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10 hours ago, VirginSmasher said:

I'm currently reading SeaBed and this may honestly be the first VN involving Conjueror that I'm not a fan of. The style of storytelling they use is pretty boring as it's incredibly Slice of Life based. To me, SoL can't be good with me unless comedy is involved or there is more of a focus on plot and the SoL is a break from the action. There is some intriguing stuff about SeaBed and that's the only reason I'm continuing through it at the moment, but at this point, it's not really delivering on anything to me.

In that case, I agree that the common criticism of Seabed is that the prose were kinda dry and therefore boring. The SoL scenes and character based story were definitely didn't help at all if you want to pursue the story, and in fact even Phlebas told me in regard of that when I decided to play this. That said, there's a reason that Conjueror decided to translated this and gave 4/5 for this back at his blog, so good luck on enduring this.

PS - In case you felt that each chapter was too long, let me tell you that after Chapter 4 every chapters is getting shorter.

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2 minutes ago, littleshogun said:

In that case, I agree that the common criticism of Seabed is that the prose were kinda dry and therefore boring. The SoL scenes and character based story were definitely didn't help at all if you want to pursue the story, and in fact even Phlebas told me in regard of that when I decided to play this. That said, there's a reason that Conjueror decided to translated this and gave 4/5 for this back at his blog, so good luck on enduring this.

PS - In case you felt that each chapter was too long, let me tell you that after Chapter 4 every chapters is getting shorter.

I've really been trying, but it's just so boring to me. I'm on Chapter 4 at the moment and it's really just not clicking with me. Haven't decided on whether I'm gonna drop it or not. :amane:

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Started Utawarerumono. Story is interesting but those initial villains are really lame, they make Bobon from Funbag Fantasy look like a daring genius.

Update: Finished it and for the first two thirds, i thought the slice-of-life stuff went on for a little too long. Last third was great though.

Edited by onorub
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19 hours ago, VirginSmasher said:

I'm currently reading SeaBed and this may honestly be the first VN involving Conjueror that I'm not a fan of. The style of storytelling they use is pretty boring as it's incredibly Slice of Life based. To me, SoL can't be good with me unless comedy is involved or there is more of a focus on plot and the SoL is a break from the action. There is some intriguing stuff about SeaBed and that's the only reason I'm continuing through it at the moment, but at this point, it's not really delivering on anything to me.

SeaBed is purposefully written in a really passive fashion. Partly to show Sachi's mental state, but also to emphasize the themes of the whole work. There's hardly any "drama" and structure is pretty flat, because the story and the characters refuse to dramatize their situations. After all, isn't that what we all do? Downplay our problems and just keep living our daily lives?
SeaBed does get more interesting towards the end (plus the later chapters are shorter too), but for the most part it's is very low-key.

Not that I think that any explanation can help if SeaBed's style doesn't work with someone, but I'm really impressed by it. The passive tone and the lack of explicit emotions in the narration is really unusual and pretty brave choice. I'm not surprised it is seen as boring, but I personally find it strangely calming. It's not captivating in the usual sense, but there's a nice feeling of time just flowing peacefully. Kinda like reading an old diary. I also think it's amazing how touching the story manages to be despite being what one would traditionally consider "uneventful".  

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2 hours ago, Turnip Sensei said:

SeaBed is purposefully written in a really passive fashion. Partly to show Sachi's mental state, but also to emphasize the themes of the whole work. There's hardly any "drama" and structure is pretty flat, because the story and the characters refuse to dramatize their situations. After all, isn't that what we all do? Downplay our problems and just keep living our daily lives?
SeaBed does get more interesting towards the end (plus the later chapters are shorter too), but for the most part it's is very low-key.

Not that I think that any explanation can help if SeaBed's style doesn't work with someone, but I'm really impressed by it. The passive tone and the lack of explicit emotions in the narration is really unusual and pretty brave choice. I'm not surprised it is seen as boring, but I personally find it strangely calming. It's not captivating in the usual sense, but there's a nice feeling of time just flowing peacefully. Kinda like reading an old diary. I also think it's amazing how touching the story manages to be despite being what one would traditionally consider "uneventful".  

If that's on purpose, then I still can't excuse how boring it is. Luckily, in Chapter 4, a couple of things happened and it sparked my interest to keep reading. I'll have to see if it goes anywhere good.

