Random Your favourite visual novel?

[fIa$hbangg]

I'm only really visiting this site because of the whole thing with CDromance but I was wondering if anybody here actively plays VNs. If so, which are your favourite and why?

 

[psvitaforever]

My first has been "Hakuoki" for the psp; the other one has been the spin-off with sweet short stories of "Code Realize", both enjoyed. I feel like I have time to put hours into rpgs and so on but not enough to read hours and hours of visual novels... That's why I haven't played others, but I would like to, on PSVita there are lots of them.

I recommend Hakuoki to anyone who looks for romance, of course, but also adventure and supernatural, set in an historical context.

 

[Gorse]

My favourite VN of all time is a DS game called Lifesigns: Surgical Unit. It's a Canadian-made localization (so all the words have "u"s in them, and "center" is spelled "centre") of a sequel to a Japan-only, untranslated DS launch game. (The plotline requires the first game to have been completed to understand, of course.) The series it comes from, Kenshui Tendo Dokuta, was ripped off entirely for the Trauma Center franchise, and if you've played that, you know exactly what kind of game Lifesigns is – a visual novel where the plot is interrupted periodically for the player to perform surgery.

The first thing you see after pushing the start button is the player character being sexually harassed by his superior doctor in an erotic dream sequence set to a MIDI rendition of George Michael's Careless Whisper. The game is heavily Japan-focused – nothing was changed from the original script – so the characters all use their Japanese names and the locations are formatted with the proper honorifics. (At some points, senior characters are referred to with the "-sensei" suffix.) There's loads and loads of ecchi comedy, too – a running gag is that one of your patients is a dirty old man who likes to pinch the bottoms of all the female surgeons and nurses.

The main character's sister – a non-blood-related lolita who clearly harbours affection for him – has an advanced stage of cancer, but the game establishes that it's in remission thanks to an off-screen surgery performed by the player, which was clearly the climax of the previous game. The first chapter introduces a "new character" to the "established team" of surgeons who serves as the game's Maya Fey – the Japanese advertisements for the game focus on the addition of this character, though playing the English version, she's exactly as unfamiliar to the player as all the other people. At one point in the game, you have to serve this character a warmed sweet potato to cheer her up – the player character cheerfully informs us that "girls love sweet potatoes".

All of the surgery parts are buggy as shit, which is very problematic because you're only allowed a limited number of errors and all the surgeries are timed. Failing a surgery, or completing it incorrectly, locks you into a "bad route" for that chapter which impacts things later on in the story, so you really have to get everything perfect on the first try. One of the surgeries is so bugged that I had to look up a walkthrough to make sure I was doing it right, only to find the guide's writer telling me that, quoting verbatim, "Due to a bug, this is easily the hardest part of the game. If you can't get it right here, just turn off the game and reload a previous save." Great! I blew about 3 hours of my life on that one part of that one mission.

At one point in the game, the characters go on a vacation to a southern Japanese island, where a whole new range of characters (and new lolita love interest for the player) are introduced. During this mission, the player must 1) perform surgery on a sentient wild hamster and 2) during another surgery of aforementioned second loli's father, ward off ghosts that attempt to interrupt the operation (the ghosts want the patient to die). Once this mission ends, all characters and concepts introduced in it are immediately disregarded by the game, and it returns to the usual setting.

In another mission, the game also very abruptly introduces a dating mechanic, where the player is given three arbitrary choices that correspond to three girls that the main character can date in a post-credits sequence. Of course, the player is never told that these choices impact anything meaningful or relate to any of these girls in any way. During another in-game dating segment, the player gets to enjoy a mini-game of air hockey, which must be beaten to proceed with the story. Also, at one point in the final mission, whoever was translating the game clearly didn't proofread their work, because a piece of hex code appears in a character's dialogue during a plot-critical scene. She literally says, out loud, "Dokuta, the patient is 00XHBC00 losing blood fast!"

