Visual Novels -

[GenociderSyo]

Just played Abyss of the Sacrifice it was pretty good.

 

[Marissa Moira]

Good to hear since you can't really purchase Vita games without the actual system anymore and I don't think physical ps4 copies are being produced anymore. Games like Uta need to stick around.

There's weird publishing disputes for it since some games are published by Atlus and some by NISA, same thing happened to Dangan Ronpa before Spike Chunsoft decided to self publish. Aquaplus may wind up doing the same eventually. They can't do the Trilogy Boxset for North America but there is one set to come out in Asia for the PS5.

Zan was a spinoff/retelling of Mask of Deception but with Action oriented combat. It was a competent attempt and actually less tedious to finish than the original.

It's been 3000 years.

And the Half Life fans are still in front of you.

 

[usoland]

Know anything that resembles Hotel Dusk/Kyle Hyde in general? Yeah, got around playing the sequel but I want more of these interactive VNs, Cing can't be the single dev that thought to do that, right?

Did you ever play Ghost Trick? It is a great 3ds mystery game, one of my favorites.

 

[Maurice Caine]

Did you ever play Ghost Trick? It is a great 3ds mystery game, one of my favorites.

I haven't, will check it out.

 

[Vapewizard]

Utawarerumono: Prelude of the Fallen now has a steam page and it's coming out next week.

Good to hear since you can't really purchase Vita games without the actual system anymore and I don't think physical ps4 copies are being produced anymore. Games like Uta need to stick around.

Cool, I was waiting for this. Part of me was considering pirating the original PC version since I prefer the sprites over the 3D models, but at the same time it's only fair to actually buy it legally on steam since it's a niche market that does need my money.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

I finished Umineko and Ciconia like 4 months ago and I'm finally posting about it now lol.

If you want the TL;DR, I like them both and I regret not reading Higurashi's VN instead of the anime.

Spoiler: Umineko Spoilers

This shit was good as fuck. I don't read VN's like this very often, but I was hooked the whole way through and I finished this in 2 months. I read this with the 07th mod and the voice acting from the PS3 port made this experience so much more enjoyable for me. The only couple of gripes I had with the story would be parts of Episode 1 being relatively slow in comparison to everything else.

If I had to rate the episodes in any particular order, it'd probably go something like: 3 > 6 > 5 > 2 > 7 > 1 > 8 > 4

Episodes 3 and 6 are tied for me for having some of the best moments and the best songs in the 25/10 OST. The logic error and the scenes right after that were so damn entertaining that I think I just read those parts for the entirety of one day, you couldn't get me to stop reading it. The endings of both of these parts are so memorable that I still get chills just thinking about it. They are also the two episodes that I managed to get the most information from as a whole. Episode 3 humanizing Beatrice was very sweet, but I saw her tricking Battler from miles away. I wasn't expecing Virgilia to be in on it too, that hurt. I managed to figure out who Beatrice really was by the end of Episode 6 and I at least knew the basics behind the epitaph riddle by Episode 3. Stand out tracks from Episode 6 and 3 would be Rhythm-changer, Miragecoordinator, ACTIVE PAIN, and birth of a new witch.

Episodes 5 and 2 were also both amazing episodes but aren't nearly as good as the top two. Episode 5 introduces one of the best characters, Dlanor, and has some of the best logic battles in Chiru. I will never not find it funny that right after Battler "jumped out" of the window, everyone in the family just went "yeah Kinzo would totally do that". The court scene as also another amazing logic battle that had me on the edge of my seat. It also brings be joy to see Erika getting BTFO over the smallest things. Episode 2 was a banger simply for the fact that Beatrice and Battler get to interact as much as they do. These two have enough charisma by themselves, but together they're so much fun to listen to. It was very fun to see Battler crying and making the most retarded theories on how to escape a closed room while Beato cackles and calls him incompetent. I wouldn't be sad if the rest of Umineko was just Beato shitting on Battler while he cries about not being able to escape a closed room. Stand out tracks from these two episodes would be Kuina, Patchwork chimera, Occultics-witch, and of course, worldenddominator.

