Tokyo Babel Released!

[Decay]

The bayesian rating takes into account the number of votes. So even if the actual average stays the same, as long as more people vote that way, the bayesian rating rises. 

Although from what I can tell, the actual average has risen by about 0.20 in the last few weeks.

[littleshogun]

Guess I learned another new thing today. So it depend on the vote I supposed. Actually, as far as VNDB rating I always use Bayesian one, because if we sort VNDB list from the score it'll be listing Bayesian one instead of average one. But I think both score should be good indicator of how good VN is (Most of the time anyway). Oh, and about average score Tokyo Babel was indeed raise up to 7.94 at this time (I forget how much the average score back before English release, but I still remember that Bayesian score for Tokyo Babel was around 7.0 or somewhere around that before English release).

[Decay]

I would argue that user scores are NEVER a good indicator for quality.

[Fred the Barber]

1 hour ago, Decay said:

I would argue that user scores are NEVER a good indicator for quality.

I've been itching to have that argument out ever since @Down said more or less the same thing in his blog post a while back. Isn't that at odds with empirical observation? If you go to VNDB and sort by rating, you get a pretty good list on that first page, for example. To be clear:

• Not absolutely everything on that first page is gold, I'm sure
• I'm equally sure there are things that deserve to be there but which are buried lower, perhaps much lower
• It implies a hard ranking, which is completely bogus

But even with those caveats, I still find it a useful guideline for quality. I actually pull up VNDB's Bayesian score ranking pretty regularly to look for good VNs that I haven't read yet but really should, and the result hasn't disappointed me yet.

Should probably move this to a new thread if it gets out of hand, though...

[Down]

2 hours ago, Fred the Barber said:

I've been itching to have that argument out ever since @Down said more or less the same thing in his blog post a while back.

*rereads his blog posts*

There was some irony in my statement. I don't think rankings are good indicators of quality for various reasons which I can expand on, but I also don't think they're completely useless: they do bring some amount of information.
My point was that behind the casual dismissal of these kinds of rankings that you'll often see around the internet, there's often the underlying idea that most people are dumb and have bad tastes, and the other idea that completes this point of view that we, ourselves, wouldn't bandwagon over something popular and are free of the various external influences that we see in other people. Needless to say that I think both of those ideas are very naive, although they're extremely hard to get rid of, especially the second one.

Now, about rankings. If you wanted to correlate ranking with quality, even if it were to a weak degree, you'd first need to define quality. Good luck with that. Do pieces of fiction have inherent, objective qualities? That's already a vast topic that could lead to a long discussion.

Let's make a hypothesis: pieces of fiction do have objective qualities, but we can't access them directly. A given reader will have an experience of reading through which some objective qualities of a piece of fiction have a subjective effect on him. (notice I made a semantic shift here: I'm talking about qualities, i.e. properties that can be "positive" or "negative", rather than an abstract "quality": we can assume for the sake of the argument that these qualities can be summed to give a "quality".)
Let's now assume that the sum of a bunch of experiences-of-reading can give a good idea of what the objective qualities, and thus the quality, of a given piece of fiction is. That's already a lot of assumption, but the "quality" we reach in the end is still a very multi-dimensional, complex item. A ranking is the result of collapsing this on a one-dimensional, numerical scale. Collapse a 2D drawing onto a line and you lose a lot of information: same thing here.
IF the complex, multi-dimensional items can be organized into a hierarchy, there's no guarantee that this hierarchy will be preserved in any way when you collapse to one dimension.

I have no idea where I'm going with my weird and obscure metaphor but the gist of it is that even assuming "quality" exists and can be clearly defined, it's irreducible, even in a weak way, to an average score.

Let's take a much more empirical approach to this: here's a social psychology experiment^{[citation needed]}. An internet site gives the possibility to download a bunch of songs, and people can rank them according to their preferences. Those rankings then make up a global ranking. In one instance of the test, people have access to the global ranking, in another instance they don't.
In the first case, within a few hours a clear global ranking established itself with some songs being clearly at the top. In the second case the votes were all equally dispersed, no song ever clearly took the top of the ranking.

