Yumina the Ethereal: The highest profile official H-RPG release ever

[DatYandereGirl]

Looks pretty cool. I'd be up to try this just to see why it's so great.

[nohman]

How passable/worthwhile is the story in this game?

In spite of having what I feel were very weak and unenjoyable stories, I was able to sink a lot of time into Daibanchou and Kamidori because of their gameplay mechanics. I've been reading some pretty lukewarm receptions of the gameplay for this game however, so I'm hoping the narrative might be more compelling then the previously mentioned titles and fill in for what (might) be lacking in the gamey side of things.

That being said, I enjoyed the gameplay from the demo. However, I don't know how much that will hold out into the late game or subsequent playthroughs. So any comments in that area or recommendations for the game would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

[Stanleys]

How passable/worthwhile is the story in this game?

In spite of having what I feel were very weak and unenjoyable stories, I was able to sink a lot of time into Daibanchou and Kamidori because of their gameplay mechanics. I've been reading some pretty lukewarm receptions of the gameplay for this game however, so I'm hoping the narrative might be more compelling then the previously mentioned titles and fill in for what (might) be lacking in the gamey side of things.

That being said, I enjoyed the gameplay from the demo. However, I don't know how much that will hold out into the late game or subsequent playthroughs. So any comments in that area or recommendations for the game would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

I personally am enjoying the game, but it doesn't really take a whole lot to entertain me. The gameplay changes slightly the further into the game you get, but I can only speak for the route I'm on. I'm also enjoying the story. The comedy is good as well .It seems to me that there is more dialogue compared to Kamidori.

[sanahtlig]

I found Aselia's characters to be incredibly dull. Mind-numbing, coma-inducing dull. I abandoned the game after half an hour, so I never got a chance to experience the plot. I know it gets better, but no thanks. Life's too short.

Haven't played Yumina yet, and I won't get a chance till late in the year.

In the first 30min of Aselia I don't even think you get to see the other world, or meet any of the actual heroines. You barely scratched the surface of the setting, much less the story itself.

I'm finding the dungeon crawling aspect of Yumina to be not that fun (I just started Ch. 2). It appears you can bypass much of it (and just do the debate battles), which I might end up doing if I get altogether sick of dungeon crawling. Debate battles are interesting enough, if only because they don't wear out their welcome.

[Stanleys]

In the first 30min of Aselia I don't even think you get to see the other world, or meet any of the actual heroines. You barely scratched the surface of the setting, much less the story itself.

I'm finding the dungeon crawling aspect of Yumina to be not that fun (I just started Ch. 2). It appears you can bypass much of it (and just do the debate battles), which I might end up doing if I get altogether sick of dungeon crawling. Debate battles are interesting enough, if only because they don't wear out their welcome.

The dungeon crawler is almost essential for leveling up. If you reley in the debate battles alone, you won't be at a high enough level to beat the final debate at the end of each chapter. At first it's boring, but it starts to grow on you once you get to higher levels.

[RusAnon]

How passable/worthwhile is the story in this game?

Kirara route is good (well, about 7.5/10 good, not 10/10), Ai okay, Yumina and True End from silly to absolutely ridiculous and very shounenish, and Tilscield story is just teaser w/out any good conclusion.

I like space operas and total wars against extraterrestrials, so I don't regret completing Yumina, but I'm glad I've used artmoney and didn't bother with grinding.

I'm finding the dungeon crawling aspect of Yumina to be not that fun (I just started Ch. 2). It appears you can bypass much of it (and just do the debate battles), which I might end up doing if I get altogether sick of dungeon crawling. Debate battles are interesting enough, if only because they don't wear out their welcome.

You cannot, first of all if you do debate battles, you will miss lots of scenes, unique skills and will not be able to get h-scenes in 2nd, 3rd and 4th chapters.

Second, you have to get level 100 by the end of game (on SH) or you will not be able to beat bosses. Tilscied's final boss was quite tough even for maxed out chars.

Third, you HAVE to complete Tilscied story in order to get True End.

[Kevadu]

At first it's boring, but it starts to grow on you once you get to higher levels.

I feel the opposite way, honestly. At first I didn't mind the dungeon-crawling so much, but now it's just tedious. It's not even hard. None of the enemies I have faced in the dungeons (not even the boss types) have been able to do more than nick away at my health if you just use basic tactics (put characters strong against logic attacks in the front of the enemy is using a logic attack, etc.). But it takes so much time. And you're always fighting the same handful of enemies, over and over and over. Watching them do the same attacks everytime. Argh, is there some way to skip animations that I just don't know about? If things just moved a bit faster I wouldn't find it so frustrating.

