Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
If you use an @yahoo.com email or any related Yahoo services, they have blocked us also due to "user complaints"
-UE
The prevalence of excuse plots among visual novels
I haven't even played a single VN and I'm already sick of all the excuse plots to get a male player-characters to interact with female characters, and have sexual relations with them.
Looking at Katahane: So there are realdolls ridiculously human robots, which I would guess are probably female. Well, at least one of them is, and she's named Belle, and is allegedly "beautiful". Oh, and there's an "aspiring actress" named Angelina as well. This isn't the worst of the lot by far, though...
I was looking through some other VNs and found this stuff:
Amusement Park: Your amusement park staff consists of cute girls.
Idols Galore!: You manage two superstar idols, who are presumably the two female characters on the cover. There's also a choice of your "lovely" assistant (who is presumably also female), as well as the "sexy" ex-idol co-manager (who is presumably also female). And there are provocative poses and panty shots on the cover already...like we can't see where this is going.
Kana Little Sister: So you play as the older brother to a sick little sister. Okay, nothing wrong with that, until I see that there's an "Uncensor Patch"...
Imouto Ijime: Just seeing the cover tells me I have to look no further for an excuse plot.
[I forgot the title]: There's this one that's like the amusement park one, but has a similarly gratuitous reason why the male player-character is working at an all-girls' school.
Gang Rape Club: ...no, just no.
Comments
This just in, porn plots aren't very good!
But yeah, a lot of eroge have pretty contrived excuses to get sex scenes in, but I don't think there's anything wrong with that. A plot is fine as long as serves the goals of the work, which in this case is porn, so...
I sure do hate it when the plumber is just there to fuck Sasha. What the heck is she gonna do about her leaking sink? It won't fix itself, goshdangit!
VNs have the extremely unfortunate problem of the medium mostly being porn.
If you ignore the porn, though, you get some really amazing stories like Higurashi, 999 and the Ace Attorney series.
Point taken.
Anyway, reading the synopsis of Family Project tells me that this might be a refreshing change from the "here's an excuse to have a harem" plot.
Anyone know how good it is?
On the other hand, My Girlfriend is the President seems to use an excuse plot in order to install the most important female character as the president of Japan.
The only visual novel I have seen that I've ever wanted to play is Planetarian.
I'm told that Katawa Shoujo is oh-so-deep but I have a hard time believing that.
"Sir, I think I know who touched your gun."
^^^ I don't know how good it is since I haven't played it, but Family Project is 18+, just so you know... There's a 15+ (i.e. with the porn scenes removed) version, but that version doesn't seem to be translated. (unless I'm looking at a different game than you are)
^^ I think Katawa Shoujo was written by a bunch of goons, wasn't it? From their usual perspective on things, it sounds like that has a decent chance of being better than par.
And what's Planetarian about?
Here's another excuse to get a harem: Pretty Soldier Wars A.D. 2048: You are the commander of a bunch of elite female supersoldiers.
^ Oh.
damnit.avi
I wouldn't call it deep, but the point of it was to take a concept that was initially supposed to be a parody and do it well, and I'd say the resul is pretty good.
^^ For future reference, use vndb.org to look up stuff about visual novels.
@glennmagusharvey:
The project was started on 4chan, actually.Can't find anything about Gadget Trial.NEVER MIND I was mistakenly searching tags> no sexual content
ooh
http://vndb.org/v107 ?
Also, I now want to play this game.
Hopefully it won't be a disappointment like Piece of Wonder was. (because that was a non-porn visual novel that was also a tactics game. Thus comparing it to this. Even though I guess this is a TBS, not an RPG)
> picture with clothes half off a girl
...okay, initial enthusiasm waning...
...still, could be worse, I guess.
Are such tactics games usually sucky?
I remember seeing web ads for Pretty Soldier Wars and it seemed to be another tactics game too.
I don't know. My experience with visual novels is extremely limited, and as such so is my experience with tactics/strategy visual novels. Piece of Wonder has bad gameplay and a bad story, Sakura Taisen V ~Saraba Itoshikihito yo~ has acceptable gameplay and a fun story. So presumably it depends on the game.
Fair enough.
Also, vndb says that Family Project has "low sexual content". Better than the craploads of stuff it showed for something like Pretty Soldier Wars, at least. Maybe I'll give that a spin eventually.
Edit: By "eventually" I also mean "if I ever actually come to like this genre at all, considering that I've never even played a single VN".
Basically it's after the end of the world, and you're salvaging stuff for your tribe or whatever, and you come upon a Planetarium and a robot girl within. What follows is a heartwrenching meditation on how the human race has failed, and what it means to be human. It's very bittersweet.
Notably, it's also not even a game. There are no choices to make, you just keep hitting the next button until the game ends.
Gimp Chicks is quite good because it's often more about Hisao than whichever route you're going down on: it still suffers a tad from the overly-introspective melancholy that plagues the genre, but at least he has a personality and struggles to overcome his own problems and attitudes instead of being a blank slate.
don't take it personally, babe, it just ain't your story is another fun distraction because of its cast of chan bastards.
That's called a Kinectic novel, Super Lazuli.
And the only VN I've played are Ace Attorney, Katawa Shoujo and Fate/Stay Night, which while a porn game, has a good plot, and and horrendously hilarious sex scenes.
You should play The Maiden Rape Assault - Violent Semen Inferno, the plot is pretty good and the sex scenes are very tasteful
Any story in which the Kashira Players from Revolutionary Girl Utena are made into a 4chan-style bulletin board is automatically a good story.
I'll also recommend Digital: A love story by the same author of Don't Take It Personally Babe
Wait, Christine Love wrote DTIPBIJAYS?
Interesting.
I do have Analogue on my radar, though that I have to go buy. Seems like JBridge liked it though.
Anyway, I played The Knife of the Traitor last night. Got one bad end. I think I need a flowchart.
Analogue is pretty good, if really really short.
Yeah, Christine Love wrote don't take it personally. I have yet to play Analogue, but Digital was pretty good.
Well, that's just annoying.
In my usual practice of researching works before getting into them, I looked up some videos of Gadget Trial on Youtube, then I looked it up on TV Tropes. Well, that was informative.
I've seen the page for Ever 17 before. So then I tried looking up Katahane.
Page blank, mysteriously locked.
And I have no fucking idea why. Because of an edit war? Because the work happened to have a little bit of sexual content? Because the work had a ton of sexual content? Because the work sexualized children? Because it contained rape fetishism? Because it was otherwise a significant source of drama? Because of persistent vandalism?
...and this is what I mean by my seeing TV Tropes as an information resource primarily. When I look up a random obscure work on TV Tropes, I want to see a basic summary of what it's about and what it's like.
And that's why I opposed the striking of offensive and distasteful works from TV Tropes. The correct solution lay elsewhere.
...anyway, back to vndb, to ask it to show more spoilers, and hope that the sexual content and technical content tabs don't spazz out on me again.
Psshhh, where's the fun in that?