Most unnecessarily difficult VN you've read

[Ariurotl]

It just sort of popped into my head today that Snow Drop exists. Oh boy, that fucking VN. After all these years it still makes me cringe whenever I recall it, and the reason is not that it's particularly bad (although it kinda is), but that it's ridiculously difficult to get on any of the routes, never mind clear it.

Only 2 or 3 choices in the VN are your garden variety "pick a response" prompts. The rest are navigational options stretching over several in-game days. For example, in the morning you are asked to choose the place you want to hang out in the lodge. During the day, you choose which slope to ski on (two or three times!). In the evening, it's the lodge again. If you're lucky, you'll stumble upon a heroine and raise a flag.

Doesn't sound too scary, right? Well, the following two points will put that into perspective.

1. You're rarely told where the heroines are going to hang out. Sometimes you get a hint, but even then it's not always right. It's a crapshoot 90% of the time, it might as well have been RNG for what it's worth.

2. If you miss even ONE event for a heroine over the course of the entire thing, you're fucked. Snow Drop does not use a "points" system to see where you end up, that shit is for wusses. YOU MISS AN EVENT = IT'S NORMAL END FOR YOU, SUCKER! I still remember my heart sinking every damn time I realized I'm on the normal end route again.

I never once managed to get on a route in Snow Drop when I first got it. Even worse, I didn't even have a home internet connection, so I had to get my ass to an internet cafe just to find the walkthrough! There's difficult, there's brutal, and then there's this sadistic abomination of a VN.

Any other examples of ridiculously difficult VNs? Please share, like and subscribe.

Edited November 29, 2016 by Ariurotl

[TexasDice]

I always hated the "pick a map location based on a muffled voiceline"-thing that Da Capo 1 tried to do. Sometimes, the voiceline isn't even a sentence made up of words and is just a quiet breath or moan, making it very hard to pinpoint whose it is. And that's coming from someone who looks up voices after every single VN read.

DC 1 and 2 also both have this stupid "pick a time to stand up based on your gut"-thing, which is really dumb. For example, to get scenes with Anzu in DC 2, you have to wake up normally, except for one time when you have to be late and another time when you need to wake up super early. There is no indicator whatsoever what character is going to be where at what time.

 

The overall amount of choices in Canvas 2 could be reduced by a lot. Irrelevant ones like having 4 out the 9 "where to get lunch?"-options lead to no interaction with anyone at all and the copypasted set of activities that shows up every ingame day cut be easily cut, as they serve absolutely no purpose.

 

Maybe those aren't difficult to figure out (you can just save and see who's showing up after all), but they sure are difficult to navigate with a happy mood.

[Nandemonai]

Snow Drop would have been a lot more tolerable if it had bothered to explain its own game mechanics.  Once you figure out that there are a set number of time periods, and a time period is always taken up when you pick somewhere to go (even if all that happens is you go there and the game says "nothing to see here"), then the game isn't too hard to figure out.  Instead it gives no signal that time always passed (like a clock or something).

It also not giving you any idea where people were was a sin.  But still not as big a sin as its time mechanic (which is counter-intutive, makes no sense, and never explained).

Tokimeki Checkin! also had some pretty strict requirements to get onto its routes.  The choices often appeared to be random, but in retrospect many of them made sense (insofar as the responses you would get would in hindsight be the thing that got you to interact with the character more), but it was also fairly inexplicable.

[Ariurotl]

7 minutes ago, Nandemonai said:

Tokimeki Checkin! also had some pretty strict requirements to get onto its routes.  The choices often appeared to be random, but in retrospect many of them made sense (insofar as the responses you would get would in hindsight be the thing that got you to interact with the character more), but it was also fairly inexplicable.

That reminds me, this VN had the single greatest choice that by itself determined whether you get a heroine's normal or good end:

Spoiler

At some point early on, the three sisters (or were they just friends?) ask you whether you had a girlfriend. If you lie and say yes, you can still get on all the routes, but it's always going to be a normal end instead of good. They literally made two sets of endings for all but two heroines (you don't ever get a good end with the yuri couple) decided solely by that one decision point.

