kilicool64

Nope. It's probably not very likely that anyone will guess this VN. It never really got much attention.

Just made a slight change to #5. In hindsight, it's really only seven VNs rather than eight.

Nope. Does Myth's translation also misspell "dammit"?

Yup.

Nope.

That's right.

Nope.

I heard a pretty hilarious description of Zero Time Dilemma that I could shamelessly steal for this, but not only is ZTD not a VN, but the description is a pretty big spoiler. Might as well leave it here anyway: Here are some non-spoiler descriptions for actual VNs: #1: Guy is eager to buy a farm. #2: A world without clothing irons. #3: Not all internet users are male. #4: When you hear "unclean", you think of antidotes. #5: Seven VNs for the price of one. #6: The VN equivalent of Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. #7: Damnit. #8: Arson caused by the Hello Kitty franchise. #9: Puppies are the root of all evil.

I will agree with the part about something interesting constantly happening during the SOL parts. It really kept me hooked during S;G's first half because it was a pretty refreshing take on the concept. Ironically, I thought it was after the SOL's disappearance that interesting things stopped happening. Okay, Chapter 6 was also pretty good. But then the VN immediately fell apart with two really weak chapters whose focal plot points and characters had no reason to even exist in the first place. And the best I can say about the stuff after that is just that it didn't outright suck like Chapters 7 and 8. It was just mediocre.

I thought Steins;Gate's first half was far better than the second, though I seem to be in the minority with this. I thought the first half had a nice balance between slice-of-life and serious parts, but once the former mostly disappears, it quickly became clear to me just how shallow the plot and characters actually are.

Admittedly, it's been years since I read Ever17, but I don't remember it having all that much in common with Root Double. Whereas E17's main focus arguably lies in screwing with your mind through really elaborate plot twists, RD starts off as a mystery thriller in Root A, but then prioritizes characterization and world-building above all else during the rest of the story. There are still some occasional twists and Root B has plenty of slice-of-life, but they're not really the focus and don't feel very E17-esque in their approach. So IMO, how much you like E17 doesn't really affect how likely you are to enjoy RD.

Okay, then you have indeed seen more of Natsuhiko, Mashiro, Yuuri and Salyu by now, though they all get some additional development later on, especially the latter two. And you're still not really in a good position to judge the other characters.

Didn't you put Root Double on hold after Root A? Because that route is mainly an introduction to the plot. The vast majority of the characterization for literally everyone happens in the later routes. If Root A is all you've seen, you're not really in any position to judge the characters' complexity.

This VN uses Steam's cloud saving feature, so if you delete the save data, it'll assume it got lost and restore it from the cloud. The easiest way to get rid of it for good is probably this: Step 1: Go to the VN's properties in Steam and disable cloud saving. Step 2: Delete your save file. Step 3: Run the VN. It'll notice there's no save file and create a blank one. Step 4 (Optional): Enable cloud saving again. Now that the save file has been replaced, this feature will no longer interfere.

Gonna take a middle ground here and disagree with both of you. Root D was my favorite part of Root Double precisely because it spent so much time exploring its huge web of character backstories and showing how they all tie together. While this did result in very slow pacing, I didn't mind this much at all because the vast majority of the flashback content dealt with things that I was interested in learning about in the first place. I guess some of Jun's flashbacks were a bit weak compared to the rest since most of her backstory is just a less interesting version of Kazami's, but even they had an important in-universe reason for occurring. And aside from them, all the characters' flashbacks not only greatly expanded on characterization, but were also critical components of the main plot. At the same time though, I also heavily disagree with the notion that the Xtend edition ruined the VN by cutting a lot of important flashbacks. That's flat-out incorrect. None of the flashbacks have been cut at all. They were all moved to the newly created post-game scenario called the Xtend episode where they're presented under a perfectly fine new context along with some new scenes. I heard how these scenes were originally presented, and that sounds like it would have been really tiresome even for me. While it's true that these scenes do a good job at further expanding the characters and setting, unlike most of the scenes that stayed in Root D, they're not very relevant to the main plot. Presenting these side stories as supplementary material that you get to read after you're already done with Root D sounds like a much better solution than delaying its conclusion by 4-5 hours.

The Xtend episode contains a lot of old scenes which are safe to skip if they don't have a key (if they do, they get some new content after an SSS prompt), but there are also lots of new scenes that expand on characterization and world-building. Not all new scenes have keys, so you should at least briefly check them all to make sure if they're new or not. BTW, I'd recommend saving Natsuhiko's scenes for last.

Did you actually read the Xtend episode? Because your first question is answered there.

Whoops. Thanks. Didn't know there was a difference. Just fixed it. Hope nobody else saw it.

You just exposed your full name to everyone who has access to the credits with that post.

Found a third one. That one sounds Italian.

I found two people with these initials in the credits.

To each his own, I guess. While I can certainly see the appeal in letting the audience figure out some things themselves, after Remember11 and I/O, I thought it was a nice change of pace to have a Nakazawa VN that solves all of its mysteries. Though it's not like literally everything gets explained. A few events that happened in Root A still require your own interpretation to make sense of. I don't see what's supposed to be cliché about the story though. Any examples?

You are pretty severely mistaken about various plot points. There are very good reasons why they occurred. Unfortunately, I can't go into details without massive spoilers. Also, a lot of Root A's events are more important than they seem. There's a ton of subtle foreshadowing in particular. Root A is fairly different from the rest of the VN, so how much you enjoyed it isn't terribly representative of how much you'll like the remaining parts of the story. They strongly prioritize characterization and world-building over suspense. That said, I would recommend getting all of Root A's heroine scenes before moving on. They have some valuable information and contribute a bit to characterization (though all three characters get much more development later on). The normal ending is also a must-read.