What to read while I wait for Koiken Otome TL to release?

[Codesterz]

2 hours ago, CeruleanGamer said:

brb hiring a hitman on Dovac before this happens.

 

Also it says 100% QC.... Unleash this fucking beast now!!!

Need help with the funding on that hitman?

A few(3-4) hours ago they put an update in the the most recent post saying there won't be anything for 24 hours. So you still got another 20 hours minimum if that holds true. Might want to find a way to keep yourself preoccupied for a while. In my case I'm gonna do something I can't believe I'm doing. I feel like I should die for it... I'm gonna try out Danganronpa. Someone please stop me

[Eclipsed]

2 minutes ago, Codesterz said:

Need help with the funding on that hitman?

A few(3-4) hours ago they put an update in the the most recent post saying there won't be anything for 24 hours. So you still got another 20 hours minimum if that holds true. Might want to find a way to keep yourself preoccupied for a while. In my case I'm gonna do something I can't believe I'm doing. I feel like I should die for it... I'm gonna try out Danganronpa. Someone please stop me

Oh no. Stop. Don't do it.

[Codesterz]

Just now, Eclipsed said:

Oh no. Stop. Don't do it.

Tell me it's a horrible game please. So I can look for another way to pass time for Koiken Otome.

[FamishedPants]

21 minutes ago, Codesterz said:

Tell me it's a horrible game please. So I can look for another way to pass time for Koiken Otome.

I enjoyed it. Especially because my initial rankings for the girls ended up being an unknown prediction on which order people died in it. 

[Codesterz]

1 minute ago, FamishedPants said:

I enjoyed it. Especially because my initial rankings for the girls ended up being an unknown prediction on which order people died in it. 

You aren't helping

[FamishedPants]

2 minutes ago, Codesterz said:

You aren't helping

Why don't I suggest other things? Ar Tonelico? Duel Savior? Unteralterbach? Cross Ange? Cross Ange.... dubbed? 

[Codesterz]

9 minutes ago, FamishedPants said:

Why don't I suggest other things? Ar Tonelico? Duel Savior? Unteralterbach? Cross Ange? Cross Ange.... dubbed? 

I've already played the Ar tonelico games. Except for the newest one. Not Qoga the one after don't remember what it was called. Duel Savoir is just top old and outdated for my tastes. Never heard of Unteralterbach just looked it up on VNDB and that art style makes me shudder. I don't own a vita so Cross Ange is a no go.

[FamishedPants]

2 minutes ago, Codesterz said:

I've already played the Ar tonelico games. Except for the newest one. Not Qoga the one after don't remember what it was called. Duel Savoir is just top old and outdated for my tastes. Never heard of Unteralterbach just looked it up on VNDB and that art style makes me shudder. I don't own a vita so Cross Ange is a no go.

Oh god. Why does that even have a game? I had meant the anime, which is a quality trainwreck, like Code Geass. 

I wanna say you should not disregard a game due to its art but that's entirely the reason why I have yet to play Eien no Aselia. Still, Unteralterbach was very entertaining.

Have you tried Killer Queen? Was okay, although you might have problems with its art as well... 

[Eclipsed]

Gave you a dedicated thread for this~

Just play Danganronpa, up to the end of the first Class Trial, and see if you get addicted  

[littleshogun]

I didn't mind though to give my recommendation at my thread earlier to Codesterz here, just saying here. For distraction games before Koiken Otome, maybe KARAKARA, Yurirei and Shinikiss here if you didn't play those three yet. I think those 3 were more than enough for distraction here. Or if not, maybe I could suggest more in future.

PS - If you need some opinion that Koiken Otome was bad games, guess I could give another review from VNDB in spoiler box below (Thanks for the review there, Crauxan). From there you could just decided to play Koiken Otome or not.

 

Played 恋剣乙女, and finished two routes: Yasui (I think? red haired) and Touko's. Mixed reviews this time, with more criticism than praise unfortunately.

