What are you playing?

[ChaosRaven]

Just want to get two VN's off my list I didn't like too much and therefore dropped.

The first is Kin'iro Loveriche - a story about a boy accidentally ending up in a noble private academy for rich kids. Felt a bit like a poor man's Yuzusoft VN. Not the worst thing to be compared with, but the VN has a few peculiarities which I found rather off-putting. First, the protagonist is lazy, dumb and perverse, which made the whole heroine cast fawning over him rather unbelievable. Carrying tons of porn magazines around, drawing nude girls in lessons instead of studying and 'enlighten' his comrades about new fetishes on a daily base like a pimp. And not to mention the running gag going on about his countless hardcore sex fetishes - you get the picture!

That said, I wouldn't go so far to say that he's a bad guy, and his interactions with Ria in particular were almost mature and well above the rest. Unfortunately, besides Ria the rest of the cast was pretty generic. I played Elle's route, which was trash, with no chemistry whatsoever between the two and little to no plot. I also tried Sylvia's route, but almost died of boredom and Sylvia's absolutely bland personality didn't help either. And I found Reina's 'I'm more lude than you' attitude pretty annoying, so I just skipped it. Maybe Ria's would have been better, but it just wasn't worth having to go through all the other routes, just to 'maybe' get a decent route. Besides Ria, I had an odd liking for Akane, but she didn't seem ready for a relationship yet and especially not with the protagonist.

Though to be fair, it's not the worst moege you can play and I've certainly played worse. However, this VN had a strong 'lude & cute' vibe going on, which I simply found unfitting and tasteless. Just not my cup of tea.

Heroine ranking: Ria > Akane > Don't care

Overall rating 5/10

I also played Amatsutsumi, but didn't like it. First, from the three Purplesoft VN's I've played so far, this was certainly the most boring one by far, with absolutely nothing happening whatsover. But well, a VN can still get decent without much plot if it offers at least good romance. However, the protagonist was apparently taken straight out of a nukige. Pretty much a walking boner who barely thinks about anything else than sex and seems to think that the world is his personal brothel. He therefore bangs all the heroines already in the common route - who needs a romance anyway? Ironically, the VN would have been way better if it would have been at least honest enough to fully commit to a nukige. Instead it tried an inbetween ride with the most misplaced and unfitting H-scenes you can imagine. Kinda "Oh I'm so down and depressed - let's f*ck?!" cringe.

I also found the character designs - with the exception of Mana maybe - rather bland in comparison to previous works, with HapyMaher in particular standing out with an incredible audio-visual design. Though, to be fair, the visual effects of many backgrounds (usually involving water) in this VN are off the charts.

While all PurpleSoft VN's I have read so far had their issues, they at least got the basics of romance right. This VN fails even at that. So yeah, if that's the future of PurpleSoft VN's, it'll be a future without me.

Heroine ranking: Don't care

Overall rating: 3/10 (I added one bonus point for the visual effects)

Edited March 5 by ChaosRaven

[SpacemanSpiff]

I've been playing Dies irae which I wanted to finish during this month, but some parts honestly give me a splitting headache to read so I've also started White Album 2 in the meantime to clear my head a bit. Not really fond of the fact that the text isn't completely enclosed though. Plus the full blown conversations going on in the background are kinda distracting. 

 

[teniie3]

I'm playing Little Busters and sometimes Hoshizora no Memoria -Eternal Heart-. Since so many males are aware of Little Buster's engaging tale, I give it a go! In addition, I recently finished Hoshizora no Memoria, therefore I'm currently playing the fan disc.

[Nemesis]

サクラノ刻－櫻の森の下を歩む－

Chapter 1 - Apparently, we always have to start the series with pottery.

Lots of talk about counterfeit and real work of arts, and how the value of art is decided. I think the old me would have commented on how superficial the art world is by focusing on the piece's history and other things unrelated to the actual art piece itself.

But I have a rather different point of view now. Art is a sort of communication between the creator and the audience, so I can now see the value on that. Its value depends on what sort of value it can give to the audience. So knowing the background of the art piece can completely change its interpretation similar to "A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs," and gains new value. Either way, I don't think I have an eye for visual art >.>

Wow at the quality of the first chapter.

Spoiler

So much malapropism already. It even adds new malapropism to SakuUta's Toritani route. A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs all over again. 愛がなければ見えない

 

[adamstan]

Today I started PSP version of Suiheisen Made Nan Mile?

