The format of these posts is simple: let’s discuss a specific game or series!
Let’s discuss the Visual Novel genre of videogames. What are your favorites? What aspects do you like about it? What doesn’t work for you? Feel free to share any thoughts that come up, or react to other peoples comments. Let’s get the conversation going!
If you have any recommendations for games or series for the next post(s), please feel free to DM me or add it in a comment here (no guarantees of course).
Previous entries: Hollow Knight, Nintendo DS, Monster Hunter, Persona, Monkey Island, 8 Bit Era, Animal Crossing, Age of Empires, Super Mario, Deus Ex, Stardew Valley, The Sims, Half-Life, Earthbound / Mother, Mass Effect, Metroid, Journey, Resident Evil, Polybius, Tetris, Telltale Games, Kirby, LEGO Games, DOOM, Ori, Metal Gear, Slay the Spire
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They’ve all been mentioned, but I want to second my favorites of all time
- Pyre
- DDLC
- You me and Her a love story
- Slay the Princess
My roommate just finished ‘Until Then’ last night and she was crying her eyes out, so I know it’s gonna be good, I just haven’t played it yet.
Edit: I almost forgot Tsukihime! It’s great with a few different routes that wildly change what the story is about, so highly recommended!
Ever 17: The Out of Infinity I understand this game may be harder to find since its not on modern platform, but I strongly recommend Ever17.
Eye opening visual novel. Interesting set up, unexpected turn of events. One of the classics. Unfortunately the company went broke so the game is stuck on older platforms.
While Visual Novels are not my favourite genre, there are a few entries that I would like to highlight, because I enjoyed playing them quite a lot:
- Pyre: While it isn’t marketed as Visual Novel, it pretty much is one. To be precise, it is a Visual Novel with sports-game elements. The world-building in this one is excellent, as is the art. The visuals alone would make this game worth playing, but there is also the soundtrack, and the gameplay of the sports events is pretty fun too. Oh, and the story. This game really requires tough choices. It’s from the same studio that made Hades, Transistor and Bastion, and it shows.
- Griftlands: Again, not marketed as Visual Novel, despite very clearly being one. This one is a Visual Novel with card battles and deck-building. Just as with Pyre, the world-building in this one is outstanding. The card battles are well done. It’s no Slay the Spire, but it’s still pretty good. Also, it has some of the best jokes I have seen in games recently.
- Loren the Amazon Princess: Again a Visual Novel that is primarily marketed as something else - this time Role Playing Game. And to be honest, it has everything you would expect from an RPG: inventory management, character stats, JRPG-style turn-based battles, trading, a world map,… But it’s still pretty much a Visual Novel with RPG elements. It has a massive scope for an indie game, and is overall pretty well done. To be blatantly honest, I played this mainly for the RPG parts, but the story isn’t bad either, once one gets past the initial “I see your party has no rogue, mind if I join?” part. The setting is still being actively developed by the studio behind it, who have released several other visual novels (with and without RPG elements) set in the same world, with recurring characters.
Pyre was the game that made me get into visual novels. Took me about 10 minutes to go from ‘When do I get to the game part’ to ‘Idgaf about soccer please just keep talking to me’ and I think it’s because it wasn’t marketed as a VN. All in all, everything supergiant touches is gold.
Huge chunk of “visual novel” standard by Western-based site are not actually considered visual novel in Japan (and visual novel fandom).
For example, Danganronpa and Phoenix Wright are not visual novel, but “adventure games/ADV.”
Even Nintendo’s Emio English promotional call it adventure games.
Anonymous;Code has been sitting in my library for too long, I really want to get started on it already! Sci;Adv is my favourite VN series.
Anyway, I started this cutesy-looking visual novel “Island” last week. I’m sure nothing bad or unexpected will happen in this story.
I wanted to get into the Sci;Adv after playing all Steins;Gates, but on PSVita most are available, but only in Japanese. I did some research on what to play where, but I might know Japanese before I have played those games
I think the official translations have pretty much only targeted PC/PS4/XBox. Pretty sure there are also no fan ports on the Vita.
For the best experience, playing on PC via Steam is the ideal setup - that way you can also install fan patches by Comittee of Zero, because the official translations have some continuity issues (along with untranslated backgrounds, typos etc.)
There are some patches, at least for S;G Elite and the spinoffs, work was being done on Robotics Notes, which apparently was completed 2 years ago. So I can play that atleast!
But I don’t really like playing visual novels on my pc, I like to play them in bed before I go to sleep
Edit: Apparently Chaos;Child also got translated and ported to vita. Only Chaos;Head hasn’t been translated and that is apparently really difficult to do as well.
