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^^^ Meiya is lame, though to be fair so are all the other Muv-Luv girls. Muv-Luv is very entertaining and pretty good, but none of its love interests are particularly interesting as characters (I'll grant you that Meiya is probably the most interesting of them, though that isn't saying much). IIRC the other taller girl was pretty good. Forget her name, but the one with a weird sense of humor who didn't have glasses or pink hair or blue hair. One VN that is worth looking at and isn't as well known as a bunch of the stuff usually mentioned in threads like this is Key's "Rewrite." Rewrite is definitely very flawed in various ways, but I enjoyed reading it and thought the premise was fun (though the conclusion was a bit strange and I wasn't a big fan of what ended up being the "core romance"). For whatever reason it managed to hold my attention more than most VNs do. Namtab posted:So my umineko speculation for episode 1, which is entirely based on reading up to halfway through, is that the inevitable murders are someone trying to word for word copy the epitah Umineko is unquestionably the best VN and probably the best piece of media in the broad domain of "nerd media" (so stuff like anime, games, science fiction, etc). It's probably the only thing I can think of where "you need to fully understand it to appreciate it and most people who don't like it did not fully understand it" is actually true and not just pretentious (or a sign of bad writing). This isn't so much because it contains deep/complex ideas, but more just because of the way it communicates things. One thing worth mentioning - unless you speak/read Japanese, do not try to solve the epitaph. It isn't possible without knowing Japanese and also isn't really that necessary or helpful towards solving any of the series' core mysteries. There are a lot of intentional red herrings where the series misleads you by causing you to think about stuff that isn't that important (or over-complicate things that are actually as obvious as they appear), but this one is pretty safe to mention since there's not really any benefit to someone fruitlessly smashing their brain against it. Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 06:07 on Jan 27, 2020 |
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Jan 27, 2020 06:02
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Hungry posted:Rewrite is one of the few pieces of media to have ever made me physically angry because it clearly lacked a central editor and slam-dunked its own appeal/tone/characterisation through the floorboards in an intentional attempt to destroy itself. I actually kinda liked the wild variation in each route. Speaking of Rewrite, I have a question about its plot - Is it supposed to be the case that each route happened during one of the evolution cycles that kept getting re-done? That whole plot point, if I'm remembering it correctly, was strange because I'm pretty sure that the Earth literally isn't old enough to have multiple cycles of "humans evolving from scratch" (even if you assume things play out roughly the same each time for whatever reason). I generally liked the "lore" of that game otherwise. Most of the fantasy elements were kinda neat.
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Jan 28, 2020 04:55
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Super Jay Mann posted:Rewrite is my favorite Key VN, though I should point out that I'm not a fan of Key's usual work anyway so I found the rather stark tonal and structure departures in Rewrite to be welcome more than anything else. This is exactly how I feel - I don't like most of Key's other stuff (though I haven't played Little Busters, which is apparently high on the comedy and the common route of Rewrite was pretty funny), but I liked Rewrite a lot and hope they do more stuff like that in the future.
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Jan 28, 2020 21:28
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So I started playing Raging Loop. It's interesting so far. I guess the premise is basically like a game of mafia? edit: This Chikamochi guy owns Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 10:00 on Feb 1, 2020 |
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Feb 1, 2020 09:22
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Raging Loop is great so far, just finished the first route. Remains to be seen if everything will be tied together well, but it's definitely succeeding as a "page-turner." edit: Rikako is hilarious edit2: I also like how the protagonist is pretty savvy and usually speculates about the same stuff the player would speculate about Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 07:39 on Feb 2, 2020 |
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Feb 2, 2020 05:31
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Staying up too late playing this. I'm pretty sure that even with a sub-par ending this will still end up one of the better VNs I've played, just because of how engaging it is and how good the characters are.
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Feb 2, 2020 10:00
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I like (Raging Loop "Wit" route spoilers) being buddies with my big strong daddy in this route.Namtab posted:All in all I know this series plays around with narration and red words and whatnot, but I hope it'll tell me what the rules over the whole mystery are The advice I always give about Umineko (that avoids being spoiler-y at all) is that you want to focus at least as much on solving the mystery of the characters' circumstances and motivations as you do on the specific mechanics/logic. Stairmaster posted:Just got the true end of RL so while I'm waiting for everyone to catch up I'll just say this: rikkako is still best girl. I haven't finished yet (I'm on Wit route) but I agree with this sentiment so far. I actually like how early in this route the protagonist basically acknowledges how the stuff with Chiemi in the previous loop was basically a suspension bridge effect sorta situation and that he doesn't really know her well enough to think it's some kind of "true love" or anything.
