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

[color=red]I think they won't put teacher route. Sad, recalling I'm enjoying Sera's route.

To my great regret, in these last two months I didn't finish a VN. My holidays messed me up and then my work and then League of Legends and then my PS3 and then my urges to explore the internet and then animes that I have been watching and then... well, I think you get the idea. So little time I have ;_;

However, I'll make an effort to dedicate myself more to VNs since the list keeps pilling up! I'll go first to Never 7 since I already started it about two weeks ago but barely read it.

Also, on an unrelated note, today was the last day I worked from 0 AM to 8 AM. I actually liked a lot that schedule since I got to access the internet freely and watched lots of anime. Let's see when I'll be asked again to work on this schedule lol

Playing Alicesoft's new VN, "Oyako Rankan".



Nothing really new or "breathtakingly" good. But it's a genuine "Alicesoft" quality eroge.
Art is nice and sexy by Min-Naraken, and the gameplay system is a bit tricky for those who like challengin to complere the cg set. lol
Story is mostly incest and how Alicesoft used to make their stories.

Nice time-sink in the end.

... Man, Seinarukana has MASSIVE content. It's probably due to the PSP + PC reason, but man, this is the first time I've played a game for such a... LONG time. And I had to use the instawin patch at Chapter 8 because I just don't have the time to spend moving my troops the proper way anymore. And be well assured that I had spent entire DAYS doing just that. Holy. Finished Satsuki's route, now gunning for Narukana's which is supposedly the true end... and HOPEFULLY they don't have the same annoying 'complete all routes to unlock secret scene' shit, because even with the patch it's going to take bloody forever to do it.

So, I've been playing Kamidori Alchemy Meister for some time now. It's an SRPG cross, but it's fine because it's the same style as Yggdra Union. So far I've essentially completed Chapter 4, but I ended up on the almost-impossible-on-first-playthrough route because I couldn't romance the undine in spite of my best efforts. It suffers the same problems as every other alchemy game: fucking ingredients. Having an extra boss to kill is nice. Having to kill said extra boss because I need a certain item because it's plot-based isn't fun. If my theory is right, its drops depend on the turn it's killed, which is not hinted at all in the game. It's turn 8 for the item, by the way. -.-

Now, combat. Since I hardly ever grind unless I need to, I often get short on health potions, because I'm stingy and don't bother grinding for the items to create the potions because the monsters are level 1. This forces me to keep a character around to heal my glass cannon between battles if she gets hit, which ends up with her being underleveled. However, the glass cannon has high EVA. and the accuracy in the game is Game Freak Accuracy instead of the normal kind. Although that's fine, since I have a character that is the same as her, but more. Most of the characters are ranged-based or underleveled when you're given them, and even then they're generally inferior to the long-ranged characters. The only reason to use them if they don't have a distance attack would be to take care of the rare Projectile Def. enemies. Even then, your cannon character can plow through it if you keep the healer next to him.

Now, for the good parts. The cannon character plows through almost everything on his own. Boss you're having trouble with? Start three squares away and use Snipe. After it moves closer, use Yuichiri One Shot to hurt him a lot. If the boss is still alive, heal the cannon. Counter with either Yuichiri One Shot or Volley when it attacks. Rinse and repeat. He's that powerful. It makes anything neutral to or weak against Nature easy to grind for ingredients against, which helps so, so much.

Now, the glass cannon. She hits hard (but not as hard as the cannon) but has two slight advantages over him. She has high EVA., which grants her at least a 75% dodge rate (it says 50-65%, but this is Game Freak Accuracy) against most enemies. Her other advantage is that she uses physical attacks without needing a specific weapon. This is good because many enemies use physical attacks over ranged attacks, meaning she can counter them more reliably than the cannon. This also means that she can switch elements easier, because swords are better in diversity than bows. That, and Yuichiri One Shot is more powerful than most bows that have an advantage over the enemy anyway.

There's also the angel that has a spear. She has a spear! This immediately makes her a lot better than most other characters. She also has the Holy element, which has proven to be the opposite of Nature at the moment. Meaning that it's very reliable.

The other characters are: the healer, a wall that can reliably block almost anything up to seven levels above it if you choose defend over counter, a mage with an AoE attack that hardly has much use but lots of power in a single-target spell, a fox, a succubus(?), and my beloved Suina.

Now, to go back to a previous save to fix my mistakes. -.-
This better not give me a 404 error.

No kidding. I gave up after 2 1/2 routes on account of MASSIVE time sink.

