Zolnir Posts

Visual Novels. Don't exactly remember, but probably totaled at least more than 24 hours since I could spend days with minimal amounts of sleep (2~3 hours per day) reading some extremely interesting ones like MLA, Witch of the Holy Night, etc. Daybreaks are beautiful.

They're probably considering the fact that 1) With BC's passive made unique some people might rush BC+LW, and hence concluding that the total APen is still too high that building Armor like in the past remains unviable and people are forced to go Health builds. Riot wants a balance between the 2 styles of defense.

Akiakane, known for her song Flashback.

Nasi Goreng? They make that every day in my uni's canteen lol...

I remember Akatsuki no Goei as the VN that ended far too abruptly, and never gave proper closure to the one girl who looks like the true heroine. Suffice to say, I never played anything that comes out of the VN again (and could not understood how did it ever gotten a fandisk). Though that is just my opinion.

... Are you serious? 200+ games to learn something as basic as that?

Lol. I'm at the point that I'm scavenging Flash games Visual Novel/RPG/good-ol-SimGirls to pass time. I didn't expect the symptoms to hit so hard after a week hiatus to do work. >_>

Finished Alicetale. Storyline's kinda generic, but it has potential with interesting minor characters and the way it puts effort in developing each of the character (except the protagonist I guess, generic I-want-to-protect-everyone dude). Hinted a sequel.

God so bored these days.

Just finished playing 操心術∞.

So first, I skipped most of the sex scenes because that's not what I'm interested at. The prologue of the story intrigued me greatly, and I decided after finishing the 1st route that the other scenes would most likely consist of just many pointless sex scenes.

I can't believe how right I was. Ever since I've downloaded 電波の奴隷 by chance, also made by the company Studio 邪恋, I've got a feeling that they've nailed the mind control thing beautifully. And now with their latest VN released I can easily tell you that YES, MY GOD, I NEVER THOUGHT A PURE-H VN CAN BE SO GOOD WITH THEIR PLOTS.

So basically, 操心術 is a series that spanned about 5 VNs long including Plus, 操心術2, 操心術3 and the latest 操心術∞, and finally 操心術 Rei 0. If you're just reading any one out of the old games, you normally would not notice a thing that there's anything amiss from the story.

But as you pick up the next title, you would start to notice something strange. More accurately, you would notice that a certain purple colored hair woman named Rei ALWAYS shows up. Her last name maybe something else, but her first name is always REI.

The next not so noticeable one - she only has an active appearance, I think, in 操心術3 (This is also the only title in the entire series that actually ends with goodness of humanity, everything else is just one heck of a sex hell) called Ibuki, is a mysterious short haired, small-sized girl whose eyes seemed to see everything and know everything.

Btw, 操心術∞ explains everything that's happened so far throughout the series, so yeah, I think it's a good idea if you want to go through the previous games first before playing this last. Although no harm done honestly.

So basically, if you had read through the above explanation, I'm going to clarify that the entire series showcases the epic war between 2 mind controllers, REI and Ibuki. And while the True Ibuki is openly blatant about the fact that her dream and ambition is to mind control the entire world, REI oftens appears at the opposite side and would do anything to stop Ibuki in the name of justice.

Spoilers!:



Can't wait for the next 操心術 VN. The sex isn't even the point anymore, I just wanna see the 2 evil masterminds - actually I should say 3, but Ibuki's boyfriend, while as evil and naturally talented in Mind Control, has very little screen time so I don't care much about him - duke it out to see who will finally take over the entire world. Oh yeah.

The title screen is badass as hell, btw. After rushing through the VN I feel like a changed man myself. I mean, goddammit, when evil starts to feel NORMAL that means... I dunno. >_>

I might play 操心術 Rei 0 because it's very recent also, and the title alone speaks enough for itself. This is very likely the origin of Rei herself, and I'm very, very, very curious about the exact plot.

Apparently that one terror mission you playing has 24 Chryssalids if I remember correctly. Read it from some guy who had trouble winning Ironman Classic.

Finished playing Analogue: A Hate Story.

So first off, feelings. Obscenely good to be honest; it's been a long time since I read good English on Visual Novels, and this is definitely the breather I need from the usual Japanese language bombardments.

Story. So since I'm a Chinese and has watched a tonne of Hong Kong dramas with my family since birth, I'm pretty familiar with the concept of 'men are honored, women are abased'. All the same, this VN is definitely one heck of a emotional roller coaster to go through with almost surgical precision when presenting the intended moral values, furnished with beautiful writing. I'm long since past the point that I would enjoy ancient-Chinese-political drama, but this is surprisingly interesting - and fun - to read. This VN features Korean culture btw, so there is a difference.

A little bit of spoiler rambling, but the forever lost 'incident' that caused the degeneration of civilization in this VN very likely involves this singular point:



Character. Both the AI Hyun-Ae and Mute's personality are portrayed almost perfectly through the logs and their dialogues with the protagonist. While Hyun-Ae first look to be a mature twenty years plus woman form her outer appearance, it becomes increasingly obvious through her words, actions and the occasional ramblings of childish dreams that she's really just a poor, young girl. Very, very young.