The game ends with all the characters having a lovely Christmas party together – though if you're not on the good ending, a now-dead patient's relative from an earlier mission interrupts the party to bawl her eyes out, then drag the main character outside and beat the shit out of him. Following the credits, which reveal that the game was translated by about three people in Toronto, the player (not the main character, the person looking at the DS screen) is given an audience with aforementioned sentient hamster, who chides them for taking too long during surgery and lets them play the air hockey game again.

I can't tell you how much I like this game – it's easily one of my favourite DS games ever, and I vastly prefer it to any Trauma Center instalment. Also, it's one of the few games that had an actual impact on my life – I actually went out, bought a Japanese sweet potato, and roasted it in my oven to see why girls like them so much. I don't want to spoil it for you, but if you can't bear the suspense, I've documented the reason scientifically below:

Spoiler

Roasted Japanese sweet potatoes taste like vanilla ice cream.

Thank you, Lifesigns: Surgical Unit.

 

[Big Finger Jim]

Great Ace Attorney 2 and Paranormasight.

 

[Antilocal123]

Basic bitch answer but Umineko and Higurashi, introduced me to the genre as a whole.

 

[MasterEn]

ace attorney.

 

[fIa$hbangg]

My favourite VN of all time is a DS game called Lifesigns: Surgical Unit. It's a Canadian-made localization (so all the words have "u"s in them, and "center" is spelled "centre") of a sequel to a Japan-only, untranslated DS launch game. (The plotline requires the first game to have been completed to understand, of course.) The series it comes from, Kenshui Tendo Dokuta, was ripped off entirely for the Trauma Center franchise, and if you've played that, you know exactly what kind of game Lifesigns is – a visual novel where the plot is interrupted periodically for the player to perform surgery.

The first thing you see after pushing the start button is the player character being sexually harassed by his superior doctor in an erotic dream sequence set to a MIDI rendition of George Michael's Careless Whisper. The game is heavily Japan-focused – nothing was changed from the original script – so the characters all use their Japanese names and the locations are formatted with the proper honorifics. (At some points, senior characters are referred to with the "-sensei" suffix.) There's loads and loads of ecchi comedy, too – a running gag is that one of your patients is a dirty old man who likes to pinch the bottoms of all the female surgeons and nurses.

The main character's sister – a non-blood-related lolita who clearly harbours affection for him – has an advanced stage of cancer, but the game establishes that it's in remission thanks to an off-screen surgery performed by the player, which was clearly the climax of the previous game. The first chapter introduces a "new character" to the "established team" of surgeons who serves as the game's Maya Fey – the Japanese advertisements for the game focus on the addition of this character, though playing the English version, she's exactly as unfamiliar to the player as all the other people. At one point in the game, you have to serve this character a warmed sweet potato to cheer her up – the player character cheerfully informs us that "girls love sweet potatoes".

All of the surgery parts are buggy as shit, which is very problematic because you're only allowed a limited number of errors and all the surgeries are timed. Failing a surgery, or completing it incorrectly, locks you into a "bad route" for that chapter which impacts things later on in the story, so you really have to get everything perfect on the first try. One of the surgeries is so bugged that I had to look up a walkthrough to make sure I was doing it right, only to find the guide's writer telling me that, quoting verbatim, "Due to a bug, this is easily the hardest part of the game. If you can't get it right here, just turn off the game and reload a previous save." Great! I blew about 3 hours of my life on that one part of that one mission.

At one point in the game, the characters go on a vacation to a southern Japanese island, where a whole new range of characters (and new lolita love interest for the player) are introduced. During this mission, the player must 1) perform surgery on a sentient wild hamster and 2) during another surgery of aforementioned second loli's father, ward off ghosts that attempt to interrupt the operation (the ghosts want the patient to die). Once this mission ends, all characters and concepts introduced in it are immediately disregarded by the game, and it returns to the usual setting.