True. It's good enough just going through Narukana's route, the Assorts and Third Destination; the others are non-canon and probably not worth too much time. I'm extremely interested with Rupitona but well, busy. Very busy. Have to remind myself that I'm busy or I'll risk failing real life. >_>

EDIT:

Because it's annoying to wait for someone else to post at the 'What VN are you playing' thread or add a review underneath another review, that's why. Feel free to take this down if you guys think that it's against the rules of course, though I think it's okay?

... Can I even do multiple posts in this thread? Ah well I'll worry about the details later.

Anyway, first things first. Review!

Re：birth colony -Lost azurite-

Quite the unexpected Visual Novel; I had first downloaded it because I saw pictures of singing and thought that it might be a music-themed VN, though it is not, but Futuristic Technology is just fine with me.

So the story tells about a hacker named Souji and his encounter with the mysterious blue-haired girl, Azurite. You will be first introduced to a 'daydream' where Souji and a number of characters charges towards a huge, weird looking machine, trying to stop something. It did not end well, and suddenly Souji finds himself on the streets, standing and perfectly fine. So was what happened before just a dream, or something else?

Anyway, first impression of the game (The first 10 minutes experience)? The most polished out of all the few VNs I've recently downloaded such as SinClient, Zero Infinity of Maxwell, Seinarukana etc. The art was unexpectedly beautiful; I was originally somewhat repelled by some of the pictures shown in Getchu and thought them ugly, but the actual ones looked really good. It also gave off the same impression as 創世奇譚アエリアル so I checked it up a little and found out that while the companies are different, they are somewhat related and hence the familiarity in art.

So first, if you love beautiful and stunning CGs, this is your game. The girls are absolutely gorgeous, and I personally think that the protagonist's sister (not blood related and a possible heroine) has more beautiful sprites than her actual CGs, which was a shame. While they're not really erotic, it is impossible not to be captivated by how polished and well drawn the art is. A definite thumbs up to the artist and a + to the VN.

As for the story... Well, I'm not sure what to say. Again, I must use the word 'polished and well written' to describe it, but I would probably not describe it as spectacular. Certainly it features quite the unique setting, but I feel like the villain is poorly designed and the initial 'dream' setup rather weak and not impactful enough to make an impression.

However, the characters are definitely memorable. I absolutely enjoy the protagonist that he is exactly what he says himself to be, "I'm not a hero." He would protect the people that are important to him, but anyone can go stuff it and go to hell. This was especially obvious in the sister's route, where he made a decision against all rationality in order to protect the person he loved most. Also, there would be a scene where he caught the culprit who's spreading malicious rumors about him, and literally tore the scumbag's entire life to the ground; which was extremely satisfying for reasons you should go through yourself. In short, Souji is definitely an entertaining protagonist and another thumbs up to the VN makers.

Out of all the heroines, the one I enjoy most is probably Serika. She has a clear sight of her own values, the strength to carry them out, and would not waver from her responsibilities no matter what the circumstances. While she was portrayed to be very strong throughout all the heroine routes, there would be a scene near the end of Azurite's route (True route)where you could see clearly how strong Serika truly is, and that her powerful willingness to put away personal emotions for the better of another.

Noi is also my favorite. Unlike Serika who holds power in politics, Noi is a person who has incredible hacking skills as well as the best combat capabilities among all the characters shown in the city Aquarius. There's a reason to that, but I'll not state it right now. She is strong-willed, cool, clever, easily teased, a tad bit innocent and has a really huge but totally believable sized rack. If Serika wasn't so shiny I definitely would've chosen her as the best heroine out of everyone.

The sister Ruri is unexpectedly whiny and turned out to be less likeable than I thought, which was ironic when you think that I was attracted to this VN because of her singing picture. Her story also features some rather generic plot so I'd not talk much about this; the only redeeming value is that her art sprites are really amazing, and that she has some really cool clothes.

As for the last heroine, Azurite... I am unsure what to say about her, so I'll just put a blank here and let you guys draw your own conclusion. The only thing I could say is that she's the most innocent out of all the heroines, and she's... a little too invisible even though she's the true heroine of the story.

The game system is very well interfaced. I haven't had such a comfortable time using them for a loooong time, so take my word for it. These are really well designed and no one should have a hard time navigating. What I love most about it is that they had the Quick Load option at the front menu, which was EXACTLY WHAT SO MANY VNS SHOULD HAVE DONE FROM THE VERY BEGINNING. The Quick Load option was suppose to be a shortcut-styled save that allows user to immediately return to their bookmarked point of the story, usually after quitting the game due to personal reasons, whether they're at the Title Screen or halfway inside the game. It's stupid that you usually cannot Quick Load from either the Title Screen or even the Save/Load Screen because... it's a function you only have when you're in the Game Screen, which kind of defeats the entire purpose of having a Quick Load in the first place. So, again, thumbs up for a well-implemented system.

