fun2novel

Can you explain a bit more in detail what you mean?

I think it's pretty much obvious that a story is what makes or breaks a visual novel. Pretty graphics, or your favorite seiyuu can only get you so far. Without a good compelling story with interesting plot and characters it's probably safe to say you're not going to keep reading it to the end. At least not all the routes. So it all falls on the writers to keep the reader interested in their VNs. Unfortunately the writing craft is easy to understand but hard to master and combine that with the fact that each reader has their own individual tastes in the kind of stories they like to read, the pressure on the write gets quite heavy. Share what are some writers that you dislike, hate, have a certain pet peeve with or just plain don't like his or her stories. This is not a place to cuss and hate a particular writer so please keep the discussion fair and intelligent. No flame/hate wars. Also, please avoid spoilers. Looseboy Credited - A Profile, Sharin no Kuni, G-Senjou no Maou Authored some of the most adored visual novels by western fans in history. You'll probably die before you finish counting on how many top 10 lists G-Senojou climbs to No.1. Both SnK and G-Senjou quickly became the must visual novels to read for any vn fan. There is no counting how much these two are praised. But this is where my problem with Looseboy comes into surface. It's kind of hard to explain but basically I can't stand his style. Every scene overstays its welcome, every dialogue feels like he's trying to buy time to make the story longer. It takes too long to get to the point. I know, visual novels are long, and they take a long time to set things up, I'm not a newbie to visual novels but Looseboy just rubs me the wrong way. It's too bad really because he can write some great characters and G-Senjoy has an awesome cast. It's just that he is in desperate need of an editor. I could not finish SnK and G-Senjou and I played them almost to the end, but I could not finish them. Maybe some day I'll give them another chance but I never want to reading anything else by this guy. Hiroyuki Kanno Credited - Desire, Eve: Burst Error, Yu-No, Exodus Guilty The late Kanno is one of the most beloved and respected visual novel writers in Japan to date. Each of his stories has some kind interesting and unique approach to storytelling, philosophy and religious overtones. At a time where most visual novels where nothing more than a fapping material Kanno wrote VNs that have a strong focus on a story. The thing is that coming up with great ideas and actually writing a good story with those ideas are entirely different things. Writing craft is not easy to master no matter how creative you are. That is the main problem with Kanno, awesome ideas plagued by problems. Desire's main selling point was that it had two protagonists that you can choose and play the story for that character's perspective. After finishing that you can choose the other character and play the story from his perspective. But Desire never uses this idea to the best of it's abilities, it never really takes advantage of it. So you end up with two stories that cross very little with each other that they might as well have been different stories entirely. What's more Desire wants to be a sci-fi story but since it had to also be hentai we end up with an unlikeable protagonist who throughout the story gets to sleep with every woman he meets. There is basically no sci-fi story here, its' just you wandering about and having fun times. Once in a while the story will stop to give some characters some depth or to make the story more interesting but in the end it's just a waste of time. There are a few surprises if you finish both stories but I'll leave that to those who are interested in playing this vn. Eve: Burst Error quickly became one of C's Ware's best selling visual novels of all time. Its main selling point is that you play the story from two perspectives but unlike Desire where you just choose and side and read the story from that character's perspective, this time to finish the game you have to change between the two characters all the time. So you're seeing the story from two perspectives at the same time. You gotta admit this is an awesome idea! Kanno has a very carefully plotted mystery story here and this time both characters influence each others progress. This creates an interesting dynamic and give a great chance to tell a thrilling story. To some extend it is a good story but just like Desire it's plagued with the usual abrupt dialogue scenes that sometimes don't connect from one scene to another. The other problem and it's not really the writers fault is the horrible game design. You are expected to make the same choices over and over without any kind of hint of what you are supposed to do next or if what you're doing has any kind of result on advancing in the game. Unfortunately Eve: Burst Error was such a hit that in desperate attempt to stay afloat C's Ware started churning more and more sequels for the Sega Saturn and the PSX and none of them were any good (according to what I hear.) Eve: Burst Error was also remade a few times including with fresh new graphical style and probably new script. There was the pc and ps2 remake (with pc having h-scenes) and another remake with another change in the graphical style for the PSP. Interesting fact, the last game in the series (not remake) was written by none other than Kotarou Uchikoshi, the man behind the Zero Escape series and the scenario writer on the infinity series. I also need to mention that due to some technical problems I was never able to finish Eve: Burst Error so this is not a review of the game. Exodus Guilty had another great idea. This time you are playing three characters through three different ages spanning a 1000 years of history between the ages. There are three chapters, past, present and future. One of the themes of this game is history and religion, how things change with times and how some things don't. It's a fascinating idea for a storytelling. One example is in the past chapter there is a puzzle you need to solve but if you go into the present and visit the same place and since the puzzle has been already solved a 1000 years ago you see the solution, then you go back to the past and solve the puzzle. How awesome is that? Well it happens maybe once through the story. And the story is nothing interesting either. Again Kanno just doesn't know what to do with his ideas and how to write interesting scenarios. The past chapter starts very interestingly with a story about a man rebelling against the gods but quickly turns into a typical jrpg story and a really cliche one at that, complete with the 4 elements and making friends on the way to adventure. The present chapter is just plain not interesting about some young guy who is a treasure hunter and he has the swag so certain women love him and others just want him. The future chapter... that's it I stopped playing this game at this point, it's basically a post apocalyptic wasteland and I had better things to do than keep reading this. In conclusion, Kanno deserves all the greatest respects and respect he gets and maybe I'm just not the person for whom his stories are written for. It's not doubt that he influenced quite a few well known Japanes visual novels. The Multi-Sight Adventure system was used in one of the most popular visual novels in Japan Machi which has influenced in some way Remember11 (if you go by some people who say this is what the main man behind the Infinity series says) although Remember11 uses the Desire's technique than E:BE's system. So share what's your pet peeves with some writers, or which ones you just can't stand.