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Still playing Symphonic Rain. Game seemed uneventful for the longest time ..... but WTF just happened there!?

Spoiler

Falsita sure twisted the knife in there, at Asino's expense, then admits she was using me...

Not used to having strangely realistic (two faced) characters like that. Quite a surprise.

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On 28/02/2018 at 11:36 AM, Thyndd said:

Ever17 finished. It took forever since I haven't got much time lately plus it's a pretty heavy paced VN, so it's easy to get fed up if you gorge yourself on it. This should be played little by little.

  Reveal hidden contents

So I was the protagonist, Blick Winkel, all along, and they had to trick me, the player, into thinking that I was playing the story for the first time in order to avoid the paradox. Damn, that's pretty fucking clever I must say. I said before that I don't really like supernatural explanations for misteries, but this is so cool that I have to make an exception. It's not even supernatural... it's just breaking the 4th wall. And here was I thinking that DDLC was a pioneer but it turns out that Ever17 did it like 15 years ago, only that more subtly and clever :pogchamp:

That's not to say that I have not my share of problems:

-What made Kaburaki, the 1st Kid, lose his memory? To be honest it just seems like an excuse of a plot device to make it all work. His story was never revealed.

-At the beginning of the game, during the prologue, you are switching back and forth between Takeshi and Hokuto. You are watching the events happening as Blick Winkel, the player, call it as you want. At some point you've gotta make a choice, which will get your perspective fused either with Takeshi in 2017 or with Hokuto in 2034. They explain that the reason Hokuto lost his memory is because Blick Winkel "got into him", which kinda makes sense: you as the player have no idea of who Hokuto is. However, unless I am missing something, there's a problem. When you choose to merge with Takeshi, I don't think that affects his memory in any particular way. A blunder or there's something I'm failing to understand?

-All the stuff about Coco being able to know things that happened in other routes and borrow "perspectives" (or call it timelines in Steins;Gate jargon, why not)... is plainly absurd. I honestly think it's there just to make things more confusing. It kinda lessens the value of the great idea that was Blick Winkel and playing with the VN format. And on that note, I remember a topic here in fuwa where we discussed whether VNs would work in your classic novel format. Some maybe, but I think Ever17 is a prime example of one that would definitely NOT. This VN makes the most out of the format. Fuck, it wrings out the format dry.

Btw, why best girl always has to suffer the most? :badnicoman: Poor Tsugumi had it the roughest. If it were not enough with what happened to her during her childhood and at LeMU, then she is forced to leave behind her children at an orphanage, THINKING THEY WOULD BE SAFE. But nope, Leiblich got them and made their lives as miserable as their mother's. I would imagine Tsugumi would have been broken into pieces if she found out... which isn't shown to happen in the story, but one can only guess.

 

 

Well, overall it was a great experience. Totally recommended guys. If you are one of those who are still thinking about whether give it a try or not, or one of those who stalled or even dropped this VN (understandably so, since one of its biggest mistakes is its pace), I'd say that it's totally worth it. You will probably be bored to death at the beginning, but seriously, tough it out and keep playing. It will pay big dividends, that much I can promise.

Last but not least I must thank to those of you who I know read my crazy long posts and thus kept me company during my adventure. It feels great to have someone to talk and share your opinions about what you are reading. That's actually the main reason I joined this forums :sachi: So yeah, thank you guys!

Now... about the next VN I'll be reading... it'll probably be Muv-Luv. I think I'll take a break of about a week though to avoid VN overdose :makina:

Wow a kamige right after another? You're on a roll here. If you hadn't gotten Muv Luv yet, you should get it on Steam soon because there's a 30% off sale for both Muv Luv and Muv Luv Alternative which will end on 8 March.

How much would you rate Ever17? I rated it a 9 because it had some of the best plot twists I've ever seen in a vn and the ending was wrapped up nicely, even though it did take quite some time for the pace to pick up

Edited by wei123
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I've now resumed playing Fata Morgana no Yakata, Grisaia Phantom Trigger and Hoshizora no Memoria.

I'm still a long way off from finishing Phantom Trigger (still at Vol. 2, don't even know if Vol.4 is the last one) and Hoshimemo so it's gonna take me quite some time to finish both of them.

