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How do you feel about VN's with Gameplay aspects?


Thatcomicguy

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I was speaking to a friend on Twitter the other day and the topic of VN's with Gameplay came up due to the increase of them being released lately. (Mainly from MangaGamer, like the one they just announced a few hours ago Heart of Crown for example.) He joked and said he's a purist and VN's with gameplay aspects are not VN's and I half agreed, half didn't.

For me it depends on both the narrative and whether it helps immersion or takes you out of it. Take Koihime Musou and Kamidori Alchemy Meister for examples, In Koihime you take the role of a general leading his troops and the gameplay is small little battles where you plan what formations to use and what commander does what; It's short and simple but makes you connected better with the protagonist, thus making him feel like a proper general rather than it just being mentioned but never seen.

While Kamidori *Which is what I'm currently reading/playing... and loving solid 8,5 pushing 9/10 for me so far* the VN is more I don't want to say unbalanced because it is and it isn't: there you play as a rising Alchemist and thus go out with your companions to go out adventuring to discover new recipes and ingredients which is really fun and addicting but you spend more time on that rather than the story of the VN. Begging the question is it still a VN or has it become more of a RPG adventure?

Those are more or less my thoughts, being somewhere in the middle but leaning more towards liking VN's having some but in moderation.

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I personally hate gameplay in my VNs, and will do anything I can to skip it. (In many cases, a 100% save file will allow you to skip the gameplay.) I read VNs to read, not play minigames. Gameplay breaks my immersion, and since you can also "fail" gameplay aspects, it can literally stop you from continuing the story. That kind of distruptive feature has no place in a VN, in my opinion.

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I read a blog post by Darbury on this topic quite a while ago; I think you might find both it and the discussion in the comments interesting. There are also a couple other posts where he attempts to define what a visual novel is.

 

Personally, I don't fuss too much over whether or not I consider something with gameplay elements a visual novel. I hold some heretical opinions. I consider the Ace Attorney series to be visual novels. I consider the traditional formula of having heroine routes (or heroes) in nigh every VN to be unimaginative and banal, and embrace new ideas and formats within the genre.

With that in mind, I welcome VNs with gameplay elements, or VN hybrids as one might call them, so long as the time spent playing doesn't outweigh the time spent, er, novel-ing. The Danganronpa and Kara no Shoujo series are good, but certainly not perfect, examples in my humble opinion. 

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1 hour ago, Thatcomicguy said:

(...)VN or has it become more of a RPG adventure?

Hybrid.

My opinion is, I like it if it is done right, look at Corpse Party per example, it is a VN hybrid with elements from the horror RPG Maker genre that gives the game personality and uniqueness (it also creates the possibility of real time escape sequences, which is very difficult to do with just text and choices). The Zero Escape series is also a good example since it incorporates the Puzzle rooms as plot points and not as "extra gameplay" and there is a lot of reading in between which makes for a balanced game.

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As long as the gameplay is fun, fits with the story, and doesn't break the pacing of the game I don't care.

Ace Attorney, DanganRonpa and Symphonic Rain do it well enough.

Zero Escape puzzle rooms take a little too long for my liking

I refuse to play SRPG VNs

Edited by NowItsAngeTime
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I very much like gameplay elements. One of my favourite aspects of stories may very well be the intermingling of gameplay with story, in that the story changes depending on how you perform, or that the story events affect the gameplay in some way.

I do have a problem, though, and that is that I suck at games. So if the gameplay is difficult, I will inevitably end up cheating my way through, no matter how earnestly I begin. Most gameplay titles end up having gameplay that wastes a person's time in some way, so I try to cheat my way through those elements as much as possible.

As for what I consider a Visual Novel...? To be quite honest, if it is anime style and it has long sections of text, it's a VN, why not. For instance, Mass Effect or Dragon Age may as well be VNs to me. They only aren't because they're Western, but if I relax that 'rule', then sure.

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24 minutes ago, Mr Poltroon said:

I very much like gameplay elements. One of my favourite aspects of stories may very well be the intermingling of gameplay with story, in that the story changes depending on how you perform, or that the story events affect the gameplay in some way.

