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Taste is always subjective. I may love something that others think is trash and vice versa, and my scores would reflect that. I, for example, don't like G-senjou no Maou and gave it a 7, while many consider it a masterpiece. Of course, if there are hundreds of low scores, something is not right with that game - but even that is not certain, as low scores can be due to anything, a poor story, bad characters, it being LGBT [yeah, there are people who would give low scores just because of that], etc. I think the best way to find out if a VN is good is by reading it yourself, at least the beginning. If that's not possible, look for in depth reviews where the author justifies their scores. What I also do is to see who is the author of the VN and if I like what they write.

VNs sometimes get criticized for their overuse of the ellipse (…). And I suppose I'll start my defense of the use of ellipses in VNs, by extending an olive branch. VNs do misuse the ellipse to an astounding degree, and I have an interesting little anecdote demonstrating this point. In college, me and some friends decided to spend a Friday night getting drunk and reading the worst VNs we could find. We stumbled upon Gender Bender DNA Twister Extreme. There is a LOT wrong with this VN, but a glaringly consistent detail of bad writing we all noticed was the excessive use of ellipses. After we all collectively noticed and pointed out how often ellipses were being used, we decided to start counting every instance of an ellipse we spotted. Keep in mind, they had already been used plenty before we even started to count. Before we even reached a total playtime of 1 hour, we counted over 100 uses of ellipses, and gave up counting after that. I share this anecdote for two reasons. Firstly, as a petty example that Gender Bender DNA Twister Extreme is horrible and I almost want to say it has no right to exist. And secondly that overall I am in agreement that ellipses do get misused often in VNs. So I am not entirely attacking this point of criticism, but I do think that many who do champion this specific criticism of VN writing miss one very important function that the ellipses achieves in VN writing, that it can't achieve in traditional print. The written word as it is presented in VNs is transient. With each click you typically receive one line at a time. And after a certain point all the lines disappear and you are greeted with fresh words from the top of the screen if NVL, or the top of the dialogue box if ADV. Furthermore often (though not always), sentences aren't displayed whole at once. But rather they get displayed in a sort of typewriter effect. This means that regardless of whether the narrative is in past tense or present tense, the occurrence of the text and the story to the reader will always be in the present. Character dialogue, internal monologues, narrative descriptions, it is all being presented to us in real time. A book on the other hand has everything written out and open to display. You can scan the whole page as well as the next page, and you have equal access to every page of the book at any given time. Want to skip to the ending? Well the medium can't stop you. This is not true of VNs. You can fast-forward, but you can't just skip to the end. The only way you can typically access specific parts of a VN is by creating a save point and therefore being able to load it up whenever you want. But you only have that option for everything you already read, you can't just pick and load sections you haven't experienced yet. Because for all intense and purposes, that's in the future. It hasn't happened yet. In other words, there is a sense of time in how the narrative of a VN gets expressed. Well in VNs, the ellipse can be used to demarcate time and expression. In this way, VNs can literally show the passage of time, without having to tell it. And I always thought the golden rule of writing was “show don't tell”, in this function the ellipse is being used optimally to show and not tell. Here is an example of how I would write a certain passage if I were writing it for a book/short-story, and then I will proceed to rewrite it for a VN. Novel/Short-story: “I don't know about that,” she briefly paused while biting her lip, “you sure it will be okay?” Visual Novel coded in Renpy: “I don't know about that...{w=1.5} you sure it will be okay?” The {w=1.5} is a wait command in Renpy that pauses the text for 1.5 seconds before resuming the rest of the line. Without having to tell the reader “she briefly paused”, we literally showed the pause by manipulating the speed in which the text gets displayed. The ellipse helps signal to the reader that the character is hesitating to express her thoughts, while the {w=1.5} command is running in the background. Now if the detail of “biting her lip” is also important to you. You would have to script things slightly differently, but you could make it that after the ellipse her sprite changes and bites her lip and you hold on that image for 1.5 seconds, before transitioning back to her previous expression and continue the text. So now you not only showed her hesitation and the gap in time it took for her to finish her thought, but you also showed her expression change. This is a way you can “show and not tell” with VNs that you could never achieve when writing for traditional print media.

A lot of things comes into play in rather hilarious ways when it comes to scores in vndb. The biggest divide is from TL readers and people who read JP. First the English readers. The highest scored vns are the ones that are tl'd and recommended to beginners. Beginners usually are easily impressed and give high ratings. As you read more and more, you tend to give lower scores and be more critical. So when you start to read more obscure titles, you'd give lower scores. You might or might not have scored the more obscure titles as a beginner if you read them early. Hard to say, as later on you choose things out of your normal reading range because you'd read everything else you wanted to read. Now to the Japanese readers. Although not universal, most people who for some reason decided it was a good idea to learn jp. Prbly has consumed so much weeb material they wanted more. So they usually are more picky or know very well what they enjoy. Moe loves will give 10/10 to moe stuff and wise versa for edgy or chuuni stuff. Or they might be more reading everything. Overall though I'd say they give lower scores averages. So basically. A low score title might be just low because the readers are more strict. Or it might just be bad. If someone has good taste and recommends it, usually it's the first. G-senjou was the first vn I read. Loved it at the time. Years later I tried reading it in JP. I found it enjoyable. But I didn't enjoy it nearly as much the 2nd time. As a afterthought. Afterwards I didn't bother changing my vndb score for the game. And I don't think many people do either. Even if their subjective taste change with time.

Gin'iro Haruka Route Order There is no route order, just do the routes in whatever order you like. Bethly Rose Daisley Aoi Hinata Nashiro Momiji Niimi Yuzuki Kisaragi Mizuha

Excellent list!