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Feb 3, 2020 02:25
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lmao at Mocchi suddenly dropping Haruaki's pants at the beginning of the third route. edit: gently caress yes, this route is the sort of one that I expected would end up happening at some point To be honest this is worth playing even if the mysteries aren't resolved in a satisfying way; the "game" in each route is interesting enough on its own Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 08:31 on Feb 3, 2020 |
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Feb 3, 2020 07:54
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Just got to one of the Big Twists in Raging Loop. It was mostly a very good and well hinted-at twist (I started predicting it after the first parts of the Darkness route), but there's only one thing I'm a bit confused about (part immediately after Darkness route spoiler) after going through over 100 loops, wouldn't Chiemi have noticed the weird changes when you started looping? Haruaki never should have entered the village "legitimately" and participated in the feast until he started looping, since he only did that because of his memories. It's also a bit funny that after so many loops she still played the game seriously.
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Feb 5, 2020 07:50
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After reading some more Raging Loop (I think I just finished collecting all the "final keys"), I get the impression that the answer to my previous question is that by the time Haruaki appears Chiemi was already pretty "broken," and unlike Haruaki himself she wasn't very focused on "solving" the loops by that point. She had also already encountered a couple changes to the loops, so even though Haruaki definitely shook things up more than ever before, changes weren't completely unprecedented. It's still a bit strange that she was playing the games mostly normally at that point, but I can at least understand why she didn't immediately try to check if Haruaki was also a looper. Also, Kiyonosuke is really good. I like that guy and I'm happy that Haruaki also learned to appreciate him. edit: Finished Raging Loop (though haven't seen the revelation scenes and extra content yet). I really liked it a lot. While there were aspects of the ending that didn't blow me away or anything, there wasn't anything that really bugged me and I was satisfied. I'd like to see other stories in this setting. Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 05:43 on Feb 8, 2020 |
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Feb 7, 2020 20:29
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I finished AI: Somnium Files finally. I really liked it a whole lot - all the plot twists made sense and were satisfying. They were the sort of twists where I realized most of them soon before they were explicitly revealed. My one gripe about the ending is that you don't explicitly marry or at least get back in a relationship with Hitomi. I get that you're probably supposed to assume that it ended up happening in the future, but it would have been nice to see it made clearer. I actually really liked how this game seemed to be establishing that your character's love interest is an actual adult woman and was looking forward to that reunion after you remember who you were and return to your body. Also I guess Iris and Mizuki are sorta sisters now.
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Feb 10, 2020 05:57
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Endorph posted:As for the ending itself, I like the angle that most of it was manmade but Rikako's turn into Bargain Bin Kiara Sessyoin didn't do a lot for me. I'm fine with her being an antagonist but her personality suddenly going 'kyahaha i want to devour the people of Yamato' felt pretty boring. She got some funny lines after that was resolved ("I want to kill Fusaishi Haruaki.") but the abridged nature of the ending meant that shift back and forth didn't really have time to settle. Mocchi also felt like he was gonna do more at some point and then... kinda didn't. Chiemi was the focus of the wolves in the second route, and he mostly just was the guy who was right but didn't feel like acting on being right. I liked him as a character, at least. Yeah, this was a bit goofy. That whole part felt like it happened so fast. Like it reveals Rikako's heel turn and then within the next 5 minutes the situation is resolved. I was also confused about one of the plot points there. What exactly did she do to everyone in the village that had Haruaki freaking out? She didn't actually sleep with them all, right? But if it was just some ritual, then it wouldn't make sense to freak out about it. Endorph posted:There is also one plot point I'm kinda shaky on. In Darkness, why did Chiemi killing herself count as a kill for the wolves? It wasn't caused by them and they didn't lay a hand on her. I could see not wanting to risk it, like 'well she killed herself when we showed up, so maybe that counts as us doing it' but the characters just act like it obviously counts as their kill and literally everyone works off that assumption, even when the possibility is brought up in the feast. It's not a huge deal but it was the only time the logic of the game didn't click for me. When you take into account that it's man-made, it's not that strange that the folks managing it would be like "Hm...makes sense for the wolves to hesitate here. Guess we'll just leave it be."