As usual, the goods first. Stunning visuals and amazing graphics. I personally think that the Save/Load interface and the Album/Memory interface is extremely space wasting (You can see only 3 slots on one page of the Save/Load file, for example), but it manages to convey its beauty as meant. The opening towards title screen was some of the best I've ever seen - short, simple, effective, and beautiful. The characters, while kind of stereotypical as usual, were absolute eye candies to watch and sometimes I just paused to admire the art. There is really nothing to complain here, as art wise it is the best of its style as of now.

Its music is just a tad bit weaker compared the art, but then again you have to remember that the latter had set a really high bar there. It is by no means weak at all, and most of its soundtrack and theme song are memorable on its own. The guitar solo was my favorite because it reminded me keenly about a similar soundtrack from Kira Kira, which also featured a guitar solo, and coupled with a clear sounding headphone I could almost dance on top of my bed. Which is unwise, but let's leave that aside.

Solid background study. The first half of its story, right up to the point the battles have ended, were very well done. They're not special, and I believe that they could definitely spice up their battle scene animations a lot more (since they went through so much effort to make the VN visually appealing), but the pacing, narration and storyline up to that point was acceptable and rather interesting. At that point you'll find yourself intensely intrigued by the mystery behind Yasui's shitty low power, Touko's secret, the gadgets lab girl might create if you go through her route and tsundere Eve. The CGs were absolutely top notch - then again, why does a sub male character get to show off his powers in all glory in a CG (practically never appears after his part in the first half), and the protagonist never get a battle CG for his own? Weird decision making - and even if the narration of the battle kind of fall off sometimes they CG more than make up for the excitement the VN wants us to feel.

System. As far as I'm concerned, everything's working. Not much to say, but a bugless VN always deserve a mention, and this seems to be one of it.

Character wise, everyone felt alive. Sub characters remain as they are, but they perform their function well and er, I really liked Yasui's route. Her story just felt natural and unforced, and right up till the end her growth, while expected, left me with a sense of good fulfillment and recharged me for the next route.

... Which is about as far as the good goes, as far as I'm concerned. We're going to start with the bads now.

So first, a waste of background. Time and time again I see Visual Novels with delicately crafted backgrounds that showed so much potential only to be wasted completely on a bland storyline. We have a world here where most people wields magic (it's called differently but basically the same thing) with actual detail about the origins of the magic, which I liked a lot. The 'Kotona' (Dragons apparently) that once haunted the land were exterminated by these magic wielders after a long and harsh war, and now is the time of peace where everyone lives in happiness. That was fine - as I've said, they've put a solid effort into the background story, and it is awesome. I could easily see this VN go Muv Luv and turned everything to hell on earth. I could easily see this VN dive deep into the human psych and talked about the differences between magic users and normal people. There are a tonne more scenarios that pop into my mind even as I type here now, and that's just how much potential we glean from the well constructed background.

... which they did not bother to use at all as we go into the individual girl's route. I suppose that I understand that this IS a pure romance VN and I'm not to expect blood and gore and sadness and misery out of it, but seriously, the background work is just WASTED. Your hotblooded battle scenes practically ends after the first half, and some girl's route - take Touko's for example - there are no fights at all. To put it bluntly, the magic element REALLY WASN'T MADE GOOD USE OF. For example, there are many types of magics such as Fire, Ice, Movement, Life, etc. One of the sub characters have an extremely plot potent magic that is to 'Lifesteal', but the character was forever crippled with a shittily weak body who can't take beyond a loud shout and terrible tsukomis. Even in Yasui's route where the magic battles actually occur rather frequently, I was forced to see again and again she using the same fire magic with zero - ZERO - variations at all. You would think that they could at least get smart and say, coat her sword with goddamn fire and make up some explanation why that would be awesome, but nooo, we must stick to swordfight (everything explained as uber sword skillz) fireballs and the ULTIMATE FIREBLAST ONLY. I thought magic was suppose to be at least innovative. The latter half of this VN just made me think that they could've just thrown away the entire background completely, since they don't even try to utilize like 10% of its true potential.