I do have a problem, though, and that is that I suck at games. So if the gameplay is difficult, I will inevitably end up cheating my way through, no matter how earnestly I begin. Most gameplay titles end up having gameplay that wastes a person's time in some way, so I try to cheat my way through those elements as much as possible.

As for what I consider a Visual Novel...? To be quite honest, if it is anime style and it has long sections of text, it's a VN, why not. For instance, Mass Effect or Dragon Age may as well be VNs to me. They only aren't because they're Western, but if I relax that 'rule', then sure.

Well, I would usually avoid calling RPGs visual novels, as the gameplay/story ratio is usually heavily skewed in the direction of gameplay. That's why I've stopped playing RPGs, I've realized that I've played things like DA Inquisition or Star Wars: The Old Republic mostly for the story, while burning dozens of hours on mindless grind I didn't really care about. For me, VN is every medium where the text-based story content reigns supreme while any gameplay it offers is supplementary to that. In this way it's very hard for me to accept this kind of purist definitions that Palas creates, where VN is created only by stripping the game from any visible, number-based gameplay mechanics. What do I care that my story route in Long Live the Queen is some ways guided by the stats? The core content is still that of a visual novel, in a very literal understanding of the term. Same goes for most VN-hybrid games and dating sims - in most of them, the story content is the central part of the experience.

Closer to the original topic, I think that gameplay can both make a VN better and break it. If gameplay elements are well-connected with the story and support its main themes, I can appreciate them even if they're mediocre by themselves - they simply work as that additional flavour that adds to the immersion. But I also hate then the gameplay lacks proper difficulty settings or skip option, so it could stall experiencing the story. For me, it's all about how it's implemented and how much time it takes - I really didn't switch from playing sandbox games to reading VNs just to play with mindless minigames for hours on end, but anything less extreme and somewhat approachable is ok with me, as long as it fits the story.

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I enjoyed corpse party, but its because corpse party isnt a game thats build over the fact that its a vn, because its not.

Other than that I fucking hate it, most apparently think that boring hex based RPG fighting or stat management is super fun (it can be, but since its not the main focus of the game its done in a terrible way and can be found better on a shoddy mobile game port on steam that costs 5$ with microtransactions)

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I have not played many Visual Novels with these elements in fact I've only played seven of them. That being said I'm fundamentally fine with them though I prefer for them to be essential to the story. In the Galaxy Angel series for example the ship combat was vital to the story. Most notably in the first one it also made it necessary to stay on the angels good side because if you didn't and acted like a total dickhead to them their combat effectiveness would plummet and you would ultimately be unable to progress at all. 

In Symphonic Rain the mini game felt at first to be needlessly tacked on but it soon became a essential component and I really can't see it being divorced from the game. However, the mini games in Little Busters and Rewrite felt really contrived and meaningless. I could easily see it not being in the game and it never added anything to me (except a few funny scenes in Rewrite)

 

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3 hours ago, Toranth said:

On the other end of the spectrum are the games with pointless, boring gameplay.  Be honest, folks - did anyone actually enjoy the "battle system" from Koi Hime Musou, for example?

I did. I felt it contributed a fair bit to my enjoyment of the story by selecting the generals and strategists.
Gameplay in a story doesn't always have to be about the gameplay itself.

I mean, even the OP presented Koihime as an example of gameplay he liked.

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On 1/5/2018 at 7:47 PM, Zander said:

I read a blog post by Darbury on this topic quite a while ago; I think you might find both it and the discussion in the comments interesting. There are also a couple other posts where he attempts to define what a visual novel is.

[Edit: Blog Post link so I don't have a wall-o-quotes]

That's a very interesting blog post.  In fact, I was 100% on board with all of it until about 2/3 of the way through where it said that the Telltale games aren't visual novels.  To me, the Telltale games are more clearly Visual Novels than Gone Home.  They're all VNs, Night in the Woods is a VN.  Hell, you might even be able to convince me that certain extremely text- or cutscene-heavy RPGS are VNs, like Xenosaga 1 or Trails in the Sky or Persona 3/4/5.  Definitely the fighting game spinoffs Persona 4 Arena/Ultimax are VNs.

