What are you playing?

[Phantom]

13 hours ago, Fred the Barber said:

Comyu gets a big thumbs up from me, and is generally pretty popular around here.

Thanks for your opinion  

[Funyarinpa]

9 hours ago, Vorathiel said:

 

So, people of Fuwa, help me please. I'm mildly ill right now, so I have a weekend at bed, without even internet connection, if not count few short moments, like this one right now. It's 15:17 right now. So, please - help me choose a VN I should read over this weekend, help me finish something

 

My biggest advice: If you're mildly ill, then just uninstall Killer Queen right now to avoid becoming severely ill. KQ is likely the worst VN I have ever read after Muv Luv Extra. 

 

Never read the others you mention (although Ever17 is a favorite of mine- it's fucking fantastic) myself, so can't say much. 

Also, I played 9 hours of Zero Time Dilemma today. Life is good. 

[Eclipsed]

9 hours ago, Vorathiel said:

So, people of Fuwa, help me please. I'm mildly ill right now, so I have a weekend at bed, without even internet connection, if not count few short moments, like this one right now. It's 15:17 right now. So, please - help me choose a VN I should read over this weekend, help me finish something. I can't wait for Ever17, but there is still a long, long way to go.

Grisaia No Kajitsu - Only Yumiko chapter left. I hate this game

Since you're mildly sick aka life sux right now, you should make it worse by spending that time finishing a VN you hate

 

23 minutes ago, Funyarinpa said:

Never read the others you mention (although Ever17 is a favorite of mine- it's fucking fantastic) myself, so can't say much. 

Also, I played 9 hours of Zero Time Dilemma today. Life is good. 

I'm reading Ever17 now  \/

Also, goddamn fking finally. ZTD's a pretty thrilling experience, glhf!

[Vorathiel]

15 minutes ago, Eclipsed said:

Since you're mildly sick aka life sux right now, you should make it worse by spending that time finishing a VN you hate

And I did it! And this route is hilariously bad, as opposite to boring and sad (Killer Queen), so I have fun. :v

[Mr Poltroon]

Canvas 2 is waaay better than I expected. I'll bash the translation any day and typos are aplenty, but the Visual Novel itself seems great.
I'm not even sure whether I'm on the common route or in a route or whatever, but it's long, it feels like I'm in control, and it feels really well crafted. It feels even more divergent than CLANNAD, and that's one hell of an achievement. 

The first playthrough, without a walkhrough, of this Visual Novel is truly magical. It feels like you're in control but it's not nearly as messy as CLANNAD. It's marvellous.
The issue? I haven't gotten into a real route as far as I can tell, so I don't know how the romance proper will be. Will it be an *enters relationship* *has sex* *the end* sort of thing? I'm hoping not but it's feeling like it. Regardless, even if that were to be the case, I cannot deny that even the daily scenes can feel fairly romantic on occasion.

 

EDIT: Also, a love triangle with two men outside of an otome. This is unprecedented! I, Protagonist-sama, have competition? Outrageous! Completely unrealistic!

[Vorathiel]

19 minutes ago, Tiagofvarela said:

Canvas 2 is waaay better than I expected.

I went to vndb to add this to my wishlist, but I saw those two screens and amount of cancer was too high. xD (still added on wishlist, but only on low  )

[Mr Poltroon]

8 minutes ago, Vorathiel said:

I went to vndb to add this to my wishlist, but I saw those two screens and amount of cancer was too high. xD (still added on wishlist, but only on low  )

Spoiler

 

To be completely honest, I am basically ignoring both of these. Lately, my interest in both childish lolis and incest has hit an all time low.  You can basically go through the game without meeting most of the 7 or so heroines (or at least, hardly ever seeing them for more than a minute) outside of that blond Elis and Kiri.

 

Now then, I may be praising Canvas 2, but I know for a fact you're a picky eater and I should warn you: I'll eat up any kind of rubbish. Me praising Canvas 2 is worth jack. It's probably a terrible game with nonsensical writing. It's just that I can't tell that kind of thing myself so I'll enjoy any "moe crapfest" that comes in my general direction.

[Fred the Barber]

I picked up SupiPara last night and have played a couple hours. I'm enjoying it quite a bit so far. Right now, it feels kind of like it's setting up a lighthearted moege, but between the overarching theme of memory and the game coming from minori, I'm expecting shit to get a little bit more real before too long. As far as characters, I found Sakura pretty likeable right off the bat, and she's only been getting stronger in every scene. The other characters are more slowly growing on me as well, especially the MC's mother.