Putting magic aside, you would think that they would at least talk about the hardships between magic wielders and non-magic wielders, but there's nothing. It's surprising really, when at the beginning there was a scene where the protagonist was thought to be a non-magic wielder and the bullies had looked down on him mercilessly like he's an ant. It's a classic plot device, sure, but it NEVER gets old, not to mention human conflict is practically our everyday life, but nah, we need to stick with the generic and mediocre because that's what the Japanese populace (I seriously doubt it, but a company believes in whatever they like) wants.

There are a plenty sub characters in this VN, but NONE of them was ever fully presented beyond some gag lines and cool phrases. Take the twins for example... actually I feel sad for using them as an example. The sister does nothing beyond lusting for women and the brother was too busy failing his own health. Take the protagonist's roommate as an example. They gave him a girl's sprite and a girl's voice but insist that he's a male (I don't even understand why go through the trouble), and beyond being a nice advisor he was nothing. We were clearly shown that the teachers are extremely capable and powerful at the first half of the story, but beyond the stereotypical sports-looking teacher -> aggressive, gentle teacher -> ara ara~, we learn nothing. Even the rivals that hated (friendly style) the protagonist so much lost all of their aggressiveness and went full friend mode at the latter half of the story. And oh, the female one fell for our protagonist. OBVIOUSLY I SHOULD'VE KNOWN. RIGHT.

But all these, all of these faults I could turn a blind eye on, if not for the singular, hilarious piteous disaster that is Touko's route. Oh, my, fucking, god. I'll try to refrain from writing in capital too much. WHY, on BLOODY EARTH, did you turn such a strong-looking, supposedly hiding some dark secret COOL girl, INTO a PUPPY who does absolutely... NOTHING? WHY? To put things spoiler-free, basically her dark secret turned out to be SUPER cheap, she loves cute things to death, she is cute, she is so cute the protagonist is willing to act like a dog because she miss her puppy, BY THE FUCKING GOD. WHY. Cuteness is a great positive factor, IF DONE CORRECTLY. Her route wasn't just mediocre, it was just downright HORRENDOUS with NO plot at all, and the fact that they made a FOOL out of my favorite character in the first half of story made me quit the VN completely. Didn't finish Eve or lab girl's route, sorry, though I pray to the heavens that they're better than ANYTHING that's in Touko's route. I got a save file and took a peek, and I'd recommend going with lab girl's route since there's a CG involving her in great danger. That means plot, and plot means something, no matter how terrible it might turn out to be. I repeat, even if you love cute and sweet stuff to death do NOT play Touko's route, or you will suffer. Even now my mind is being raped by how they handled the climax, and to put it mildly, it wasn't pleasant. The other way was to fill this post with such terrible expletives that I have to be banned from the forum.

I had initially wanted to praise how this VN singlehandedly defeat my prejudice for poor or generic plots with just astounding visuals alone. I am now left with a wretched heart cursing whoever wrote Touko's route in such distasteful fashion that it nearly wiped out any good feelings I have for the VN.

 

[FamishedPants]

16 minutes ago, littleshogun said:

I didn't mind though to give my recommendation at my thread earlier to Codesterz here, just saying here. For distraction games before Koiken Otome, maybe KARAKARA, Yurirei and Shinikiss here if you didn't play those three yet. I think those 3 were more than enough for distraction here. Or if not, maybe I could suggest more in future.

PS - If you need some opinion that Koiken Otome was bad games, guess I could give another review from VNDB in spoiler box below (Thanks for the review there, Crauxan). From there you could just decided to play Koiken Otome or not.

  Reveal hidden contents

Played 恋剣乙女, and finished two routes: Yasui (I think? red haired) and Touko's. Mixed reviews this time, with more criticism than praise unfortunately.

