/vng/ - Visual Novel General

[Thricegreat]

For who likes Katawa Shoujo, there is a secret Kenji route too. :)

[Amlux]

For who likes Katawa Shoujo, there is a secret Kenji route too.

Lol, it was the first one I got just choosing naturally. A sign I'm destined to never find love.

[Thricegreat]

For who likes Katawa Shoujo, there is a secret Kenji route too. :)

Lol, it was the first one I got just choosing naturally. A sign I'm destined to never find love.

As I remember, you need to avoid all those girls for Kenji. Do you hate love? :)

My first route was Ikezawa Hanako by choosing naturally. I guess I would end up like that if it was IRL.

Honestly I think I unnecessarily make my life hard by liking mentally unstable people. I think it's not good and try to avoid that. But I'm always naturally inclined to them.

[kshmr]

What is the first visual novel you ever played, and what were your initial impressions of the medium?

My answer is a little embarrassing, which is that, as a certified zoomer my first visual novel was Doki Doki Literature Club! and I didn't take the medium very seriously. I was in a dumb period where I thought I was somehow too good for anime and otaku stuff, which I kept up for an annoyingly long time before seeing the light. There was a fan-game called Doki Doki Blue Skies that I played shortly after that sort of played the premise straight as a game about girls with mental illnesses without all the technological horror stuff and I actually really liked that one. I imagine if I replayed it now I would find it a bit underwhelming (I think the writing was ok but the MC was frustratingly dumb as a rock, which I suppose I hear as a fairly common complaint with Japanese VNs as well), but I had never really encountered a game with that sort of story before and it gave me a lot of new feelings of yearning and a sort of bittersweet melancholy that I've continued to feel with games like this where you can become very immersed in a life with deep personal connections that aren't really yours.

My first "real" VN was Saya no Uta and I loved it. The story was good and engrossing but I especially loved the style. The art describing how Fuminori sees people is really captivating with its formless grotesques, and I would also like the mention the 3D flesh backgrounds which have all the vintage charm of that specific era of video game 3D renders. The music is also really great (as is pretty often the case with VNs--particularly "SCHIZOPHRENIA," "SAVAGE," and "SUNSET," the last of which makes quite good general evening background music).

My first one was DDLC too bcz my frnd just said, bro plz try VNs, they r peak, something like that i don't remember so I just got DLLC from itch.io as it was ren'py based n free I wasn't really using wine back then
Then I played/read another Ren'py VN named "Stillwater" and this is only what I've read

I thought I'm the only zoomer here lol

[Hans Sepp]

What is the first visual novel you ever played, and what were your initial impressions of the medium?

The first visual novel I played was Shizuku. This might seem like an odd choice given that it's considered the first true visual novel in history, but I had to start there because I consider every English-translated VN I've played to be a parody and that was the first I read in Japanese.

[BobDeus]

got me laughing too hard and i pretty much quit right there. I couldn't take anything after it seriously. Maybe someday ill go back and finish it.

I absolutely hated that scene too, I thought it was tonally off from the rest of the VN. Out of all the routes, Emi is by far the weakest. You would have enjoyed it far more I think if you picked literally any of the other routes.

By the way, I recommend anyone into visual novel's play the short VN Digital Seclusion. It's a visual novel about... well, a guy who reads visual novels. But I thought it was intriguing and there's way more effort put into visuals than the run-of-the-mill Ren'Py project.

I am very surprised to never hear anyone talk about Policenauts. It's a 1994 VN released for the PS1, was directed by Hideo Kojima! That coupled with being well received by critics, makes me surprised I've never heard anyone talk about it. I'm thinking of reading it next.

[Thricegreat]

I think this conversation alone already justifies Emi route.

Singularity-Monodromy and Essence-Energies.

[Amlux]

Am I weird in that I didn't think "that" scene from the Emi route was that bad? It was a little tonally jarring, but I dunno. Seems like the kind of thing you would have happen as high schoolers fucking around.

Shizune was by far the weakest route IMO. So much just fell flat. Which is a shame because I like Shizune as a character a decent amount. Clearly Rin is far and above any other route.

[Thricegreat]

Shizune was by far the weakest route IMO. So much just fell flat. Which is a shame because I like Shizune as a character a decent amount.

To say something about Shizune route, there is the existence of Misha too.

[Deoster]

There was a really good post a while back on this forum about "summer media," and I thought it would be nice to extend the concept. What VNs do you think are most emblematic and appropriate for fall, winter, or spring? Any additional summer ones should probably go in the original thread

Maybe it'd be better to make individual threads for each season when they roll around, but I'm impatient