Mute on the other hand, can be considered the 'pinnacle of modern woman' within the Munguhwa's society even though she's just AI. And considering that there are still so many shackles and misguided beliefs Mute has despite having a rather outward and rogue personality, it becomes painfully clear here that no one can escape the influence of one's environment. Still, she's definitely one of the most reasonable individual - well okay, there's only like one human and 2 AIs on the ship - even when we compare her to our current societies. Despite having misguided (actually I'm gonna avoid using this word from now on, because I can't help but feel like someday someone's gonna use the goddamn word against myself) beliefs, she was willing to listen to good reason, and can compromise her own feelings and admit that the right facts are indeed, right. Revenge doesn't cloud her. Anger doesn't cloud her. While Hyun-Ae is infinitely more cuter than Mute, it is impossible to deny Mute's boldness and intelligence. She is that amazing.

... Perhaps just reading through my 'more in-depth than usual' VN characterization you guys would realize that Analogue: A Hate Story writes about characters a lot better than most VNs did. And Christine Love did it with just logs and one-sided dialogues.

A little talk about the flaws of this Visual Novel, which really isn't much:

1) The endings can be a little petty when we consider everything that we've been through learning what happened in the star ship Munguhwa. There's no real epilogue beyond the short excerpt within the credits, and the difference between all 5 endings is no girl, get 1 girl who was friendzoned, get 1 lover girl, get another lover girl, get both lover girls. Well, yeah, a little bit petty in my opinion. Ending 5 was especially abrupt, but then again, you did 'cheat the system'. =3

2) It's actually a plus for me as a programmer, but apparently casual players find the console terminal very annoying to use. I mean, if you think THAT's hard to use, imagine what WE have to live though with REAL softwares... T_T

3) Some mistakes with the console terminal. When you access the power controls you'd realize that even though turning off certain subsystems should theoretically kill the protagonist, it doesn't happen.

... Well I think that's it. It's rare for me to run out of flaws to ramble about, which is definitely a pleasant surprise for me. I don't believe that 'the story's too short' justify as a flaw, although it can be for certain VNs. This is however, not one of them. Definitely worth its price, ESPECIALLY when Steam is on Autumn's Sales. =D

She's just flexible lol, don't think too much about it.

Hmm. I had meant to say that some readers who read at a fast pace would have problems with reading the VN, but I guess I did a poor job screening my reply. I apologize, I did not mean to sound like an elitist, it's just a personal opinion. I understand your points perfectly.

I'm actually sympathizing from the developer's side since I'm a programmer myself (half-baked though), and so it just doesn't sit too well with me when I feel like the developers efforts could potentially be wasted by something as simple as fast reading.

Again, just using me as an example, I have the tendency to double click every text so they would display quickly, or just set Text Speed options to maximum. So obviously if you follow strictly to the default options and wait for every line perfectly as if you're setting the VN to run on Auto Mode, the animation would run perfectly to display its maximum aesthetic experience. However, ultimately these type of readers are also just one side of the entire demography, as you said it yourself. There are also problems such as animation transitions might take too long and delay the usual text reading speed, etc etc.

Also, my opinion did not stem from just Witch Garden alone. Some time ago, The PS3 version trailer for the latest White Album VNs also showcased a similar animation effect, which although looked pretty cool for some players (especially those who are new to the genre, looking from the comments), was offputting because they look unnatural and too breast-bouncy. Though I personally have no qualms with that so I didn't post it here.

Simply treat all of my posts as an opinion stemming from a completely subjective point of view, because there's no way for me to ever be completely objective. Again, I'm sorry if my post offended someone.

The biggest problem I see from these animations would be exactly the animations themselves.

The developers are assuming that the users would want to see their characters to act more lifelike, and while that is definitely headed at the right direction, it ultimately does not fit the Visual Novel format.

The Problem: Fast readers would not waste time waiting until a character finishes speaking and animating. The moment I read and understood their conversation I would immediately clicked to the next text, and hence the majority of the animation would eventually go to waste.

This is true even if you're not a fast reader, and would prefer to watch all the animations until the character finishes speaking. As you read more into the Visual Novel you'll unconsciously start to cut corners in attempt to get to your main point of interest faster. So eventually you're going to get used to the animations and skip them anyway, thus rendering the objective of the animation far less effective.

One way to force the readers to fully experience the new animations is to lock the text speed like 999 Hour did unless its a second playthrough, and not allowing the readers to jump until the text/voice is done. This however is naturally going to turn off some VN readers (like me) because it's kinda not in our nature to read slowly, and considering that the theme of the VN is basically pure love in witch costume, we might not even pick it up at all.

As far as I can tell, right now Witch of the Holy Night by Type-Moon has the best grasp on implementing a Visual Novel and nearly perfected the combination of art and writing with their luxurious amount of CGs, accurate use of NVL modes when necessary and proper sprite motions. Also, Muv Luv Alternative features one of the absolutely best use of sprite motions and was immensely impressive in 'animating' battle scenes the way Animes will never be able to compete.

EDIT: And Daggerise, you CAN play in Window Mode. Just switch your to High Color 16-Bit.