Gameplay in Visual Novels

[Twitchycolt]

What are your thoughts on traditional gameplay elements in visual novels? Do you like them? Do you feel they're unnecessary? Would adding more of these elements to visual novels increase their popularity in the west? While somewhat niche, Agarest Wars and Phoenix Wright have managed to appeal to a lot of people.

Personally, I really enjoy games that can mix gameplay and traditional VN elements. Particularly in action genre- sound effects and flashing blades are great, but actually getting to do a fight is even better. One of my favorite parts of Princess Waltz was the fact that all of the intense fights that were described were accompanied with a card battle fight. And (on normal) those things were pretty tough, and felt appropriate.

Everyone else?

[Eurobeatz]

I like visual novels with no gameplay at all other than choices to further the story. When I go to play a VN I go to read a story, not play a video game.

[Guest]

i would play baldry sky if there was an option to skip battles...

[RusAnon]

Generally I like gameplay elements, but sometimes it actually hurts experience:

- Aselia — doing other routes is truly annoying due to unskippable and very repetitive gameplay. Even if you cheat and raise your chars levels to 99, its still VERY burdensome to walk around that huge map.

- KnS — same thing, unskippable gameplay made it hard to play all routes. My thoughts upon getting True End were "ugh, finally done with it, no more same damn map movement lookups".

- DBBA, Sengoku Rance and pretty much every other AliceSoft game — severe time limit. I hate time limits. Esp. when there's no way you could do all quests/side heroines in said limit.

Also, puzzle mini-games are most stupid thing you could add to VN.

[shcboomer]

I feel like gameplay elements are nice, it is a good way to spice things up. Although most people seem to like skippable options as well. Depends on the VN though I guess.

[Mikel]

It really depends on the VN, for example I dropped Tears to Tiara because I had to fight a boss and I needed to train more, but I wasn't playing for the RPG part, I wanted to see the story, so the gameplay kinda screw it up xD

But then, there are VNs with great gameplay, or at least like Princess Waltz, where you can choose the battles to be easy or normal, and in easy you can win in a matter of seconds, which is what I do, because in normal it takes some time to beat the enemies

[sanahtlig]

I heavily lean towards VNs with gameplay, and in fact most of the titles I play in Japanese have gameplay. I usually play games with RPG systems, but simple interactivity options can be nice too. I think interactivity is what really sets VNs apart from other forms of story-based media such as manga, anime, and novels. If you're not taking advantage of that as a developer, you're not leveraging the full potential of the medium.

Unfortunately, the availability of gameplay VNs in English is pretty limited. Eushully and Softhouse Chara are among the best and most prolific gameplay VN developers, yet only 1 game from Eushully (with good gameplay but subpar story) has been translated, and no games from Softhouse Chara have been translated.

[solidbatman]

Corpse Party might be the only VN I've played with gameplay, though many games I've played carry VN elements within them.

[InvertMouse]

If the story's great, no gameplay is needed at all. Gameplay is welcome but only if it's not tacked on. Utawarerumono and Sakura Taisen's, for example, had gameplay I genuinely liked. The latter failed to age too well, but still.

I think having gameplay is a great way of introducing VNs to a western audience. 999 for the DS would be an example. The sequel got translated as well, so I guess it sold well.

I've been building VN x game hybrids in my indie endeavors, too. For game devs who want to tell a story, it's a great choice.

[Supah Kawaii Weeaboo]

A good number of my favorite video games barely have characters, a story, or on-screen text. But as I grew as a fan, I gradually started to appreciate games which have an interesting cast, narrative, and mandatory reading. This is a roundabout way of saying that it took years before I could accept a story with graphics and choices could be on par with a video game. It wasn't until my last year of college before I even looked at a visual novel, and it took another year before I found one that I genuinely enjoyed.

I like gameplay, but I admit that it doesn't always fit into a VN. (Why did the Ai Yori Aoshi spinoff have minigames?) And there are many ways in which gameplay can be dull, frustrating, or gimmicky. If you're creating a free or independent VN with some form of gameplay, then make sure that it's a relevant and enjoyable part of the experience.

[Darklord Rooke]

What are your thoughts on traditional gameplay elements in visual novels? Do you like them? Do you feel they're unnecessary?

I prefer VNs with gameplay.

Would adding more of these elements to visual novels increase their popularity in the west?

Making them portable and affordable would make a bigger impact, I suspect.

[Wahfuu]

If the gameplay isn't actually good then it drops the replay value of the game drastically since it just becomes a repetitive slog to read something different. Baldr Sky's system looks pretty good. And I was quite the fan of all the stuff you could do in Duel Savior and Kamidori, but sometimes it just becomes annoying if it doesn't actually offer anything but a time sink.

[sanahtlig]

There's a number of VNs where the gameplay is a minor element, like minigames (e.g., Princess Waltz, Koihime Musou). Victory is a bit sweeter when you're actually engaged in the fights--this also applies to some extent when you have to make a series of tough choices (e.g., Soul Link).