The art is, of course, gorgeous. Characters have that same glow I saw in eden*, which makes everything look soft and lush. And of course it's all pseudo-animated (tons and tons of sprites). Back and profile sprites are both rare, though everybody seems to be raving about Muv Luv's back sprites lately, but SupiPara has both and gets a lot of mileage out of them. The effect of the profile sprite is especially dramatic, for me, and I honestly don't recall seeing that sprite angle anywhere else before (though of course my experience isn't that broad).

I am having some issues with the engine, I think. I usually play on a tablet, which has never given me problems before, but the text display is excruciatingly slow, even after I set it to max, and the animations sometimes look a little choppy or just plain slow, especially when two sprites are on the screen at the same time. Probably going to switch to the desktop and hope that handles it better.

[Decay]

3 hours ago, Fred the Barber said:

I picked up SupiPara last night and have played a couple hours. I'm enjoying it quite a bit so far. Right now, it feels kind of like it's setting up a lighthearted moege, but between the overarching theme of memory and the game coming from minori, I'm expecting shit to get a little bit more real before too long. As far as characters, I found Sakura pretty likeable right off the bat, and she's only been getting stronger in every scene. The other characters are more slowly growing on me as well, especially the MC's mother.

The art is, of course, gorgeous. Characters have that same glow I saw in eden*, which makes everything look soft and lush. And of course it's all pseudo-animated (tons and tons of sprites). Back and profile sprites are both rare, though everybody seems to be raving about Muv Luv's back sprites lately, but SupiPara has both and gets a lot of mileage out of them. The effect of the profile sprite is especially dramatic, for me, and I honestly don't recall seeing that sprite angle anywhere else before (though of course my experience isn't that broad).

I am having some issues with the engine, I think. I usually play on a tablet, which has never given me problems before, but the text display is excruciatingly slow, even after I set it to max, and the animations sometimes look a little choppy or just plain slow, especially when two sprites are on the screen at the same time. Probably going to switch to the desktop and hope that handles it better.

For some reason you move the slider to the left to speed up the text, not right. Note that they didn't bother adapting the text speed for english text so the second fastest setting still moves very slowly and the fastest is instant. 

[akaritan]

I just read Karakara and I was surprised, to say the least. I was expecting a Nekopara-esque fanservice romp with little to no substance, but I actually ended up quite enjoying it. Mind, it is still quite "moe", but the world is interesting, and it had quite a bit of charm to it. Some of the characters are kind of nice, if simple. I don't love it and I wouldn't necessarily recommend it to someone with a distaste for lighthearted titles, but if you like that kind of thing, then Karakara's definitely worth your ~2 hours.

[Lucius]

Kinda spoiled myself a little bit more on what's to come between episode 5 and 6 of Umineko just now - by accident, of course. Could barely finish episode 5 now because of darkness-induced audience apathy. It's gotten so bleak that it's not even fun to read anymore, what with Trollkastel screwing everything up.

Yeah, I know things will eventually get better in later episodes, but the way this is written, drenched in such downer, it's kinda off-putting.

[ChaosRaven]

So, after several weeks of grinding I finally finished Ikusa Megami Zero. It was overall a very mixed bag with light and shadows and some of the lights were particular bright while some of the shadows were pretty dark.

The Good:

Spoiler

So let’s start with the good stuff. Just like Kamidori the game offers a large world with many locations to visit. This isn’t a trivial thing, most VN’s have a very limited scope like the local school for example, and you usually see the same background locations the whole time which can get quite dull after a while. Traveling the world, seeing new locations and meeting other characters is therefore like a breath of fresh air. There are reasons why games with huge gameworlds like Skyrim are so popular even without offering a big story. It wasn’t as open and free like Kamidori though, and more linear which had both its good and bad sides.

While the art itself really starts to show its age, the production values itself were top-notch  with many locations and characters drawn. I guess the number of drawn characters was easily in the range of 40 –  50 which is a huge contrast to the other title I’m currently playing – Melty Lovers - which has just a mere 4. 