In another mission, the game also very abruptly introduces a dating mechanic, where the player is given three arbitrary choices that correspond to three girls that the main character can date in a post-credits sequence. Of course, the player is never told that these choices impact anything meaningful or relate to any of these girls in any way. During another in-game dating segment, the player gets to enjoy a mini-game of air hockey, which must be beaten to proceed with the story. Also, at one point in the final mission, whoever was translating the game clearly didn't proofread their work, because a piece of hex code appears in a character's dialogue during a plot-critical scene. She literally says, out loud, "Dokuta, the patient is 00XHBC00 losing blood fast!"

The game ends with all the characters having a lovely Christmas party together – though if you're not on the good ending, a now-dead patient's relative from an earlier mission interrupts the party to bawl her eyes out, then drag the main character outside and beat the shit out of him. Following the credits, which reveal that the game was translated by about three people in Toronto, the player (not the main character, the person looking at the DS screen) is given an audience with aforementioned sentient hamster, who chides them for taking too long during surgery and lets them play the air hockey game again.

I can't tell you how much I like this game – it's easily one of my favourite DS games ever, and I vastly prefer it to any Trauma Center instalment. Also, it's one of the few games that had an actual impact on my life – I actually went out, bought a Japanese sweet potato, and roasted it in my oven to see why girls like them so much. I don't want to spoil it for you, but if you can't bear the suspense, I've documented the reason scientifically below:

Spoiler

Roasted Japanese sweet potatoes taste like vanilla ice cream.

Thank you, Lifesigns: Surgical Unit.

Oh man this one really made me chuckle. I was never really familliar with the trauma center series but this made me intrigued. I'll make sure to study up on it, thanks!

 

[Big Finger Jim]

My favourite VN of all time is a DS game called Lifesigns: Surgical Unit. It's a Canadian-made localization (so all the words have "u"s in them, and "center" is spelled "centre") of a sequel to a Japan-only, untranslated DS launch game. (The plotline requires the first game to have been completed to understand, of course.) The series it comes from, Kenshui Tendo Dokuta, was ripped off entirely for the Trauma Center franchise, and if you've played that, you know exactly what kind of game Lifesigns is – a visual novel where the plot is interrupted periodically for the player to perform surgery.

The first thing you see after pushing the start button is the player character being sexually harassed by his superior doctor in an erotic dream sequence set to a MIDI rendition of George Michael's Careless Whisper. The game is heavily Japan-focused – nothing was changed from the original script – so the characters all use their Japanese names and the locations are formatted with the proper honorifics. (At some points, senior characters are referred to with the "-sensei" suffix.) There's loads and loads of ecchi comedy, too – a running gag is that one of your patients is a dirty old man who likes to pinch the bottoms of all the female surgeons and nurses.

The main character's sister – a non-blood-related lolita who clearly harbours affection for him – has an advanced stage of cancer, but the game establishes that it's in remission thanks to an off-screen surgery performed by the player, which was clearly the climax of the previous game. The first chapter introduces a "new character" to the "established team" of surgeons who serves as the game's Maya Fey – the Japanese advertisements for the game focus on the addition of this character, though playing the English version, she's exactly as unfamiliar to the player as all the other people. At one point in the game, you have to serve this character a warmed sweet potato to cheer her up – the player character cheerfully informs us that "girls love sweet potatoes".

All of the surgery parts are buggy as shit, which is very problematic because you're only allowed a limited number of errors and all the surgeries are timed. Failing a surgery, or completing it incorrectly, locks you into a "bad route" for that chapter which impacts things later on in the story, so you really have to get everything perfect on the first try. One of the surgeries is so bugged that I had to look up a walkthrough to make sure I was doing it right, only to find the guide's writer telling me that, quoting verbatim, "Due to a bug, this is easily the hardest part of the game. If you can't get it right here, just turn off the game and reload a previous save." Great! I blew about 3 hours of my life on that one part of that one mission.

At one point in the game, the characters go on a vacation to a southern Japanese island, where a whole new range of characters (and new lolita love interest for the player) are introduced. During this mission, the player must 1) perform surgery on a sentient wild hamster and 2) during another surgery of aforementioned second loli's father, ward off ghosts that attempt to interrupt the operation (the ghosts want the patient to die). Once this mission ends, all characters and concepts introduced in it are immediately disregarded by the game, and it returns to the usual setting.

