alpacaman

Oh boy... Now I'm really curious what their other titles are like.

I mostly agree with your opinions on the routes, except for Yukine's route which I found rather boring. Tomoyo might be my favorite heroine in Clannad but what the way they handle her route just feels like such a waste to me. The main reason people love Clannad though is probably the true route, although I personally think its individual heroine routes are on the whole stronger than the ones in LB as well. LB has the better common route though.

Depending on the type of VN it could have been any other bodily fluid, so I'm glad they clarified.

I thought the ending was totally fine. If you look at KnS as a horror story first and foremost and not as a much as a murder mystery the true ending works pretty well imo.

Yeah, after reading Japan's numbers a little closer I have become a little cautious calling their response better than that of western countries, as they test very little compared to other countries and the development of their death toll can mean anything from having enforced effective measures to their containment measures being effective only for a certain amount of time and the virus now silently spreading. I think Japan is one of the countries where we really have to wait two more weeks to see how things turn out. Another thing worth mentioning: Even comparing death tolls between countries can be misleading, as not all countries test everyone who died from pneumonia-like diseases for Covid retroactively. For example Germany doesn't, yet they apparently test more asymptomatic young people than other countries seem to do, which explains their low deaths to confirmed cases ratio.

Aggressive containment measures from the moment there was a chance Covid would reach Japan (or other East Asian countries for that matter), like testing anyone entering the country from a place with known cases and quarantining them until the results come back. That way they can more or less effectively isolate any source of spreading. This only works as long as you can identify every chain of infections. As soon as you reach a certain threshold of unidentified infected people that strategy is not viable anymore as tracing these chains would require hundreds of thousands of tests each day, among other problems. If Western countries wanted to contain Covid, they would have to start aggressively testing some time back in January. Now all that is left is mitigation, which means trying to slow the spread over a long enough time window that healthcare systems don't become overwhelmed. Which many countries were late for anyway. One of the reasons many Asian countries are semmingly dealing way better with this than those in the west is that they already had to deal with SARS a couple of years ago and learned a few lessons about how to effectively fight infectious diseases.

