Katawa Shoujo Act 1 Preview feedback thread

[Aura]

The latter

[ChaosEngine]

Gotcha. Sorry about that.

[Aura]

False positives are all right, cause you never know... it really might be an error.

[Jake Fuyou]

Actually, after playing the Clannad VN with an English patch recently, I must say I preferred the characters of KS to that. For one, the situation Hisao finds himself in, especially after having a heart attack in the snow scene, and the epilogue-type part in the hospital bed, was quite moving. You really felt after he was told he was going to Yamaku that he had been seriously screwed by life. So the reason for him being in the school, or to say the set-up for the whole story, felt real, and thus his apprehensions and his thoughts about starting in the school for the disabled felt real because you believed his reason for being there, and thus followed the story.

Plus the characters are great because they aren't really types, I mean Shizune isn't tsundere really, they all seem unique, not just a line up of the regular moes. All the characters all have something about them so to speak.

[vermithrx]

I had never even heard of VN's before coming here, but I have to say Katawa Shoujo has some of the most interesting-yet-believable characters of any story driven game I have played to date. Thank you for the wonderful experience this first act has been. I will be waiting with bated breath for the full game to be released.

There were a couple continuity issues I noticed, however. Forgive me if the following is somewhat confusing; It's hard to keep the diverging timelines straight in my head.
During the chapter A Private Lunch, Hisao's thoughts refer to a conversation with Muto in It Builds Character which does not occur if you follow Shizune's path and choose, "Wait for Shizune and Misha to come to a decision." during Lunch Evolution Theory because that bypasses it through Detour Ahead. You could have him instead refer to the unavoidable conversation he has with Yuuko after he scares away Hanako in Shared Library as it has a similar subject, but this isn't as appropriate for the other paths since the discussion with Muto would be fresh in his mind in those.

Also, if you follow Shizune's path and join the Student Council then switch to Emi's Path by racing her, when you get to An Aesthetics Hisao's thoughts imply that he has already heard Rin's Blind Boy Story from Things You Can Do. He couldn't have, though, because he was making festival stands with the Student Council at that time. Shizune's path bypasses it through Event Horizon.

[BcDed]

Wow nice work finding those errors although I hope the fix isn't to change the dialogue and is rather just to change the flow slightly because I like the part where Rin once again refers to the blind boy.

[Khaos]

First of all let me say, that this is awesome!
The developers did a marvelous job - and are still doing it - to handle the specific subject with such an ease and so naturally.
I'm especially impressed by the writing of the Shizune-route and the Rin-route. The former managed to make me really like the character I liked the least at the beginning, the latter is just ingenious, also those two have the best ends.

And now three issues I wanted to point out.

1. Scene completion?
I had a 100% scene completion though I hadn't played the Lilly-route yet. The only hints that I didn't have anything possible was, that the final picture in the gallery was missing apart from the thought, that there must be more. So how was I able to get the Lilly-end cleared without even playing it?

2. Hanako art

hanako.jpg (63.22 KiB) Viewed 6316 times

In the left picture, it looks like the scarred side of her face is somehow too big, like that part of her face was swollen. I don't know if this is intentional, since burn scars often tend to be thick, but it makes her look a bit odd, especially when compared to the right pic, where the burnt part of her face covers less area although from the perspective there should be more burnt area visible than on the left pic. Also in the right pic, her arms are too thin.

3. The endings of the demo.
While the endings of Shizune, Rin and Lilly where really nice, I think, the Hanako-end could've been extended a bit more in the evening, so they can have a firework-watching-scene, too, perhaps from the window of the tea-room. And the Emi-end with "going to bed early and no fireworks" was a bit disappointing as well.

[EnigmaticThief]

Well, here we go with my first post. While I can't comment much on the technical aspects, I do hope that I can give some good feedback on the demo's stylistic elements.

After playing through each girl's route, I can say that I enjoyed them all, but I won't go so far as to declare one 'better' than another right now since the time you can spend with each varies greatly. While Shizune's route ropes you in from the very beginning, you can only get off the ground with Emi at nearly the end of the chapter. Of the five girls, I would say that Shizune and Rin felt the most developed as of the end of chapter one, and I very much enjoyed the way Hisao started to approach each of them, responding to Shizune's mind games and Rin's philosophical tangents in turn. All routes had funny and sweet moments that were quite touching. And, of course, Kenji is one crazy mofo.