As usual, the goods first. Stunning visuals and amazing graphics. I personally think that the Save/Load interface and the Album/Memory interface is extremely space wasting (You can see only 3 slots on one page of the Save/Load file, for example), but it manages to convey its beauty as meant. The opening towards title screen was some of the best I've ever seen - short, simple, effective, and beautiful. The characters, while kind of stereotypical as usual, were absolute eye candies to watch and sometimes I just paused to admire the art. There is really nothing to complain here, as art wise it is the best of its style as of now.

Its music is just a tad bit weaker compared the art, but then again you have to remember that the latter had set a really high bar there. It is by no means weak at all, and most of its soundtrack and theme song are memorable on its own. The guitar solo was my favorite because it reminded me keenly about a similar soundtrack from Kira Kira, which also featured a guitar solo, and coupled with a clear sounding headphone I could almost dance on top of my bed. Which is unwise, but let's leave that aside.

Solid background study. The first half of its story, right up to the point the battles have ended, were very well done. They're not special, and I believe that they could definitely spice up their battle scene animations a lot more (since they went through so much effort to make the VN visually appealing), but the pacing, narration and storyline up to that point was acceptable and rather interesting. At that point you'll find yourself intensely intrigued by the mystery behind Yasui's shitty low power, Touko's secret, the gadgets lab girl might create if you go through her route and tsundere Eve. The CGs were absolutely top notch - then again, why does a sub male character get to show off his powers in all glory in a CG (practically never appears after his part in the first half), and the protagonist never get a battle CG for his own? Weird decision making - and even if the narration of the battle kind of fall off sometimes they CG more than make up for the excitement the VN wants us to feel.

System. As far as I'm concerned, everything's working. Not much to say, but a bugless VN always deserve a mention, and this seems to be one of it.

Character wise, everyone felt alive. Sub characters remain as they are, but they perform their function well and er, I really liked Yasui's route. Her story just felt natural and unforced, and right up till the end her growth, while expected, left me with a sense of good fulfillment and recharged me for the next route.

... Which is about as far as the good goes, as far as I'm concerned. We're going to start with the bads now.

So first, a waste of background. Time and time again I see Visual Novels with delicately crafted backgrounds that showed so much potential only to be wasted completely on a bland storyline. We have a world here where most people wields magic (it's called differently but basically the same thing) with actual detail about the origins of the magic, which I liked a lot. The 'Kotona' (Dragons apparently) that once haunted the land were exterminated by these magic wielders after a long and harsh war, and now is the time of peace where everyone lives in happiness. That was fine - as I've said, they've put a solid effort into the background story, and it is awesome. I could easily see this VN go Muv Luv and turned everything to hell on earth. I could easily see this VN dive deep into the human psych and talked about the differences between magic users and normal people. There are a tonne more scenarios that pop into my mind even as I type here now, and that's just how much potential we glean from the well constructed background.

... which they did not bother to use at all as we go into the individual girl's route. I suppose that I understand that this IS a pure romance VN and I'm not to expect blood and gore and sadness and misery out of it, but seriously, the background work is just WASTED. Your hotblooded battle scenes practically ends after the first half, and some girl's route - take Touko's for example - there are no fights at all. To put it bluntly, the magic element REALLY WASN'T MADE GOOD USE OF. For example, there are many types of magics such as Fire, Ice, Movement, Life, etc. One of the sub characters have an extremely plot potent magic that is to 'Lifesteal', but the character was forever crippled with a shittily weak body who can't take beyond a loud shout and terrible tsukomis. Even in Yasui's route where the magic battles actually occur rather frequently, I was forced to see again and again she using the same fire magic with zero - ZERO - variations at all. You would think that they could at least get smart and say, coat her sword with goddamn fire and make up some explanation why that would be awesome, but nooo, we must stick to swordfight (everything explained as uber sword skillz) fireballs and the ULTIMATE FIREBLAST ONLY. I thought magic was suppose to be at least innovative. The latter half of this VN just made me think that they could've just thrown away the entire background completely, since they don't even try to utilize like 10% of its true potential.

