Recommend a VN

[neumanproductions]

To finish off the concept of incest so we can get back to normality on this thread i'll just state that incest was actually a common practice in the old'n days.
Royalty would have incest as a way of maintaining as one would say pure blood, wandering family of ancient times while not always with direct siblings would pair off with cousins and such, and to play the religion card; most religions have the beginning with one man and one woman who would have kids that of course had to have sex with each other to have more kids. (aka Genesis in Bible and so on). Even the evolutionary theory on one note takes the side of incest frequently. So let's face it, incest has happened multiple times in society and probably still is happening.

Now back to another recommendation:
The remakes of "Lightning Warrior Raidy 1 & 2" are very interesting. While short is the first one in comparison to the second, and considering they are 3D fantasy RPGs with 'bad end style sex', the plot in both cases actually makes sense. I'm actually looking forward to if Zyx actually goes ahead with their plan to create a 3rd which would not be a remake but an original story.
I recommend it to any eroge players who like leveling up, boss battles, and even has everything to hit at least one of your favorite fetishes.
And don't just take my word for it, as the series has been claimed as one for the best in its genre by Japanese people. So there, review from a whole bunch of Japanese people and a white guy.

[DMGnome]

Playing Deus Machina Demonbane. My thirty-minute first impression is that it's what you would get if H. P. Lovecraft had knocked up a giant robot and then the baby was raised by Batman. Weird, but intriguing, and so far enjoyable.

[PlatonicRabbit]

I don't think I've seen Kara no Shoujo posted.

It's a fantastically gripping VN. It's a murder-mystery which follows a detective as he cracks down on a number of homocides. It's very well written and has quite the plethora of CG. There are a few small notes, however. Kara no Shoujo is exceptionally gory, bloody, and just simply horrifying. At certain times, the VN puts you in the killer's point-of-view as he mutilates his victim and will show a rather disgustingly gruesome CG. There are also BAD ENDINGS and GAME OVERS in this VN with the routes you go about solving the case. It's also incredibly depressing, for it took me a few run-throughs of KatawaShoujo to lift my spirits. If you can stomach the unsettling aspect of Kara no Shoujo and keep in check the pure hatred you will feel for the killer, I recommend this VN to you. This is the only other VN, besides Ever17, that I've stayed up all night reading (most likely to see the killer receive some freakin' justice).

Edit: I thought I'd add a TL;DR.

If you can stomach blood, gore, dismemberment and psychopaths, read Kara no Shoujo.

[Malagant]

Heh, now that we're talking about gruesome VNs anyway...

Divi-Dead hasn't been mentioned yet. It's an oldie, made by the company that also created Discipline: the Record of a Crusade and Bible Black.

Like the other two, Divi-Dead is also about mystery and supernatural themes, but it doesn't contain nearly as much sex. Which is a good thing, IMHO - especially Discipline was so full of absurd sex scenes that I spent most of my time digging through the hardcore porn in order to get to the story.

And aside from the (relatively few) sex scenes, it also has a few rather gruesome scenes. Several characters end up dying, occasionally with messy results. But the game is not exactly stuffed with guro, so it shouldn't be anything that the average VN lover can't handle.

The story is awesome - Divi-Dead is one of the very few VNs (or indeed, videogames in general) that drew me in so much that I occasionally took a pause just to wonder about what might be going on. As in; it really made me try to figure out the questions that the protagonist was asking himself.

Most good VNs and story-based games occasionally have moments like this, but this was one of the few games that kept me immersed throughout the story.

Without spoiling too much; the story is about a guy (IIRC an orphan) who spent most of his youth in hospital. He's now finally healthy enough to attend school, so he's sent to a boarding school that's run by his uncle. But don't expect any typical Japanese highschool tropes here, though - you won't find any. It's pretty bleak and quiet for a highschool setting, in fact, but that's actually part of the plot.

..
And to continue with the gruesomeness: Enzai - Falsely Accused.

The art and story are amazing (in both aspects, it's actually one of the best VNs I've seen so far).

However, it... doesn't exactly cater to the typical VN lover.

For one, it's yaoi. It's also set in a 19th century-ish prison. It contains a good number of sex scenes, most of whom are not consensual, and a lot of whom are downright brutal.

But, much unlike Discipline, Enzai still manages to have a good story/sexscene-ratio. You won't find yourself digging through the porn all the time with this one. The sex scenes are not out of place, nor do they overshadow the story - something that cannot be said of a lot of other visual novels.

The story itself is about mystery and intrigue. As the title already suggests, the protagonist (a boy who's propably in his late teens) is falsely accused of murder, and is sentenced to life in prison because of it. Then it turns out that he wasn't just convicted because the inspector needed a victim...

You can try to investigate what's really going on. But you don't need to go down that road, and you can also just try to survive by associating yourself with certain people or cliques. And you can also try to come up with a plan for escape, of course.

If you're not (too) disturbed by the prison rape and other assorted gruesomeness, then I definitely recommend this one.

