Visual Novels

[Stark]

Do the Zero Escape games count as Visual Novels? Because those are pretty great.

[laurenhiya21]

Do the Zero Escape games count as Visual Novels? Because those are pretty great.

I've only played a little bit of the first game (I couldn't get the DS emulator to work that well with it), but I'm pretty sure that the first and second games are visual novels. Not sure about the third one since they're seems to be some disagreement on whether it is or not.

Either way they all do look good to me. Only reason I havent given 999 another shot is that I'm waiting for the remaster.

[Exhuminator]

The Zero Escape games lean more towards adventure games than VNs. VNs typically don't have as much exploration or interactive puzzles as those do. True VNs are big on branching paths brought on by dialogue choices which lead to different endings, that's their primary form of "gameplay". Kind of like a Choose Your Own Adventure style book, but with actual choices few and far between. And I'm not saying that's a bad thing either. I'm just saying that adventure games and VNs are very different beasts.

[Stark]

Corpse Party? I started that one, haven't finished it yet.

Lauren, definitely give 999 another go, it's quite good and you have to play through it a couple of times to get the full experience.

[BoneSnapDeez]

The Zero Escape games lean more towards adventure games than VNs. VNs typically don't have as much exploration or interactive puzzles as those do. True VNs are big on branching paths brought on by dialogue choices which lead to different endings, that's their primary form of "gameplay". Kind of like a Choose Your Own Adventure style book, but with actual choices few and far between. And I'm not saying that's a bad thing either. I'm just saying that adventure games and VNs are very different beasts.

That reminds me - I played Suishō no Dragon (1986) earlier in the year which is either labeled as an adventure game or visual novel depending on who you ask. It has the trappings of an adventure game - exploration, inventory, some basic combat - but it's essentially impossible to truly "lose" and you could theoretically reach the game's end just by fumbling with all the options until you choose the correct one.

In other news, I have started to play eden* and am finding it enjoyable thus far.

Lauren, are you playing Lucy -The Eternity She Wished For-? That's another one that intrigued me. The original version of the game was Korean, from what I recall.

[laurenhiya21]

The Zero Escape games lean more towards adventure games than VNs. VNs typically don't have as much exploration or interactive puzzles as those do.

Ah ok, that does sound more like an adventure game to me. I had to take a bit of a guess since I was on my phone which was running out of battery. I just guessed it was considered a VN since it was on VNDB

Corpse Party? I started that one, haven't finished it yet.

Lauren, definitely give 999 another go, it's quite good and you have to play through it a couple of times to get the full experience.

Not sure I would consider Corpse Party a VN. I didn't finish it, but to me it felt more like I did more running around, looking for items to solve puzzles, and avoiding ghosts than reading VN sections. The sequel, Book of Shadows, I would say is a VN though, since the only gameplay bits seem to be choosing which room to go to or choosing an option of what you want the character to do. I thought it was pretty poorly written though so I wouldn't suggest reading it.

And I'll give 999 a go once the remastered version comes out next year. I'd much rather wait and play it on my TV or Vita than my DS (which is a bit busted right now).

Lauren, are you playing Lucy -The Eternity She Wished For-? That's another one that intrigued me. The original version of the game was Korean, from what I recall.

Yep, I just started playing it recently. I bought it on a bit of a whim since the ratings seemed good and if I didn't like it, I could always just return it. I'm only about an hour into it, but it seems enjoyable so far. The character art is on the low quality side (as in the art gets blurry when the characters get closer to the screen), but the premise seems interesting and there have been a few good funny bits. I'm a little worried that the main character might be going in the "really stupid main character" direction, but that's the only thing I'm not liking so far (and that's not exactly a big dislike as I don't know if he's going to be dumb or not yet ha).

[Exhuminator]

Since everybody will tell you 999 is amazing, allow me to be the one voice of discontent... my review from when I beat it in 2014:

999 is an interesting story, told in a highly inconvenient manner, via a badly designed game. The only way to uncover all of said interesting story is to replay this game six different times. A slow text speed, no way to instantly skip previously read dialogue (you can speed it up a little), and having to redo puzzles you've already beaten over and over makes replays not much fun. The graphics are competent at best, the puzzles are totally simplistic, but the OST is above average. Honestly the fact that 999 is so highly lauded says more about the general lack of good writing in video games than anything else.

I managed to get the "true ending" on my second pass, thankfully. Maybe the remaster version will fix some of the problems I had with it, but personally I found the original 999 to be a bit overly lauded. That said, I bothered to buy the sequels to 999, so I must not have TOTALLY hated it. Hope you like Sudoku!

[ElkinFencer10]

Corpse Party? I started that one, haven't finished it yet.

I would consider Corpse Party a VN, but it's DEFINITELY in that grey area between VN and adventure, and there's good reason why a lot of people don't consider it to be a VN.

[isiolia]

I managed to get the "true ending" on my second pass, thankfully. Maybe the remaster version will fix some of the problems I had with it, but personally I found the original 999 to be a bit overly lauded. That said, I bothered to buy the sequels to 999, so I must not have TOTALLY hated it. Hope you like Sudoku!

It's a good possibility, since Virtue's Last Reward improved a lot on jumping to story splits. I haven't played the latest one though.

[Reprise]

Since everybody will tell you 999 is amazing, allow me to be the one voice of discontent... my review from when I beat it in 2014:

999 is an interesting story, told in a highly inconvenient manner, via a badly designed game. The only way to uncover all of said interesting story is to replay this game six different times. A slow text speed, no way to instantly skip previously read dialogue (you can speed it up a little), and having to redo puzzles you've already beaten over and over makes replays not much fun. The graphics are competent at best, the puzzles are totally simplistic, but the OST is above average. Honestly the fact that 999 is so highly lauded says more about the general lack of good writing in video games than anything else.

I managed to get the "true ending" on my second pass, thankfully. Maybe the remaster version will fix some of the problems I had with it, but personally I found the original 999 to be a bit overly lauded. That said, I bothered to buy the sequels to 999, so I must not have TOTALLY hated it. Hope you like Sudoku!

I haven't played 999, but I'm so glad Virtue's Last Reward fixed all of those criticisms you mentioned. I do feel a bit silly jumping into the series with the second game though