Best Visual Novels for PC

[Weebicon]

I feel like Clannad is a must play.

 

[LiberoVulpesLiberoVulpes's icon]

Uff 5 pages, sorry if i repeat, feeling lazy to check if they have been mentioned.

Clannad, and Little Busters! Are imo the best VNs Key has ever made, Planetarian is great as well.
Saya No Uta, its great, and can be read in an afternoon.
Utawarerumono is amazing, its my favorite franchise.
Ef a Fairy Tale of The Two, is a life-changing experience, speaking from experience.
Katawa Shoujo is fantastic.
Symphonic Rain, is beautiful.

That's about it from the top of my head.

 

[Kuro2427]

Uff 5 pages, sorry if i repeat, feeling lazy to check if they have been mentioned.

Clannad, and Little Busters! Are imo the best VNs Key has ever made, Planetarian is great as well.
[...]

Planetarian and Katawa Shoujo are CLASSIC gateway drugs. The latter specifically hit /v/ like a truck for YEARS after it came out lmao

 

[kuroninneko]

I dont play a lot of VN games but my favorite is Spirit Hunter NG

 

[DeadVoivod]

Dreams of Desire.

 

[Nebulon_Galaxy]

How has no one posted Muv Luv?

I recommend everyone and their dog to play it!

 

[AceOfAces]

How has no one posted Muv Luv?
View attachment 51713
I recommend everyone and their dog to play it!

The main problem with Muv-Luv is that talking about what makes it so good is huge spoilers.
The best non-spoilery information I can really give is that the writing is spectacular and it's one of the very few VNs to actually make use of being a VN rather than a static comic. For example, here's a snatch from an interview with the game's director, Koki Yoshimune:

 

[Infasis]

Ef a Fairy Tale of The Two, is a life-changing experience, speaking from experience.

Good man. Minori hit it out of the park with those.
I wish more people would hire Tenmon. His music does such a good job pulling at heart strings

 

[werewolfx]

Tsukihime, you can play it in the browser

 

[Sheepy765]

I played Nekojishi once, that was a pretty fun visual novel. Though it has a very particular demographic, I think.

 

[Super Funky Piece]

i still need tackle more VNs my friends all recommend but i still gotta mention Please Be Happy by Studio Elan. it's about a foxgirl in a contemporary fantasy earth who has travelled the world in search of the first human she befriended. she's spent her travels living as a thief since she has an uncontrollable magic that makes people forget her after a day.
it's a very relaxed and kind story but not without its emotional moments and accompanied by some fantastic voice acting. fairly tightly paced and not too long a read on the first go either, i'd say.
also it's a yuri VN with two partners to choose from if that is a vital deciding factor for some.

 

[Deleted member 179251]

I am very mainstream, so yeah, the original Tsukihime is my favorite of all time. And also Fate/Stay night.

 

[edenfh]

Personally i don't really have a favorite i really liked Dies irae,Umineko and Demonbane i tried Rance and could enjoy some of it but i couldn't deal with Rance himself. I feel overall it's a pretty unexplored medium.

dont play a lot of VN games but my favorite is Spirit Hunter NG

I wish for more horror-themed VNs, while i don't necessary care if there is nsfw stuff a lot of works don't focus horror feelings beyond that, it's pretty cheap.

 

[kuroninneko]

Personally i don't really have a favorite i really liked Dies irae,Umineko and Demonbane i tried Rance and could enjoy some of it but i couldn't deal with Rance himself. I feel overall it's a pretty unexplored medium.


I wish for more horror-themed VNs, while i don't necessary care if there is nsfw stuff a lot of works don't focus horror feelings beyond that, it's pretty cheap.

I agree thats why I liked Spirit Hunter NG so much. Super creepy. Also Death Mark is the game before it. There is a third game but cant remember the name. If I ever make a VN game one day its gonna be horror. Another game I remember was Raging Loop. Interesting horror game but needs lots of patience. I used to have a friend that told me about the good VN games.

 

[Krazy Kat]

A Wife and mother's
A Mother's Love
Being a Dik
Dream of Desire
Fashion Business
Good Girl gone bad
Intertwined
Lust epidemic
Summertime Saga
Summer's Gone
The Visit
Treasure of Nadia
Our red string
Zombie retreat

you can play with android phone / tablet with joiplay emulator

 

[rugal]

2 really good RPG visual novels
utawarerumono the original pc version
tears to tiara the original pc version

 

[Gym Ghingham]

My gf is a fan of Visual Novels, I really really tried the Muv - Luv Visual Novel in PC I honestly give it a chance but around 38 minutes later I quitted.

 

[popckorn]

Spoiler: huehue

RENPY GOONER SLOP!
HUEHUEHUEHUEHUEHUE

No but seriously though.
I never got into Visual Novels.
I rather read Choose Your Own Adventure books, or read Graphic Novels.

It is a weird genre for me. Kind of how pointless RPGs feel to some people.
I used to no understand RPGs because I was a player of random bursts because I had a super tight schedule since I was a kid with helicopter parents.

When I got into University and spent summers alone in a foreign town, I started playing them, advised by friends, and I became hooked on them.

So maybe I should pay close attention to your recommendations and give it a try.
But then again, I have read a couple hundred books (no kidding) so I truly do like reading better because I enjoy "Turn of Phrase" and Idiosyncrasies in Authors' Styles.

