Blindy, have you played Psycho-Pass: Mandatory Happiness yet? If so, what are your thoughts on the game? I love the anime series, although not super big on visual novels (although, I do like the Phoenix Wright games).

Also, have you checked out Digimon Survive? I might also look into picking up that at some point next year.

Dec 17, 2022 18:08:30 GMT Lony said:

Blindy , have you played Psycho-Pass: Mandatory Happiness yet? If so, what are your thoughts on the game? I love the anime series, although not super big on visual novels (although, I do like the Phoenix Wright games).

Also, have you checked out Digimon Survive? I might also look into picking up that at some point next year.

Have not played Psycho-Pass yet, I heard you really need to watch most of S1 to get what the game is going for and I have yet to find time for that anime. But I heard Season 1 of Psycho Pass is terrific and I know I will like it.

I am currently on Digimon Survive amazingly enough, just need to finish both The Quarry & High On Life before I get back into Digimon Survive. Only about 1 hour in, tough to really gauge. Very simplistic strategy RPG at least so far. Have heard amazing things about this game though. 

So I (dropped) Digimon Survive, Sorry Lony . It was a boring first couple of hours but in fairness to the game, I have heard so many people say it picks up so I might get back into this game in the near future. I am a huge Digimon season 1-3 fan so I still got hope in this one.

In the mean time, I still had an itch or two to scratch in regards to visual novels and man be on the lookout because I completed two well-heralded and beloved visual novels....




VA-11 Hall-A: Cyberpunk Bartender Action


999: Nine Hours Nine Persons Nine Doors

VA-11 Hall-A: Cyberpunk Bartender Action

So this year I made it a bit of a mission to dive more into visual novels. A genre that always fascinated me that I played in spurts over the years due to game length and craving gameplay, 2023 is going to be a year that I feel I do a bit more with this genre as a whole. As I get older and get a bit more tired from work, it's going to be a genre like this where it's story telling 1st and gameplay 2nd that will be massive for me where I can sink in a good couple of hours late night before the workday begins again.

So my 1st game of this genre happens to be one I wanted to play for a while in VALHALLA(We will say this for the sake of not going crazy) Cyberpunk Bartender Action which is considered one of the better visual novels one can play. I knew pretty much what I was getting into when it came to this game considering I just played 'Coffee Talk' which was inspired by this particular game, only with Coffee Talk it was making caffeinated drinks vs in VALHALLA it being alcohol/bar related drinks. Overall, I came away pretty happy with my experience of VALHALLA. Much like with Coffee Talk, the game has you play a barista who interacts with customers who come in for a drink and end up venting their frustrations & feelings as you begin to learn more about a character upon each visit. This is easy reading for a visual novel and while I will admit there were too many characters to account for(This is something Coffee Talk did right in comparison) which leads to not remembering key points about a character's arc, I overall liked and laughed and felt for so many of the characters that you serve in the game, which is a credit to the writing.

I hate making consistent comparisons to Coffee Talk, especially since VALHALLA: Cyberpunk Bartender Action came out quite a few years before, but where this game goes right is the main protagonist having a personality and not being a catalyst for the secondary characters to take over. Jill who you play as is more than just a barista as her backstory and issues come into full light eventually which makes her pretty sympathetic and easy to root for to succeed. The secondary characters, some she knows and some she is introduced to interact with her so well where she isn't just sitting back and listening to the characters vent among each other which is what happens in Coffee Talk often.

This game gives you tons of reading, from the actual customer interactions at the bar to the downtime that Jill/main protagonist has in her own apartment as you'd expect in a visual novel. While again, I think there's too many characters in this game(There are characters who are far more important than others, who make 1-2 appearances in the game and are never heard of again) and the better thing would be to do offer side content postgame or something with a set of characters exclusive to this to not overwhelm the player. There's no doubt though that this game tries to bring something fresh in the table. This isn't so much meta-talk like it is in Coffee Talk so much as having characters interacting with one another in storylines woven onto themselves.

