My experience with Gameplay VNs
Entry posted by Clephas
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These are just a few thoughts that I've had after experiencing various gameplay VNs over the years.
First, understand that I see VNs as reading material (in the same vein as manga but with the addition of voice, some animation, and detailed narration) first and games second. Second, the type of gameplay most likely to be fused to a VN (strategy or turn-based rpg) are ones I played for well over a decade before I first encountered VNs, so I have at least some qualifications to evaluate them.
First, for the gameplay... no matter how you express it, the average VN gameplay is several levels below the average console strategy game, srpg, or jrpg in terms of quality and design. Some of the best of the type - such as the Ikusa Megami series - just barely reach the same level as stuff released before the turn of the century as far as those two aspects go.
Second, balance... in a VN hybrid, having a good balance between the story and gameplay is vital. In other words, the grinding needs to be minimalized and difficulty should be adjustable. VN hybrids without adjustable difficulty levels (with an easy version that really is easy) tend to result in a VN where the story is told in snippets between long stretches of grindy gameplay (Softhouse Chara's games tend to have this flaw in excess).
Third is feature creep... a lot of hybrids have weird gameplay features that make the game confusing without really adding anything enjoyable to the game. An example of this is the recruitment system from the 'breeder' Venus Blood games. To be blunt, this game mechanic, while fitting in with the atmosphere in the story, made the games unnecessarily complicated, and not in a good way.
Fourth... story pacing. A lot of hybrids have horrible pacing. In particular, many of them start out really well, grasping the reader/player with a dramatic prologue or first few chapters... then suddenly become a complete slog or grind in the mid-game. To be honest, the most egregious offender in this case are strategy-conquest VNs, where the story won't progress significantly until you've achieved an artificial goal, like conquest of a certain region. Generally speaking, most strategy-conquest VNs (such as Sengoku Rance or Madou Koukaku) start out really well, with an interesting beginning to the story... and suddenly become devoid of story for about thirty hours if you don't act in exactly the right way. The Sengoku Hime and Sangoku Hime series are classic examples of this. Both series tend to have first-rate beginnings, but the story gets put to the wayside pretty early in the game. As a result, you essentially get stuck playing a sub-par strategy game for ten to fifteen hours before you manage to restart the plot. This is tiring and boring, to say the least.
My conclusion? Generally speaking, VN hybrids can be good, but that is only if the VN aspects don't become an adjunct for the third-rate gameplay that tends to be tacked onto them.
- Makudomi, Zalor, ChaosRaven and 3 others
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