Episodes 7 and 1 were good but had the lofty task of explaining a fuckton of exposition in a short amount of time. Episode 1 had to introduce 18 characters, the epitaph, the lore behind Beatrice, and probably something else that I'm forgetting. For the most part, Episode 1 did a good job. It does meander in some parts while doing so but once it reached the family conference where the family members tried to extort money out of Krauss and he counters the fuck out of them, the story picks up and I was locked in from there. A scene I really liked was when Maria was just singing over all of the dead corpses and the fact that she couldn't explain what the fuck had just happened to her. I really did think that part was just magic and that Maria was in on it the whole time. Episode 7 not only explained who Beatrice really was, but Kinzo's backstory, the origins of the gold and why it was on Rokkenjima, why everyone died after 12:00, the story of Lion, and the "real" culprits on Rokkenjima Prime. The start of the Episode confirmed Shakanontrice for me but since Episode 2, I thought I was spoiled on George being the true culprit and that he was using them to carry out his murders because some Italian faggot kept spamming his gay ass manifesto and his crackpot theories on to /a/ with broken English, so it was a real shock to me when Kyrie and Rudolf savagely killed everyone in the gold room. I kinda saw it from Kyrie based on events from Episode 3 and 6, but Rudolf? He was so goofy that I couldn't expect the guy to do it. Stand out tracks would be Kiri no Pithos, End of the World, l&d circulation, System 0, Prison strip.

I don't hate Episodes 4 and 8, I just think that the pacing of the Ange sections bogged down the rest of Episode 4 as a whole. The shit with Maria and Rosa was extremely sad though and hearing the meaning of "Uu-Uu" made me cry. Episode 4 also made me realize the true meaning of magic and how it was used throughout the previous episodes as well as dropping the bombshell that Kinzo was dead all along, which I really should've picked up on much earlier. Episode 8 was a nice ending which left me satisfied with not just the story as a whole, but Ange's story arc as a character. If I'm being completely honest, I wasn't feeling Ange as a character, it was sad to see her getting bullied and humilated by her classmates, but it wasn't enough to justify all her edge to me. Episode 8 helped vindicate Ange for me. These two episodes are also the most magic-centric ones which I'm not as much of a fan of in comparison to the tense logic-battles. Krauss vs Goat-kun, Gaap vs George, and Jessica vs Ronove were cool as fuck though. I did think the scenes with Ange in the Magic ending for Episode 8 were very sweet and Tohya being Battler, which I saw from a mile away, still managed to get something out of me when he said he was no longer Battler anymore and he wanted to discard that personality. Also lol small bombs. Stand out tracks would be Revelations, Resurrected replayer, DisCode, and Victima propiciatoria.

I haven't read Saku, Hane, and Tsubasa since I'm waiting for the Switch/PS4 port to come out later this month so I can read it with voice acting.

Since there are probably some people who read Umineko while it was coming out 10 years ago, I have some questions to ask about the story when it was happening. I don't expect an answer:

Did any English speaking people manage to solve the riddle of the Epitaph? I know it requires a lot of Japanese wordplay, but was somebody autistic enough to put the clues together and learn Japanese?

What was the earliest somebody managed to solve the true identity of Beatrice? I've heard things about people solving it by Episode 3 but I'm not sure if they managed to put the pieces together by like Episode 2.

What were some of the craziest theories that some people on forums about the culprit or in general?

How was each episode recieved when they were initially released?

also ronove best boy

Spoiler: Ciconia Spoilers

I think I may like this introduction more than Legend of the Golden Witch.

The bulk of Phase 1 is dedicated towards worldbuilding and character interactions, and it does a damn good job at acclimating the reader to the new world. I have no clue if Ciconia is a mystery like Umineko, but I see no reason for them to go this in depth with the world unless certain elements are being used later throughout the story. Phase 1 mainly focuses on the AOU cast and I think they did a good job of developing them as a whole. I really hope that the other nations get more development as well. When the ending happened, it made the buildup well worth it and gave me a fuckton of questions that I have no answers for. Ciconia has a lot of potential and I'm really excited to see how it goes.

After listening to the fantastic soundtrack of Umineko, I felt kind of burnt listening to Ciconia's OST. The soundtrack isn't nearly as dynamic or impactful as Umineko's but I have hope that the later phases will pick up the slack and send me home with some bangers. Some notable tracks were Yain no Rinkaku, Ominous3, Apocalypsis Ciconia ll, and Sunya no sora.

