Tokyo Babel Released!

[Decay]

I never expected to read a VN that made Civ references, but, well, here we are.

[Dark_blade64]

First impressions: I'm gladly I purchase this title over Princess Evangile (Not like I won't do it anyway in the future ) Just finished intro part, but I dare to say this will be one helluva ride.

[Suzu Fanatic]

Finished Sorami's route. Not sure how I felt about it - I liked certain aspects of it, but felt other parts hurt it. Satisifing conclusion though - even if it had more then a few ?'s left behind.

(Raz and Sorami spoilers below)

 

-For starters, Are the routes sopposed to be alternate timelines, rather then a different choice in the same timeline? What I mean by that, Metatron and Messenger never show up to interfere with Setsuna and Sorami when they reach Heaven in Raziel's route (Unless it has to do with Lilith's route), and Metatron never attacks Uriel.

Basically, rather than choices shifting the flow of events - it completely re-writes the timeline. Not sure why it stands out to me, as plenty of VNs operate like that, but it sticks out in my mind for some reason~

-Another nagging thing is the true ending (though I enjoyed it), the two kept their memories - but it isn't clear on the whole "growing up" process. It said they were born into the world, thus starting over from scratch, wouldn't the intelligence of the past lives become evident to their families? Or do you soppose they slowly regained those memories as they grew up? Felt like a bit of a plot hole.

I guess my only gripe is the LACK of Sorami in this route - it almost felt like Propeller couldn't afford her VA to do too much, so made sure to use a lot of scenes without her. But then again, it really might have just been Higashide's vision of her story.

I was sort of right, sort of wrong about my prediction of Sorami though - While she was NOT Gehtal - her memories were def. a heartfelt wish Gehtal harbored (even if crazy).

Sorami is a sweety though, no doubt about it. Now onto Lilith! (I suspect my favorite girl)

[littleshogun]

About your speculation for Kanae Ito, interesting stuff, but I think it's more like Higashide writing I suppose because even if we dismissed Kanae Ito, propeller obviously still need to take note to Kamiya Hiroshi here, in regard of famous seiyuu. Oh, also for small spoiler let's just said Ai Kayano and Sakurai Takahiro also involved more in Sorami route (Not to mention both of them were quite famous), so I think if propeller couldn't afford Kanae Ito here to do much, it's probably because in regard of involvement of many other famous seiyuu.

As for gaming writing, I think the first step would be writing the story first then thinking who would voicing the character, so once again it's more leaning toward Higashide writing because I remember that Princess Waltz (PW) was had the main heroine not voiced for almost half of the game (He was there as assistant writing though, but I think he managed to influence it. Oh by the way PW main heroine seiyuu was not quite famous ie had not much role according to VNDB).

tldr - I think it's once again more of Higashide writing, but maybe it's my bias here though.

[Nerathim]

https://ask.fm/Conjueror/answers/135470766299

This ruined my day

[Suzu Fanatic]

11 hours ago, Nerathim said:

https://ask.fm/Conjueror/answers/135470766299

This ruined my day

Was pretty bummed out seeing that too - I can't help feeling some resentment towards the VN community. Ah well, people can't help what they like/don't like - after all is said and done~

My hope, is that by the end of 2016 (when MG is tallying up the annual sales) that TB does well enough to consider future ventures. But I guess time will tell.

[ChaosRaven]

It's far too early to make any final statements about the sales. It's a Steam title. Eden's initial sales weren't that great either, but a few Steam sales later it was the second best selling title of the year. Besides that, it's a title with no adult content, not particularly moegish art, overall average ratings and a reputation that it's mostly for hardcore chuuni fans because of an overabundance of battle scenes. Expecting top sales from MangaGamer's more adult content oriented customer base isn't particularly realistic. The real money will come from Steam sales when the title is cheap enough to be viable for its customer base.

[Decay]

2 hours ago, ChaosRaven said:

overall average ratings

Which is ridiculous, because this game is actually quite great. The VN community is so utterly enamored with the elite set of action chuuni titles that get hyped to hell and back that any title in the same genre that isn't part of that group just gets ignored completely, especially if it's all-ages. The age rating is completely irrelevant to this title, though. It doesn't feel like it lacks maturity in any way, nor does it feel like it ever glosses over any important events. Everything just works, nothing is lacking. 