If Aselia and the really old school adventure game titles, like Nocturnal Illusion and 3 Sisters Story are VNs, then "visual novel" has a very broad definition.

15 hours ago, Toranth said:

On the other end of the spectrum are the games with pointless, boring gameplay.  Be honest, folks - did anyone actually enjoy the "battle system" from Koi Hime Musou, for example?

I did, actually.  It's true.  You can button mash through any fight in minutes, because the game gets easier every retry and eventually you just crush everything no matter how terrible the commands you mash in.  And it's not very deep.  But if you actually try to work out how to do well, it's just complex enough that I found it a decent diversion.

Plus the pacing of that game would feel off if they weren't there.  RPGs are the same way.  If you took your average RPG and made a book (or more like a TV show) out of all the cutscenes, the pacing would be off.  (In fact, the few RPGs I know of, that did get made into anime? Those anime are usually not great.)  The segments of going around fighting mess with the internal pacing in a way that's hard to explain.  Koihime's battle sections are the same way.  The battles are used to add tension to the story.  It makes it feel more like the stakes are real.

Books or TV shows have a hard time doing that.  Games can just throw fights at you to emphasize that no, things are really at stake here.  Or that yes, that guy really is a badass.  You know he is cause he just opened up a can of whupass.  Same with Koihime.  When that game wants to make you feel outnumbered, it can do more than just talk up how outnumbered you are.  It can throw you into a fight where you're outnumbered 10 to 1, and it's all you can do to not die until your reinforcements show up.

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Personally, I don't really care what is considered a VN or not. If I enjoy it then that is what matters. I like deep stories and good characters and character interractions. That's why RPG and JRPG are my favourite gaming genres, and that is also why I like VN-s. But I never liked them to an extent where I was annoyed, that I had to get through the gameplay elements no matter how good they were. That is mostly true for actual RPG and JRPG games.

When it comes to VN-s, it seriously depends on how well it's done. In VN-s the main focus is usually on the actual VN parts (I belive), so there is a lot less development on the gameplay. Which can end up as a VN, with some shitty gameplay. In that case you want to read and you get constantly interrupted which is annoying. On the other hand I think if the gameplay is well done, than it can give more depth to the VN aside from the reading. It also can get some people (like me) more invested and immersed in the whole story line and world. But even when that is done, well there is still one big hurdle. The pacing of the gameplay elements. Kamidory for example (and other eushully games as I have heard) have a lot of grinding in later parts of the game, which completly cuts of the story for hours. And if you wan't to continue the story, it is really annyoing to do tha same dungeon over and over again, for some materials.

Still I'm the type who likes to play between story segments, and it also helps me get immersed in the world and story, so I prefer VN-s with gameplay if it's done right.

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6 hours ago, Nandemonai said:

I did, actually.  It's true.  You can button mash through any fight in minutes, because the game gets easier every retry and eventually you just crush everything no matter how terrible the commands you mash in.  And it's not very deep.  But if you actually try to work out how to do well, it's just complex enough that I found it a decent diversion.

Plus the pacing of that game would feel off if they weren't there.  RPGs are the same way.  If you took your average RPG and made a book (or more like a TV show) out of all the cutscenes, the pacing would be off.  (In fact, the few RPGs I know of, that did get made into anime? Those anime are usually not great.)  The segments of going around fighting mess with the internal pacing in a way that's hard to explain.  Koihime's battle sections are the same way.  The battles are used to add tension to the story.  It makes it feel more like the stakes are real.

Books or TV shows have a hard time doing that.  Games can just throw fights at you to emphasize that no, things are really at stake here.  Or that yes, that guy really is a badass.  You know he is cause he just opened up a can of whupass.  Same with Koihime.  When that game wants to make you feel outnumbered, it can do more than just talk up how outnumbered you are.  It can throw you into a fight where you're outnumbered 10 to 1, and it's all you can do to not die until your reinforcements show up.

RPGs have real gameplay, where the player has to make choices, devise strategies, manage resources, etc.  I have no problems with that sort of gameplay - I'm quite fond of Aselia or most Eushully games, for example.