As far as aesthetics go, it's about as you'd expect from a game involving bartending. The soundtrack is a pure jam with the ability to create and make your own Jukebox for dedicated songs to change things up as you go on reading the interactions at the bar you serve clients. This game has no real filter with the dialogue, with cursing and some vulgar-ness involved which is appreciated as this game doesn't fall victim of being a vanilla experience as far as characters go. The gameplay at first was a massive turnoff as unlike with Coffee Talk, you have to press certain ingredients on a requested beverage which was a hassle on my console of choice to play this game(Nintendo Switch). It is still an experience best played on PC if possible as to avoid needing to hold buttons down on a joycon/controller which if misdone, can ruin the drink and make you begin again with the superior keyboard experience but overtime, I just got used to this element of the game where I just had to be careful not to get too finicky with the joystick as I am creating my drink. The game gives you clear instructions on what to make but it will sometimes not tell you what to make or expect you to do the total opposite which makes a guide to try and get the best possible ending(s).

I would rank it right on par with Coffee Talk and as a very good visual novel game. The minor blemishes would be the awkward controls at first to make a drink, the inability to save at any point(You get BREAKS and end of the day time to save your progress, but you will go 15 or so minutes at given points before getting to save so take that as you will...thank goodness for the Switch's sleep mode) and there's one too many characters for my liking where the characters who don't appear often get lost in the shuffle. What this game does right are the essential characters being pretty lovable and easy to get into, the music OST being a pure lo-fi banger, the story being pretty solid with a decent amount of twists & turns, and a nice 1990's anime-ish perspective with the artwork. Overall, had a pretty good time with VALHALLA: Cyberpunk Bartender Action.

999: Nine Doors Nine Hours Nine Persons Nine Doors

Can't say enough good things about my revisit with this one. So admittedly, I got 1 ending of 999 on my Nintendo 3DS about a decade ago and was so soured on the thought process of having to replay the game again to get more ending to get a true climax of the game. It didn't make sense to me to have to replay everything, as someone who at the time had little to no understanding of a visual novel with a flowchart so I consistently thought to myself, "What's everyone seeing in this game that I am not?!" but boy a decade or so later, I got it. I was hooked and consistently on my seat wanting to dig deeper into this mystery. Despite being a near 15+ year old game(At least here in US), this game still holds up amazingly well and I absolutely can see why people hold this game as the very best that Kotaro Uchikoshi has written. Don't get me wrong but I still hold the 1st A.I. The Somnium Files as his very best work but this game truly holds up so well nevertheless.

I am one of the very few people who despite getting 1 ending of 999 ages ago, I played and really enjoyed myself with Uchikoshi's later work, the aforementioned A.I. Somnium Files before getting into his older and well-regarded 'Zero Escape' series....and truth be told, I think that's what made the difference. See, there's so many similarities in his writing and so much wink-nods that I didn't get upon playing this game long ago that I got after 60 or so hours among his 2 other titles. The sound effects of entering the escape rooms, the insane plot twists, the scientific formulaic explanations, this time around....I got it.

My 2nd playthrough of 999 was played on the XBOX One as apart of the ported Zero Escape two game set which is important because there's a massive difference amongst the original Nintendo DS version vs this updated one that sealed the deal for me acquiring every single ending and getting all of the achievements possible in this story. The original DS version had you restart the game over, only with the capabilities of fast forwarding all of the unnecessary dialogue. The updated version allows you to skip around via a now traditional flowchart so you don't have to playthrough every part or escape rooms again to try and get each of the multiple endings necessary to get the true ending and uncover the full mystery. This is huge and made the revisiting/backtracking much, much more manageable, maybe the flowchart concept came a little too late for the original version to get to it, but I don't get why this wasn't incorporated in the older game?! By no means is this a perfect experience, as you actually have to visit and answer certain ways that you are given little to no advice upon doing in what is an admittedly, overly hidden way of telling the story but boy is the payoff worth it.

The characters, the pacing, the story, the actual puzzles, everything gameplay and story wise is fantastic with 999. It's like if the Saw series had a numbers theme attached to all of the puzzles as this is a escape room enthusiasts dream game. Without spoiling too much, basically it's a cast of characters who get kidnapped and are put together in a sinking ship and have to work together and solve numerical puzzles and essential trap rooms/escape rooms to progress, all the while having a time limit to escape or else it's death. It's such a simple concept but it's just well done where you have no idea what is to come next. There's different endings that venture off to some absolutely wacky and crazy storylines amongst the characters but I am pretty satisfied with the true ending you can do in this visual novel. There's a fair amount of gameplay but nothing too overly demanding so it works as a game after work.

