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Just finished Akeiro Kaikitan, And It Was Good.

Clephas already did a review on his blog, and he hit all the major points.  I'll disagree with Clephas in one thing though - I thought Akeiro was a better game than the already very good Nanairo Reincarnation.  Akeiro fixed what I thought the greatest weakness of the Nanairo was:  actual differentiation between the routes.  Nanairo had one story with short differences in the ending.  Akeiro routes can be very different (and much darker), but always for a good reason.  Each route results from the Protagonist choosing different actions in the Common part, learning different things, then acting on that info - and each makes sense.  This all cumulates in the True route, an amazing conclusion to the buildup in the previous routes.

 

The weak points of the game are a bit of lack of focus (for example: 3 routes are romantic, 3 aren't), a bit of reliance on the previous game for lore, and a bit of a Deus Ex to set up the True Route.  Hardly major, but they keep it from being perfect. 

Not sure if I'd go so far as to call it a 9/10, but it is one of the better 8/10s I've read.

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Silky's Plus is the worst thing that happened to the eroge scene in recent years and the fact that people like their games should really motivate me to finally commit sudoku... because if the majority of people think that this is what a "good" eroge looks like then there is really no reason to live for me anymore... since I will probably never get nice things again... :(

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44 minutes ago, Tyrosyn said:

Silky's Plus is the worst thing that happened to the eroge scene in recent years and the fact that people like their games should really motivate me to finally commit sudoku... because if the majority of people think that this is what a "good" eroge looks like then there is really no reason to live for me anymore... since I will probably never get nice things again... :(

Oh?  Pray tell, what do you think makes a "good" eroge?

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57 minutes ago, Toranth said:

Oh?  Pray tell, what do you think makes a "good" eroge?

Let me clarify that I wasn't implying that you or anyone who likes Silky's Plus' games has bad taste in eroge.

There are not many eroge companies which show the evolution of the medium in the last decade as good as Silky's does. Silky's was always trying to be modern and popular while its parent company elf stayed true to its roots. When Silky's Plus was formed last year, it essentially sealed elf's death. Economically speaking, abandoning elf was the right decision, but it's also sad for me to see something I really liked die.
For me, Silky's Plus is the perfect metaphor how the eroge scene changed throughout the years.

I liked the old Silky's games made in the 90s. For me, those games were "good". When I read a Silky's Plus game, I can see many elements and influences from Silky's older games, but they are all interpreted completely different, you know, more modern. (Neyuki no Genei is the best example, it's nearly a remake of an older game.)
And I hate it. Compared with their older games, everything is far worse in my opinion. Everything is a disimprovement. How the heroines are written, how they talk, how the routes are structured, how the MC behaves, and so on...

But I'm in the minority here. Silky's Plus' games are immensely popular. Most people like them. The way these games are designed is exactly what the audience wants.
This made me realize that I'm not part of the target audience anymore. What I want to see in an eroge is not what most people nowadays want to see. Silky's Plus' popularity and how I can't emphasize with it is the proof to my assumption. This make me feel even a bit lonely.

Well, that was everything I wanted to say, really. If you really want to know what I deem "good", well, read some of elf/Silky's games from the 90s or early 00s. ^^

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Started playing Gahkthun fandisk and it's pretty cool. The slice of life parts are good and it's nice to see more about the characters that didn't get quite enough screen time in the main game, for example Izumi. Some new light is also shed on the relationships between the members of Governing Council and their closest associates, and these are developed further. 

Overall it feels really similar to Fate/hollow ataraxia. You repeat set days (though this time it's not really a time loop), choose different events, mostly mundane, but there's also something bigger going on behind the scenes. I've only done one and a half cycle so far, so I'm also excitedly anticipating what is to come. That said, there's already been some pretty intriguing and unsettling foreshadowing, some even on the scale of the whole series, it's setting and timeline.    

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On ‎2016‎年‎4‎月‎10‎日 at 9:41 AM, Tyrosyn said:

Let me clarify that I wasn't implying that you or anyone who likes Silky's Plus' games has bad taste in eroge.