[Censuur]

I found kara no shoujo to fall into far too many VN cliche's to be enjoyable for me

A simple non-spoiler example would be in the start, he gets a vague assignment from a mystery woman, before they're done talking the woman starts walking away, and despite expressing a desire for answers the guy just lets her walk away to the effect of "I wanted to ask her more, but she already walked away" making my inner voice froth with rage yelling "go run after her and ask your damn questions! what are you? retarded?!" and to make matters worse this all happened in a freaking empty park with no one else around, I really can't stand such inconsistent story-writing where a character expresses a desire for something and then takes absolutely no steps toward accomplishing what he desires to the point of acting mentally handicapped.

Personally, I really prefer VN's like soul-link where the protagonist actually has a goal and somewhat competently goes about accomplishing his goal, rather than expressing a goal and being completely passive about it or having no goal whatsoever, the worst offenders though are VN's in which the protagonist lost his fucking memory, its not so bad when its used as a mechanism to explain the background or the world etc, but when characters are just acting completely inhuman about it things just get really tiring, which brings me to my last gripe about VN's which is when a protagonist just retardedly waltzes through the story without any understanding or learning the things he's taught (fate/stay night comes to mind)

Anyway, /end rant, I recommend people go read soul link + g-senjou no maou (predictable but entertaining)

[Qaenyin]

I don't think I've seen Kara no Shoujo posted.

It's a fantastically gripping VN. It's a murder-mystery which follows a detective as he cracks down on a number of homocides. It's very well written and has quite the plethora of CG. There are a few small notes, however. Kara no Shoujo is exceptionally gory, bloody, and just simply horrifying. At certain times, the VN puts you in the killer's point-of-view as he mutilates his victim and will show a rather disgustingly gruesome CG. There are also BAD ENDINGS and GAME OVERS in this VN with the routes you go about solving the case. It's also incredibly depressing, for it took me a few run-throughs of KatawaShoujo to lift my spirits. If you can stomach the unsettling aspect of Kara no Shoujo and keep in check the pure hatred you will feel for the killer, I recommend this VN to you. This is the only other VN, besides Ever17, that I've stayed up all night reading (most likely to see the killer receive some freakin' justice).

Having played KnS recently(thanks to the mangagamer release), I figure I'll share my own opinions on it.

The characters are, mostly, good(they have their quirks, but with the notable exceptions of the female lead and the token blonde foreigner, their personalities are, if kind of odd, at least believable). The dialogue is well written and it gives good insights into the thought processes of the characters. Information towards solving the mystery is, largely, presented in a way that allows the player to reason things out, and the overall story links together nicely across the different routes and subplots the game has.

Now, the music. It's extremely generic, not particularly interesting. The murder scene music is handled with pretty much generic slasher movie BGM, the rest is typical slice of life VN music with little that stands out. It's not offputting or jarringly inappropriate, it's just nothing special.

The story is suitably elaborate, and for the most part well written. The subplots all tie together nicely, the events don't stretch the boundaries of plausibility too much. The H-scenes are rather overly common however and I can't help but feel they seem excessively shoehorned in(something many VNs suffer from).

The art is solid, although some of the facial expressions are decidedly weird for such a straightforward and serious atmosphere. The actual quality is quite good though.

Now comes my large complaint: the gameplay. While I know a lot of you guys will go "pfft, gameplay in a VN? Who cares." the gameplay is actually a pretty big deal for this BECAUSE the game doesn't use a standard text-dialogue-fork system to determine routes. Essentially, it has some of those, however, most of the time during a given day in the game you're given the option to travel to one of any number of locations on a "world map". You pick(usually two) locations and events occur at those locations, and which locations you visit determines which routes you end up with. The problem with this, though, is while that system isn't inherently bad, the game has an utter lack of any sort of logic regarding why you go where and when. Without a walkthrough honestly I'm tempted to say it's impossible to get anything but a bad ending except through sheer coin flipping trial and error. While this could, I suppose, be managable, within reason(through saving liberally and simply doing experimentation to get the events you want), almost every scene you get doesn't even seem important at the time, so you are, essentially, forced to make MUD-style event "maps" using a piece of paper or notepad or something and then just try out every feasable one of the several hundred possible combinations(all but about 2 of which result in bad ends).

Considering this VN tries to present itself as a serious mystery which requires thought to solve, it fails badly at actually ENCOURAGING using thought to solve it(or rewarding said thought). I doubt many people are actually likely to not simply use a walkthrough for this game, it is simply that frustrating to have any effect on what ending you get through any other method.

I want to call KnS good, I really do, but given the huge frustration the game's route system causes I cannot recommend it to someone who actually wants to enjoy the things the game was marketed around.

[UrbanBas]

So your saying it's generic?

[Qaenyin]

So your saying it's generic?

No, I'm saying it's good, if you have a walkthrough, but fails at being what it's marketed as(that is, an adventure game style mystery VN that's intended to encourage people to think it through to solve it).

[UrbanBas]

That makes more sense. So it's good but incredibly frustrating without a walkthrough.