What would happen if people inputted their scores on vndb without having access to the ranking and without ever having contacts with VN communities? Who knows. The result would certainly be different from the experiment: the songs were chosen to be of a rather similar quality (I haven't looked up the precise protocol).

I think that what all of this makes clear is that rankings are indicators of popularity (although uncertain ones...), and popularity affects our opinions, so rankings do give us interesting information that we should consciously take into account (because otherwise we'll unconsciously take them into account...). You could also say that they play into what "interests" us, or that they give us information on the people that vote in them rather than on the works themselves.

But saying they can measure, even in a weak and non-certain way, quality, throws us back to the immensely complicated question of what the hell is quality anyway. I would like to believe there's indeed some sort of "quality" to be found in popularity, but I can't justify it.

 

edit: well shit this is way too long and nobody will read it now ._.

[FontSize72LOL]

On 4/22/2016 at 7:13 AM, Decay said:

I would argue that user scores are NEVER a good indicator for quality.

I would both agree and disagree with this particular statement. The thing is, i feel like ratings are more of a measure of a titles "mainstream appeal" which is a good indicator of what is "Universally good", but not quite a good indicator of something that would be specifically "good" or relevant to your specific interests. The issue is VNs being niche as they are, don't always try for mainstream appeal and those cant really compete, ratings wise, with those that do. I do agree that Ratings shouldn't be the sole thing that decides whether or not you pick something up, and one should always look deeper. Thats about all i'm going to say on this topic, however.

 

Anyway, on the actual topic here:

I finished Tokyo Babel a couple of a days ago and i have to say that i've really enjoyed it. I didn't really want to get into a "review" or "rant" over it but there are a few things i figure i should bring up. I actually didn't mind the "casual" tone used in the narrative, or the English itself. I felt that it flowed pretty naturally, all things considered. Some of the slang did trigger me a little bit (not because the slang was used, but moreso, i just have an adversion to those particular word choices, "totes" being one of them). I felt the pacing, all around, in this VN was a bit off. It was rushed at times, and dragged a bit at others, although compared to Ayakashibito, i think they did a little better job here. I feel like Raziel got the short end of the stick when it comes to endings. None of the bad endings were good, but her "good" ending was by far the worst. I'd almost say it was worse than Sorami's normal end. Its not even the fact that it was one of those "Bitter-sweet" endings, I just felt that if the other two characters got a "happy" ending, she should of as well (I just felt like it was more along the lines of Sorami's normal ending, and not a "True" ending). There are a bunch of little things too, but i suppose those would be more or less nitpicky (*cough* where is my Samael route, she was almost best girl ;(, ahem..)

In terms of Routes: I'll have to go with this order of my personal enjoyment: Lilith > Sorami > Raziel

In terms of Characters I'll go with: Sorami > Samael >> Lilith > Raziel

[Evenlaist]

i only read up to raziel route, and already cant stand this game.Especially the fighting scene.. They feel cheap..
Seriously, equallium breaker ? Bunker Buster ? Unversal Time machine (or whatever its name is) ?

Not to mention about Setsuna, he just found his raison d etre and suddenly he 'mastered' it.

Some big shots also died too easily, like they only exist because they are needed for other routes.

 

[FinalChaos]

Have finished Sorami's route and going through Lilith's route currently.

First of all I'd like to say that between Raziel and Sorami's route the similarity is majorly regarding the structure, the content(both story and fights) is definitely different. While it doesn't go in a completely new direction from the offset, there is a significant difference between the two routes, imo it doesn't feel repetitive at all.   

The major complaint that I had about Sorami's route was the trope they used.

 

I really felt that route would have been better if they didn't go for the whole damsel-in-distress trope. My major reason for this is that it caused Sorami to be absent for a significant chunk of the route. I really liked the character development and how Setsuna and Raziel got closer to each other during the pilgrimage. Also Sorami had already been in the exact same situation at the start of the vn. After showing how Sorami recovered from her fear and was strong and always cheerful, they suddenly had her undergo breakdown. Well perhaps they were going for the contrast but I would have rather seen her fight along with Setsuna and overcome the problems.

