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Mature The Visual Novel Thread

Oooh, VN thread... I can't recommend Studio Élan's VNs enough. Heart of the Woods especially has been one of my favorites lately. If you like supernatural occurences, pretty deep lore, and generational trauma (and also girls kissing), you'll love this one too!
 
Little Busters is my favorite VN. It's a really cute story about a high school boy and his childhood friends who recruit some schoolmates for a baseball team before one of their own graduates and leaves to get a job. The original version, console releases, and Steam version are all All Ages.

The same game studio, Key, also made Clannad, which is quite good.
 
Ace Attorney
Danganronpa
AI The Somnium Files
Digimon Survive (yep it counts)

Need I say more?
 
A lot of the VNs i enjoy have gameplay elements to them beyond just reading but some of the ones i enjoy are:

The Ace Attorney Franchise
Zero Escape 999
Hatoful Boyfriend (laugh at me all you want it has some genuinely interesting lore beneath the surface!)
Doki Doki Literature Club
Star Seeker in: the Secret of the Sorcerous Standoff

I would like to read more VNs in the future so i'm definitely open to recommendations!
 
my interest in VNs tends to jump between (murder) mysteries and otomes (although i admittedly have less experience with the latter :slowpoke:) i'd say my favorites of each are zero escape 999 (i like the trilogy as a whole!) and jack jeanne (i love kisa and sou hiiii <3)

unfortunately i haven't really made an effort to read any in a while :sadsola: i tried buried stars a while back, but i'd probably have to start from the beginning if i decide to pick it up again lol.
 
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a discord screenshot. max: 'being online is what iono would want'. message pinned notice. lisia: 'holy shit is this how you get me to do things'. max: 'shit dude maybe'.


This is how @WholesomeCryptid got me to post here. I'm doing great, thanks for asking! LOLLL

Visual novels... I'm probably going to talk a lot. Sorry. I'm not much of a gamer, but I adore visual novels so much. (I don't consider them games, but instead as another book format (like ebooks), but that is my own thing.) I like kinetic novels the most, where I don't make any choices, but not enough to shy away from playing novels with branching stories! Same thing if one has game elements! So long as it's more of a novel than a game, and I like the story, and it's not weird... I'm in. I'm picky, but I love falling into the worlds really good VNs create.

My favourite studio is undoubtedly KEY (they are the only exception to my no-male-oriented-bishoujo rule)... I love how they make genuinely emotional stories that do a good job of building up an actual story and actual connections with characters aside from romance. I know I'm always going to cry mutliple times whenever I start reading through any of their novels. Little Busters! is my favourite out of their stuff, though I'm due for a CLANNAD reread soon! I genuinely love Komari from LB! so much, like, we are scarily similar people... I've honestly always kind of shipped Riki with Kyousuke, not any of the girls. (Ditto for Kengo and Masato.) I'm currently reading through for the third or fourth time, and I've been having fun with it so far! I have vague memories of reading through when times weren't too good for me, so it's nice to know it's stuck with me all throughout this time. I like to think that their themes of sentimentality, loss, and fleetingness really shine through in my fanfic writing... (my older sister thinks so too (@Blanc ハロー!この話題について姉ちゃんから聴きたい!eyes emoji), which is very high praise to me, LOL!) I want to read Angel Beats! and AIR and KANON, too.

As you can maybe guess, in terms of genre, I mostly like novels that make me cry, LOL! Whether they're romance or not doesn't particularly matter, but I am quite picky... I'm hyper-aware that there are certain tropes present in way too many VNs, so in order to avoid them, I tend to stray away from playing bishoujo novels oriented towards men. KEY is the only studio that is my exception to this, as well as a little-known VN that I read at a very bad time in my life and still love to this day, despite it being a little rough around the edges in some parts. I am one of the two people in its English-speaking fandom, and a very good friend of mine is the other one LOL... a year ago, I translated a fan letter she wanted to send to the creator, and we got a response back, which was so cool! I own the manga of it, too, LOL.

I honestly really want to read so so so many otome novels, but it is very difficult for me to find the kind of fictional guy I'd like in them (←lesbian except for some anime boys), so I'm still kind of waiting to find the right one, and would love reccomendations! (I am very picky, but I can like bishonen, especially if they're feminine or blonde or white-haired or act cute, LOL...) Maybe Haatoful Boyfriend, @WholesomeCryptid has told me a lot about it, even though the romance kind of takes a backseat to the story... or hopefully Prince of Stride, since I own it and Kohinata and Kuga look pretty cute.

