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Jartse

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    Your Tips to Finishing VN's

    in Visual Novel Talk

    Posted

    Here are mine:

    1. don't read two at the same time

    2. do not look for your next vn until you are nearly finishing the current

    3. ctrl over h-scenes (unless plot related)

    4. take mini breaks, where there's a good spot like an intermission/end of chapter, stop, take a 2-3 min break, then back to it. Helps with going through slow SoL sections which tend to be written this way.

    5. Don't read at auto mode, voice acting is great during interesting spots but it really slow you down in reading during the uninteresting spots.

    6. Give yourself a mini goal especially after the intro if the vndb blurb is too vague (eg/ see a particular character smooching the protag, or try to predict how the story will play out) - sometimes i find myself enjoying the vn to the point where i didn't care about the original mini goal (theses I tend to give good scores on vndb)

    7. Most important of all, pick a vn you are interested in from the vndb blurb

    It's worked for me so far from my vndb listing so maybe I might be onto something here.

    Can you remember the first 5 VNs you ever played?

    in Visual Novel Talk

    Posted

    First 10 - it's quite easy since I keep the save games so I just look at the modify dates.

    - Planetarian (around 2007 - I don't think I know this is a VN back then)
    - Ever 17 (2010)
    - 999 (2010)
    - Remember 11 (2011)
    - Wanko to Kurasou (2011 - one route only before I dropped it)
    - Umineko (2011)
    - Umineko Chiru (2012)
    - Chaos;Head (2012)
    - Never7 (2013)
    - Steins;Gate (2013)

    If you count Ace Attorney as VNs - they would fill up #2 to #5 (1st to 4th game)

    What, one feature in some VN's like you'd like to see more commonly in VN's as a whole?

    in Visual Novel Talk

    Posted

    9 minutes ago, Dergonu said:

    * A timer that keeps track of the amount of time you have been reading for, so you can more easily get a proper estimate of how long it took you to read the game.

    Seconding this, the length indicator in vndb/egs is not always accurate - some of the Medium length VNs I've read in default auto mode definitely goes way higher than 30 hours.

    Flowchart is nice but sometimes you just don't want to be spoiled, maybe after you finish all the routes.

    What are you reading? Untranslated edition

    in Visual Novel Talk

    Posted

    Christmas/New Year holidays gave me extra time to read, recently finished Yurameku Kokoro ni Michita Sekai de, Kimi no Yume to Yokubou wa Kanau ka - longest non nukige name VN I've read so far.

    To those who wants to read this VN, be careful of spoilers - once you've been spoiled, a few routes are literally unplayable as it hinges on the fact that you have yet to work out what's going on. I also recommend the following route order for optimal enjoyment if you plan to play all the routes.

    Tomoe -> Tsukino -> Sumire/Konoha (just make sure these are read after the other two)

    From reading the blurb on vndb it sounds like a mystery-ge, and in a way it is during the common route, however once you get into the routes it feels more of a romance charage than a mystery-ge as it starts to explore their motivations in being there during the summer break with the protag, some with excessive slice of life aka SOL. Every mystery being revealed during the routes are well hinted during the common route, so for experienced mystery VN readers, you could work out the entire mystery before the first choice even pops up.

    The protagonist (Aoi) is as dull as any VN Protags goes, for those who hate a generic dull protagonist stay well away from this VN. He is emotionless throughout the entire game, the reasoning does get explained in one of the routes, but still... it's terrible.

    The common route is extremely well done in setting up the mystery and getting you all hyped up about the mystery and things going on. This bit also does a good job conveying each of the heroines' characteristics with a bit of SOL along the way (not too excessive here at all in my opinion). However the routes themselves don't really live up to the hype built up in the common route so if you're going into the routes expecting this quality, you will be disappointed.

    Tomoe path is a good starter route to the VN as it doesn't dive into the mystery too much. Tomoe herself in short is an excessive brocon borderlining yandere, gets jealous real quickly and jumps in between the protag and other heroines during their routes lol. Her route has a lot of SOL with the mystery elements of the island are shown in glimpses, so you never have a full picture of what's happening (which is why I recommend reading this first). By the end of her route I was a bit sick of her exccessive jealousy (it gets annoying) so I was happy to have that over and done with. For those who are reading and trying to solve the mystery, you can use this route to test your theory.