Putting magic aside, you would think that they would at least talk about the hardships between magic wielders and non-magic wielders, but there's nothing. It's surprising really, when at the beginning there was a scene where the protagonist was thought to be a non-magic wielder and the bullies had looked down on him mercilessly like he's an ant. It's a classic plot device, sure, but it NEVER gets old, not to mention human conflict is practically our everyday life, but nah, we need to stick with the generic and mediocre because that's what the Japanese populace (I seriously doubt it, but a company believes in whatever they like) wants.

There are a plenty sub characters in this VN, but NONE of them was ever fully presented beyond some gag lines and cool phrases. Take the twins for example... actually I feel sad for using them as an example. The sister does nothing beyond lusting for women and the brother was too busy failing his own health. Take the protagonist's roommate as an example. They gave him a girl's sprite and a girl's voice but insist that he's a male (I don't even understand why go through the trouble), and beyond being a nice advisor he was nothing. We were clearly shown that the teachers are extremely capable and powerful at the first half of the story, but beyond the stereotypical sports-looking teacher -> aggressive, gentle teacher -> ara ara~, we learn nothing. Even the rivals that hated (friendly style) the protagonist so much lost all of their aggressiveness and went full friend mode at the latter half of the story. And oh, the female one fell for our protagonist. OBVIOUSLY I SHOULD'VE KNOWN. RIGHT.

But all these, all of these faults I could turn a blind eye on, if not for the singular, hilarious piteous disaster that is Touko's route. Oh, my, fucking, god. I'll try to refrain from writing in capital too much. WHY, on BLOODY EARTH, did you turn such a strong-looking, supposedly hiding some dark secret COOL girl, INTO a PUPPY who does absolutely... NOTHING? WHY? To put things spoiler-free, basically her dark secret turned out to be SUPER cheap, she loves cute things to death, she is cute, she is so cute the protagonist is willing to act like a dog because she miss her puppy, BY THE FUCKING GOD. WHY. Cuteness is a great positive factor, IF DONE CORRECTLY. Her route wasn't just mediocre, it was just downright HORRENDOUS with NO plot at all, and the fact that they made a FOOL out of my favorite character in the first half of story made me quit the VN completely. Didn't finish Eve or lab girl's route, sorry, though I pray to the heavens that they're better than ANYTHING that's in Touko's route. I got a save file and took a peek, and I'd recommend going with lab girl's route since there's a CG involving her in great danger. That means plot, and plot means something, no matter how terrible it might turn out to be. I repeat, even if you love cute and sweet stuff to death do NOT play Touko's route, or you will suffer. Even now my mind is being raped by how they handled the climax, and to put it mildly, it wasn't pleasant. The other way was to fill this post with such terrible expletives that I have to be banned from the forum.

I had initially wanted to praise how this VN singlehandedly defeat my prejudice for poor or generic plots with just astounding visuals alone. I am now left with a wretched heart cursing whoever wrote Touko's route in such distasteful fashion that it nearly wiped out any good feelings I have for the VN.

 

SEX

WITH

TENTACLES

(CONSENSUAL)

NOTHING ELSE MATTERS. 

[Codesterz]

3 hours ago, Eclipsed said:

Gave you a dedicated thread for this~

Just play Danganronpa, up to the end of the first Class Trial, and see if you get addicted  

Yeah I'm actually running through it right now. Not all that far into it yet though. Can't say much at this point. The text speed is annoying as hell though. Why is there no way to set it to instant?!?!?!?

[Eclipsed]

Really? I like that sort of "very fast" text setting. You damned "instant" readers are too gud ._.

But yeah, it should be standard for any text game to offer speed settings, dunno why they didn't implement 

[Codesterz]

1 hour ago, Eclipsed said:

Really? I like that sort of "very fast" text setting. You damned "instant" readers are too gud ._.

But yeah, it should be standard for any text game to offer speed settings, dunno why they didn't implement 

Agreed. It really bugged me for a while. But after an hour or so I started to notice it less.  My dislike for it isn't really that it moves to slow that my reading is stuck waiting on it. It's just when I'm reading a part of me notices the text appearing while I'm trying to read which distracts my reading.