Your impressions and feelings before and after the game?

[Guest]

It's the menu from the demo.

[FissionXMailed]

It's the menu from the demo.

Noted.
Thanks for the answer.

It's probably the main menu, judging by the fact that the left-hand portion is cut off, which is where the menu options would be located.

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Yea I was assuming so, but didn't want to play that game. (I'm usually wrong when I do lol...)

[Tezzeret]

I actually had only heard of Katawa Shoujo from another forum i go to literally 7 days before it's release. At first i didn't think much of it. I summed it up to "it looks interesting but i'll just find out what happens from other people". Mainly becuase i've tried VNs before and found them excrutiatingly boring. So the release came and went and i saw people talking about and i thought "well it couldn't be that bad" and a few days ago i DL'd it and was instantly impressed.

All the girls seemed interesting but i was drawn to Rin, who still manages to captivate me and get all my attention on top of cursing my thoughts with her presence 24/7.

Long story short, didn't expect much came away very happy and i still haven't finished all the routes. My heart's gonna be a mess when all is said and done.

[encrypted12345]

Let's see,a few months ago, I heard from Tvtropes that this was tasteful. I generally trust it, so I tried out the demo and liked it.

By the time I played the demo, I had played a substantial number of visual novels, so I tried to predict which visual novel this would be most similar too. At first, I was thinking of Family Project or Yume Miru Kusuri, but I had a nagging feeling that those guesses were inaccurate. I didn't know why at the time; I just did. Above all, I prayed that this wouldn't end up like a Key Visual Arts Visual Novel. They are good, but I have qualms with their characterization and how they torture cute girls to extract tears from the audience. Something about KS told me that this plot strategy would be terrible.

So I went into the game as soon as I could, not knowing what to expect and was stunned by how good and unique it was. As a visual novel player, I would rate this a 9/10 albeit for different reasons than I usually rate visual novels that high.

Long story short, I usually rate visual novels high because of atmosphere or plot: Sengoku Rance, Fate Stay Night, Tsukihime, Sharin No Kuni, G-Senjou No Maou, the Afterstory section of Clannad and so on. The characters have to be interesting, sure, but they were never the strongest point. I really, really hate to say that Sengoku Rance has the most effective use of the concept of characters out of all of them since Sengoku Rance is as offensive as Katawa Shoujo is tasteful, but it's true. That comedic rape eroge effectively used a huge variety of characters to create a huge, breathing world and did it better than most other stories.

Only with Katawa Shoujo can I give a high score because of awesome-tier characterization and incredible amounts of realism. It's so earnest, I was genuinely moved. It so accurately portrayed ordinary human beings that it was extraordinary. It's so awe-inspiring that my eating patterns were out of whack for a few weeks after finishing the VN. So kudos, 4Leaf Studios.

[Raumulus]

I heard about it on the Escapist a month or so back and didn't think much of it at the time. I began looking up on it a while later and saw that nearly every person playing loved it. I gave it a shot, I thought it was going to be decent, just not anything special. Holy Hell, was i wrong. This is seriously one of the most well-written pieces of work I have ever seen and the music just adds to it tenfold.

[Althamus]

I generally keep in touch with gaming news, so I heard about this in dribs and drabs for about a month before it came out, mostly being slammed for being a game where you date crippled girls (gasp!). It didn't really register, except that it was generating a lot of press for being riské. I put it into the pigeon hole of "needs a lot of publicity to get players, probably sucks" and thought no more of it.

About a week after it came out, I was bored one evening with absolutely nothing whatsoever to do. I was just logging onto facebook for about the thousanth time that hour, and noticed one of my non-gamer friends had posted a link to a news website talking about KS's release. My memory was stirred, and despite the fact I've never played a dating game before, or read a VN, or anything really in this category, I thought that the game might help me pass a half-hour or so before it was time to go to bed.

I downloaded it, flicked through the website, and loaded it up.

I was presently surprised at the quality of it, but the first video, where Hisao is in the hospital blew me away in terms of what I was expecting and the professionalism of it. I immediately sat up straighter and took KS seriously. This wasn't something thrown together and relying on a dodgy topic to get viweers. This was something with merits of it's own.
By the time I was halfway through Act 1, I'd fallen in love with Emi, was shocked at how impressive the game was, and knew I would play it through to completion.

4am the next morning, I had finished my first runthrough, was utterly, utterly, utterly blown away by the game. Possibly exacerbated by the fact that I had gone from expecting it to be dire, and hoping it could take up half an hour of my time before I got bored, to being a flag-waving fanatic of KS, and with a die-cast certainty that I would play the game to 100% completion, and continue playing it after that point.

[Hyu]

Aamzing game.No problem during the first play but during the second it was different.Everything seemed wrong as if he was betraying the girl from the first play.
I'm probably the only one feeling this though.

[hickwarrior]

My memory is probably a little bit too muddled here and there. Nonetheless, I'll try to recall my impressions.

