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So after playing VNs for 20 years with heavy emphasis on moege and charage, I finally gave in and purchased Fruit of Grisaia after being told by so many people how good it is in terms of story, writing and how solid the localisation is. The first thing that struck me is the game is wordy... long.. I mean real fucking long. Huge passages are spent on exposition with lots of what the MC is thinking, his take on the world at large, plenty of backstory that continually fills in as you progress and how it fits in with the route as you're playing it. The writing is solid indeed and thought provoking. The heroines are all reasonably interesting, though after having played so many VNs, there was nothing new in their personalities I hadn't seen before. The localisation is indeed solid; on my rating it almost reaches a 9/10. The only reason I wouldn't give it a 9 is that I know enough Japanese to see certain less than ideal choices in translation though none of them are massive fails, and all nuance was captured, so it's easily an 8.5 (This is my localisation rating, not my rating for the game itself.)

So I planned to start out with Makina's route since she was the least appealing heroine to me (I always go from least to most favourite heroine) but it took forever to get past the common route. It went on and on and on. I struggled to read much every night as it would make me sleepy after an hour or so of reading close to the end of the night. This was a bad sign for me. Anyway I soldiered on because of all its redeeming features and finally branched into Makina's route. I kept reading and reading and reading and waiting for that moment where it grabbed me and I simply couldn't let go of the story. 3/4 of the way through Makina's route, and many sleeps interrupting the story later, it never happened... I realised I'd lost the fight. I just didn't care about what was happening, found the endless tirade from the MC tiring to read, and didn't warm to anyone or anything. I starting mashing the ctrl key during the MC's thoughts, and then randomly through what looked less interesting. I got tired of the endless strategy scenes. Finally I gave up and mashed ctrl to the end of the route to at least see the end, which I didn't like. Since I liked the other girls much more, I then downloaded a full save game to check out the H scenes of the other heroines, some of which were pretty appealing, but not enough for me to wade through another trillion lines of story to get through, and I was mad at myself for paying money for a localisation that had not been decensored. The only thing I could think of by the end was the translator Koestl deserves a medal for translating so much fucking text, though if he actually enjoyed the game I could see how he managed to do it.

Sorry guys, I failed. I'm still only interested in charage and moege with significant romance as the primary part of the story. I'm just too old to get excited by dark themes and bad shit happening to people. I lived through gen X and depressing us as teenagers was like shooting fish in a barrel. Most of us got over it. As a middle aged man I've seen more than my fair share of actual bad shit happen to people I love and care about, and I only want mild drama and then serious happy escapism as my reward.

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2 hours ago, ittaku said:

So after playing VNs for 20 years with heavy emphasis on moege and charage, I finally gave in and purchased Fruit of Grisaia after being told by so many people how good it is in terms of story, writing and how solid the localisation is. The first thing that struck me is the game is wordy... long.. I mean real fucking long. Huge passages are spent on exposition with lots of what the MC is thinking, his take on the world at large, plenty of backstory that continually fills in as you progress and how it fits in with the route as you're playing it. The writing is solid indeed and thought provoking. The heroines are all reasonably interesting, though after having played so many VNs, there was nothing new in their personalities I hadn't seen before. The localisation is indeed solid; on my rating it almost reaches a 9/10. The only reason I wouldn't give it a 9 is that I know enough Japanese to see certain less than ideal choices in translation though none of them are massive fails, and all nuance was captured, so it's easily an 8.5 (This is my localisation rating, not my rating for the game itself.)

So I planned to start out with Makina's route since she was the least appealing heroine to me (I always go from least to most favourite heroine) but it took forever to get past the common route. It went on and on and on. I struggled to read much every night as it would make me sleepy after an hour or so of reading close to the end of the night. This was a bad sign for me. Anyway I soldiered on because of all its redeeming features and finally branched into Makina's route. I kept reading and reading and reading and waiting for that moment where it grabbed me and I simply couldn't let go of the story. 3/4 of the way through Makina's route, and many sleeps interrupting the story later, it never happened... I realised I'd lost the fight. I just didn't care about what was happening, found the endless tirade from the MC tiring to read, and didn't warm to anyone or anything. I starting mashing the ctrl key during the MC's thoughts, and then randomly through what looked less interesting. I got tired of the endless strategy scenes. Finally I gave up and mashed ctrl to the end of the route to at least see the end, which I didn't like. Since I liked the other girls much more, I then downloaded a full save game to check out the H scenes of the other heroines, some of which were pretty appealing, but not enough for me to wade through another trillion lines of story to get through, and I was mad at myself for paying money for a localisation that had not been decensored. The only thing I could think of by the end was the translator Koestl deserves a medal for translating so much fucking text, though if he actually enjoyed the game I could see how he managed to do it.