After that, only R;N DaSH and Anonymous;Code remain, but they haven’t been released on vita at all
Ace Attorney is a classic that has been remastered all the way up to PCs, would reccomend it.
I’ve gotta put this one out there because it will largely get overlooked every time the topic of “Visual Novel” gets brought up, but Digimon: Survive.
As a tactics RPG, it’s pretty mid. Character growth and customization exists, but isn’t quite as expansive as I’d like for that kind of game. It’s no Final Fantasy Tactics, for example, but comparing it to other tactics games doesn’t do it justice, because it’s one of the better-to-best written visual novels I have ever played.
Each of the endings explores the way small changes in circumstance can heavily impact people’s decisions, each of the characters and their partner monsters are oozing with personality, and some of the potential outcomes for each character represents some of the most wild, fucked up, and human emotional responses possible. Your decisions as the main character have minor impacts in the lines of which characters reach their end of their growth arcs, and which evolutions are available to your partner and some of your companions partners, and the collective value system limits which of the main branches you’re permitted to explore for your ending. Which it doesn’t boast the wide assortment of branching narrative paths that some visual novels take, it does still succeed in making your decisions feel like they matter.
And this is completely aside from the fact that it’s a Digimon game. A franchise widely viewed as “for children”, yet it engages with heavy existential themes and doesn’t shy from letting horrible things happen to good, and bad, people. People die, on screen, in ways I would not want small children to see. In a lot of ways, the game is a functional “reboot” of the franchise, sharing a lot of commonalities with Digimon Adventure, but using older characters, more serious mature themes, and never referencing the monsters as “digimon”. In fact, the term is only used once, during the epilogue of one of the endings, otherwise they’re referred to as Kemonogami, and treated like Yokai. They’re engrained in the history and legendsof the world, and it’s an amazing take on the franchise.
I’m gushing at this point, but what really matters is it’s an extremely well-written visual novel with competent enough Tactical RPG gameplay, and also currently on a rather deep Steam Sale. Cannot recommend it enough.
Doki Doki Literature Club is the GOAT. Can any VN gamers recommend something similar? Every other VN game I’ve tried had me wishing it was just a book and quitting before the end.
I haven’t gotten started on it yet, but “You and Me and Her” seems to be a common recommendation for fans of DDLC.
I haven’t played it (yet, it’s in my extensive backlog) and I don’t think it’s exactly the same, but have you checked out Slay the Princess?
It’s definitely not exactly DDLC, but it’s so good and unique I put it in the same ‘greatest VNs of all time’ category. Slay the Princess is a masterpiece, and I’d urge you to bump it up on your backlog!
Not necessarily a VN, but you might like Pony Island if you liked Doki Doki.
Digital: A Love Story is also an experience that was really powerful for me.
Pony island was awesome!
DDLC mods are pretty good too.
Blue skies is the best one IMO
I was unsure if choosing a specific visual novel would make the discussion too limited, so I decided to go with the genre as a whole for this thread.
Still, I sneakily used my favorite visual novel as the image: Steins;Gate! It was my first game in the genre. I bought it on a whim for PS Vita, after seeing the glowing review headlines that applauded it for its great story and music. Little did I know that this meant only story and music: there was barely any gameplay! This together with the fact that some of the tropes felt really strange to me at the time (I was not really into anime culture) made me regret my purchase and almost stop playing.
But somehow the story got its hooks in me. Only a tiny bit at first, but day after day I became more engrossed and looking forward to my play session. I read it mostly during the night while in bed, and it really took over my life for some time. Eventually I finished all routes and achieved the true ending, which is one of my favorite endings and stories in videogames as a whole.
Since then I’ve played lots of others. Some quick thoughts:
-999: a bit disappointing, the story felt very contrived and not as great as others experienced it.
-Virtue’s last reward: a real step up from the previous game, complex and satisfying story with a very meta twist to it!
-Zero Time Dilemma: often described as the worst in the series, but somehow this story really grabbed me from start to finish. The stakes were extremely high and while the story was very convoluted, the payoff worked for me.
-Danganronpa 1 and 2: very strange and over the top, but extremely well written mysteries with great presentation and soundtrack
-Ace Attorney: the first game in the series. I played it on switch and liked it, but didn’t love it. The humor felt to childlike for me at times.
-Planetarian: fantastic little gem of a game. Most visual novels will demand dozens of hours of your time, but this can be finished in less than 5 hours. Absolutely amazing.