    Tsukino route is the one which dives into the main mystery behind the island and slowly slips you info about it as part of the SOL, eventually ending with the whole thing told to you flat out. Basically aside from revealing the mystery her route is empty of other drama so if you are like me and "accidentally" read one of the two latter routes, her route becomes extremely boring and dull to read. Her ending is just what you would expect once you know the truth.

    From here onward the next two routes becomes more of a charage than a mystery-ge, as in both routes the island's mystery is literally handed to you on a silver platter near the beginning and instead explore the so-what-now side. Konoha route is the one which goes into to this and has a very sweet ending (Catharsis is the word I think), her route resembles a moege route the most if you ignore the island mystery reveal part.

    Finally Sumire route is a bit different to Konoha. Bit spoilery to get into details but in short it goes through her background story, personally I was surprised by some of the plot reveals in this route. My complaint here is the fact that the latter part of her route including the ending feels a bit lackluster in that all the other heroines seems to have vanished in thin air (not literally, just the lack of interactions with them)

    Overall the game had interesting mystery set up from the common route with very minimal SOL, but the actual routes themselves suffer from not living up to the expectation built up in the common and instead is full of SOL and drama. I'm a bit of a sucker for sweet endings which melts your heart so I enjoyed Konoha route the most.

    What are you reading? Untranslated edition

    in Visual Novel Talk

    Posted

    Finished Baldr Bringer... in short, it's wasted potential due to bad execution, the player is rewarded with some plot too late.

    The game is very different to sky/heart where you don't actually follow a flowchart story of events happening to the Protag. Firstly a bit of a rant on the game mechanics. There will be some very minor spoilers here on how the game is structured but shouldn't ruin your experience should you end up playing this game.

    Spoiler

     

    Game mechanics wise instead of having the story flow onto the next event, in this game you pick from the main menu which event you want to see next. Events can be a mission battle to get closer to the heroine, move on in the main story, or just talking to the heroine.
    In each mission battle, you get dropped into an open area and you get to go roam around the area freely and kill enemies which pops up and attacks you. From there you move onto different mission objectives which can be going to this area and kill this boss/trigger the next event. After a few of those the mission is completed and you're bounced back onto the main menu to select the next mission.
    The game's also level based, each battle event has a level recommendation - you can pick from the menu selection what level the enemies will be at relative to the difficulty (+0,+2,+4 etc). Enemies drop restorative items along with weapons at the enemies level and you get more rarer items by playing a higher difficulty. As far as I can tell there's no death penalty aside from restarting the battle (not the entire mission), there are cases where the mobs will just be way too tough for your level so don't push too hard on that difficulty.
    From a weapon perspective, you basically equip a gun, a sub-weapon and a close range weapon. Just hold and fire, no more infinite comboing the mobs with different moves - though that won't do you any good in this game as you get swarmed with mobs most of the time.
    Main event progression is also quite predictable for the most part, once you've done a few missions you'll get the flow of what it's doing. The difficulty noticeably steps up around/after the 6th area and spikes a bit out of control (even on the easiest mode) after that, which means the player has to go back and replay some of the easier missions at higher difficulty just to level up and get better weapons, that or get better at the controls. Heroine progression is based on how often the heroine's weapon is used, while it sounds annoying I can assure you this is not the biggest issue at all later on.
    In addition to the above, with the open map - there's also hidden upgrades and secrets scattered around the different areas, some are upgrades and some are information capsules where you can read them from the main menu after picking them up.

