*sighs* more ladder-style complaints
For those of you familiar with my tendency to bitch and moan about this kind of story-structure, I don't really need to explain... but I'll do so anyway. The 'ladder-style' story structure is the style used in games such as G-senjou, Aiyoku no Eustia, and Sen no Hatou. While it does make it easy to fit in a 'true' path (the true path being main street) and breaking things down into 'arcs' makes for a more expansive story, that is at the cost of increasing irritation in a way that would never have come up in a kinetic novel (which all VNs using ladder-style should be).
What is that irritation? Meaningless heroine routes.
There are two types of heroine in a ladder-style VN. There is the true heroine and the 'fake' heroine. I'm not kidding... all heroines other than the true one are fakes, as are their paths, in most cases. Amatsutsumi was an exception, but it was a rare one, lol.
Now, in order to explain this, I'll outline how most of the games using this style tend to play out. There is a main story going on, both in the foreground and the background. In most cases, the background elements of the story that don't come out until you are in the true heroine's path preclude all possibility of the sub-heroines' paths actually existing in the context of the greater setting.
Another quality of these games is that the true heroine is almost always one of the least-interesting/attractive heroines in the group, both personality-wise and setting-wise. Airheads, ditzes, weak-willed victims, naive princesses, and overconfident self-proclaimed geniuses with an impenetrable belief in their own correctness (if you haven't figured it out Eutia>Hatou>G-senjou)... the list goes on, but you get the picture (again, Amatsutsumi is the exception rather than the rule). I honestly have no idea of why all these companies that choose to use this style do it this way...
Now, frequently the true path itself has excellent storytelling with round antagonists and protagonists whose value as a character far outweighs the weakness of the true heroine... but this brings up another issue. This issue is: the other heroines. The elements of the setting, the personality and objectives of the antagonists, and even the personality of the protagonist sometimes render all other heroine paths as literally impossible in most cases. If you don't mind SPOILERS for Eustia and Sen no Hatou, I'll give you some examples below.
In Eustia, the world is dying and Eustia herself is the only element that might allow for humanity's survival on that floating island city. Unfortunately, without Caim at her side, alone... the chances are about 100% that she would give up long before she managed to reach her full potential. In Sen no Hatou, the antagonist of the piece is pretty much a sorcerous mechanism, implacable and unstoppable. There is no possible element in the other heroine paths that might cause him to fail in his pursuit of the suffering and destruction of the main characters.
Now, as to why that's a problem... I know it is nitpicking... but when I empathize with a heroine, fall in love with her by proxy, and see her off to a happy ending, there is nothing that can possibly drive me more insane with rage than the 'true' ending of the heroine path completely invalidating the possibility of that small happiness even occurring. Eustia's best heroines are all 'fake' heroines, the same goes for G-senjou and Sen no Hatou as well. The Leyline trilogy also suffers from this particular issue.
So do you understand now why I hate this type of VN structure? I have good reason to despise it. I still respect the makers of Namima no Kuni no Faust for choosing to make the game kinetic and just add the other heroines 'endings' as 'what if' scenarios in the extras far more than I will ever respect the makers of the games I mentioned above.
This isn't even mentioning that, by having heroine paths split off earlier, you lose a great deal of the story meant to develop the characters in the first place.
Why did I bring this up again...? Because, for the fourth time this year, I've come across a VN that I was interested in that uses this never-to-be-sufficiently-damned story structure, Sora no Tsukurikata. Damn all non-charage makers who follow fads like this particular one to hell, I say.
- Darklord Rooke and RedK
- 2
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