About how to walk through a VN

[Guest]

This is something i've been wondering about a lot and i'm sorry if the matter has already been discussed or not, I couldn't find a topic on it on the forum.

 

It's about the use of a guide to at least complete a VN and to 100% it

 

For now, my method of clearing a game is going through one route blindly and finish it, then i pick up a guide to complete the game.

 

So I was wondering if that has a bad influence on the experience i will have playing the game ? ...

 

But I would like to explain quickly why I use guides so soon.

 

First of all, I lack time, and even though most of my free time is dedicated to anime/manga/VN and this kind of stuff i always feel i'm missing something, so i just need to discover everything.

 

Second, And that's a big question to ... I'm scared of bad endings (yeah yeah ... T_T)

Since i've played Hanako's bad ending and a few others that made me feel like a heart less monster i just don't want or can't play them.

So most of the time I just end up avoiding the bad endings cuz i'm a chicken and don't want to hurt the characters i like .

 

So the discussion would be about the use of the guides and it's influence and the importance of bad endings in the plots (are the always important ? because they don't always seem)

 

[Nosebleed]

I know how you feel. I also absolutely despise bad endings and i often use guides too. 

Wether it takes away the experience or not I don't think it affects much because the choices in most novels hardly change the common route so you're still getting the same story. The only difference is really in the character route itself. If a route is good you'll still love it regardless of wether or not you know you're getting it. 

It takes away the fun of guessing yourself but it won't ruin the story in my opinion.

I personally try to avoid bad endings but that's just me

 

Recently i made the Toradora Walkthrough from scratch and it was a fun experience finding out every single thing. However at a certain point it gets really repetitive and i wished i had a guide at hand. I even ended up skipping endings i didn't care about just because i was just tired of repeating the same scenario over and over.

[ririkosama]

Em hmmm.

If I think a VN is important, most of the time I will ask my friend for some advice before starting it. For example, Maid Cafe Parfait, we'd better complete Rikako route at last. If you can understand Japanese I think you can google some guides (is this word right?) before starting a VN.

In fact you can just ask me if a VN has Good End.

 

Maybe I found sth I can do....write a summary of VNs I played?

[Okami]

I am always playing blandly on first play then for others if I can figure out how to get them without walk-through I go for them blindly too but If I am not sure how to get to their routes I use walk-through. But I too try to avoid bad endings.

 

As for if they take away the experience or not I wouldn't say that they do they just take away the unpredictability of an ending a little.

[Katatsumuri]

I play blindly, except if I get a bad ending, then I switch to a guide.

I also use a guide if there are a lot of choices.

[Guest]

There are guides that i think are necessary to follow, Steins;gate! for example.

 

Usually for walkthroughs i check whether or not an order has to be respected in order not to miss scenes or to unlock other route (trying to get a route i can't yet). Just to be sure i don't do useless choice on the first try

[SieghartXx]

For me, it depends on the visual novel. I've used guides from the very beginning, and sometimes I wouldn't use them at all, but it's not like I didn't enjoy playing them. Mostly, I use them to avoid bad endings or because I like to play first a specific heroine, then the other, and so on, and sometimes I need a guide or I would end up in another route by mistake (like when I played Little Busters! I wanted to do Haruka's first, but entered Yuiko's xD)

[Pabloc]

I almost always use walkthroughs from the start. If the VN has a recommended route order, I follow it, but otherwise I usually like to leave the best story/favorite heroine for the last playthrough, so the guide is still useful. Sometimes, when I don't have a preffered reading order in mind, I do the first playthrough without a guide, but those are rare exceptions. I don't have time for trail and error, and wlakthroughs let me focus solely on the story, so if they have any influence on my experience with a VN, I'd say it's a positive one.

As for bad endings, I read them, and I use the walkthrough to find them all. And I usually read them before the good/true ends. Well, unless they are just completely meaningless "you didn't get any girls, game over" or something, those don't add anything to the story, so I skip them. But otherwise, especially if the VN has "bad endings with story" tag on VNDB, I'll certaily read them. But well, I'm a completionist.

Bad endings done right, while often be quite heartbreaking, they can add a lot of overall impact to the VN, precisely because of this. Soul Link is a good example here, awful bad ends were probably the most memorable parts of the VN, they made the whole story much more dramatic, and the good endings felt more satisfying thanks to that.

Most bad endings are just a brief, unimportant game overs, but some can certailny add to the whole experience quite a bit.

[Guest]

Yeah most of the bad endings tend to be ... well just there to show you you fucked up.

That's the problem, I'd love to see bad endings which are actually of some use in the story.

 

Fate/stay night did a good job with this, and was a game which can be interesting to go blindly through.

 

Because some bad endings such as in Symphonic rain where kinda pointless ...

Fal's bad ending is literally :

'I'm not coming with you'
Fal: Okay *sadface*

BAD EnD ... Wut ?

 

And that's not and isolated case unfortunately

[daniel]

There's also the problem where the bad end is written well enough that you can't tell it is the bad end. Or conversely, the good end is so poorly written you think it is the bad end. I can see why you'd want the "wrong choice" to not end the game right away, but I don't want to invest too much time on it. I'd rather make a bad choice and have a short wrap up. Like you said, F/SN did a good job balancing between "wrong choice" and "end game story," and there's parts of the story that you can understand better by having chosen those wrong paths.

 

Back to the original question: I play through once, even to a bad end, and then use a guide after that. It's just fun to see where my own choices would lead me first.

[nohman]

My preference on the matter switches. I think I prefer to play blindly (for at least a route or two), but it largely depends on the game. For F/SN I used a guide for the entire thing, collecting up all the tiger dojos as I went along. I also typically try to aim for the bad ends before the other stuff, since I prefer to have the normal/good/true endings be the last thing I experience rather than the bad endings. Just leaves a better taste I suppose.

[Flutterz]

On my first run I either play blindly or go after a heroine that catches my eye. If that works and the game doesn't seem too complex, I'll try to get the other routes on my own. If I fail on my first attempt (like major fail, not just the kind where you load the last save and pick the other option to continue) or the game has a ton of choices, I'll find a walkthrough and follow that.

 

I'll also generally avoid bad ends unless I find a good reason not to.