[Censuur]

I'd say its pretty damn generic, it has barely an original thought in it, the characters, events and heck even the music is cliche'd, overused and incredibly predictable, add to that a coin-toss location system and jarringly out of place and generic H-scenes

It does have some redeeming qualities though, the production value looks quite high, the overall atmosphere is well done and if the above complaints don't ruin the immersion for you like they did for me, you could have a pretty enjoyable VN experience with this (I'd say my experience was ruined by having read much much better VN's ;p)

[TheDukeGrand]

I'm surprised to see nobody has mentioned Sengoku Rance yet!

Sengoku Rance takes place in Feudal Japan in the Sengoku Era. You play as Rance with his sidekick(slave) Sill who visits Japan for vacation. But instead they meet up with the Oda family which was once the ruling clan of Japan. You assume full command of Oda and set yourself a new task:

To bone all of the girls of Japan and conquer it as you go!

While the main goal of Rance doesn't seem to be the deepest, the game has a deep and nice turn based strategy game element to it with RPG elements to it! (leveling, items, abilities). You have X numbers of Fans which works as action points which you spent on the world map(over japan). Declaring war costs 1 action point for example and talking with one of your commanders costs another fan. Once you've used up your fans you end your turn and all the other clans of Japan do their things until it's your turn again. There are several thousand events in the game and there are multiple routes(you'll maybe unlock a few hundred events on your first playthrough of the True Story route. There are 3 other routes unlocked after your first playthrough. Also you unlock FFA). Sengoku Rance has a very big cast of lovely and interesting characters with plenty of H-Scenes to boot!

When entering battle you pick up to a total of 6 commanders to fight the battle. Commanders have different types of units. A commander may be a tactician and serve as a buffer. Another commander may be a miko squad which heals and uses ranged attacks. There are several types of commanders, each with their own type of soldiers and abilites. Battles have X number of turns so battles don't last forever. There's a bar ontop which shows the win ratio. If you take heavy losses your ratio will fall. And even if your army is alive, when the turns have run out. you will loose. It's not always a battle to the death! When defending a territory(village, town or castle) with castle providing the defending player a very big boost to his win/lose ratio.

Play for the hentai, stay for the AWESOME Story and Turn Based Strategy! With very nice replay value! (There's even a record screen which shows which characters you've cleared, what events you've done and what endings you've finished). Also, there is a FFA mode where you can play as any clan of Japan. You don't know how hard this game is until you've tried to conquer japan as Imagawa(Hanny)

The only negative i can think of(for some people, i don't really mind it at all) is the lack of voice acting. The game has rocking music to boot! Probably the best soundtrack i've heard in a VN ever! Loads of good humor and the game even brought me to tears a few times because you grow attachment to the characters.

I've only played a few VN's: Ever17, Swan Song, Saya no Uta. But i say that Sengoku Rance has turned out to be the best! With Saya no Uta being a close second!

Here's a nice video for those interested. Shows some gameplay and characters:


Yes, the game is fully translated and can be easily found on the internet. The patcher provided by the translation groups installs your japanese .iso of Sengoku Rance and patches it up to the latest official patch and translates the game! Pure genious if you ask me! No applocale or other programs needed!

[TheDukeGrand]

I should've registered... Somehow managed to use Img code instead of URL. Sorry!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tj_2y22K ... re=related

[Dollywitch]

Totally disagree with the R07 disrecommendations. I think Umineko especially has fallen victim to a small but vocal group of people who pick it apart and greatly overexagerrate it's flaws and have done so in such a harsh manner that makes fans look at it in a negative light. Part of the problem is that when a new episode got released, the various ch*s would fill up with fake or misinterpreted spoiler and people would get very angry at R07 for turning Lambdadelta into a cake or something. Even when these get explained away, it still leaves a bad taste and the negative view of the series as a whole that these revelations provided is not easily defeated. I think that because it does play around the reader even more than Ever 17 did, it opens itself up more to such criticisms, but it doesn't make it bad. Out of the VNs I've read, it's still the one that resonates with me most deeply, that I care the most about.

Also if nobody's mentioned it, while not a traditional VN, Digital: A Love Story.

[Dollywitch]

Though this post might not be helpful as I'll be mentioning a title that would require you to have a very firm and thorough grip on Japanese, try out Forest written by Hoshizora Meteor from Liar-Soft, the company Aura brought up in the mention of the ~WAB~ series. Granted, some simply won't get it and some might not appreciate how convoluted the presentation of information tends to be in-game, but it's by far the most unique and amazingly intricate title I've read. An original setting, deep characters, a rich writing style, this title gets progressively exciting and overwhelmingly enchanting if you choose to hang on through what you would at first deem a messy and bizarre presentation. At the risk of sounding like a broken record though, you really need a thoroughly fluent understanding of Japanese before you dive into this title, otherwise your thought process will perpetually circulate around the letters "WTF" from start to finish.

Oh man, I want to play forest so bad. It was a huge influence on Umineko from what I gather. Plus, goth loli witch. But it may never be translated. It makes me so frustrated.

[UrbanBas]

Also if nobody's mentioned it, while not a traditional VN, Digital: A Love Story.

That's a pretty good one. A bit hard once you get to a certain point but you can just go around it by saving then loading. Made by the same person who did "don't take it personally babe, it's just not your story" if I remember right. Though Digital is older.