Welcome!

By registering with us, you'll be able to discuss, share and private message with other members of our community.

SignUp Now!

Visual Novel Recommendations Megathread

Been a while huh.

My recommendation this time is the franchise which kickstarted the entire Oshi culture through anime/video games media, Sakura Wars.

I will be describing broadly just the main series where the VN aspect are the most prevalent, as of this post, only the 1st, 5th and 6th games has been released outside of Japan, with 1st in Russia and Chinese, and 5th and 6th in English. The 1st and 2nd games has an English patch (I'm sure you can find it easily out there :) ) and 3rd game's translation is currently being worked on.

So what's Sakura Wars? Well, think Fire Emblem, put it in alternate version of 1920s Japan where WWI didn't happen, remove all the boys (but not the homo subtext, this is important), leave just the harem, amped up the novel aspect by 400%, oh and add 6 meters tall steam-powered robots, and there you have it!

The story is a bog-standard VN where you work as a theatre usher by day and protector of Tokyo by night. alongside 6 girls (another 2 joined up later at the sequel) as a stage actresses. Unique to this series is the LIPS System, it's your usual multiple choices dialogue with a twist, as these are often timed and may even unlock new choice as you are getting closer to the countdown, there are some variation where you control how you gonna deliver the dialogue, be it loud and full of energy, or as silent as a mouse, or say nothing and let the timer run out, it's a viable choice. Your relation with the girls are going to affect their combat capabilities as well.

Ima stop here before I turn this post into a 4000 words article, if we're talking about Sega, this IP dwarfs Sonic by huge mile in Japan, play it, give it a try.
 
Prism Red said:
Been a while huh.

My recommendation this time is the franchise which kickstarted the entire Oshi culture through anime/video games media, Sakura Wars.

I will be describing broadly just the main series where the VN aspect are the most prevalent, as of this post, only the 1st, 5th and 6th games has been released outside of Japan, with 1st in Russia and Chinese, and 5th and 6th in English. The 1st and 2nd games has an English patch (I'm sure you can find it easily out there :) ) and 3rd game's translation is currently being worked on.

So what's Sakura Wars? Well, think Fire Emblem, put it in alternate version of 1920s Japan where WWI didn't happen, remove all the boys (but not the homo subtext, this is important), leave just the harem, amped up the novel aspect by 400%, oh and add 6 meters tall steam-powered robots, and there you have it!

The story is a bog-standard VN where you work as a theatre usher by day and protector of Tokyo by night. alongside 6 girls (another 2 joined up later at the sequel) as a stage actresses. Unique to this series is the LIPS System, it's your usual multiple choices dialogue with a twist, as these are often timed and may even unlock new choice as you are getting closer to the countdown, there are some variation where you control how you gonna deliver the dialogue, be it loud and full of energy, or as silent as a mouse, or say nothing and let the timer run out, it's a viable choice. Your relation with the girls are going to affect their combat capabilities as well.

Ima stop here before I turn this post into a 4000 words article, if we're talking about Sega, this IP dwarfs Sonic by huge mile in Japan, play it, give it a try.
Click to expand...
Its crazy that Sega never release these games in the west or at least in PAL. These games are huge in terms of gameplay, and each one gets progressively more in depth. If these games were released in the 10s-20s i think it would have been a smash hit. Especially when games like SMT Persona and Fire Emblem took a lot of inspiration from these games. There hasn't been anything like this in JPN well until the early 00s which says a lot from these games. VN back in the 90s were just classic choose your adventure types. Only game series that came somewhat close to having a lot of depth in the gameplay perspective and not in the VN aspect was either Princess Maker or Rance.
 