Easy recommended, one of the better visual novels I played and I totally get why people bang the desk hard for it amongst it's counterparts of this genre. Everything works well and there's very few flaws. The voice acting is about standard of what you'd expect from this game with this type of budget, nothing great but nothing ear-grinding either. The flowchart could have been a tadbit better but besides that, this game does so much, so well.

You got a Steam Deck Blindy? Video novel games tend to be perfect for them.

Feb 13, 2023 20:55:02 GMT c said:

You got a Steam Deck Blindy? Video novel games tend to be perfect for them.

Nope, got a Nintendo Switch though but I don't take it around too much in the subways to and from work. I know Steam is really good with the visual novels but I also feel like the Swich gets their fair share amount of these games as well. 

OPUS: Echo of Starsong

A game that came out in August 2022 for XBOX Game Pass, OPUS: Echo of Starsong was a game that I tried out via the subscription but I fell off within the 1st 30 minutes. It has such a slow beginning and throws characters at you with little to no real background that it was just something that I didn't really get and thus dropped it. 

I feel like with me trying to venture a little more with visual novels and the like, this was one I did want to re-visit and sure enough, I did! But was it a great experience.....ehh. It was solid but there were certain gameplay mechanics that I wish could have been done without. This game is one of those that I wish was just a full blown, true visual novel with minimal gameplay involved as the story and cast of characters would have shined more without having to move around or play a game of 'RNG: The Video Game'(Will get to that shortly). 

Lets start with the good, the game tugs on your feelings quite a bit. Not in a cheap, easy way but in the 10 or so hours that this game has you in it's grasp, it utilizes the time to really get you invested in the main 3 characters that you play in this game that are with you until the very end. Yeah the game is somewhat slow in the beginning as far as giving you the player reason to care for these characters but OPUS: Echo of Starsong eventually gets to the point where you care about each one and want them to succeed towards their goal in this intergalactic space world that you embark on. By the end of the game, without spoiling, I was holding back tears a little which says something about this game's connection to you. Again, I am not that much of a softie when it comes to gaming but the ending with the appropriate music and tender, soft scenes does such a good job at hitting home the end of the journey and the closure one of the character's get years upon years later. 

The music compounds this game very well, not a soundtrack I will go back to listen to but it is appropriate and given the game's smaller budget as it's an Indie studio game, it's very good. The space world that this game takes place gives off such a "Nomads going base to base trying to avoid the perils of being on the run' and I thought the Japanese dialogue was good(No English voice acting, so it's subbed all the way).

Some of the things I thought were not so good were the gameplay elements. As I mentioned before, OPUS: Echo of Starsong was a game I wish just went the visual novel route instead of the 85% visual novel and 15% gameplay because it wasn't so good. What was lacking exactly? 

This game has an RNG/Dice game that upon arriving to locations or trying to get to spots, you may get ambushed by space pirates or intergalactic bandits where pending on a dice roll, you may either get to your destination unharmed or get shotdown and lose ARMOR PLATES/game's form of health. You also get dice rolls that can either give you maps based off of NPC interactions if successful or a token of failure if you don't, which stinks because that means content(Albeit minimal) is locked upon being successful with these RNG rolls. One can attest that you can soft reset to make sure you do land the proper means to get what you want but I don't think that should be something necessary. There are ways to improve your luck, like buying certain items at a vendor and/or during your scavenging to sites, you can get items to help you out but these still aren't full blown guarantees that you get the result you want. This was one game mechanic that I wish would have been done away with personally speaking. 

The couple of explorations work and the puzzles are fine but there's a section that is timed where you have to get the right items to allow you to solve puzzles that didn't really work, especially since there's no run button to really move along these segments. These are mandatory towards advancing in the game(The exploring you do in the outer space is visual novel driven so you aren't doing anything outside of using an exploration pack/expendable obtainable items and getting rewards) and I don't think they were necessary. The puzzles are very good and are heavily based off of sound and needing to get the correct soundwave/vibration to open up doors or find new places to scavenge but the gameplay itself felt slow and when timed obstacles or an instant death encounter with an assassin happen, you really wish it wasn't in this game. 

The good outweigh the bad here but it's definitely a game with tons of promise held back by the little things that fully stop OPUS: Echo of Starsong from reaching great heights, at least for me. The story while gets a bit confusing, the meat & potatoes of it with the 3 main characters is solid, the music & space setting that you have is very good for a visual novel and you get some solid puzzles...just the gameplay portion and RNG minigame were ideas that maybe could have been best left out. Considering this was an Indie game and all, this was a very respectable outing for a small studio and I still am glad to have comeback to this one and finish it.