While the gameplay wasn’t as complex as the one from Kamidori it was still quite addictive simply because it was fast paced. The possibility to switch between auto-fight and manual control was also pretty good, because you could restrict your valuable time to fights which are actually worth it. The real time movement was also nice because it kept things fast and fluid even if I wasn’t a big fan of the random battles. I like to see my enemies and I want to be able to clear maps. At least the game offered leader staffs which allowed to tone down enemy attacks. Too bad it took me several chapters to understand the meaning of that item . The attribute system was a bit strange though. The element system was good because you could adjust your equipment to the enemy even if getting ‘healed’ if hit by a weapon with the same element as your armor was a bit too extreme for my taste. But overall I would say the gameplay was a highlight of the game and was probably the main reason I finished the title way a lot faster than Kamidori. Ironically, I probably died more often in the tutorial and the first chapter than in the rest of the game together. There was still too much grinding but not as bad as in Kamidori.

While I wasn’t particular impressed with the overall characters, there was one huge exception and IMHO the biggest highlight of the game: Haishera

Technically she’s 'just' a demi-goddess although I’ve no clue what separates her from a real goddess considering how ridiculous powerful she was. She's constantly dancing between evil and neutral (I guess good would be a bit too much) and mainly seeks power and the competition with strong opponents. She definitely can be a very ruthless and merciless war goddess since she doesn’t really care about mere humans anymore, but on the other side she’s also extremely loyal to her friends which are usually the opponents she respects the most in battle. She's pride and extremely passionate in everything she does. Certainly the best written dark-grey character since G-Senjou’s Azai Gonzo. The voice actress also did a marvelous job in giving her the perfectly fitting voice. In general all scenes involving Haishera were good while all scenes without her were… not so good.

The Bad:

Spoiler

Now to the not so great stuff: The characters, or to be more precise the main characters. With the exception of Haishera pretty much all main characters were rather dull and one-dimensional. That’s not to say there wouldn’t have been other characters that could have been interesting. Amdusias, Hakuginkou the Eleven leader, or Sora no Yuushi had definitely potential but they have so little screen time that they were just good side characters not more. Overall, Haishera had probably more character and personality than the rest of the cast together. But even Haishera wasn't a permanent companions. She had two chapters for herself and otherwise just appeared occasionally.

But the whole main cast of Satia, Shamara, Abirus, Kaya, Dalnos and Peruru were pretty much the epitome of bland and boring. This is mostly caused by the weak writing for character interactions. In general it was just plain bad and it’s probably a good thing that most of the writing was more event focused anyway considering his complete lack of talent in this area. Kamidori was way better written here.
It also takes a while until the plot actually gets interesting. The main antagonist stays in the background most of the time and just comes and says “booh” from time to time. A lot of stuff felt more like loosely related side stories. The VN is also almost kinetic with barely any relevant choices and you can’t choose a main heroine you want to romance.

The Ugly:

Spoiler

Unfortunately, there wasn’t just bad stuff, there was also REALLY bad stuff. And it’s first and foremost the over-sexualisation of the plot and as a consequence the protagonist.

Usually, most VN’s - even ero heavy ones - which aren’t straight nukiges, keep the H-scenes separated from the actual plot to times of intimacy. Usually after a certain time of romance and after building up the mood first. Then there are the VN’s which just randomly place H-scenes anywhere with little to no context like KnS1, but if you just ignore them it at least doesn’t hurt the plot. And then there are the brainiacs who try to include them into the plot with more or less ridiculous explanations. This is typical for nukiges, and unfortunately Zero falls into the latter case.

An essential part of the plot relies on a rather peculiar type of feature called ‘sex-magic’, which is used by the protagonist almost like a swiss army knife as the solution to every problem, ranging from energy transfer, uncursing (!!!), skill transfer, body transfer and what not. I wouldn’t be surprised if he even would try to make coffee that way . And now let’s see what the writer makes out of this sex-magic in the supposedly most dramatic chapter 3 where Celica becomes the god slayer:
Celica gets caught by the corrupted church and you’d expect it’s either game over, or he gets imprisoned with the opportunity to flee. But no, instead he gets lots of vaginas and is sent from sex orgy to sex orgy to drain energy and get super powers that way. Considering that the energy drain doesn’t seem to be restricted to women, how unbelievable ‘generous’ of the corrupted church to just give him young and sexy girls and not grannies, dirty old geezers, other men or even beasts to drain. Then he rapes and sex drains every female being who can’t run away fast enough until he finally has gained almost godlike super powers. Naturally, the church is so impressed by his mighty Johnny of doom that he ascends to ‘THE HORNY ONE’ the chosen sex-machine of the corrupted church. Now he finally is strong enough to be able to beat the Goddess. *Silence*