Lately I have started reading a bunch of short visual novels (mostly EVNs) and since Covid leaves me with a lot of free time, I decided to write a series of posts containing several short reviews for them. I will focus on ones I recently purchased but maybe there will even be time to go through my backlog of short titles, even the ones I got in bundles and probably would not touch under normal circumstances. So let's dive right in. The Agony by KishMish Games & Talentplace This one I picked up for 49ct or something like that because Steam reviews said it was hilariously bad, and, well, they weren't wrong about at least one of those two words. We follow the story of Oleg, who is very masculine (which he never fails to point out in his inner monologues), and his girlfriend Olga/Olia, whose character traits are that she is very beautiful and in love with Oleg. They get lost in the underground maze beneath their home city after having to run from a couple of bad dudes and Olga/Olia gets kidnapped by someone or something lurking down there. Can Oleg rescue his loved one and defeat the evil lurking in the dark? Personally, I didn't bother to find out after reaching the first ending telling me everything going on isn't real (spoilers, I guess). The whole thing reads like one of those bad fantasy fan-fictions where the author makes stuff up as they go with incompetence showing at every level. The English translation from the original Russian is, to put it nicely, not that great either. It starts out with the titlecard for the opening chapter saying "Oleg and Olga" and then the next sentence calling her Olia. I know, transcribing names from different alphabets can be complicated, but the inconsistency in the spelling points to how little care was put into the translation, which is full of grammar errors and weird sentence structures (yes, I know my English isn't perfect either, but I don't charge anyone for reading my stuff). I didn't get far enough into the VN to find out what the title refers to, so from now I'll pretend that it's supposed to describe your experience reading it. Avoid it, unless you really want to laugh at how bad it is. Cyber City 2157 by Harotobira Speaking of bad translations from Russian to English, this game taught me to read the text in the screenshots on the shop page before buying a VN instead of just looking at the visuals, and I only mention this game here to tell you to not pick it up unless you can read Russian. Because unlike The Agony, CC2157 seems like it has some artistic ambition behind it and seems to rely heavily on verbal images and metaphors. The English version is so garbled that I probably wouldn't even be able to figure out if the effort was brilliant or terribly misguided, so I dropped it shortly after the opening sequence. Alone with You by Benjamin Rivers Inc. Alone with You is a hybrid between 2D adventure and visual novel (it doesn't have a vndb page), where you lead your unnamed protagonist through the ruins of a deserted space colony originally designed to terraform a planet that is hostile to human life. Your only companions are the AI that controlled all systems of the colony before its crew went extinct and the virtual replications of four former engineers and scientists whose memories it uploaded. As energy reserves are low you can only spend time with one of them at a time. During the day you explore the colony's facilities together with the AI in search of things you can use to make your escape vessel work, finding clues to where and why things went wrong on your way. At night you talk to one of the alter egos about their work and what their life was like. Despite being wildly different from the outside, the closest thing to compare AWY to when it comes to the overall experience in my opinion would be Analogue: A Hate Story. It has a similar back-tracking structure where you first work your way closer to finding out how a certain catastrophe could happen in the past (only in this case its through exploring areas in the colony instead of reading logs), interrupted by sections where you talk to a witness of the events about the details (there even is a little romance involved). Where Analogue tries to paint the picture of a collapsed society though, AWY is more introspective, focusing on themes of loneliness, self doubt, regretting past decisions and how people behave in the face of an inescapable disaster. The gameplay sections as well as the brilliantly done visual and sound design give you a real sense of desolation and solitude, although they can get a little repetitive and the game can feel too long at times. So if you're willing take in its atmosphere, Alone With You is definitely worth checking out. If you need something to happen at all times, better pick something else. Ghosts of Miami by Pillow Fight Games I really wanted to like Ghosts of Miami, with it being a detective story set in 1980s Miami and its cool visuals. Sadly I found it to be pretty mediocre. My main complaint is that it often struggles to find the right tone. It tries to capture the hedonistic happiness of the era as well as issues of race, sexual minorities, drugs and cartels, but then never fully commits to either side of its story, dulling the 80s-ness and failing to make an emotional impact in its darker moments at the same time. I wouldn't recommend picking it up, especially not at full price (which is 15€). Lily's Day Off / Lily's Night Off by Kyuppin These two short VNs share the same premise and are made by the same person, so it makes sense two review them together. Both revolve around an unnamed protagonist coming to his senses and the first thing he sees being famous tsundere pop idol Lilypad Lily. What makes these games unique is that the only thing fixed in each (very short) playthrough is the setup, but the plot and even characters' memories and motivations can change completely depending on your choices. So it's basically a collection of joke endings which can mean anything from cutesy romance to cat aliens. They are kind of hit and miss, but at least Lily's Night Off with its significantly higher production value than its predecessor, including short character animations that do wonders for the comedic timing and a CG for each ending (each drawn by a different artist), is a fun way to kill an hour or two. And I just love its Secret True Ending.

Even Germany wouldn't be able to handle the mass-spreading approach. They may have greater capacities in terms of hospital beds and ICU units than other European countries, but still way to few to be able to manage rates like Italy has right. Also Germany has few nurses per hospital bed when compared to other countries so risks like medical personnel getting infected are higher than elsewhere. Also, comparing death rates between northern Italy right now and other countries isn't really helpful. Someone pointed out earlier that an overwhelmed healthcare system causes the death rate to go way up (this very long article discussing all the statistics we knew five days ago estimates a factor of around 8 compared to a proper response). A comparison to the total amount of deaths caused by the flu doesn't make a lot of sense either as infection rates for it are so low that it doesn't spread a lot and only a small fraction of the population get it at all.

