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genericnick
Dec 26, 2012

On the off chance anyone here knows: Are Visual Novels big in China? Asking because VNs were really helpful when I was learning Japanese and I was thinking of trying Mandarin for a bit.

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genericnick
Dec 26, 2012

Inadequately posted:

Visual novels are fairly popular in China, there's loads of Chinese VNs on Steam although they don't really get as much traction in this thread as translated Japanese VNs or ones that were originally in English. Probably because there's not many of them with a particularly good English translation (often the best you'll get is 'functional'), but there's no shortage of them and if you're planning to read them in their native language that shouldn't be an issue (aside from the traditional/simplified Chinese split).

Hermitage: Strange Case Files is one I've been enjoying. You play as a bookstore manager who can't leave the building for some reason, but keep getting drawn into mysteries of a decidedly paranormal bent. The translation can occasionally be a little stilted, but it's understandable enough, though the English and Chinese versions are different games entirely so you can't switch between languages.

Another fairly popular one is Will: A Wonderful World. This one has a pretty neat concept: you wake up with the ability to hear and answer people's prayers, and by rearranging the events in the letters they send to you, you can alter their destinies. This one is available in English and has traditional and simplified Chinese as language options.

Knell of St Godhrkar is an indie one that popped up while I was browsing, revolving around multiple characters involved in a murder case. You'll see a bunch of Steam comments complaining about the translation, but those are fairly old and the translation has been significantly improved since then. It's free so you can't really go wrong with giving this one a shot.

Oh, and one that got rave reviews even when the English translation was machine-translated garbage was The Chrono Jotter, which recently got an actual proper English translation a few days ago. Highly recommend this one.

Thanks! Knell and Wonderful World seem like exactly what I was looking for.

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