Mr Poltroon

Just in case anyone is interested in knowing, the new role I've been given managed to lock my permissions such that I could not see any forums or forum posts; not even the one announcing my change in role. I thought, for moments, that the forum had imploded.

@Dergonu I seem to recall you might've played that yuri game. Am I misremembering?

Whoa, happy birthday @Flutterz. Your (now utterly irrelevant!) Gin'iro Haruka playthrough brought me much joy.

*twitches* Wait, this wasn't a very useful reply. My apologies. Feel free to tell me to bugger off and I'll even hide this.

Not to discount your initial premise or the entire post, because I think what I will say won't disprove it or anything, but I'm somewhat willing to bet that the majority of people that read Umineko for the first time do not fit into the pattern you have described. Many, including myself, who are fans of the mystery genre are not actually interested in solving the mysteries. The interest is in having characters be smart and do it all for us so we can be amazed. This particular type of reader is often kicked in the shin by Umineko which does not actually bother to solve its mysteries, and even when it does, it does not do so correctly*. Indeed, the novel itself dedicates many of its scenes to giving the readers clues and trying to get them to actually think and try to solve the mystery. Many of the scenes where meta Battler is alone introspecting or talking with someone else as an aside of the main plot it can often be them encouraging him to try and solve things or explaining why it's not an impossible task. In light of all this, it is very difficult for me to swallow that the novel did not intend to have you read it as a mystery at the start. Thankfully that isn't quite what you said and I ultimately agree that whilst the novel wants you in mystery-solving mode for the tale it wants to tell, that mode isn't the one that'll get you to the truth/meaning/whatever of the scenes. On the topic of my own replay, I leaned heavily into the mystery-solving aspect for my readthrough because I didn't try to solve anything my first way through, and by the end the game does give you the key pieces of info to put things together. Still, most of the more abstract scenes I do "ignore" from a mystery solving perspective even now, choosing to read them purely as character moments. I don't have it in me to try parsing them in any other way. *Which does not matter, because to somebody who isn't solving things, there are a tremendous amount of scenes of "awesome music is playing and this character might be doing something amazing" when they actually are not (Battler's the master nothing-doer while looking awesome). This works to amaze inattentive people anyhow, so Umineko's not so bad even from this perspective.

Hm. Is this the stuff @Dergonu likes?

EVN, a term that stands for English Visual Novel, and it refers to Visual Novels that were developed by English-speaking developers. Other similar terms that might be used are OELVN (Originally English Language Visual Novel) or Western VN. Examples consist of Highway Blossoms or Mutiny!!, and, of course, the titles in his Steam Curator page.

Who removed the bloody 'NO' reaction?? Also, hey, Happy Birthday, @babiker, if you're still around and about.

Hm. I'd forgotten by this morning. Thanks.

Happy Birthday, @littleshogun.

"Thank you all for caming along for this ride!" No problem, mate. I do love some good caming about.

If you look at any list that recommends the "best" then the same titles will naturally appear there, because they're the more popular ones, the ones more people like. If you are looking to find visual novels you do not know about, you will need to venture into recommendation threads with veterans asking about them, or, better still, make one yourself, because I assure you there are people who will know of Visual Novels you may not. You just need to show what you've played or what you like. Discussion itself mostly takes place about either the big famous titles or the bigger recently released things, so you won't find obscure VNs by reading the discussions that are had, most of the time. So in that sense I can agree (though if you start threads about obscure titles it is likely that people who've played it before will at least browse it). Do you know about Symphonic Rain? Play that without looking it up any further if it looks like it might interest you (and you haven't already).

I don't know that I would describe Disco Elysium as a Visual Novel, but simultaneously I somehow felt it had too much text even though I read Visual Novels that most definitely tend to offer more such fluff. Must be because in Elysium I always felt I was making no progress and/or that the text required too much thinking to parse/interact with. What a scrub I am.

I am not sure the OP's "translator groups" is actually meant to exclude the localisation companies, if I'm reading it correctly. At any rate, I do not know Japanese or its VNs, so I could not say if the best titles are being brought over or not, only that I like the ones that are brought over.

@Silvz I don't know if Seraphim has seen your reply yet, but as obvious as it may seen, I would put it in spoiler tags so as to not affect the person's experience. Maybe I'm very wrong and they don't mind, but if you don't know how they'll react, directly replying to their theories, whether it seems obvious or not, may affect them negatively somehow.

Okay. I'll just focus on crime theories for now, as I don't have much to add on the tea parties and ???. It's witches witching about. Full spoilers for the entirety of Umineko. Episode 1 murder theory: That's my theory. I now present to you episode two stream of consciousness. This time I wrote far less about random details. That may mean I was more invested, or maybe less. I'm not sure. To be honest, I don't appreciate the author telling me how to enjoy my mystery novels, but fine. I can try and solve them, see? (To be honest, I now realise that Ryukishi07 really did give us everything we needed to get through all the hard parts if we'd read through Umineko once.)

But what does my young foolish self do, who took that key and dropped it down the drain? Never read a mystery novel in my life, and frankly, haven't read any since, if not for other mystery visual novels. Regardless, I've decided to give it another try. Here's a stream of consciousness for the first episode of Umineko, which I started on Thursday and only now finished. Spoilers for the entire novel as I've read the whole thing and will be using the bits and bobs I remember as I go through. I'll follow with the tea party and ??? and then possibly clearer thoughts. Also I'll make a blogpost for my everything on Episode 1 at some point.

Like, certainly, I appreciate that The Heart of the Woods masterful experience, but I know what I'm getting into if the premise is 'a goth girl meets a fairy girl and yuri ensues'. I was not expecting ebi's usual stuff, and actually hoping it wouldn't be in. This is all great news to me.

I've moved the thread to the Original VN forum. This seems interesting. Glad to see you've hit your goal.

I mean, I guess some people may think this way, and argue it, but I wonder if anybody coming off of Umineko would actually think this way. That since it wasn't real, it does not matter.

Thankfully, I can still interact in some ways with this VN.

I apologise that I cannot contribute much to this discussion, but I find it fun in how much of a state of simultaneously knowing things and not knowing things I am. I've read through the VN, but I took away so little from it, especially these many years on, that all the big spoilers and twists don't really mean much of anything to me. I don't feel spoiled, but it's not like I remembered them. I'd hope to one day read it but... That'd require a lot of motivation. I don't know if it'll ever come.