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Seraphim

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Posts posted by Seraphim

  1. After a somewhat longer wait than expected, the 07th mod for chapter 8 of Higurashi finally dropped a little over a week ago, and I'm now done with that chapter as well as the main series as a whole.

    Spoiler

    The beginning of this chapter was probably the most boring part of the entire series, what with all the info-dumping and characters without sprites sitting around talking politics and whatnot.
    The part with Takano's backstory kinda fell flat for me. It's pretty clear that it's supposed to tug at your heartstrings (there would be no need to go into such detail about her suffering otherwise), but it becomes hard to truly sympathize with the hardships of her youth when you know how twisted and cold-blooded she is as an adult. I mean, we're talking about a person who has no qualms about downright executing children to get what she wants. The fact that she herself, when she's asked to take responsibility for everything that transpired by ending her own life, starts bawling like a baby and pleading that she doesn't want to die, speaks volumes about what a selfish and pitiful person she truly is.
    She's "saved" by Tomitake claiming that she suffers from Hinamizawa Syndrome, but that honestly seemed more like an excuse to spare her from having to shoulder the entire burden and repercussions of the failed operation rather than the actual reason behind her actions, considering the fact that she had been obsessed about finishing her grandfather's research by any means necessary long before she even went to Hinamizawa.
    I think the best kinds of antagonists are the ones that you can sympathize with to some extent despite their questionable actions, but Takano's utterly unlikeable in that regard. Not once does she care about anyone other than herself and her grandfather, so why should anyone care about her? She's told towards the end that she doesn't have a single ally and I'd say that's a fitting conclusion for a person who does nothing but use and abuse others.

    On a completely different note, I've been wondering about what Akasaka's role in chapter 8 would've been like given the fact that chapter 4, which he's the protagonist of, wasn't supposed to be a part of the series originally. Would this mean that they'd just toss this unknown superhero-type character into the mix in the final chapter or that he wouldn't be a part of the script in the first place? Removing him from the story altogether would alter the progression of events quite a bit, so it would be interesting to know how that would've been handled.

    Speaking of Akasaka, the whole scene where he rescues Rika from Okonogi and the mountain dogs was quite the chuunifest. In just a few years, Akasaka's apparently gone from amateur to some kind of martial arts god that can easily beat people who have been doing this kind of stuff much longer than he has. Admittedly, most of them weren't combat specialists, but they far outnumbered him and should've been able to easily take him down if they just worked together. Furthermore, there was a group of ten or so mountain dogs just letting Akasaka fight Okonogi one on one without interfering in any way. Normally, they'd also attack Akasaka, or at the very least carry out their objective by apprehending Rika, but instead they chose to just stand around doing nothing, jeopardizing the entire mission for no reason whatsoever. It was fun to watch, but not very believable.

    Likewise, the battle at the hill was also more than a little far-fetched. That a handful of kids would be able to single-handedly take down like four full squads of armed professionals by using some homemade traps, is some next level Home Alone shit. Kevin McCallister would've been proud.

    One thing that kinda blows my mind is why noone told Oryou or any other influental people (like, say, the yakuza syndicate that's run by Shion's and Mion's parents) about this major event that could possibly wipe out their entire hometown and everyone in it. I mean, it's not like they'd have to inform the entire village, but they could get some well-needed assistance and greatly increase their odds of success by letting a select few capable people know about the situation. Hinamizawa even has a history of coming together against threats from the outside, so it's really odd that they wouldn't use that to their advantage at such an important time. It would fit the story well, to be honest.
    That said, the chapter ended without a single casualty for the first time in the entire series, so maybe getting others involved, however logical it would be, would've resulted in a more gruesome tale. I'm generally a sucker for happy endings, so even if things wrapped up a bit too conveniently, I'd say I'm satisfied with the outcome.

    Higurashi was a great read with a lot of both expected and unexpected twists and turns, and now I'm, more than ever, looking forward to seeing what Umineko has in store for me.

    EDIT: Oh, right, I should mention that I ran into a couple of funny typos and bugs during my playthrough. At one time, they were referring to "the dam conflict" as "the damn conflict", and on a few other occasions, I saw a reappearance of the bug that randomly inserts character sprites where they aren't supposed to be. Here's one example, but the best one is when a delighted Mion forced her way into a scene she wasn't even a part of, blocking the view for several characters while they were discussing important matters. You can see what I mean here and here.