Update:

The Bad News: Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward is about to leave XBOX Game Pass in a few days, thus ending my chance at a full 100% completion of The Nonary Games on XBOX....unless I buy the game of course. BUT I own the original game via 3DS so not all hope is lost, minor inconvenience.



The Great News: A really well-acclaimed VN dropped called Paranormasight: The Seven Mysteries of Honjo dropped yesterday(Today for EShop/Nintendo Switch people like me) that has gotten ALOT of good buzz. I am really down for a horror VN, especially with how much I enjoyed Spirit Hunter: Death Mark(See last page on how good that was, full platinum!)...so that's my next game. Costs like $16 bucks which is pretty good. 

Pretty good counter to Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty which is a Soulsbourne inspired game. Much needed. Get my horror thrills in before Resident Evil 4: Remake drops end of month.

I had some gold points, so I downloaded Paranormasight!

I probably won't get around to playing it for a while, because I'm still in the middle of Root Film and AI: The Somnium Files and Death Mark, but yeah. I didn't even bother reading anything about it - the visual style just dragged me in. That's probably not very wise TBH.

Is that AARON?!?!?!?!

He's back, my thread did it. :cry: :cry:

Yeah buddy Paranormasight has been a blast thus far, only a couple of hours in. The World Ends With You's art director is behind this game, I didn't know!

Aug 28, 2022 14:25:22 GMT Blindy said:

The thread is verging onto going to page 2 with the PW Arcade frenzy that is going on...



A recent Game Pass game appeared not too long ago in the 2020 Visual Novel game "Coffee Talk" and it was a game on my radar due to the acclaim & attention it was commanding. It was only a matter of when, not if, I would find a deal to grip me to give this game a chance...and it being free on Game Pass was the clincher. And man was it a clincher because I ended up 100% the entire game!

Coffee Talk is very reminiscent to a game I did not play yet in VALHALLA: Cyberpunk Bartending Action, only this game isn't about serving cocktails and alcoholic drinks but more so about serving tea & coffee over to your patrons instead. There's plenty where this game hits the spot on.

The lounge & cozy music feels like an absolute perfect ambiance to the chillness & laxness of Coffee Talk. A lot of perfectly fitted coffee lounge music. The writing that takes place in this game is pretty good. Admittedly, the beginning stories of each character do get a bit clique in some sense(Themes of Game Crunch, Interracial relationships, Online Dating etc. are discussed) but each character is oozing personality where you end up enjoying everyone's presence. No one truly outstays their welcome, and that includes your top customer Freya who is a writer who is looking for inspiration to overcome writer's block for her dream novel. The graphics feel like very retro and are totally fine for what this game is aiming to achieve in the couple of hours it has your undivided attention. It's a very digestible 6-7 hour game if your fully completing it and the game isn't a very hard 100% completion. Admittedly though, some of the trophies like 50 correct orders in Challenge Mode or trashing/discarding 25 drinks or staying in the Foam Art for 1 hour for a trophy/achievement seems silly and pretty unnecessary outside of maybe padding the game length but again this is for purely full completion. I admittedly used a spoiler free guide when it came to the story of the game but I imagine needing to get the orders done correctly for your regular customers might seem tough if you have little to no idea of what a certain drink is without trial & error.

The gameplay, however little of it, consists of you needing to follow directions and make a drink the exact way the patron/customer wants it. You will be running into about 8 different regular characters throughout your time with Coffee Talk and there's not too much punishment if you don't get their order correctly. It's a game led by it's story & writing over actually needing to get the correct orders or not which makes this game absolutely ideal for a chill evening game after work or something. Admittedly, it's a very linear story with no real branch paths to take but that's okay! I like how controlled of a story this game is and there you end up getting closure on every character's struggle and emotional pouring to you as the barista if anything. It's a simple formula but it does get you invested in the characters to the game's credit. 

Very easy recommend of a game, it's a game that does not wear out it's welcome and even has a secret ending sort of put into NG+ where you can select a few parts of the story to revisit for exclusive dialogue that leads to more explanation of the crazy twist that this game has by the end. There are other modes to such as Challenge Mode that has you in a timer get the desired drink of your patrons out where trophies/achievements are attached to it. 

