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Otome/Boy Love VNs for Those Who Don't Like Otome/Boy Love


nohman

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So I heard on IRC that DRAMAtical Murder is often the most downloaded game here on Fuwanovel, and it got me thinking. Maybe I'm missing out on some decent to respectable stories simply because the romantic/sexual aspects of boy love VNs aren't to my taste.

 

So I wonder, are there any boy love VNs here on Fuwa that are worth reading EVEN if you aren't into that sort of thing? Games whose stories might outshine their erotic content? Likewise, what about otome games? I've never played one before, so I'm curious that I might be missing out on something worth reading.

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I did a quick browse through fuwan's otome section.

While quite a few games have an actual story, in most of the cases, the romance (if you can call it like that, since, specially on the yaoi ones, the contet is quite rapey) is the biggest part of it. You could possibly enjoy them, depending on how you feel about the genre, but overall, there are many "common" translated VNs I would recommend to you before jumping into this kind of thing, nohman.

 

They are not bad, but even if you just don't feel anything towards the genre, you'll have to skip like 30% of the scenes just because they won't interest you. If you actually dislikes the genre, it would be even worse.

If you want to follow through it, Yo-Jin-Bo seems to be the one with the highest amount of story. And it's an otome, not a yaoi, so I guess it will be easier to you.

 

The story of those games isn't magically better. If I had to say, they're about the average VN, just for a different public.

 

As I said, I'd just keep going with the normal VNs, though. There are still many kamiges for you to play before going to the highly experimental stuff~

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As I said, I'd just keep going with the normal VNs, though. There are still many kamiges for you to play before going to the highly experimental stuff~

 

Ah, I didn't mean this to be a recommend me something to read thread specifically. My backlog is pretty big, so I wouldn't be getting to anything like that anytime soon.  I just thought it might be a topic worthwhile to throw around and ruminate on, since it's an entire side of the medium I've wholly neglected and never really thought about. 

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From the typical BL, I have only read Togainu no Chi, and it's a very good title (if you like grimdark, dystopian settings and violent street fights, that is). It has merely 10 H-scenes (2 being a token bad endings). They can get pretty rough at times, but in the end, it's the story and character development that matters here. It doesn't have too much actual romance too, which is a plus for me (I don't mind rape and stuff, but bishies going all rabu-rabu with each other... that's just wrong :P).

DRAMAtical Murder sounds like a good stuff too. Well, it IS Nitro+ after all - it can't be bad. :P

In short, story-oriented BL titles with low sexual content are perfectly readable (especially if they aren't focused on romance). As long as you are open-minded enough to survive a few H-scenes of course (but since you asked a question like this, you probably are).

As for otome games, I like female protagonists in general, so I am somewhat interested in those. A lot of them are focused solely on romance and are ero-free though (shoujo-style romance is cute and all, but it's not really my cup of tea).

For the first title (assuming you only want translated stuff), I'd recommend The Second Reproduction. It's fairly short, has a proper plot (not a pure romance story), and a not-completely-useless protagonist.

Yo-Jin-Bo is mix of romance and action, but served in a parody-sauce. This makes it funny and random at times, but also quite hard to be taken seriously.

Most other translated otome games that I have found look like pure romance stories, probably without much plot (I didn't find anything that would pick my interest).

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I've never played a BL game, but I've played a few otome games. My main problem with them is that they sacrifice any plot for just romance. A lot of them are also very short and rushed, and female protagonists are often complete saps. 

 

However, when done right, they are very entertaining. Not life-changing masterpieces, but entertaining.  RE:Allistair had a pretty well-written protagonist, but I found the rest of the game a bit repetitive. Starry Sky in Spring is the only otome game I've actually 100% completed.

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I was wondering this too, there are two VNs that picked my interest but I give up on reading them after seeing that they are boys love but then I decided to give them a shot in a near future so now they are in my plan to read list (Togainu no Chi and DRAMAtical Murder). So my sugestion would be to pick up some BL VN that look intresting to you and read it/them when you have a time and then disade for yourself if you like it/them or not.

 

As for Otome VNs that aren't Yaoi I didn't come across any that looked interesting but I did watch a faw Otome anime that I liked (example Amnesia) so I don't have any in my plan to read list but if I would to come across some that look interesting I would read them.

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I liked Sweet Fuse (PSP) quite a bit. Lots of tension and suspense, diverse cast with interesting motivations and backgrounds, and a main character who is resilient and entertaining. The good endings include the conclusions of the girl x boy romances, which I thought were justified in the story.

 

I'm okay with most pairings and romance options... though I've become somewhat bored with boy x girl(s).

 

The notion of a main character who's implicitly bisexual is relatively tough to find outside of WRPGs from the last decade. Winter Wolves' indie games Planet Stronghold and Loren the Amazon Princess are VN hybrids, with design cues from both WRPGs and visual novels.

 

If someone wants to start one or more of the following threads, go ahead:

 

"For those who don't like boy x girl (typical love polygon / harem)"

"For those who don't like cute aesthetics"

"For those who don't like any romance"

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