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

Finished Chaos;Head. Wimp beats prostitute monster (Seira) with a stick (Di-Sword) and suddenly he's awesome, works every time. The story was mediocre owing to the stagnant execution and plainness; if anything there were entertaining delusions and probably the best Ahegao I've seen in a while coming from Hazuki.

Well I decided to roll with the "Scientific Adventure" theme and now I'm on Steins;Gate. I've got some fairly high expectations considering I am a huge fan of the Steins;Gate anime.

welp, septem.org

better wait till someone upload a MF link.

I hope girlcelly will update her mega.co folder. She only uploaded the lovely call patch, haven't touched the August patch.

Lol, don't know what's wrong with it, but already played it after I posted the septem link. It's Wakoto's and Seine's turn.

Im finishing Yumi's route in Yandere.

願いの欠片と白銀の契約者 first impression.

Been a while since I've done this ye? With work I find myself collapsing to the next morn right after dinner more often than usual, even though I slack off a lot and generally try to go back home early. The mental strain seemed to be as huge as ever however; guess I still need a little bit of time to adjust or something. >_>

Anyway, it's a game from propeller, the company that made Tokyo Babel. That immediately gave me a good impression and I am glad to announce that it wasn't wrong. This time it introduces 'puppets' as the main theme, and is an all girls main cast (the male sub characters don't count of course).

The story is intriguing to say the least. I love how it introduces mystery and horror - hmm, maybe I should say eeriness instead, since it actually isn't that scary - wrapped in a volatile atmosphere, and the harmony between music and the transitions has just been fantastic. They definitely pulled this up far better than 3rd Eye did with their new VN (unfortunately for 3rd Eye).

It is not without weaknesses, however. Before the 1.01 Update the Settings literally would not work, and even then you probably would want to switch graphic processor around to integrated because it crashed me at certain animations when I was using my NVDIA graphic processor. Pretty bullshit honestly since this is literally the first time I ever had real technical problems with the settings, but whatever.

Also, it may feel as if rushed or... disconnected in the beginning, but the disconnection is the point so just hold out, and you'll eventually see how amazing it was.

The main character gives me the creeps at first - mainly because she was so annoyingly naive - but later on she, of course, improves a lot. It was also very interesting to see her Dark mode where she literally stalked and murdered puppets off the streets for revenge. The voice acting on this part is absolutely stunning. To know more, PLAY THE GAME YEAH!

I have crossed Steins;Gate. Finally.

Huke from Black★Rock Shooter designed those ABSOLUTELY orgasmic eyes and Kristina's vivid red tie-good lord I just want to ravage those dirty pixels (I really loved the art design).

The story felt infinitely more compelling than the anime maybe it's due to a VN's abundance in content but I stand by the fact that the immersion and philosophical weight behind the well-worn world of time-travel was refreshing. Yes some parts feel habber-dashed using time-travel as the incredibly convenient plot device and I found contradictions behind the Convergence Point theory but I stand with Nitro⁺ in saying "it's 99% reality and 1% fantasy". The cellphone system is innovative but it's major flaw is the inability to see your messages before being sent so you usually end up guessing and reloading until you reach a satisfactory answer (which is saved for your second run of the game). I'm probably incredibly biased towards this VN to a ludicrous degree, it's just everything I love about this caught me twice at the right time and with the right appeal. I being the terribly immature person I am say it that was the choice of Steins;Gate.

in case you haven't heard of it

http://sukebei.nyaa.se/?page=view&tid=311418

願いの欠片と白銀の契約者 Review

It was a fantastic read.

Hype was a double-edged sword more prone to harm, and with a title like Tokyo Babel before †˜Propeller’ had set themselves a high bar of standard that most Visual Novel companies would fail to pass. Thankfully though, 願いの欠片と白銀の契約者 may be a better Visual Novel than Tokyo Babel, and for that I’m truly thankful. Recently I’ve lost much passion for Visual Novels – no thanks to †˜Reminiscence’ – and if it wasn’t for this I might’ve continued to be in a slump, never reading any of the new VNs that I’ve downloaded.

But let’s dive straight into its weaknesses first. The biggest flaw of 願いの欠片と白銀の契約者 is none other than its system and settings. First, under the †˜All Settings’ tab, there were some configurations that outright don’t work. Before patch 1.01, you couldn’t even initiate Full Screen mode and while this I find to be rather trivial (the resolution would look bad anyways in full screen), can easily break the experience for a user with small screen laptops.

In fact the only thing that the patch fix was the Full Screen, and there are still buttons that don’t work as expected. †˜Resolution change’ for one, does not work. The †˜Textbox Transparency bar’ works, but you’ll only see the effects when clicking into the next line of words which could be utterly misleading. There’s also a setting that allows you to add… borders? On the sides of the overlaying text box (not the dialogue one), but they were barely noticeable and completely useless in my opinion. I honestly do not understand why there would be so many bugs present in the VN; perhaps they’re testing out a new patch on their engine and have not ironed out the various bugs yet. Who knows?

