Pretty much none of the VNs I play have sexual content. And there’s always VN Database to check before you play. I never played Chaos;Head, but I did watch the anime adaptation and it was more wtfery than I expected, so it might end up on the to-play list at some point.
Yes. Anime = disco. Believe it!
The screenshot of the fighting reminded me of a sega saturn game that was actually pretty good. Dragon…dragon… was it dragon warriors, no no, ah! Dragon Force! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_Force
Anyway, that was a good game, so if the game
ovel actually had that level of depth, it could almost make up for the rest of the badness.
I can’t post links, so all links are replaced by search keywords. Just search them, and click the first result.
>HRose
Your ongoing quest for epicness reminds me, have you heard of Guin Saga, the world’s longest running novel? It has reached 126 volumes when the author passed away. Unsurprisingly, people say it’s not worth reading.
>Sengoku Rance
AFAIK, this is a fullblown strategy/RPG, not a VN. Its priority is not on story or making sense. Its setting is a mixture of series in-jokes and a parody of the sengoku era.
You can read this SelectButton forum thread to get a sample of what its story content consist of.
(Search: site:selectbutton.net rance)
>Chaos;Head
People say it’s passable, but its follow-up, Steins;Gate is an instant classic. Of course Steins;Gate is now in the process of being adapted into anime.
I bow before Lynxara’s knowledge (and willingness to do research on topics she apparently doesn’t care for). Muv-Luv is definitely linked to Kimi ga Nozomu Eien. It seems the latter’s main characters all play important roles in Muv-Luv.
EDIT: In fact, the Kimi ga Nozomu Eien main characters can be seen in the OP.
For me, I feel I’ve had enough just by reading this long-winded post (this blog post is written with a critical eye, and different from your average anime fan writing).
(Search: site:jphinano.wordpress.com muv-luv)
The badness in this kind of games can be so bad that it’s great :)
Yes, but for how much I love quirky Japanese stuff I still haven’t managed to learn the language, so I have to rely on stuff that is translated in a way or another. Steins;Gate doesn’t seem to be…
Sengoku Rance was awesome, although the earlier Rance games (i.e Rance the Brute King) was better.
Alicesoft is making a Space Strategy game called “The Great Empire” to be released next year that I’m looking forward to now… http://www.alicesoft.com/daiteikoku/index.html
Oh, and yeah Muv-Luv was pretty good for its time, but I honestly think Fate and the Higurashi stories are better. It’s a mix of a post-apocalyptic mecha series and a typical high school love comedy.
Chaos;Head has a very good introduction. I like a lot this kind of introspective writing, but at the same time it pains me to know that for every game I could play there are hundreds that I can’t understand… I may end up liking this genre much more than classic JRPG, there’s much more space for creativity and originality (same as anime, but this also gives better pacing and much more depth).
This has also an amusing introduction since it begins with classic MMORPG catass.
I find Ryosuke Takahashi’s work pretty fascinating, so Muv-Luv got on my radar two or three years ago when it started getting compared to his peak work from the 80s.
Mecha anime has softened considerably since the genre peaked in the 80s, basically over character licensing issues. The brutality of Muv-Luv Alternative makes it very unusual for a modern take on the genre. The only comparable project I can really think of offhand is Bokurano.
It’s true I don’t care much for VNs as a rule. I’m glad fans are going out of their way to make its more interesting specimens playable by foreign audiences. Licensing issues tend to make it highly unlikely any of the best games could be released officially in English.
I would agree with the comment made up-thread that most foreign players would probably find Higurashi or Fate/Stay Night more interesting. Those games just have more broadly interesting premises.
If you really want some Mecha Visual Novels, Nitroplus did a number of them that were pretty good…I suppose Chaos:Head/Steins Gate counts as one of them.
The Baldr Sky games are also very good, with some pretty good 2D action to back it up.
Outside of the mecha stuff, I’d reccomend YU-NO, Cross Channel, Tsukihime, Umineko, and the other Alicesoft games…espeically Kichiku Ou Rance, Rance 6 and Dai Akuji
Umineko is crazy and a lot of fun when you speculate with other people. I don’t know what I would think of it without the fanbase.
God I wish I had more patience for visual novels. There’s some really cool storytelling going on, but they’re a long haul affair that I have to play on my computer when I’d usually rather use it for gaming or movies or something.
The most recent one answered quite a few of the mysteries though…looking forward to playing the newest one soon when it comes out this weekend.
Also thinking abuot buying the PS3 version when it comes out…it’ll be nice to play it with higher res visuals and fully voiced speech.
It answered a lot of the mysteries, but the new ones are a lot of fun to argue about. There’ll definitely still be room for interpretation at the end, I am sure.
Chaos;head is 99% translated but not finalized because a western company bought the rights to do nothing with them, so Steins;Gate is in limbo and won’t be translated by fans and neither officially.
Baldr Sky is untranslated.
The rest is all translated, YU-NO in progress, Umineko as it comes out. And the Rance game posted above is the only one currently available.
The group doing Muv-Luv is doing also the “What a Beautiful” series which has some good art and a dark/fantasy setting that seems intriguing. The only one fully translated at the moment is Sekien no Inganock.
http://amaterasu.is.moelicious.be/blog/?p=87
Bah, just learn Japanese and save yourself the trouble! :)
Just finished it and while I wasn’t impressed in my initial playthrough, the more I thought about it the more blown away I was by what the implications of the mysteries revelaed in the final chapter were.
Definitely leaves a lot open to interpetation though.
Slight thread necro due to the mention of Steins;Gate:
I started playing this over the weekend and the story is really fascinating, and the UI + the story branching system (it’s entirely handled by cell phone texts - different keywords are highlighted when you receive one and by choosing a keyword you decide on the general context of the reply message) is very slick as well.
I have yet to finish it but I can highly reccomend the game for anyone interested in the genre - I’ve noticed that an anime series recently started that might be worth checking out.
After reading this thread I’ve became curious and tried to check this Muv-Luv game. However for some reason I can’t locate the english patch on that site HRose has mentioned.
http://amaterasu.is.moelicious.be/index.php?page=projects
The project is marked as “completed” but the downloads section of that site doesn’t seem to have it, unless it is called by some other name. (confused)
Maybe I am missing something, but where did you people get translation patch for Muvlov? If you could post some links it would be great. Thanks a lot!
The reason there is nothing in the download section is because Amaterasu is negotiating a licensed release with age.