Setting up text hooking for this was royal PITA, but unexpectedly Textractor came to the rescue (I think it's the first time I used it with PPSSPP)

As for the game itself, it looks promising. At the first glance the setting looks like a crossover between Konosora (with a bit of Miazora thrown in) and Koichoco Also, the PSP version seems to have exclusive additional route written by Tanaka Romeo.

Edited March 15 by adamstan

[Fujoneko]

Man... I've been away from this thread for so long...

Little update: I finally bought a Steam Deck! I was torn between that or the Switch, but I own all my games on my Steam account haha

I'm almost finished with Steins;Gate , but I'm waaay too lazy to write on each route asjhbdaswvd
Let's just say Suzuha's ending was the one I found the most interesting.

Spoiler

Maybe I just like to see the protagonists break

I finished Mayuri's ending today and next week I will read Kurisu's route. Phew! Finally one "classic" scratched from the big list!

I'm not forcing myself to read it, and I'm really enjoying it!

[Shinyun226]

Just finished up Kizuato (specifically the original win 95/98 version)

Liked it overall, and thought it was a pretty significant improvement over Shizuku as a whole -

Spoiler

though I have to say a lot of specific pieces of Shizuku were more memorable imo, even if the overall package wasn't as good. ie Kizuato didn't have anything that will stick with me quite as much as some of Shizuku's bad ends (Graduation and the toaster endings in particular) or the Ruriko True End. I mean Chizuru's route for example has some stuff which is pretty iconic, but... nothing REALLY stood out to me in that way.

That aside though, it had a pretty solid and engaging story. Though, I do have to say that a certain very important plot twist was a bit too stupid for my taste. I mean, did the 'oni' really have to turn out to be Predator knock-offs? (literally, they're aliens that go from planet to planet to hunt for sport...)

I'm also a bit torn about whether or not I liked the twist of Kouichi's inner-demon "awakening" being a big red-herring/Yanagawa being the real killer - particularly considering how this "mixup" is the primary conflict of both Chizuru and Kaede's routes, but then in Azusa's route it's just immediately accepted that Kouichi is innocent and just has a mental link with the real killer etc..

 

 

Music was really good - I was a bit worried that the soundtrack would be a disappointment compared to Shizuku due to Orito Shinji leaving Leaf, but ended up really liking the music.

Also, like with with Shizuku, I really like the aesthetic that the original version of the game has, with the digitized photos as backgrounds etc.. Just looking at screenshots of the remakes, they definitely don't quite have the same charm or atmosphere.

Spoiler

Also, as an aside, despite being pretty infamous, the plagiarized omake story was pretty underwhelming lol

 

Anyways really looking forward to continue playing through the Leaf library. Next up will be To Heart which I'm definitely excited to play, even if just because of how historically important it is for the genre. (well technically Saorin to Issho is up next, but that's a fandisc so I'm sure it won't take me long to knock out).

[Nemesis]

サクラノ刻－櫻の森の下を歩む－

Chapter 2 - Explores Naoya's life as an adult as he watches others grow up.

I think the main topic here is there are many different roads in life.

Spoiler

Similar to how Sakizaki started art when she got injured and quit track and field.

Once a dream has ended, a new one opens up.

---

Chapter 3 - 「薄っぺらな天才は、才能が透けて見える。天才は、才能を忘れさせる」

Main theme in this chapter and possibly the entire game is talent and what is art. While, it is true that hard work is also required for talent to bloom, the starting conditions and peak for genius and normal people are different. While normal people strive to get recognize, geniuses strive to create something new to express their way of life and the beauty that they can feel.

Onda Housai is a fairly interesting person too with quite a bit of bias. It's interesting to see his perspective from a somewhat talented person comparing himself to geniuses.

Art can move people, because the creator managed to experience sorrow that others can relate to. Sorrow and Happiness are two sides of the same coin.

I think I see Scaji's obsession with Spinoza. To become a good artist, you need to have a certain perspective as being a part of a whole. But at the same time, as the observer, you are separate from the whole hence you can create art and give value to it.

Spoiler

This means being able to put yourself in other's shoes similar to how Misuzu put herself in Nei's shoes and imagined what sort of world she lives in when she created her art.

I think Spinoza gets too lost in his own metaphysics to interpret it the way Sca-ji wants to. 春と修羅 by Miyazawa Kenji is probably a better work to reference for the artist's point of view.

Art is transcending the limits of your inner world by reaching out to other people's inner worlds. It's creating meaning from nature and communicating that to other people.

I had a lot more to say, but I accidentally deleted some of my notes, so I'll just end it here for now until I manage to retake my notes.

