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.
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.
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.
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 played clicked 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.
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.
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!
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.
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
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.
Ever 17: The Out of InfinityI 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.
Me: You have wasted what little free time I have with a bad design choice that you could easily have avoided. Since I can’t skip your cut scenes, I will instead skip your games.
Elden Ring really got this right by playing the cool cut scene once and then every attempt after goes straight into the fight. Could’ve done with closer sites/shrines in a few of the fights, though
And the cool cutscenes are skippable even on your first time encountering the boss (great for multiple play throughs). The one run back I can remember being annoying is Rennala.
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