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Reading 428 Shibuya Scramble (just reached 16:00) and so far this is the best VN I've read so far regarding the implementation of a choice system. Seeing choices by one protagonist impact the fate of another is really fascinating, even though the plot itself doesn't actually branch beyond wrong choices leading to bad ends. On a few occasions the degree to which everything is intertwined feels a bit forced and just seems to be there to include a few more choices and bad ends, but even the bad ends are worth watching as they often give you a nice scene that either is pretty funny (the cockroach end!) or gives some nice character development.

Beforehand I was a bit sceptical about the use of real photographs instead of drawn sprites and backgrounds as it reminded me of Plumbers Don't Wear Ties (which, btw, would qualify as a VN if it just had textboxes), but 428's art direction is just really well done making this is one of the few visual novels that have actual visual storytelling beyond reaction shots and simple visual effects.

Other than that, so far it's a good thriller (?). It gets bonus points for its Twin Peaks references although I hope my theory involving them turns out wrong that (spoilers for Twin Peaks and 428 ahead)

Spoiler

Leland Palmer is the Mastermind as that would be kind of lazy imo. Giving your big bad the same name as the murderer in Twin Peaks and having his henchmen hang out in the Black Lodge seems to be way too on the nose.

I suspect him because of this reason and the fact that he was introduced very early on and since then had only one or two short scenes to remind you of his existence while every other side character contributes to the plot in some way and 428 doesn't seem like the kind of story where someone is just there without reason. Additionally it's writing 101 to introduce the villain in the first act, so my whole reasoning is mostly based on meta-arguments. Which is exactly why I would be dissapointed if it turned out to be true.

 

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Reading Chaos child and its pretty damn awesome tbh. If i could point out something i'd like to be different then its more likable protagonist and general female characters. Protagonist is too far on the loser scale and most of the girls act way too dominantly. Not once have i seen anyone shut up such a girl when she acts naggy or completely bitchy, truly annoying. Other than those things its just epic.

Edited by Stormwolf
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Still reading Chaos;Child, but currently it's starting to frustrate me more and more to be honest. Mostly because the perpetrator is just so ridiculous powerful in comparison, that the conflict got so completely one sided that it's getting rather boring in consequence. It's like watching a Dota2 match from Evil Geniuses against an amateur team.

While conflicts against overwhelming powerful sides aren't unusual, the good side usually has at least the advantage of being anonymous - like the rebels in Star Wars making hidden strikes against the mighty Empire. Stein's Gate was such a conflict where they had to fight a powerful organization from the shadows.

And in most murder mystery VN's like Kara no Shojo, the perpetrator is even the haunted one who has to try to outsmart the police. But while the situation in Chaos;Child has similarities to KnS, the main characters are more like a bunch of lab rats trapped in a cage which are completely dependent on the arbitrariness of its owner. Personally, I prefer somewhat more balanced conflicts where both sides are trying to outsmart each other.

Spoiler

It has gotten painfully obvious that the protagonist and his (remaining) friends are only still alive because the killer wants them to be and he could kill them pretty much whenever he wants. I can't really blame the protagonist for that though - a killer with the ability to mind control everyone and let his friends do all the dirty work is just absolutely diabolic. Unfortunately, that doesn't change the fact that the main cast is pretty much completely useless, because they are just sent from one trauma to the next.

Currently, it looks like they'll need some ridiculous Deus EX Machina to get the perpetrator. I simply can't imagine them getting him through regular means. The VN is still good I think, but I don't think it will end up among my favorites. I absolutely hate it if a VN gives me constantly the feeling to be completely helpless and just on the receiving end the whole time. And that's coming from someone who recently played and liked Fata Morgana.

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I just finished Chaos;Head and have a copy of Chaos;Child for PSVita on the way. I'm pretty hyped to start it.  Chaos;Head ended up entertaining me a lot more than I thought it would. I (regrettably) watched the anime back when it aired, so that thing spoiled some of the surprises. It's gonna be awesome going into Chaos;Child blind.

(I've really enjoyed the entries in Science Adventure series I've read. I hope someday there's a way to read Occultic;Nine and Robotic;Notes in English)

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I'm currently reading/watching Shiny Days. Not going into any details about what a trainwreck it is in terms of technical performance (basically, it's even worse than School Days HQ, which I referred to as Broken Mess: The Game back when I was going through it), but more importantly, the writing is just plain terrible at times.
I just finished the "Paris for Two" route. It was a pretty cute love story for the first three chapters, but then they somehow managed to mess it up completely in the final chapter.