Another part that bothered me about Sorami was the use of Gethel's eyes. Throughout the vn, it has only been used to find the doors and hardly in battle(expect the parts when Setsuna replicates/takes them but I'm talking about when Sorami uses it). I thought that the eyes would be extensively used to find out the weakness' of the opponents or something. With Lilith and Raziel saying that Gethel's eyes will help a lot during the journey and stuff, whenever it was used Raziel could do the same albeit taking a slightly longer time.

And with me now playing through Lilith's route I'm slowly understanding all the hype for Samael.   

[ChaosRaven]

I've started with Tokyo Babel now, but so far it's pretty underwhelming and I think I'll drop it for now in favor of Root Double. While the production values are certainly impressive, the writing is a real mess. What does this VN want to be? Horror? The Matrix? School life comedy? Action? I've actually no clue, since nothing fits together and everything is just so convoluted and confusing.

It also didn't help that Gethel is my top candidate for the most annoying character of the year. I ended up switching off her voice in the options to shut her up, because I simply couldn't stand her bullshit talk anymore. At least she had the dignity to die so I fortunately don't have to endure her presence again. 

But I'll most likely give the VN another try when I'm finished with Root Double. It can just get better... (hopefully)

[Nerathim]

On 27/04/2016 at 0:21 AM, ChaosRaven said:

I've started with Tokyo Babel now, but so far it's pretty underwhelming and I think I'll drop it for now in favor of Root Double. While the production values are certainly impressive, the writing is a real mess. What does this VN want to be? Horror? The Matrix? School life comedy? Action? I've actually no clue, since nothing fits together and everything is just so convoluted and confusing.

It also didn't help that Gethel is my top candidate for the most annoying character of the year. I ended up switching off her voice in the options to shut her up, because I simply couldn't stand her bullshit talk anymore. At least she had the dignity to die so I fortunately don't have to have to endure her presence again. 

But I'll most likely give the VN another try when I'm finished with Root Double. It can just get better... (hopefully)

 

This posts triggers me.

Basically, you're judging the VN out on the two first hour of reading? Didn't you think the whole writing mess at the beggining was intentional because it revolves around Gethel who is a REAL MESS of a girl?

It doesn't matter anyway, you probably only or didn't reach the opening so try to get to finish one route instead of making hasty judgements.

[Zenophilious]

8 hours ago, ChaosRaven said:

I've started with Tokyo Babel now, but so far it's pretty underwhelming and I think I'll drop it for now in favor of Root Double. While the production values are certainly impressive, the writing is a real mess. What does this VN want to be? Horror? The Matrix? School life comedy? Action? I've actually no clue, since nothing fits together and everything is just so convoluted and confusing.

It also didn't help that Gethel is my top candidate for the most annoying character of the year. I ended up switching off her voice in the options to shut her up, because I simply couldn't stand her bullshit talk anymore. At least she had the dignity to die so I fortunately don't have to have to endure her presence again. 

But I'll most likely give the VN another try when I'm finished with Root Double. It can just get better... (hopefully)

That's not even equivalent to the demo, dude.  You don't generally decide whether or not to keep watching a movie based on the first few minutes, so why do the equivalent to a VN?  Gethel kicked the bucket anyway, her voice won't annoy you anymore.  Read a couple more hours and decide if it's as "convoluted and confusing" as it was in the first segment.  I'll give you a hint, it's not.

Do you seriously expect them to explain everything before the opening even plays?  I just...I don't even... 

[Decay]

The prologue's disjointed writing is due to the circumstances of how Gethel has trapped Sorami. Her entire world was in flux, at that point. The writing reflected that.

Once they make it to Pandora, things become much more consistent and "normal." There are some issues related to what you were complaining about, like how the game will switch from action to comedy and back from time to time, but generally speaking the format for each route is slice-of-life character building and training -> first combat encounter -> celebration and another brief SoL sequence, w/ maybe more training -> action action action action. The balance and pacing can feel a little off at times, but I wouldn't necessarily qualify it as a "mess."