Btw, once you've completed the game, I highly suggest that you go to the Archives, select the 3 Minutes something tab, scroll and select the most bottom option. That is an extra story talking about Azurite's doubts and Azurite's true name, so don't miss out!

To the sound it is. The Music and Sound is the biggest weakness for this game. Usually I have never needed to adjust volumes in a VN - especially those involving individual characters - but for this VN I was forced to do so many times. For one, the Background Music is too damn loud sometimes. They garble the character's voice so badly that I was forced to lower the BGM's volume and increase the individual character's volume (For example Azurite's; her voice is very soft) to the max. You shouldn't need to ever do this unless you're really sensitive to sound, and I'm not.

Another thing is that the BGM is not memorable. They're there, but that's all they do. None of it ever strike it close to my heart even for the special, emotional scenes BGMs that were meant to do so. They held so little impact that the only music I remember from the VN was Ruri's song. It also annoys me that she has only one song throughout the entire VN, but oh well. The automatic door opening/closing sound effect is also extremely weird and sounded more like a spaceship's airlock than anything.

Overall, good VN, and ties quite impressively well to it's prequel Fake Azure Colony. If anyone has a working link or torrent for that game btw please PM me, because the torrents I tried are not working.

EDIT 2: Currently playing the prequel to Re：birth colony -Lost azurite-. I find that it has a better storyline than Re：birth colony -Lost azurite- even though it's old, though the childhood heroine whose attitude is very jarring and annoying in my opinion.

And then the true heroine (guessing haven't finish) SLAPPED HER AND STABBED AT EXACTLY ALL THE POINTS THAT I DISLIKE ABOUT THE CHILDHOOD HEROINE. OH YES. OH BLOODY YES. Insta-favorited.

Finished the first playthrough of Kamidori. Overall, it was okay. The music was great, but having to hold off my units and tell them not to attack so I can listen to it wasn't good. The battle music suffered an even worse fate, what with engagements lasting ten seconds long at most.

The combat, as I previously mentioned, was good. An SRPG with the style of Yggdra Union's field system. Half of the characters quickly became inferior to others, but that's expected. By the end of the game, chances are the party will end up with two or three characters and a bunch of filler to explore the map with. Mostly because those three characters are nukes with decent survivability.

H scenes. They appear to be rather common, but they're decently paced throughout the game. That's what the timer said, but in reality they tend to be mashed up together. It's rather unappealing. I also somehow missed half of them for the character whose route I was on, despite doing everything as soon as I saw it. This means I'll have to go back to get them, for an unexplainable reason.

New Game + may be bugged. I was forced onto a different route than my target, despite obtaining all the qualifications needed for my target. I'm also unable to unlock an area (and thus the rest of the area) of the powerlevel dungeon despite having went to said part of the dungeon in a previous playthrough at an earlier portion of the game. I also get endlessly assaulted by the owner of the bar having a fake map event that's the same set of Japanese characters that the game thinks I haven't seen before. It sucks, because it makes me think that a real event is happening.

Alchemy is bad. No matter how you try and sell it, it's bad. This game handles it better than others that I've played (I rarely need to gather materials because I already have them) but it's still bad.

Events are good. I love the non-h events in this game.

Playing Duel Savior Justice right now. I went for the hardest setting from the start, but so far everything has been pretty easy; I dare say that I had a much harder time playing Baldr Sky and had only managed to beat the final boss once at final difficulty with my chosen gear... Hope that this'll be a lot more fun to play when I can choose the Super Hard mode.

And it's not like I'm good either. Remember Material Brave? It features a much more improved and smoother gameplay (They're basically the same), and the controls are a lot easier to chain and combo. I could hardly cancel properly and could do only an average of 7 hits (10+ with luck and button spamming for the cancel >_>), and yet I'm beating bosses left and right that were supposed to be 'kinda hard' 'would force you to change difficulty setting if you're not careful', so yeah. Hope that changes as soon as I end my first playthrough.

Btw, how do you switch characters to use? Or am I fixed with just Taiga only?

Taiga is awesome. Taiga's voice actor is even more awesome! xD

Since this is a pretty old game, it features a veeeery small window (640 x 480 is pure torture for such an interesting game) and I wish I could've at least resize it to 800 x 600 in window mode or something, but of course that's asking too much.