Summary of the final chapter:

Spoiler

- Boy and Girl starts dating
- Boy sees Girl hanging out with Grownup Man and gets jealous
- Grownup Man is actually Girl's estranged father, but Boy doesn't know this
- Boy overhears Girl and Grownup Man talk about love, going back to their former relationship and whatnot
- Boy misunderstands, not knowing Grownup Man is Girl's father, and confronts Girl about it to find out what's going on
- Girl says Boy is misunderstanding, but despite knowing the issue, Girl chooses to not clarify that Grownup Man is actually Girl's father
- Boy gets mad and decides it's a good idea to rape Girl and show it to Grownup Man in order to claim Girl as Boy's property or whatever
- Girl runs off to Paris to get away from Boy
- Boy goes after Girl to Paris
- Boy and Girl meet at the airport
- Boy apologizes
- Girl immidiately forgives Boy, because Girl had not told Boy that Grownup Man was Girl's father, and that apparently made it okay for Boy to rape Girl
- Happily ever after :heart:

What the hell happened?

Anyway, due to OCD tendencies, I'll probably force myself to 100% Shiny Days, as I have with all other VN's I've read, but my expectations are pretty low by now.

Edited by Seraphim88
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Typical shitty way of creating drama in Japanese media. Characters just don't explain completely normal stuff and happily go along keeping it a secret even though it causes problems. You basically see it everywhere. Not to that dramatic extent though of course :P

Edited by Stormwolf
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On 24.1.2019 at 8:55 PM, alpacaman said:

Reading 428 Shibuya Scramble (just reached 16:00) and so far this is the best VN I've read so far regarding the implementation of a choice system. Seeing choices by one protagonist impact the fate of another is really fascinating, even though the plot itself doesn't actually branch beyond wrong choices leading to bad ends. On a few occasions the degree to which everything is intertwined feels a bit forced and just seems to be there to include a few more choices and bad ends, but even the bad ends are worth watching as they often give you a nice scene that either is pretty funny (the cockroach end!) or gives some nice character development.

Beforehand I was a bit sceptical about the use of real photographs instead of drawn sprites and backgrounds as it reminded me of Plumbers Don't Wear Ties (which, btw, would qualify as a VN if it just had textboxes), but 428's art direction is just really well done making this is one of the few visual novels that have actual visual storytelling beyond reaction shots and simple visual effects.

Other than that, so far it's a good thriller (?). It gets bonus points for its Twin Peaks references although I hope my theory involving them turns out wrong that (spoilers for Twin Peaks and 428 ahead)

  Reveal hidden contents

Leland Palmer is the Mastermind as that would be kind of lazy imo. Giving your big bad the same name as the murderer in Twin Peaks and having his henchmen hang out in the Black Lodge seems to be way too on the nose.

I suspect him because of this reason and the fact that he was introduced very early on and since then had only one or two short scenes to remind you of his existence while every other side character contributes to the plot in some way and 428 doesn't seem like the kind of story where someone is just there without reason. Additionally it's writing 101 to introduce the villain in the first act, so my whole reasoning is mostly based on meta-arguments. Which is exactly why I would be dissapointed if it turned out to be true.

 

So I finished 428 yesterday and everything I wrote about it previously still holds true. Seems I really swallowed that red herring. In general, if there is one thing 428 is really great at it's setting up and paying off plot devices, especially when it comes to the showdown on Shibuya Scramble. It definitely deserves all the praise coming its way as it's probably one of the best constructed VNs out there. I didn't fall in love with it like I did with my absolute favourite VNs but I still fully recommend it to anyone who likes visual novels since I can't find a single reason not to like it.

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Finished chaos child a few days ago

Spoiler

 

Damn, that must be one of the saddest and loneliest endings i've ever seen. Serika remembered him, yet chose to accept his sacrifice. Honestly, i thought that was pretty shameless after what she did. She should fight for the blame, and rightfully so regardless what Takuru wanted. Honestly she should be dead. I don't think that redemption shit suited the vn i've read up to that point.

The girls didn't even give enough of a shit to give takeru one final goodbye except Uki. Good girl. Yuuto also by wanting to become a lawyer to help his dear brother. Good stuff.

