Welcome to the General VN Discussion thread!
If you have something you’d like to talk about but don’t think it’s worth posting as a separate thread this is the place for you.
- Did you start playing something new?
- Are there any games you’re looking forward to?
- Are you looking for suggestions on what to play?
- Do you have some feedback or questions about our community?
These and any other topics are welcome here - as long as they are VN or community related.
I’m following elevator’s example and copying my comment from the otome community o/
I’ve finally continued my current run of Jack Jeanne (an otome game by the Tokyo Ghoul author about an all-boys theatre school)! My wired headphones broke some time ago so I put off playing until I got new ones lol
I’m still on Soshiro’s route, and it’s a really…different experience? so far. I’ll get into it a little more detail in the spoiler, but he’s really struggling with not keeping up with his peers.
spoilers for Soshiro's route
In the first plays, Soshiro only gets minor roles, and he isn’t even picked for a role at all for the third one (at first). He really, really, struggles with not being able to perform on the same level as Suzu and the protag. I don’t really remember playing an otome game with a love interest who deals with this kind of issues before. At one point, he’s blaming himself for “destroying his own dream of performing on stage”. The VA is also doing an absolutely fantastic job of communicating this. I feel so bad for him ;v;
Last session, I played through a training camp section, where everyone practices a 15 minute mini-play about an aspiring singer and a tapir that wants to eat this dream of becoming a performer. Soshiro’s perspective really recontextualizes this whole scene, since the topic must hit super close to home for him.
Things will start looking up for him from the third play on, though, and I’m really curious to see how he’ll develop.
I’m also challenging myself to clear all rhythm games on extreme this time around, it’s not as hard as I expected \o/
Apart from that, I started watching Demily Pyro’s VODs of her of The Devil playthrough after already playing through all the available episodes myself. There’s quite a lot of foreshadowing for several plot points that I completely missed the first time around. Especially
of The Devil Episode 1 spoiler
How all of the windows in David’s flat are one-way due to his horrifying experience with a stalker
Huh, I actually looked at Jack Jeanne when browsing VNDB a few days ago so it’s funny to see it mentioned here. Spoilers sound pretty interesting, too bad I don’t have a switch to check it out myself. Maybe some day. Congrats on the rhythm sections!
I’m tempted by the of The Devil spoilers but I still need to play the damn thing (it’s on my PC, waiting… calling…). I’ll just bookmark this comment for later.
I got a switch just to play this game lol :,) Theres lots of other switch exclusive otome games as well
Also yes go play otDevil!! do it!!
I will, I just need to survive the next few… weeks, if I’m lucky. It’s not getting forgotten, that much I can promise.
I kinda forgot to post it yesterday (got a lot on my plate this week) but it’s here! Yay?
Some quick updates for the moment:
- The upcoming fan patch thread is (very slowly) growing, I should be able to finish a “good enough” initial draft to get us started this month.
- I played a kinetic novel called Girl of the Bakehouse ~ Withered. It’s the first project by MICA Team, developers responsible for Girls’ Frontline series and the first attempt at the universe shared by all their games. I’ll try to write a short separate post about the title since I liked it quite a bit.
- I decided to play and then drop Amagami. I like the writing, art, characters - pretty much everything except for a single feature: event map. Specifically, game has a huge event map were you pretty much choose which event with which character you’d like to play. Sounds neat, right? My problem has to do with another part of that which is game showing off every single piece of content you got locked out of.
It’s not a huge deal but every time this happens I got a huge case of fear of missing out which in turn made me less and less inclined to continue. I can’t tell you why exactly this single element stresses me out so much but it was enough to call it quits, even before I managed to finish a single route.
That’s all I have for now. Have fun everyone!
That’s so interesting: an event map would draw me in! I like graphs and seeing what I did and did not complete. But knowing FOMO affects you negatively and dropping it because of that is totally valid.
Yeah, the map itself is a pretty neat mechanic even if it can be a bit overwhelming initially (you can have dozens of option available at the same time, all of them time limited as the game runs on a calendar system). Here is how it looks in game - sorry for the blurry PS2 screenshot but I can’t make my own at the moment.
The whole thing is a shame because I really like the game, it’s just bringing the attention to locking the content that sours the mood. I DIDN’T EVEN WANT TO PLAY SOME OF THEM so why am I like this?
Anyway, it’s a fun choice for anyone who isn’t bothered by things like that.
Feel free to let me know if this is inappropriate, since I literally just copy/pasted it off the comment I put on the weekly what are you playing post in !otomegames@ani.social.
Went and played the Saintess of the Golden Bow demo. Haven’t explored different options yet, just one playthrough.
- MC is definitely her own person, and I like how she has realistic reactions to her situation but also still refuses to just give in—she pushes herself to make sure she’s taking action to get out of the situation. Has her own hangups about love which bodes very well for my drama appetite.
- Game is very pretty. Also torments me with the fact that out of all the dateable characters, I only like Noah’s sprite; for literally every other character I like their sprite including MC’s abusive dad. Just off looks he looks better than the LIs 😳 I like the personalities of all the guys though.
- +1 for quality of life features. I got times in the game where it’s clear I can make a choice to ask for exposition, but I’m pretty sure I could also not without being penalized. I also got the game explicitly telling me about the fact that the next choice I made would lock me on one guy’s route. Yay for having this information upfront for replays!
- I feel right at the beginning I was fed lots of different situations with romantic drama lurking and I am living for it.
Noah route spoiler
Died an extremely ho-hum death. It both felt logical, not unexpected or out of nowhere, and also like something I could not really bring myself to care about even though I liked the characters. Didn’t jerk any tears from me and it’s easy for me to cry at sad stuff in fiction. However we got reincarnated right after and then a “you hit the demo end!” message explaining that death isn’t the end. So I am going to guess this wasn’t supposed to be a hard-hitting emotional moment, and it’s more a part of cool exposition/a twist. I trust the writers so far.
I don’t mind, any comment related to VNs here is a win in my book. More so if they end up sharing new stuff to check out.
This one looks promising, I’ll have to add it to the list __φ(．．)
