Tawm

The true route in Kara no Shōjo.

Wait, you didn't finish either?! There is a second scene. There are no consequences whether you choose to go through with it or not. It's a perfect example of how an h-scene that is only there for the sake of having a sex scene with each heroine can negatively affect your overall experience.

I knew Compile Heart's Active Animation Adventure system would make its way into VNs at some point. The system used in this game for the animated sprites seems like a cheap knockoff, though.

The market for VNs in the west is so small compared to target audience in the east, that if they removed h-scenes for whatever reason, the market would likely take a huge dive in sales across the board and negatively affect the medium as a whole. There has been an attempt to cater to the western mainstream audience on Steam, but the second people find out there's censorship in any way, they refuse to buy or play the VN in question, claiming to not get the full experience, even if what is censored is straight up hardcore pornography fluff and nothing else. There's just no way to please everyone. Most people I bring up the topic of visual novels with have no idea this medium even exists in the first place.

I'm up for it. Whatever the VN of choice is, it's likey something I'd never even consider reading otherwise. Could be interesting.

I strongly dislike h-scenes. They can be good for a laugh, though. Recently, I've been going through Ayakashibito again with a friend (living room, pc hooked up to tv). Whenever there are sex scenes, we do loud readings of the dialog, which brings us to tears without fail. When I trigger an h-scene while reading alone, I simply hold the skip button until it's done. It's such an enormous waste of time, and the way they are written is with 90% certainty cringe worthy. If I wanted to jerk off or watch porn, I'd go do just that; not sit through 12 hours of dialog before the slurping noises and mosaic genitalia are delivered. I know it's the main draw for a large portion of consumers, so removing them altogether would likely negatively affect the medium. An option to disable h-content is a win-win for everyone. Either way, I read VNs for their story and characters, and the fact that they contain sex scenes or not does not affect my overall enjoyment of a title, unless they're completely random and interrupt the pacing of the game *cough*Ayakashibito, Kaoru route*cough*.

Yeah, it's decent. Great setting and music. As others have said, there's lots and lots of info dumping regarding swordplay and whatnot. It can get pretty tedious, as a lot of it is repeated. It has one of the most unlikeable protagonists you'll come across. Within 20 minutes, you'll want to see Akane's head on a spike. Also, the major plot twist is something you'll see coming a mile away. I'd definitely recommend Kikokugai over Hanachirasu as well. Be prepared to read a comedy or something light hearted after that one, though, otherwise you'll have heartburn for weeks. It hasn't seen an official western release yet, as JAST loves spending years and years on projects. You should be able to find the fan translated version easily with a google search.

I don't care about length one way or the other as long as the fluff is minimal.

Oh, wow. That comes dangerously close to being plagiarism of the Costa Del Sol theme from FF7. Seriously, look it up and compare them. My all around favorite OST is likely Saya no Uta. The BGM gets more and more schizophrenic as the VN goes on. I love the vast majority of ZIZZ' work, but Kikokugai and the above mentioned are the ones that stand out. Sharin no Kuni, Ayakashibito, Kara no Shoujo, Cartagra, Swan Song, Muv Luv Alternative and Steins;Gate also have exceptional OSTs. Haven't finished more than 30 VNs, but less than half of them has had noteworthy BGM.

I'm currently re-reading American Psycho. One of my all time favorites, and by far Ellis' most memorable work to date. I did buy Dune some time ago, but haven't gotten to it yet.

Nothing too fancy. Always try to keep it as clean as possible.

I've connected my PC to my TV and am going through Tears to Tiara with a friend of mine using a gamepad through Xpadder. Went with something with gameplay to introduce him to VNs, though I'm not sure if the story is at all worth anyone's time. The intro was pretty interesting and reminded us of Breath of Fire IV, but that was all thrown out the window after the prologue. Will the porn be awkward with two 25 year old men in the room? Yes. Yes it will.

Yeah, that sounds awful. I don't think I can stomach another 3-ish hours of this crap after all; and I sat through every route in Muv-Luv Extra, which should say a 1000 words about how unbearable Killer Queen is.

Currently playing Killer Queen. I'm around 8 hours in, and it's absolutely awful. Someone put in countless hours and effort into localizing it, but I don't see any redeeming value which warrant it so far. It must be one of those games you play solely for the ending, otherwise I fail to see why anyone would spend time on a localization. Ugly, generic art with reused backgrounds over and over and over and over. Generic character designs paired with throwaway stereotypes whom I don't care whether live or die. Music that is so generic, it required less effort to compose than a Nickelback CD. I'll finish it in a few hours, but please, someone help me understand why THIS out of all things was localized.

The Good: - Believable characters and motivations, enemies have some depth and their own rationales - Each of the routes seem like they could actually stem from the choices made, admittedly via a bit of butterfly effect at times - PoV changes offer great backstory to side characters - Great worldbuilding, revealing details naturally as the novel progresses. There are a couple of "infodump" sections, but that's fine, as long as not all the exposition is toploaded at the beginning. The Bad: Just a couple of bad H-scenes -- that's more or less my only complaint. In general, there seem to be a bunch of less-than-necessary H-scenes, but I only really care about the completely ridiculous ones that break immersion with the story. Specifically, I think it would be better without: Yeah, that's pretty much my opinion on it as well. One thing I don't like is how underutilized Katou Kotarou is.

- Vic Mackey from The shield - Tony Soprano from The Sopranos - Omar Little from The Wire - Thomas Magnum from Magnum, P.I - Dana Scully from the X-Files - Walter White from Breaking Bad Other than Vic Mackey being my favorite of the bunch, the others are in no particular order.

Definitely. I fucking hate summer. The next person likes summer more than winter.

The hottest character is clearly Liu Haojun.

Yeah, I started yesterday despite what I said. It's something I've been wanting to do for years. Memorized the Hiragana and will revise and work on the Katakana later this week. Don't think I'll be touching Kanji before knowing Kana entirely by heart. Can't sleep in this heat anyhow.

I usually wait until the spoken dialog is finished before clicking. Squeaky, loud and obnixious characters I tend skip the moment I've read the line. Being able to mute individual characters is one of my most appreciated features in VNs. Sumika would be less annoying if she was voiced by Gilbert Gottfried. Ugh.

I enjoy reading and am more immersed in visual novels than any other media. VNs are a perfect compromise between manga and anime. The latter I find entirely too shallow and dropped completely years ago, though.

Started Swang Song. I've said so once before, but this time I don't think I'll be sidetracked. Last time, I got to the point where you meet Aroe, and I said to myself "Dear god, this mentally handicapped girl is going to get raped, isn't she? Then I kinda went on vacation and started playing Muv-Luv Extra, Unlimited and Alternative when I came back home instead.

Not much other than gaming, guitar and workout on a 5 day split routine. Living by myself, I have to both clean and cook in addition to everything else, which takes fucking ages due to my inefficiency in these departments. I want to start learning Japanese, but I'm not sure I can spare much time for that with my other activities in mind.

Playing some Divinity: Original Sin and Freedom Planet to keep me occupied until LoH: Trails in the Sky is released on Steam tomorrow.

Ayakashibito Now that I think about it; the entire game is pretty fucking depressing. Kikokugai: The Cyber Slayer Tears of rage! Gen Urobuchi has a twisted mind to say the least. MLA: And also the entirety of Kara no Shoujo. There is no light at the end of that tunnel, lol.