Most of the things you mention in 2. are things governments can in turn respond to by providing sensible relief for employees and economic stimuli and guarantees. People who die because of 1. don't come back and an overwhelmed healthcare system isn't too great for the economy or public trust in institutions either. As an individual you can be careful without panicking. Should you buy rations for a few days in case become sick and can't leave your home? Probably (at least unless you usually buy a week's worth of groceries anyway). Should you buy all the toilet paper your local grocery has in stock? Of course not. Should you wash your hands more often and regularly disinfect surfaces several people might touch? Yes. Should you steal disinfectant from a children's cancer ward (which actually happened in Germany a few days ago)? Hell no! Avoid crowded spaces like bars or public transportation as far as possible, cough and sneeze into tissues or the crook of your arm, wash your hands regularly, avoid touching your face, stay at home when you're feeling sick, and maybe postpone the visit to your grandparents for a few weeks. The institute in Germany responsible for disease control advises people not to use protective masks unless the are required to for professional reasons. The protection they provide is relatively low compared to the measures I mentioned above and it's suspected they can give a false sense of security leading to people letting the other stuff slide. Also places like hospitals and pharmacies need them more urgently than private citizens and their stocks are usually not big enough for a lasting epidemic.

+ Scar of the Doll. I only picked The Agony because of reviews saying it was hilariously bad and it only being 0,49€ though, so that might be the one on the list you probably shouldn't check out.

Just finished SubaHibi and yeah, I liked it a lot. What surprised me a little was how "normal" the VN is in the sense that there is a coherent plot and way less artsy posing than I expected after what I read about the game beforehand. Occasionally there is an overly long tangent or some pretentious symbolism, but never to a degree that it hurts the overall experience. Also SubaHibi is one of the rare cases in Japanese media I consumed so far where I felt like the author actually did some research on the mental illnesses they wanted to portray. And it has one of the best soundtracks of any non-Key VN I've read so far, including one of the greatest stupid shenanigans songs ever, which is close to the last thing I expected to get out of it all: So after having finished almost every long VN on my must-read list, I decided to go for a change of pace and purchased a total of 14 promising looking short EVNs (plus one JVN) for a total of ~33€ in the recent VN-sale on Steam and which I'm probably going to read all over next few weeks.

