Visual Novels

[Super Guido]

One of the upscalers for the Infinity Series uses pedophilic terminology. Why is this necessary?

Anyway I'm finally going to get to play Ever17, and not the apparently half-assed Steam release.

 

[Poop A Loop]

Now on to Heaven's Feel! I distinctly remember some of the more weird parts of that route from reading it on the LP Archive a decade ago but that's about all I remember so this'll be interesting.

Finally finished Heaven's Feel! I feel about the same as I did with UBW, but it was nice to wrap it all up. Fate's still my favorite route overall but Heaven's Feel did an interesting job explaining all the weirdness with the grail. I read online that Heaven's Feel is more like a "True Ending" to the entire game but I didn't get that feeling at all. It was still relatively conclusive in explaining and resolving stuff with the grail, but it still felt incomplete considering how some characters who didn't make it were treated. I dunno. Just personal preference I guess.

I expected to like Fate/Stay Night more, but it was still really good. Also, more games should have stuff like the Tiger Dojo.

Even though the writing for it was absolutely terrible and seems to exhibit the worst habits of the author/localizers with dumb vague circular prose, that little Realta Nua episode seems like it was a small way of recognizing that the Fate Route deserved a happier ending, which was really nice. Saber's still best girl.

 

[Thiletonomics]

Sentimental Graffiti will be getting a remake for PS5 and the Nintendo Switch.

The VNDB listings for the remakes did say that scenarios would be edited for "current sensibilities". So what would be the problematic content in the original that would need to be cut?

 

[Boiled Pizza]

Rewrite or went back to Summer Pockets or Umineko

Rewrite is a very entertaining VN. It has all kinds of feels in it and it had me smiling all the way through. It strays a bit from your typical Key VN, but I'd say that's a good thing in this case. Route quality varies a lot as some of them had different writers. The important routes were written mostly by Romeo Tanaka, and I enjoy his style a lot. The worst route was written by r07. I don't like his style at all.

Summer Pockets is more of normal Key and very enjoyable. Both have superb music.

As for Umineko... I didn't like it at all. It was dragged out (it's 25 hours of content stretched to 140-160 hours), full of nontent and about 20 characters that didn't even need to exist at all. It's pretentious, verbose and the ending is absolute trash. I enjoyed it up to chapter 4, but after that it all just started falling apart. I can't really explain why I dislike it so much without spoiling the entire thing, and even if I did I'd just spend hours typing it out and Umineko has already wasted too much of my time.

I guess a short explanation of why I dislike it could be summed up as "There is no way that is the answer. It can't be that stupid, can it? Oh man, it was." It's the only VN I actually regret reading. Dead Angle is a great track though.

As for recommendations, "The House In Fata Morgana" is on sale now, and it's my favorite piece of fiction of all time. I can't recommend it enough.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

The worst route was written by r07

The Lucia route was great. I like a good "everything goes catastrophically wrong" route, and even then it still was not so much of a downer. Worst route was Chihaya as the game suddenly became a Fate clone.

 

[ShitLurker]

Finished mask of Deciet. it's a 10 hour story stretched to 50 as far as I'm concerned. The end made me hate Nekone even more.

Started Mask of Truth and am a few hours in and it's miles better (I am VERY intrigued by the Maroro of wrath in the opening cutscene). Nekone hate has gone down a good bunch as well.

I can only presume that it will stick the landing due to all of the praise it gets, but the second game is ass and could have been stapled as the first quarter of Mask of Truth by triming the chaff ("let us get drunk, let us eat snacks, haku you so dumb *unfunny slapstick*" for 30 hours) and barely lost any of the weight. Hell, not seeing Nekone be a little shit for so long would have probable made me not start Mask of Truth with such a low opinion of her.

 

[WelperHelper99]

Witch on the Holy Night finally got its release date for the movie.

 

[Super Guido]

Finished Ever17. It was good, but the true ending was kind of dumb.

Spoiler

The way Takeshi died after he should have drowned was pretty fucked up, though. I'm sort of glad that part occurred at all because I was like "He swam that far down and still survived? That's horse shit."

I liked the big twist with Tsugumi and her children having a cry together.

 

[Boiled Pizza]

The Lucia route was great. I like a good "everything goes catastrophically wrong" route, and even then it still was not so much of a downer. Worst route was Chihaya as the game suddenly became a Fate clone.

The sudden turn of mood was good yeah, but I still think the other routes where everything goes catastrophically wrong do it better.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

The sudden turn of mood was good yeah, but I still think the other routes where everything goes catastrophically wrong do it better.

They all do a good job in not feeling repetitive, with the main character switching sides in the conflict.

A lot of VNs fail in having a true ending that requires seeing all the heroines endings, but not using those to build up the characters or the setting. In Summer Pockets for example all of the non main heroines end up being invalidated by a true end "twist" that exists for the sake of having a true end.