Corrupted

I just played Nekopara 1 for the first time two days ago. I'm horrified. It's like the ultimate objectification of women. They're intellectually inferior, children, dependents, sex objects, they don't have goals or ambitions that conflict with your own, their job is to smile and be cute, they are suited to be your lover, play partner, free labor, whatever you want to buy them for, they're just playthings that have no agency whatsoever and they're custom designed to love, lust for, and worship you. They're the realization of the image that oppressed women across the world are forced into reflecting. They're disposable daughter wife sex slaves, and the entire world around them just treats it as normal. It makes me so sick. Also, I came buckets and my heart grew three sizes that day. I can't wait to play the sequels.

Ooh, 10 points for tying it back into the original topic so smoothly...

I'm glad you get what I mean. Also, yeeesshh. That sounds like it'd piss me off in a similar way to Evenicle, but much worse. I'm literally sitting here trying to sort through my feelings on this and understand why sometimes I want to feel like the chauvinistic dominant rape overlord and sometimes I want the catgirl slave species to violently revolt and obtain freedom and dignity. Perhaps the protagonist is exactly the problem; I just can't connect emotionally with the stupid horndog fratboy hero. Give me some intelligent evil, cynicism, sadism, something I can actually understand and empathize with. Here's a rapey protagonist I enjoyed much more: http://mangakakalot.com/manga/maou_no_hajimekata

I just played all of Planetarian in one sitting. My thoughts: This has helped me refine my goals, here. I want VNs that make me do some or all of the following: 1. Make me cry. 2. Make me daw with lovable flirtation. 3. Get me pumped or emotional with awesome soundtracks. I don't want to sacrifice quality for the sake of hentai scenes. I certainly enjoy hentai scenes, but I'd rather have no hentai scenes than bad ones that break my immersion. I think that means I want Nakige - not Nukige, not Moege. I have a preference for robots/AI, loli, yandere/loyalty, jealousy, and imoutos, but if I love a personality of a characther that's all that matters (I'll take Ramius's unattractive fatass from Evenicle any day because she's so fucking precious, appreciative, and loyal). If I need to fap, I'm just going to go to "Professor Dave's Masterbation Station". *Opens it up* (Wait why is there a new scene here that wasn't there before?!) Grisaia really got on my nerves sometimes by dragging on and being too slow, but the more I think back on it the more fondly I remember it. It really was one hell of a complete experience. Well, I don't think I'm going to make another poll so soon - I'm going to start up second place, Ever17, instead. By the time I finish that, then perhaps enough time has passed that I won't feel guilty making another poll thread from scratch. Thank you for putting up with all my spam, ya'lls input is making my life better :>.

Oh my gob. A talkative and adorable robot girl is trying to be helpful by handing me a hammer upside down.

Welp, that's been long enough I think. Planetarian it is. I'm excited - I haven't played a Key game for a long time. I played a lot of Evenicle while I waited, and ran into some unexpected and disturbing nightmare fuel in that game last night; time to take a break from it for a while! Perfect timing. I'm guessing if I rerun this poll after I finish Planetarian it'll be Ever17 next. I'll be sure to stick Fate Morgana up there next time too.

I ain't clicking on your final spoiler, sir. I really enjoy Evenicle and I intend on beating it! Legendarily fun and complete feeling game. I googled Rance, it sounds rapey AF. Aster is often ALMOST a rapist, but Rance sounds like the real deal from the description. I have such mixed feelings. I could totally enjoy rapey hentai if that's the point, but when they go out of their way to make the victims sympathetic it's like whoa, feeling kinda sick. VNs (and VN-like-rpgs) have opened me up to a whole new world of complicated, mixed feelings.

Yis! And, and -

I think the MC is literally Maou, unless he isn't, because you played to the final chapter. In other words, when you go down a side route, he was always Maou. If you don't, he was never Maou. This is the only explanation I've come up with that satisfies me when I try to understand the side routes and main route simultaneously.

Is there any reason I shouldn't play planetarium on steam? I keep hearing how steam censors stuff and ruins other stuff, so I'm afraid. I already bought it there when it was on sale, though.

Koko felt like a bitchy, watered down Nagisa to me. I agree that Anzu is amazeballs, though. Every single line of hers in the entire game is fantastic. Then she just turns into an absolute sweetheart on her path, like wow. Nanaka was so boring, that when I followed her path to my very first venture into Act 2, I stopped and started over. She was interesting in paths that were not her own, though, which is just something that seems to happen sometimes. I could play a whole other game just listening to Anzu and Akane snark it up. I agree the game could be a lot better without the sex scenes. It really hurts my immersion when there's 0 physical intimacy then 2 minutes later the heroine is like, "uh, let's go have sex now". It's either that or the MC is too pushy, there's no middle ground. It's just poop for sex scenes all around. Amakase is hot, though -.-. Anzu's face is not so bizarrely wide in pretty much every image besides her standard character sprites, and she looks cute then too. These two tracks were enough for me to prefer Hoshimemo: I'm very close to playing Ever17, but it looks like Planetarian is currently barely beating it in the pole. I've been playing Evenicle to wait and see how the pole turns out. That game is just amazing, it has everything in it. Fun rpg mechanics, every possible fetish, every possible character body type, the most loving and sweet flirting ever, and horrifically disturbing shit that'll give me nightmares.