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Mar 9, 2020 03:54
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The Colonel posted:finished episode 6 of umineko and the ep6 tea party scenes Episode 7 is great, possibly my favorite episode. Some good new music in it too. Did you understand anything after finishing Episode 6?
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Mar 13, 2020 08:26
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The Colonel posted:on ep 7 of umineko and i've really enjoyed it overall but uh I will always and frequently unhesitatingly claim that Umineko is the best VN; it's arguably the media opinion I feel the most confident with just stating outright with no qualifiers (and telling other people they're wrong for thinking otherwise, lol). I would go as far as to say that it's the best media falling within the broad category of "nerd media" (encompassing stuff like video games, anime, fantasy/sci-fi novels, etc). Ryuukishi07 understands and empathizes with human beings far better than the vast majority of writers in this domain. A lot of stuff is kind of difficult to understand on first playthrough (but in the good way where once you do understand it things "click" and nothing feels awkward), and I like this blog for going through the first four episodes (and some of the 5th) and commenting on things and how they connect to the series' mysteries, etc - https://goatsreadingseacats.tumblr.com/ (no one go to this link if they don't want spoilers) When I first read it, I noticed a lot of things that I completely missed on my first play-through (or that I didn't understand when they were happening). I mention this because it's entirely possible to miss a lot of important stuff while still enjoying the VN.
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Apr 9, 2020 01:21
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In retrospect Raging Loop was fairly flawed in a few ways, but it benefited from enjoyable characters and good music/voice acting. The plot was also coherent (which is more than you can say for many stories), though the ending and broader plot stuff was less interesting to me than the actual wolf games. I ended up enjoying it more than most VNs I've played. I'd probably put it on a similar level to Rewrite.
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May 22, 2020 16:50
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Supersonic Shine posted:I watched a Steamed Hams parody of Umineko and, no lie, it set me on a binge of a series that I thought would be too complex for my liking. lmao this is amazing. Anyone who has played Umineko should watch that.
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Jun 13, 2020 19:31
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MegaZeroX posted:I'm assuming it should only be watched by people that have finished it, right? Nah it's fine. The only people I might recommend against watching it are people who haven't played through Episode 1 yet (and even then not really for plot spoilers so much as stuff about how things are presented).
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Jun 13, 2020 20:28
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MegaZeroX posted:OK I watched it and without love it can't be steamed killed me. Ah yeah, you're right; forgot red text isn't introduced until then. Also you're correct about that music. I kinda wonder if they meant to use Golden Slaughterer instead, because the tracks are similar.
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Jun 14, 2020 02:05
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I forget exactly what happens in Terra. I remember that the general jist is that you want to show Kagari you resolving the conflict between Guardian and the Summoners, and the early parts show Kotarou going off to fight in Generic Middle East with Guardian but I forget how the actual conflict is resolved.
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Jul 30, 2020 05:19
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Stairmaster posted:the protag in this first story in muv-luv photon melodies is a huge dork i hope someone noogies his rear end Oh poo poo, I had no idea this was a thing. Completely ignoring games media pays off again! I keep finding out about big long-awaited games after they've already come out.
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Aug 4, 2020 05:05
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noether posted:idk if this is the best thread to talk about umineko spoilers but erika's story about her bad breakup left me with a totally different impression of what had been happening than she believes. Now, I could just say what my conclusion was, but I figured that writing it out as a mystery for people to solve would be much more in theme! I forget the exact details of that situation, but I remember thinking that Erika may have essentially driven her partner to behave in ways she perceived as being suspicious/a betrayal. You see this sort of thing pretty often in real life, where someone acts in ways that drive away their partner, but they perceive it as their partner betraying them in some way. That being said, I forget the specifics. I can't remember if Erika ever found any conclusive evidence.
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Sep 3, 2020 00:28
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Irony Be My Shield posted:Looking forward to it. MLA is great but I was always curious about what would happen after MLU My controversial opinion is that MLU is better than MLA.