I was just reading this webcomic and afterwards the comments, something I usually do at that site. I noticed a discussion in it, where one user was saying that this VN* fetishizes(SP?) disabled people and then that same person going on to debate on how it can 'pollute' our gene pool and such. Anyway, people rushed to this VN's defense, saying it's got way more than that going for it. Of course, the stigma VNs have isn't out of my mind at all, but I got very curious and at one point and decided to give in. Maybe I shouldn't have done so in hindsight, but I'll get back to that.

right now, the VN is my 'guilty pleasure' due to the aforementioned stigma. It hit me right at my curious and subsequently plunged me into serious mode with depression. It made me think of relationships and how I see how it could work. It's kind of odd, but I've never been in one, which is where my curiousity came from. Of course, when it comes to emotions, my head's not screwed on right, not to mention downright removed from my body and in space. I'm pretty sure emotions play a huge part in a relationship, but I always would feel more like a white knight. Or like some idiot who just wants to have a romantic time with another girl. It's pretty much the realization that it's hard to get into a relationship with what I've seen around me that makes me feel depressed. Maybe it's just me, but all I see are girls that are barbie dolls. Even if that's space logic, it still is in my head and makes my shy away due to my stupid high expectations of how to present myself, something that makes me quite anxious. I'm already bad at social interactions and making myself clear at times.

Anyway, where was I? I think I trailed off too much. Ah yes, all those things combined make me feel depressed. So yea, KS made me realize a lot of this, even if it wasn't obvious. In a way, I'm thankful for it and curse it. thankful, since I know i have this, but curse it, since I am too embarassed to get this off of my chest by talking to someone about it.

Anyway, after I had played Emi's route, it felt odd... Odd at how natural it all felt. I can't place it in logic that easily, but every aspect of that story just felt right after one playthrough. My mind is still foggy of what really happened, but it definitely felt right. Even the H-scenes. It's so odd for me. I never thought I could experience this, but I did... That's another reason why I'm thankful for this VN. The experience is real and feels realistic. Even if there are quite a few things off, it still feels like that for me.

For me, this is and always will be, my emotional rollercoaster and turning point. It's best that whenever I want to explain what's going on with me right now, I can point at this VN and say 'that'.

*I use the term Visual Novel for myself, since it's not exactly a game. It's kind of interactive, but you still follow a story through someone's eyes. You make decisions for him, yes, but it still doesn't define a game for me.

[rk47]

Expected some kind of lulz fest and offensive content but got surprised with the 'clean' content. I'm still 'wow' at it. Even the sex scenes weren't overdone. Though the writing do drags and drop at some point, I find it a great effort for first time makers of such games. I don't play Visual Novels often and was expecting a few laughs out of it, but I couldn't make fun of it, really great.

It's like eating a foreign dish, expecting to puke in disgust, only to find it pleasantly savory.

[GamerJM]

Before playing the game I was expecting something more sexual. I wasn't going in expecting straight-up hentai, but I was expecting the sex scenes to be more copious. I think story-wise, I expected all of the routes to be a little bit like the way Shizune's was (but shorter), with filler and not as much development. I downloaded it because I wanted to get into H-Games and decided this would be a nice "bridge" game. While I haven't played any VNs prior to this I have played the Ace Attorney games so I expected the game to be a little bit like this.

What I got was fantastic obviously. I don't think KS is perfect by any means, but for what it's worth I can't think of a single free game better than it. The story is just really moving. I guess I felt a really personal connection to it since almost all of the themes/messages can be applied to my life in some way. I loved the characters, I loved the setting, I loved the drama, I just loved everything. I don't like the way some of the choices were handled, and I think all of the stories had pacing problems at one point or another, but everything else was fantastic.

[nyttyn]

Came in curious, having heard about it through the grape vine as something 4chan managed to spawn. Didn't have high expectations other then courosity. Played the demo, though "Holy shit this is actually pretty good." Wait two weeks for the release...

Quite frankly the most feels a novel has managed to make me have in quite some time. Also, I learned "Punctuality," which is now among my favorite words.
Also, I became extremely impressed by the dev team, who managed to kill my sex drive for the entire week I played it. That gets serious kudos.

[yipyapper]

I was hooked when I first saw Misha's drills. The rest was just icing on the cake.

[Megumeru]

This sums it up real nice (contains humor from SYD)

[ICEheaven102]

I thought KS would be some cripple pr0n like what a lot of people said, but once I played it, I got sucked into the game's amazing story and I cried on my first arc, Emi.

Love you Emi <3

[Pl4t0]

It's a tried and true story.

Before playing: I found out about Katawa Shoujo when I literally just glimpsed (and I mean glimpsed) the words "4chan", "hentai", and "game" in the headline of a random news post on a site that I don't even follow.
My attitude before playing: having been conditioned by other hentai games, "Fap time here I come!"
An hour in: finally realize I cannot just jam the spacebar and hope to stumble across the h-scenes. Characters begin to resonate.
Short while later: I was wrong...so very wrong about this game.

The rest is history.