There are not many eroge companies which show the evolution of the medium in the last decade as good as Silky's does. Silky's was always trying to be modern and popular while its parent company elf stayed true to its roots. When Silky's Plus was formed last year, it essentially sealed elf's death. Economically speaking, abandoning elf was the right decision, but it's also sad for me to see something I really liked die.
For me, Silky's Plus is the perfect metaphor how the eroge scene changed throughout the years.

I liked the old Silky's games made in the 90s. For me, those games were "good". When I read a Silky's Plus game, I can see many elements and influences from Silky's older games, but they are all interpreted completely different, you know, more modern. (Neyuki no Genei is the best example, it's nearly a remake of an older game.)
And I hate it. Compared with their older games, everything is far worse in my opinion. Everything is a disimprovement. How the heroines are written, how they talk, how the routes are structured, how the MC behaves, and so on...

But I'm in the minority here. Silky's Plus' games are immensely popular. Most people like them. The way these games are designed is exactly what the audience wants.
This made me realize that I'm not part of the target audience anymore. What I want to see in an eroge is not what most people nowadays want to see. Silky's Plus' popularity and how I can't emphasize with it is the proof to my assumption. This make me feel even a bit lonely.

Well, that was everything I wanted to say, really. If you really want to know what I deem "good", well, read some of elf/Silky's games from the 90s or early 00s. ^^

Well, now I'm curious.  I remember Koihime fondly, but mostly my memories of Silky's are of the Ai Shimai series and other rape-ochi type nuki-games.  In fact, when I played Nanairo, I was pretty surprised that is was a Silky's game at all.

 

So what is it that you dislike about the modern industry?  Mostly, it seems to me like those sorts of games are still around... just "more" to them.  More characters, more scenes, more graphics... if you miss the brevity and conciseness of earlier games, that has been lost under the bloat resulting from massive disk space availability, I can understand.  But even just about everything else, including gameplay in games that still have, seems to have improved to me.

 

Which isn't to say that moeblob and cheap charage knockoffs aren't flooding the market.  But I think there is still plenty of good substance to be found, no matter what your tastes.

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On 4/1/2016 at 10:33 PM, Canicheslayer said:

I'm reading/playing it too. 30 hours on it (All that remains is the "true route" part) ...I absolutely adore the art, the music, most of the characters (Mayumi :wub:), the cyberpunk universe....and the narration is terrifically interesting. But you have to read/play it little by little. Because, it's so exhausting (route C or D were more or less OK. However my poor brain wasn't prepared to Route E) :upupu:

...and? ;d Have you managed to do some progress?

Today I finished route B and read routes C and D. It was so fast paced and godly written, that I was just absorbing the text, without reading it. Really needed that change of quality after few days with boring, stupid and bad written Grisaia.
Anyway - both of those routes were absolutly great. Level of mindblowingness was just right - high enough to 'not understand' what is going on, but not as high to completly fly from my mind.
Hopefully route E and then apostrophes would be as good as C and D. ^^

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11 hours ago, Vorathiel said:

...and? ;d Have you managed to do some progress?
 

Slowly but surely. I finished D'. It was absolutely fantastic :sacchan:

Quote

Today I finished route B and read routes C and D. It was so fast paced and godly written, that I was just absorbing the text, without reading it. Really needed that change of quality after few days with boring, stupid and bad written Grisaia.
Anyway - both of those routes were absolutly great. Level of mindblowingness was just right - high enough to 'not understand' what is going on, but not as high to completly fly from my mind.
Hopefully route E and then apostrophes would be as good as C and D. ^^

Hehehe...I'm not the only one :makina: Sometimes, with certain routes or certain passages of I/O, it feels the same as Ubik (Philip K. Dick's Novel). It's frustruating AND awesome : I'm lost but i'm still addicted, fascinated and happily mindblown:kosame:

Edit : Now I can affirm it. At worst, I/O will be in my TOP 10 VN (even if B', A' and the last route are bad) :wub:

4 hours ago, Decay said:

edit: It's heavily recommended that you read the prime routes in reverse order.

Just finished Route C'. Clearly, I was right to follow the advice of the "experts" (Fuwanovel's walkthrough, for example):mare:

Edited by Canicheslayer
4.1 oops mindblown...and not mindblowed
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I didn't post here in forever, so here we go!