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Jan 29, 2021 03:44
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Stairmaster posted:Its actually a pretty common take Ah, that's interesting - I pretty much always just see people talking about how much they like MLA.
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Feb 5, 2021 07:54
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Gnosia question that just came to mind and wasn't that clear from the in-game FAQ - do the "Agree/Defend/etc" follow-up dialogue options contribute to the hidden "players will get suspicious if you talk too much" metric? The FAQ mentions that they are safer and have lower impact, but it's not clear how much safer. Subjectively they don't seem to do much and other players usually only get on my case if I've directly spoken up 2+ times during a round.Namtab posted:My gnosia review is that its good, but you have to be really into werewolf I'm enjoying it a lot as well. I'm at loop...15 or so and have been putting a lot of stat points into Intuition, since it's handy being able to 100% know that someone is either Gnosia, AC Follower, or the Bug (through detecting lies). I haven't really figured out any clear "tells" beyond maybe the mute girl almost always being unreliable when she supports or doubts characters and the Gina thing someone else mentioned (edit: I just remembered one other tell that I think is fairly reliable - mute girl seems to almost always defend her fellow Gnosia if she's Gnosia, as opposed to others characters who aren't so obvious about it). Also, for some reason Chipie really hates me. Almost every game he hates me. I'm looking forward to getting more abilities. The ones that let you point out someone is a Definite Human/Gnosia sound really useful, since there have been a number of situations where there's obvious logical proof that someone is or isn't Gnosia and I can't tell other people. One minor "pointer" that I noticed yesterday that other people might not have is that "killing the person your fellow Gnosia (when player is Gnosia) recommends killing" seems to lead to events/dialogue with them. edit: I also enjoy the plot element of (extremely early minor spoiler) Setsu also going through the loops and treating it in the same sort of way the player does - they seem to have no problem with just telling the player what job they are, since they're also aware that there are no real stakes. psychoJ posted:yeah i'm enjoying it, i just wish there was more dialogue variation in the trials. also i love shigimichi but he keeps voting for me!! that son of a bitch!!! Yeah, the dialogue can be a bit awkward when, during the same round, a character will repeat the exact same thing multiple times. I heard you the first time! Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 01:49 on Mar 8, 2021 |
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Mar 8, 2021 01:39
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MegaZeroX posted:Seems to me that so long as you don't speak up directly more than once, they probably won't get on your case about it. Also seems to be on a scale on their character opinions. No one will say anything if you are confirmed, and your allies won't care. So if you speak up like twice, maybe one or two people that hate you will note it, but it shouldn't be too bad with good charm Yeah, with low charm it's usually a slippery slope where the instant someone starts complaining about you everyone else joins in (unless it's one of the characters that has a bad relationship with most of the other characters). When someone like crew Remnan (seemingly the dumbest guy who is slowest to distrust people) or crew Otome start suspecting you, something has gone wrong. Irony Be My Shield posted:The Say You're Human skill is very powerful but yeah, other than that I think Intuition is fairly ignorable. Once you get a feel for how the game works you can usually work out who the gnosia are in time without the Lie indicator, so it's more a matter of making sure the right person gets voted off (Charisma, Logic) and that you don't get killed yourself (Stealth as Crew, Performance as Gnosia). Charm you also need some amount of to not get randomly dogpiled on quiet days, and it also lets you be more aggressive without getting yourself voted off. That skill owns as long as no one stops it (if they do stop it I'll usually thrown some suspicion their way). Intuition + that skill is a nice crutch for finding at least one non-crew person, and knowing about one enemy person often makes it easier to figure out the others (and will also often let you know who the real engineer/doctor is, if the person who lied was one of those). I haven't really figured out how to detect gnosia (or other bad actors) without either detecting a lie (or having another character detect a lie and tell me) or having engineer/doctor reports.
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Mar 12, 2021 09:20
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MegaZeroX posted:I often figure things outside of logical stuff from (strategy spoilers I guess): Yeah, this is actually one other thing I notice sometimes - cliques that wouldn't normally make sense are often Gnosia. Though you have some characters who aren't reliable allies to fellow Gnosia, like Raqio and sometimes SQ. MegaZeroX posted:
In my experience this isn't reliable unless they're specifically calling out lies. When it comes to suspecting people, Comet and other high-intuition characters seem very unreliable and prone to suspecting people they dislike; she's only reliable when she says "this character is lying," and it's hard to know if that's why she suspects a character otherwise. MegaZeroX posted:
This is a good idea that I haven't thought of yet.