As for Fata Morgana, I'm going to finish it soon* and I can safely say that the game has some really good plot twists, with this one catching me totally off guard:

 

Michel being born as a female

 

* I'm at the part where

 

Morgana's past is revealed, from Mell's perspective. 

Edited by wei123
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5 hours ago, Dreamysyu said:

What's your opinion on the game itself so far, by the way? Also, favorite character?

It's certainly unique; even though it's a Japanese vn, it gives me more of a European feel than a Japanese one and I don't mean that in a bad way (in fact, it's quite refreshing). It has also quite a number of plot twists which I didn't expect since I went into the game without reading reviews on it. There were also some surprisingly funny moments here and there which I quite enjoyed. 

As for my favourite character, I don't really have one since I was more ineterested in the plot than the characters, but I did quite like

Michel and Giselle

I am tentatively giving it a 8.3 but that may change once I finish it.

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11 hours ago, wei123 said:

How much would you rate Ever17? I rated it a 9 because it had some of the best plot twists I've ever seen in a vn and the ending was wrapped up nicely, even though it did take quite some time for the pace to pick up

I'm not really a fan of rating numerically any piece of media as I feel any score I could give would be off. But if you insist, I guess I would give it something between an 8 and 9 out of 10. Those two extra points correspond to the poorly paced slice of life bits and to some "plotholes" (more like things left unexplained, not really plotholes per se) that, as Dreamysyu said, could've been perfectly explained with an 1 hour more worth of reading. I should clarify that I've never rated anything in my life a 10/10, so it goes without saying that I personally consider Ever17 a really good VN :sachi:

Oh, and thank you for the info about Muv-Luv! Thing is, I already purchased it some time ago :wafuu:

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16 hours ago, r0xm2n said:

Still playing Symphonic Rain. Game seemed uneventful for the longest time ..... but WTF just happened there!?

  Hide contents

Falsita sure twisted the knife in there, at Asino's expense, then admits she was using me...

Not used to having strangely realistic (two faced) characters like that. Quite a surprise.

 

Spoiler

I loved Fal's route for exactly that reason. It was really shocking and I had no time to prepare for that level of betrayal. It hurt especially hard since I was such a fan of her character. The thing was I could understand why she did it considering her background and who she was raised by.

I'll always love when a piece of fiction can surprise me even if it really hurts when it happens

Edited by Ranzo
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15 hours ago, r0xm2n said:

Still playing Symphonic Rain. Game seemed uneventful for the longest time ..... but WTF just happened there!?

  Reveal hidden contents

Falsita sure twisted the knife in there, at Asino's expense, then admits she was using me...

Not used to having strangely realistic (two faced) characters like that. Quite a surprise.

Spoiler

Fal is best psychopath.

But on a serious note, I really like her route because it's so different from anything I've seen elsewhere. Also, the game's hyper-cute art (which took me a while to get used to, and then once I did I adored it) only makes the whole experience of that route more jarring.

At any rate, enjoy the rest of the game! The game has a clunker route or two, but also some really good ones; Fal's isn't the best or most interesting by a long shot, even for a fan of it like me.

 

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Playing Lise's route in Symphonic Rain.....

Spoiler

That CG of Grave pointing that cane across Lise's throat ...... that sent a chill down my spine.

Also imagining how traumatizing that type of "discipline" would be was enough to make me shed a few tears.

 

Yeah, that was one of the more uncomfortable scenes I've read yet...

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Seeing that Hatsukoi Sankaime got translation and in my language (Indonesian) as well, I decided to play it and hopefully I can comment on that later. What I can see for now is that while it have high tech setting, I think it's more or less just a moege with emote system.

Edited by littleshogun
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Just now, littleshogun said:

Seeing that Hatsukoi Sankaime got translation and in my language (Indonesian) as well, I decided to play it and hopefully I can comment on that later. What I can see for now is that while it have high tech setting, I think it's more or less just a moege with emote system.

yeah, Not a such of masterpieces, Just a common moege VN. but I really enjoy it (although their length a little bit too short, I think ), some of their on purpose mistranslation frustrating me, but its make funny on their ways.  well,  that's the second translation of herosoft into our language (indonesian),  so at least I want to read it until the end. 