Berio's split personality is very erotic. Lol. I'm actually very attracted to her because of that since... well... let's just say Duel Savior's ero is veeery entertaining. xD

I'm also playing Duel Savior Justice. The game's hard difficulty is joke, as Zolnir already said. Although I really enjoy the combat in this game, so I suppose it makes up for the complete lack of difficulty. Since I'm not too far, there's little I can say that Zolnir didn't say already. However, I'm not fond of Shiro Taiga's personality. It doesn't help that I'm too used to his voice as Shiro's that I can't imagine him as anything else, but I'm not really too fond of perverted main characters. I also hated being forced to have the bath scene. Berio isn't the one I'm interested in pursuing first, after all. The music is also appealing.

You get new characters in New Game +. You get the character whose route you completed. As with the window, I have it as 800x600. Although it's fullscreen, so that may be why.

Huh? Seriously? How do you do that?? my resolution auto resize and the thing just covered my entire screen. How??

I also noticed that when I accidentally F4 (full screen button), the resolution returned to 800 x 600, and the fights start to go VERY smooth even with 4 member teamfights (But the window borders are still 640 x 480, hence can't see meter bar >_>). And then I tried again and it's back to bloody 640 x 480. My eyes... T_T

I'm unsure of why it's screwy with you. I checked my config menu, but nothing really explained anything about it.

As for the game, I've just recruited no-name. Even on Hard, I find myself having to give massive handicaps (start attacking at 1/4 health and no blocking, only use the axe and lance, only use the bomb, etc.) if I want the fights to be challenging. Kaede is the only exception to this rule, and this is why I love her so much. Unlike everyone else, she's so much fun to fight because she provides a challenge. Lily and Reco are so pathetically weak that I occasionally stop attacking just so I can get my HP low enough for a challenge.

With the plot, it hit an extreme Cerebus Syndrome while trying to remain semi-serious. Unfortunately, those two do not go together. Suffering from Cerebus Syndrome is bearable, but getting a progressively darker plot while still keeping the light elements kinda kills it. It's like Shira Oka, if the plot made any sense at all. I'm still interested in the game, but it took a massive hit from suffering from the syndrome and trying to keep its humour. There's also Lily being a tsundere, Shiro Taiga being a massive pervert, and the difficulty being a joke.

Well the difficulty level gets harder by 2+ times I think? After you go through your first few playthroughs, so Hard -> Super Hard -> Insane? and then it gets stuck there. Before the Harem route, the only challenging fight is the Four Stooges one, and you just need to keep the enemies at one side and keep on attacking and you can win.

Mia's route is a bitch. I hope that I never have to go through such a horrible route ever again. Absolutely the worst of everything that could happen happened, and the only consolation is that Avatar is saved from 1000 cycle wars.



After all that ranting about DSJ, now I'm going to talk a little about Fake Azure Arcology.

The plus side. Good voice acting, and three pretty decent heroines: Haruka, Noel, and my favorite Ledi (or Lady). Haruka has the body of a model despite her small breast size, is insanely cool looking, a little innocent for her age and VERY innocent when it comes to her ambitions and dreams (it's like she's high on candy when she talks about Flight). Noel is a cat cyborg with the best character design in the VN, and she's also very cool personality. Ledi is an extremely strong-willed girl, who although is a little insecure because she's a Created Human, had always shown a strong, mature side and never fail to make you smile with hers. Apparently golden hair girls in this series all share the same traits.

The down side. There's a LOT of downside for this one unfortunately. First, the Osanajimi heroine is scary as fuck, almost at the same level as Mia. Spoilers here, but the first thing she did when:



I've had enough of crazy Osanajimi's for a while, seriously, this is literally giving me traumas with all the madness lurking about this route.

The plot, although seemingly promising at first, was pretty bad actually. They had a pretty damn good setting and twist to utilize, but executed it very lamely. Haruka and Akira's route had made a pretty okay impression and I was anticipating a lot more twists to be revealed in the future, but instead there was... how to say? Nothing. Ironically, I can tell that the Osanajimi route was given a LOT of attention and would probably be one of the best routes to read, if I wasn't so freaked out by her attitude and skipped all the lines that has her in it. -_-"

Ledi's route was my favorite, but they really did not add any additional details in her path that wasn't already explained before. I was massively disappointed that even the aerial dogfight in her route wasn't as exciting as it could be. She IS the true heroine of the story, mind you, but the entire VN made it so bloody vague (even with the Grand Epilogue) that I have to check it's SEQUEL to know exactly who's the real heroine, and which route is the true end. It was actually a Noel + Ledi route, but that is not an excuse for poor execution of the storyline.