Also, is anyone else finding in the later chapters there just isn't that much to do? Early on in the game there were always more event scenes than you could fit into the time available so you had to pick and choose. Now I find myself literally wasting days doing nothing just to get on with the story, since there are no event scenes left and I've already done all the dugeon-crawling I can stomache.

[Pointless Spirals]

Yeah, if you want to do the higher level difficulty and you'll have to, just to get the true end, the dungeon is a must. not only will you need to be a high level to beat later bosses, you also need to grind there for skills and equipment for your characters. Plus, if you don't want to waste time to grind for skills, you can buy them from the store...though you will still need to grind in the dungeons to get money.

[nohman]

I personally am enjoying the game, but it doesn't really take a whole lot to entertain me. The gameplay changes slightly the further into the game you get, but I can only speak for the route I'm on. I'm also enjoying the story. The comedy is good as well .It seems to me that there is more dialogue compared to Kamidori.

Kirara route is good (well, about 7.5/10 good, not 10/10), Ai okay, Yumina and True End from silly to absolutely ridiculous and very shounenish, and Tilscield story is just teaser w/out any good conclusion.

I like space operas and total wars against extraterrestrials, so I don't regret completing Yumina, but I'm glad I've used artmoney and didn't bother with grinding.

Thanks for taking the time to comment. That estimation of the each route's quality is reassuring and better than I was expecting.

After going over this thread one more time and scouring the internet for other pieces of information, I think I'll give this game a shot sometime after I get my fill with GTAV next week. If it falls short of what I'm expecting, at least I can take comfort in supporting the medium commercially for once.

[Blackbird]

I have just finish Yumina route, is there any walkthrough out for Yumina?

I will move on Kirara route after, next will be Ai.

The conclusion were really weird for Yumina route, the boss were really easy.

 

Will it be a true end route? O_o

 

Please correct me that is folder were save data is: C:\Users\Blackbird\AppData\Roaming\Will\YuminaTheEthereal

[RusAnon]

I have just finish Yumina route, is there any walkthrough out for Yumina?

I will move on Kirara route after, next will be Ai.

The conclusion were really weird for Yumina route, the boss were really easy.

 

Will it be a true end route? O_o

 

True end is separate thing, you access it from main menu and it doesn't follow any of heroine routes. Well, Yumina is closest to it, except romance.

Walkthrough is here: http://omoteura2.com/yumina/

[Blackbird]

I forgot I were on Yumina thread that why I said Yumina, thanks for walkthrough.

I will check it out.

 

So there isn't any english walkthrough out there yet? O_o

[JepTheSeaGod]

i will give this 9/10 i like the gameplay the story line and the over all is the romance in it. it leaves it at some parts of them and most of the romance is at the end for some of them and i think its awesome bc most games i seen like this is all the romance and not enough action and this game does what games like this should be like it leave most of the romance parts scattered and not in one go and not to long. thats and the story i love is with Ai because you dont know what going on at all for the most part at least and Kirara story is interseting to say the least still working on yumina so i still have a long way to go to beat it but still i love this game

[sanahtlig]

The story would've worked a lot better as a romantic comedy along the lines of Baka Test.  The sci-fi storyline fell pretty flat because the setting was poorly developed, and the dungeon crawling got pretty repetitive and tedious.  Not to the mention the H-scenes with the non-heroines were just...bad.  While it's still probably the best officially localized H-RPG, there's definitely better ones in Japanese.  If you're willing to swallow the removed scenes, Aselia the Eternal has a much better story and arguably better gameplay.

[douggle]

I finished this recently I enjoyed Yumina quite a bit, the story I thought was quite good, however I did have one complaint, and it was that the sprites on the screen didn't always portray the proper emotions instead they used the character portraits, 

[Karakkan]

I finished this recently I enjoyed Yumina quite a bit, the story I thought was quite good, however I did have one complaint, and it was that the sprites on the screen didn't always portray the proper emotions instead they used the character portraits, 

 

Yeah, I'm not that far into it admittedly, but I'm finding that I'm preferring and looking more forward to the chibi cut-out scenes/skits than I am the usual conversation, because there they actually portray a good deal of emotion (and are often quite funny, which is always a plus in my books).