Sorry guys, I failed. I'm still only interested in charage and moege with significant romance as the primary part of the story. I'm just too old to get excited by dark themes and bad shit happening to people. I lived through gen X and depressing us as teenagers was like shooting fish in a barrel. Most of us got over it. As a middle aged man I've seen more than my fair share of actual bad shit happen to people I love and care about, and I only want mild drama and then serious happy escapism as my reward.

That's bound to happen. The main reason I like Grisaia is for the comedy, which not everyone likes. Whenever I think back to it I recall that the routes really weren't much fun most of the time. I rather feel like skipping a fair bit of them. But I'm all over the common route.

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1 hour ago, Mr Poltroon said:

That's bound to happen. The main reason I like Grisaia is for the comedy, which not everyone likes. Whenever I think back to it I recall that the routes really weren't much fun most of the time. I rather feel like skipping a fair bit of them. But I'm all over the common route.

For what it's worth, I did find the comedy amusing, chuckling out loud when it was there, but it was pretty rare and got rarer as the story went on. Perhaps that's why I survived the common route despite its absurd length; it was more slice-of-life and character development and less melodrama and tragedy.

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Much like Mr. Tiag of Poltroon, the main thing I liked about Grisaia was the common route... in fact, that's so true that I only ever played one route (Sachi's, basically just because it was the first option), which I didn't like, and then I've never gone back to the game since. The common route comedy consistently delivered for me, and I laughed out loud a lot, but then when I actually saw a route, I just got nothing from the game anymore. I keep telling myself I'll go back and play more, because the girls were fun, but it's been a few years now, and it doesn't seem likely to happen at this point...

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4 hours ago, Fred the Barber said:

Much like Mr. Tiag of Poltroon, the main thing I liked about Grisaia was the common route... in fact, that's so true that I only ever played one route (Sachi's, basically just because it was the first option), which I didn't like, and then I've never gone back to the game since. The common route comedy consistently delivered for me, and I laughed out loud a lot, but then when I actually saw a route, I just got nothing from the game anymore. I keep telling myself I'll go back and play more, because the girls were fun, but it's been a few years now, and it doesn't seem likely to happen at this point...

Well, its sad so many developers fail with routes. Mostly its either too much side cast in the routes, which sufficates both the reader and the bonding between the mc and chosen heroine, or they vanish entirely almost as soon as the route starts. The best is to keep the dynamic going, but making sure we get a good amount of bonding moments as well. 

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7 hours ago, Stormwolf said:

Well, its sad so many developers fail with routes. Mostly its either too much side cast in the routes, which sufficates both the reader and the bonding between the mc and chosen heroine, or they vanish entirely almost as soon as the route starts. The best is to keep the dynamic going, but making sure we get a good amount of bonding moments as well. 

Yeah, it does seem to be a really fine line to walk... Honestly, I've recently found that I prefer kinetic novels, or at least non-traditional route structures. It kind of makes sense to me that it's just hard to tell five distinct, compelling stories with the same cast of characters, each of them focusing around a different one of them, vs. fitting together one really, really good story around your whole cast.

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7 hours ago, Fred the Barber said:

Yeah, it does seem to be a really fine line to walk... Honestly, I've recently found that I prefer kinetic novels, or at least non-traditional route structures. It kind of makes sense to me that it's just hard to tell five distinct, compelling stories with the same cast of characters, each of them focusing around a different one of them, vs. fitting together one really, really good story around your whole cast.

Its a fine line, but not really difficult. I mean, when you're doing a romance route and wonder if they've even been on a date then its a bit lacklustre. A sky full of stars hikari is for me a good example. Maybe its the cut content, but it felt more like a friend route.

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Majikoi S

Still entertaining to read, but i'm not too happy about the new characters that's been introduced.

Spoiler

 

The new characters for the most part are just better than the previous cast, perhaps just to get some "oomph" to their character. I didn't like that tbh.

Tatsuko route was pretty decent. Good job Yamato!

Kokoro was cute as expected. Missed having a route with her when i played the original.