As for theories, I don't have many that haven't been said by other schizos on the internet. The only ones I have are that Vier is Jesstress and the underground lab doesn't exist, Koshka is the Rika/Bern of Ciconia, and that the "Pandora" that the scientists are referring to is the ability to loop.

It's kinda pointless to talk about Ciconia yet because we don't know shit about how it will proceed from here. On one hand the ending has the bad guys win decisively and the world is doomed, which suggests a loop. On the other hand there isn't the massive kill-em all that usually happens to justify going back in time, if anything, it has a lot of lingering plot threads.

 

[Marissa Moira]

Apparently the Vita port of Fate Stay/Night may wind up coming to the west after Fate/Extra Remaster but for the PS4/PS5.

Vita port is the family friendly version because it was also the same version brought from the PS2. But I figure there might be some remastering going on since the older art style doesn't mesh with how the Fate characters look now.

 

[HexFag]

It's kinda pointless to talk about Ciconia yet because we don't know shit about how it will proceed from here. On one hand the ending has the bad guys win decisively and the world is doomed, which suggests a loop. On the other hand there isn't the massive kill-em all that usually happens to justify going back in time, if anything, it has a lot of lingering plot threads.

Wouldn't the massive kill-em-all be the world going back to the state it was at the end of World War 3? I guess it is up to interpretation until we get Phase 2.

 

[LightDragonman1]

Once again, I keep trying to get into this medium with works like Muv-Luv and Fruit of Grisaia, but the sheer length of them (50+ hours!) means that I tend to give up partly through.

 

[Namesarehardtocomeupwith]

Utawarerumono is out now but there's no porn.
If I can't fuck cute animal ear girls after slogging over 50+ hours of trpg gameplay then what's the point?
Witsarunemitea did nothing wrong.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

Utawarerumono is out now but there's no porn.
If I can't fuck cute animal ear girls after slogging over 50+ hours of trpg gameplay then what's the point?
Witsarunemitea did nothing wrong.

You degenerate, who need more than head pats?

 

[Vapewizard]

Utawarerumono is out now but there's no porn.
If I can't fuck cute animal ear girls after slogging over 50+ hours of trpg gameplay then what's the point?
Witsarunemitea did nothing wrong.

It's for people like me who are interested in the setting and VNs with gameplay but aren't interested in porn that contains boobs.

 

[Axelle-ratio]

Once again, I keep trying to get into this medium with works like Muv-Luv and Fruit of Grisaia, but the sheer length of them (50+ hours!) means that I tend to give up partly through.

As much as I like Muv-Luv Alternative, there is at least 15 hours of monologuing that can become thick to slog through as it can get very samey. Maybe try a shorter one first? Saya No Uta is a good choice as its under ten hours. By reading a few good short-medium length ones it might be easier to stomach the 70+ hour behemoths like Muv Luv or When They Cry.

 

[usoland]

I will second Saya no Uta, sure it is a grotesque theme but the writing is actually pretty good if you can handle it. It's also really short.

 

[Erika Furudo]

I finished Umineko and Ciconia like 4 months ago and I'm finally posting about it now lol.

If you want the TL;DR, I like them both and I regret not reading Higurashi's VN instead of the anime.

Spoiler: Umineko Spoilers

This shit was good as fuck. I don't read VN's like this very often, but I was hooked the whole way through and I finished this in 2 months. I read this with the 07th mod and the voice acting from the PS3 port made this experience so much more enjoyable for me. The only couple of gripes I had with the story would be parts of Episode 1 being relatively slow in comparison to everything else.

If I had to rate the episodes in any particular order, it'd probably go something like: 3 > 6 > 5 > 2 > 7 > 1 > 8 > 4

Episodes 3 and 6 are tied for me for having some of the best moments and the best songs in the 25/10 OST. The logic error and the scenes right after that were so damn entertaining that I think I just read those parts for the entirety of one day, you couldn't get me to stop reading it. The endings of both of these parts are so memorable that I still get chills just thinking about it. They are also the two episodes that I managed to get the most information from as a whole. Episode 3 humanizing Beatrice was very sweet, but I saw her tricking Battler from miles away. I wasn't expecing Virgilia to be in on it too, that hurt. I managed to figure out who Beatrice really was by the end of Episode 6 and I at least knew the basics behind the epitaph riddle by Episode 3. Stand out tracks from Episode 6 and 3 would be Rhythm-changer, Miragecoordinator, ACTIVE PAIN, and birth of a new witch.

