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alpacaman

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Everything posted by alpacaman

  1. I think infodumps at the beginning are rarely employed because there is no in-story-conflict yet readers can connect it to. At least to me they feel more like homework than useful information most of the time and I tend to get bored before the actual story even begins. A way of infodumping that's rather unique to VNs that can be rather effective is adding opportunities for expositioning outside of the actual story. For example an encyclopedia can be a good way of explaining things characters in-universe wouldn't talk about normally without taking you out of the story for too long. 428 utilizes this feature brilliantly, adding funny side stories to its exposition and even secretly setting up plot devices. VA-11 also has an approach I really like where you read news stories and internet boards inbetween story-sections (although admittedly it's used more for world building than infodumping).
  2. Chaos;Child sits quite high on vndb and got quite a few glowing reviews, so I didn't really expect it to be an experience bordering on so-bad-it's good. It's incredibly entertaining, but at least in the second half for all the wrong reasons. Its setup was promising enough, but at some point the story just took the worst and most convoluted turn imaginable every time. It felt like the creators had five different clashing ideas about where they wanted to take the story and what themes they wanted to explore and just decided to do them all at the same time anyway. I finished the VN about 11 months ago and still catch myself thinking about how stupid it was, so at least I can't say it didn't leave an impression on me.
  3. Do you think there is a parallel dimension where cats became the world-dominating species and they made a movie called "Humans" in which they CGIed actors into naked and furless cat-ropomorphic abominations that sing and dance?
  4. I didn't hate ZTD as much as most Zero Escape fans seem to do but I admit it was a pretty weak way to end the trilogy. To address a few of your points:
  5. No, but you can change the difficulty in the settings. On very easy you can probably win every fight by just randomly mashing buttons.
  6. So I just finished Dive 1 and well, I can see how it got its 8.45 on vndb. The VN is incredibly well paced for the most part. The gameplay blends in seemlessly with the plot and is fun enough in itself. Still, for me personally there a couple of aspects that keep me from really loving it. My main gripe is that Baldr Sky doesn't really care about all the interesting ethical and philosophical questions its world poses. For example, the story takes place in society where part of the population has implanted bio-chips into their brains, basically connecting them to the internet 24/7, where intelligent AI controls everything, and these people make up one faction, while the other (apparently bigger) group of people look at AI very critically. At the same time the rich people (anti-AI people) built a seemingly impenetrable fortress while the outside suffers greatly from corruption and a refugee crisis, leading to many people throw themselves into virtual reality to flee from the actual one. There are so many possible angles the writers could have taken and so many moral gray areas worth exploring in this world, but they basically went with "one faction is right and the other one is wrong" and the setting is basically just a backdrop to spin an epic tale about people in mechs fighting. Very rarely does it happen that any faction's core values are actually challenged. When the motives of some of the "good guys" get questioned, it always has to do with them secretly schemeing something instead of their ideas possibly negatively impacting other peoples' lives. This also plays into my issues with the cast and how part one's heroines got developed. Each one of them had a background that would have allowed for interesting character arcs and instead they got pretty generic anime trope stories. Anyways, I still enjoyed the overall experience so far quite a bit, it's just a little frustrating for me that there are quite a few places where there's a lot of wasted potential imo.
  7. I think so as well. Extra's cliches and humour were terrible to a degree where the game bordered on being a parody of the rom-com genre. Unlimited is all about Takeru maturing out of that world so it makes sense that the humour would do the same. I'm not a fan of Unlimited either as it still employs some of the same storytelling tropes as Extra. Going this route still makes a lot of sense if you look at Takeru's character arc over the trilogy, so the creators probably knew very well what they were doing.
  8. The gameplay doesn't take that much time, about 5-15 minutes every two hours, including setting up your equipment.
  9. Yeah, the pacing is really slow and mainly focused on world-building and exposition. I'm at chapter 10 in my first playthrough and so far not a lot has changed. At least to me it feels like the first playthrough is trying to set everything up properly so things can hopefully speed up later, kind of how S;G did it, or MLA that took two prequels and like 15 hours of build-up to properly set up its story. I personally don't mind this approach and the switching between past and present and most scenes at least feel like they add something to the overarching narrative with little fluff. My two main complaints are that I don't like the cast that much so far and that the gameplay sections are too far apart for how short they are. Anyway, I feel like the whole experience could go into three different directions from where I'm at right now: It could turn into an amazing dark epic like MLA (with less trauma though I suppose), it could go the Root Double way of telling its whole story through neverending exposition, or completely fall apart into convoluted stupidity that mistakes edginess for being deep like Chaos;Child did. I'm a little afraid it might be the the third option as C;C also has a very high vndb-score despite being really bad.