I don't know too much about BL novels, but I do have one on my to-read list (Hashihime of the old book town), and am excited to read through it sometime. I want to get into BL more, someday. With GL novels... I'm also picky because I frequently question whether I am the target audience for them (and not men), but I am convinced that everything Studio Élan touches is gold. @Mialentia got me Heart of the Woods recently and I need to read through it! My boyfriend (@ConfectionerMari hi. LOL) also got me another novel I was wanting (Love Curse) and heard about from a friend, so I want to read it, too. Back to Studio Élan, though... I'll quote a retrospective I had about Please Be Happy a few months ago, but rest assured, it made me cry again LOL.

I've had this in my mind for a while but have neglected to reply! My apologies... it's the sort of thing where it felt like a good idea to sit on.

I'm very out of touch with really any fandom opinion or discourse at all, so it's difficult for me to properly say 'this is underrated, I think, but it shouldn't be', ORZ... however, most of my favourites tend to be not super popular, so I can at least start there! It's cliche, as I've been re-reading it for the first time in a couple years, but the visual novel Please Be Happy is quite near and dear to my heart. Something about its premise is so relatable in many ways (becoming more deeply understanding of oneself, thanks to the kindness of newly met friends in a new place), but also very specific in others (which I won't go into, for fear of spoilering others, but I would imagine nobody here has ever been a fox). It's the sort of story I can't help but smile at because of how it combines bits of sentimentality and introspection with comfortable, joyful fun. 'Cosy', if I had to put it into words, though that feels a bit, mm, minimising or downplaying, somehow. And sure, perhaps it's a little painful in some parts, but that's mostly due to how I think back on myself reading it as a seventeen-or-so year old girl and how I very likely felt reading it, and juxtaposing it to myself now -- painful moments in media are lovely, too, they're something I treasure deeply.

The voice direction and especially soundtrack are wonderful as well, to the point where I often get a track or two stuck in my head LOL. The way that dialogue is presented onscreen feels very fresh and dynamic! Simply put, I firmly believe that even if it was an otome novel, I would still love it just as much as I do now... I guess you could say the GL part is a nice bonus, though it's not something I exactly seek out, typically. :chansey: despite being a lesbian ahaha; while I'm not too picky about if a romance is straight or not, anything that feels 'realistic' is forever what I prefer! though, my tolerance for male-oriented bishoujo novels that aren't made by KEY is very low. I also tend to have that sort of 'am I really the target audience, here' distrust when it comes to GL content in the end, anyways, but I've been continually impressed with everything Studio Elan puts out... I'm rambling very much right now, apologies. My TLDR for oftentimes preferring otome novels over yuri, or whatever. Shutting up now! Enjoy what you like, always! LOL

Anyways. Right. If I had to pick one... I think it'd be that one. It goes a bit deeper than that, I'm sure; I have some memories connected to when I first read it that may be colouring my thoughts, but I wholeheartedly reccommend it even with that in mind. It's the sort of thing I think should be seen as a 'must-read' novel, much more than whatever most people are saying. (No idea what they like, but.) So, yes! I'm finding it was as good as I thought it was before, so that should count for something. I want to go to Wellington, New Zealand, specifically because of it, also.
Wow! That's a lot of words! Way too many! I'm sorry! LOL.

Let's see... who to ask... @oran if I could ask the same of you, actually? :bulbaWave:

Let's see, what else... I'm really begging for more companies to release their novels as all-ages editions, please! (I want to own Hashihime on Steam, but I really don't want to have to skip through R18 scenes, grr. since I don't get why ppl want that anyways but I'm just a hater) I also really appreciate how KEY's Steam releases are bilingual, so I can press a button to switch from Japanese to English or vice versa... it's super fun to see how certain jokes are localised! I like visual novels because they feel more immersive and customisable than a regular novel, and they're oftentimes portable, too! (Loooove my PS Vita for this, I so badly wish people were still releasing novels on it.)

In terms of non-romance novels (well, we know Phoenix and Edgeworth are married, but) I really like Ace Attorney, too. I've only read the first game, but I'll get around to the others sometime! @oran need ur otome recs PLSSSS... the patient needs moe anime boys to live... OJPEDIOHOJDEFHR. Also, @ miss oran :enzap:, @recarmdra convinced me to start Zero Escape: 999 (under the promise she would guide me through it so I wouldn't see much triggering content), and I really am liking it so far even though I'm not far in! I adore Clover and Snake so so much (especially Clover!), and June is such a weirdgirl... I feel seen by both Clover and June. Would love to hear your thoughts sometime!

As you can see, I really love visual novels, LOL!!! I'm not good at reading them consistently because I... don't know what's wrong with me, but I want to change that. Hooray.

Maybe someday I'll work on that visual novel script I had when I was 16. It needs a lot of work, I'm sure, but maybe the story plot could be salvaged. :enzap:
 
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I'm trying to make one. It's actually not that hard.
i fantasize about making a vn all the time but unfortunately it requires a large amount of time and dedication to one project that i unfortunately lack. i wish you the best of luck in your visual novel endeavors!!!
 
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