Monshiro - lolicrap. When she was introduced she was said to have skipped grades, but later the writer tried getting across the message that she was as old as them. Well, can't help having an idiot for a writer i guess. Although some scenes in the "continued" part was heartwarming even though the problem was solved way too easily. I can't fathom such an issue as blood relation problems being so easy to solve.

Margit - Was OK i guess, but it could have reigned in the h scenes a bit.

Tsubane - What an absolute fucking cunt. This heroine does not belong as a main route at all. Holy fuck. She took advantage of Yamato and his friends and didn't even like him when she confessed. Just do the first route where she takes control and you can see what an absolute despicable manipulating ass she is. That's not a boyfriend/girlfriend relationship at all. That is more master and slave, and Yamato is way off character as well. Not so very sorry for manipulating Yamato and his friends at all it seems. The proper option would be to tell her to "fuck off" in her confession scene and get the route tagged as finished. The second route was better, but well, she's still that despicable ass, just that Yamato really has to stay on his game to keep her in check. And i didn't like that she took over Yamato's role as both an intellectual and a strategist, making him redundant. I myself did want to see Momoyo defeated so that part wasn't the worst. I like Momoyo, but she was a bit too cocky.

Afterstories are crap though, as expected. But i'll suffer through them to get to the meat of the story! 

But throughout S i can't help but think that Yamato has been rendered completely useless. Even more so than the original game with it's routes. I wish he wasn't just sometimes quick witted, but actually had a decent role in the events that happened. Oftentimes here he's just the wimp who runs away, and that's that.

 

 

Edited by Stormwolf
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On 02/03/2019 at 12:05 AM, Fred the Barber said:

Much like Mr. Tiag of Poltroon, the main thing I liked about Grisaia was the common route... in fact, that's so true that I only ever played one route (Sachi's, basically just because it was the first option), which I didn't like, and then I've never gone back to the game since. The common route comedy consistently delivered for me, and I laughed out loud a lot, but then when I actually saw a route, I just got nothing from the game anymore. I keep telling myself I'll go back and play more, because the girls were fun, but it's been a few years now, and it doesn't seem likely to happen at this point...

Oh dear, someone with exactly the same experience as me then. Looks like it wasn't necessarily the fact it was a heavy drama novel after all responsible. It was the shift in tone and execution at fault. If you went in expecting nothing but drama (and enjoyed or preferred that) then it probably would have been fine. Looks like I'm relegated to only playing charage and moege for the rest of my life, and that doesn't bother me one bit. Might even be good news for people who want stuff like that translated that other translators are not interested in tackling, as I might.

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Replaying some parts of White Album 2. I normally don't like acoustic songs but when I listen to the acoustic version of Todokana Koi and thinking about it's story makes me emotional. The raw emotion that song can make me feel even after I finished reading it a long time ago is an achievement by itself. This game is probably the only game to make me not want to play one route because playing that just made me felt too bad (Kazuza's route in Coda). Setsuna all the way

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7 hours ago, Seraphim88 said:

Oh My God, that Yoshino music video in Rewrite might be the single greatest moment in a VN so far for me.
Does anyone have a translation for the lyrics? I'm worried I might stumble over some spoiler if I try to Google it myself.

Here's a subbed video, only thing you might have to look out for would be related videos I guess.

Spoiler

 

 

Edited by ArgentstR
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i've playing death end re;quest since its released 19 feb, this game is very good, story is a mixture of SAO and corpse party with thriller story. Art, especially character design and environment is very beautiful since they're using Kei nanameda (mugen souls series, trillion god of desctruction) and huke (steins gate and black rock shooter) as illustrator, if you know. In this game you can trigger bad ending anytime if you choose wrong decision. this game is worth to play, but if you can't play it for some reason you can just watch this walkthrough.

This guy is the only one upload with japanese voice and english subtitle, since i love japanese VA.

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After attempting to play Fruit of Grisaia and failing miserably, I've started playing the very light and fluffy moege offering from Purple Soft, Chronoclock, which many say is their least interesting game. Unsurprisingly I'm enjoying it 1000x more than Grisaia so far. It's easy to see what I play VNs for, and I should stick to what I know works...

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So, finished Nozomi's route in Seinarukana. :notlikemiya: And that the hell is wrong with this ending? :michiru: To be honest, kind of looks like the terrible ending to start with. I guess, I should've started with Satsuki. So, going for her next, and then Narukana.

