alpacaman
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Posts posted by alpacaman
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The Silver Case has a somewhat similar vibe to Serial Experiments Lain, with both being highly stylized late 90s postmodern experimental titles.
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3 hours ago, Plk_Lesiak said:
I think Serbia was genuinely quite good! At least it stood out.
I liked Serbia as well! Their stage show just screamed "small country ESC entry" with its CG effects that some VNs from 2006 have pulled off more convincingly. Serbia is one of the more interesting countries in terms of nationally dominant politics vs. their contestants at the ESC anyway, but that's probably a rant for a different time.
The second semi-final was just bad though. Almost anything that wasn't a not-quite-power-ballad where the performer lacked the vocal skills to carry their respective songs made it to the final because the alternatives were just that bland. Sadly Iceland didn't make it. They sent a bland song, but a different kind of bland than the majority of the field today, and with the by far best vocal performer this year (I mean she did backflips and still hit every note perfectly and with the right emphasis up till the end).
On 5/9/2023 at 10:15 PM, Plk_Lesiak said:the Polish entry is just a full-on travesty
YES. I joked with my girlfriend that Poland reaching the final would be the funniest outcome of this semi-final since it was the only song this year upholding the proud ESC tradition of boring latin-influenced pop songs performed by attractive women with thin voices. And then they did? I don't even know what to to say...
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I've been quite happy with the line-up so far in terms of entertainment factor. Countries like Holland, Malta, Switzerland or Ireland especially suck almost every year, so I expected nothing else. But there has also been stuff like Serbia with its weird Gundam video show:
Or Croatia with whatever this is:
My personal favourite was Finland with its weird mixture of EBM and Eurodance, but performed with the right dose of self-irony.
Also worth mentioning is Israel, who managed to send a pop song so generic yet overflowing with terribly misguided attempts at being quirky that it transcends our pedestrian notions of what constitutes good or bad.
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To cite this post from a couple of years ago:
QuoteVA-11 Hall-A is a VN-ass VN. The only gameplay present is actually just an elaborate choice system and makes up an extremely small part of the experience.
Anyway, wasn't this type of discussion about semantics kind of big a couple of years ago when the western VN community was still relatively young and trying to define who and what did and didn't belong? Darbury for example wrote an interesting blog on the topic on here a couple of years ago in case you're interested in reasoning that goes deeper than "has mandatory gameplay segments so it's not a VN". By this metric you could exclude something like Totono from the category since it has a stat raising/puzzle section you have to clear in order to see the true ending. The video even acknowledges that in Japan where the genre originated from the term visual novel isn't commonly used but then goes on to argue that games have to be novel-like to qualify because it's in the name of the genre.
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2 hours ago, Zakamutt said:
I personally don't know if I'll ever read these patreon-driven epics since I like a finished story (and I know that if I binge something to the current end I'm often not coming back to it — I left homestuck at like page 3000ish then never returned). But not everyone has my personal hangups w
I totally get it. Lessons in Love at least has a really regular release schedule with one or two updates each month. It does probably work better though if you've started reading it when there wasn't nearly as much content. Then it feels more like an ongoing tv series where each episode has its own A and B plot while the overarching story moves forward really slowly until it culminates in the series finale. The next one introduces new threads and characters and so on. Once you've caught up you only need two spend one or two evenings each month to keep up to date.
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At least in my opinion DDLC has enough qualities that set it apart from other titles, even stuff in a similar vein like Totono. I wouldn't say it's anywhere close to a 10/10, but I'd argue it holds an important spot in EVN history and has enough going for it to make the cut. Then again that's just my personal opinion. You're the one curating the list and I can't imagine the end product would turn out well if you included anything anyone mentioned in this thread. Personally, I find it kind of hard to grasp what you are going for. Or rather I kind of get it, but I think something like a testimonial format where the personal angle is obvious from the get-go would work better than a list with somewhat dubious criteria for what gets included.
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I have a couple of suggestions, today I'll only add (my reasons why to the two I think any definitive list of this kind would be incomplete without because it's almost midnight where I live. Probably going to elaborate on the rest sometime later.
1) Doki Doki Literature Club: I know this one is kind of controversial in the community. It's still one of the titles that introduced many people in the west to visual novels. Yes, it's gimmicky, but what it sets out to do it does very well and doesn't overstay its welcome. Many people in the community saw the game as an attack on VNs as a whole, but I think it's more about player agency and the relationship between games and the ones playing them.