Episodes 5 and 2 were also both amazing episodes but aren't nearly as good as the top two. Episode 5 introduces one of the best characters, Dlanor, and has some of the best logic battles in Chiru. I will never not find it funny that right after Battler "jumped out" of the window, everyone in the family just went "yeah Kinzo would totally do that". The court scene as also another amazing logic battle that had me on the edge of my seat. It also brings be joy to see Erika getting BTFO over the smallest things. Episode 2 was a banger simply for the fact that Beatrice and Battler get to interact as much as they do. These two have enough charisma by themselves, but together they're so much fun to listen to. It was very fun to see Battler crying and making the most retarded theories on how to escape a closed room while Beato cackles and calls him incompetent. I wouldn't be sad if the rest of Umineko was just Beato shitting on Battler while he cries about not being able to escape a closed room. Stand out tracks from these two episodes would be Kuina, Patchwork chimera, Occultics-witch, and of course, worldenddominator.

Episodes 7 and 1 were good but had the lofty task of explaining a fuckton of exposition in a short amount of time. Episode 1 had to introduce 18 characters, the epitaph, the lore behind Beatrice, and probably something else that I'm forgetting. For the most part, Episode 1 did a good job. It does meander in some parts while doing so but once it reached the family conference where the family members tried to extort money out of Krauss and he counters the fuck out of them, the story picks up and I was locked in from there. A scene I really liked was when Maria was just singing over all of the dead corpses and the fact that she couldn't explain what the fuck had just happened to her. I really did think that part was just magic and that Maria was in on it the whole time. Episode 7 not only explained who Beatrice really was, but Kinzo's backstory, the origins of the gold and why it was on Rokkenjima, why everyone died after 12:00, the story of Lion, and the "real" culprits on Rokkenjima Prime. The start of the Episode confirmed Shakanontrice for me but since Episode 2, I thought I was spoiled on George being the true culprit and that he was using them to carry out his murders because some Italian faggot kept spamming his gay ass manifesto and his crackpot theories on to /a/ with broken English, so it was a real shock to me when Kyrie and Rudolf savagely killed everyone in the gold room. I kinda saw it from Kyrie based on events from Episode 3 and 6, but Rudolf? He was so goofy that I couldn't expect the guy to do it. Stand out tracks would be Kiri no Pithos, End of the World, l&d circulation, System 0, Prison strip.

I don't hate Episodes 4 and 8, I just think that the pacing of the Ange sections bogged down the rest of Episode 4 as a whole. The shit with Maria and Rosa was extremely sad though and hearing the meaning of "Uu-Uu" made me cry. Episode 4 also made me realize the true meaning of magic and how it was used throughout the previous episodes as well as dropping the bombshell that Kinzo was dead all along, which I really should've picked up on much earlier. Episode 8 was a nice ending which left me satisfied with not just the story as a whole, but Ange's story arc as a character. If I'm being completely honest, I wasn't feeling Ange as a character, it was sad to see her getting bullied and humilated by her classmates, but it wasn't enough to justify all her edge to me. Episode 8 helped vindicate Ange for me. These two episodes are also the most magic-centric ones which I'm not as much of a fan of in comparison to the tense logic-battles. Krauss vs Goat-kun, Gaap vs George, and Jessica vs Ronove were cool as fuck though. I did think the scenes with Ange in the Magic ending for Episode 8 were very sweet and Tohya being Battler, which I saw from a mile away, still managed to get something out of me when he said he was no longer Battler anymore and he wanted to discard that personality. Also lol small bombs. Stand out tracks would be Revelations, Resurrected replayer, DisCode, and Victima propiciatoria.

I haven't read Saku, Hane, and Tsubasa since I'm waiting for the Switch/PS4 port to come out later this month so I can read it with voice acting.

Since there are probably some people who read Umineko while it was coming out 10 years ago, I have some questions to ask about the story when it was happening. I don't expect an answer:

Did any English speaking people manage to solve the riddle of the Epitaph? I know it requires a lot of Japanese wordplay, but was somebody autistic enough to put the clues together and learn Japanese?

