|
Oh hey, I didn't know this topic existed. I love VNs and since I just finished Root Double a few days ago I wanted to find somewhere to talk about it. In general I was a pretty big fan. That said the first route was also the best; it's hard for the game to top the nonstop suspense and mystery in Route A. The protagonist of Route B was also not all that good. Lastly the last route dragged on a little with the extended flashbacks. This was necessary for some characters, but the RAM section for Ena and Louise seemed unnecessary. The SSS mechanic was a novel way to play the game, but I feel like how you're supposed to interpret a high Senses value vs a low one got fuzzy as the game progressed. I used a guide, and the bad endings are very forgiving in terms of how to avoid them, so it didn't affect me much, but I see how it could be frustrating. That sounds like a lot of complaints, but the overall quality was still really high. The plot was very engaging and the last scene before the credits with Watase putting his ideals on the line to challenge Natsuhiko was a great way to end everything. I also liked how this game was a lot more grounded than Nakazawa's other works. The last VN I read that he was involved in was I/O. Talk about a huge shift! I imagine this is because he only came up with the concept for Root Double and it was written by a team under his supervision instead. You can recognize traces of his style; there's no shortage of philosophical and paranormal technobabble. But it never dives off the deep end, which I/O and Remember11 were very much guilty of. I was waiting for a big twist that never came, and really things were all the better for it. The characters were also well-written and complex. I think Watase was easily the most interesting, but I also like Ukita, Yuuri, and Subject N a lot. A very good read overall, perhaps a little worse than Ever17 in quality, which was my favorite Nakazawa VN. Now I have to find something else to read. I worry I've already read everything good though.
|
#
¿
May 16, 2016 22:36
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 25, 2024 21:33 |
|
|
Just finished Steins;Gate 0 myself. There were some great parts, but I felt some of the new characters were hit or miss. Actually I was a little disappointed in its treatment of Amadeus itself. Since Amadeus Kurisu was essentially an antagonistic force in most routes. The parts with Okabe, Amadeus, Maho, and Leskinen were by a pretty significant margin the most interesting to me. The other new characters and their plotlines were less gripping. However, I did appreciate that the old cast almost all got good moments that expanded my understanding of their characters beyond just what was in the original game. Just getting more of that is already worth it. And Vega and Altair was a great final route; that's really where I felt the sequel was able to perfectly capture the spirit of the original. Definitely worth it, just less even in quality overall.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 2, 2017 05:20
|
|
|
Wow, that's brutal. I've always wanted to own a physical copy of Ever17 too. I'm surprised it got bought so quickly, but then I guess it's actually kind of rare and valuable.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 17, 2017 01:24
|
|
|
Finished Fata Morgana, for the most part. Very good VN. I thought for the most part it did a good job of handling some difficult subjects. Though, it bugs me that the epilogue is trying to hook up Mell and Nellie. That's not at all where their relationship was going in Morgana's door! Still good though. I was particularly fond of Morgana, but the cast was overall great. I think the OST was also good, though I confess that I accidentally played through a pretty significant section of the game with BGM turned off and didn't notice. I think I'm going to chalk that one up to the writing being gripping. The art was... pretty bad, but then I don't know if I can complain about art quality with Higurashi and Umineko in my top VNs. One question. Apparently there's an achievement for reading through the game twice. Has anyone done that and is there some bonus epilogue or something that would make that worth it?
|
|
#
¿
Nov 25, 2017 01:11
|
|
|
Oh, I'll probably reread it at some point. I liked it enough to justify it and it's not even that long. Just wondering if there was some hidden content I was missing. I didn't bother with most of the dead ends either.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 25, 2017 01:44
|
|
|
I've been reading Raging Loop and think I must be not that far from the end of the main story? I finished Darkness and went back to get key 3, but then I had a surprising revelation and I wanted to put it here to look back on in case I'm completely crazy. They started discussing the mastermind who wants that giant monster thing to emerge, and that can only be Rikako, right? They said the loop restarts when the mastermind dies - She's crazy but alive at the end of Yomi, in Wit's last bad end she dies right next to Haruichi and in the proper end she is killed right before he dies and the loop resets, and in the route the monster actually shows up, it's only Haruichi, Meiko, and Rikako alive at that point, and the first two weren't originally in the game. I didn't think they would be going that direction with how the game was treating her like a saint or something, but that seems to be the implication. I've been enjoying it a lot though, and I wonder if it still has some crazy left to give.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 19, 2020 00:05
|
|
|
I just finished with the True Ending of Chaos;Child. Overall: It was very good. I liked Takuru quite a bit as a protagonist, and most of the cast was also good. I didn't think that much of Uki or Hana, but Takuru, Serika, Hinae, Nono, and Mio were all a lot of fun. The character routes were kind of a weak point overall. I know Nono's is well regarded, and I really liked her as Senri both there and in the true ending, but the conflict in that route is really dumb in the first place, considering it was a victimless crime. Hinae's route wasn't really Hinae at her best, and the ending was senselessly edgy even for the game with all the gruesome serial killings. Hana's route was pretty wild, but I was kind of disappointed at how having fantasy monsters roaming around the city wasn't enough to serve as a conflict so they had to make Wakui do it instead. And Uki's route was just kind of short and predictable. Serika as the villain in the common route was really good, and she has some great lines and expressions. I didn't like Sakuma much, though, and I thought he made for a pretty bad mastermind. Wakui was slightly more tolerable, maybe, but they could have easily been combined. Most of the Committee of 300 stuff in the series isn't good, it makes villains with confused motivations and vague methods. Which is why Serika makes for a much stronger presence, for sure. The Chaos Child twist in the true end really shocked me, for sure. I had to stop and think about it for a while because it seemed so crazy. That said, I'm not too sure what the point was. It wasn't a twist that explained many unanswered mysteries. I think the one that it did explain is why Mio was so sure Serika wasn't a psychic, which I had been wondering about. It felt a little forced, but it did catch me off guard, I'll give it that. I was happy with the True End overall, other than the aforementioned thing it was about what I expected.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 3, 2021 00:30
|
|
|
Dr. Video Games 0031 posted:You can safely ignore everything Tanaka Romeo has ever done except for Humanity Has Declined (LN/Anime) which is great. I thought he did most of the parts of Rewrite that were good, though. I've read some bad VNs, but I'll call out Never7 as a really bad entry in a good series.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 29, 2021 14:35
|
|
|
Speaking of Baldr Sky, I finished it earlier this week and thought it was pretty great, 9/10 level VN. Some parts of the finale I was more or less iffy on, but it was lots of fun, even the iffy parts. The big flaws probably are the repeated text, like was previously mentioned, and I was also fairly annoyed by everyone's terrible communication skills. Particularly grating in Chinatsu's route, even though I really liked Chinatsu as a character, but it was an endemic problem. By the time in the last route people were explaining the plot and Kou kept interjecting to tell them how impossible that was I really wanted to strangle the guy.
|
|
#
¿
May 29, 2021 20:40
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 25, 2024 21:33 |
|
|
Gato posted:e: also I swear I have no memory of the "quadrillion" inscription above the chapel - when was that mentioned? feels like the sort of detail I would normally have got really hung up on In fact it wasn't explicitly written out. Back in an earlier episode (2? because of the chapel murder?), George says there's an inscription in English but paraphrases it. However, I think Battler says something about m, b, t, q which is supposed to be your hint. And I think it comes up again in episode 4 during one of the Ange scenes.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 5, 2021 15:24
|
|