 

As an individual game, SakuToki is rather flawed with the main flaw being it wasted a lot of characters' potential. The main one(imo) was wasting Shizuku and Rin (the booklet and drama CD kind of fixes it). But as a sequel to SakuUta, it is a great work of art that expands upon many of its themes and connects it to other Scaji games.

SakuToki covers a lot of topics, so I'll leave a lot of the topics for later if/when I have time to write a more specific review on it.

If Sakuuta is 「幸福の先」の物語, I view this as a 「虚無の先」の物語。 When you are at your lowest and life feels empty, what happens from there?

If you manage to avoid the obvious pitfalls of suicide and escapism through religion(which is covered in Subahibi and Tsui no Sora), you try to fill that empty cup. But fill it with what? それを人は、「美」と呼んだんだ」 We call whatever fills that cup as beauty. From there, we start to create human values, ethics, art, and give meaning to our own life.

「虚無を見出した後で、俺は美を見出した」

Only when we are at our lowest, we are able to open the door of possiblities to advance in different directions. For artists, they can intentionally put themselves in those situations so they can open the door to Charis.

Spoiler

In Naoya's case, he is able to choose between the path of being an art teacher with Misuzu, a normal life with Makoto, or returning back to art with Ai.

This is similar to Nietzsche's concept of Ubermensch, where people transcend the established morals and prejudices of human society to define their own purpose and values in life by facing hardships.In Sca-ji's case though, he doesn't reject the concept of choosing to become content with mediocrity and simple pleasures, but considers that as a possible choice in happiness.

This is why I like Scaji, he possesses both the strengths and weaknesses of humans. While being a genius, he's honest to his desires. He affirms both a life dedicated to honing your own craft and a life filled with pleasure. It's what makes him human and relatable.

Then, he goes to deal with a lot of topics on what is art, talent, and how do you create good art and repeating some of SakuUta's theme on happiness.

Spoiler

I think the conversation between Kenichirou and Reijirou explains it best.

Kenichirou views life as a poem or musical score. In the standard definition of happiness being a "good happening", happiness and misfortunes are just notes which pass by quickly. Each note being finite is what allows us to experience the world and feel its beauty. Art turns that finite beauty to infinite by giving it form. Since life is a musical score, it has a tempo and melody(I think this is where サクラノ響 comes in), and that's where we can find real happiness. Happiness is not something you seek, it's something that's always beside us.

[Fujoneko]

On 3/18/2023 at 12:33 PM, Fujoneko said:

Man... I've been away from this thread for so long...

Little update: I finally bought a Steam Deck! I was torn between that or the Switch, but I own all my games on my Steam account haha

I'm almost finished with Steins;Gate , but I'm waaay too lazy to write on each route asjhbdaswvd
Let's just say Suzuha's ending was the one I found the most interesting.

  Reveal hidden contents

Maybe I just like to see the protagonists break

I finished Mayuri's ending today and next week I will read Kurisu's route. Phew! Finally one "classic" scratched from the big list!

I'm not forcing myself to read it, and I'm really enjoying it!

Finished it!! I had a great post for this all ready to send, but my PC crashed

Anyways, I really enjoyed the wild ride it was, I'll give it a solid 8/10. Why not a 9/10? I just couldn't connect too much with Kurisu - this is my main issue with most "main heroines"; they grow on me after I finish the VN and give it time to rest, though.

Spoiler

To be fair, I loved everyone but to the point of falling in love like Okabe did (which weirded me the fuck out, ngl)? Not really...? They are cute together but when he realises he loves her, it was too sudden for me lol

Anyway! I don't know what to play next, honestly. I have installed Chaos;Head Noah since I want to read it soon this year, but I think I'm going to take a short break from the sciadv series for now. I'm considering maybe Totono, Umineko, Sweet Pool or some short ones.

[Nemesis]

Just reading through random VN's this week while I bask in the afterglow of SakuToki. Tried Sekimeiya and continued Rance through Rance 4.1.

The Sekimeiya: Spun Glass

I'm mainly using this VN as a way to judge whether it's even worth looking into the EVN scene or should I completely forget its existence.

So far, writing is pretty meh. This seems like the sort of writing you'd see with RPG talking to NPC's. Their choice of names and settings are extremely weird and just feels not very well thought out. The character writing on the other hand is fucking awful.

I think this game highlights exactly what is wrong with EVN writing, it's fairly typical game writing with lack of focus on fleshing out the world or characters. It focused too much on the game-aspect of solving a riddle, and the characters act like they are playing a game. There is a complete lack of human element to it.