This whole vn was basically turdpile upon turdpile showed atop of Takeru's head. I thought by being so relatively dark with its common route and side routes, a bit like symphonic rain, it deserved a somewhat more happy ending. Takeshi did let the real perpetrator go, so he could just as well have faked a "real" killers escape or pin Wataru as the real murderer and his death as self defense without taking in innocent Takuru. 

 

 

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I just started playing Serment - Contract with a Devil, which was dropped on Steam by Sekai pretty much out of nowhere. It's this kind of cutesy dungeon crawler with some wholesome yuri romance and looks pretty nice so far. The writing seems decent enough and while character designs are a bit hit and miss, the art in general... Well, I'll let the Main Menu background speak for itself:

file?downloadToken=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhb

Should be quite fun. :>

Edited by Plk_Lesiak
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29172.jpg

Finished Chaos;Child as well - or to be precise, its common route. Unfortunately, I wasn't particularly impressed by it. <_< (Warning: Rant incoming!!!)

If I would sum up the experience of Chaos;Child in just a few words, I'd say it had a quite good start, a somewhat mediocre middle part and a horrible ending.

Long story: roughly the first third of the story was actually quite decent. The murder cases were interesting, the protagonist much more bearable than in Chaos;Head and the heroines likable. I also liked the fact that the VN had a more 'traditional' cast of moe heroines with routes. Many story VN's forfeit the romance parts for the sake of the plot. That's not really a bad thing, however moeges are popular for a reason. And my vision of a 'perfect VN' has well written heroine routes with romance and moe embedded in a good story. However, this combination is so rare that I could only name two VN's that succeeded at it - Fate/Stay Night and G-Senjou no Maou. Maybe even Sharin no Kuni as well, but that's more or less it. The majority of other good story VN's either don't have romance at all or it's so minor that it's of almost no relevance. For that reason, I had high hopes for this VN after the promising start.

Towards the second third of the VN - the middle part - the VN started to show certain 'signs' that made me worried. To give some background about that, I want to bring up the Higurashi anime, which  marked a bit of a turning point in the anime scene. It had a very unique mixture of cute moe girls and gore. While there were violent animes before, they usually had a very different, darker style - for example Hellsing or Claymore comes to mind. Higurashi made that unusual combi working with a very solid plot and it left a lasting impression due to its gory scenes being particular shocking because of they involved cute moe girls. Over the years, this inspired various other animes to use a similar formula. Good follow-up's were Puella Magi Madoka Magica, less because of its mostly minor gore and more because of its dark themes. Unfortunately, there were also more than enough shows that tried to fake depth by adding gore and just delivering a rubbish plot. Typical indicators of those 'works' were sudden personality swaps that didn't make sense, ridiculous over-exaggerated hysteria and whining orgies from the protagonist that could last for minutes to 'emphasize' the grittiness and maturity of the plot. Furthermore, artificial stretching of the story to delay the revelation of its non-existence as far as possible to the end. And finally, an absolutely disappointing ending when it gets clear that the show had no substance at all.
And Chaos;Child started to show similar signs. Very few revelations and too much slice of life, and so the story got slower and slower to the point of stagnation. A certain key issue involving Yui was probably the turning point. The story got frustrating because there was almost no progress and the villain seemed untouchable. To be fair, at that point the VN still had the potential to be very good.

Unfortunately, after that the last third or so of the VN started and threw that at me:

Spoiler

Once upon a time, there lived a girl named Serika who had a friend named Takeru. But what nobody could know was that...

Spoiler

Serika was just Takeru's imaginary friend. But wait, how could that be? She was interacting with others! But what nobody could know was that...

Spoiler

Takeru real-booted Serika alive with psi-powers. But wait, how could that be? Why did Takeru have such powers? But what nobody could know was that...

Spoiler

Takeru was victim of an earthquake in his childhood where he saw a strange experimental light that granted all kids nearby their favorite super power. Naturally this effect is highly scientific and Einstein and Newton approved and called "Shonensis Chuuibyou" in expert circles. But what nobody could know was that...

Spoiler

Serika also had some strange split personality which was so different from her normal nice self that even her voice was different. But both Serika's reeeeally liked Takeru and wanted to do something for him. They thought about giving him a present like a video player, or a computer, or a yearly subscription for a brothel, but nothing seemed to fit. Then Serika 2 had great idea, because what nobody could know was that...