Clephas when are you going to play http://vndb.org/v14069 ? It's been out for a while now.

Tears to Tiara was a good game but the story cut short too soon. It had a wonderful presentation too. But the story, couldn't they invested a little more into it instead of all these h-scenes???? I was so disappointed by (the story in) Tears to Tiara that I got turned off from trying Utawarerumono for good. People keep saying how good it is so I don't know, maybe I should play it.

SINCLIENT Snow Sakura 12Riven Soul Link (Ultimate) Scarlett Edelweiss Baka Moe Chuning Lover Eve New Generation X Ore no Tsure wa Hito de nashi all don't get the love they deserve, lol.

The best this year for me were I/O and Root Double. The only ones I actually finished so far this year.

Clephas, is Eien no Ikusa Hime contains a complete story of Zero or a summary of it? Are the characters voiced?

To answer this thread's question: Yes it is!

Hey, never say never. It is actually something I would love to see happening there are so many console exclusives out there

What does it remind you of?

Oh yeah S;G is very good. For me personally it's one of the best but not up there with the Infinity series.

I mean when they change scenes they usually would show a date. Some games show the actual time too like I/O for example. There is usually so much going on in these stories that I can't even bother to remember time and date, lol.

Do you guys ever pay attention to the date and time stamps when they appear?

Yeah, Never7 is the complete version of Infinity. Maybe the prime numbers have something to do with Infinity?

Actually no need to worry. While there are one or two mysteries left for the sequels, 12Riven is pretty complete. So you can relax, they aren't gonna pull a Remember11 on you, lol.

Well, all the numbers in the Infinity series are prime numbers. But the choice of these numbers seems to be random. Of course 12 is not a prime number but this is a new series.

12Riven is the first in the planned trilogy known as the Integral trilody. But 12Riven didn't sell well so they cancelled it completely and instead they released the crap that was Code_18 which was supposed to be the next game in the Infinity series. Poor Uchikoshi, he just can't finish any of his trilogies "sexual comedy" is that what he is working on right now? It's not really his style but who knows, lol. But I can't wait to see what's this vn is going to be.

It will be worth it to wait for these games I guarantee you that. And yeah, I wold love to see ZE3 come out. I would like to see the 12Riven trilogy as well but alas it seems like it will never come true. Sad, so sad. Btw, you guys heard about Uchikoshi's new game?

Too bad we will never know what it all really means, :/

I am so tired of this discussion. Games can tell stories. Dark Souls doesn't tell a story, it's just a collection of a few details here and there. This is NOT a story and it is NOT revolutionary in any way. Super Metroid did a better job at telling a story and it was released over 10 years ago. Complaining how cutscenes break 'immersion' is not the way to go. Games have an infinite number of ways they can tell a story. It is all about the kind of experience you are looking for. Uncharted would not be the same with it didn't have a story, Metal Gear would not be the same if it didn't have the cutscenes, Indigo Prophecy, Heavy Rain and Beyond Two Souls would not be the same had their design been approached as a standard videogame, heck even Bioshock will not be the same experience if it wasn't for story and cutscenes. If you don't like cutscenes and story in game? Fine, this doesn't mean that everyone else feels the same. Most people will agree that the current way of putting notes for the player to find throughout the environment is not a good way to tell a story. In fact I don't even bother with searching for notes anymore, I just don't care about it, if you want to tell a story then tell a story don't force the player to read all these small pieces.

It's really hard to say if Secret Game has the same style as these other games. One thing I do know, Nakazawa got the idea for a suspense story while working on Secret Game. Actually while reading Killer Queen (as a reference for the remake) and this is how the idea for Root A in Root Double came to be.

Actually there are 4 versions at least. Killer Queen - the original, made by a doujin group before they formed a company Secret Game: Killer Queen - a remake of Killer Queen, made by Regista (the same company who did I/O and Root Double.) I don't know how much Nakazawa was actually involved in it. Secret Game: 2nd Stange - the next game in the series, was too rushed and thus pretty much unfinished. Rebellions: Secret Game - a remake of Secret Game: 2nd Stage, expands on the story by basically adding and rewriting about 80% of the original (they added a few more routes too). Was written by the Root Double team. Yeah it has a similar premise as the Zero Escape series. Are these games any good? Maybe, who knows, lol.

Yeah, the translation won't be coming anytime soon. They should have just started translating and if the Xtend version comes out just adapt the translation to that version. The only route with any major changes is the last route so there is no reason to wait for Xtend port to be announced for the pc.

Nah, no way it will ever get an official English localization, but it's nice to dream I guess, lol.

And 12Riven was pretty good too