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

This.

Dendenden has a pretty meh title but seemingly cool gameplay. I was unfortunately not that impressed when I watched its gameplay trailers, but hopefully a play will change my mind. The character designs were good enough that those overly large boobs did not dent my spirit, so I guess it's good news? >_>

Playing LxC2 trial (because I'm impatient bastard, fuck just 2 months left).

Promising improvement so far comparing to the first LxC. The after-school interface is much more cleaner than the first LxC and "walking side by side" feature creates a good atmosphere.

Sad thing there's tons of things that I can't understand for a while, like easy - normal difficulty (lol wat?) and some weird options.

It's still a romance themed VN, is it?

Just finished Kanon. No clue as to why I've put this on hold for so long. For a VN that came out in '98, I was unsurprised at most of the routes because it was outdated so the elements of the story were a bit lackluster, until I got to Ayu's.

Even though it's this old, that one soundtrack that plays always makes my heart throb because it sounds so sad. It's the song that plays when Yuuichi gets picked up by Nayuki, the very first scene and CG of Kanon.

I enjoyed all the routes. It's really great.

Of course, it's just your usual "school-life romance VN". I'm a big fan of the first LxC so ... just want to try it hahaha.

Still disappointed that there are no Teacher character... T_T

Speaking of which, I totally forgot to post my 僕が天使になった理由 review from vndb here. Also the reason why I may sound a little... tired of romance-centric stories, because this is just packed with em.



For those who knew me, they would know that I have a huge weakness for musical Visual Novels, and thus almost all the Visual Novels from Overdrive had a special place in my heart. First on the list would be of course Kira Kira, and everything else under the same universe (Kira Kira Curtain Call, Deardrops, Cross The Future etc). This is my subjective opinion, but Overdrive has made some of the best songs I’ve heard from Visual Novels, and only losing to one time epics Symphonic Rain (though I thought some Overdrive songs were certainly on par too). So when I saw this came out I immediately made it my first priority to play it just after completing Rewrite.

僕が天使になった理由 is a Visual Novel which focuses on the theme †˜Music’ and †˜Fantasy: Angel’. You have a dark-spirited protagonist who seemed to view everything in the worst possible reality due to a terrible past, until one day an angel fell from the sky and changed his life forever. At first sight this wasn’t the best of openings even as a brief synopsis, but surprisingly enough I didn’t feel any skepticism when playing the actual game itself. The writer did well to create a sober enough atmosphere that nullified any †˜meh’ type of feelings when the angel, Aine fell from the skies. At that moment I already knew that this Visual Novel would most likely not disappoint me, for it had certainly caught my attention so fully that I wouldn’t even think to distract myself with other VNs.

So basically, 僕が天使になった理由 narrates about the different types of love difficulties we may encounter in life. Each chapter is dedicated to tell one type, and for the common route they are:
The individual heroine routes are no different, as: . All of these problems were narrated in a condensed, simplified version, but they were definitely entertaining and each provided with a most realistic conclusion regardless of the protagonist’s decision.

Speaking about the choices. The protagonist would make a decision at each turning point of these relationships whether to †˜Return the Broken Piece of Heart’ or not that would decide the fate of these couples they’re trying to help (under Aine’s persistent pressure lol). Hence there are of course two different endings, and they were very realistic that not one – despite the very different outcomes – had a perfect happy/sad ending. It was always a mixture of sadness and happiness, some more than the other, but always a mixture. I absolutely love the VN for this one point alone: there is no perfect happy ending for ANYONE at all, not even in the true route, not even for an angel. Such is the way of life, and the way僕が天使になった理由was so frank about this simple truth is a refreshing breath of the air.

The sub heroines and characters were fleshed out okay – not too good but not bad either. But this is also the only serious VN I know where every sub heroine route ended, regardless of their two separate endings, Yuri’s route was the shortest out of all (and in my opinion the worst, but make no mistake, it is still a good read) others, where the two of them attempts to deal with the problem presented by the crazy sister. To put it mildly (without spoilers), the good end puts the protagonist in a miserable state and the bad end utterly broke him and Yuri. THAT’S RIGHT, LET NO ONE BE HAPPY AND EVERYTHING ENDS IN DESPAIR! FUHAHAHAHA – ahem, woops. Inner demon be at peace, at peace~

Heavy Spoilers now on sub heroines’ route PLEASE AVOID! So while a devil spawn like this feels super fine and dandy, someone more normal might find it a little too hard and depressing to swallow. No, it’s not as dark as say Yume Miru Kusuri, but the constant bombs of sadness was enough to turn an angel’s wing black. And yet you must complete all the sub heroine routes first before you can progress to the true end, . Damn, I REALLY like this VN for what it is, LET THE DESP *stomps inner demon*

Now, about the system, 僕が天使になった理由 offers something new. There are a lot more new functions (which I didn’t use, so won’t make much of a comment here) in the Config section, and the Mouse Settings page is… rather impressive. In the Omake (Extra section), announcements would be made if you have completed a certain heroine’s route to help keep better track of your progress. As long as you’re in the Omake the heroines would make funny jokes on occasion (though you can turn them off by clicking the microphone near the bottom left). For Scene Replays we have the Calendar interface, which organize things better than the conventional when trying to search for a particular scene to replay.