I hope can be better at next translation project . :vinty:

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On 3/8/2018 at 9:01 AM, Jazid-Kun said:

yeah, Not a such of masterpieces, Just a common moege VN. but I really enjoy it (although their length a little bit too short, I think ), some of their on purpose mistranslation frustrating me, but its make funny on their ways.  well,  that's the second translation of herosoft into our language (indonesian),  so at least I want to read it until the end. 

I hope can be better at next translation project . :vinty:

If anything one of the translation was looks nostalgic to me in all of wrong way, and also make me understand of why some people was dislike whenever suffix '-san' translated as Mr/Ms/Mrs. As for the text, other than funny translation things actually it have quite a lot of typo, but it's not like it was not understandable anyway so I'll let that slide.

Edited by littleshogun
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On 3/6/2018 at 8:16 PM, r0xm2n said:

Playing Lise's route in Symphonic Rain.....

  Reveal hidden contents

That CG of Grave pointing that cane across Lise's throat ...... that sent a chill down my spine.

Also imagining how traumatizing that type of "discipline" would be was enough to make me shed a few tears.

 

Yeah, that was one of the more uncomfortable scenes I've read yet...

Sigh...yeah that route will really get you down. Her song still effects me to this day.

So I finished playing Magical Eyes -Red is for anguish- tonight and I really liked it. It started off a little janky but it I really got caught up in it as the story went on. The mystery was quite interesting and very different than what I am used to. I'm definitely looking forward to playing the sequel when it comes out. I guess after this I should try getting back to Seabed.

Oh and one thing that Magical Eyes has going for it is a really great intro video

 

Edited by Ranzo
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I've resumed playing Little Busters and started reading my first ever otome vn, Code Realize. I swear I have this bad habit of resuming stalled vns or picking up new ones even though I still have unfinished ones :amane:

Which means that now I am reading 5 vns at the same time: Little Busters, Code Realize, Grisaia Phantom Trigger, The House in Fata Morgana and Hoshizora no Memoria. 

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I've come back to Katawa Shoujo on a whim, having listened to bits of the soundtrack and thus remembering how much fun I had with it. I'm doing the Emi route now and having a lot of fun - I'd forgotten just how good it is at sucking you in and making you want to find out what happens next. Plus it's a really soothing and easy read, too, and i find that while I like more convoluted and "hit you in the feels" type stories a la Fate/Stay Night, sometimes I just want to kick back, relax, and not worry too much. But yes, I'm really liking this read-through, and kind of wishing I'd not left it for so late. The thing too is I can't get past how good it is for a free VN - even having read several paid VNs (and quality ones at that) it still manages to hold its own very well, and it manages to nail some things others don't, like bringing back the background that was present when you rewind, loading and exiting extremely quickly, and having a fantastic soundtrack. 

I'm hoping to read something that's more on the dense, "feels-y" side after this, but I'm definitely enjoying my time with this and the sad part is now I'll only have the Rin route that I haven't yet read I'm not so sure if I'll like it much or not. 

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On 3/13/2018 at 8:54 PM, snowbell55 said:

I've come back to Katawa Shoujo on a whim, having listened to bits of the soundtrack and thus remembering how much fun I had with it. I'm doing the Emi route now and having a lot of fun - I'd forgotten just how good it is at sucking you in and making you want to find out what happens next. Plus it's a really soothing and easy read, too, and i find that while I like more convoluted and "hit you in the feels" type stories a la Fate/Stay Night, sometimes I just want to kick back, relax, and not worry too much. But yes, I'm really liking this read-through, and kind of wishing I'd not left it for so late. The thing too is I can't get past how good it is for a free VN - even having read several paid VNs (and quality ones at that) it still manages to hold its own very well, and it manages to nail some things others don't, like bringing back the background that was present when you rewind, loading and exiting extremely quickly, and having a fantastic soundtrack. 

I'm hoping to read something that's more on the dense, "feels-y" side after this, but I'm definitely enjoying my time with this and the sad part is now I'll only have the Rin route that I haven't yet read I'm not so sure if I'll like it much or not. 

Yeah I was  too invested in Visual Novels at the time to be pulled into the Katawa Shoujo hype machine but I did appreciate what a good time I had with it. Katawa Shoujo was a excellent starting point for many into exploring the genre at large.

Oh I'm playing Aoishiro right now and I think it's pretty good so far.  Their mouths move when they talk, it's all pretty incredible.

Edited by Ranzo
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