First of all, 300 hours later, I've finally completed what would probably be considered the grand ending of Higurashi Sui. I still have 3 more arcs to go, ranging from fanservice to fandisc non-canon, but overall I think my favourite arcs were the ones coming from Kizuna, the DS releases. It's pretty funny, but I honestly found some of the new characters even more likeable and interesting than the original cast. More on this when I actually finish the VN!

Taking a break from Sui, I've started reading the PS2 version of the first Demonbane. Only about four chapters in so far, so I can't say much else than "Holy shit what is all this budget?!" I'm also reading the Steins;Gate fandisc on the Vita in preparation for S;G0 which is waiting on my PS4. Not sure how much of this I'll actually read as I'm not the biggest fan of fandiscs, but I'd like to get at least one route down. I also have Phenogram on the Vita too - PS+ has already provided me with over half of the X;Y VN library, they're on a roll!

On the topic of PS+, there's one last thing I've played. Like some games before it, Punchline has a 2 hour free trial up before it actually comes out, so I decided to check that out. Punchline seems be the original story expanded upon in VN form, with parts of the anime still kept in. It also has this "puzzle" mechanic where you have to play pranks on the people living in the house in order to get the story moving again, but really all this involves is switching between the different rooms and clicking on one of a few objects and hoping that it is correct. Not really sure how the story will work in a much longer format (I thought it was good because of the ridiculous pacing in the relatively short anime format), or how much you can even get out of this if you've already seen the anime... I mean seeing more Yukatan is great and all, but was this really necessary for a story that was all about ridiculous plottwists coming one after another as fast as possible? If you haven't seen the anime, I suppose this might be worth getting, but as for me the trial just convinced me to wait rather than making me buy it.

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Finished One Thousand Lies quite a while back (wasn't able to post much recently due to net issues and then other work piling up).

Well it was a great read and is definitely an vn I'd recommend to anyone looking for a comedy.

Also I hope that many people would go and try it out as it really seems like only a few have taken notice of it. 

 

I am playing through Tokyo Babel currently, it's swell as expected.

It truly rejuvenated my vn spree, and I've recently just stuck to it without much anime-watching. Well as a result even with my generally time-constrained pace I've already finished Raziel's bad end and will soon finish the true one as well.    

While I'm on it I'll just give my compliments to it's awesome fight scenes. Till now all the fights were new and thoroughly enjoyable, with barely any repetition at all. Also the duration of each fight is really well timed.

 

And also I'm playing Rance 02 in-between my play-though of Tokyo Babel. Played till Stage 2 at the moment.  

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Hmm... I played Emi's route in Katawa Shoujo a while back, maybe I should go through the others...

Anyways, at the moment, I'm playing FSN [Fate], because I'm late to the party. After that age-long read (because then there's UBW and HF) I might move onto some indie VNs, maybe play My Girlfriend is the President! after the indie novels.

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So, I finished all the routes in Ever17 except for Coco's. Well, so far I'm enjoying this visual novel very much. Never before I enjoyed trying to solve mystery in a work of fiction that much. Also, I like how it uses the traditional mechanics of the medium to present the mystery and hide the hints. In the end, this visual novel is probably the least adaptable to any other type of media among the ones I've read so far. Even for Umineko or Rewrite it is possible (theoretically) to think of a way to make an adaptation work. Here you will either have to completely rewrite everything in the story, or just take one route and adapt it separately (I guess, this is what the manga did. Don't think it would work considering that individual routes, well, are pretty average without each other.)

My main guess about mystery so far is that

Spoiler

Kid's routes actually take place in 2034. Also, all the characters except for Tsugumi are different people from the ones in Takeshi's routes, though I am not sure about Kid.

Even though I disliked most of the characters at the very beginning, in the end I got used to all of them. Except for Coco. I hope her route makes me see her something more than an annoying little brat. It's quite noticeable that this VN is pretty old, the overall presentation still works. Not that I ever prioritized presentation in games that much. Right now I am ready to give Ever17 a good 8 or a weak 9. Let's see what the final route is going to bring to us.

