Easiest/Most Difficult Routes? (SPOILERS EVERYWHERE)

[someguy1294]

Now, the general consensus seems to be that Rin's route is the hardest, but I want to test this. Which routes do you consider hardest to complete (from the beginning of Act 2 on), getting a good ending without using a walk-through?

Personally, I think the difficulty looks something like this:

1. Shizune's easiest. Don't cheat on your girlfriend. This isn't hard to figure out, guys. The only thing that makes this route difficult is resisting the urge to bone Misha... on second thought, maybe that makes it the hardest?

2. Emi's route is very forgiving. You can get to her Good Ending straight from the Dinner Scene, and if you fuck that up, you get another chance!

3. Rin's route, in my opinion, is far less hard than rumored. If you pay attention to her character, the first do-or-die choice isn't that hard to figure out, and if you played your cards right before-hand, you can wind up with two good answers instead of one. Even walking in blind, that gives you a sixy-six point six percent chance of making the right choice. The difficulty in Rin's route is not completing it, but getting to her Act 1 Ending, since that requires you to do almost nothing that indicates you're interested in Lilly or Hanako until the blow-out between Lilly and Shizune.

4. Hanako's route, like Rin's route, has two points at which you can fuck up and miss the Good Ending. Unlike Rin, however, there's only one way to get the first choice right, and the first do-or-die choice comes during a deceptively placid scene. There is nothing threatening in the way Hanako asks, 'What should we do?', but at the point of Rin's first killer choice, the stress is high and it is clear Hisao is in danger of losing Rin.

5. What makes Lilly's route the hardest, to me, besides the fact that you must make THREE correct choices (more than any other route) is the fact that you can screw yourself out of the Good Ending as early Act 2. Don't feel like talking to Lilly about how Hanako relies on her? Congratulations! You're about to go through the next two acts for nothing, then wonder what the hell went wrong.
So you go back to the last choice, the scene in the restaurant, and select the other choice... and STILL get the Bad Ending. If, at this point, you're actually willing to track through every choice you made and try to figure which ones doomed you without using a walk-through, I commend you.

Note: This wasn't MY personal experience, as I got Lilly's Good Ending on the first play-through. I'm still aware of this route's potential to screw you, however.

Your thoughts on which routes are hardest and why?

[AaronIsCrunchy]

I think Rin's is the hardest route, simply as the answers to any questions are without consequence right up until the 'understand her' question. It's easy to be complacent, think AH SOD IT and then put yourself in an emotional creek without a paddle.

[brythain]

I think route difficulty is actually not just a matter of probability. To me, there are two main factors: 1) whether you can discern that there is some sort of path through the maze, and 2) whether the route is psychologically difficult.

That's why I think of Lilly's as the easiest—you can see there's some sort of path, and all you have to do is decide to tell her everything. I think of Hanako's as difficult because most of us can't find the level of empathy at which we won't white-knight her and the negative payoff is pretty painful; I think of Rin's as most difficult because 1) you can't see a path, and 2) even if you could, it's hard to know (even at the good ending) if things are turning out 'right'.

[Tidus]

Rin's requires the most choices (Or at least it certainly seems so...by a lot.), and honestly the hardest choices in the game are almost all in her route. I'd say Rin by a longshot. Hanako for second hardest, I guess?

Emi, I found the easiest.

[AussieInquisitor]

Speaking from a mechanics perspective, I would agree with the OP's post and description. The real kicker, as my collegues have poinyed out, is not that it's mechanically difficult, but because it's toying with your emotions as you go and, in part based on these emotions and how one may interprets one of the heroine's dialogue or Hisao's thought process, you could end up going down a path you may or may not want to go.

For example, Rin's requires a lot of headscratching to try and figure her out (even though we learn it's highly unlikely we're meant to). Shizune's requires perseverance (in more ways then one ), Lilly's route requires you to open yourself up to her, even though Hisao might be of two minds about it. And so on and so forth. Once you pick up on these cues the first time round, it's a lot easier, but especially for first-timers, it varies from simple to a first-time VNer's nightmare.

[d2r]

I dunno if difficulty is really a thing which applies to KS; it's more of an interactive story than a game per se. Hell, when I played the game the first time, I did it using Feuver's flowchart because I was more interested in seeing the particular stories than in seeing what I'd end up with going in blind (which would have been Emi, since I'm a runner myself and would have had Hisao push himself).