*Gasp* Well, that chapter was probably the biggest pile of horseshit I’ve read in recent years and I was so close to dropping the whole thing at that time. Fortunately this was just the low point of the VN, the rest was better even if it suffered from similar problems throughout. Because Celica is often exhausted after fights and therefore needs sex to recover. He therefore goes ‘sex-begging’, which means going for whores and sexually harassing every girl he meets, even intruding into mansions of noble-women to beg them for sex which they usually don’t refuse for reasons probably only the writer knows. This behavior was really driving me mad and everytime he started his pathetic whining again I wanted to take the approximately hundred health  and mana potions and shovel them down his throat - with the bottles of course. And then his ‘uncursing’ approach by raping the dragon girl – you really want to drag him to the next town and smash his head against the church bell so maybe the holy gong enlightens his brain to try it with some priests first. 

Overall, pretty much everything sex-related in the VN was lowest kusoge level. And unfortunately that includes various important plot events which lowers the quality of the the story significantly.

Heroine rating: Haishera >>> Amdusias = Hakuginkou > Sora no Yuushi >>> Don’t care
Final rating: 7/10 (Haishera was great, but the ridiculous over-sexualization of the plot and the crappy protagonist really drags it down.)

[Mr Poltroon]

Finished a first playthrough of Canvas 2. Predictably, I got to a bad end. Probably missed like one or two events
Thankfully, it's easy to orient myself in the VN, so I could probably get into a route with a bit of effort. From what I've seen, the common route and character route are mingled, which I think it really cool. You basically live your life and events unfold around you, but you choose who you hang out with, and hanging out with a person makes you go along their route and even change your demeanour. "Today I'm in a good mood." "Today I'll need to go home early." "Today a new teacher will be coming.". And you live your life around said events.
Edit: For instance, you make a promise with your student on one day, and it's completely your choice whether you even remember about it. If nothing else, Canvas 2 has the feeling of agency down pat.

Even so, the bad end was pretty not bad and a fairly decent end by itself. It's truly the "You're an upstanding teacher who didn't drag any of his students to bed" end.

 

Edit2: I've finally figured out what this VN excels at. It excels at tying everything together without leaving any gaps. Even if you miss three random events with a character, it won't seem like it because the scenes have small changes in them to reflect what you already know and don't. Basically, it must have taken a hell of a lot of effort to set this all up.

[Lucius]

Finally sifted through the end of Umineko: Episode 5. What a mess. The pacing is all over the place. This is easily the worst episode I've read so far. The ending just kept on dragging on and on like LotRs: The Return of the King - without the charm and heartwarming moments.

Compared to earlier episodes, which had a nice balance of excitement and bleakness, this one was just bleak 70% of the time. It felt like struggling through a swamp while trapped in the middle of nowhere, sapping my stamina away while taunting me with despair. It's a terrible read.

I mean, don't get me wrong, I don't mind dark and bleak stories at all. Hell, I'm a sucker for them. But this is mood whiplash, a sudden change of tone from previous episodes where there was at least some kind of adrenaline rush to keep you entertained amidst the death and despair. I just didn't have as much fun reading it as I did before in episode 1-4.

I think the main reason why this is so is because the characters are either annoying Mary-Sues (Trollkastel) who can't be remotely overcame, or just idiots who are too dumb to live (Natsuhi). There's nothing about them that kept me engaged. The only characters I like in this episode is Battler (of course) and the newly introduced Dlanor. Dlanor is a powerful character done right. Trollkastel is a powerful character done so wrong.

Don't get me started with Erika, that bitch.

[Kurisu-Chan]

I'm starting with Fuuko Ibuki, so far it looks like Nagisa Route, i hope it branches and give us something different. 