In another mission, the game also very abruptly introduces a dating mechanic, where the player is given three arbitrary choices that correspond to three girls that the main character can date in a post-credits sequence. Of course, the player is never told that these choices impact anything meaningful or relate to any of these girls in any way. During another in-game dating segment, the player gets to enjoy a mini-game of air hockey, which must be beaten to proceed with the story. Also, at one point in the final mission, whoever was translating the game clearly didn't proofread their work, because a piece of hex code appears in a character's dialogue during a plot-critical scene. She literally says, out loud, "Dokuta, the patient is 00XHBC00 losing blood fast!"

The game ends with all the characters having a lovely Christmas party together – though if you're not on the good ending, a now-dead patient's relative from an earlier mission interrupts the party to bawl her eyes out, then drag the main character outside and beat the shit out of him. Following the credits, which reveal that the game was translated by about three people in Toronto, the player (not the main character, the person looking at the DS screen) is given an audience with aforementioned sentient hamster, who chides them for taking too long during surgery and lets them play the air hockey game again.

I can't tell you how much I like this game – it's easily one of my favourite DS games ever, and I vastly prefer it to any Trauma Center instalment. Also, it's one of the few games that had an actual impact on my life – I actually went out, bought a Japanese sweet potato, and roasted it in my oven to see why girls like them so much. I don't want to spoil it for you, but if you can't bear the suspense, I've documented the reason scientifically below:

Spoiler

Roasted Japanese sweet potatoes taste like vanilla ice cream.

Thank you, Lifesigns: Surgical Unit.

Did the first game ever get an english translation?

 

[marky]

I'm not a big fan of Visual Novel, but I have played some of the more talked titles like Doki Doki Literature Club and also both titles from the Vampire: The Masquerade franchise, which I really like: Shadows of New York and Coteries of New York.

My favourite series, however, is Ace Attorney series both Phoenix Wright and Apollo Justice.
On second place is Zero Escape: Zero Time Dilemma and Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward.
I know there are more games in this series, but I've only played these two.
And in third place is a series that is completely different - Nekopara, which... well generally it's +18, but on PC. Version for Nintendo Switch and probably other consoles (I don't know) is censored and every spicier scene has been removed.

 

[Gorse]

Did the first game ever get an english translation?

Nope, not even a fan-made one, so you'll have to make educated guesses about what happened in it. (And based on what happens in the second game, anything is on the table.) There was never a Kenshui Tendo Dokuta 3, so I guess Trauma Center won out, in the end.

 

[TentaclesMod]

My favourite VN of all time is a DS game called Lifesigns: Surgical Unit. It's a Canadian-made localization (so all the words have "u"s in them, and "center" is spelled "centre") of a sequel to a Japan-only, untranslated DS launch game. (The plotline requires the first game to have been completed to understand, of course.) The series it comes from, Kenshui Tendo Dokuta, was ripped off entirely for the Trauma Center franchise, and if you've played that, you know exactly what kind of game Lifesigns is – a visual novel where the plot is interrupted periodically for the player to perform surgery.

The first thing you see after pushing the start button is the player character being sexually harassed by his superior doctor in an erotic dream sequence set to a MIDI rendition of George Michael's Careless Whisper. The game is heavily Japan-focused – nothing was changed from the original script – so the characters all use their Japanese names and the locations are formatted with the proper honorifics. (At some points, senior characters are referred to with the "-sensei" suffix.) There's loads and loads of ecchi comedy, too – a running gag is that one of your patients is a dirty old man who likes to pinch the bottoms of all the female surgeons and nurses.