[douggle]

Like I said I highly enjoyed it was a bit sad when it ended, I want the Fandisc Nao

>tfw you cant read moon

[Decay]

The story would've worked a lot better as a romantic comedy along the lines of Baka Test.  The sci-fi storyline fell pretty flat because the setting was poorly developed, and the dungeon crawling got pretty repetitive and tedious.  Not to the mention the H-scenes with the non-heroines were just...bad.  While it's still probably the best officially localized H-RPG, there's definitely better ones in Japanese.  If you're willing to swallow the removed scenes, Aselia the Eternal has a much better story and arguably better gameplay.

You should be able to stomach the removed scenes because they're awful. Seriously. The writers are just bad at h-scenes, and the removed evil route is just hilariously bad. Instead you get much better replacement scenes, so it's all good. Aselia the Eternal is not particularly great, but it's better than Yumina in most ways. For people wondering why this is relevant, this is because it's made by the exact same dev team. You can see some recurring themes as well as some minor gameplay concepts being reused (the color system, battles that kind of go automatically using non-random math, etc).  It's more strategy than RPG, though. The closest non-h game analog I can think of is Ogre Battle, just without the freeform movement (it's set paths across nodes).

 

The one thing I like more about Yumina is the comedy. It's not the funniest game, but it has its moments and Aselia can just be way too serious and dry at times. Yumina drops the comedy halfway through, unfortunately. But I enjoyed it when it was there and miss it in Aselia. Oh, and the art is much worse. You can tell it's the same artist, it's just much more amateurish.

[Zenophilious]

Heh, the gameplay seems to be a combination of Paper Mario, Final Fantasy, and dungeon crawling.  Sounds interesting.  I'm gonna at least check out the demo and see if it's something I might like.

[sanahtlig]

You should be able to stomach the removed scenes [in Aselia the Eternal] because they're awful. Seriously. The writers are just bad at h-scenes, and the removed evil route is just hilariously bad. Instead you get much better replacement scenes, so it's all good. Aselia the Eternal is not particularly great, but it's better than Yumina in most ways.

I thought the scene with Aselia was adorable.  There was a noticeably drop in overall writing quality in the evil route, however.  From what I hear the removal of the H-content actually introduces plot holes, such as why Motome tempts Yuuto throughout the story.  In the original game, Motome is drained during a scene where Yuuto is raped by a spirit soldier, leaving it thirsting for spirit energy.  

There's also the removal of the rape scene with Kotori, which traumatizes her and shocks the protagonist with the depravity of his foes.

 I get the impression that the original story is much darker than the story that emerged once the H-content was removed, similar to the effect you'd have if you removed all the H-scenes from Saya no Uta and pretended sex never happened.

[Tatsujin]

WoW ~ seriously ? I just finished this game recently and I don't find it amazing or something.

It was very very funny( the funniest VN I have played). The characters are somewhat unique(too unique for my taste />/> ) and battle system is interesting too. But that's about it.

-Story is predictable.

Ah! forget it, that genre shift is totally fking unpredictable. But aside from that "well, that escalated VERY VERY QUICKLY" shift, the entire story is another kamidori's copy.

-Battle system needs polishing.

It was really interesting, challenging and filled with possibilities at first.

But after some time, the game throws you with skill points after skill points(I found myself upgrading the random skills without reading descriptions because the given skill points are enough to fill the entire skill tree...in just lvl-20) , some un-rare seriously overpower items and in the end, the battle is just a matter of how to properly use the audience points.

1 death for kirara and Yumina is all I took to finish the game.

- H-scenes suck, seriously suck.

It is the first time I saw H-scenes worse than those from KEY. Just 4,5 un-erotic moan and then "I'm cummmming" . WTF!!! Seriously, I couldn't find it arousing even by a bit.

-Art

Each character sprite has only 1 position. That is a huge letdown for me. Yes, there is a small CG near the text showing various expressions but still, seeing the smiling face(sprite) when the character is angry is weird.

There aren't enough GOOD CGS for each character too. Yes, good CGs, some CGs aren't memorizing or worth at all.

^Yumina standing. And that is a late game, near the climax CG.

My impression to this eroge is baka-test in visual novel form. That's all.

The comedy is top-notch (best loading screen ever ), story is solid, not bad but not epic too. 7/10

Yeah, I like RPGs but this is not my cup of tea. I've never played VN RPGs anyways. I like linear plots like Grisaia and Muv-Luv Alternative + Chronicles volumes. I also like traps with bad ends like Fate/Stay Night which makes it a nice thing to mess around with. I freaking hate VNs that have too many options like Little Busters! (though I like the music, characters and the atmosphere). I prefer linear plots and I just don't buy RPGs in VNs since they don't look anything remotely amazing. I still prefer 2D RPGs ... I don't know.

I'm not playing this one.