Nebulon_Galaxy said:
Its crazy that Sega never release these games in the west or at least in PAL. These games are huge in terms of gameplay, and each one gets progressively more in depth. If these games were released in the 10s-20s i think it would have been a smash hit. Especially when games like SMT Persona and Fire Emblem took a lot of inspiration from these games. There hasn't been anything like this in JPN well until the early 00s which says a lot from these games. VN back in the 90s were just classic choose your adventure types. Only game series that came somewhat close to having a lot of depth in the gameplay perspective and not in the VN aspect was either Princess Maker or Rance.
Click to expand...
I genuinely believe Rance could've reach this kind of hype, it's only held back by the fact that it was marketed as an eroge.
 
Prism Red said:
I genuinely believe Rance could've reach this kind of hype, it's only held back by the fact that it was marketed as an eroge.
Click to expand...
Agreed. Alicesoft would be a far bigger name if people could get over being prudes. Eroge as a whole is filled with great stuff that people are afraid of touching because acknowledging that people love sex is a taboo, and so a lot of stuff is either ignored, or had to have an all-ages remake.
 
Yousef said:
That all looks really damn good.
Click to expand...
MGQ is a pretty respectable JRPG series (it is not a VN), though it takes until relatively late in the second game to hit its true potential.
Free Friends 2 rattled around in my brain for a few months shy of ten years, now. I'm sure there's a lot of depth in there, but the me of nine years and one month ago wasn't able to quite determine why that was.
Love Escalator focuses on stealing your friend's girlfriend. I heard about it in the manga 16-Bit Sensation (it's about the eroge industry; would highly recommend a read, even if nobody has the last four chapters to get translated) and keep thinking about it.

Toushin Toshi II is just genuinely great. A sequel to Alicesoft's first good game, and it's centered around themes of corruption, misogyny, dehumanization, how society pushes you to be a bad person, how easy it is to become one, and how you shouldn't be one, anyway.
 
And speaking of all ages remakes...played ToHeart. Multi's route, at least. The game is really rough if you decide to pursue a first year on your first go, because the first half of the game has you play in Hiroyuki's first year. So you need to get through the entirety of March, one day at a time. And then you need to wait until that first year appears. And fuck you if you want to go after a different girl, because the route guide system immediately turns itself off with no way to put it back on if you break from it, so you need to play blind if you were to, say, load a save from April so that you don't need to slog through nothing happening in March.

I'm also really not a fan of the localization choices. Trying to cram a four year school naming convention into a three year one isn't good, and the other localization choices also suck. It feels like we're sliding back to "if we acknowledge Japan exists, we failed everyone reading this."

Beyond those very frustrating decisions, the game itself is decent, I suppose. I see why it had such a huge impact in the eroge market in 1997, but we aren't from that time. I'm really glad they allow you to switch to the classic voices, too, since a lot of the newer ones are very clearly "we are voicing a character" instead of trying to sound like a person. Not all, but most.

In short, the game is one of those ones that you play because it's historically important, rather than because it's good. That said, I'm doing Aoi's route next, and there's nothing I love more than violent girls. So who knows if that'll change.
 
Last edited:
Alright, Aoi route done in ToHeart. It dragged on near the end, so I ended up taking a few days' break.

Verdict is...it's fine. I see why this game is so important, and how it shaped the industry. But it doesn't hold up the way other old games like Tokimeki Memorial do. I might do Akari's route, but I think that's as far as I'd go. It doesn't seem worth my time.
 
Thanks Vivi, you reminded me this thread exist.

DEARDROPS

The main premise is about a former professional violinist who retired for some reason, he gave up playing violin and return to his hometown, where he live in a livehouse owned by his childhood friend. He eventually reignite his passion for music once again after seeing a live rock band performance, and so begins the story of 4 teenagers (and 1 old man) with attitude who banded together to rediscover their love for music.

The story is not too long and is focused on the drama rather than romance or seggs scenes, the heroines are obviously your band mates (minus the old man, sadly, curse of the bassist) each with their personal struggles, or the lack thereof in case of one of 'em, but in a good way. I vibe with the lead singer.
7/10 from me.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top