Visually, I would say that the demo surpassed my expectations, with the various movement and transitions used with the character sprites being very well done, not to mention the effects such as the fireworks and the "zoom out" used in the final scene on Shizune's route. Shizune certainly seems to have the most expressive variety of sprites of the main girls, however something struck me as strange. In all her sprites (besides one seen in the ending scene of her route) her hands are either hidden or occupied. I thought it strange that the player wouldn't see more active use of her hands in her various moods and gestures, but perhaps this was a deliberate choice to increase the impact of scenes like the one I just mentioned in parentheses. Another note in regards to Shizune, I thought that the pantyshot in the CG of her battle of words with Lily seemed a bit much. While imagining how Misha would intonate Shizune's veiled insults and the way the two rivals are glaring at each other (quite a feat by Lily) chip away at what seriousness their argument might have, that upskirt just destroys the rest of it. Aside from sprites, the I thought the photographed backgrounds worked very well, especially the slowly evolving courtyard with Rin's mural, and the opening cinema sequence was great.

For music, everything sounded appropriate; I didn't notice any glaring instances where the background theme clashed with the action on screen. Character themes all seemed to match their owners' personality, from Shizune's very collegiate-styled march to Hanako's whimsical clarinet melody.

In summary, I was very impressed with what you have so far, and can't wait to play the finished product.

[Ayla]

I've never played this type of game before so i was hesitant to start it but i have to say that i LOVED the end product. I really enjoyed working out how to get to each girls ending (though somehow i ended up with Lilly at the same time as Hanako - glitch?). Hanako is by far my favourite girl and i really liked the way that Lilly's ending lets her go out and have fun with people.
The storyline sucked me in straight away and i loved Hisao's personality. Especially when he came out with little sarcastic one liners in reaction to things people are saying.

I didn't really notice any glitches apart from the Lilly/Hanako one. I played through to Lilly's story last and got the final picture but somehow still have 2% to complete and one chapter missing (i checked and i played all the options) which seems to be a glitch but maybe i just didn't save in the right place.

I can't wait for the whole thing to come out. i want to know more about the characters and the story!

[Khaos]

I didn't really notice any glitches apart from the Lilly/Hanako one. I played through to Lilly's story last and got the final picture but somehow still have 2% to complete and one chapter missing (i checked and i played all the options) which seems to be a glitch but maybe i just didn't save in the right place.

I can't wait for the whole thing to come out. i want to know more about the characters and the story!

Wait...so you played through everything and are missing 2%, I hat 100% without even playing Lilly-route...wat?
What scene are you missing?

[potter]

probably " slow recovery" which is below "home field advantage" and above "no recovery".

You need two spesific answers/paths to get it

[linger]

- Kenji's theme is mixed too loud in comparison to the other music.
- Sometimes the writing is too bloated, should be more concise.
- Rin's route is too hard to get to D:

Also, I don't think there's anything wrong with the Shizune pantyshot

[Guest]

I didn't really notice any glitches apart from the Lilly/Hanako one. I played through to Lilly's story last and got the final picture but somehow still have 2% to complete and one chapter missing (i checked and i played all the options) which seems to be a glitch but maybe i just didn't save in the right place.

I can't wait for the whole thing to come out. i want to know more about the characters and the story!

That's not the Lilly/Hanako glitch. The Lilly/Hanako glitch is where you play through Hanako's route but the game acts as though you played through Lilly's as well.

You're almost certainly missing the scene... eh, I'll spoiler the rest.
...between Home Field Advantage and No Recovery. Almost everyone misses that one, because it's the hardest scene to get. If you made decisions completely randomly, you'd only have a 2.43% chance of actually winding up with that scene... assuming I did my math right. With the same assumption, compare that to something like... a 22.57% chance of ending up with Emi's festival scene.

[Guest]

- Rin's route is too hard to get to D:

1) That's intentional. Raita's initial notes specified that Rin should be hardest to get.
2) ...and it's also almost incorrect. I've said before that it feels like Rin is almost the default option.

Just avoid everyone else. If you don't make any mistakes then the art teacher shows up and you can join the club.

All the other girls have specific things for you to do, so the only reason why getting Rin is tough for most people is because there isn't anything before that point which seems to be heading for her.

[Khaos]

2) ...and it's also almost incorrect. I've said before that it feels like Rin is almost the default option.

But avoiding the others correctly without getting Kenji end is a bit difficult.