  10. Hat! Hat! Hat! (I don't care which one)
  11. And here I was thinking about starting a thread asking people if they think he's a bad guy after reading something arguing that it's all just a matter of perspective because one of the game's main themes is how perception shapes one's morals. But yeah, he does some things that put him in the irredeemably evil camp for me, so Saya no uta x3.
  12. You just spared me years of psychoanalysis trying to figure out my deep sitting issues when the answer was this simple. Thank you so much!
  13. I guess it depends on if you like the protagonist. If you do, you're going to have the time of your life. If you can't stand him (like I do) the comedy will probably fall flat (which makes up the first ~40 hours [does this count as a spoiler?]) and the rest will feel ridiculously over the top. But almost everyone in this forum seems to like him, so it would be best not to listen to me.
  14. Analysing the psychology of nukige protagonists should become a whole thing.
  15. It's a lesbian kink game, but Ladykiller in a Bind's dialogue consists almost exclusively of flirting and teasing.
  16. In a very edgy move I decided to spend some of my very first pay on something completely pointless. Since then I am the owner of a squirrel mask I can neither properly see nor breathe in.
  17. Exactly. Key is really good at creating characters and writing good comedy around them but really hit and miss when it comes to properly developing them (more miss imo). After Story is one of the few instances in Key VNs where every major character involved gets a good arc. I picked Akio btw.
  18. Microwave ovens emit microwaves at a frequency that makes water molecules rotate, adding kinetic energy and heating the water in the food, which in turn heats the rest of the dish (because thermal energy is basically kinetic energy on a microscopic scale). If the plate gets hot it's because it got microscopic scratches which small amounts of water can flow into. Ceramic itself is practically transparent to the microwaves, meaning it doesn't absorb any energy from the microwaves and doesn't get heated directly. The food itself not heating up properly has to do with the microwaves not reaching far beyond the surface of the dish so most of the heat gets distributed around the edges.
  19. VNs actually offer a lot in terms of what the creators can do that isn't really possible in other media. They can use the similar literary devices as in plays while having the possibility for a first person narrator, passages in prose and a branching narrative, while keeping full control over the visuals, soundtrack and acting choices and without having the same time restrictions which offers more options when it comes to story structure and pacing.
  20. Yeah, that's also possible. Then again German doesn't really have fixed rules when it comes to the grammatical gender of foreign words. Speaking about the title, what is "the definitely unauthorized parody" supposed to mean? Who could have authorized this game? Is Hitler still alive somewhere in South America ?
  21. Talking about heresy, a while ago ago I saw someone on the street who tugged his sweatpants into the white tennis socks he wore with sandals.
  22. The way the titlecard is formatted I'm pretty sure it's supposed to be a pun on "Mein Kampf". As for the game itself, this could go either way. The best satires about the Third Reich expose how pathetic its leaders actually are once you take away the aura surrounding them. I can see an angle where turning Hitler into a yandere or whatever could deliver on that front. Then again this game could turn out to be one big edgelord "hahaha genocide" joke, which is really something nobody needs (at least I don't).
  23. My venture into 80s Japanese pop led me into a different direction, namely to Jun Togawa, probably most famous for her song Suki Suki Daisuki, which became kind of a meme a few years ago. The subtitles in the thumbnail might give you hint as to why. The rest of her output isn't any less weird. To give a few examples: I love everything about this music video, be it the silent 30 second intro, her stage costume and especially the awkward scene filmed from the view of the insect man. And speaking of Japanese artists attempting English lyrics:
  24. To make a tomato sauce with fresh tomatoes you need certain types of tomatoes like San Marzano (and they should be of good quality). If you're not able to get them even the Italian recipe books I own recommend passata/canned tomatoes. Also the most important lesson I learned from Italian cuisine it's that everything tastes great if you mix it with enough olive oil and garlic. I thought the saying goes "comparing tomatoes and cucumbers". There is no point to it. Anyways, I prefer both when they've been processed in some way. Cucumbers should be pickled, and there are even varieties you can make stew out of (which tastes surprisingly good).
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