This game has a sequel coming out within the next year or so, curious where this game goes because the formula is very simple and there are plenty of other ways this game can do meta-criticism towards with topics in and out of the gaming industry. However, the lead writer Mohammad Fahmi passed away a couple of months ago so there are fairly big shoes to fill in that regard. Game was worth the hype, had a nice time with it. Can't say any of the characters or stories will stick with me forever but the game does a bang up job in what it sets out to do. 

Day 1 XBOX Gamepass, lets go. I have my April Visual Novel of the month chosen. Had a Target physical order ready and everything, will take this everyday of the week. The Lo-Fi lounge music is going to work.

Curious about the Tron visual novel, TRON: Identity as it also comes out in April. Want to see the price on that. With anything TRON, the soundtrack is what it is all about.

Shame that I already got my taxes done but for the peeps who have not, a free visual novel/date sim game coming to steam end of the month does this in a real quirky way. Really curious about this.

Still writing up my thoughts on PARANORMASIGHT but folks.........folks this dropped.

It's free on Steam. My goodness. Might have to jump in.

Paranormasight: The Seven Mysteries of Honjo

What a pleasant surprise this game turned out to be! When this game was first announced, I was hoping to get something similar to the mold of visual novel that I played last year in Spirit Hunter: Death Mark and at least in the beginning, I feel I got that sort of experience. I do agree with the majority that the game has a very spooky beginning that sort of drags it's own feet midway through with too much lore & in-game universe discussion with loads of emphasis on the countless notes inside the game. By the end, I didn't actually mind the game as it sort of becomes a mystery story where the game ties all the loose ends all at once and sort of brings closure to the various characters in this universe.

I get people really hoping for a continuous dark theme of horror throughout the visual novel but I don't necessarily mind the heavy emphasis on the murder mystery elements and the curveballs that Paranormasight was attempting to throw throughout the 10+ hour story, especially towards the end. My major gripe was the middle portion really dragged on and got a bit too technical with all of the Japanese mythology lore and more so tons & tons of case files/lore dump. It gets to be a bit too much in fact that there was a point that outside of character bios that are routinely updated with events in-game, I tended to just skip the Japanese lore parts because it was just too much detail for what seemed so minimalistic in effect for the story of Paranormasight.

The story without giving away too much is there are rare artifacts that are scattered all around the setting of this game, that each character ends up stumbling upon through various means. These aren't just any mere artifact though, each is possessed with a curse that if specific requirements are met, can end up killing whomever is in the way of the artifact holder. The concept of reviving comes into play where if ____ people are killed, if the artifact is met at 100% completion, the artifact holder may revive whomever from the dead...which offers an interesting morale conflict of 1 life vs many with each character having a different stance towards that said concept.

What this game does really well is the execution of this concept. Paranormasight gives you a buildup of each character and as to their desire towards wanting to revive someone, each with a different morale & reasoning behind what they will do. The interactions amongst each characters who all have different motives adds to the story once the characters start to meet with one another upon the flowchart. You need to send a fax to be saved and that fax that initially does not happen upon your 1st play of a portion of the game, as you suspend the game, you suddenly get the now sent fax to go and save someone from potential peril. Little things like that sequence really help web together the flowchart and link the characters to one another that one action from a character's arc leads to something else happening to someone else's.

Another side perk that this game offers is the couple of moments that the game requires you to interact with menus in order to progress the story. Without spoiling, one in particular requires you to mute the sound entirely to avoid getting killed by a curse. Another requires you to save as a way to recollect a memory which you need to progress. Another has you take off a certain item to avoid dying, which can only happen after an initial trial and error. Of the visual novels that I have played, Paranormasight really sticks out as one that happens to break 4th wall with instances such as this. The game is told and set through a narrator as he speaks to you here & there to let you know where you went wrong upon a death with subtle hints.

Outside of the inconsistent pacing of the game which again for me dragged on a little bit by the middle of the game, I found that some characters were far more prominent than others. One character in particular is one you heard about and see mentioned but don't ever interact with them at any point in the game despite being considered a semi-important figure in the game's world. The major twist of a character's reveal also sort of falls flat because there was little to no interaction for the longest time. The fully fleshed out characters were done proper but the ones that weren't just felt like side characters at best and I felt there was more potential to make them maybe more relevant to the player.