So this post got way longer than I expected it to, probably because it's easier to explain something that is there than prove something is missing, especially in a VN of this length. It is the first post in what I hope will become a series where I want to discuss a couple of VNs and some their themes and how they are explored in more depth, especially ones I either have a strong emotional connection to or dislike despite them being highly regarded in the community. They are all going to contain spoilers for the games they cover, in this case Baldr Sky Dive 1&2. In this one there are a lot of footnotes where I try to explain plot points and so on well enough for someone who wants to read this review without knowing the game to be able follow what I'm talking about. In case you're just looking for my spoiler-free condensed opinion about this game, you can read the last paragraph. At the time I finished the first route of Baldr Sky I thought it was a quite promising start. It was obvious a story of this scale would need a lot of exposition and the game handles it pretty well in always trying to tie every piece of information to a mystery waiting to be uncovered and the introduced concepts were interesting enough to be fun reading about them on their own. I wasn't to fond of the narrative choices regarding Rain's (the heroine of the route) character arc, because her family background seemed like a great starting point to explore several aspects of the setting and themes it implies (1). She grew up in the Midspire, a gated community for rich and influential people who are opposed to the organic AI (2) that controls many aspects of the outside world. Her father is a hardliner in that regard and the commander of an anti-AI military force of the world government. He has become estranged from Rain, who starts sympathizing with the pro-AI faction, and his wife, who slowly started to degrade mentally and finally joined an abusive cult called Dominion and died shortly after (3). Isn't this a fantastic set-up to simultaneously explore how certain parts of the society in this world function, discuss why the pro-AI and anti-AI faction hold their respective believes and establish an agenda for Rain that's at the same time complicated and relatable, making her a three-dimensional character? While there are two or three scenes and a little dialogue addressing each of these topics, the route focuses on how she has always been in love with the protagonist, made a promise to dedicate her life to him after Gray Christmas (4) and was friends with Sora, the true heroine who died back then. Her connection to the cult is only used to give her and the protagonist a reason to not run away before the final showdown. All of this robs her of an actual agenda beyond doing what the MC tells her, effectively turning her into a prop that talks exposition and provides military intelligence in the later routes (she becomes rivals with another heroine later on, but that is more of a small subplot rather than something that adds actual substance). While I thought this approach was a wasted opportunity, I could also see how it aids the main story by not having Rain's personal issues interfere with the the main plot advancing and it gives Sora some more time on screen. So I didn't think too much of it, especially as there still was more than enough time left in the VN to fill its world with life and explore all the topics the first route hints at. And there are a lot, for example: Poverty vs. wealth in a highly developed society, what happens when a private company becomes so important to the world order that the state doesn't have any means of properly regulating them, the ethics of modifications of body and genes, what constitutes your personality, especially in a world where your memories get stored on some hard drive and your body can be replicated, the ethics and politics of sentient AI, even the theme of spirituality in a world where said AI sets and controls the rules for a cyberspace where people spend just as much time as in the real world, effectively turning the AI into a deity, and possible afterlife in cyberspace. At one point in Baldr Sky I started to notice a pattern that keeps being repeated over the course of the VN in how it deals with most of these themes. Or rather doesn't, as issues rarely ever get discussed on their merits, but rather on what faction or character holds which position or what the game needs to be true. Let's take the conflict about organic AI as an example. The anti-AI people are the bad guys. You know that because they call the other side names and have a tendency to get violent. So when they create designer babies that's bad and the children turn out to become sociopaths. When the leader of the pro-AI faction clones her dead sister with minor changes to some of her genome to make the two non-identical (for reasons), it is a clever maneuver against the big bad and the child is a genius. When the anti-AI faction builds its own machine-AI supercomputer, it is possessed by an evil super-AI trying to annihilate mankind. When the pro-AI put the control of all of cyberspace into the hands of AIs they have no eefective control over, they happen to only want everyone's wellbeing. When Chinatsu (5) switches to the Anti-AI faction, it is because she has a false conception of who is responsible for Gray Christmas and not because her believes or worldview change. So it is not some deep insight that makes her overthink her position again, but her commander betraying her. And of course he does, he is anti-AI after all (6). Whenever someone opposed to the way Ark Industries (7) does things raises a good point, it rarely ever gets addressed, and when it does, it immediately gets drawn back to the personal level. A protester criticizing their lack of accountability is not to be taken seriously because he is part of an angry mob. The leader of Dominion telling the MC that Ark and Dominion are basically doing the same thing in trying to revive people in cyberspace who died in real life is just the ramblings of a madman. Even when it turns out that Ark is in fact doing this exact thing, it is alright because Ark does it with good intentions and Dominion are evil so their experiments only produce digital zombies. The game even acknowledges that Ark doing this would be a huge scandal, because the anti-AI faction sends spies to their cyberspace to expose this and weaken Ark's political position. Still Ark doing this is seemingly OK, as they only experiment on old rich people who don't want to die and are willing to pay to reach digital afterlife, and also because it becomes an important plot device to save the world later on. I could go into how BS resolves and picks sides in the three way conflict between Ark, Dominion and anti-AI people makes a pretty weird point about faith and religion but why bother when the writers probably didn't think that far anyway? I think I made my point about how Baldr Sky avoids making any moral or political statements beyond “torture is bad” or “making pacts with lunatics is bad” and reduces any clash between ideas to conflicts between people or factions. It cannot even bring itself to say that corruption is inherently bad. At one point the sleazy mayor Anan, whose secret cooperation with Dominion has brought the city to the brink of destruction, gets captured by the good guys. One of them points out, without it getting challenged, that Anan's shady dealings have made the economy flourish by bringing high-tech industries to the city. Which is a great point to make when all the returns enrich Anan and his corrupt pals while a major part of the population lives in poverty. There actually is one theme Baldr Sky tries to explore to some degree, namely memories and how important they are to forming your personality. A big portion of the VN is told through flashback, most of the heroine arcs revolve around past promises, Makoto (8) has a sickness that causes her to have memories from different timelines (yes, those exist in BS) and lose her sense of self in the process, there are different ways factions try to recreate real people in cyberspace by feeding their memory data to NPCs, a certain memory is sent to the past to solve everything, the titles of the two parts of the game are “Lost Memories” and “Recordare”, and so on. To me this seems like an odd choice for a plot