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Teclo wrote:Reminds me of how it took me around a month of reading Ever 17 to get to a point shortly after it's revealed that the painfully generic hostess character is actually an AI hologram, at which point I thought "Oh boy here we go again - a handful of cookie-cutter characters with no soul but with some dumb, one-note back story, like most other "good" VNs ever".

I have to say that I didn't have problems with either the pacing or the characters of Ever 17.
Yes, that VN is very text heavy and lacking in the action department, so if that's not your thing you might be disappointed, but every character is exactly who he/she needs to be to make the story work.
And it's a story that no one should miss out on.

Qaenyin wrote: MuvLuv Extra was stunningly bad on purpose. The entire point of MuvLuv Extra was to be stunningly bad.

Well they succeeded. To the degree that I will never touch an âge game again. I have better things to do than be trolled by smartass moe peddlers.

If you ask me looking only at what gets US releases and patches VNs that start out appearing as a school story when suddenly out of left field supernatural elements come into play (I'm looking at you Key) are more common and cliche than a straight forward school story. Now if you want to talk trash MuvLuv Unlimited was trash although, I guess it was necessary to start out the story for alternative.

delta wrote:

Qaenyin wrote: MuvLuv Extra was stunningly bad on purpose. The entire point of MuvLuv Extra was to be stunningly bad.

Well they succeeded. To the degree that I will never touch an âge game again. I have better things to do than be trolled by smartass moe peddlers.

Fair enough. I have to admit I had a really difficult time stomaching it myself, although I love how it was toyed with in the trilogy as a collective story. I will say that it feels a lot like something that can only be enjoyed in hindsight and not during reading though(which... while I guess can work for an artistic statement can be a poor choice as an opening to a trilogy, since you'll drive off your target audience before they get to a point they'll actually enjoy the story).

I have never actually played(or watched the anime adaptation of) Kimi ga nozomu eien, but I hear it has much of the same structure(starts out really cliche and generic looking and quickly becomes an extremely dark tragedy), so I guess this is kind of a "thing" with âge.

Teclo wrote:So what about something that actually has a good story and interesting setting?

Started thinking about what I've been reading lately which I can recommend. Keep in mind that I don't take games and fiction especially seriously. If I start it up on my computer or console, then I'm already halfway to enjoying it... since I tend to spend too much free time online, and end up neglecting most of my games and stories. I say this even though I'm aware that Sturgeon's Law is true in every genre and media form. So if some of my recommendations may not meet someone's quality standards, then I apologize... I just happened to like 'em, that's all.

Trying to think of quality recent stuff written in English... "One Billion Rupiah Girl" is a freeware kinetic novel. It's a setting which has not previously been explored (modern Indonesia), and I thought it was a fascinating story about greed and poverty. Find it at http://www.renai.us/game/1brg.shtml

Trying to think of quality translated stuff... One of the games I've been sitting on is the DS game 999. I've heard it's a dark survival story with puzzles. It's been getting good press even from relatively mainstream and strongly opinionated sites such as Destructoid. And it's from Chunsoft, the company which has made some classic non-romance VNs for years and years. I really should take it off my shelf, since my most recently played games include LovePlus (not original, but I'm fascinated by the gameplay) and Canvas 2 (unremarkable harem game, but I like about three of the characters).

Qaenyin wrote:Also Teclo I think the real problem with plots like that imo, isn't that they pull out these random off the wall backgrounds. I think what's awful about it is that they do that, and don't even make the backgrounds relevant to the character's personality and their development. It's kinda why I can't stand Key VNs at all. Every single damn character is some moe blob with a background that has no actual relevance to their character in any way, and doesn't actually get any development or resolution before the end. It feels like you could just ad-lib their background and get much the same result.

Yes, that's exactly it. To go one further, it's not just that it has no general relevance to their personality, it's that it's not a normal developmental thing - it's some random cod-philosophy/existentialism bullshit. The writer isn't very good, has no actual talent, so her backstory can't be something intelligently written, ambiguous and well-realised - no, it's that she's a vending machine AI program from a cola machine on Mars, and she gained self-awareness. Ever 17 had that in spades. After reading it for about a month, the entire plot seemed to be "Teenagers get stuck in facility, talk about random crap in a totally unconvincing way and play hide-and-seek. Oh, and one's an AI, one's a ghost or whatever the fuck - who even cares any more?" and that's what passes for story. It's like F/SN - the whole "WHAT A TWEEST!" nature of that wasn't based on drama, writing skill or things the author has observed from human behaviour; no, it was "She's really King Arthur, he's really Herakles" and so on. Bolted on random comic book wankery.