The artwork of the game is very pretty even if some of the art design's choices of characters having closeups during dialogue(Think As Dusk Falls sort of as the closest thing in gaming to this) were a little bit much for me. The music fit the themes of the game and 1-2 tracks were pretty catchy too so that is a plus. There's no voice acting which is fine considering the budget and the accessibility features are always good such as save anytime or increasing the subtitle size. Stuff you'd expect from a 2023 visual novel but still appreciated nevertheless.

Overall, had a blast with Paranormasight: The Seven Mysteries of Honjo and it was such an unexpected horror/mystery thriller that despite some of the inconsistencies like pacing & certain characters getting more shine than others, it is most definitely a good recommendation for anyone looking for a good visual novel that has horror & mystery elements. There's a ton of lore dumps and they rear their ugly head at the worst times but they are skippable and you don't need to fully divulge yourself to get the grand scheme of the story. Had a good time with this one.

The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog

Was planning to hold off a bit on visual novels given I have played quite a few but then this announcement came from SEGA, a day before April Fools day. As someone who grew up on the retro sonic games and sporadically played any of the 3D Sonics, I sort of knew I was going to be a bit overwhelmed with what was marketed as a free love passion project to longtime Sonic fans. However, I came away after my under 2 hour experience with The Murder of Sonic The Hedgehog somewhat shocked at how solid it was.


Now, to get out of the way, it's a 2 hour at best playing experience. Again, the game is free on Steam so there's no qualms to be had so it's an actually solid evening experience that's very digestible. The gameplay wise is an easy to follow visual novel that sort of borrows from the Ace Attorney series where you need to point & click for evidence around a room and present it to the subject at hand that is present in each room. It's very elementary and simple where 'Every item found matters to progress the story' which can be seen as a bad thing but I also like that it's a simple gameplay element as opposed to being something more tedious.


The Murder of Sonic The Hedgehog really shines if you're at all caught up with all of the cast of characters as this game really is a nod to everything Sonic throughout the years. A lot of this must have went over my head but even the simple concept of who murdered Sonic is easy for anyone to figure out. The story is very much like Ace Attorney meets the board game 'Clue' where you interview and ask everyone of their alibi & try and figure out who did it. Unlike the Ace Attorney games where there's a back and forth of dialogue that you have to call 'OBJECTION' on, this game actually does something a little bit different....


This game has a top down screen rolling game that plays similar to Sonic the Hedgehog 2 where you have to meet the required ring total to progress or else you have to restart the minigame again. Along the way are obstacles that range from instant death via falling to spikes to enemies/bombs that appear throughout. Each task is a different sequence so despite the "same-sy' feeling you might get playing these, there is a bit of differentiation where the few times you have to do this minigame, it never feels redundant. I will say though that the biggest miss of this game is just how many of these minigames they throw at you by the very end, where there's a good 6-7 back to back sequences that you must do to see the end of the game that really wore out their welcome by the end. Especially as the screens have so much obstacles that try and thwart your ring collecting, it got to be too much for me. Yes there's difficulty settings that you can adjust to make it easy(Such as invincible mode) but the issue is once you start the final portions of this, there's no saving in between or adjusting the difficulty so you're most certainly going to have either restart a previous save file or tough it out(That's me). It got to be too much and I actually would have preferred if this game was a full fledged visual novel from start to finish rather than throw these minigames but I get it, it's a Sonic game and with Sonic games is platforming and difficulty so you need to scratch that itch for people who are going to play this game.


Thoughts with this game are that The Murder of Sonic The Hedgehog is a very solid game and for what is a free game, there's tons to get from The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog despite the relatively short game length and all. Especially for diehard Sonic fans, this will be a love letter to the __th degree that they may end up appreciating more. The game's simplicity from a visual novel standpoint may be hit or miss for some, likewise for the minigame portions but it's a heck of an effort for a small budget, Indie title with an iconic franchise blended in. I can't grade this higher as there isn't any replayability/different paths and it's a relatively short game with a semi-frustrating end game portion that soured the experience a little by the end.

I'd never seen this before!



These were the characters from Distrust (which eventually became Danganronpa).

Some of them were mostly kept intact for DR (Hifumi, Togami and Yasuhiro are obviously there), but some of the others look pretty cool. There are 15 characters here and 15 in DR, but there are some who definitely don't have an equivalent here. Like...who could #2 on the bottom row be?!

The red eyes are interesting too. 