 

Edited November 29, 2016 by Ariurotl

[fun2novel]

I haven't played them myself but a lot of Black Cyc games. You need some real clairvoyance powers to know what you're doing.

 

[Valmore]

I hated Cross+Channel because it felt like a damned endless loop that went nowhere until I cheated and read a walkthrough.

Edited November 30, 2016 by Valmore

[Benji Price]

20 minutes ago, Valmore said:

I hated Cross+Channel because it felt like a damped endless loop that went nowhere until I cheated and read a walkthrough.

Same here. Didn't enjoyed it just because of that.

Also Kara no Shoujo gave me headaches for the everyday location options, but that one was much more worth of it. 

And taking out VNs... Captain Tsubasa 2 from NES console... I still have nightmares about that 

Edited November 30, 2016 by Benji Price

[Nandemonai]

Ah, yes, Kara no Shoujo.  A game that is perfectly willing to silently fail you during investigations, while making it appear you've found everything.  I actually respect that; I feel like it enhances the "I'm a detective" feeling by making your performance actually matter.

What I don't like is during one of the later investigation scenes, where investigating in the wrong order will prevent you from finding a vital piece of evidence for no good reason.

[Kabu]

I generally haven't had much trouble in my VNs but one example that immediately comes to mind is Katawa Shoujo for one route in particular. My first time playing through the entire thing I ended up getting the bad end twice in a row while aiming for Rin's route and I still can't help but feel that I got lucky with my choice combination, as to this day I still have no idea what her requirements actually are.

[Aegis312]

Wait isn't that called blind choices?.... i tought those were the visual novels's players version of "Hardcore" or "360 NoScope"...the latter being the most literal

[Funnerific]

Soul Link's blind choices are pretty cool in that you get multiple opportunities to get the necessary items, some you can do without, but then some choices later down the line will give you a bad end while others won't either way. Your previous actions influence what options you have in the future a lot, and I think that's rad.
Now, if we're talking language difficulty too, the most unnecessarily difficult VN I've read is Itsusora (Futami route )

[Dergonu]

Hmm, Nurse Love Addiction was annoying on that front. It has so many choices, many of which will just send you down the netural end, which is so annoying, as it looks like a real ending until it just... stops and tells you to go back. And, getting the bad ends by mistake is really easy as well. Pretty rough game overall if you play it blind. I made the Fuwa walkthrough for that game, and if I didn't have the Japanese walkthrough to rely on, it would have been hell making it most likely.

 

(Thought we were talking reading difficulty for a second. Was going to mention that this is a thing: 磯貝十郎左衛門正. Freaking samurai names...)

[Toranth]

Classic, enduring hatred:  Pia Carrot 2. 

A stats based sim game where you don't know which stats matter, or how much for each character, plus choices with consequences that don't show up until much later.  Combine that with a main heroine whose route involves choosing other heroines, getting 'bad' events with her (avoid them, and you'll get a bad end), and ending with a totally counterintuitive trick choice?  Constant failure without a hint as to why.

 

Eff you, Azusa.  Just - No.

[Zidan209]

10 hours ago, Kabu said:

I generally haven't had much trouble in my VNs but one example that immediately comes to mind is Katawa Shoujo for one route in particular. My first time playing through the entire thing I ended up getting the bad end twice in a row while aiming for Rin's route and I still can't help but feel that I got lucky with my choice combination, as to this day I still have no idea what her requirements actually are.