that mainly revolves around conflicts between political factions in a high-concept sci-fi setting. BS makes a few interesting points on that front, especially in regards to the connection between memories and what the calls soul, but as with the other themes I mentioned before, a lot of it seems to be mostly window-dressing, not something that impacts the plot or the characters' motivations in a major way. Additionally, seeing how often VNs in general use flashbacks as a storytelling technique, its not that novel of a concept. You could also make the valid point that not every piece of media needs to discuss complex philosophical questions, and you would be right. But then why raise them at all, when all they do is serve as props to either give the setting the appearance of depth and complexity or serve as a means to introduce other plot devices that could just as well have worked without them? Another problem this approach causes is that it does not allow the characters to have any deeper agency. They cannot have any ideals, because then the game would have to talk about those. Their alignments revolve mostly around who they have sympathy for and who could harm them. I already talked about how this keeps Rain from getting meaningful character development that ties into the larger narrative. To pick another example, Nanoha's route (the second one in the game) has very similar flaws: While she is the least interesting one of the heroines to begin with, her backstory still offers enough to create some drama that adds some depth to both her character and the themes Rain's chapter introduces. Nanoha's parents were leading pro-AI scientists who got killed by terrorists. Also the aftermath of Gray Christmas made her a refugee. She deals with this by clinging to her happier past and spending all of her free time in the replication of her college dorm in cyberspace and trying to live her life just as she did back then. But instead of being the basis for some character growth with her finding a way to embrace the present or exploring why the cyberspace is so attractive to so many people, there is another romance plot involving a past promise (9). This is especially frustrating considering that this way BS misses a great opportunity to further explore the aforementioned theme of memories. Her life as a refugee gets dealt with in like three scenes where you learn that she works in an internet cafe and has to live in an actually not that shabby love hotel (oh the horror!) and some dialogue where other people about how hard she has it. As for her relation to the overarching plot it revolves around her still trusting and being in contact with the scientist responsible for developing Assembler, whom she has known since being a child and who went into hiding after Gray Christmas, while the everyone else is trying to hunt him down. He seemingly betrays her and implants a device containing Assembler into her stomach, so she gets sad and runs away. He goes mad, so maybe he really is a bad guy? Again, the heroine's personal struggle has to take the backseat and her route mainly utilizes her as a means to lead up to another set of plot points and provide a little romance and h-content. The other routes are not that much better either, with the exception of maybe Makoto's character arc (10). The protagonist's character arc is solid though nothing to write home about, I guess, and there are a few well written side characters, although not enough to change my overall opinion on BS's treatment of its cast. I cannot finish this review though without talking about the evil mastermind who plotted everything. I will keep it short though. Having your grand villain appear nearly exclusively through exposition by other characters is pretty bad writing, unless you want to make a very specific point. Which BS does not. He does not embody some vague concept, like fate or human hubris or whatever. He is just an under-characterized seemingly a higher intelligence that wants to kill all humans in every timeline or whatever. To sum it up: The way Baldr Sky engages with the more general subjects it raises is, to put it nicely, fascinating. It just refuses to do it. It is a story about a conflict between political factions, yet it does not want to discuss politics or policy. It takes place in a world where the relationship between humans and technology raises tons of moral and social issues, yet it does not want to talk ethics. At the same time it does not seem like it cares that much about its characters either. So if BS wants to engage seriously with neither its themes nor its characters, what does it expect me to get emotionally invested in? That there's six women in this world who want to carry the MC's baby? In the end, apparently that is close to all there is to it. Which I find pretty disappointing for a VN of this length and reputation. I still rated both parts 7.5/10 on vndb as the pacing and overall advancing of the plot are executed well. I also liked the gameplay enough to add an extra half point. I should probably clarify a few of the terms I'm going to throw around to avoid confusion. To borrow from wikipedia, the setting “is both the time and geographic location within a narrative”, the premise of a story is “the initial state of affairs that drives the plot”, and a theme is “a central topic a narrative treats”. To make the distinction between these three more clear with an example, in MuvLuv Alternative the setting is present Japan in an alternative history where aliens invaded earth and mankind started building mechas to fight them. The premise is a young man who keeps looping through this timeline trying to use his knowledge of coming events to ensure mankind's victory and return to his original world. Themes MLA explores include, among others: trauma, patriotism, coming-of-age, alien intelligence, comradeship and the struggle against fate. Organic AI in BS has acquired some level of consciousness and thus can't be completely controlled by humans, but greatly surpass classic machine AI in processing power. The anti-AI faction (as in anti-organic-AI) sees this uncontrollable alien intelligence overseeing all the rules in cyberspace as potentially very dangerous, whereas pro-AI people believe the AI to be benign and thus point to its advantages. Dominion is an end-times cult that believes the AI to be a goddess and tries to separate peoples' consciousnesses in cyberspace from their physical bodies. An event where Assembler, a nanomachine to rebuild the earth's destroyed environment, but with the potential to wipe out all life on earth in its unfinished form, gets released from a research facility and the world government prevents its outbreak by obliterating most of the city surrounding it with a megabeam weapon in earth's orbit. The heroine in the third route. Actually Kirishima Isao's character arc is one of the more interesting ones in BS. Him acting against his morals by betraying and knowingly sacrificing his closest confidant because he is too focused on reaching what he thinks would be the best outcome leads to him losing not just the battle, but also his closest ally and the moral high ground he claimed. This would be way more effective though if BS ever showed any sincere interest in the morals of its characters. The company leading the pro-AI faction. Don't get me started on them. How you could pick a company with their business model as the good guys simply baffles me. They act as mediators between AI and humans, but seem to earn their money by implanting bio-chips into infants' brains (and those of everyone who can pay for it) that connect them to the internet 24/7 and upload all their memories to the cloud (which the AI can access and use). They also built a college with high tuition fees for these people where they get taught by the AI itself and turned into an internet elite class (but which gets destroyed on Gray Christmas). The heroine in the fifth route. There are between three and five of those in all six routes, depending on how loosely you define “past promise”, if I remember correctly. It involves her learning to cope with her illness in a positive way and emancipating herself from the grasp of Dominion/Neunzehn (the big bad). There even is a symbolism-heavy CG! It is as on-the-nose as it gets, but at least there is an attempt at doing something even remotely ambitious.