What was the earliest somebody managed to solve the true identity of Beatrice? I've heard things about people solving it by Episode 3 but I'm not sure if they managed to put the pieces together by like Episode 2.

What were some of the craziest theories that some people on forums about the culprit or in general?

How was each episode recieved when they were initially released?

also ronove best boy

Spoiler: Ciconia Spoilers

I think I may like this introduction more than Legend of the Golden Witch.

The bulk of Phase 1 is dedicated towards worldbuilding and character interactions, and it does a damn good job at acclimating the reader to the new world. I have no clue if Ciconia is a mystery like Umineko, but I see no reason for them to go this in depth with the world unless certain elements are being used later throughout the story. Phase 1 mainly focuses on the AOU cast and I think they did a good job of developing them as a whole. I really hope that the other nations get more development as well. When the ending happened, it made the buildup well worth it and gave me a fuckton of questions that I have no answers for. Ciconia has a lot of potential and I'm really excited to see how it goes.

After listening to the fantastic soundtrack of Umineko, I felt kind of burnt listening to Ciconia's OST. The soundtrack isn't nearly as dynamic or impactful as Umineko's but I have hope that the later phases will pick up the slack and send me home with some bangers. Some notable tracks were Yain no Rinkaku, Ominous3, Apocalypsis Ciconia ll, and Sunya no sora.

As for theories, I don't have many that haven't been said by other schizos on the internet. The only ones I have are that Vier is Jesstress and the underground lab doesn't exist, Koshka is the Rika/Bern of Ciconia, and that the "Pandora" that the scientists are referring to is the ability to loop.

I will always be sad I uncovered a spoiler and it turned out to be THE spoiler for Umineko's culprit. I was only on episode 3 too. I'm not an old fan of Umineko, but do you know about the sheer autism that is Rosatrice? A guy made an 8+ hour long video series saying that the official answer was fake, and that it was really the witch Rosatrice. He removed the videos as the manga released and outright showed the official answer as being 100% true. But luckily people saved copies and reuploaded. If you didn't know about it, you now have an "old" autistic fan theory.

Spoiler

 

[HexFag]

I will always be sad I uncovered a spoiler and it turned out to be THE spoiler for Umineko's culprit. I was only on episode 3 too. I'm not an old fan of Umineko, but do you know about the sheer autism that is Rosatrice? A guy made an 8+ hour long video series saying that the official answer was fake, and that it was really the witch Rosatrice. He removed the videos as the manga released and outright showed the official answer as being 100% true. But luckily people saved copies and reuploaded. If you didn't know about it, you now have an "old" autistic fan theory.

I know of the Rosatrice video and I have seen a good chunk of it before realizing that if it were to be the case, it would outright ruin the themes of the story. I do have respect for something like that in comparison to Erikantrice since the videos at least make some kind of effort to put things together without outright ignoring segments of the story and these videos were made before the manga set the true culprit in stone. Also spoiler the video, the thumbnail is spoilery as hell.

 

[Erika Furudo]

Thanks, I'm a retard that didn't look at the thumbnail.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

Finished Our World is Ended. It's a pretty alright VN, with an absolutely great voice cast and a pretty hilarious script that can be pretty smart sometimes. Sadly the game's plot feels pretty unfocused and it kinda runs out of steam near the endpoint. Still a recommend if you want a funny VN. It also has one of the best introduction scenes in a VN, where the main character returns to his small game dev company that's making kusoge and is told by his boss to make hype and protect the game on a message board, only for the boss to and other coworkers to fuck it up even more.
An interesting part about the VN is that a lot of people online complained about the cast being unlikable, but I found it to be more realistic (despite being exaggerated for comedy) than the usual anime cast. It's people with their own shit going on and they are going to need time to become friends with a new part timer.

 

[GenociderSyo]

Any reccomendations of things to grab on my vita before the vita store closes?
Been a fan of 999, Psychopass, Corpse Party, Stein's Gate, etc.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

Any reccomendations of things to grab on my vita before the vita store closes?
Been a fan of 999, Psychopass, Corpse Party, Stein's Gate, etc.

Like I wrote in the thread about the topic, Dungeon Travelers 2 is a near perfect game that is criminally underappreciated. It's the only dungeon crawler I felt had more to it than the same old party member setup of tank-healer-dps. Also cute girls.