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Mar 12, 2021 20:13
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Gaius Marius posted:Well you have to do meiya and sumika before you can move on. Also meiya us by and by far the best Everytime I hear "Meiya" I just think "noble confidante" and laugh. Something about her character is sort of amusingly sad. Luceid posted:Alternative is very exciting in the moment, but I look back more fondly on Unlimited now that it's been a few years since I played them all in one hit. Nice to see other people with this opinion. I liked the first portion of Alternative quite a bit, though. Not sure what fraction of the overall story it comprises, but roughly until it starts becoming more action-packed.
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Apr 26, 2021 08:12
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Ibram Gaunt posted:Yeah I learned my lesson when I bought Grisaia and Baldr Sky based on the hype and got bored of both extremely fast. With pretty much all things falling under the umbrella of "nerd media," you should look at the *bad* reviews, not the good ones. Knowing what people dislike about a title will usually give the most useful information. It's promising that Muramasa doesn't feel that way to you, since I felt the same way about Grisaia/Baldr Sky as you did. Endorph posted:i enjoyed grisaia a lot but i just went into it wanting some funny characters goofing around and one Isnt This Deep route, not a lifechanging experience The protagonist made it hard for me to enjoy it like that. It helps to have a protagonist like the Kotarou in Rewrite in order for comedy stuff to work well (I haven't played most other Key games so I wouldn't be surprised if some do something similar, but Rewrite - mainly the common route - has really good comedy). Though another game I bizarrely found funny despite not really being a comedy is Dies Irae. Something about that game's tone and presentation was really amusing to me.
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Aug 29, 2021 23:55
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Arist posted:I finished Robotics;Notes today. Normally I blitz through VNs, but R;N was a bit of a slower burn for me. I think a lot of that is probably due to how long it takes not just for it to get crazy, but even just for it to pick up, period. Chaos;Head was something of a slow build with ever-present insanity, and Steins;Gate used a relatively uneventful first half to seed a ton of payoffs when the poo poo hit the fan at the halfway mark. Robotics;Notes takes a different tack, in that... it's honestly not that dense with stuff happening until the back third (and mostly just the last two chapters, even then). I don't want to call it "plodding," but it's certainly pretty slow. If it wasn't for the Kimijima Report hunting, which honestly feels more like a subplot for a long time, it'd just be lazy days hanging with the characters, mostly. And I liked the characters in the end, even if Frau's whole deal got more than a bit grating and even Junna herself didn't seem to know what she was doing in the story for a long-rear end time. Have you played Chaos;Child yet? I liked that more than anything but Steins;Gate. One thing I liked in Robotics;Notes is the part where they genuinely just gently caress up extremely badly and drop the robot on Subaru. It worked well as a nadir moment because it was genuinely the fault of the characters; they did stupid stuff and injured their friend as a result. Probably my least favorite part was the stuff with Misaki. I was really hoping for something interesting there, and "she's just being brainwashed/puppeted by the disembodied cyber ghost of Kimijima" (which was kind of a bizarre and contrived thing to start with) was kind of lame. Her POV stuff is particularly confusing in light of this. I would have liked it more if she was a genuine antagonist with some sort of interesting motive.
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May 19, 2022 07:32
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Nate RFB posted:It'd be better if he had someone, virtually anyone, to bounce off of when he's off doing the real story. They give the briefest of overtures to this by having Frau tag along once but that's only for about two scenes with no follow up. It'd be like what if S;G didn't have the lab crew together whenever Okabe was looking into SERN. You have this whole stable of mostly decent characters and just choose to never engage with them for most of the major scenes that matter. Yeah, this was a pretty big issue. The "real plot" stuff was almost all just Kai/Airi until the very end.
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Jul 10, 2022 10:04
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Irony Be My Shield posted:Yeah my reaction to the true ending was definitely more "huh?" than anything else. Same, I was just sort of like "okay, I guess?" Common route was very good though, and some of the side routes were also good/fun.