Going by how much I liked the heroines I'd go Chinatsu>Rain=Aki>Sora>(don't remember the name of Sora's sister)>Nanoha. The routes I'd rank Sora's sister>Chinatsu>the rest>Nanoha. Each heroine actually had some interesting aspects to them (even Nanoha, who I really hated), but the game never really cared enough about its characters to explore them properly.

Didn't he have most of the creative control though?

Was thinking back to Clannad and I just can't wrap my head around what purpose Kappei is supposed to serve narratively. He isn't in any scenes outside of his route (at least I don't remember any), his route itself doesn't add anything to the overarching family theme as the whole family-giving-you-a-purpose-to-live-on-in-hard-times thing is already done in Yuusuke's subplot and tbh neither his route nor he himself as a character are that great to begin with. Even the most basic "one more girl/boy to date" explanation doesn't work as he isn't dateable. Not to mention that Clannad is already more than long enough without him. Is it because Maeda thought the "I want you to keep on living because I'm pregnant!" - "Who's the father?" - "You!"- "But we haven't even had sex yet!"-joke was too funny too pass up? Was it that? No wonder he was cut from the anime.

Maybe it's supposed to show her indigestion?

C;C spoils the ending of C;H, but as long as you don't plan on reading the latter you should be fine. I only read C;C and I don't think knowing C;H would have improved the experience. In regards to S;G it's the other way round for me: C;C is so bad I would probably never pick up another title by the same developers ever again if I hadn't read S;G first. So I voted for 428.

