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I had someone ask me why I consider some VN battle scenes to be good and others to be low quality just the other day, and I thought I would address this here. First, I should state that while visuals definitely have an effect on the quality of a battle scene, the quality of visuals is less than 15% of the reasons why I pick one VN's battle scenes over another's. The considerations when it comes to visuals are raw quality (artist skill, detail, etc), number of combat-related CGs and sprites, and the quality of the visual effects. More important (roughly 25% of the whole) is music and sound effects. It is quite possible to turn a VN whose visuals are mediocre and writing are good into a masterpiece based solely on how the BGMs and sound effects are used. I've seen it happen (Devils Devel Concept being a prime example), and I can honestly say that this aspect almost always trumps visuals when it comes to determining the quality of a given battle scene. Another 25% comes from context and presentation. I split this evenly because these two factors tend to be inter-dependent in battle scenes. Without the context, you can't tell whether you should care, and presentation (the art of bringing writing, sound, and visuals together to create a collaborative effect on the reader) quality can dramatically alter how you see the battle. The last 35% is all writing. My prejudice would have put it at 50%, but realistically, in a VN, writing is at the very least 35% of what determines the quality of a battle scene. The very simple reason is that making a battle scene interesting requires an eye for detail, for stringing descriptions of character actions, emotions, and words into a cohesive whole. There are plenty of writers outside of the VN industry who only do this well and literally are incapable of 'peaceful writing'. That is because what is demanded of writing during a battle scene is fundamentally different from what is demanded outside of battle scenes. To be blunt, most VN writers have no idea of how to write a battle scene, which is why the good ones stand out so much. 'Tom blasted magic sword at Dave, Dave took it on his shield with a grunt' is about as far as it goes with most VN battle scenes... and that is fairly horrid, since there is no sense of what is actually going on in that exchange. It isn't uncommon for VN makers with unskilled writers to simply substitute visual and sound effects for descriptions of the battle simply because the writer can only handle dialogue and minimal or copy-paste action lines. However, this results in amazingly boring scenes, since there is usually almost no variation in visual or sound effects from scene to scene, action to action. This means that they are essentially using a square block for a round peg. I don't know how many third-rate battle scenes I've fallen asleep to over the years... Anyway, ideally, a good battle scene should have all the elements come together in one cohesive whole. However, in practice, that almost never happens. About the only companies that have ever managed to do that consistently are Nitroplus, Light, and Propeller... and we all know what happened to Propeller and (more recently) Light.

Hmmm, since I technically finished it in 2019 I'd say Tokyo Babel. It had some good characters and some genuinely interesting ideas and themes but I felt it really fell short of putting forth a cohesive and likable narrative. To me I think that one of the major issues lies with just how bland and utterly boring the protag is. Everything about him was just vacuous and empty and it made the awkward and clumsy attempts at romance(or what little their was) even worse because I could never see how anyone could have a connection with him. Like I know that he's supposed to be stoic and all but that's no excuse for giving him the personality of a chunk of concrete. I wished they had kept Sorami as the protag instead of relegating her as just a major character. I really feel like this was a missed opportunity to make this vn an otome considering there were a lot of interesting male characters on display. Also, while the setting and lore of the story was pretty interesting I think it again fell short. Making it a school setting was a bizarre and frankly stupid choice because of just how little they actually addressed that. Like, I get that in Japanese media literally everything has to be set in a high school or else Japan will sink into the sea, but I hoped for something a little different. I also guess that it kind of makes sense that purgatory would be set in a high school. Something that I also was detrimental to Babel was just the shear amount of fucking info dumps this story has. The story reads like some dude failed to finish his thesis on Jewish and Christian mythology and just decided to cram all that information into the plot of this vn instead. Like, holy shit there are just a constant torrent of names and places that the vn just assumes that we are supposed to be familiar with. Even with my relative grasp on mythology and such I still had to google plenty of these damn names. It made me wonder how the Japanese audience made due with this since most of this shit had to be completely foreign to them. It's like Fate Stay Night on the most aggressive steroids. Still another thing that held the vn back was the fights themselves. They started off interesting but they soon wore off their welcome in that they never seemed to fucking know when to end. They went on forever. Every fight had to be as drawn out and laborious as possible. Oh and let's not forget about all that constant fucking screaming that went on during the battles. was so fucking annoying dude whenever he showed up on screen. Anyway, I didn't like it all that much and basically it's only saving grace was how great a character Lilith was. Without her, I wouldn't've finished playing it. Chaos;Head was also pretty disappointing overall thanks to how utterly loathsome I found the protag to be, like I get that's part of how he's designed but it still kept me from giving a shit about him. I also found the mystery to be not all that interesting and I don't really remember most of it anyway. I was supposed to have played this game since 2013 or so but could never get it to run. It wasn't really worth that wait.