2) VA11 Hall-A: It's cyberpunk bartender action, what more could you possibly want? It nails the aesthetic with great visuals and BGM, has great characters, some actual depth to its themes without ever getting anywhere close to being pretentious. Also it has some of the best comedy in any VN I've read so far.
Other:
3)Any Love Conquers All VN out of Analogue: A Hate Story, Hate Plus and Ladykiller in the Bind. The first is the most influential one, the second one the even better sequel, and the third one is really innovative for a porn game when it comes to mechanics.
4) Meeting in the Flesh: An inversion of Saya no Uta's themes, showing you can find beauty anywhere.
5) Lessons in Love: A work in progress that at this point is even longer than Umineko and according to its creator is the longest VN in existence, period (each update is about 30-60k words long and there's been about 50). Which shouldn't keep you from reading it. At least to me this one is more about vibes than plot and works very well despite its length.
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https://kimimithegameeatingshemonster.com/2022/03/14/students-statistics-and-bloodthirsty-beasts/
I found this post about it. If Loop8 comes anywhere close to how amazing that one sounds it's a must-play for me.
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20 hours ago, HataVNI said:
Higurashi no Naku Koro ni, Umineko no Naku Koro ni, Loopers,
Iwaihime, Rose Gun Days
Fixed it. Iwaihime is a confused mess.
Anyway, Ryuukishi is an interesting choice for an interactive social game since his best/most famous works are almost exclusively kinetic novels.
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Did I mess up the link in the op? Anyway, there's also a Chaos;Baby #2 and aparrently four Chaos;Queen games.
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Is it recommended to read Chaos;Baby before Chaos;Child to not miss any important context?
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Let the wall of beautiful noise blow you away. Anyway, I recently discovered that Japan might be the country with the best shoegaze scene around (at least after its first wave). J-rock typical chord progressions and its tendency for hymnic choruses work really well with a dreamy wall of noise it seems.
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I played Meeting in the Flesh and absolutely loved it. I wrote a little about it on this forum back then.
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14 hours ago, tahu157 said:
This is the most bonkers Osu! play I can think of. It may not seem like much if you've never played before but these patterns are unbelievably difficult to read. No to mention difficult to hit even if you can read them. 1:18 through the end of the song is utter insanity.
This reminds me of what it feels like watching speedruns for Celeste. The world record has been broken five days ago and it's just insane seeing someone rush through stages in 2 seconds that literally took me several hundred times to beat.
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It really is a great game. I loved how the game design and themes complement each other. Most character backstories deal in some form with learning to accept yourself and those around you as well as finding the right balance between self-expression and not intruding on others too much. Much in the same vein, the player's learning curve revolves around learning each character's peculiarities and finding your own way to work with or around them. You can't fundamentally change the other characters, only nudge them in the right direction or let them run into a situation where they are in over their heads depending on your goals and you have to so while learning what you are good and bad at because otherwise you only end up pissing them off. For example I had to learn that trying to lead discussion ended in me getting voted or killed off most of the times so I changed to a style where I held my head low and stuck to collecting information at first and only switched into attack mode once I had solid understanding of the playing field (e.g. once I caught several characters lying).
If I had one major criticism of the game it's that I wished for more characters to get proper arcs. Something like each character getting a loop completely dedicated to them once you unlocked all of their notes would have been nice.
The character who made life hardest for me was Shigemichi. Not because he was hard to deal with but because of him being a dumbass. He constantly self-sabotaged and got voted or killed off before I got the chance to see his character events.
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So apparently AiD released a prequel to the prequel (which is in development hell) to the fault series (whose latest entry is in development hell) three months ago already without anyone noticing as there's only 20 reviews on vndb so far. It's called fault - StP - Lightkravte. Has anyone read it and can comment on whether it's any good?
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On 7/18/2022 at 12:00 PM, Plk_Lesiak said:
I think this is from a Western tour of some sorts? It seems like Yagami is one of those rare Japanese musicians that worked with Western producers and toured outside of Japan early on... And maybe I'm off, but it's hard for me to see a reason anyone would televise this, it's probably some kind of VHS or Laserdisc rip? It just circulates without context on YouTube.
Probably because she's married to a US-American who also produced a couple of her albums. It might also be the reason her English lyrics are less cringeworthy than those of most of her peers from the time period.
Anyways, her album Communication is perfect 80s kitsch from start to finish.
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As far as I'm aware there is a limit for 5k characters at a time. If you want to translate a longer text you need to feed it to DeepL in portions. Which might have a negative effect on translation quality as the AI works better the more context it has to work with.