I was a Technical Writer, Translator, Proofreader, and Ghost Writer for almost a decade, and am a failed Fiction Writer myself, so I kind of am SNOBISH and PEDANTIC AF about Visual Novels.

I shall give them a chance.

 

[Gym Ghingham]

I recommend it, but it's a definite time investment. I'll give a quick reading guide though since the naming scheme is a bit convoluted. Steam release is the all-ages versions, which is only really relevant if you have a very specific fetish and possibly has lore implications for NG+ in Unlimited.

• Muv-Luv Extra: Complete Sumika and Meiya's routes to unlock Unlimited. These routes have significant overlap with one another so the second playthrough will be faster if you skip through text you've already read, like Tsukihime's "Near Side". Completing the other heroines' routes (or getting the two 'bad endings' centered on Marimo and Mikoto) isn't necessary, but will fill you in on some background information and explore their characters a bit more. These "far side" routes are about 2/3 as long as the "Near Side", and you get to skip lacrosse, which is a huge plus.
• Any Unlimited route is fine. On NG+ there's a lore-revealing h-scene with Yuuko-sensei but I don't know if that's in the all-ages version.
• Muv-Luv Alternative is the sequel to Extra/Unlimited. This one has no routes, but your choices change which scenes you see in some instances.
• Altered Fable/"Before the Shimmering Time Ends" is a denouement to Alternative set in an altered version of Extra (thus the name). It's to Alternative what FLCL was to End of Evangelion.

From here, you have options: Total Eclipse is set during and after Alternative (it has an anime adaption which is fairly solid, although it ends before the last few chapters of the novel were released on various fandiscs; the Steam version collates them all and includes some cool stuff like using anime footage for animations), and is kind of like Top Gun with giant robots.
The Day After is set in Unlimited, after the events of Unlimited. I'd recommend reading this after Alternative and Total Eclipse, because some stuff happens in TDA that will make more sense with the context of Alt and TE (it's fine even without it, though).

Finally, there are a series of shorter stories that are set in the Unlimited and Alternative timelines, most of which are in collections on Steam now (photonmelodies, photonflowers, etc.). Sadly none of the Steam releases include Faraway Dawn or its sequel, a very challenging and very fun tacRPG set in Alternative. Schwarzesmaken, which is set before the divergence point between Unlimited and Alternative and is more of a WW2/Cold War spy movie aesthetic, also got a 12-episode anime (which has been fansubbed) which has a fabulous soundtrack:

While it's not hugely important to enjoying Muv-Luv (I haven't read them), Extra takes place in the same world as previous ages works (ages is the studio), so characters from that show up every now and then.

There's also a very in-depth series bible, the Codex, which I sadly can't attach to this post, but you shouldn't go anywhere near it until you're finished reading since it casually spoils everything. However, the information, especially the interviews with staff, is very interesting.
I've uploaded it on my MEGA for anyone who wants it, since I can't remember where I got it from.

I don't know if the all-ages version nerfed it, but in Alternative original, it could get pretty gory when people died, since a huge part of the aesthetic is understanding that you're not going to have a pleasant death in this setting but maybe needing to make a sacrifice for the greater good (the greater good), so you might want to double-check that before you get started if you have a weak stomach.

For me, this (Extra-Unlimited-Alternative) is probably the single greatest work of fiction I've ever read and I am not a shallow reader. I'd say for sure that if you're planning to just sit down and knock them out, you'll probably end up pretty emotionally exhausted. I finished the back half of Alternative over about 18 hours and was just emotionally empty for the next week.


Bad take, Takeru's romcom home is the whole reason Alternative, and to a lesser extent Unlimited, work - they're the core of his motivation, and the contrast between his lives is what drives his development as a character. (Reading Extra and Unlimited is not optional, Alternative trusts that you read them and plot threads that it picks up have been seeded as early as Extra.)

this is awesome i really tried to play VN games like my gf does but i didn't manage to stay interested more than 38minutes, i hope Luv-Muv comes in another genre of gaming.

 

[Mini_Man.XW]

The Silver Case

 

[vulonkaaz's iconvulonkaaz]

The NOexistenceN of you AND me

One of the best games I've ever experienced in my life yet no one seem to be talking about it

very comfy, very philosophical, god-tier OST, this game resonates deep inside my soul

---

(the avatar frame i'm using on this site actually come from this game, i didn't know until I played, now that avatar frame is even more special to me and I got the same on Steam)

 

[Duke_11037]

101 Methods of Suicide

It recently got an english release, I believe about two weeks ago. I've finished it today. I wouldn't recommend it for people just getting into Vns or people who can't handle things like suicide, incest, gore, etc. If your are into Denpa's I do think it's a must read. My main problem with it though is that it can feel like it has it's head up it's own ass a lot. Very noticeable in certain big scenes. The cg art can have the characters look lobotomized at times too.

 

[Viviana Santos]

Hop on peak

 

[Darzhgrod]

My favorite VN is Hatoful Boyfriend. It looks like a meme game but it's surprisingly well written, very funny, and very dark at times with conspiratorial intrigue. It's like a Planet of the Apes scenario, you're the only human left on Earth that's been taken over by evolved talking birds but you're a teenage girl starting high school. If you finish dating all the prospective pigeons, the story finale takes some ~w i l d~ turns. A+ game I welcome our amorous avian overlords.

You can choose for the love interests to be represented as hot anime boys instead of actual birds, which is, obviously, a choice for cowards.

 

[Rox00]

Umineko my beloved, always hop on 07th Expansion's works as well cause they are just as good.