The main character's sister – a non-blood-related lolita who clearly harbours affection for him – has an advanced stage of cancer, but the game establishes that it's in remission thanks to an off-screen surgery performed by the player, which was clearly the climax of the previous game. The first chapter introduces a "new character" to the "established team" of surgeons who serves as the game's Maya Fey – the Japanese advertisements for the game focus on the addition of this character, though playing the English version, she's exactly as unfamiliar to the player as all the other people. At one point in the game, you have to serve this character a warmed sweet potato to cheer her up – the player character cheerfully informs us that "girls love sweet potatoes".

All of the surgery parts are buggy as shit, which is very problematic because you're only allowed a limited number of errors and all the surgeries are timed. Failing a surgery, or completing it incorrectly, locks you into a "bad route" for that chapter which impacts things later on in the story, so you really have to get everything perfect on the first try. One of the surgeries is so bugged that I had to look up a walkthrough to make sure I was doing it right, only to find the guide's writer telling me that, quoting verbatim, "Due to a bug, this is easily the hardest part of the game. If you can't get it right here, just turn off the game and reload a previous save." Great! I blew about 3 hours of my life on that one part of that one mission.

At one point in the game, the characters go on a vacation to a southern Japanese island, where a whole new range of characters (and new lolita love interest for the player) are introduced. During this mission, the player must 1) perform surgery on a sentient wild hamster and 2) during another surgery of aforementioned second loli's father, ward off ghosts that attempt to interrupt the operation (the ghosts want the patient to die). Once this mission ends, all characters and concepts introduced in it are immediately disregarded by the game, and it returns to the usual setting.

In another mission, the game also very abruptly introduces a dating mechanic, where the player is given three arbitrary choices that correspond to three girls that the main character can date in a post-credits sequence. Of course, the player is never told that these choices impact anything meaningful or relate to any of these girls in any way. During another in-game dating segment, the player gets to enjoy a mini-game of air hockey, which must be beaten to proceed with the story. Also, at one point in the final mission, whoever was translating the game clearly didn't proofread their work, because a piece of hex code appears in a character's dialogue during a plot-critical scene. She literally says, out loud, "Dokuta, the patient is 00XHBC00 losing blood fast!"

The game ends with all the characters having a lovely Christmas party together – though if you're not on the good ending, a now-dead patient's relative from an earlier mission interrupts the party to bawl her eyes out, then drag the main character outside and beat the shit out of him. Following the credits, which reveal that the game was translated by about three people in Toronto, the player (not the main character, the person looking at the DS screen) is given an audience with aforementioned sentient hamster, who chides them for taking too long during surgery and lets them play the air hockey game again.

I can't tell you how much I like this game – it's easily one of my favourite DS games ever, and I vastly prefer it to any Trauma Center instalment. Also, it's one of the few games that had an actual impact on my life – I actually went out, bought a Japanese sweet potato, and roasted it in my oven to see why girls like them so much. I don't want to spoil it for you, but if you can't bear the suspense, I've documented the reason scientifically below:

Spoiler

Roasted Japanese sweet potatoes taste like vanilla ice cream.

Thank you, Lifesigns: Surgical Unit.

That was a ride to read. I wonder how that game got a localization (if it can even be called that, it sounds like a translation without much localizing) in the first place, not that I'm against it. I was thinking about playing this game until you mentioned how buggy it is, now I might watch a youtube longplay instead, or just cheat with action replay in the hardest parts.

 

[Ain_Gamer]

Suzerain, it's a game where you play as a president of a country where your choices affect the future of your country and family, the ending made me SOOOO angry when I got it that I couldn't sleep in the night after I beat this game.

Of course if I made different choices I wouldn't had that ending but I don't regret them, I made them because it aliened with my beliefs.

 

[Gorse]

just cheat with action replay in the hardest parts.

Those won’t help you — in the mission I mentioned, the actual touch-screen input is what’s bugged, so you’ll have to either complete it legitimately even with cheats or just skip it over. I recommend doing it the real way for a rich, fulfilling gameplay experience.