And this wasn’t the only problem. For me at least, the game was guaranteed to crash when a certain sprite transition (often used during battle scenes) happens. I had to turn off animation and get pass that transition every time or there would be no way to continue. Luckily this doesn’t happen often enough that it would frustrate enough a person to quit, but the bug definitely wasn’t rare enough that I would call it so.

Also, the game automatically becomes †˜inactive’ when you click out of it, even in windowed mode, which meant I can’t do anything else if I want to listen its fantastic music, or it would become silent otherwise. I have absolutely NO IDEA WHY they want implement the Windowed mode like Full Screen, but this was absolutely irritating to say the least.

Lastly would be the voices of some sub characters. I have no idea why, but the †˜Politician’, †˜Old man’ and †˜Researcher’ voices did not come out even though when I checked the backlog they were clearly there (and can be replayed). This game is unsatisfyingly buggy, and this is after the patch fix too.

However, those were the only few major flaws I find in the game. It is otherwise an absolutely stunning story that told of a shadow war of human and puppets. I honestly did not expect the author to use the theme and tell such a beautiful yet unbelievably refreshing story, and the intricate efforts taken to keep the world’s logic intact and sound did not go unnoticed. I hand my full respect towards the author and thank him for writing such a compelling story, and of course to the director/artist/composer etc as well.

Now we talk about the story. First, as I’ve mentioned before this is a war between humans and puppets. However, the line here can be incredibly blurry as some puppets felt as brilliantly alive as a human, and the humans themselves may not be what they think they are. And so you follow the lead character Mina’s PoV (If I got the name wrong again, please just ignore me LOL), a very normal high school student who is extremely dependent and who whines at anything she can’t stand. Yes, she isn’t exactly the most impressive protagonist ever, but since she is a young girl the emotional instability is more acceptable than a male’s. Also, she constantly grows up throughout the various hardships she faced, becoming more resolved and outspoken over time and sometimes even incredibly cool. It is easy to see why her companions flocked to her like magnet (although there’s another reason to that).

I would not spoil anything in the story; that you’ll have to experience it yourself. 願いの欠片と白銀の契約者 is in a sense, the opposite of Tokyo Babel since it has far less fighting and a lot more discussing. This actually adds to the realism of the story because one, the characters themselves do not wish to kill unnecessarily; two, they don’t want to fight blindly and hence approach things with great caution and consideration (now this truly makes sense), they were more devoted to unraveling the truth behind the war, the one and only way that may or may not lead them to the future they wish. Add in the fact that their time was not as limited as Tokyo Babel, and you have a story of opposite style but were just as amazing.

Another thing I’d like to mention is the various different endings near the end of the story. Of course for this VN there is only one true end, and these 3 endings offered at first are just alternative scenarios used to explain further truths and mysteries that were not revealed during the main storyline.

But these endings are not just any simple alternate endings; in fact they’re not just any †˜what-if’ endings. This is my interpretation, but I believe that these endings were the imaginations of what would’ve happened through the three characters’ point of view: Jessica, Yan and Riko. I repeat, this are just their imagination of what would’ve happened after the event. Likely that even if for a time reality had followed exactly as their imagination dictate, there would still likely be contradictions and the route would eventually still diverge away at some point. In short these are incorrect alternate endings, had the alternate endings were real.

The evidences of the above speculations would be that the various characters’ thoughts and actions actually differ in each ending. The most obvious one would be Mina. Take Jessica’s Route for example. In her imagination Mina was timid, very obedient, and a person who would never kill a friend just for… well spoilers here. Mina was even a non-factor in her route and it was all up to Jessica to stand up and dictate the way of things. Her image of Mina was in fact inconsistent and even wrong. Almost the entire story before the choices was told through Mina’s point of view, and that’s why we know that even though she was initially timid, she has long since outgrown her dependency and was a lot braver than Jessica imagined her to be. More importantly, Jessica wasn’t as strong as she thought herself to be in her Route, and the true route would show you exactly that. This was true for both Yan and Riko where they thought they would come to a resolution to their problems much easier, even though in reality they have all failed their expectation of themselves.

And then there was Yan’s Route. Here, her imagination of Mina was also wrong – though in this case she didn’t actually know Mina that well – where Mina was again portrayed to be weak, vulnerable, and someone who needed her protection. This route was actually quite teary and the shocking ending had me cursing for a full bloody minute, but I won’t tell why except that it’s the good kind of shocking ending. Still, Mina – all of the girls, in fact, they never would’ve ran away – was actually a lot stronger than she gave credit for. In fact out of all four girls she may actually be the one with the weakest mentality.