Its character sprite and sound execution is also weird as hell. One, some of the dialogues really don't match the character sprites they're using. Imagine reading a supposedly sad line with a bright smiley face on the character. Some of the chosen BGMs are extremely vague and they just don't fit any of the themes they're suppose to portray (actually I think those BGMs just suck big time). The experience is just lousy overall.

And finally, the aerial dogfights. I came searching for this VN because it's sequel made me interested, found out that it isn't exactly what I'm looking for, thought that it was fine and read it anyway, and found it disappointing. The dogfights mostly consist of a single CG showing the exterior of the airplane, or the view from inside the cockpit, and nothing else. Plane A has broken Plane B's Visual Sword! CG still shows Plane B completely intact. I mean like wtf, there's absolutely no excitement at all! Man...

When I was playing it's sequel Rebirth: Azure Lost Colony and found myself interested in it's prequel, I was expecting a story about the German colony Stelenglobe, which has a really good setting. First, this colony focuses on pure research and hence has the best technology of the entire world. Second, it is a world where AIs and Cyborgs are created legally, and they also have human rights. Basically they're recognized as an equal to human, and that is really interesting.

So I went in search of its prequel expecting to see a story about the struggle to give AIs human rights + flight, but instead I was treated to a different setting featuring a really disappointing story. Sigh. Oh well.

Playing "Pick Me, Honey!", by TRABULANCE.
Definitely not something you want to read if you're looking for a good story. Just a pretty generic Harem, with a touch of comedy thrown in.
I don't know who translated this, but I can't help feel there's a lot of little mistranslations thrown in also. I can't read, but I can definitely hear little mistakes, and to be honest they really add up.

For instance, the protag says "You really seem to be enjoying this job.", and Chihiro simply says "Yes I am, especially when I can work with you.", when she was speaking there was something missing at the beginning.

She said' hai, tottemo tanoshii desu. ', if I'm not correct I believe it meant 'Yes, it's very fun', maybe I'm just being nitpicky, but those little misreadings really add up in this game.

6/10, reading it for the H-scenes and vanilla, not really a good back-story in this. This is strictly H-content for me.

Playing SinClient. So far so good, I could somewhat guess the respective roles the characters are going to play out, but the story remained somewhat murky due to a mixture of 'impossible science' in it. The ending of Beginning was somewhat sudden and incredibly fast paced from the slow start, but I could accept that as a part of reality. Time to read on!

Started Swan Song, the narrative is amazing. This is going to be a great story. Playing multiple VNs at once at the minute.

I finished Yandere-chan with two of the dead ends on Saturday, I'm playing Corpse Party: Blood Covered Repeated Fear again because all of my previous saves got corrupted (I'm on Chapter 2), and I started playing Moe Cure Net on my android this morning. I'm going for Ren then Honoka. I'll figure out the rest when the time comes. It's pretty good.

Lol, I just finished Illusions's new game, "Happy End Trigger", which surprisingly is a well made VN, not just a sex simulator, heck because it's a VN the sex simulator is non-existent.

It plays around like a normal VN, but the H-scenes are like the animated scenes in some VNs.
Story wise nothing new.

Finished Sin Client. There were problems where the MC kind of fell out of his league and underperforming MANY times after his recovery, and there were situations where the Prime Minister's choices were less than comprehensible, and that some of the choices and actions the characters make are way too emotional and impulsive for a supposedly top level agent, lousy character sprites, but otherwise pretty well executed.

Just imagine a spy movie and expand its content into a Visual Novel and you'll get SinClient. Not exactly what I would expect from its title (I was actually disappointed how it turned out), but still pretty good.

Just finished Kaede's route in Duel Savior (I know I'm slow) and I am very unimpressed with this game. Three of the enemy big four were killed offscreen and only mentioned in passing, and the one I killed onscreen was rather boring. I was supposed to hate him, but I didn't really care about him. His "special art" was only used twice. Once to show that yes, this once lighthearted game does allow supporting characters to die. The second time, it was obvious that it would be broken. On top of that, he was a complete joke to fight. Despite my completely reckless fighting style and not using the gauntlet on him, I defeated him easily. When he summoned enemies, I considered the rope ninja he summoned a higher priority than him. At least I unlocked the next difficulty.

Next, some errors I saw. They'll all be in spoilers because they're after the game got afflicted with Cerebus Syndrome.

Basically, this game was good. It was, until the Cerebus Syndrome kicked in, and it started rapidly going downhill from there. The combat is kinda fun, though. What's the best route, Zolnir?