Posts Tagged “Visual Novel”
When I told my friend I was going to buy a commercial OELVN to check it out, the response was “Why would you do that!?”

Even western fans of Japanese visual novels often frown upon the OELVN (Original English Language Visual Novel) community. Production qualities are always a concern, as the amateur teams formed by western enthusiasts simply have no chance of competing against fan-translated famous Japanese visual novel titles. But there’s always a start— the Key staffers’ first big title, ONE, certainly had neither good artwork nor detailed storywriting, even compared to animation from back then. But just as the early visual novels offered something different from the animanga medium, OELVNs have their own appeal. Yet as far as I can tell, OELVN groups haven’t made much progress at all in expanding over the recent years, especially in comparison to visnov localization companies like Mangagamers. Read the rest of this entry »
9 Comments »
A story of unrelenting revenge, heartfelt redemption, and everlasting love after ten years of agony…

G-Senjou no Maou [Lit: The Devil on G-string] is an Akabeisoft2 visual novel released in 2008. Made by the creators of Sharin no Kuni (my favorite), the acclaimed G-senjou with its combination of a suspenseful criminal schemes & detective mind games, brilliantly-executed character drama, an awesome & well-developed core cast, and one of the best story finales ever. For fans of non-generic visual novels who enjoy either a mystery thriller or a wonderful romance/drama, this is definitely a must-play~ (Much thanks to TLwiki for their wonderful Christmas present to the community) Read the rest of this entry »
24 Comments »
Merry Christmas everybody~! ^o^ Hope your holiday has been going great~! In the meantime this’ll be the final of my holiday post spam (seriously, 13! I’m spent! I have no clue how those episodic bloggers keep all this up xD)

It’s been preciously one year since I start playing Sharin no Kuni, Himawari no Shoujo, and compared to my 2010 anime experiences, this visual novel easily blew them all out of the water to take my #1 spot. With a unique premise, an imaginative background that was taken advantage of to its fullest, an awesome set of characters including one of the best protagonists ever, not to mention a high-impact dramatic buildup that would even have the famed Key staffers envious— this is one visual novel that’s a must-play if you’ve got any interest in the medium at all~ Read the rest of this entry »
11 Comments »
“This game is insane… I don’t mean insanely good or insanely bad, but that it leads to insanity.”

Remember 11: The Age of Infinity was developed by KID in 2004; it’s the last title in the Infinity series, which includes Never 7 and the hugely-popular Ever 17. It’s a mystery thriller visual novel that’s compared with the likes of When They Cry series at times. The story is fast-paced and addictive. The strange ‘body-displacing’ phenomenon will suck you in quickly and boggle your mind. But it’s also rather short— I got both good endings and most of the informative bad endings in just ~15 hours of game time; also unfortunately, the ending to Remember11 is extremely unsatisfying, and although amazing in its own rite, the limited revelations certainly don’t match up to its predecessor Ever17. Nevertheless, much thanks to its translation staff over at TLWiki. Read the rest of this entry »
5 Comments »
Much thanks to Dakkodango Translations for translating this game, although they really should think about investing in a game description page; I almost skipped this because I had little clue what it was about.

Eien no Aselia [Eng: Aselia the Eternal] is a visual novel strategy game hybrid made by Xuse nearly a decade ago, and unlike the usual visual novel, it’s got enough gameplay to be comparable to true SRPGs. While its story is rather straightforward for a visnov, Eien no Aselia remains remarkable in its own right by enveloping its audience with a vividly-depicted original fantasy world while engrossing them in an epic story balanced alongside addictive turn-based strategy mechanics. It’s essentially an epic fantasy adventure x military fiction stuck into a JRPG… somewhat like Utawarerumono, except better imo. Read the rest of this entry »
9 Comments »

Bad social reputation is something the Visual Novel fan has learned to accept. But if you thought the whole Rapelay incident didn’t really hurt our interest that much, think again…
The recent edit war between Minori (Wind, Ef) and the translation group NNL may just lead to the complete scrapping of the Eden translation project, one that is highly anticipated by the visnov community and reviewed by Choux to be “one of the best” with Shinkai-Makoto-worthy artwork. But while an entire community vents against Minori for being xenophobic, Minori explains themselves in self-defense, which included:
“Each country has their own culture.… we realized that there are countries that punish mere possession of problematic forms of expression… Currently, The bill that allows to limiting the content to all EROGEs is being discussed in the Diet because intellectuals and politicians said ‘Japanese EROGE were being problematic and troubled with the foreign countries.’”
Picking my memories brings up that Minori started their xenophobic streak because of the Rapelay incident.
Read the rest of this entry »
16 Comments »

My first impression was that this game is just outright ridiculous: premise of steam-powered transforming mechs launching from a secret base beneath a Broadway theater, stereotypical characters as flat as their cardboard cutout presentation, plenty of super-shounen tropes in the story… It’s even got weeaboo culture all over — especially when the opening scenes involve a half-Japanese half-Texan cowboy samurai featured as the main heroine… Wat? ( ̄~ ̄;)
But you know, I love not grinding, or worrying about experience distribution, or maximizing experience gain from every battle. Because in Sakura Wars V, you level up by talking and forging inter-party bonds, visual novel style; kind of like Persona social links, except better since it actually levels you up. So take all of that frustration out and add some fresh inventiveness to each battle (Valkyria Chronicles style, this is by the same dev team) and you have some real Tactical RPG gaming, like hopping between skyscraper roofs destroying artillery or an aerial battles in the New York City subway — yes really.
Read the rest of this entry »
13 Comments »
Netto first got me thinking when he reported the eroge industry to be in a state of peril, but I’ve been puting it off until this past weekend, when I (finally) finished Persona 4 and got started on my UK version of Agarest Wars. As one might guess, those two games are very much on the topic here.
 Tears to Tiara Visual Novel on the PS3 (those graphics aren’t bad at all)
The boundaries between JRPGs and Visual Novels has always been blurred. After all, IGN recently identified the JRPG “talking cardboard cutout” tradition in their Top 10 Ways to Fix JRPGs, and the most recognizable image of Visual Novels has got to be that windowed screenshot of bishoujo character CGs atop a classroom background with dialogue box beneath it. Not to mention, there are Visnov producers like Alice-soft (Rance) and that branch of Leaf/Aquaplus (Tears to Tiara, Utawarerumono) who seems to specialize in importing RPG elements into their Visnovs. But combining JRPG and Visnov elements goes far deeper than just the graphics corner-cutting of presentation or the addition of a basic combat system.
Read the rest of this entry »
4 Comments »
|