Dreamysyu

I believe, After should be played first.

I was going to write about Adabana after I finish it, which is going to take some time since I was going through it very slowly and currently I completely switched to Iwaihime. But, yeah, it's pretty good. Especially the art and the music. As for the story, it's interesting, but I'll judge it after I complete the whole game, I guess. As for Iwaihime, I'm currently at chapter 3, (yeah, I'm still slow) and it seems to be slowly getting better, even though the horror parts are still pretty disappointing. On the other hand, Ryukishi was always pretty good at writing character drama, so it could work in the end after the meaning of the horror parts becomes more clear.

Same, actually. I literally dropped Dies Irae due to slice of life scenes. It's not like I particularly hated them, but they somehow ended up killing my excitement for the story, so I just stopped playing at some point and never got back. As for the question, I don't really know. I noticed that I generally don't like how sol scenes are done in chuunige. I'm definitely not sol hater though, I enjoy it a lot in other types of stories. But what I don't like is that many plot-focused VNs just use it as filler, and it just doesn't add anything of substance to the story or character development.

Funny how these threads are getting deader and deader each season. I actually haven't been watching anything so far. Not really in the mood for anime. Though I will check out the new Higurashi anime at some point, at least.

Well, I'm also playing Iwaihime, though, as far as I understand, I only just finished chapter 1. And, to be honest, I'm not entirely convinced about this VN so far. The very first scene was pretty well done and overall disturbing, but after that it kind of got kind of cheesy. The horror scenes after that aren't particularly impactful, since they just don't feel real to me, which reminds me of my experience with Phenomeno. I don't know, I hope I'm wrong, but this may just turn into an inferior version of Higurashi. At the same time, I am moderately intrigued by where this whole mess is going. From what I understand, while the scenario for this VN is written by Ryukishi, the original idea isn't actually his, so I don't really know if I can use my experience with his previous VNs to make assumptions. That said, I do seem to recognize certain hints here and there, but they may just be red herrings.

Pretty much this. You can basically see the first game as an extended prologue that introduces the world and the main characters. I'd say, the first half of the first half of the first game is a bit boring because of numerous infodumps, but it gets pretty good in the later half when it gets to the main intrigue of the game. The second game has better pacing, and they improved on some other things, so it's a really good experience from start to finish. I personally liked how they used the visual effects to make the experience feel more cinematic, and the ending was also pretty powerful.

To be honest, I'd just recommend to contact tech support (if you actually bought the game, of course). I doubt anybody else would help you with problems like that.

It's been a lot of time since I read Air so maybe I just don't remember it right, but I'm pretty sure they weren't particularly relevant, and some of them were even unfitting. I mean, Air is the VN where h-scenes were literally added to the script after it was already completed since the authors weren't sure if it would sell without them.

I wonder, will they have to start the translation from the scratch, or will they be able to use the old translation they did with Degica?

It's out! Well, that first scene was really disturbing.

Whenever I look at Black Cyc VN entries on vndb, I have very conflicting feelings about them. On one hand, most of them seem unique enough to make me actually want to play them. On the other hand....

Well, to be honest, I really don't care about v-tubers, but this app (game?) kind of caught my attention. I wonder if it's possible to use it to create original characters for RPG Maker games with it. The design feels a bit too moe for something I've been thinking of, but maybe it's possible to do something like that. PS. I was thinking about something like face portraits or in-game CGs. In-game sprites, obviously, would have to be done some other way. Edit. Well... I really should've used the translation patch...

That's basically all Key's true endings in a nutshell.

Sure, but 3D games are a lot more popular. Comparing them to manga and light novels, VNs are a lot more expensive to make. Anime are even more expensive, but they are typically based on existing stories from the other media that are already popular enough, while most VNs are original. Also, manga and LNs are usually episodic (or, otherwise, very short) so the publishers can get some invested money back relatively soon, while in case of VNs they typically have to make a full product first, and then if it works then it works.

I personally think that VNs right now are in a sense stuck in a cursed loop. VNs as a medium just really lack variety and as a result appeal to a small number of people. Even most all-ages titles follow the same story structure: even in non-adult titles a male protagonist always has to be surrounded by a lot of female love interests; it almost always has to take place in high-school; even in plot-focused stories there are a lot of slice-of-life scenes, which aren't even well written, and mostly just serve as a way to stall the story for some time rather than developing the characters; finally, the personalities of the protagonist, the heroines and even the side characters typically just follow certain well-known archetypes. So, if you just happen not to enjoy some of these titles and just want to find something more unique, you're much better off watching some anime or reading a manga. Otome games are a bit different, but, from my limited experience with them, they seem to have a bag of different, though slightly similar, problems. There are indeed some unique and experimental VNs that do things differently, but most of these are doujin titles and don't get that much exposure. Most of them aren't even that good, since good authors are likely to join some company at some point and start making a lot more standard VNs, or leave the medium altogether. Also, we, the current VN fans, enjoy these tropes to at lest to some extend, and a lot of us actually prefer them. As a result, in a short run it's not a very good strategy for companies to experiment with story structures, since they don't know if the fans would like these changes, and they just stick to the strategy that worked thus far. And VNs are also expensive to make, so they don't allow for much flexibility. Nowadays, manga and light novel authors don't even have to make any initial investment at all, since they just can start posting their stories online and see how people react to them, or even completely stick to episodic online distribution. In case of VNs, even a single financially unsuccessful product can make a whole company go bankrupt. I personally think that if VNs somehow let this loop, there's a good chance that they would start appeal to a bigger number of people. They probably wouldn't be the same people as the current VN fans. Will they ever do that? I doubt it, but I don't know. EVNs might actually lead to something interesting at some point, who knows?