I finished Da Capo 2 while waiting for this poll to resolve: That game, by lacking even a single good soundtrack, helped me realize that even though I'm not a music person in general, the sound track might just be the most important part of a VN to me. It's why MLA's my number one. Just one or two good songs are why Hoshimemo and If My Heart Had Wings blew me away, and allowed me to overlook the awkward flaws of G-String. Da Capo 2's biggest crime is definitely the fact that the big sassy snark queen herself, Akane, was not a date-able heroine. But, perhaps...this allows her to maintain an unattainable grandeur. .......and the poll is still tied. I'll go play some Evenicle while I wait for that tie to break.

Gosh darn it. I appreciate this, but now I'm going to have to devote some more time to decision making. I suppose in the end, I'm probably going to be referencing all three lists along with researching based on my own developing interests. I can't ignore the fact that CLANNAD isn't on the first list, and MLA isn't on the others, and those two are my favorites. I'll just have to take a mature approach of continually refining my objectives instead of taking the easy route of picking one list and sticking with it. I suppose I'm still partial to the first list because of the title (50 to play before you die, literally #lifegoals). It's my original bucket list, and thus special to me. I guess I'm just going to keep spamming these forums with questions and requests for suggestions in order to make the best use of my reading time, because it seems like people don't mind helping <3. Also, when someone posts that something is their favorite, it has a strong influence on me. Not the least of which because I know there's at least one person who'd be happy to discuss it with me after I finish it.

My bad, OP. Just take this tangent as sort of some extra votes for School Days/Shiny Days, perhaps. :>

It's funny that you used Kosame eyes. Hoshimemo was the final straw for me: Those characters are looking purty good. I've always only been attracted to very skinny women/girls as well as naturally going towards caretaker-like relationships, so I think this evolution was inevitable. That said, ironically, I loved Kotonoha sooooo much that I just might have gained some appreciation for somewhat chubby heroines just because of her. Kotonoha is in Shiny Days too, right? She's the star. Body type doesn't matter compared to my appreciation for uber loyalty.

Is that so? Is there a more updated list you would recommend? I might seriously consider switching over to it. I should probably start a new thread asking for just that, I guess. I figured any decent list was better than wasting time trying to figure out what exact list to use, but if there's a newer and categorically better list I'd be grateful to find it.

Oh? Kotori's was still worth repeating? Hm... I loved Kotori <3. Would brush hair forever.

Ha! I've recently discovered that I'm more on the loli, imouto, cat-girl side of things...I thought I was above all that, but no. Perhaps I am growing into a beautiful young weeb.

I did Ageha and Amane's path last, and they seemed to be hit the worst. I had absolutely no trouble enjoying the other paths. I think Ageha is lame, but I'd love to enjoy Amane's route a little more. Then again, maybe Ageha won't be so lame with a new translation. Thanks for the link! I am a little tempted to play the whole game over again. But I'm actually on a little bit of a "time limit" and I'm trying to finish this list while i can: I let myself get lots on tangents and play other games, but I'm not sure I can justify replaying one just yet. I really appreciate you sharing your thoughts on it and bringing it to my attention, as well as linking the better patch. I enjoyed that game enough that there's a nonzero chance I will play it again with the better translation. I'm also regretting playing the steam version of MLA since it killed an important scene, and MLA is my all time favorite, so I'm considering replaying that one one day tool.

I greatly enjoyed it despite the poor translation. However, I was also made aware that I'm only getting about 50% of the pleasure out of what is an extremely deep game. It seems to have the property of being enjoyable no matter how deep you choose to get into it, however. As long as you aren't turned off at the start from the sexual harassment elements.

Now I'm feeling guilty again. Hah. I really liked the art style of Cross Channel...so dreamy...characters are so lithe...reminds me somehow of final fantasy tactics?

I'm trying to knock out this list, although I'm also going on plenty of tangents. Do you think The House In Fate Morgana shoulda been on it and is one of the best all around must plays?

Is shiny days worth playing if I enjoyed school days? I thought school days was raw and gritty and awesome with realistic skanky and obsessive characters. However, the navigation was hella tedius. Flowchart or not, it was incredibly difficult to do everything because of that retarded green/red bar system. Is shiny days any easier to navigate?

Aw shoot I'm not sure how to tell. Regardless, I'm not going to replay the game again ever probably because I did actually enjoy and finish it already. I may always be a little scarred, however, at just how cringey the MC was during the hentai scenes with the more dominant heroines. But I will also always be a little happier because of how flippin' cute it was to walk around with a proud twin on each hand to that bouncy awesome soundtrack.

So, I kinda noped out of Kanon, Da Capo 1, and Kana little sister because they just felt so old and slow. It's hard for me to get into them after playing something as gloriously beautiful as the Grisaia series or as intensely engaging as Little Busters and MLA. Guilt at not giving them a chance may eventually make me finish them, but after some people commented that "nah, they're really just that old so don't worry about it", I feel better about leaving them stalled and moving on to newer things. I did at least start up Ever17 and SteinsGate to see what they were like but then I got pretty worried at how old they looked. They seem to be one of the favoritist of everyone, though. Are they, unlike those previous others, the kind that simply always worth it to push through despite the original turn-off at the aged appearance? I don't want to be a graphics snob or something; I mostly just want to spend my time effectively.