Spoiler

For the mystery, no, it doesn't take a genius to solve it. You just need to pay attention to information it is intentionally leaving out like the date, having limited information for current time, and why Shiroha was wearing different clothes, existence of Miya, Akaro not knowing Katei. Which leads you to conclude that they are not just time traveling, but traveling between different world lines, possibly 3 different world lines. Now the puzzle just becomes a stupid linear algebra question of fill in the blanks of how everything works which is still fairly difficult simply due to the number of different variables. Now here is where the developer went wrong, is it fun just solving a bigger and bigger matrix? Not really, it's just a mind-numbing manual task where you just keep iterating over it until you find the solution.

This is a perfect place to quote Naoya:

「魂が喜ばない作品など、芸術ではない．．．

それはー楽しげな家具と同じだ

楽しげな家具、そういった作品もいいだろう

楽しげな家具は、生活の役に立つが、あんたの作品は家具ほども役に立たない」

I'll give it props for the effort the creators put into it, but that's it. I'm not interested in playing a mind-numbing boring puzzle game. There's lots of better use for my time. Playing mafia is a much funner experience with similar level of difficulty, except with genuine people's reactions.

This game has pretty much convinced me to not touch another EVN for the next 5 years if this is the best they can offer.

---

ランス４．１ ～お薬工場を救え！～

It's a short simple game after Rance 4. It doesn't have the grindiness of the previous game, and has a rather short fun story.

This short minigame is a lot more fun compared to me wasting my time with Sekimeiya.

[ChaosRaven]

On 3/30/2023 at 4:02 AM, Nemesis said:

I'm mainly using this VN as a way to judge whether it's even worth looking into the EVN scene or should I completely forget its existence.

So far, writing is pretty meh. This seems like the sort of writing you'd see with RPG talking to NPC's. Their choice of names and settings are extremely weird and just feels not very well thought out. The character writing on the other hand is fucking awful.

I think this game highlights exactly what is wrong with EVN writing, it's fairly typical game writing with lack of focus on fleshing out the world or characters. It focused too much on the game-aspect of solving a riddle, and the characters act like they are playing a game. There is a complete lack of human element to it.

Yes, I also expected a lot more from it. The idea behind the plot might be good, but the writing was just bad. The writer was probably very experienced, because it felt like he was struggling with absolute basics. It would have been better if he'd started out with a short and simple VN before trying something like this.

Anyway, if you want to try a decent EVN, I'd recommend Heart of the Woods (provided you're fine with yuri).

[Shinyun226]

Just finished Flowers -Winter-

So it took me about 2 years since I had some pretty big gaps between games, but finally completed the series.

Excellent overall but... gotta complain about some elements of the final game...

 

 

Spoiler

So all this build-up, making it seems like there's something really sinister going on and... it turns out that Mayuri is just grandma-sitting? Really? That's it??

Like I understand why the details regarding Mother Elder not being all there might be kept a secret but... there's a billion cover stories that they could have come up with etc... Not to mention Mayuri didn't have to act so weird about it. It just seems like everyone stirred up a whole lot of drama about basically nothing.

 

It's a shame, because everything leading up to the reveal was pretty engaging. ie: The whole implication that's present in the first play-through that Rikka might be a traitor (before the player knows those letters being read and the chapter openings are actually about Shion and Sayuri) was particularly interesting, even if it all was a red-herring.

That aside, there were a few other overly stupid elements in the game (some of the other puzzles were nonsense, especially the whole chain of clues leading to the secret room) but... I still really liked it nonetheless. Winter had a LOT of great character moments, very happy that Erika got a lot of screen time, really like Shion and Sayuri's story and the ending was pretty satisfying all things considered. Also it had Hokama Senpai. 10/10 right there, even if her screentime was severly lacking.

 

Definitely a little sad that this is the last game, as I'm gonna miss the characters quite a bit. There are a few drama CDs that have come out though (with another one set to release this June) so I've got at least a little bit more Flowers material left to enjoy at least. Also definitely gonna have to buy all the soundtrack CDs - Between these games and AikaiIto, I've discovered I really like MANYO music.

Anyways, overall can't recommend the series enough. Definitely a must-play for any HimeDanshi/HimeJoshi out there looking for a good Yurige.

 

As an aside... Playing Flowers has also gotten me interested in trying out other Innocent Grey stuff. I know to expect something quite a bit different (obviously their other games aren't Yuri... among things) but, since there's an HD remaster of Cartagra coming out end of this month, thinking I might go ahead and pick that up.

Either way, that's probably something I won't play for a while. It's been a good 5-6 months since I've played a KID game (finished My Merry May back in November I believe), so probably gonna cycle back to my queue of KID games and start Ever17 next.