Spoiler

Takeru really like criminal cases and so Serika 2 had a fantastic idea to give him his personal case to solve by murdering lots of innocent people and butchering his whole family. Both Serika's agreed (High-Five) that Takeru would be absolutely delighted and eternally thankful to them. But after they thought a bit about it, they decided that they would need a bit help with that. And so they did what every teenage girl with a career aspiration as serial killer would do, they asked...

Spoiler

Dad! Naturally, many dads might have been mean to Serika and just denied her that completely understandable wish, however what nobody could know was that dad was actually...

Spoiler

Dr. Evil! A sadistic bastard who did human experiments just for fun. And so dad just responded after a bit of thinking "Why not?! Sounds like fun! I wanted to slaughter them during my experiments anyway. Adding a few more innocents makes it all the more entertaining." (High-Five)
And so they started. But what nobody could know was that...

Spoiler

Takeru simply wasn't able to solve the case, just fumbling in the dark and playing the drama queen the whole time. And so the Serika's being the nice girls they are, had just pity with him and presented him all the mysteries and secrets on a silver plate, so he didn't have to figure them out by himself with his limited intellect. But what nobody could know was that...

Spoiler

Takeru now considered himself responsible for the whole mess since Serika was a creation of him, leading to an unbelievable touching end. But what nobody could know was that the 'touching' was actually because of...

Spoiler

1387977881-image-o.jpg

Facepalming - lots of it!!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Oh! My! God! What was that?!? :marie:

I think that was the biggest bogus plot I've seen in the last ten years. I'm still not sure how much of this stuff is actually supposed to be true because it was so buried in nonesense and ridiculum. Trying to go 'chuuni' with their silly swords towards the end certainly also wasn't the brightest idea. Heroines were also more or less dropped and not developed any further. Everything felt rather rushed, after the VN was incredible slow before that. I thought about playing the heroine routes and the true route, but after reading some comments and synopsis about them, it seems that I didn't even read the biggest bullshit yet. If it wouldn't be so ridiculous over-dramatized you could at least take it as goofy comedy. But the VN seems to honestly expect to take this nonesense serious. And what's the point with the sex-delusion system? It might have made sense for the protagonist in Chaos;Head who was a lot more broken - but here?! Overall, there's a rather good thread on Reddit that points out a lot of problems of the VN and I agree with most of them. No idea how it could get such a high rating on VNDB. This is light years away from both Stein's Gate and also Root Double with which it has strong similarities.

Heroine ranking: Hinae > Mio > Nono = Serika ? Hana (It's hard to judge Hana since you don't get to know her very good in the common route)

Final rating: 5.5/10 (Start: 8 Middle: 7 End: 2)

I'm honestly kind of sad that the VN turned out that way - there was so much potential. I would have probably given already a high rating if they just made a somewhat 'normal' ending with more romance orientated routes and didn't try to go hyper extra special. I wonder if this was the fault of Umehara Eiji, the writer who wrote all the bad chapters at the end. He's the only one of the five writers with no previous experience - and it showed.

Edited by ChaosRaven
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I would say that I did find the Reddit comment on Chaos Child was quite interesting, so let me comment on that a bit.

Spoiler

After I read the spoiler, what I can say is that they didn't need 300 Committee. Yes you didn't read it wrong if you've been following SciFi ADV here that Chaos Child didn't need Bigger Bad here, because you can still have Serika asking help from Sakuma without the latter as the member of Committee because the story in Chaos Child was more personal. I also agree with the sentiment at that thread, because I start to sense that Chiyomaru just using Committee as his tool for creating the drama rather than actual villain, and if he kept writing the spin off like this then the only way to knew the ending would be when SciFi ADV was abut to be cancelled and that Chiyomaru realized that he piled up too much Committee plot so much that he rushed to write the game to end all of the plot line. Granted that it seems unlikely seeing that they keep re-releasing Steins Gate, but it's only a matter of time until he's overwhelmed by the setting that he set up himself.

Sorry for the rambling above.

As for Chaos Child if you wonder why it did get high rating in VNDB, then you may as well try to answer why some people like Himawari there. As for who is at fault, well it's probably Chiyomaru decision to add Sequel Hook to the VN itself (I would say that if we ignore the sequel hook, then Chaos Child is a complete VN here) so you better not wonder about that. 

Edited by littleshogun
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4 hours ago, littleshogun said:

As for Chaos Child if you wonder why it did get high rating in VNDB, then you may as well try to answer why some people like Himawari there.