To answer the spirit of the question, though: If we define difficulty as "easy to get the ending you want", and assume you want to get the good rather than the bad/neutral ending, then I'd actually argue the hardest route is actually Lily's. Consider: if you choose to keep anything to yourself (e.g. Avoid the subject in A Brief History of Thyme), you've locked yourself into the Neutral Ending well before you realize that's the ending you'll end up with, and there's nothing you can do about it.

[SpunkySix]

Emi's comes naturally and the choice near the end was sort of tricky for a first timer but also relatively obvious.

Lilly's sounds the toughest to me, tied with maybe Rin's. Sharing everything is hard when you don't realize how much is at stake, and I love Rin, but man she can be confuzzling.

[Mirage_GSM]

Rin's path only has two choices that effect the ending at all, and one of them is a no-brainer.
For the other one however the two options are almost identical. The nuances will probably only be understood by someone who is very fluent in English, and even then one couldn't be certain this nuance was there intentionally.
Still as has been mentioned it is at least a situation where you would think hard about your answer.
For Hanako the question that will make or break the route does not seem dangerous at all, so it's basically down to luck which ending you get.

For easiest I will vote for Emi - mostly becasue there are people who misunderstood "comfort", but I don't think anybody would turn down Misha's advice in a situation like that.

[Potato]

You're about to go through the next two acts for nothing.

It is impossible to go through any act for nothing.


Anyway, Lilly's is the easiest. Choices are obvious and the story's fairly simple. Hardest would be Rin's choice-wise or Shizune's story-wise.

[someguy1294]

To answer the spirit of the question, though: If we define difficulty as "easy to get the ending you want", and assume you want to get the good rather than the bad/neutral ending, then I'd actually argue the hardest route is actually Lily's. Consider: if you choose to keep anything to yourself (e.g. Avoid the subject in A Brief History of Thyme), you've locked yourself into the Neutral Ending well before you realize that's the ending you'll end up with, and there's nothing you can do about it.

*hi fives*

Yayz!

[Tidus]

I dunno if difficulty is really a thing which applies to KS; it's more of an interactive story than a game per se. Hell, when I played the game the first time, I did it using Feuver's flowchart because I was more interested in seeing the particular stories than in seeing what I'd end up with going in blind (which would have been Emi, since I'm a runner myself and would have had Hisao push himself).

To answer the spirit of the question, though: If we define difficulty as "easy to get the ending you want", and assume you want to get the good rather than the bad/neutral ending, then I'd actually argue the hardest route is actually Lily's. Consider: if you choose to keep anything to yourself (e.g. Avoid the subject in A Brief History of Thyme), you've locked yourself into the Neutral Ending well before you realize that's the ending you'll end up with, and there's nothing you can do about it.

I'd agree, in general KS isn't very hard. More or less, it just takes some thinking. Mechanically, it's not challenging, like something such as a hard raid fight in an MMORPG. Nor does it require the reaction time and focus for games such as Touhou.

Hard in this game is also entirely subjective. What comes naturally for one person to answer, may be entirely different than another. And that can make or break a route.

[Aura]

None of the choice structure was meant to pose a challenge. KS isn't a game, it's a story. In reality, some experimentation with mild obfuscation and a couple oblique things make the structure less than 100% obvious, but still more or less accessible, which I suppose is a decent outcome.

[someguy1294]

For Hanako the question that will make or break the route does not seem dangerous at all, so it's basically down to luck which ending you get.

For easiest I will vote for Emi - mostly becasue there are people who misunderstood "comfort", but I don't think anybody would turn down Misha's advice in a situation like that.

That's precisely why I think Hanako's route was the only one I screwed up on the first play-through.

[gbrit10]

I voted Lilly's as easiest, as, aside from Emi, Lilly's is the easiest route to get on to, and aside from Shizune, is the easiest route to maintain, since you just tell her everything and it all turns out fine.

I voted Rin's as hardest...I should maybe have voted Hanako. Oh well. They're both harsh. And to be honest, when I did Rin's route, I restarted from save when I was about to get the good ending, just because it was so freakin' hard to read what was happening. So I'm okay with voting Rin.

[Atario]

For Hanako the question that will make or break the route does not seem dangerous at all, so it's basically down to luck which ending you get.

If you're taking the decisions with it in mind that any of them might screw you, then you think about them seriously — they're all potentially dangerous.

But besides that, that particular decision really is testing how you feel about her. Do you want to be with her or not? And what you choose is essentially what you get. So to call it luck seems very wrong to me.