My complaint about Koihime Musou is that the battles are absolutely meaningless, but time consuming.  Each battle is an exercise in "push these buttons in this order".  If you are trying to win, it's hard to lose once, and even when just playing around it's hard to lose twice.  There's no individualization to the battles, even, other than the numbers of each troop type listed.  The presence or absence of the protagonists or antagonist characters makes no difference (except as a head in the corner).  The battles aren't even long enough or often enough to make the player identify with the characters as an avatar.  There's a good reason everyone was thrilled when the patch introduced the ability to skip previously won battles, and why they didn't show up in the later games.

You suggest that the gameplay can be used to draw the player into the game, by increasing tension or portraying dangerous scenes... but again, in games like KHM, the battle system doesn't have ANY of that.  Instead, after you 'win' a battle, you get a standard series of VN scenes to depict the actions of individual characters.  A 5-second animation of fighting, repeated every time, would have been just as effective - and 100 times faster.  You'd still have all the tension and character action in the VN part, without losing anything from the 'battle'.

Some games manage to do this.  But some don't, and you end up with boring, distracting, time-consuming breaks in what can otherwise be a good story.  And THAT is the end of the spectrum I dislike.  I think that each game should with keep the story going, and make sure that everything else the game does supports it - or make the gameplay the point, and make sure the story supports the gameplay instead.

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So I was enjoying myself playing a pretty nice VN with gameplay elements. I reached the last part of the game, which was a long sequence of battles where you couldn't go back to prepare yourself anymore, I have gone through difficult battles and then came the final boss. It was pretty hard and frustrating because I just wanted to finish the story, but I didn't give up and tried again and again until I finally defeated it. It was satisfatory to finally reach the end of the game---Except for the plot twist! There was actually another final boss, harder than the last one. Now I'm stuck in this battle and can't finish the story (Mostly my fault, though).

Tl;dr: VNs with gameplay can be fun, creative and easier to go through it than pure text VNs for some people, but it can also affect the pacing of the story, your enjoyment or even your interest in the game. 

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27 minutes ago, Testarossa said:

So I was enjoying myself playing a pretty nice VN with gameplay elements. I reached the last part of the game, which was a long sequence of battles where you couldn't go back to prepare yourself anymore, I have gone through difficult battles and then came the final boss. It was pretty hard and frustrating because I just wanted to finish the story, but I didn't give up and tried again and again until I finally defeated it. It was satisfatory to finally reach the end of the game---Except for the plot twist! There was actually another final boss, harder than the last one. Now I'm stuck in this battle and can't finish the story (Mostly my fault, though).

Tl;dr: VNs with gameplay can be fun, creative and easier to go through it than pure text VNs for some people, but it can also affect the pacing of the story, your enjoyment or even your interest in the game. 

Name of the VN? plz, I'm curious xoI

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2 minutes ago, Palas said:

That's not what I said though. I personally don't care what numbers do or don't - and that the stats guide the story in LLtQ just means it's a choice system. A choice system can be infinitely complex, but to me, if you choose in it based on the outcome in the story or according to the characters, that's pretty much still a VN to me. But that's me. VNDB thinks differently. Ask them. Ask pabloc.

Well I think ZTD could be a VN incorporated into a different style, and I also think LLtQ is a Simulation VN, but, VNDB is very conservative on that aspect.

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5 minutes ago, Palas said:

That's not what I said though. I personally don't care what numbers do or don't - and that the stats guide the story in LLtQ just means it's a choice system. A choice system can be infinitely complex, but to me, if you choose in it based on the outcome in the story or according to the characters, that's pretty much still a VN to me. But that's me. VNDB thinks differently. Ask them. Ask pabloc.

Aye, I've just read that old blog post without proper attention and interpreted a view you were describing there as your own - I've realized that l was wrong later but forgot to correct what I wrote. :wacko: I really don't even see much point in this kind conservative guarding of genre borders, site such as VNDB should be focused on utility for its users and not measuring whether the amount of VN "essence" surpasses some abstract threshold, unless in obvious cases, where there's simply no good arguements for including such title. 

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