design.

I don't play Venus Blood for the art lol...

Speaking of which, this Gaia seems to be strangely similar to Dea Ex Machina's universe... is this a coincidence?

.I am under the impression that there is always one part of a VN that devs narrow their focus on, then they feverishly hope that they have enough time to make the other parts catch up. If you do not mind I would like those arts about now.

Finished Soukou Akki Muramasa: Janen Hen, I still have a ton of unanswered questions and while vaguely entertaining how they elaborated on the multiverse approach, I probably put my expectations too high for a fandisc.

Sumaga. At some point I stopped caring about the fifteenth repetition of the same bloody scene, so now I'm just mashing skip and paying attention to the important bits.

Yeah, Append Life November is here.
November

Venus Blood Gaia's new system is pretty harsh -_-". I had to restart 2 times because I screwed up my resource management big time and wasted way too much Arcana to create useful troops. That and the chapter 2 White Snake literally just freaking annihilated my entire army in 2 rounds (Btw this is a cool one, you can line up up to 18 units in a row to Attack the enemy and fight bosses, which is SERIOUSLY cool!).

So after finishing through the crap of my final year as a college student that is my Thesis, I finally managed to just sit down and enjoy a VN made by a western developer of all people, but I've heard it was pretty well received.

I've been playing Analogue: A Hate Story and I've gotta say, this game is getting my blood boiling, but that just might be the gender equality sympathizer in me. Never thought I'd be going through a story where women are practically treated like dirt and are expected to be subservient to men that it's practically grating on my nerves and my values.

Well for me i like VN with some action and RPG element to it, so after finishing Sengoku Rance twice one in Ran route and the other on True route. Then I pursued Daibanchou (the conquering japan game with highschoolers), that one was easy and too much mindless grinding so you can take the events.
As for now I'm currently in NG+ on Kamidori Alchemist Meister, where i finished Yuela route once and I'm currently on Yuela ng route. This game blew my mind, it has so much possibilities in rpg leveling up it's crazy, as for mindless gringing there's none, because the grinding you to lvl up your characters is very doable and rewarding as your allies became much more than dead weight.

PS: I still have Rance installed because I haven't figured out Yamamoto Isoruku Route or Uesugi Kenshin. I want to get Kurohime fast, so I have to fight the Shimazu brothers but it's very hard to finished them and still have female commanders in your party roaster

Okay so... I had finally gotten around to reading more SubaHibi. The break I took in-between was excruciating, as I've been so eager to read more of this the time I was "off". I've gotten through all of Chapter 2 and I'm somewhere through Chapter 3 (following the guide). I practically pulled off a reading marathon there out of anticipation.

Gotta say, SubaHibi is absolutely full of surprises. Chapter 2 is insane (and insanely awesome). A great amount of insanity here and there that it ended up sort of "breaking" my comprehension in a way. Like... everything seemed so completely overwhelming. There were too many questions in my mind to the extent where I made a decision to accept things as they are and to stop thinking in general, lol. Is this a genuine feeling or am I being too sensitive to details? Also, some of the scenes in this chapter were really disturbing. D:

With Chapter 3, I'm not entirely finished with it yet, but... Ugh! What the hell is this VN doing to my mind!?! Once again, it could be a result of me being too oversensitive. The content of this chapter so far is making me feel very, very angry. There were times as I read where I was practically forced to take a small break in-between sessions to go cool off. I don't usually feel this way towards most VNs (especially not something like anger), but this, to my surprise, seems to be an exception... just... oh my god. It's quite difficult to swallow, but I shall continue reading.

I adore the music in SubaHibi. It's so amazing. There was one specific track that first played in Chapter 2 and I just had to make a separate save file right before the scene it played in. Now, I'm making save files for all the music tracks I want to listen to, haha.

Finished Sumaga. The art style is great, it's not really the CGs that caught my eye but the embellishments that are generally attractive to stare at. Soundtrack is good, the vocals sync up nicely and generally match the events pretty well. The H was pretty good, they understood that H is meant to cater to fantasies not perpetuate real sex. However the awful execution of the story ruined the game. They just rushed into events that were repetitions of the same thing for the umpteenth time so over half of the game can be skipped, some romances were literally started overnight for idiotic reasons and the worse part is the MC was copy and paste material, so I could care less for his troubles since I literally took the words right out of his mouth before he even said them on many occasions. Frankly this visual novel was a huge disappointment, because it completely fumbled it's storytelling but managed to be aesthetically pleasing.

I'm going back to finish up Majikoi and the Grisaia Trilogy.