Spoiler

To not get her bad end is a bit obvious, something like you just can't be too annyoing to her. But where even I failed was the difference between her good and bad end. I was brooding over every choice for a while, and then i choosed the right one, which lead to the normal ending. Yes, you had to choose the wrong one to get her good ending, because it ruins her career and she doesn't leave the school

 

[Fred the Barber]

Flowers: Printemps has, if I just counted my walkthrough correctly, 63 choices, of which you must make ~60 correct (most give you points; some go to immediate bad ends) in order to get either of the two non-bad endings. Couple that with the fact that it never explains that there's subtle but visible feedback for your choices, let alone how to interpret it, and that it takes some time to notice it, and then even more time to be able to start reasoning about it after you notice it, and I guarantee you're getting bad ends (probably multiple of them, including of course the final one) on your first time through.

Now, once you finish that playthrough, if you're not an idiot you'll have figured out the feedback and can just save scum your way through all 63 choices to reach the ending you want. Because while some are obvious, not all of them are, and you need so close to all of them correct that all those non-obvious ones need to be right too. Joy! Who doesn't love save scumming?

And that's why I made a walkthrough for Flowers: Printemps.

Edited November 30, 2016 by Fred the Barber

[Okarin]

In The Way We All Go (game I recommend wholeheartedly), everything happens in the span of like 3 days, and some heroines are pretty much invisible and don't appear in the story if you don't do a proper selection of choices. So, you have to keep a guide nearby, the game has 21 endings (neat).

Edited November 30, 2016 by Okarin

[Nier]

Kara no Shojo.

[ChaosRaven]

Well, Root Double's Senses Sympathy System is definitely one of a kind. Simply the best way to don't miss any bad end. 

[fun2novel]

18 minutes ago, ChaosRaven said:

Well, Root Double's Senses Sympathy System is definitely one of a kind. Simply the best way to don't miss any bad end. 

It's not that bad once you get the hang of it. But there is one part where you gotta be careful or you'll be set on a path to one of two endings.

[Firemonk]

Cross channel..... spent 8 weeks trying to get past a week but it....more in the spoiler box

Spoiler

It never freaking worked, no matter how many times I did that shit the week repeated, hell  I even followed Nosebleeds guide but it still repeated if you know how to fix the problem, message me.... or maybe I'm just being stupid, not like it would be a first....

 

Edited November 30, 2016 by Firemonk

[Kawasumi]

22 hours ago, fun2novel said:

I haven't played them myself but a lot of Black Cyc games. You need some real clairvoyance powers to know what you're doing.

 

oh god yes, GSS has this heart based system that indicates what heroine you favor when you select a choice, except a lot of these choices straight up trolls you a lot of the time lol

[Funnerific]

6 hours ago, ChaosRaven said:

Well, Root Double's Senses Sympathy System is definitely one of a kind. Simply the best way to don't miss any bad end. 

In route A it always alerts you about a wrong choice and lets you redo it before giving you the bad end (the first time it's yellow, the second time it's red - and red doesn't appear if your choices are ok). Pretty easy.

[Polycentric]

On 11/29/2016 at 6:00 PM, Valmore said:

I hated Cross+Channel because it felt like a damned endless loop that went nowhere until I cheated and read a walkthrough.

I played Cross+Channel on and off for a while and didn't realize it was a loop for the longest time. I thought "hey this seems awfully familiar!" RIP me.

Edited December 1, 2016 by Polycentric
can't grammar

[ChaosRaven]

3 hours ago, Funnerific said:

In route A it always alerts you about a wrong choice and lets you redo it before giving you the bad end (the first time it's yellow, the second time it's red - and red doesn't appear if your choices are ok). Pretty easy.

It once took me more than 25 reloads to get the right combination. Just knowing that your choice was wrong doesn't give you automatically the right combination. The possible number of combinations raises exponential with the number of slider choices.

[kilicool64]

1 minute ago, ChaosRaven said:

It once took me more than 25 reloads to get the right combination. Just knowing that your choice was wrong doesn't give you automatically the right combination. The possible number of combinations raises exponential with the number of slider choices.

Did you turn off the hints? Because they typically explain pretty clearly what you need to do to avoid the bad/normal ending you just got.