Nah, Himawari is sitting far below with a 7.8 which isn't particular high for a story VN. No comparison to the 8.5 'kamige without flaws' rating of Chaos;Child.

Edited by ChaosRaven
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7 hours ago, ChaosRaven said:

No comparison to the 8.5 'kamige without flaws' rating of Chaos;Child.

I would say that that kind of thinking is wrong, because kamige is very subjective matter and thus none VN that could be categorized as kamige without flaw. I admit that you raise a point that the plot was controversial, but I think it appeal a lot of people out there. So I would suggest that you can read some VNDB posts there to know why it's got high rating and appeal a lot of people, and of course if you still did find that it's not acceptable it's okay (You can say that the execution is very flawed).

Edited by littleshogun
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I've finally completed Shiny Days. Or rather, I've managed to complete what I can, but I'm still missing a lot of content that is pretty much impossible to get due to the maze-like routing system that requires you to pick specific combinations of a ton of choices to reach certain route points. Even after doing everything in the official guide from the publisher, I was still only at 70% completion, with 7 endings and several route points missing.
Since then, I've replayed certain parts over and over again, picking different choice combinations in hopes of making progress eventually, but I've only managed to unlock one additional ending and one route point after all that effort. I'm just clutching at straws by now, so I've decided to abandon this project before I go insane.

All in all, this was the worst VN I've ever read and I can't possibly recommend it to anyone. Not only for the terrible routing system, but also storywise and from a technical standpoint. To put it bluntly, it's a steaming pile of sh*t, and the only reason I kept going was because I have a bad habit of being unable to leave stuff unfinished.

Sidenote: Since Shiny Days is supposed to be a more lighthearted visual novel than School Days, I figured maybe Makoto (the protagonist) would be a decent human being here, but it turns out he's still the same scumbag he's always been. He raped 5-or-so different girls over the course of the story, cheated on pretty much everyone, and had no problem lying to their faces in order to cover up his detestable behavior.
The only way the story of Shiny Days could be somewhat enjoyable is if someone ran up to Makoto and punched him in the face every time he does something inappropriate.

I think I need to read something that's actually good now in order to avoid being scarred for life by this horrendous experience.

EDIT: If anyone's interested, this is what the route map looked like after doing everything in the official guide:

Zun8hh.png

Edited by Seraphim88
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Playing Otome ga Tsumugu Koi no Canvas.

Probably the only game I liked from Ensemble. Most of their games had that weird glossy art and cliche story that put me off. This game is probably one of the best charages I have played. It has depth and well portrayed relationships. It helped that Shin/Mizuki really felt like a Character that needed to be saved by the heroines and also the kind of character that can save them in turn.

Also yeah, this game was one of the most difficult works I have read for some reason. probably because of the poetic way the author writes monologues, it's beautiful really.

Only finished Rena's path yet, on Chiharu now and then to Shizuku.

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12 minutes ago, Larxe1 said:

Playing Otome ga Tsumugu Koi no Canvas.

Probably the only game I liked from Ensemble. Most of their games had that weird glossy art and cliche story that put me off. This game is probably one of the best charages I have played. It has depth and well portrayed relationships. It helped that Shin/Mizuki really felt like a Character that needed to be saved by the heroines and also the kind of character that can save them in turn.

Also yeah, this game was one of the most difficult works I have read for some reason. probably because of the poetic way the author writes monologues, it's beautiful really.

Only finished Rena's path yet, on Chiharu now and then to Shizuku.

Well, one day we get something thats a bit different translated too. One day..

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Still playing Otome ga Tsumugu Koi no Canvas

Finished Chiharu's route. Plotwise, Rena was better but I really loved Chiharu's character as she hit all the right spots with the characteristics I like in a heroine.  A heroine with a strong facade but actually kind of weak-willed and desires affection from others. Although, the ending they should have made in into an extra like with Rena's last H scene. The scene after they show Shin's painting was the perfect way to end the novel.

Even if Rena felt like the main heroine, playing Chiharu after Rena made me appreciate Chiharu's character more as there are a lot of foreshadowing that you could understand if you played Rena's route and this is proof of good writing.