Edit: Actually...

So what's the appeal here? Is it just a genre of dating sims? I tried one once or twice, but couldn't get down with it.

Nov 18, 2022 2:32:51 GMT @ness said:

So what's the appeal here? Is it just a genre of dating sims? I tried one once or twice, but couldn't get down with it.

They're murder mystery games!

You unlock a dating sim mode after you complete them, but the main games are about a bunch of weirdos all locked up together, slowly losing their minds and killing each other.

It's like if PW was a game!

Apr 6, 2023 21:03:22 GMT @papaya said:

Nov 18, 2022 2:32:51 GMT @ness said:

So what's the appeal here? Is it just a genre of dating sims? I tried one once or twice, but couldn't get down with it.

They're murder mystery games!

You unlock a dating sim mode after you complete them, but the main games are about a bunch of weirdos all locked up together, slowly losing their minds and killing each other.

It's like if PW was a game!

Does have a lot of OT vibes to it.

Apr 6, 2023 20:21:53 GMT @papaya said:

I'd never seen this before!



These were the characters from Distrust (which eventually became Danganronpa).

Some of them were mostly kept intact for DR (Hifumi, Togami and Yasuhiro are obviously there), but some of the others look pretty cool. There are 15 characters here and 15 in DR, but there are some who definitely don't have an equivalent here. Like...who could #2 on the bottom row be?!

The red eyes are interesting too. 

Edit: Actually...

These designs are pretty cool, feels very Battle Royale like if anything. Toko looks like a man in these pics though, made the right decision on her redesign for sure. 

@aaron @payaya waifu of 2023 incoming. Just dived a little bit into Master Detective Archives: RAIN CODE which is by the creator of Danganronpa(He does the scenarios of this game), Kazutaka Kodaka and it's pretty much Danganronpa to a tee. :lol: The characters scream of Danganronpa only they aren't students in this game but the entire Labrynth portions of this game are practically the game's equivalence of the murder trials that took a couple of hours in the Danganronpa games. 

So far so good, if you liked DR1-DR3, you will have a good time with this one. It has a really slowish beginning though, the way it's done is sort of sluggish in a sense but it does pick it by the end of Ch.0. I am still really early with this game though. 

Finished up Master Detective Archieves: Rain Code a few days ago, we'll get to that game pretty soon but first some catchup:



Coffee Talk Pt II Hisbuscus & Butterflies(XB1)

One of my semi-hyped games that got a release date this year, I really liked the 1st Coffee Talk. While the 1st game was nothing revolutionary as far as visual novels go, it had a simple enough concept and the game introduced tons of meta commentary that ranged from game crunch to interracial(Or in this case, interspecies) relationships that I found interesting. It was something I played before the inspiration behind Coffee Talk, VALHALLA: Cyberpunk Bartending Action and dare I say it, Coffee Talk Pt I did things better than VALHALLA, in particular the game being easier to do drinks(I played VALHALLA on a Switch which took a little bit of time to get used to) so I was pretty psyched for a sequel. This was especially big since the lead writer of Coffee Talk Pt I, Mohammad Fahmi had passed away a little over a year ago of this writing so I really wanted to see how Toge Productions would rebound after such a sad & devastating loss. Much to say, Coffee Talk Pt II does what I expected out of it, even if at the cost of the game being safe and not really going outside the formula of Pt I.


Coffee Talk Pt II dare I say feels more like an add-on/DLC to the 1st game. It plays pretty much the same way with a few minor exceptions here and there. There's a new item system that allows you in certain parts to give items to certain patrons in the game that can lead to different endings or dialogue but basically outside of that, the game feels more so like a reunion of sorts of the cast that you liked or even felt indifferent towards in Pt I. You basically get a rundown on what life has been for these characters after the 1st game with a few sprinkles here & there on top of it all. Those sprinkles happen to come in the form of new characters to the world of "Coffee Talk" which includes a social media influencer named Lucas, a baritone singer with a semi-mean streak in Fiona, a distant relative to the ever loveable space traveling Silver named "Amanda" among other new characters introduced in this sequel. If you had little to no real connection to the first game's cast, than this one won't do much to sway you in the correct direction. Likewise, it's arguable that the new cast of characters just aren't as good or fleshed out as the new ones, as each have a (IMO) less interesting arch amongst themselves. What sort of got a bit much is the fact that this game really tries to incorporate them often throughout the story and unless you purposely mess up one of the character's drinks, they would routinely get involved with the old cast of characters so it's a "Take it or leave it" sort of deal.