-Muv-Luv Extra: I am currently finishing all routes for the first game in this trilogy, as I have heard multiple times that the 3rd one is incredible. I liked it most when it was just funny nonsense (it can be quite hilarious at times). The serious parts really didn’t hit home for me and a lot of the content feels a bit problematic and strange. I suppose some of this is culture, some of it satire and it was originally an erotic game so that might have something to do with it.
A little surprised to hear Zero Time Dilemma is seen as the weakest game of the trilogy. I played them all in a vacuum, never really engaging with the communities around the franchise, and I would never have said that myself.
If I had to pick, I’d argue that Virtue’s Last Reward was the “worst” one, but I am not happy about writing that. It was a great game that I enjoyed start to end, but ending on a “this will only make sense when the 3rd game releases in X years!” note leaves a really sour taste in my mouth. The other two games are complete experiences, and when I am playing a visual novel, the last thing I want is a cliffhanger “join us next time to find out!”
That said I think I enjoyed puzzles and philosophical musings of it the most out of the three? So my opinion is more about what was bad than what was good and should probably be discarded anyway.
It was a great game that I enjoyed start to end, but ending on a “this will only make sense when the 3rd game releases in X years!” note leaves a really sour taste in my mouth.
Well, one problem with ZTD is that it completely ignored the teaser in VLR’s epilogue. Actively contradicted it even.
I don’t think the teaser made VLR feel incomplete though, since it was also completely disconnected from VLR’s otherwise self-contained story.
999’s DS version—the original—had superb dialogue. Sadly they made it absorb all the narration way more rigmarolously than VLR’s.
(Fun fact: Makoto Naegi has a specific pattern on his hoodie.)
I’m a huge fan of otome visual novels, but I don’t think it’s something that many here would appreciate lol, so I’d rather talk about a different subgenre that I like, Danganronpa-esque VNs. Basically, these are crime novels involving a quickly shrinking group of characters with interactive elements. For me the entertaining part is that actually thinking about cases matters to progress the story. I love to guess “whodunit” based on clues and my own intuition.
Of these, there are 3 Danganronpa games (there’s a spin-off, but it has a vastly different gameplay). These are great to check out VNs in general if you don’t know if that’s your thing. They are very well-made, although their aesthetics may not be for everyone. The second one is my favourite, mainly because of its catchy tunes.
Zero Escape games - also a staple of this subgenre. They are half VN, half puzzle games. It’s a great sci-fi story involving time shenanigans, you’ll probably like it if you enjoyed Steins;Gate.
Kimi ga Shine - I really, really love this game! It’s a Japanese indie game made by one person, Nankidai. It’s available for free and also has a Steam version. It’s not complete yet, but it’s absolutely worth it to check out the content that already exists. What makes it stand out is that your choices have a great impact on the following story. An atmospheric, psychological game that feels very authentic. It has plenty of interaction, it’s not long and it’s fun to replay to make other choices.
I also love Ryukishi07’s VNs, “When They Cry” series. The art is admittedly ugly, but the stories are very intricate and convoluted in the best sense of the word.
I also love Ryukishi07’s VNs, “When They Cry” series. The art is admittedly ugly, but the stories are very intricate and convoluted in the best sense of the word.
The first of the “When They Cry” series are the only VNs I have ever
playedclicked through and it was surprisingly good, even for someone like me who isn’t into anime and kept me hooked through all the episodes. I highly recommend it.I’m a huge fan of otome visual novels, but I don’t think it’s something that many here would appreciate lol
Thanks, but it’s pretty dead at the moment.
Best way to fix that is to join in and post something!
Otome isn’t my personal interest (my sexuality goes the other way), so I don’t have much to say myself, but I’ve seen Elevator7009 trying to build a community first on kbin.social (before that site died) and then on kbin.run (before it died) and now there and I’d like to see her efforts succeed.
If you’re not interested, feel free to ignore it, but if you’d like a place on Lemmy for discussion, there are at least a few people there who’ve been trying their damnedest to get something going.
Admittedly, I’m too lazy and not that much online to help build a community. But thanks for spreading the word about this place anyway!
Doki Doki Literature Club & Danganronpa Trilogy got me into VNs. I’m also playing Digimon Survive, games by Spike Chunsoft, & anime VNs (Evangelion, Death Note). PSP & DS era seem to have a lot
I’ve played the Steins;Gate ones and DDLC. I like that it’s relaxing when I don’t feel like doing something super interactive and the branching paths when it comes to story is cool. I picked up Chaos;Head Noah which I haven’t started yet but look forward to getting into the other visual novels in to SciADV series.
Steam Deck has been how I’ve read them, and it’s been great with the suspend feature making it book like in getting into it and out of it convenient.