Spoiler

Chiharu's conflict with her loyalty and devotion to Rena as she was completely aware of her feelings, she still loved Shin. The conflict with her feelings is even more heavy after the dialogue that she really thought Rena could just go marry wolfgang (The douche), so she could be with Shin. Chiharu hated Wolfgang in Rena's route and she was willing to make them marry if she gets Shin. Still, the little moments of monologue like that make me love this game. Some light statements that you could wave off actually is quite heavy.

So far definitely a 9/10. This game really is poetic and translating this in English probably is quite the herculean task.

Gonna play Shizuku's route for last and ignoring Inui and Anastasia. I really want to continue playing ChuSinGura after a long break.

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Well, I finally got Chaos;Child in the mail and started it.  I've been enjoying it so far, so hopefully, I like it more than others have. I find it way spookier than Chaos;Head was. The hotel was intense. The way people knock on doors in this game is really creepy too. (Maybe I should start knocking like that when I visit people's houses?...)

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Finished the Chaos;Child common route and that finale really was... something. I didn't hate it as much as ChaosRaven did but yeah, the twists and reveals were pretty bad. I'll just mention one huge issue I had, because picking apart everything wrong with the last third would probably take me hours (spoilers for C;C and Hatoful Boyfriend ahead):

Spoiler

When a villain with a similar motive works better in a pigeon dating-sim you're doing something wrong. "My best friend had an innocent wish so I decided to commit mass murder to fulfil it for him" only works as a motivation when your villain is either crazy evil or a parody, not someone the reader is supposed to sympathise with and who just has to see the wrong of their ways. It gets even worse when the best friend character starts feeling responsible for the actions of the bad guy.

Despite how little sense the plot made in the last third, it was still paced well enough that it was an engaging read for me. But maybe it was just because I was mentally prepared for things getting stupid down the line from the point

Spoiler

the Di-Swords were introduced. When you feel the need to put huge magical swords in your crime story, you're probably not very confident about the mystery you built.

On a side note: Shouldn't the Di-Sword with the mind control device still be in the psychic realm (or whatever you want to call it) instead of being a real sword connected to a machine? The swords are supposed to be something Gigalomaniacs can summon as a manifestation of their powers and not as their source. So if the weird rucksack gives you psychic powers, shouldn't its wearer become able to summon a sword themselves? And yes, I know this this is a minor issue compared to all the other dumn stuff going on in the end.

Despite all my ranting, I still kind of like C;C's common route, especially its overall atmosphere and the way it built suspense.

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2 hours ago, alpacaman said:

Finished the Chaos;Child common route and that finale really was... something. I didn't hate it as much as ChaosRaven did but yeah, the twists and reveals were pretty bad. I'll just mention one huge issue I had, because picking apart everything wrong with the last third would probably take me hours (spoilers for C;C and Hatoful Boyfriend ahead):

  Hide contents

When a villain with a similar motive works better in a pigeon dating-sim you're doing something wrong. "My best friend had an innocent wish so I decided to commit mass murder to fulfil it for him" only works as a motivation when your villain is either crazy evil or a parody, not someone the reader is supposed to sympathise with and who just has to see the wrong of their ways. It gets even worse when the best friend character starts feeling responsible for the actions of the bad guy.

Despite how little sense the plot made in the last third, it was still paced well enough that it was an engaging read for me. But maybe it was just because I was mentally prepared for things getting stupid down the line from the point

  Hide contents

the Di-Swords were introduced. When you feel the need to put huge magical swords in your crime story, you're probably not very confident about the mystery you built.

On a side note: Shouldn't the Di-Sword with the mind control device still be in the psychic realm (or whatever you want to call it) instead of being a real sword connected to a machine? The swords are supposed to be something Gigalomaniacs can summon as a manifestation of their powers and not as their source. So if the weird rucksack gives you psychic powers, shouldn't its wearer become able to summon a sword themselves? And yes, I know this this is a minor issue compared to all the other dumn stuff going on in the end.

Despite all my ranting, I still kind of like C;C's common route, especially its overall atmosphere and the way it built suspense.

Worst is yet to come.

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Just finished Chaos;Child. I thought it was a great read overall, but although I liked the way the True Ending route was built, the conclusion to the story felt immensely dissatisfying.