So, I guess I'll also pick my favorites from last year. Though I don't really care if it was released last year, I'll just choose from the ones I played. Best story VN: I think Fata morgana no Yakata from Novectacle is a clear winner here. There was certainly nothing else that came close to this one in terms of story telling. But my runner-up is surprisingly an OELVN, Heart of the Woods from Studio Élan. I think that's the way to go for the English VN scene. Best moege: Shin Koihime † Musou -Kakumei- Son Go no Ketsumyaku from BaseSon gets first place for me. I was actually pretty close to pick that in the story VN section due to its strong plot, but in general I see the Koihime franchise still as a moege series because of the all-girls cast and the emphasis on fan-service. And Haruru Minamo ni! from Clochette is my runner-up in this section. I played both titles in Japanese, but if I would have to pick an English favorite as well, I'd probably choose the two first 9 -Nine- episodes from Palette. Best nukige: (NSFW) So Mamagoto ~Mama to Naisho no Ecchi Shimasho~ from Atelier Kaguya Team Bare & Bunny gets first place from me. And I decided to pick Bishoujo Mangekyou -Norowareshi Densetsu no Shoujo- despite its loli heroine for second place, because of its surprisingly strong emotional impact. It's probably the only nukige I've read where I had tears in my eyes at the end. And Kyonyuu Fantasy Gaiden gets an honorable mention from me for its surprisingly strong plot. Best otome: Ah and I almost forgot, Hakuouki ~Shinsengumi Kitan~ gets first place for me for otome, followed by Nightshade. Actually, both would have been strong contenders in the story section as well.

So, as we're still in the time of yearly recollections and were talking recently about VNs we liked the most, what are the titles that crushed your hopes and dreams? Which ones were not plain bad, but rather fell short of your's and everyone else's expectations, to the point of turning your hearts into an emotionless void? For me, the answer is pretty simple: Crystalline and (sorry @ds-sans :() Chemically Bonded. Both games were really well-produced visually and had good sound designs, but absolutely fell apart when it goes to telling a story. The main difference between them is that while Crystalline was absolutely devoid of meaningful plot and tension, Chemically Bonded made a few bizarre missteps with its writing and structure of the story, breaking the flow of the romance, particularly in the tsundere heroine's route. Neither were anywhere close to being among worst EVNs of the year, but definitely had most wasted potential. So, what are your guys' greatest regrets of 2019 in VN form? :3

Wow, that second video is really something Looks like I have another singer to follow. Indeed, very nice voice, and songs too. That violin solo at the beginning was pretty impressive as well.

https://youtu.be/nSuAD3Nsjhw?t=16

So, it looks I can never get enough of Leo Ieiri's voice. This song is pretty cool too... Just why it's not on Spotify? Edit: And something a bit more serious. :3

that sakura <insert word here> that is released on 2019

My biggest disappointment recently was definitely Lamunation(TL released in 2019), even though I read it this year. From the titles I read in 2019, the most disappointing one was Sisters ~Natsu no Saigo no Hi~ I think I finally never got to write my impressions in "What are you playing" thread, so might write here as well It has pretty good production values, being almost fully animated. Also, the story had the potential for being nice nakige, but developers decided that the best use for all those animations would be to turn that "na" into "nu" So the story got overwhelmed with numerous long h-scenes. Overally game isn't bad, I enjoyed it (and it's pretty short), but it screams "wasted potential!" - after some of the story reveals my expectations were much higher, thus disappointment. On the more positive note - except for few lines when we hear news from TV, it's easy enough that I could read it without the text hooking

Ah, good choice here! I love the characters in this series. Surprisingly good music too. I watched an episode of this at my anime club; it's hilarious. Good to see it managed to keep things going until the end. Ooh, that reminds me, I need to add the movie to my list. It was so nice being able to watch that in theaters. And yeah, definitely a good ending here (although part of me wishes he ended up with Koga). Huh, you don't see very many comedies with satisfying endings these days. How was that?

To Heart 2 (duh)

Okay it looks like I missed a few, and some just happened to finish recently, or I only recently watched them to move them to my list. The good news is there are quite a few to add to the list. Here's what I came up with. A place further than the universe. Angelic Layer Assassination Classroom (The) Disastrous Life of Saiki K. Hanasaku Iroha Hi Score Girl New Game! Nodame Cantabile O Maidens in Your Savage Season Rascal Does Not Dream of Bunny Girl Senpai Re:CREATORS Sakura quest Ushio & Tora Valkyrie Drive: Mermaid WWW.WAGNARIA!!

This one is super spoilery, so only open if you won't play it blind under any circumstances and need that info to decide.