[ChaosRaven]

Just for clarification, this was just a first impression to decide if I read Tokyo Babel or Root Double first. I've finished Aoishiro just 1 - 2 days before Root Double was out which was my favorite in the first place. So I gave Tokyo Babel the one day chance to prove that I want to read it before Root Double. It failed pretty hard at that, but that doesn't mean that I've dropped it for good. It's just delayed for when I'm finished with Root Double.

[DharmaFreedom]

Hi guys, I just started reading tokyo babel. I'm really liking it so far! [I'll be going raziel, sorami, lilith as advised].

I just wanted to know if its really essential to read through all the bad ends? Does the bad ends offer much needed information as i progress towards to true route or it isn't really important at all?

I don't usually read bad ends since i well.... don't like bad endings! 

[ChaosRaven]

1 hour ago, DharmaFreedom said:

I just wanted to know if its really essential to read through all the bad ends? Does the bad ends offer much needed information as i progress towards to true route or it isn't really important at all?

I don't usually read bad ends since i well.... don't like bad endings! 

I only got one or two bad endings and just skipped the rest. But with the bad endings I got, I really didn't have the impression that they were necessary, and they weren't long anyway.

[ChaosRaven]

I finally managed to finish Tokyo Babel.   (Decided to post my final review here since it fits better)

The first route had to serve a bit as an ice-breaker to get me used to the awkward action-comedy-utsuge style of the VN. After that it was significantly easier for me to warm up and enjoy most parts of it. Mainly the comedy and story sections, while the action scenes somehow never managed to grab me and I ended up skipping most of them towards the end.

 

Surprisingly, I enjoyed the second route around Sorami the most. Considering that she was just saved at the start, her naivity was just natural and she had a great chemistry with Setsuna. I was also nice to see how certain characters and situations developed in comparison to the first route, especially Setsuna's and Sorami's relationship to Adam and Eve. While the route probably suffered a bit from too much similarities to the first route, it still had enough going for it to make it interesting. I also think that Metatron and Remiel were the best villain characters in the game since I could really understand some of their reasons for their actions. I also like the Adam and Eve couple, but I couldn't really see them as villains. Setsunas and Adams rivalry was also often too exaggerated to fit the 'chuuni-cliche', considering the desperate situation they were in. Both Setsuna and Adam were overall too mature characters for such silly behavior. I would have really liked to see them act more often as allies instead.

Lilith's route was a bit of a mixed bag though. For one thing Lilith herself was reduced to a mere side character in her own route that appears pretty much just at the start and the end, for another thing the second half of the route consisted pretty much exclusively of action scenes that made barely any sense anymore. The first half with Samael and 'Cerbi'  was pretty nice though. Samael had a great chemistry with Setsuna, although I've no clue why she was so head over heels into him (though that applies to most eroge relationships though). She was probably the worst 'villain' in the game, but certainly the most moe character.

Overall, I enjoyed the comedy and story parts the most, even if too much revelations were just presented on a silver plate instead of steadily dropping hints to make you find out the truth yourself. Ironically, I found the supposed strength of the game - the action scenes - the worst part of it, hurting the story more than benefitting it in most cases. I would have preferred it if the often surprisingly good story segments would have been extended instead. One thing that was consistently good though was Setsuna. Certainly one of the best protagonists I've seen so far, with a very good male voice actor. Art was okay, there was a lot of it but sometimes it was more mass over class. Music was good though, with the exception of the ultra cheap hard rock tracks often used for the battles. A superb pre-battle music though and some great suspense tracks.

Favorite heroines: Sorami > Samael > Lilith > Raziel

Final rating 6.5/10 (I really wanted to give it a 7/10, but the second half of Liliths route really soured my mood again.)

[Zenophilious]

Does anyone know who voices (SPOILERS)

Spoiler

God and Metatron?  Neither of their characters are on VNDB, and I can't find any mention of their VA's anywhere.

 

[littleshogun]

2 hours ago, Zenophilious said:

Does anyone know who voices (SPOILERS)

Yes, I knew. And it's in the opening by the way if you watch it carefully. As for the seiyuu, God's were Ogura Yui and the latter was Horiuchi Kenyuu. I'd give the link to seiyuu's MAL pages in case you were interested. Hope it'll be help.