Spoiler

I really don't understand why Takuru and the others decided to pin the murders on him, when they could have just said that Sakuma, one of the people actually responsible, was the culprit. It makes no sense whatsoever.
Sure, one could argue that Takuru's taped confession was an effective way to spread the video with the image to cure the Chaos Child patients, but there must have been a thousand different ways to make that happen. Wakui even said it was fine to use the video, since the Committee no longer had any interest in Shibuya or Chaos Child Syndrome.
If Takuru hadn't taken the blame, maybe he, Serika and the others could've possibly started hanging out together like somewhat normal people, rather than Takuru rotting away in captivity for the rest of his life. I mean, Serika obviously got her memories back at the end of the game without her mind breaking, so there shouldn't be anything stopping them as long as they can forgive each other.


Other than this, I thought the VN did a pretty bad job at foreshadowing. In a story like this, you always end up speculating a lot, so it's not really that strange to figure out some stuff beforehand, but I'm kinda disappointed that some of the more major plot points were so transparent. Some twists I figured out before they were revealed:

Spoiler

1. Serika was either the murderer herself, or helping the one who was.
I started thinking this during the first chapter, and as the story progressed, more fuel just kept being added to the fire to support my theory. She had a few strange reactions early on, she tended to show up or leave at important times, she pointed out things that would make progress in the case whenever Takuru missed something, and so on. The first time we learned about her broken Gero-Froggy, I immidiately thought that "this sound is going to be a vital clue at some point", and the more I started suspecting her of being the killer, the more it started to feel like that Gero-Froggy would be what revealed who she was.

2. Minamisawa Senri was still alive, but living as another person.
The first time I saw the CG of her strapped to the chair, I thought that this was possibly Rimi from Chaos;Head or Serika with long hair, but as soon as Nono mentioned something during the common route about Takuru being alone in the basement (rather than being there with Serika, like he thought), it was pretty obvious that Nono was Senri. Since Serika didn't exist as a physical person at that point in time, the only way that Nono could've known about Takuru being alone down there is if she saw it herself.

3. Uki's route was a dream.
The moment Takuru woke up in the dorm after the Yui murder scene, I figured this was something created by Uki, considering she had done something similar to Momose in order to return to the basement during the common route. It didn't take too long for weird stuff to start happening and imply this was a dream, so this is probably one of the easier twists to figure out.

4. Wakui was either involved in the killings, or had some connection to the Committee.
I guess this isn't really a case of bad foreshadowing, since there weren't any obvious hints about him like in the previous two cases, but something felt off about him and I started suspecting him from the moment he was introduced.


There were also a couple of twists I expected to come that turned out to be wrong. Namely:

Spoiler

1. The first time I saw Haida, I was pretty much fully conviced she was Ayase from Chaos;Head. The hair color was similar (I figured the length was just because she let it grow over the past years), she wore clothes that seemed sorta gothic, and she was dragging her leg (Ayase injured her leg during the earthquake). That theory went down the drain as soon as I found out she was a pyrokinetic, and her eye color and face turned out to be a mismatch when her face was shown.

2. During Kurusu's route, I thought it would be revealed at some point that the one who killed Sakuma was actually her, not Serika. We were told that Kurusu learned about Serika's secrets because that information leaked from Serika when they fought, so I figured that Kurusu learned about Sakuma being a bad guy and decided to end his life to protect the people around her. I'm kinda glad I was wrong about that, since that would have made Kurusu a murderer (although it would have been for a good cause in this case).


Anyway, to those of you who have read Chaos;Child, I would love to hear about theories you were either right or wrong about!

Edited by Seraphim88
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Reading Midori no Umi now. I was interested in that VN for quite some time - mostly because I've a mysterious mansion fetish and the VN looked very interesting in that regard. I also have the Japanese harcopy lying around for over a year now, waiting to be read. It was therefore a bit of a surprise when SakuraGame suddenly came along with it's pseudo western release.

The translation is obviously bad, but it's still better than what Atlas is spitting out, so it's at least better than nothing.

Anyway, at the beginning of the VN I really thought I'd have fallen in a large sugar storage, with half of the inhabitants of the secret mansion being moe heroines and the other half sweet little kids.

However, a few hours reading later...

I've died four times now. Two times I was murdered, one time I ran away with a heroine and we both got lost and died, and one time I went insane. In addition to that, the heroine I wanted to romance seems to be a dangerous yandere that threatened me and now I'm scared of her. So I'm slowly getting the impression that this isn't just a run of the mill moege. :o

It's getting more interesting the further I read, but no kidding, the VN gets really depressing after a while and it's slowly getting to me. It's a good thing that I have some fluffy 'emergency moeges' lying around to get my mood up again. :sachi:

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