Comment on Visual November 2023
Candelestine@lemmy.world 11 months ago
When it comes to VNs, I tend to really like a select few of them, and dislike most of them.
Usually they’re either too banal, targeted at a different demographic than me, and there’s just not enough meat on the bones to keep me engaged. I mean, don’t get me wrong, it can be fun to imagine myself back in HS, but I’d really rather not…
Or they’re too fantastical, in which case I’d just rather pick up a proper fantasy fiction or sci fi novel or big budget game, where I get just a lot more.
There are, however, a select few that ride the line between realism/complexity and spoofy fun and force you to make really hard choices. The kind that make you spend 30 minutes staring at a dialogue choice, just processing.
My favs were The Life and Suffering of Sir Brante and Suzerain. Honorable mention for the only romance VN that I’ve ever liked, Katawa Shoujo, which also had a moderate dose of tragic realism, and happens to be free to download. Is also mildly NSFW, for the record. Other two are clean.
If anyone has a particular recommendation, I’m always somewhat interested in more. I tend to dislike the popular ones though, and they have to be in English. I’ve already bounced off of Psycho Pass, Danganropa(sp?) and Fate for instance. The genre as a whole has always really interested me though, I think it has a lot of unique potential.
Paranomaly@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
The best that comes to mind would be VA11-HALL A if you don’t mind something completely character driven and with essentially no plot. Game play elements are there but very, very light. Western developed despite an obvious love of eastern media, doesn’t fall into high school stories, and well written.
The Life and Suffering of Sir Brante was one that I downloaded to try this month but didn’t get around to. Will keep the recommendation in mind~
It’s a bit harder to find western developed ones as the genre is much younger in the west. General perception amongst publishers were that they were a terrible translation cost to profit ratio and that western audiences wouldn’t be interested in them. I heard a rumor before that Valve held this opinion as well and thereby didn’t accept many onto steam. They were so surprised by the success of some that made it through green light that they decided that they didn’t know everything that players wanted and this caused the much lighter approach they took to moderating green light.