Riko’s was funny not only because it was unexpectedly short, but also the way how they had welcomed the Final Judgment. You can say that the girl was most naïve, and although she definitely nailed Mina’s personality closer than Jessica or Yan, she was still wrong. In this case she idealized Mina too much where the protagonist accepted all her fate too easily and seemingly without the slightest regret, which was of course, wrong. She also imagined Jay wrongly (Riko’s route follows the true route to an extent) where even though at the face of terrible sadness she thought the man would remain calm and controlled, when in fact his outburst was much more painful and unexpected, and his control held on by the tinniest strand.

So you might be asking: Ultimately, what is the point of these three endings? It is exactly as I’ve already mentioned above: They are the world seen through Jessica, Yan and Riko’s eyes and what they believe in. You may say that these short but meaningful endings described completely the characters themselves, as it gives you a taste of their values, beliefs, hopes and even despairs. Route Jessica gives you Jessica, as Route Yan gives you Yan, and as Route Riko gives you Riko. You are literally living their life in this short (well actually not quite, around 1 hour at least and 2 hours most) but extremely meaningful sequence.

And they are absolutely beautiful. I have never seen alternate routes/endings used so meaningfully in absolutely any other Visual Novels, and right now all I can say is that the author will always, always have my highest respect. Amazing, amazing work here, really.

Now then. The weakest point of the VN’s presentation was also the battle scenes. Since the VN actually pride itself in quality presentation with simple resources (and it worked wonders most of the time), the battles scenes themselves actually felt too static and could’ve used a little bit more action and movements of sprites. The battles scenes were definitely still of good quality (the sound effects are especially detailed), but they’re ultimately not as good as the various atmospheres and emotions generated by the other scenes. So don’t expect to see sprite movements like what Fate/Stay Night, because there won’t be any.

Another point of the VN that baffles me is the All Ages rating. There are times when the characters are clearly engaged in uh, less-than-appropriate activities, and during the beginning scenario the protagonist was even raped by a doll (it’s really hard not to think otherwise, since the other characters themselves had remarked uncomfortably it so). Why even bother with the tag since the content is explicit anyway? Perhaps the author felt that it would be a damaging distraction to the actual story, but as Katawa Shoujo has showed us, you don’t need to fill in †˜Oohs’ or †˜Ahhs’ or †˜Ichaoo!’ for the next few hundred lines to depict sexual activities (in fact the real ones would be much shorter and quieter). But we can’t all avoid our biases, and I would agree that it did sharpen the focus of the story. Still, I really wished that I could have my eye candy. >_>

The VN’s overall presentation is absolutely fabulous and in harmony. Let’s start with the art. This is another strong case of hit and miss: If you ignore everything else and judge it purely by its style, you may find the art a bit weak and even old fashioned. But in my opinion, the VN has actually found the perfect artist to draw its world and characters because they fit the story’s main theme †˜Dolls’ wonderfully. As I am a man of words I do not know exactly how to describe this, but the art style in my opinion just fits right with the story and its world, that’s all I can say.

The sound. This is the absolute strongest point of the VN. Each one of the soundtracks are memorable on its own, and you never feel bored or tedious listening to them because they’re so beautiful and yet simple. What’s even more amazing is that it has only 25 OSTs in total, and for many of the common scenes the same few soundtracks (about 6 to 7 I think) were reused again and again, but they never, not once, wore me out. Many common Japanese VNs easily have over 30 soundtracks – take Sensuibu! For example; it has 35 soundtracks in total – and to be honest I don’t think I even remember one tenth of them, and most of the music just bores the crap out of me after only an hour of gameplay.

Honestly, I’m in awe with this part of the VN. As I’ve mentioned before, the OSTs were reused a lot of times, but they were never out of place. How to say this? For example, OST A could be used for many different scenarios, and they wouldn’t feel out of place. They could be used in a peaceful atmosphere, a sad one, or even a happy one, and it wouldn’t feel out of place and actually pull out different feelings depending on the story. You wouldn’t believe how flexible and versatile they are until you experience the VN yourself.

And then there was voice acting, which was just crazily awesome in general. Mina’s (the protagonist) voice actor is the star here. I actually have no idea how to describe this – you need to play the game, seriously – but let’s take her soft voice for example. During a certain time of the story Mina would suffer a huge, traumatic blow, and for two weeks she would stalk and murder dolls in the middle of the night (even though she had absolutely no idea what she was doing for that time period when she finally †˜woke up’ from her nightmare). When I say she spoke like †˜a ghost behind your back’, I really mean it. Honestly if I was that doll I would’ve freaking pissed my pants while running away, human or not. It was that awesome. In fact, the voice acting was the main pillar that supported the entire VN as a true masterpiece.