  2. Yuuji's still the one I like most. A few other favorites are Yamato from Majikoi, Achi from 428: Shibuya Scramble, Haruaki from Raging Loop, Date from AI: Somnium Files and Tomoe from Bokuten. All in all, I have a preference for capable, assertive protagonists with established personalities. I'm not a big fan of the self-insert protagonist type.

  3. The hard drive with all my VNs as well as various pictures and documents related to my Japanese studies crashed suddenly a while back. Couldn't salvage anything, unfortunately. After that, I got a Backblaze account. Costs me $60 a year, but it's worth it for the peace of mind I get from knowing that all my files are continuously being backed up in the background while I do other stuff.
    It obviously wouldn't help you in this case, since it's after the fact, but it could spare you from having to experience something like this again (or possibly something worse, like what happened to me.)

  4. I wasn't able to find a Cruise Sign ISO anywhere, and since I don't have any way of playing disc-based games on my PC, I guess I'll have to abandon the idea of that right now.

    On the bright side, I finally got the PC version of Flight Diary to work. Not sure why, but it seems to run perfectly with a locale emulator. I hadn't even considered trying that before, since the computer's already set to Japanese locale and I have no trouble running other games in Japanese. Flight Diary is a special case, apparently.

    Anyway, I haven't had much time to try it out yet, but I've been slowly (we're talking less than a snail's pace here) moving through the beginning of Hotaru's route. I know a decent amount of kanji already, but I've realized that I really need to brush up on and improve my grammar and non-kanji vocabulary. That said, it's very satisfying to feel how certain things click into place in my mind, and I'm honestly kinda regretting not getting started with reading earlier, however slow it may be at first.

  5. Photonmelodies apparently also includes these:

    "Adoration"; a prequel to the story Duty ~Lost Arcadia~ which depicts Europe during the events of Alternative.
    "Resurrection", a story about a European spy who is also featured in Total Eclipse

    If I've understood correctly, they aren't a part of Altered Fable.

  6. Was planning to get started on my first VN in Japanese today. I picked KonoSora Flight Diary, because I deemed it fitting since the original was one of my first VNs and still one of my all-time favorites, but it's refusing to cooperate with me. Whenever I try to start the game, it freezes at the Pulltop logo and I have to end the process in the task manager. I've tried changing basically every setting in the launcher that appears before the game boots, but I get the same result every time. Any suggestions? (Yes, the computer is set to Japanese locale.)

  7. 9 minutes ago, adamstan said:

    how long did it take you to complete English version?

    Hard to say, I'm afraid. I have a bad habit of pausing in the middle of gaming sessions and then leaving the games on in the background for extended amounts of time while I do other stuff. As such, my playtime on Steam can usually never be trusted. In ATRI's case, the timer says "29 hours", but you could probably shave off roughly 10 hours from that.

  8. Yeah, that kinda caught me by surprise too!

    Spoiler

    To be honest, it's remarkable in a way, since she's basically just exhibiting what should be considered completely normal humanoid behavior. It's really nothing we should be surprised about, but we as readers just sort of started making assumptions on our own based on her external appearance and the way she acts. A very well executed plot twist, I'd say!

     

  9. I had no issues whatsoever with Nanairo Reincarnation from what I can remember, so this must be a screw-up from either the developer or the coders in the localization team then. I could accept stuff like this if I was trying to run a VN from the 90's on a modern system, but for one released in 2020, not so much.

  10. After coming from ATRI, Adabana seems to be a major step down in terms of playability. The game engine is glitchy as hell, judging by my first minutes with it.
    I can't toggle fullscreen in the options (it's greyed out) and if I do it by using Alt+Enter, the stuff on-screen becomes somewhat blurry (as if you've just taken an image at a low resolution and increased the size by dragging). UI icons are highlighted with an annoyingly long delay, and some of them are highlighted even when you're not targeting them.
    There doesn't seem to be any hotkey for switching between English/Japanese either, like you could in ATRI. (At the very least, nothing I've tried has worked and there's no mention of any way to do it in the options.)
    It's apparently also one of those VNs where you have to keep the mouse cursor visible on-screen at all times to progress text.

