So What Got You Into VNs?

[cro-mag]

Actually i kinda don't quite remember what was the first one - Da Capo or Majikoi... I have i strong feeling that Majikoi. And one of the main reasons for that - when i watched an anime i was like "O_O it's the 1st episode, so what the hell happening here??" You know, about

Spoiler

Kawakami War

They showed it in 1st episode and there were so many people, doing some fights for whatever reason, and it was all really confusing)) So i kinda wanted to know what's happening. Plus fights and characters were pretty good so i wanted to spend more time with them and see more fights. Plus Miyako of course. Although, she's way better into VN.

[+StrikeR+]

I always loved the CG artwork in VN's but the first time i tried them (which where many, many years ago) i didn't pick the right material (it was some nukige) so i thought i wouldn't be interested, well back then other then Animation it is true that i couldn't get into stuff like VN's Manga, or LN. Fast forward a few years after the misleading attempt, and Katawa Shoujo pops out, and as you all know it had a huge controversy surrounding it. So i began reading it, at first it didn't do much for me, but i kept reading out of curiosity to find what was bad about it, then Ikezawa Hanako picked my interest, went on her route and i was addicted to VN's ever since. My first japanese VN was Da Capo, it was entertaining but with VN's such as G Senjou no Maou, Muv-Luv, Majikoi it became my favorite means of entertainment, and now i'm absolutely addicted.

[cro-mag]

6 minutes ago, +StrikeR+ said:

I always loved the CG artwork in VN's but the first time i tried them (which where many, many years ago) i didn't pick the right material (it was some nukige) so i thought i wouldn't be interested, well back then other then Animation it is true that i couldn't get into stuff like VN's Manga, or LN. Fast forward a few years after the misleading attempt, and Katawa Shoujo pops out, and as you all know it had a huge controversy surrounding it. So i began reading it, at first it didn't do much for me, but i kept reading out of curiosity to find what was bad about it, then Ikezawa Hanako picked my interest, went on her route and i was addicted to VN's ever since. My first japanese VN was Da Capo, it was entertaining but with VN's such as G Senjou no Maou, Muv-Luv, Majikoi it became my favorite means of entertainment, and now i'm absolutely addicted.

Those last 4 VNs could easily get you addicted to VN, that's for sure... Katawa Shoujo is still on my wishlist. The only problem for me, as a person who plays games, reads manga/LNs/VNs, is obviously time. One of most time consuming hobby)

[+StrikeR+]

On 5/14/2018 at 11:52 AM, cro-mag said:

Those last 4 VNs could easily get you addicted to VN, that's for sure... Katawa Shoujo is still on my wishlist. The only problem for me, as a person who plays games, reads manga/LNs/VNs, is obviously time. One of most time consuming hobby)

I used to be a gamer, but then i took an arrow to the knee... Jokes aside my gaming needs have subsided... I crave mainly for visual novels, light novels, anime and manga this days, with some light gaming sessions in between, so light in fact that i think i spent ~two months on lords of the fallen and still haven't finished it once.

[mnmnoko]

I don't remember exactly, but my first one was AIR, which I knew from a critique.
Actually, I skipped around one-third of the game because I wanted to finish it as soon as possible.
In addition, I was new to any otaku contents including VNs, so I had a little prejudice about them.
To be honest, I despised VNs and needed some courage to play them because of social implicit intolerance.
They were too shady, in short.
Compared to the present time, more people had the same tendency at that time, in my opinion.
I started being addicted to them after these inner struggles, however.

[YukinoMiko]

 I was in a chatroom (actually completely VN/anime/whatever-unrelated) with a couple of really weeby people who were talking about Ever17.

I decided to look into it.

It was good shit, do recommend.

 

It also probably helped that I started watching subbed anime when I was 12, because I met someone literally living in Japan online who wouldn't stop recommending shows to me. I had already been watching the dubbed stuff on network TV since I was pretty small, so it wasn't too big a leap--and from there, VNs weren't too big a leap, either.

Edited May 21, 2018 by YukinoMiko

[MeguminBlast]

Here's why I started VNs in a nutshell.

4 years old - I watch Pokemon and Teen Titans stuff like that. Really like the anime style, but have no clue what anime is.

7 years old - I watch Naruto and love it. I search for more. Everything goes downhill after this point.

9 years old - I loved Higurashi cause horror and blood and I found School Days cause the anime's ending. I saw bad ends and played a route cause I wanted to see a girl kill herself by jumping off a roof and have her head go asplode. There was sex, I was shocked, I watched my bad end I desired, and uninstalled. Also I had no clue what they were saying cause I fucked up installing the ENG patch, but I didn't care as I got to see death.

10/11 years old - Still a Higurashi fan, read Onikakushi-hen, stopped during Watanagashi because I wanted to 'learn JP and read Matsuri'. 

12 years old - Found Season of The Sakura, True Love 95, and Runaway City. The latter was shit, but the first two was pretty good (Though I only did Reiko's route in SotS and the Mikae's in TL95). Had a breif thing with Kanon as well, but didn't get to far.

13 years old - Read Tsukihime (but didn't finish it at the time) and ONE: To The Radiant Season. This is where I started reading VNs regularly and my downward spiral began.

15 years old - Read Shizuku as my first UTL VN and realize I'm learning JP so I can read pornographic Chinese powerpoints.

And that's how I got into VNs.

Edited May 23, 2018 by MeguminBlast

[Archangel]

I watched too many Hentai with awful art that changed the character designs (cough Pink Pineapple cough cough) and terrible voices for the protags (cough 90% of Hentai! Cough! I'm actually sick!) So I decided to get into VNs.

And tranlate them, but that's a different story.

[Corrupted]

I played Katawa Shoujo and it really moved me (and gave me a disability/catetaker fetish). However, it didn't get me into Visual Novels...because I had no idea about the existence of Visual Novels or the connection between Katawa Shoujo and visual novels. I think at the time I thought visual novels were some sort of niche Japanese thing and Katawa Shoujo was it's own kind of niche one-off thing imitating it in English. Or, really, I just never made the connection. So I greatly enjoyed KS, it blew my mind, and it didn't lead to playing more VNs.

Fast forward years down the road and DDLC melts my soul. It makes me want to die - a keen melancholy that's hard to come by and a valuable experience to me. This time, I explore the steam comments and make google searches looking for a similar experiences. If Katawa Shoujo had been on steam maybe I would have done the same at the time. Wanting to get those feels again I grab the first Visual Novel that catches my eye on steam and also happens to have a ridiculously, in-arguably high rating like DDLC: CLANNAD.

CLANNAD was such a different pace of game than the roguelikes and pvp-centered games I usually played that I had a really hard time getting into it. At this point it became a bit of a mission - I had done some research and learned of the existence of many great visual novels, as well as realized that DDLC was specifically meant to give one a taste and lead them to try other VNs. I was also starting to develop the fantasy of playing losing myself in visual novels as a good, I let's say, bucket list objective/important distraction during a difficult period of time in my life. 

So having decided it was in my best interest to push through at least CLANNAD, and wanting to go to sleep with a better feeling than I get playing other, more lonely solo games, I kept pushing myself to play CLANNAD for a couple hours every few days for a couple weeks. FINALLY, I acclimatized to the pacing of the medium, as well as finished my very first route. (oops can't remember which is was. Probably Nagisa, although Tomoyo left the biggest impact at first.) So I got into it enough to finish all the routes, and it was the After Story that really blew my mind. I had no idea what was happening or how far it was gonna go. It was surreal. After that it was Tomoyo After and Little Busters, and well, that's enough mind blowing meta-horror romance to snatch up this goth kid's attention span for the rest of his life.