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Apr 20, 2023 00:39
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^^^ IIRC Bernkastel red texts that the events of the Episode 7 tea party are what really happened, and as mentioned below she doesn't really lie - her thing is more "choosing the truths to tell that will be most painful." The counter to the stuff Bernkastel says isn't "that's bullshit," but instead "that's ignoring many important things about all the characters involved." It basically comes back to all the "without love it can't be seen" stuff, which is just saying "it's important to have empathy and try to understand people." Bernkastel gives the unvarnished account of what happened, but that doesn't tell you the "full story" (while the fictional accounts from Beatrice's diaries and Tohya are fictional, but tell you a lot more about the actual people involved).Barent posted:I guess that's my issue with it then. I definitely prefer to have a definitive answer like Higurashi does. But I suppose that's antithetical to the point of the work. I don't thing it's a bad game though just not for me. (Full Umineko spoilers) Umineko is more about the characters than the events of how everyone died. The various "games" (with the possible exception of the one in Episode 5) all tell you things about the characters, because they're all created with the characters behaving in ways that are true to who they are (so they're basically "things that could have realistically happened"). 5 is an exception because Lambdadelta is running that game and it mentions that she has the "pieces" do some things that they wouldn't normally do. It still has useful information (namely the stuff about Natsuhi's background), but is less reliable than the first 4 episodes. So basically, though the various "games" (as well as stuff in the "meta world" where Battler and Beatrice interact, etc) you learn about the characters. The characters are the core of the story, rather than the narrative (but to the extent that a "real series of events" exists, it's almost certainly the Episode 7 tea party - this includes the events leading to Battler losing his memory, and it also fits with Bernkastel's whole thing of "selectively using the truth in ways that are hurtful" (but also misleading because you don't get the full picture - from just the Episode 7 tea party alone, you wouldn't learn much about the various characters and their motivations, like the fact that most of the Ushiromiya siblings had the capacity to commit the murders). The "core" of the story is the Beatrice character herself. The VN itself is vague about her circumstances, but once you figure out what happened a ton of stuff throughout all the episodes (and particularly 2) makes sense (and the manga basically makes everything explicit). Basically Beatrice is the daughter (and grandaughter thanks to incest) of Kinzo and Kuwadorian Beatrice (who was herself the daughter of Kinzo and Italian Beatrice). She was "assigned male at birth," but was severely injured when Natsuhi dropped her off the cliff, which lead Nanjo/Genji to decide to instead raise her as a girl (due to said heavy physical damage and the results of Nanjo's surgery). Once she reaches puberty, this leads to significant identity issues (IIRC the manga shows this with a scene where she's confused about the other girls having their periods while she doesn't, and not developing the same as them in general). This is where Kanon comes from (and probably why Genji accepts the idea and cooperates with it, since he - correctly - feels partially responsible for this). Sayo/Shanon wanted to try living as a boy. A lot of people mistake the Shanon/Kanon thing as a "multiple personalities" situation, but that's not it - it's just the same person experimenting with different identities, but still being fully aware of what they're doing. This whole situation is also strongly hinted at with Lion in Episode 7 (as how "Beatrice" would have ended up if Natsuhi had accepted her and she hadn't been dropped off the cliff - my interpretation is that she likely would have been a sort of androgynous boy, but there's no clear answer). This is also where all the "furniture" stuff comes from, and Shanon/Kanon talking about "not being permitted to love." The most revealing scenes are the ones in Episode 2 where Beatrice berates Shannon/Kanon - it's basically expressions of self-hatred/self-disgust. Like the stuff with Beatrice mocking Kanon's manliness - it suddenly makes a lot more sense once you realize what's actually going on there! One of the biggest stressors ends up being the George situation, because she (probably correctly IMO) is extremely worried about what will happen if George finds out about her body. Scenes like the one with Shannon and George at the aquarium, where they end up deciding to have different hotel rooms, kind of take on extra significance with this in mind. This is part of why the whole bomb idea is so alluring to her - if everything is erased by the bomb, then Shannon will always be "George's perfect fiance" and Kanon will always be "the boy Jessica has a crush on," etc. Meanwhile, in the "real world," those situations would end up running into major problems due to her body (with George being