alpacaman

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.

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.

Maybe it's supposed to show her indigestion? 

Oh hey, is it just me, or is this song absolutely brilliant? 
 

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.

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.

Confession: Reviewing long VNs is agony.
I've just finished the first version of my VenusBlood FRONTIER review and on one side I really had a lot of things I wanted to say about this game and reasons to recommend it to people, but on the other, I feel like I've sacrificed half of my soul playing through all of it too quickly, and the rest was consumed by this Word file I'm looking at.
Maybe a hobby that drains you from all your lifeforce is not an optimal choice after all...?

So, I finally decided to clean up my VN library and read all those VNs that I got on sales or in bundles ages ago and never played. As a result, I finally got to Alice in Dissonance titles. fault milestone one was one of the first VNs I bought on Steam, back in 2016, and while I liked the first 20 minutes of the game that I saw during my play test back then, but for some reason I never finished the game till now.
Overall, the fault series was pretty different from what I expected judging by these first twenty minutes. If I had to describe this series in a few words, I'd say, it's an episodic fantasy with heavy focus on characters and drama. What I personally found rather impressive about these games is how well they use CGs and visual effects in certain scenes to make them look really dynamic. In my opinion, it's really impressive that a doujin VN manages to use its graphics a lot more consistently and more creatively than many high-profile titles. The quality of the art itself, however, is a bit inconsistent. Overall it's pretty standard anime-style drawings, and there are some minor characters who look a bit strange, but, overall, it's pretty detailed, and there are some pictures that look really beautiful. Also, the first game got a major graphics update in 2018, so now it's one of the few VNs in 4K resolution.
However, if we exclude the graphics, there are some minor flaws that I would expect from a doujin game. First of all, there are no voices. I personally don't consider it a major flaw and believe that some VNs actually work better without voices, but it may be crucial for some people. Secondly, while I personally didn't dislike the music, its usage in the game wasn't ideal. Some songs were looping with very small interval and it was very irritating. Also, there are some melodies that may sound well on their own, but, I believe, don't fit well in a visual novel because they distract from reading. Finally, it's not very important, but the opening song is kind of... meh, if you ask me.
As for the story, the first half of milestone one is mostly focused on introducing the setting and important characters. Which leads me to the biggest complaint I have with this game - the first half is basically just one massive infodump. I mean, I understand that it's necessary evil because of the episodic nature of the series, and they tried to include the infodumps more naturally in the dialogues, but I still can't help but think it could be done even more subtly. There were some occasional small details in the story that, I felt, either didn't make much sense or could be done a bit better. Other than that, I don't really have any complaints about the story at all. As it shifted from the worldbuilding more toward character drama in the second half of the game, it got a lot more interesting. The last quarter is especially cool. All the little details actually come together in the final reveal, and overall the conclusion felt pretty emotional to me, just like it was supposed to feel. Overall, I'd give this game a solid 7/10.
 
fault milestone two (side: above) is pretty similar to the first game that there's little to add. Still, many small details were definitely improved. There's no problems with the music. Actually, I can say that I liked the soundtrack in this VN. In my opinion, the general quality of writing also improved. There are no infodumps, and all the new information is introduced naturally in the story. The visual effects are used even better than in the first VN, especially since there's a bit more action (though it's still not the focus). The overall pacing of the story is also pretty great. Though, I suspect it may be a problem on my side, but I personally had some annoying stability issues in the second half of the VN. It really didn't help the emotional impact of the final scene that I had to replay the whole scene four or five times simply because it was constantly crashing. Still, I don't think I've seen anyone complain about having any similar problems with this VN, so most likely I just finally need to buy a proper desktop PC instead of my three-year-old laptop.
The only major complaint I have with the game is that, well, it's incomplete. As you can probably guess from the title, this game is something like a half of the second episode in the story rather than a proper episode. Excluding the overarching story that started in fms1 and will probably continue before the last episode assuming that we actually get to the last episode eventually, there are two major plot threads that started in this episode, and while one of these threads comes to the proper emotional conclusion, the other is completely left hanging. Well, it's a pretty obvious thing to expect from an episodic release. Still, I can't really give it anything higher than 7.5/10 for now. I will probably raise it after side: below is released. Though, it seems like they are going to release the prequel to the first game first, and, after massive delays, it will probably come out this year, so I'm not really expecting the continuation for another two or three years.
Just for the record, the trailer to fstp looks pretty amazing!
 

Mhakna Gramura and Fairy Bell is quite an interesting... experience. It's written more like a children's story book, though there is a bit of a twist in the last quarter of the VN. It's also fairly short: it took me just two hours to finish the whole VN. Overall, you can definitely read it even if you didn't read the main fault series since it's pretty standalone. Well, it's interesting example that VN format works even for something so vastly different from the usual galge and otomege. I gave it 8/10 on VNDB, but, honestly, due to the nature of this VN, I don't think like rating it even makes much sense.
Anyway, I'm really looking forward to the later fault titles. I can't really say this was the most impressive VN series I've read at this point, but it has good potential, and I still enjoyed it a lot.
~~~~
Now, let's see what Kindred Spirits of the Roof is about.
PS. Also, I stalled Baldr Sky for now. I don't know, I just can't make myself enjoy this VN for some reason. I'll return to it eventually and at least force myself to finish the first route, but I don't know when it will happen.

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.

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. 

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?

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.

Confession 1: For the 80th time I got rid of all the mobage and generally non-VN games I was playing and I'm trying to get my daily routine back in order. One day it will work, I'm sure...
Confession 2: After two days of fighting on the frontlines of an intense flamewar, I got myself banned (temporarily) from the Libyan Civil War subreddit. There's a chance it's my first ban ever on a discussion board/forums of any sorts. At least, I can't think of another one and in the past, I would be pretty shaken by such a thing. In this case, I'm kind of glad, because I should've stopped posting there a lot earlier... I guess I just really don't like Erdogan and everything associated with him...

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.

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!

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!

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.

I diagnose you with "not sexually attracted to anime boys".

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.

Naivety at it's finest.
Do you even know who's actually influencing these laws in the first place? If there's any sort of strawman to be had, it's blaming the current industry issues on cultural differences; the greatest otaku demise of it all. Furthermore, are we talking about vns or precisely about 18+ eroge counterparts? There's a major difference between these two. One is a self-restricting niche, the other is just not as popular and won't ever be. This brings us to the beginning point - how in the world are you expecting an ultra niche market to sustain it's profitability, while satisfying everyone's needs? But hey - it's much easier to look for scapegoats, than take responsibility for one's own actions.

Holy fuck, the incelspeak is strong with you. Steam is pandering to SJW? You think that's where child porn laws are coming from? That's fuckin' delusional. 
Western ideas about porn and the general idea of porn and art/serious entertainment incompatible with each other are possibly the biggest factor keeping VNs niche. Those have nothing to do with SJW positions. You can blame the "leftist culture" strawman as much as you want, but you'll be just deluding yourself.

It's a lesbian kink game, but Ladykiller in a Bind's dialogue consists almost exclusively of flirting and teasing.

Five main types.  Kichiku (think extreme sadist), hetare (weak-willed, generally submissive, tends to be the object of oneshota and reverse-rape games), sexually active version of the common charage protag (kind and mysteriously attracts women but actually has sex with them instead of not noticing they like him), baka (idiot, usually cheerful and perverted), and evil overlord (a variant on kichiku that wants to somehow rape his way to taking over/destroying the world/country/city).