Mysterious Stranger wrote:
In all honesty the Kirimiya arc was the only one I really enjoyed. It was short, sweet and fun, and I liked it quite a bit. The Nekoko arc was alright. Though, here's hilariously supreme irony of YMK: the story that's all about drug abuse (i.e. Nekoko's) is the least surreal out of all three. Despite that, Nekoko had a decent ending, so I can't say I hated it. The Shiraki arc, though... oh boy, I'm fairly certain I loathed that one. Absolutely tedious up until a certain point, at which it just went insane, to a not-at-all-enjoyable degree. Seriously, one of the most ridiculous climaxes I've seen in quite some time. Ridiculous.
I had to use VNDB to find out which characters you were talking about, since I only ever hear people call them Mizuki and Aeka. Personally I had the exact opposite opinion in routes then you, although judging by the opinions I have seen it generally comes down to how much the player relates to them. Despite all the routes having being incredibly ridiculous at times, it still has many realistic elements within it. And yes, the Aeka climax was incredibly over the top and pretty damn stupid. How no one got arrested in that route was just bizarre.
Mysterious Stranger wrote:Overall, I thought it was decent enough. The sheer number of H-scenes was a consistent nuisance, though, and with the possible exception of the Kirimiya arc, I don't think it really covers its three "issues" nearly as well as KS did.
There are much better VNs out there then YMK however, and out of all of the popular non-nukiges it's probably the only VN with a ridiculously high amount of H scenes. The reason it is generally compared to KS is because of those realistic elements which is a surprisingly rare feat in most VNs.
Not sure whether you are still interested in School Days HQ, but I finished it not that long ago (although I didn't complete all the endings, there were too many) and confirm that you could do a hell of a lot better. It's probably the one VN that's more realistic than KS and YMK, but it has a huge amount of bugs and the stupidest set of characters around that they actually make Shirogane Takeru and Luka (from ML and MGQ respectively) look like geniuses, and that it a pretty impressive achievement. It's kinda like the VN form of a soap opera, so if you like those kind of things you may enjoy it and I personally thought it was slightly underrated, but it's still a mediocre VN at best.
OtakuNinja wrote:Clannad: From the same company as Kanon. The stories are longer, but I still prefer Kanon. It's still a very good VN, though.
How long is Clannad anyway? I've heard some people say it can take 80-100 hours to complete everything in it, but I have a feeling that they may be exaggerating a little. My experience in the 50+ hours VNs are limited as I have only played one so far, so I have no idea what the norm for them are.