the biggest issue here - note how much he talks about wanting children). Finding out that she's also a child born of incest and is related to her love interests (after solving the epitaph) is basically the straw that breaks the camel's back, and is probably what causes her to plan the murders in addition to setting up the bomb (as opposed to just committing suicide or something). Since she never actually does the murders (due to Kirie and Rudolph doing it first, after the adults quickly solve the epitaph), we never find out if that would have happened (IMO she probably wouldn't have been able to go through with it - actually directly doing violence to other people like that is a lot different from writing/daydreaming about it). Also you're not dumb for not understanding it - I didn't either when I first played, and I was just lucky enough to stumble across someone else's commentary that made everything click into place on a reread. Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 20:02 on Aug 28, 2023 |
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Aug 28, 2023 19:55
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Tunicate posted:But yeah the red text statement early on that there are exactly five servants ruins the intended puzzle for me. Any attempt to weasel or rationalize out of it ends up being so contrived that you can knock out any other part of the story with the same level of bs and the whole thing collapses But you're explicitly told that the red text is deliberately used in misleading ways, and it's still technically true - Shanon and Kanon are separate servants with their own schedules. Basically if you go the route of trying to solve the mystery like a logic puzzle using red text, you're going to get really confused and bewildered at the explanation for what's happening. This is why the story goes out of its way to repeatedly point out why the "seeking the solution through just logic" stuff is bad and won't lead to an accurate understanding (via Erika). The red text can be used to attempt to double-check ideas, but with an understanding that it's often going to be deliberately misleading (it depends on who's using it and what their motivations are). In Beatrice's case, this is because it's used in a context where someone is trying to simultaneously hide and hint at the truth; Beatrice uses these misleading red texts both to mislead, but also in the hope that Battler will figure out the core of the "trick" (which is itself core to Beatrice's identity and circumstances). IMO the writing is partially at fault for readers going the "red text logic puzzle" route (due to all the Battler/Beatrice debates centered around it), and Ryukishi likely deliberately did the Erika stuff in the second part to try and correct this (since there's a gap between releases and he could see where readers were going "off course" and try to correct it).
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Sep 1, 2023 01:27
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What has the response to Anonymous;Code been like for people who have played it in Japanese? Also was I hallucinating some news from a while back about the company who makes those games closing shop or going bankrupt or something? Is this the last Science Adventure game? Regardless, it's kinda sad that higher-budget VNs don't seem to have a big audience. I feel like there used to be more of them.
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Sep 1, 2023 23:34
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It's not "outright false"; it's a semantic/perspective trick and one that is very strongly hinted at (if not outright explained?) at multiple points. At certain points they specifically draw a distinction between stuff like that and "the number of humans on the island" (which actually does consider Kanon/Shannon to be one human). It's been many years since I discussed this a lot more so my memory isn't as clear, but in the end there was just one logical thing that is truly questionable in terms of whether it makes sense - the thing with Erika in the parlor where both Shanon and Kanon are seemingly there in episode 5. And this still technically makes sense due to some perspective thing - IIRC it's related to Battler not being the "detective" for that "game" - but IMO it's a bit too mean/misleading. But more importantly, there seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding here about many elements of the story and characters. Like the part where you're mad about Battler not drowning Beatrice in "blue text" speculation - the reason behind stuff like this is very simple. Battler is not making a full and earnest effort to "win" (and neither is Beatrice). The reason he constantly rants about how he won't forgive Beatrice and is going to expose her (etc) is because he is conflicted about the whole situation and trying to rile himself up. And similarly (and even more obviously) Beatrice is not making an earnest effort to defeat Battler. This is made about as obvious as possible at the end of Episode 3, when Beatrice suddenly bails before "winning." It's always very funny to me when people think that the episode of Episode 4 is supposed to be read as "an enraged Battler going all-out against Beatrice."