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Only going by lines of text, they are about the same. Little Busters contains a couple of minigames though that you can spend quite some time on (or skip if you don't like them).
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Would your experience with Clannad have been ruined had you known beforehand that
SpoilerNagisa dies?
I'd say that would have about the same impact on someone's enjoyment of that VN as knowing what you do would on Little Busters, maybe even less. LB is even more atmosphere and vibes than Clannad.
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Over the last couple of weeks I watched the anime adaptations of Key VNs I hadn't seen yet, namely Air, Little Busters and Rewrite.
Air: This is the only one out of the three where I haven't read the VN so I can't really comment on how good of an adaption it is. What I can say is that I enjoyed it quite a lot despite the rushed pacing at times. I feel like three or four more episodes to properly establish the heroines and backstory could have worked wonders for its general quality because what is there in the anime is in no way weaker than Kanon imo except maybe for the one route by the guy who hasn't written anything since whose name I'm too lazy to look up. It's quite atmospheric and Air as a story feels like the logical link between Kanon and Clannad thematically. I get why it is the closest thing Key has to a "forgotten" VN, with the game being (and looking) quite old and the anime falling somewhat short of the amazing adaptations of Kanon (at least the one by KyoAni) and Clannad, but I'd still highly recommend checking it out.
Little Busters: Out of the VNs written by Maeda I think Little Busters is the hardest to adapt, mainly because of all the minigames that make up a lot of its charm that won't work as well in a linear medium. Considering that I thought the adaption was pretty solid even though the drop in production quality when compared to Kanon or Clannad is immediately noticable. I feel like they tweaked a few of the heroines' personalities a bit, sometimes for better (Kotomi), sometimes for worse (Haruka). Also some of the heroine routes were actually handled better in the anime than the VN, especially in Mio's case. And is it just me, or is there a lot more fanservice than in the KyoAni adaptations? I'm not fundamentally opposed to it, but in a couple of emotional scenes it got quite annoying.
Rewrite: I know this one is kind controversial, as it has an original route and is pretty obviously rushed trying to cut down an 80+ hours VN into 24 episodes. Despite that I think this version of Rewrite is probably close the best that's possible considering the restraints in terms of time and budget the studio apparently had to work with. Yes, the way they handle Lucia's and Shizuru's backstories is clunky, and the bad CG, animation and direction in some scenes when compared to others make it pretty obvious what parts of the anime they thought were important to get right and which ones not so much. But I think in terms of what Rewrite wants to convey as a story they did a solid job. The new route itself captures the spirit of the VN well enough and where they make changes to mechanics or personalities they are sensible. Would I recommend it someone who hasn't read the original? Still no. For that it's just moving through things way to fast to make sense of what's happening without prior knowledge. But I think it shows they consulted Tanaka Romeo for the new route and if you're looking for a somewhat different take on some material you already know, I think its worth checking out.
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Great video! I've been looking for content creators (tbh not very thoroughly) in the VN-fandom who take a more analytical angle regarding themes and this kind of stuff, and I like Key, so this was right up my alley.
Have you watched/read anything else by Key? If Kanon's core themes resonated with you, their other titles might as well. I'd suggest going chronologically though as each game somewhat builds on the ideas of the previous one, something I realised only very recently when I finally got around to watching the Air anime.
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I'd say the second part is worth reading on its own. It's a lot better than the first one and its main plot is pretty much self contained anyway. Most of the overarching plot and worldbuilding is kind of lame anyway, so I wouldn't mind it never being completed as long as AiD manages to put out at least one or two more episodes on the level of M2S:a (is that how you abbreviate the title?).
What are you playing?
in Visual Novel Talk
Posted · Edited by alpacaman
Started reading Cross Channel after @AmelieDoree's glowing review using the Amaterasu TL since it's supposed to be the only out of the three that's at least attempting to be somewhat accurate. I really like the game so far, but the TL notes are killing me sometimes.
Like what the hell is this? 1) "My stomach bug" is not a personification. 2) English has a metaphor with the identical meaning: "my stomach growls". It's even comparing the noise to one an animal makes. 3) The phrase "stomach bug" also exists in English, and means something different.
I'm usually quite lenient when it comes to TL quality, at least as long as there is some basic flow to the translated text, but when it's making me read three lines of text consisting of a wrong translation accompanied by a wrong TL note to explain a three word Japanese phrase that has an accurate three word English translation, it takes me out of the scene. So much so I decided to interrupt my read through and rant on the internet about it.
Edit: the next line is "like a beast". Goddamnit.