I'm currently trying to clear my backlog, especially the titles I paid more than 20€ for. First up was AI: The Somnium Files and well, it is probably what happens when Uchikoshi is trying to do something a little more lighthearted than usual. Despite still getting rather dark at times and the overarching mystery being quite complicated, there are several wacky characters and a lot of silly humour (one of the recurring locations is a mermaid café, sigh). What I really like in general about Uchikoshi's writing style though is that his stories - despite employing complicated supernatural concepts and plots - still at their core explore themes that feel deeply human without ever getting too clichéd, with his favourite seemingly being about the importance of meaningful relationships while growing up in an otherwise unloving environment. AI is no different in that regard, making for an overall satisfying experience. 8/10 I also wanted to mention that, although AI is not as heavy on characters explaining unintuitive concepts through metaphor as other Uchikoshi titles, it still manages to have the uchikoshiest of uchikoshiisms: Next up was Raging Loop. Being based on Werewolf/Mafia (games I really like) and receiving pretty positive reviews, I went into it with high hopes. After finishing it, I'm torn about if I liked it or not. For about 80% of the reading time it was just as I hoped it would be, but there are two major aspects I don't like. The first one is the third act. The explanation for what is going on feels like the writers were trying too hard to be clever and the order in which the remaining conflicts are resolved seemes backwards, with the emotional arcs of the characters being concluded first and the lore discussion with the big bad at the end. The other thing that annoys me is the way the protagonist is developed. I get why a story like this needs a protagonist who is so level-headed to degree that borders on cynical and sometimes even sociopathic. What I don't like is when this way of thinking doesn't ever really get challenged. Other than that it was an entertaining read, with enough suspense for three VNs and an intriguing mixture of occult stuff and psychological thrills. 8/10 And lastly, yesterday I started reading SubaHibi. So far it seems nice enough. Yeah, I know of its notoriety and expect things to get way darker over time. I feel like this this VN could be either a thought provoking masterpiece or pretentious bullshit. I'm pretty excited because I love passionately hating stuff, so either way it's going to be a win for me.

That's the main reason my blog still sits at just four entries. I have started writing at least five different analysis pieces, only to stop after two or three paragraphs because it felt like it just wasn't worth the amount of energy I still had to invest to finish them.

Finally managed to finish Dive 2 and my gripes are still the same as they were after finishing the first part. It's focused on making every little piece of information fit the extremely elaborate plot without leaving any holes to a point where it doesn't leave space for most characters to develop in a meaningful way or to explore the themes inherent to its world. The plot itself and the pacing are still amazingly well executed considering the immense length of the VN (it took me nearly 100 hours to reach the true end), I just wish there was more depth to the overall experience.

The scenes in question revolve around the heroine of the route being captured and you running to their aid. You'll probably know which scenes the walkthrough is talking about once you get there. I don't think I get more specific without spoiling anything.

There are certain battles where you have to beat a certain amount of enemies (I think) to clear them. If you fail to beat that threshold in a certain timeframe you get a short cutscene and enter the next stage. So, for example, to get Rain's good ending, you have to kill a set amount of enemies before the second cutscene after the start of the battle, and if you manage to get there before the first one, you unlock Spectral Missile. For the Normal End, you have to beat the level between the second and fifth scene, and so on.

The routes diverge sooner and to a higher degree the further you get into the game, so there will be less overlap between them. You have to read most flashbacks again though with little additional content added once you finish the fourth route.

Yeah, I think there are worse ways to do exposition than dumping it right at the start, and I know quite a few TV shows and movies that do this and are still quite good. It's just very hard to do in a way that keeps the reader invested enough that they remember the important information. As for the encyclopedia thing, I don't think reading an encyclopedia entry is worse than a wall-of-text dump or some character monologueing exposition, at least as long as it's not information that's new to the protagonist. Of course none of these options should be the primary way of expositioning, as imo a story should always try to tie every important piece of information to its characters' motivations or its themes or whatever makes sense through a scene where something actually happens imo, but if that's not possible or highly inconvenient, putting it outside the main text often is a better choice imo. Do you think this particular VN could have gotten a good prologue when the writers weren't able to write an encyclopedia that actually explains things?