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Looking to get into Visual Novels


Umero

Demon Girl Master
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Let me just start by saying that I'm not a hater so any criticisms I give about the visual novel medium shouldn't be taken as close-mindedness. I would rather enjoy things than not and I've been trying to branch out into many different genres. I recently started listening to voice works a few months back and finally appreciate how good of a medium that is if done properly. That being said, I'm trying to get into visual novels and I have a few questions.

What visual novels would you recommend with short H scenes?

I'm a veteran of HRPGs so I'm most used to more frequent and shorter scenes with average to good looking art. Of the few visual novels I've played (Taimanin Asagi, Taimanin Yukikaze, School Days, Do You Like Horny Bunnies?, Deep Sea Existence, S S Cats, Monster Survive, and Monster Girl Quest) I've only ever finished D.S.E., S S Cats, and MGQ. I always found visual novels to have really long but interesting stories but with equally long H scenes. I would read text for 30mins to 1 hour only to be "rewarded" with a 15 minute scene that has 1 CG and a lot of variations. I really don't like how long each scene is or I felt like there should have been more scenes inserted throughout all of the story. I thought MGQ was particularly good because it had about 10mins of reading with three monster battles back to back after that, which was more like what I was used to in HRPGs. S S Cats, like all of games also had 2 minute scenes in between 10 minute story sections and I'm not surprised they've completely switched to doing HRPGs now.

How do you fap to visual novels?

Since H scenes in HRPGs are relatively frequent, I tend to several scenes before climax, which only ever happens once since I tend to play for 1 to 2 hours. When I tried playing Taimanin Yukikaze, I fapped to parts of the early training scenes because I loved Rindou's character design, but skipped most of it and stopped halfway through Yukikaze's virgin loss scene because it was so text heavy. Should I treat each H scene like like an H anime, put it on auto, and climax at the end of each scene? I'm usually only used to climaxing once after a long session, but I suppose I could shift to climaxing after multiple short sessions for visual novels.

How do you handle choices and multiple routes?

Barring the difficulty of choice selection with with a translator, how do you navigate the various routes in a game? I usually dislike games like the newer games that lock you out of scenes because you because you had too much sex or give special scenes for virgin runs because I like seeing all of the content in one playthrough. While, I see the value in changing the world drastically because of your choices, I always find that most games have a "true" ending despite having multiple endings so I don't really understand the purpose of world changing choices since they are essentially "what-ifs?" Why not just have a simple choice system: choice A leads to bad end and choice B continues the story? I really dislike missing a scene I wanted to see in a particular area and be forced to backtrack and do Astrophysics just to figure out the combination of choices I need to arrive at that scene. School Days was particularly annoying because if you wanted to see scenes with girl A, you would make all the choices that pleased only girl A, only to be rewarded with a few average or bland scenes. Meanwhile, all the best scenes with girl A actually came from a convoluted process of choices which had you jumping back and forth between girl A and B until you ended up with a harem of girl A, B, C, D, E, F or dead. Does everyone really just get walkthroughs for every visual novel they play?
 
Well, first I'll start by mentioning that I'm not a pro of VN, so I may be mistaken in my answer (putting aside my own preference of course, it's hard to be perfectly objective).

What visual novels would you recommend with short H scenes?

From what I've seen, there mostly 2 big categories of VN :
1) Story heavy
a) VN style only
b) ADV type with battle (like Eushully work for exemple) - not stricly a VN, but many peoples put them in the "VN" broad category

2) Hentai Heavy

Theses are broad categories, some story heavy like Eushully work can have lot of H scene, but usually the Story heavy have less scenes.
The number and length of the H scene depend a lot from circle to circle - I'm don't know enough about the differents circles habit to really recommend some to you. Plus I've still have to learn to use VNR to really play the VN.

What I can recommend is for you to check some translated VN game - there quite a number available to purchase (or ask the cat - if it's still feed - I must have seen nearly half a hundred translated VN the past year in the cat basket - of course, some where old game or re upload of old translation).

There some of these like "A Clockwork Ley-Line The Borderline of Dusk" or "Newton and the Apple Tree" that have few scene and most of the gameplay spend on reading the story.
Since I'm can't read japanese I'm more into these english translation at the moment to check if the VN still suit my taste as a game type (although the adv type are too rarely translated to make a decision for the moment ...).
There a couple of old classic that are story heavy like Fate / Stay night or Utawarerumono who both only have fan translation.

How do you fap to visual novels?

Well, that would depend on the VN and if you can understand what is happening. VN being with spare scene are more like "finally some H action, let's enjoy it". You can go as wild as you want if you enjoy the scene or not. For the VN with more scene, It really depend on if I like the scene or if I'll stop there - in which case I'll enjoy it. If I happen upon another scene after a good one, I may skip the fun to replay the scene another time to enjoy it.

How do you handle choices and multiple routes?

As I'm mostly trying english translated game for the moment, I do by trial & error. Unless I reach a point where there so many choice and I can't manage to found the good way to open missing road(s), I won't search for info on internet. But yeah, I'm a bit of a completionist so If I can't finish by myself without spending hours in trial and error I'll skip external help.

I'll advise you to check AS for extra info on VN. It's a forum much more focused on VN / ADV .... game than ULMF. They got threads of discussions, they share VN code and help to play & hook the games.
 
Thanks a lot for your reply! I did a bunch of looking around and found a bunch of Nukige on MangaGamer so I might pick up one and see if I like it. I'm just sad that I might not be able to truly appreciate games like Taimanin Asagi because I don't like how long the scenes are. Thanks for the idea for skipping scenes and coming back to them later I'll have to make a note of that. ULMF also seems more RPG friendly so I'll go check out AS thanks again!
 
If you want to look at english VN, there an uploader on nyaa who's specialized in it, you can check his list of uploaded work for a list of game name and description.
Plus, it can also help to check some game and bought them later if there an official translation (because, yest, sadly the description on many official translation site are rubish to get a good idea of the game compared to the official japanese site).

check the link below if you're interested.


PS : as far as I know it's not forbidden to link to the cat, but if I'm mistaken, delete the link and sorry in advance . . .
 
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