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Sep 2, 2023 08:13
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Tunicate posted:It is a "semantic trick" in that if you replace words in the statement with different ones, it means something different. (Umineko spoilers) There's no universal law that one person can't "count" as two servants if they're employed under different names and recognized as other people as being separate individuals (and all the people actually being "served" by Shannon/Kanon recognize them as separate people, except for maybe Kinzo before he died - I forget if he's supposed to be aware that Kanon and Shannon are the same person, though I think he only ever interacts with Kanon in this way). You can certainly argue that it's misleading and a trick, but it's not "factually untrue." If it helps, you can think of it as "characters in a play" (this is part of why everything is framed as a game with "pieces" etc). That's why there's a distinction drawn between stuff like that and talk of the actual number of "humans" on the island. In the "play/game" that is the stories in the various episodes, Shannon/Kanon exist as separate characters/servants who are "played by the same actor." (And all of this is still secondary to the fact that you're not supposed to be logic-ing out the solution using red text. The most meaningful information tends to exist in the "magic" scenes even though they aren't literally occurring, because those scenes are usually still representative of real things - like the Beatrice vs Shannon/Kanon fights in Episode 2 representing internal conflict.) One thing more indirectly related to this is that I think the Shannon/Kanon stuff was a lot clearer in the original VNs. In the original art it's far more obvious that they could be the same person (they basically have the same face, but with different hair), and there's also no voice-acting to further confuse the reader (not that the voice acting in Umineko isn't generally great, but it does make it at least somewhat harder to recognize what's going on with Shannon/Kanon).
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Sep 2, 2023 22:58
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I've played Anonymous;Code for around 5-6 hours. I'm enjoying it so far, though with the way these games work a lot will depend on how its various mysteries are resolved. I'm kinda mixed on its main mechanic. It's neat in theory, and I like how Pollon's response to you attempting to Load (which I'm capitalizing to make it clear I'm referring to the mechanic) varies depending on the circumstances - if you try to Load at a "wrong" point Pollon will reject it, and how he does so depends on what's happening. But I find myself getting confused over the fact that my game Saves and auto-saves exist separately. Like if I want to go back to a point and try Loading, I've been confused a few times whether the Save (or auto-save) I'm returning to is after a previous Load. And Pollon's Saves exist during the game's timeline, so if you load into an earlier autosave they won't exist. So the game gets the player directly involved with its core mechanic, but only sometimes, with the auto-saves basically being "normal" saves, as opposed to the Saves that exist within the story and are used by Pollon. But you can also create story Saves yourself (though it's clear that you created them instead of Pollon), and I think they maybe don't even stick around if you load an earlier auto-save? It's a bit confusing to me, but maybe I'm just dumb. I think it would have been easier to understand if the game straight-up gave you some sort of branching "timeline" UI where you could select where you wanted to go, instead of having to look through auto-saves and hope you're choosing one that isn't on a failed branch or something. One other issue (that is probably a bigger one since I imagine I'll be able to wrap my head around the stuff above eventually) is that it can be a pain getting back to a specific point where you want to try Loading. In a game like Steins;Gate you can just skip all dialogue until you get to the text message prompts (or in other VNs just normal dialogue prompts). But in this if you skip it'll just keep zooming along until it reaches the "end" (which is presumably whatever bad end you reach if you don't Load correctly). So I'm left button mashing through the dialogue and hoping I don't gently caress up and skip past the line where I want to try Loading (in which case I think I'm hosed and have to load the Save/auto-save again, since I don't think I can go backwards). I understand that the game doesn't want to just directly reveal the "decision points" to the player via the skip function, but as is it can get a little tedious when you're searching for the correct decision point. I was confused for a while during one of the Chapter 3 decision points where Juno shows up and places you in front of the train. The game obviously expects you to load there, which I did, and it leads to a bad end where you die and it gives you a message that's something like "you need to avoid running into Juno." This makes me think that I need to load some earlier point and do something completely different that doesn't involve going to that guy's apartment. But it turns out you're supposed to just not load at all when she throws you in front of the train, and Momo will push you out of the way and save you. IIRC you then get a later obvious prompt to Load. The bad ending text was misleading! It makes you think that you need to go back and do something differently as the player. If there's a way around this that makes it easier to "fast-forward" to decision points, someone let me know.
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Sep 9, 2023 09:24
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I liked the one optional bad end early into Anonymous;Code where Pollon loads before the plane even took off to try and address that situation, and it doesn't work partly because it fucks him up a bunch (since you learn that the save/load system causes increasing strain if you use it to go too far back in "time"). I kinda feel like that (or something similar) shouldn't have been optional, because it answers an important question that the reader would otherwise have - why Pollon doesn't just load a really long time before something bad happens, since normally you'd think that having more time would definitely be better and it wouldn't make sense to just go 15 minutes back when trying to solve some urgent problem.
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Sep 12, 2023 21:30
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