 

[wilddogsdivorce]

Higurashi and muvluv both have a permanent place in my heart. muvluv alternative was an insane experience. a bit ashamed to admit it, but i am also a grisaia fan. original series only, haven't tried the side stuff. it's cheese, i like it. i've been reading umineko, it's honestly really good but i haven't been able to get myself to give it the attention it deserves. i do highly recommend. i want to read clannad soon, since i liked the show quite a bit and can only assume the game will be more of that. i've tried to play steins;gate but it feels like a psp game to me and it kind of puts me off just a touch. same for danganronpa. tsukihime is pretty great but i haven't ever finished it, but it has a legion of ardent supporters and i think they're right. no opinion on stay night as of yet.

for people familiar with the genre, and whom have a strong stomach. i often recommend Moon. it's a deep cut. it's old, it's a bit tough to get running. and it's not even something i can honestly say i fully enjoy, but rather it's something i find endlessly interesting. i think about this game a lot, and how its premise is actually really solid. i would have executed it differently, but i often find myself rotating the vastness of its potential in my mind. in that way, it's kind of like the elfen lied manga. the people who made it have something wrong with them, and you get to examine that in an interesting way through the aspects of the story that are given importance. and sometimes more so the ones that aren't. it's made by tactics, who went on to form key. who of course made clannad. it's not what you'd expect from them. the game downright requires a guide. and it's very dedicated to showing you things that will make you uncomfortable.

 

[Ppapeno7135]

I started playing VNs with the late 90s and early 2000s eroges. From that time, I'm very fond of True Love.
Now, speaking of japanese ones, it's Kara no Shōjo (The Shell Part I: Inferno). Great dark plot, beautiful art (and grotesque, when needed), H scenes appear only when it makes sense to have them.

My favourite one, though, is Vampire: The Masquerade - Coteries of New York. Even with its flaws, it took me back to my pen and paper RPG days of youth.

 

[Prism_Red]

Full Metal Daemon Muramasa, for a reason that will spoil everything so let's leave it at that.
Also Snow Sakura and Majikoi (and it's expanded universe in general), I like VN that focus more on comedy in general.

 

[mandrakes]

I'm only really visiting this site because of the whole thing with CDromance but I was wondering if anybody here actively plays VNs. If so, which are your favourite and why?

Visual Novel by Dr. Pink Cake and L&P do i need to tell it why

 

[SwordBreaker40]

Every Rance game ever. I mostly hate visual novels if I wanna read I read. Also cheaper to read im not paying 60 euro to read stines gate or 43.99 to read clannad when the anime is cheaper.

 

[mlastes1987]

Mirrors for the NEC PC-8801MA, translated to English.

 

[Nightwaver]

any vn from the science adventure series (chaos head - steins gate - robotics notes - chaos child - anonymous code) and all the sequels and side stories related + all the ushikoshi vn's (never7 - ever17 - remember 11 - 999 - virtue s'last reward - zero time dilemma - both the AI games) and more ..

 

[CanicheSlayer]

My favorite "authentic" Visual Novel is G-senjou no Maou (The Devil on G-string if you prefer). But if hybrids or borderline cases counts, It's the third episode of Phoenix Wright, Trials and Tribulations

 

[DrunkOcelot]

Read the entire Great teacher Onizuka series in high school.

 

[RageBurner]

If the definition is broad enough to count adventure games, then Snatcher and Policenauts.

 

[ThatOneLum]

I don't play a ton of visual novels, but I like those that have a mystery element to them, and usually some gameplay hybridisation.

Zero Escape: 9 Persons, 9 Hours, 9 Doors is a great game with a couple of sequels that I highly recommend.

Danganronpa Trilogy is also awesome even if the fan base has a bad rep these days.

 

[RageBurner]

I don't play a ton of visual novels, but I like those that have a mystery element to them, and usually some gameplay hybridisation.

Zero Escape: 9 Persons, 9 Hours, 9 Doors is a great game with a couple of sequels that I highly recommend.

Danganronpa Trilogy is also awesome even if the fan base has a bad rep these days.

Yeah those are awesome picks. They had actually slipped my mind if you can believe it.