    Now all that above doesn't sound too bad, but the mechanics themselves creates a few problems. First because you get to pick the next mission, there's really no way to flow the story fluently onto the next event, so with this mechanism instead you either get the story in pieces or none at all (hint: it's mostly the latter). Secondly, leveling. Leveling up sounds like a chore, though in reality its not too bad at all as you can just sit in a nice cosy spot in a high level mission and continue firing till you level up (takes minutes), what annoyed me the most around the leveling bit is the fact that you won't come out in one piece in the latter missions with recommended level weapons, I didn't feel comfortable with the mobs unless I had super-duper-rare-red weapons +2/+3 levels higher, but that poses another problem. To get those weapons you need to play a mission of a higher difficulty to begin with. Lastly, because the weapons you get early are so crap, you'll feel the need to mob but be very frustrated not being able to do it effectively, when the hoards of mobs fill the screen... you guessed it, lag! (I've found one of the cheap ways to get less lag is to turn the corpse count to the lowest possible in the settings, it's a lag-saver)

     

    That's all the game mechanics (rant) out of the way, here comes the more spoilerish area, plot, the problem with talking about the plot in this game is that it's quite spoilerish so I'll keep this as minor as possible.

    Spoiler

    From the beginning of the game, you can tell after meeting a few heroines that they're just managing their own areas in the Vertex as "disposers". Each of the 10 heroine is modeled off a person who existed in one of the past Baldr Games setting and is packed full of references to those games (I didn't play Sky Zero and Force so I missed lot of those references). You'll find that for each of the 10 heroine, there's 7 hearts and it fills up one for each event, with the first event normally describing which era/game she's from. Great it sounds like lots of story to go through here.... so I thought.

    Unfortunately the first event is as much backstory as you're going to get out of each heroine until the 6th event, where the story infodumps you with the heroine's events leading up to them somehow became a disposer in the Vertex, then followed by the Protag helping the heroine. Then followed by a H-scene for those who needed to know when the 18+ content starts. For those wondering, the 7th event is just a H-scene unlocking at level 20.

    Some of these events are actually quite emotionally touching and I feel for (most of) them. The downside is that you'll have to tough out the majority of the gameplay first as you need level 16 for each heroine before the 6th event unlocks.

    Following the main plot, eventually you'll read a point where the Protag meets with the antagonist in the Vertex and have a showdown with him. This is where the heroine routes split assuming you've seen the heroines 6th event. The heroine routes ends here with credit roll (PS you'll be presented with a list of which heroine you want to talk to at the beginning of this mission so it's pretty obvious)

    The 10 heroine endings themselves are quite separate from each other and also very very short (15mins max), as they serve as a supplement to their 6th event story and gives them a happy end. You can do them in any order or none at all.

    Now to the true ending for Eris (girl on the cover), to get this ending you have to have uncovered every dirty bit of secret around the areas and seen all the "other" information on the Vertex. This added like hours of pain to me as some of the hints available in game was way too vague and I succumbed to the need to look up a walkthrough online for a few of the secrets.

    Once you have done it all, I was in for a few hours of history and explanations (no battles yay!) with lots of infodumping about the Vertex, Baldr, disposers etc - most of it if you pay attention to the Vertex notes and the heroine routes you would have noticed what they're trying to do there - it's surprisingly dark, but it's missing all the highlights of the previous games with the world setting, the politics, the big wtf mystery reveals, the chunni moments, the dramas, the end of the world if we don't stop this thing etc.

    The game here expects you to know the history of the past Baldr games which I struggled with a bit but generally grasped most of the important points - this part is probably the most interesting plot-wise out of the entire game as it finally (sort of) explains the reasoning behind "the final chapter" sales pitch without going into spoiler territory. Can't say I've understood 100% of it as it seriously infodumps you assuming you're well versed in the Baldr games.

    After that part it's followed by the story closing and final boss which is more of a pushover (IMO) than Heart/Sky. The ending itself is not as satisfying as previous games.

     

    I rated this game 6/10 on VNDB (the true route was a little redeeming and some of the heroine routes aren't bad). Overall this game is really only for the die-hard Baldr fans to know why it's the final chapter having played all the previous games, but if you are a die-hard fan planning to play this, be prepared to be frustrated by the difference in gameplay and lack of plot for the first 10-20 hours, only to be rewarded with a few hours of real plot. Though the lack-of-high-school theme is definitely a break from the VN norm.

    Any ROM hackers?

    in Gaming Talk

    Posted

    Once was but now retired.

    I would first recommend finding an editor for the game if you want to play around and see what you can do - if your goal is just to make minor tweaks though (like making yourself invincible etc) having a cheat editor or memory editor will probably be all you need - most emulators come with those out of the box nowadays.