So yeah, they write literally tens of thousands of words about fuck all, no observational merit or artistic merit, and then say "and actually Akira-san is actually a cup of coffee from 1932!" Not to be so cliché to use a Shakespeare example. but it's like the twist at the end of Romeo and Juliet not being that one of them was only feigning death, but that actually all the other characters are just NPCs in a VR program that Romeo and Juliet are playing in some Tokyo mall's arcade. It's more about writing a bucketful of nonsense with the promise that "all will be made clear" and then taking a huge technicolour dump into the bucket at the very end. It's sadder still that some fans then reach into the shit-filled bucket and try to mould a decent shape out of the enormous turd within. Umineko, I'm mainly looking at you.

gekiganwing wrote: "One Billion Rupiah Girl", "999, "LovePlus", "Canvas 2"

I'll check out those recommendations, though I've played 999. I thought it did human interaction a lot better than the usual VN, but still sadly seemed to boil down to some "he's a ghost, I'm a psychic reverberation" type ending. Still, it's something I've recommended myself despite that. I've also played Love Plus quite a lot. It's as you say - unoriginal and predictable but somehow compelling to play through. For one thing, and I'm not trying to use this to explain its success away so simply, but it's oddly novel to have the girl look at you, react to you directly, rather than just hundreds of preset sentences spoken into a void before you get to click "Go Home" or "Walk Around The School" or something. The other two I will certainly check out. I also played through The Stanley Parable, the game that delta recommended, and that's very good, very funny and very clever. It's not remotely anime-ish at all, it's just a very smart look at narrative in gaming. It'll take about 20 minutes to try it all out, so give it a shot.

Teclo wrote:Ever 17 had that in spades. After reading it for about a month, the entire plot seemed to be "Teenagers get stuck in facility, talk about random crap in a totally unconvincing way and play hide-and-seek.

True enough, but what makes anyone like Ever17 is entirely in the last 20% or so. It was one of the first VNs I read and I was not fed up with formulas back then, so if I read it today it's likely I would not get to the end. But I still say in that particular case it's worth it.

And before anyone says it: The difference between Ever17 and Cross Channel and MuvLuv Extra is that Ever17 is merely somewhat lame, generic, slow and boring early on, while the others are actively aggravating. In the case of CC I even hammered on through the promised great ending and it turned out to be far too short and not good enough to be worth it. Based on that experience I'll skip on MLU/A.

Plus, funny you mentioned Umineko; I read that up to 7 and will read the rest once 8 is translated. It's very terrible but it's terrible in a way that still keeps you reading - i.e., it's not boring crap with the promise of it getting better at the end, at least it tries to deliver constantly. I would never recommend it outright though.

delta wrote:Plus, funny you mentioned Umineko; I read that up to 7 and will read the rest once 8 is translated. It's very terrible but it's terrible in a way that still keeps you reading - i.e., it's not boring crap with the promise of it getting better at the end, at least it tries to deliver constantly. I would never recommend it outright though.

Yeah I have to agree on that. Ryukishi07 focused on presentation by far over story, so while from a critical standpoint it's bad, it's a fun ride nonetheless.

Honestly I'm of the opinion that excellent presentation can carry a terrible story far better than an amazing story can carry awful presentation.

Qaenyin wrote:Honestly I'm of the opinion that excellent presentation can carry a terrible story far better than an amazing story can carry awful presentation.

My opinion is the oposite, but then I'm old enough to remember when EGA was State of the Art...
Besides, I'd rather read a good book with no graphics at all than a stunningly presented VN with a crapy story.

I agree with you, Mirage. Great writing can overcome crappy art, but I've never found great art to be able to overcome crappy writing.

I just read this on crunchyroll and I had to share it. I don't knwo if it's trolling form the creators of this free visual novel but it certainly makes other visual novels' premises look better by comparison... I mean pigeons, really PIGEONS?! I don't know if this belongs here but since we are talking visual novels recommendations, this one I would onyl recommend to bird fetishe freaks

Crunchyroll wrote:check out the official site, which is plastered with notices that this is NOT an April Fool's joke.

Suspiciously Specific Denial

Is there any VN that really starts out strong? I've almost come to accept boring beginnings as a fact of the VN world (Though I've only read 4, Ever17 being by far my favorite.)

Not to be that guy, but even KS starts out kind of drab and there were definitely moments where I just didn't give a shit about what they were talking about. The heart attack itself gives the game a nice jolt of action and suspense, but the following scenes at the hospital really felt 30 minutes longer than it was. Ever17 starts out pretty boring, and the fact that in the very start you swap perspectives makes it a little confusing, but luckily it has some sweet action that starts up pretty fast, and after your first playthrough provides a good amount of little "Oh, so that's what's going on there" moments. Establishing a story is always a difficult process, and sadly I just haven't seen a VN pull me in just with its intro. It's always a "I know if I dig a bit, I will find gold" feeling.

griffon8 wrote:I agree with you, Mirage. Great writing can overcome crappy art, but I've never found great art to be able to overcome crappy writing.

Eh that's not really what I meant. Presentation is more than the graphics and art. Story is what happens. Presentation is HOW it happens, the dialogue, the art style(style, not quality), the music, etc.

Style is a matter of taste, and if the music is really horrible, I can turn it off and still read a good story.
I'm not sure what you mean by dialogue... I agree that if the writing style is bad, or if the characters say OOC things all the time it does detract from the story. Can't say I have any complaints about Ever17 in that department, though.