Oh well, this is how the VN fanbase has always been. I've been expecting this the whole time, while really hoping I was wrong.

[Dark_blade64]

16 minutes ago, Decay said:

Which is ridiculous, because this game is actually quite great. The VN community is so utterly enamored with the elite set of action chuuni titles that get hyped to hell and back that any title in the same genre that isn't part of that group just gets ignored completely, especially if it's all-ages. The age rating is completely irrelevant to this title, though. It doesn't feel like it lacks maturity in any way, nor does it feel like it ever glosses over any important events. Everything just works, nothing is lacking. 

Oh well, this is how the VN fanbase has always been. I've been expecting this the whole time, while really hoping I was wrong.

That's the norm of how different kind of communities normally operate. Just observe how the gaming community behave and you could immediately notice most are like that. Self proclaimed elitists and the so called normal players jump off to conclusions immediately and  tag new games that don't appeal to them as being bad without even watching the gameplay or not knowing anything about it.

[Suzu Fanatic]

http://blog.mangagamer.org/2016/04/07/tokyo-babel-testers-corner-vol-1/

A decent read for anyone curious about Tokyo Babel, and want more info/insight. Written by Xarrias, one of the playtesters for TB. (spoiler free)

[Nerathim]

Just finished my first route, Raziel's. I can't believe this isn't even the true route given the proportions it took. Can it seriously become more over-the-top?

I'm pretty hyped for what is to come though, even if the epilogue left me with some really bitter afterstate. I can't say I didn't see it coming but Tokyo Babel is definitely darker than Ayakashibito.

[littleshogun]

To nerathim, not. Raziel route is not the true route if you need confirmation from me. The true one was Lilith. As for your next route expectation, let me tell you something. It's better if you expect happier ending for next route, and for true route you could only unlocked it after finishing Sorami route.

By the way, for VNDB Bayesian score, currently right now Tokyo Babel score is at 7.23. Quite massive jump compared to the time when it's not released yet, with Bayesian score was around 7.01 or somewhere around that.

For sales, I couldn't comment much other than hope it'll be doing well and in the future Tokyo Babel will be recommended for good VN. And speaking about Mangagamer Tester Corner page, I agree that this game may as well called 'Megami Tensei: Galge Edition' because we had apocalyptic setting, location was in modern Tokyo, and we had 3 parties here who did pilgrimage in Pandora (Human, angel, and demon. Or respectively Neutral, Law, and Chaos in alignment word). But I think it's only from the setting though, as for the angel and demon they were not as extreme back in Megaten in regard of their ideology (Well, they had much more important issue here though).

I think that's all I could write now.

[Suzu Fanatic]

Finished it last night, was a pretty enjoyable ride. Still need to organize my final thoughts though.

Last route offered some emotional investment, and tears were shed. Not quite as good as Ayakashibito in some respects, but still a damn good VN worth my money.

 

Samael best girl

[Nerathim]

Finished Sorami route, only Lilith left I guess.

I have to say that this VN is pretty damn good. Most characters are really likable and grow on you, the VA and the soundtrack are stellar, enormous amount of CG, the setting is breathtakingly ingenious and backed up by in-depth researches on mythology, actually funny and I also appreciate the story being really nuanced, "gray", and not black and white.

And the translation is worth praising as well, it conveys a very high-grade writing as far as VNs go imo.

[Decay]

It really is quite good. My biggest complaint however is that it feels like they only had about two routes worth of material but had to throw in a third route, maybe out of a sense of obligation. The route that suffered the most because of this is of course the best girl's route, Sorami's. It felt like they just sort of ran out of ideas for the fights in that route, and had many of the same encounters/villains as Raziel's but simply approached from a different angle. Also those repeat fights just felt abbreviated and substanceless. It was still good, but it wasn't blood pumping the whole time like Raziel's was. Sorami's route felt like too much of a retread for that. The final fight was rather great, though, and I liked the ending. So there's that, at least. 