Now, I want to write more about the hints I saw in the story and how I interpreted them. Well, I enjoy reading people's rants like this, so, probably, someon will like it. And, please, no spoilers in the answers! I'm already spoiled a bit too much, and you'll see what I mean if you decide to read it.

Spoiler

First, about time when the story takes place. Well, I have no serious doubts that Takeshi's routes take place in 2017. It was mentioned by Takeshi himself in his conversation with Kid, and I don't really have any reasons to doubt him here. On the other hand, all the mentions of the date in Kid's routes are pretty fishy. At first, it is again mentioned by Takeshi, but Takeshi in Kid's routes behaves very strangely and has some pretty antagonistic tendencies. I personally think that he is not really the same Takeshi whom we saw in Sora/Tsugumi routes. His behavior in You's route doesn't make sense if we think that he is the same character as one of the protagonists. Also, it is seen on several CGs that he has a different hair-color. Well, I probably wouldn't have noticed it if it weren't for several spoilerific pictures of black-haired Takeshi I saw on the internet. Originally I thought he is some character who only appears in Coco's routes, but later I thought another possibility.

Let's move to the second time the date is mentioned. Actually, if I'm right, this one is pretty stupid, but whatever. It is mentioned in one scene that Yukie Tanaka died on 02/07/19, and it happened 15 years ago. Kid interpreted it as 19 July 2002, but it is probably 2 July 2019. It is either a nasty coincidence in the real life, or even more nasty plotholy coincidence in-game. Well, whatever.

Now, why I started to think about the date at all. First of all, Kid's and Takeshi's routes don't show different perspectives on the same events. They just don't. Otherwise, when we choose between protagonists we also magically change Yubiseiharukana's name, Takeshi's hair-color, make Coco into ghost and somehow trap Sara in Lemu. Well, choices in VNs sometimes make even more strange changes to the story (I am looking at you, G-senjou and Tsukihime), but I have a pretty strong feeling that it is not the case here. There are two ways to solve those inconsistencies: 1) There are actually two LeMu's, and they are only connected via some strange timeloop; 2) Kid's routes are set in the future. I vote for the second explanation. Why? Because it actually explains almost all the obvious overshadowing you can see in the story. And not so obvious.

... I wrote a really long wall of text here, but accidentally deleted it. Damn Firefox! When I used Ctrl+z, I only wanted to return the last two words I deleted, not return to where I started an hour ago! Well, I'll be brief now an write what I think happened. I don't have that much to say anyway, so, probably it's for the better.

After the events of Tsugumi's route, Tsugumi and You survived. You had a one year old clone (sister, probably) called Yubiseiakikana and, after her mother died, she continued to raise it as her own child. Tsugumi became pregnant after having shmex with Takeshi, and she bore twins: Sara and Kid. Proofs: Sara and Tsugumi seem awfully familiar (hated family-member trope), and Kid and Takeshi have the same voice-actor (and the game doesn't want us to know it for some reason). Also, spoilerific black-haired picture of Takeshi and father figure in the mirror look alike, but it doesn't count (I actually guessed it before I got to Sara's route, so I probably didn't spoil it. Probably. That's why I hate spoilers so much!) Pipi was kept by You as a robo-dog, and is an evil mastermind behind the scenes!:illya: Evil Pipi emoji, anyone?

Seventeen years later, 40 year old Tsugumi, both of her children, the second You and an impostor pretending to be Takeshi become trapped in LeMu again. Probably, for some pseudoscientific timelooping experiment, but it could be anything. An original Takeshi probably survived (he could be infected by Cure virus), or not. And I don't understand, how Sora randomly gains physical body several times in the story.

Well, I guess I'm finally finished. Hope you enjoyed it! Now, on to final route!

P.S. Also, authors don't believe in Physics.

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5 hours ago, Polycentric said:

Picked up ef after finishing eden* which was sweet and short. Only on Chihiro's tale though in ef.

"Only"? Erm, I want to make sure, did you read The First Tale first, containing the Miyako and Kei stories? If not, you really should do so first.

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Just got to the first fight scene in Tokyo Babel.  I'm so glad I bought it  :sacchan:  The action is absolutely great with the production values they have.  No idea what the BGM track is, but man is it good for a fight.  They got the chuuni feel down to a science.  I think I'm gonna like this one.

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