Overall, I see why people call the story in this VN disappointing when compared to Aselia. Overall, it's basically the very definition of dumb fun. It's fun to play, but it's obvious that this VN could be so much more.

7/10 so far, even if the ending almost made me lower it. We'll see if the true route brings anything more. (I understand that this VN is most likely just as linear as Aselia, but we'll see).

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6 hours ago, ittaku said:

After attempting to play Fruit of Grisaia and failing miserably, I've started playing the very light and fluffy moege offering from Purple Soft, Chronoclock, which many say is their least interesting game. Unsurprisingly I'm enjoying it 1000x more than Grisaia so far. It's easy to see what I play VNs for, and I should stick to what I know works...

Chronoclock was actually my first true visual novel I read, and it's safe to say that it was a good choice on my end. I really liked most of the cast, minus D.D lol
It's moege that has an interesting enough premise to keep playing. Grisaia is pretty good, it just takes forever to get through the common route. It also has such a massive shift in tone and only a couple of choices that matter. I can't blame anyone for not wanting to play it all the way through because of that.

Right now I'm getting into Planetarian. I'm not that far in, but the setting has me interested since it's something I haven't seen from Key before. I imagine it won't take me long to breeze through the entire game in one sitting, but we'll see.

 

Edited by dwaif
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If you like ChronoClock, you should play the much better moege that was released (in English) a few months later, WagaHigh (though I probably like the art a bit better in ChronoClock, admittedly; Purple Software stuff looks amazing). It's very moege, and though the hook sounds less interesting, it's actually used much better than ChronoClock uses its (really interesting but tragically under-leveraged) hook.

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Yeah, WagaHigh was great, although I felt a bit overwhelmed with h-scenes. Half of them would be enough ;)  (And I didn't like the way nipples were drawn in h-cgs)

Recently I got all-ages version on Steam sale, and I plan to reread it in Japanese some day :D (+18 version misses dual-language feature).

Edited by adamstan
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4 hours ago, Fred the Barber said:

If you like ChronoClock, you should play the much better moege that was released (in English) a few months later, WagaHigh (though I probably like the art a bit better in ChronoClock, admittedly; Purple Software stuff looks amazing). It's very moege, and though the hook sounds less interesting, it's actually used much better than ChronoClock uses its (really interesting but tragically under-leveraged) hook.

Certainly Chronoclock looks better. Wagahigh has proper copy paste heroines from x amount of other vn's. There is nothing at all unique. Chronoclock though have heroines with a bit fresher look. I haven't read them so i can't speak for the personalities.

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Yay, I completed first route in To Heart PSE :D やった!

It was Akari's (childhood friend) route.

6006.jpg

Well, it was pretty decent, and because it requires to get along with some other characters, also serves as nice introduction. I wasn't too fond of conflict this route uses - but I have to admit, that while I was facepalming at MC sometimes, his behaviour was believable - pretty immature, but well, they're 16, what should I expect :P And additionally confused by their lifelong osananajimi relationship. To quote Hiroyuki's thoughts (my loose translation, quoting from memory):

"Childhood friends - almost like siblings, but not related. Definitely closer than friends, but still not lovers. How long can we continue this strange relationship?"

At least everything ends well - as it should with moege :)

As for the other heroines that I met during this route, I really liked Lemmy, Multi (robot girl) and Aoi-chan. Shiho seems to be annoying brat :P I'm also interested in Tomoko, for two reasons. I like girls with glasses, and she's voiced by Aya Hisakawa :)

With 10 heroines total it will certainly take me some time to finish it, but after that first route I'm definitely going to continue :)

 

The game features also radio program called "Heart to Heart" that you can choose to listen to on Saturday evenings (totally optional, doesn't affect routes). Most of it went over my head, 'cause it's audio-only, and they're talking pretty fast, but it sounds nice.

Spoiler

And then one day, while walking thru a city you can meet the girl that hosts it, and get her autograph :D I wonder if it's bonus for listening to all parts? Will check on next playthrough.

Also, chibi-sprites used on map-movement screens are absolutely cute.

chibiakari.png

Edited by adamstan
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Also, in my first post about To Heart I've said something about the actual game looking better than screenshots on VNDB (like AIR or Crescendo). It turns out, that this time it's simply due to PSE edition having improved graphics (both characters and backgrounds) ;) The "bad" looking screenshots were from first PC 18+ version.

13815.jpg
85871.jpg

or

Spoiler


akaribed.jpg

 

Edited by adamstan
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