What is your least favorite type of route plot?

[Silvz]

11 minutes ago, sanahtlig said:

My least favorite route plot?  That would be where the route has no dramatic tension and is just a vehicle to deliver H-scenes or other "feel-good" fluff.  A lot of games just tack "routes" on to check a feature box and don't feature any meaningful divergence from the main plot.

But isn't this a problem with the game as a whole instead of a route plot? I mean, I totally agree with you on this, but I'd personally go beyond that and say that I dislike games where you only build a romantic relationship without any kind of twist, but it is very difficult to come across a VN with this problem when you know the kind of VN you're getting into.

[sanahtlig]

20 minutes ago, Silvz said:

But isn't this a problem with the game as a whole instead of a route plot? I mean, I totally agree with you on this, but I'd personally go beyond that and say that I dislike games where you only build a romantic relationship without any kind of twist, but it is very difficult to come across a VN with this problem when you know the kind of VN you're getting into.

Many VNs are NOT romantic by nature, or at least they're not focused on romantic choice, yet they feel pressure to conform to the convention of having multiple love options.  Princess Waltz is illustrative: the game is pretty focused on one particular heroine, yet at the end a throwaway H-scene is tacked on with a heroine of your choice.  This type of route structure often doesn't have obvious cues in the premise.

There's also the type of game you're referring to: a good example would be the Cation series.  They ARE focused on romance, but there's not any meaningful conflict or dramatic tension.  This is more likely to be indicated in the premise.

Edited June 24, 2020 by sanahtlig

[Clephas]

On 6/23/2020 at 2:33 AM, Seraphim88 said:

Here are a few, off the top of my head:

"Person X used to be passionate about activity Y but stopped doing it because of reason Z"
Just by adding that piece of information, you can be more or less certain that the route is at some point going to kick off some sort of redemption quest revolving around reigniting that former passion. It's usually the protagonist doing it for the heroines, but it can be the other way around too. That said, it's well done and not really an issue in many cases, but there are also times when it feels really forced and the person in question isn't allowed to move on with their life even if they're completely fine with the current situation. I mean, it's not strange to give up on something in real life in favor for something else, but that rarely happens in these stories from what I've seen.
 

 

 

I absolutely loathe the variation where the protagonist ends up spending the entire game as a coach without ever really getting back on his feet.  What's the point of a recovery that isn't a recovery?  It's one of the three reasons I hate Aokana (along with the protagonist's reason for quitting being pathetic and all but one of the heroines being boring).  It's one thing to find another way in life, but in that case, I want them to make a complete severing from the activity entirely.  I don't want to see an entire route where he keeps looking back on the good 'ol days and wondering about what-ifs.  

About the only VNs that use this trope well are Walkure Romanze and Fake Azure Arcology (where the protagonist actually has a huge heap of traumas that make it feel real).

Edit: Oh, the protag of Kizuna Kirameku Koi Iroha is really solidly behind his own decision to give up competing.  It was a decision he made for the right reasons and is mostly at peace with.  However, it isn't quite the same thing, lol.

[Stormwolf]

On 6/23/2020 at 9:33 AM, Seraphim88 said:

Here are a few, off the top of my head:

"Person X used to be passionate about activity Y but stopped doing it because of reason Z"
Just by adding that piece of information, you can be more or less certain that the route is at some point going to kick off some sort of redemption quest revolving around reigniting that former passion. It's usually the protagonist doing it for the heroines, but it can be the other way around too. That said, it's well done and not really an issue in many cases, but there are also times when it feels really forced and the person in question isn't allowed to move on with their life even if they're completely fine with the current situation. I mean, it's not strange to give up on something in real life in favor for something else, but that rarely happens in these stories from what I've seen.
 

You forgot about the part where the heroine needs to move to germany or america because that's the only places where she can go to school for her specific talent.

[Clephas]

The protagonist is supposedly a genius at something, but the moment the heroine routes begin, his abilities seem to disappear (Most of the Ensemble games for the last seven years, Tsuki ni Yorisou, Otome no Sahou 2).  This convention is a plague on charage in general, since there is a tendency to want to weaken the protagonist's individuality in the heroine routes to fit the heroines' needs.  This is an effort to reduce potential for conflict, but it also makes the game less interesting and/or disappointing.

[Soul Hunter]

Well, anything that has zero romance is almost certain to be out of my radar, and the romance can be of any kind, it doesn't matter if it is unhealthy for the people involved as long as they're enjoying themselves (see Saya no Uta? That was beautiful), or if it is hard to believe (see those cases where you conquer the club prez 3 hours after meeting her, those are funny cases ), or any problem you can come up with in a love story, some ranting here:

Spoiler

Muv-Luv Alternative wasn't one of the best games for me precisely because of its lack of routes, which is lack of romance to most of the heroines, it DOES have romance with Sumika, and I really appreciated her interaction with Takeru, but I wanted more with the others, such a shame the game was making impossible for anything to happen at the end, and Takeru even forgot everything, dammit, great game either way.

I didn't get enough of Momoyo in Majikoi also, her route is nice and all and it's cool to see how hard Yamato is working to conquer her, but she only gets a fucking epilogue, unlike the others where Yamato starts dating in the middle of their routes, this made me sad because Momoyo is my favorite in this game, but well at least you have a romance time with her, better than nothing.

This is one reason I'm afraid of playing Umineko, people say it's good but it apparently doesn't have any romance, well I'll give it a try one day.

Aside from this I think any route that the protagonist turns into a wimpy and stays that way until the end is bad, never saw that though.

Oh, remembered one thing now, NTR is the absolute worst, I'll never read this kind of shit.

Edited July 13, 2020 by Soul Hunter

[Ruvik]

Honestly, I hate it so much when the romance interest/partner in the route suddenly start to treat mc bad and it turns out they were deceiving them for their plan. They didn't tell mc about the plan because they thought mc couldn't keep a secret *rolling eyes* 

What's worse is, my favorites tend to turn out like this and it makes me instantly dislike them