    Doing minor tweaks is the easy part, but when you need to get into full on level designs and assembly hacking to make yourself a complete new game based off the same engine, it gets hard - and extremely time consuming with all that extra testing - then once you release it to the public you get judged harshly on the quality of the work as everyone is expecting commercial quality.

    Questions about Dies Irae routes *spoilers* (Kei ending mainly)

    in Visual Novel Talk

    Posted

    Been a while since i read it, it's real hard to remember specifics when it comes to the end of that route.

    I would still recommend Kasumi route even if you've read Kei at the very least for the awesome battle scenes, there's also background to the other routes in hers - in some cases knowing what the bad guys are/capable of makes it more interesting.

    Kei's route ending is essentially an open ending. Technically they won because the ritual didn't complete and they retreated.

    Questions about Grisaia no Rakuen.

    in Visual Novel Talk

    Posted

    Without any spoilers, 18+ of Rakuen is not crucial to the main storyline. Unless they are censoring non H-scenes like naked CGs/sprites.

    I am assuming any naked sprites/CGs will be redrawn rather than having the content removed entirely or just have no visuals during those scenes.

    For Love of VNs: A List of Financially Independent protagonists

    in Recommendations

    Posted

    Looking at my own list:

    I honestly don't remember Rui Tomo's protag earning his own keep (was it part time?), might just be my bad memory there though. If you're counting part time then a lot more VNs will creep in (eg/ Comyu/Hatsuyuki)

    Pretty sure Protags from Baldr Sky and Heart earn(ed) their own keep from working if you're counting Muramasa, AstralAir as well - though AstralAir's protag is a bit on the spongy side.

    Owaru Sekai to Birthday technically... I'll let you decide on this one.

    And lastly Eustia, Caim does earn his own keep - but it might be too 'high fantasy'

    What are you reading? Untranslated edition

    in Visual Novel Talk

    Posted

    13 hours ago, Riku said:

    Well, in the end I couldn't wait this summer like I said in @Clephas' review of Suisei Ginka, and I started reading Ruitomo. I just finished Rui's route.

    To be honest, while it's not boring (I liked the banter of the characters), the story isn't really entertaining either. I know it's only the first route and it really begins to deliver with Iyo's route, but when I know I'll have to play Atori and Koyori's routes first which most people say are under the rest, I'm a little reticent to read them. Well, at least the dialogues are good.

    Now, about the reading difficulty, while I can understand what I read (Well, mostly), I'm sure I must have missed quite a number of between the lines meaning. Well, I guess that if I end up really liking the VN, it gives one more reason to re-read it once my Japanese is better.

     

    It was amusing to anticipate how/when Tomo gets busted in those routes.

    Everytime someone mentions Amatsutsumi the dual of them doing the こころん ほたるん gets stuck in my head - it's almost as bad as that frozen song.

    Recently finished Sakura no Uta - I was a bit surprised and disappointed as to how it ends, while its good and all, overall I find it too overrated looking that the overwhelming list of 10s on vndb (probably just rated from the last few chapters). Minor spoiler thoughts:

    Spoiler

    The VN work overall had varying quality issues (Like PicaPica) and things don't really pick up until the Shizuku route.

    Personally I find past story (Shizuku and IV routes) being the highlights of the vn and more interesting than the present story (Makoto/Rin/Common), where the reader is often left stranded because of a lack of the protags awareness of the past and the narration being completely misleading (even though they are suppose to be the protags thoughts)

    There's a glaring example of this right at the start of the vn with regards to the inheirtance.

     

    Help with Non Translated VN

    in Recommendations

    Posted

    Chiltrans in layman's terms is another version of VNR or ITH/ITHVNR+Translation Aggregator (TA in short), but it can just be used in place of TA - personally I run ITH/ITHVNR + Chiitrans as for some reason Chiitrans seems to parse the some words better than TA. The stay on top feature works for some games in full screen.

    TA should also be able do things such as google translate of a sentence or hook into Atlas (I've never gotten them to work/needed them to work) - that is if you are desperate to see what different translation engine translates the same text as.