Also, in the Songs and BGM section, there are several new options that I’ve really come to like. Next to the Song List is a Playlist which allows you to, well, make up a playlist of music so you can hear them in any order you like. At the right there are 3 options you can select: Lyrics, Lyrics + Code and er, Slide Mode (Sorry my Katagana kinda fails sometimes)? They are exactly what they mean: Lyrics displays a white board with the song’s lyrics on it, Lyrics + Code adds additional text (again, sorry but I don’t understand what they mean) above the lyrics and finally Slide Mode displays CGs in succession until the end of the song. At the bottom you have a slide bar to control volume, and a number of buttons which symbolized †˜Previous (song)’, †˜Play’, †˜Stop’, †˜Next (song)’, †˜Loop’, †˜Loop Song Once Only’, and †˜Shuffle’. The knob thing actually means that you’re playing the entire Songlist or the Playlist. Finally, click at the chibi Aine portrait and she would make cute noises, though of course like I said you can turn it off if it gets annoying.

What I think about the music in general… let’s just say that Overdrive never disappoints me. What’s more, they actually made an improvement (subjective) by shortening the usual lengthy opening of a song. So yes, I’m both impressed and happy.

Now, about some of the technical faults of I find in the VN:
1) No Autosave function.
2) Interface text in Save/Load page is way, way, waaaaay too small.
3) They grey interface text at the Config section looks blurry.
4) At the Song/BGM replay section, the switching of songs when clicking †˜Next’ and †˜Previous’ is very slow.
5) I’m not exactly sure how to use some of the functions offered in Mouse Settings honestly. The help texts are a pain to read.

The non-technical faults are:
1) Since every single chapter focuses entirely on the topic †˜Love’ despite the difference it can easily get tedious. There were no breaks in between at all and it may stifle some readers.
2) The truth/final mystery+solution is kinda †˜meh, wut’ even though the ending was really cool. Also, I easily guessed all the truth to all the mysteries, so they don't surprise me at all.
3) Too short for me at least. A total of maybe fifteen to sixteen hours maximum if you play through all routes (with skip on common).

And that’s the end of my super lengthy review.

I finally got to finishing all the routes in Katawa Shoujo recently, I procrastinated on the Rin route for the longest time. Now I'm going to finish My Girlfriend is The President since I never finished the Irina route or started El's route.

I started playing various cases recently in the Phoenix Wirght games. After I jumped from case 1-2 to 2-4, I can see how much Phoenix, Edgeworth, and the judge have improved. Phoenix's presses are actually good and not "Are you SURE this is how it went?", whereas Edgeworth is actually better than Phoenix. In 1-2, Edgeworth was crappy, to the point where everything he said seemed to be solely to make the trial go on longer. As for the judge, he seems a lot less corrupt now. I'd type more, but I'm on my phone.

Just finished Rewrite's "Terra" route. By far, this is probably the best route in the game given so far. Akane/Lucia's might be in for a tie, and Moon is a bit behind.

The reason I liked Terra so much has to be because of Esaka's character in this route.


However, there's one thing that actually confuses me, so anyone that has completed Rewrite 100% can click the spoiler. I'm genuinely confused about Terra, despite it being such a much better route than the others.

No,



Also, what do you think of Shizuru's route? I personally think it's the best out of all the heroines (in terms of presentation), but why on earth people keeping dissing about it?

Playing violated hero 2...... wtf i lost the words, the battle picture zig-saw
i wonder why people always say that the drawing better than monster quest, that obviously wrong

Shizuru's route is better then I thought, and it's definitely the better one out of the two routes Yuuto Tonokawa wrote (the other one being Chihaya). Personally speaking, I wouldn't say it's the best but that's just subjectivity on my part.

Wait, there are drawings? I didn't get too far in Violated Hero 2 before deleting it, but I wasn't really that impressed with any of it. I will admit the art (of the few monsters I saw that had art instead of 16-bit sprites) was good, though. Monster Girl Quest was amazing in that it was fun and had a very enjoyable story. I'm really quite looking forward to the third part.

I am playing Higurashi no Naku Koro Ni. Only started the Watanagashi chapter, but I haven't laughed like that for a while.

*Facepalm* You're right, I completely gapped that one detail.


You too? I actually love Shizuru's route. It seemed the most pure route of the game. At the same time, it's the only route outside of Terra(technically),

Shizuru's route also have more CGs that were put to better use as compared to the other routes. Some of them just made me felt tears and Clannad when the scene played out. I never understood the great amount of rejection I got from the vndb forums (lazy to argue with them) when I told them that.

Currently playing steins;gate. As expected form the original, it has even more sparks than the anime, and the anime was already good.



Btw Zolnir, do you know what exactly is this 'good memories'?

If I'm not mistaken,