[bogdankl]

after fate bled my soul dry I just wanted something a bit more lighthearted, I was thinking I might finally read Koisuru Natsu no Last Resort since it has been installed in my pc for quite a few months now but instead I started kamidori which I remember being way lower rated on vndb, I barely started it <actually now that I look at the time I played it for a bit > but it's alright, being an actual game really helps 

 

On 8/6/2016 at 4:47 PM, Vorathiel said:

I went to vndb to add this to my wishlist, but I saw those two screens and amount of cancer was too high. xD (still added on wishlist, but only on low  )

 *cancer intensifies*

 

on a serious note, I actually played canvas 2 until I think about the end of the sisters route <that was the only route i tried> I actually wanted to like this vn, I really did but for fucks sake the art stuff was so out of touch with me, It was just soooooo fucking boring and sooooo bloody uninteresting that it just killed the vn for me

maybe I'll try it another time but for some reason whenever the theme of a vn doesn't resonate with me (like for instance if it's about a flying school club or about an astrology school club) and it just tries to actually teach me about these stuff I'm just really turned off by that, I want to read vns not to learn how to build a glider ffs

[abrazilrep]

Got Clannad downloaded, but I don't know if I should continue to read it. I'm not too into pure, y'know? (+18 is life). And still continuing Koiken Otome, into Yuzu's route.

 

[MFrost]

Princess Evangile.

Playing through this, on Chapter 11, and all I can say is, I wish the Nun had a route. She seems interesting.

[Lucius]

Looks like I spoke too soon. Sort of.

Completed the ???? of Umineko episode 5... Holy shit. What a turnabout. Even though I accidentally discovered some spoilers earlier, this was still an amazing read. This is the way the rest of episode 5 should have been... is what I would like to say, but without the ugly parts from the main story of episode 5, I guess the ending in ???? wouldn't have been as satisfying.

By the end of it, I was thinking about how I wanted this to be made into a brand new season of Umineko, done by a better team of animators this time. All that drama and suspense is perfect for an anime.

Definitely looking forward to episode 6. Can't wait!  But for now - I have to complete Nemu's route in euphoria. 

[SCG_1037]

Going to start reading Koiken Otome , really do not know what to expect , so that will be fun 

[littleshogun]

Play Supipara, and will write a little review about this later in Supipara discussion thread.

[Zenophilious]

On 8/7/2016 at 7:03 PM, MFrost said:

Princess Evangile.

Playing through this, on Chapter 11, and all I can say is, I wish the Nun had a route. She seems interesting.

Yeah, Sister Mishima is great.  I find the idea of a nun that flirts and makes perverted jokes hilarious.

What do you think about it so far?  I thought the plot was standard crappy drama, pretty forgettable and cliche in most places, but I really liked a couple of the characters, and Chiho's Ayaka's route was overall pretty solid compared to the others.  What route do you plan on doing first?

On 8/7/2016 at 1:20 PM, bogdankl said:

*cancer intensifies*

"Hetare protagonist"

Ewwww.  Probably gonna read it eventually, though, just like Ikikoi.  I have no shame.

[MFrost]

3 hours ago, Zenophilious said:

Yeah, Sister Mishima is great.  I find the idea of a nun that flirts and makes perverted jokes hilarious.

What do you think about it so far?  I thought the plot was standard crappy drama, pretty forgettable and cliche in most places, but I really liked a couple of the characters, and Chiho's route was overall pretty solid compared to the others.  What route do you plan on doing first?

 

Just got past the part that Sister Mishima was joking around near the lake. Dammit Masaya! Make her eyes truly sparkle for you!! ... was my only thought. Would've been nice to see her in something else than her nun outfit though

I'm probably going with Ayaka first. I like the heroines that are playful/teasing/fun and then I'll do Chiho. She doesn't seem like other Childhood friend's yet compared to the few ones I've played so far, so that's nice. I'm expecting some of the usual HSDrama with her route though, as for Ayaka, I'm not really sure, but I'd like to show up the headmistress, so maybe Ritsuko's 3rd. I'm actually saving at points in the beginning for both Ayaka and Chiho's routes, which is why it's probably taken me so long to finish the prologue before getting into their route.
If Tamie had a route, she'd be first though. I wanna wear her hat.

[Asimmacovski]

My friend told me to read Ever17 and if I don't like it I should just die. (he's a bit tsundere)

So yeah, I guess I'll be reading it, it was a pain to get it to run without crashing.

[Eclipsed]

36 minutes ago, Asimmacovski said:

My friend told me to read Ever17 and if I don't like it I should just die. (he's a bit tsundere)

So yeah, I guess I'll be reading it, it was a pain to get it to run without crashing.

Good luck. I just started myself, so let's compare thoughts later