I'm reading Lilith's route right now and it's like it has all of the inspiration that was missing from Sorami's. It's excellent so far. 

[Eclipsed]

Note to self: read best girl Sorami's route first, to avoid any 'same encounters/villains as Raziel's but different angle' disappointments

[littleshogun]

@Eclipsed I think you should still read it in the order of Raziel first, then Sorami and finally Lilith though. The reason was because some knowledge in Sorami's route was major spoiler or so I'd read in Raziel's route, and according to the review Raziel route had the least information, then Sorami reveal more and finally Lilith reveal the rest. Although you could use the expectation from Decay's word to read Sorami's route though, in term of action scene that is.

[Decay]

59 minutes ago, Eclipsed said:

Note to self: read best girl Sorami's route first, to avoid any 'same encounters/villains as Raziel's but different angle' disappointments

No, definitely don't do this. I think you'll end up ruining both routes like this, lol. Read Raziel's route first no matter what. 

[Diamon]

Pfew, finally finished Tokyo Babel, what a ride! Definitely one of my favorite VN so far. Tons of action and biblical references (though I'm not sure how accurate they were). I was also surpisingly pleased to see that there was an even cast of female and male characters, something you rarely see in VNs, especially when the temptation of having gender swapped sexy angels or sexy demons / succubus could be strong. The perfect voice acting was really what made the VN though. It was funny to hear kanahana to be a bit more on the teasing side with one of her character (dem civilization refs), and while at the very beginnig her voicing raziel feels a bit off, you grow accustomed to it very quickly.

Anyway, regarding the route order suggested, I'll add that you should try to read :

Raziel bad end > Raziel True end > Sorami bad end > (Sorami normal end) > Sorami True end > (Lilith Bad end 3) > Lilith True end > (Setsuna end)

Raziel bad end is especially important since it explains some stuff that won't be explained anywhere else, though not anything major. Also I think it's a perfect first ending to achieve, and continuing onto the true ending after the bad ending will feel much less abrupt (I think the writer intended for us to read the bad end before the true end, seeing how raziel true end was written sometimes)

None of the other bad end go as in-depth as Raziel bad end (they only last 5 minutes at most compared to the hour of raziel bad end), so they are more skippable. There are a few CGs though that you won't get if you don't play them, so try to read those I've listed at least.

[Scorp]

@Decay will you write review for this title?

[Decay]

Yes. I hope to finish the game and start writing the review at some point today, and for it to go live in a day or two.

[Nerathim]

Now that I finished Tokyo Babel I can't help but to crave for a small and light-hearted fandisc that would follow the true ending. It will never happens but the credits left me with a feeling of emptiness that only my favorite titles can do. There wasn't much scenes to foster any kind of empathic link between the reader and the characters but I still felt close to the universe nonetheless. There may be a few big flaws,, I don't know, they went totally over my head and I can say that Tokyo Babel is one of my favorite VNs as of now. Mostly thanks to the setting, Higashide didn't comply to anything in his story (not a single H-scene, when it was one of Ayakashibito's main flaws). Tokyo Babel has a big identity and I'd recommend it for that, among many other strong points.

[Decay]

I finished this up last night and wrote my review. It should go live sometime later today, or tomorrow at the absolute latest. In short: I liked it a lot. In length: Read the review, dummy. 

I'm gonna miss it after spending the last two weeks with it. So long, Tokyo Babel, you were good while you lasted.

[WinterfuryZX]

http://www.brashgames.co.uk/2016/04/12/tokyo-babel-review/

generic rewievs...

[Dark_blade64]

8 hours ago, WinterfuryZX said:

http://www.brashgames.co.uk/2016/04/12/tokyo-babel-review/

generic rewievs...

I would refer visual novels more like being interactive piece of work. Similar to reading a book but clearly having better representation than books aswell sometimes movie segment and even some gameplay. This guy seem to not understand the charm of visual novels. Not mentioning the biggest reason he gave that kind of negative review is because there is no gameplay. But still doesn't this still count as a game? If so he should have review it as being a game? Dunno why he is complaining...