    The easier way to think of text hooking translators is

    1. You first need something to extract the text from the game engine, once you have the text

    2. With the japanese text you'll need to either:

    2a. Throw it into a machine translator and see the Engrish output (eg/ google translate/Atlas) - very bad idea for most VNs as its generally gibberish.

    2b. Display it on screen with dictionary lookup on each word. As Japanese is not similar to English where one word is a word (eg/ みな means something different to say みなと even though they start with the same characters), there needs to be something to split the sentence into dictionary understandable words - that's where parsers such as JParser comes in.

    Never 7 all endings how?

    in Visual Novel Talk

    Posted

    Just checked my save game on this.

    The first one (from common) under spirited away is called "Afterwards..." - as for how to trigger it I'm not exactly sure as it's been a while, may have something to do with the test of courage and the people you pick there.

    The ending you're missing is the PSX Epilogue -  It can only be accessed through the shortcut menu, apparently included as a bonus from the translators. Source: https://tlwiki.org/index.php?title=Talk:Never_7

    Hope it helps!

    What are you reading? Untranslated edition

    in Visual Novel Talk

    Posted

    On 31/12/2016 at 2:18 PM, Zalor said:

    Currently reading Subarashiki Hibi. I just started It's My Own Invention. I thought Mamiya was a pretty cool and an interesting character from Down The Rabbit-Hole 2. I liked seeing this really timid kid snap

      Reveal hidden contents

    and become a cult leader.

    I'm liking his perspective so far. But I have a question. I really hate Tomosane Yuuki, and I know that we read the story from his perspective in Jabberwocky and Jabberwocky 2. I heard those 2 chapters are considered the best in the VN, but will I still enjoy them despite hating that bastard's guts. I just really hate hate hate hate bullies. I'm hooked on this VN and will read it regardless, but I am wondering if that will effect my opinion of those two chapters negatively. (Regardless, if they are well written I don't think that will effect my view much. I'm just kind of emotional right now and really sympathize with Mamiya, lol). 

    Keep reading, I found that my opinion changes after every chapter read. Personally I didn't like Mamiya after rabbit hole 2 but he turned out pretty good in the invention chapter.

    Just don't forget to read Tsui no sora 2 - get a walkthrough for it if you have trouble getting to it.

    What are you reading? Untranslated edition

    in Visual Novel Talk

    Posted

    Recently finished 装甲悪鬼村正 - really one of a kind VN which I've read so far (aside from it being probably the longest and hardest thing I've read), that average vndb rating doesn't lie!

    At first I was a bit concerned with all the relations with the other Nitroplus titles, but it turns out to be nothing major (aside from some hilarious scenes involving the protag).

    There are some minor nitpick/complaints about a couple of things though aside from the moral discussions/infodumping, the final route had a couple of what I could describe as epic battles which were skipped over along with some choices in places which required a bit of guessing.

    More specific examples/comments (major spoilers alert!):

    Spoiler

    I wanted to see Sayo vs Jouan in the final route, it kinda ended showing Sayo around in the true end so I'd imagine Jouan lost (though Kageaki did say to Chachamaru "I have a feeling I won't see him again"). They also sort of skipped over how Ichijou and Kanae stood against the silver star spawns along with the fight between Doushin and Hikaru.

    The choices in Revenge Volume during the Konatsu battles were... a little bit too hard to get right without a few guesses. The Shishiku battle choices were quite logical which I didn't pick up without actually thinking over it.

    The backstory of Yagenta/Ukyou/Ichihime was a little hard to grasp in chapter 2, good thing that didn't turned into an important element or maybe there's some dots I haven't connected there - that bit of infodumping (maybe just the way they spoke) was particular brutal on non native Japanese speakers along with Suzukawa's lectures in the first chapter/Sayo's voice impersonation in second chapter.

    In the Ichijou route, the very last scene before the credits roll with the final skill from Masamune was not explained very well (maybe it's just me not understanding the details again), from the Epilogue I figured out the result but I just didn't get what that final skill was.

    That cube puzzle in the final route was so random! Also it was strange to read the epilogue before the Akki route.

    Overall, awesome VN, there are some very unforgettable moments -  これは英雄の物語ではない.

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