In conclusion I give this Visual Novel 8.8 out of 10. It was not without flaws, among which the system was the greatest of sin here, but to give up on this VN just because of that would be a sin by itself.

Starting Zanmataisei Demonbane. The USA PC version, not quite sure what the difference is. Anyhow, I have not found anything impressive besides the amount of panty-shots they have managed to fit in a three second span; however there is potential for things to shape up.

Damn Zolnir, I'll read that later lol



The PS2 version besides some obvious script changes has a lot more CGs and other awesome tracks. According to comments from other users, it's WAY better than the PC version (this thread has some comments about the PS2 version).

Btw Zolnir, did you read the PC version of Demonbane or the PS2 version? I guess that you know what I'll say :P

PC version. 18+ all the way! XD

Well I was less referring less the PC to Ps2 version and more JPN to USA. You know I could admire the supposedly wonderful soundtracks and extra CGs galore but I have an incurable fetish for books.

Finished Zanmataisei Demonbane. I innately dislike long VNs because after a certain point I just get exhausted and realize I could get more enjoyment out of a shorter and more blunt VN that has the same quality. My exhaustion was particularly noticeable when the VN had plot secrets that everybody knew, thankfully the entertaining execution of the plot made up for it. Probably the most compelling thing about Demonbane is the fact that it delivered absurd and comical action-hero nonsense with no restraint or illusions of restraint. ex. hey you know what is better than a dimension breaking swords? TWO dimension breaking swords. Guns? Pft giant mech revolvers that shoot DRAGONS. This positive reception is mostly nostalgia from the zanier days of anime and action-hero cartoons but it's a well welcomed nostalgia.


Well I was going to go to Kishin Hishou, but machine translations bleh. I'm probably going to look into Analogue, mostly because of the sequel and it shows promise.

Analogue shows promise?

We need a whip. And a chair. And some ropes.

I'm a fan of the leather attire but I'll skip on wax foreplay.

My knowledge of Analogue (at that time) is ahem: "Analogue: A Hate Story is a visual novel featuring semi-static manhwa-style character images, and focused on reading text logs. Using the mouse and keyboard (gasp), the player interacts with the Mugunghwa's main computer to read log entries, communicate with the AIs, and occasionally enter commands directly into the vessel's computer system. " and compliments from renowned critics; who I respect but disregard since preference is self determined. At that time Analogue was simply another VN to me, maybe that was best to prevent potential spoilers.

On a side note struggling for dignity after uncovering the change_outfit function is harder than I thought, I feel relief and profound sadness that there is no school swimsuit option.

At least you're playing the VN. It's one of the few games that actually stimulates your inner child programmer.

EDIT: Innocent Bullet is the absolute most 'standard' Visual Novel I've ever seen. It has great graphics and even great music, but I've never seen a story - no, actually, I think it's more like a freaking essay - following a format to such an unbelievable point. This is by far the most mediocre storyline I've ever seen in 2013 and completely wasted the potential its initial setting and background had provided. Holy fuck disappointing. The only redeeming quality would be that it's only about 1.7GB size, so I can freaking uninstall it once I've confirmed that the 'true' route was about as shitty as you could imagine it to be.

I hate Analogue: A Hate Story because the best thing about this short story was that it presented moral ambiguity better than most plotlines will ever hope to achieve and accomplished this through making me hate every charming character that ever existed (or ceased to exist) on the Mugunghwa (the ship where the story take place), including the protagonist. This was great since too many VNs nod towards heroines being flawless in the end when consistently flawed characters are always more interesting. The command prompt style gameplay was good because the game gave you a general sense of what you should aim for but left you to figure out the rest yourself. Probably the worst of the game was that *Mute was fairly transparent because she rarely interacted with the protagonist, she will have more dominance in the sequel but I would still hate both heroines equally.

Wow, I've seen a lot of cases where people fell victim for A:HA's manipulations, but this is the first time I found a REAL victim.

*celebrates*

EDIT: Make no mistake that I love the game a hell lot.

I should become a victim more often.

I spent six hours thinking about why I liked this game and I realized it was because everyone was an asshole.

I can appreciate nice assholes (this is not a Haiku Fakku was being weird at the time)

I... I'm back and I've completed all of Little Busters. Little did I realize how much weight your words carried. The tears, they just sort of came out of no where. It really, truly was a piece of work to behold. I had my suspicions on how the story was going to turn out, but when it actually came around, it hit like a truck. KEY always seems to make me spontaneously burst into tears at least once per VN.

Needless to say. Little Busters was a glorious read. I'll be working on Hoshizora no Memoria next but... maybe in a week I'll start. I need time to digest the awesomeness that I've just finished.

That's a great idea; letting yourself cool down for a bit. Otherwise the soul crushing disappointment from reading accidentally an absurdly inferior VN next would destroy you.