    I sure hope the story is good enough to warrant enduring this crapfest.

  11. It's not much of a spoiler, but yeah, better safe than sorry!

    I'd also love to read Asta's earlier works, but I haven't gotten started on reading VNs in Japanese yet, not even with text-hooking. I guess it's probably about time I do that!

  12. Just finished ATRI.

    All in all, I had a great time reading it; more so than I expected, even though I'm already a fan of Konno Asta. I'd say this isn't far from becoming one of my all-time favorites, but I have one gripe with it that makes it not reach quite all the way, and that's the true ending, which I have some mixed feelings about. It's not bad; in fact, it's both well written and suits the plot, but at the same time, it was a bit too clear-cut to make it satisfying for me. To clarify, while moving into minor spoiler territory:

    Spoiler

    I'm usually not a fan of long time skips, where you're just told of major events that took place off-screen while you weren't looking. Much like in Amane's ending in Grisaia no Kajitsu, where you learn that

    Spoiler

    Yuuji passed away prematurely from cancer,

    I would much rather be left with a blank slate so I can theorize on my own about what happens in the future.
    To be honest, I usually don't like open endings either, but I feel that would have been preferable in this case. (Unless I could get a purely happy ending, which is what I feel would actually suit this VN the best.)


    Now, time to move on to Adabana. (Sorry, Aniplex, you won't be getting any money for this.)

  13. 6 minutes ago, Narcosis said:

    It's just baffling to me he didn't even bother to do any sort of research, when writing the prologue. It really devalues the entire game afterwards and at the same time, forces you to greatly lower your expectations, thus lowering the enjoyment.

    I'm not sure if you're referring to the sea levels rising, details about diving or something else, but none of that stuff really bothered me. I can imagine it might if you were hoping for something completely realistic, but that wasn't really my expectation in the first place so it hasn't affected my opinion in a bad way. If anything, I actually enjoy the writing in ATRI a lot and the translation feels very vivid and fluent. (especially compared to something like Forgotten Trace: Thanatos in Nostalgia, which just released)

    10 minutes ago, adamstan said:

    According to the walkthrough there are two endings - good and bad, and after completing both, True Ending is unlocked in the main menu.

    I saw the bad ending yesterday and have been playing a couple of hours more since then. I thought I was on track to the true ending now, but I guess I'll need to view another one before unlocking that then. In any case, I hope it ends on a positive note, but I know how these stories about robots tend to go so my mind is kinda getting prepared for having its hopes crushed.

  14. Here are a few, off the top of my head:

    "Person X used to be passionate about activity Y but stopped doing it because of reason Z"
    Just by adding that piece of information, you can be more or less certain that the route is at some point going to kick off some sort of redemption quest revolving around reigniting that former passion. It's usually the protagonist doing it for the heroines, but it can be the other way around too. That said, it's well done and not really an issue in many cases, but there are also times when it feels really forced and the person in question isn't allowed to move on with their life even if they're completely fine with the current situation. I mean, it's not strange to give up on something in real life in favor for something else, but that rarely happens in these stories from what I've seen.

    Forced drama. It seems many developers feel like they, to spice things up, have to add some drama to their routes no matter what, which quite often leads to events that feel unnatural or downright stupid. Chiho's route in Princess Evangile is an excellent example. Not only did they already pull the

    Spoiler

    "adult stabs someone" card in the Rise route, there's also the fact that the whole thing with Masaya's father returning, broke and desperate,

    doesn't happen in any of the other routes, although it should (since the choices and events in other routes couldn't possibly affect his behavior).

    The "start ghosting the person you like in order to keep a secret or make them long for you" stunt. The most recent one I remember is from SakuSaku, where

    Spoiler

    Mio had a fight with Yuuma, but rather than talking to each other and clearing everything up, Mio starts ghosting Yuuma because she's convinced that's it's a great idea to put the reconciliation off and instead make up with him on his birthday. Of course, Yuuma doesn't know anything about what she's planning, so he thinks she's ignoring him because she's still mad, which leads to him being completely miserable for days (or maybe even weeks; I don't quite remember).

    Technically, I guess this could fall under the previous "forced drama" category.

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