OPPAI ORACLE

Talk about visual novels and their parts like music.

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).

Deoster wrote: Fri Jun 19, 2026 6:10 pm

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

Katawa Shoujo. I loved it, honestly. I had never experienced being that addicted to a game (if you call it a game) and having it consume that much of my time. I never had a connection with a 2D character that strong. Lily was the first route I did, and I liked her very much. But Rin was my favorite route. After that I read Saya no Uta and Ever17 -the out of infinity- and realized that this was the supreme medium for storytelling and for otaku media.

The only VN I read fully is Higurashi. I got more than halfway through Umineko but I got bored. Perhaps it would be nice to read more VNs but I don't like getting an annoying hard-on from all the porn and I don't want to make choices.

Something I noticed from my pirated GOG versions of Higurashi was the stupidly high CPU usage, it could be due to WINE but who knows (it played perfectly fine though). Umineko doesn't have this problem.

Deoster wrote: Fri Jun 19, 2026 6:10 pm

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

I don't remember exactly, but I guess it was "恋と選挙とチョコレート (Love, Election and Chocolate)" after watching the anime adaptation. I was just curious about the original.

My initial impressions were... I think it was "The art is beautiful...". Then "The music is also beautiful...". Then after the enforced Chisato route, I thought it was an evil.

Though I still like it. It was the first work by the company sprite. I highly recommend Aokana by them too.

Amlux wrote: Fri Jun 19, 2026 6:14 pm

Lily was the first route I did, and I liked her very much. But Rin was my favorite route.

I liked Lily at first too. But she was too normie.

Rin route is good. But for me the best route is Emi. It's very Nietzsche-like and also somewhat similar to my all time favourite "この大空に、翼をひろげて (If My Heart Had Wings)".

satoridepon wrote: Fri Jun 19, 2026 6:56 pm

The only VN I read fully is Higurashi. I got more than halfway through Umineko but I got bored. :D

This is exactly why I couldn't finish Umineko. And I have forgotten most of the plot.

Amlux wrote: Fri Jun 19, 2026 6:14 pm

Deoster wrote: Fri Jun 19, 2026 6:10 pm

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

Katawa Shoujo. I loved it, honestly. I had never experienced being that addicted to a game (if you call it a game) and having it consume that much of my time. I never had a connection with a 2D character that strong. Lily was the first route I did, and I liked her very much. But Rin was my favorite route. After that I read Saya no Uta and Ever17 -the out of infinity- and realized that this was the supreme medium for storytelling and for otaku media.

Same experience here, I read Katawa Shoujo when it came out since it was big on the internet at the time, then read some popular translated VNs like Saya no Uta and Yume Miru Kusuri. Emi was my favorite btw

I got into them really late, because I had this preconceived notion that they're not good, for some reason... I really had no clue how vast this genre / medium of entertainment is, and just how many classics were made in the 2000s. So, so many, I'll never be able to read them all.

So because I had that bias (stupid) the reason I got into them was because I watched the Oreimo anime adaptions and to put it lightly I was frustrated by them. I wanted to like them, and I loved at least one of the characters, Kuroneko. She was treated so poorly it made me kind of disgusted, and I wanted to experience some kind of legit romance with her with no bullshit, so I found out there's a Oreimo VN on PSP, and decided to play it. It was so much better than the anime, really, although in retrospect it was nowhere near as good as I thought at the time. There was two reasons I got a lot more into Oreimo than expected. 1. I had this preconceived notion that VNs are bad, so when I actually enjoyed my first one, the enjoyment level must've shot up further from this surprise. 2. It was better than the anime, so I was really satisfied that I got to experience a better version of Oreimo.

After this, I realized that I should try some of the bigger VNs to see what all the fuzz is about after all. At first I intended to only read a couple of them, but they were all so great that I went on an absolute powergaming spree for a few years, with playing VNs being something I'd regularly do several hours per day. The VNs that followed Oreimo were Katawa Shoujo, Saya no Uta, and Steins;Gate by the way.

Amlux wrote: Fri Jun 19, 2026 6:14 pm

Deoster wrote: Fri Jun 19, 2026 6:10 pm

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

Katawa Shoujo. I loved it, honestly. I had never experienced being that addicted to a game (if you call it a game) and having it consume that much of my time. I never had a connection with a 2D character that strong. Lily was the first route I did, and I liked her very much. But Rin was my favorite route. After that I read Saya no Uta and Ever17 -the out of infinity- and realized that this was the supreme medium for storytelling and for otaku media.

The first one i read was also Katawa Shoujo. I wanted to do Lily's route but i ended up with Emi's.

Spoiler

The anal scene

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 read it in English but I'm trying to only read vn's in Japanese from now on. I'm reading Dracu Riot right now and it's pretty hard, but it's doable with textractor. If you have any suggestions for visual novels with easy Japanese please let me know. I haven't played any other vn's besides the two mentioned and I like basically all the genres except for maybe BL.