What I didn't find as good as the original was the way to get trophies/achievements in this one. If you don't care at all whatsoever on this stuff, glance through to the next paragraph by all means but for me, I got a full 100% of the first one yet didn't bother to get the final 1-2 trophies as Coffee Talk II's trophies felt very tricky and even more rinse/repeat expecting you to play through the same story again and again with purposeful miscues in order to trigger new dialogue/story paths. It just got tiresome to the point that by the great mercy that you can skip previously read dialogue that I just didn't care to fully clean up the final 1-2 trophies because at the time upon playing this, no one really knew the scenes that trigger events to occur to get the final 1-2 missing pictures that are necessary to get the full completion. What was great is having the game sort of speak to you via 3rd wall breaking to let you know how close you are to getting the full picture and new dialogue is great but for the most part, I feel it's a waste of time trying to get the full completion. If anything, it just extends & makes the main story just repetitive as all heck where it just isn't fun.

Overall: 7.5/10. If I gave the original Coffee Talk Pt 1 an 8/10, I do feel this game is a bit of a blemish and a dropoff from what I truly expected out of the sequel. What I would have expected with maybe more experimentation with the latte art or ability to do drinks(The game gives you new ingredients sure but it just feels like more of the same), the game doesn't really go out of it's wheelhouse for and normally this is fine, again I want to play what I bought/downloaded with no punches being pulled or any sort of twist for the sake of. A new couple of characters doesn't really feel like a sequel to me, if anything this just feels like DLC and if you adored the first Coffee Talk, you won't be letdown. I just wanted maybe a little more out of the sequel and to sort of build the solid premise of the original and just didn't get it. Again, given the circumstances of the tragedy the studio endured in the past year, I give them massive credit for putting out this game and god bless them but I had good hopes for this game to be massively better than the original I really fell for in August upon it's Game Pass arrival but alas. Even the Lo-Fi music felt very samesy and while it's definitely pleasant to listen to, I felt like I was in deja vu all over again when playing this one. 



Edda Cafe

So I have a pretty long commute via train so I said for 1-2 rides home, why not pick something easy to read to make my tenuous & mundane travel easier to deal with. Looking for recommendations for any Android/mobile Visual Novel led me to this one....and I can see why. It's super easy to read, easy to relate to and it took me 45 minutes to complete at best. There's a main story with 2 possible outcomes that you can choose by the very end but of course you will want to save before decision time and see both endings for what they are. Without spoiling too much, this visual novel mostly allows your main protagonist to travel back to time prior to tragedy that impacted the character upon your introduction to the story. It's a very light hearted tale that does take a pretty serious (Albeit predictable) tone by the end so I think for the little content that there is, this game is decent. Nothing that will stick with me nor anything out of the ballpark as far as twists or captivation goes but for like less than hour and for something that is a free download, it's worth a quick read more than anything. Artwork is solid too and yeah the music goes on repeat every 10-15 seconds with some budget friendly voice acting too!

Not sure if I mentioned or not but have you played Coteries of New York, Shadows of New York or Night Road? All three are Vampire the Masquerade visual novels and pretty good ones.  Some real creative characters, and the New York ones were good enough to become canon for the larger RPG.  Not played Night Road myself but people raved about it.  Story is said to diverse deeply into different paths.  

I also assume you did Doki Doki. If not Doki Doki Literature Club is amazing. The original PC one is batshit crazy at the end, but the other ones including the ports are good, but not as good as the OG PC port had you literally deleting game files at one point. It would also get your Steam info to tell you your name and what games you enjoyed playing. Also would look for Twitch stuff to see if you were streaming. Creeped the hell out of people.

Aug 1, 2023 20:31:12 GMT c said:

Not sure if I mentioned or not but have you played Coteries of New York, Shadows of New York or Night Road? All three are Vampire the Masquerade visual novels and pretty good ones.  Some real creative characters, and the New York ones were good enough to become canon for the larger RPG.  Not played Night Road myself but people raved about it.  Story is said to diverse deeply into different paths.  

I also assume you did Doki Doki. If not Doki Doki Literature Club is amazing. The original PC one is batshit crazy at the end, but the other ones including the ports are good, but not as good as the OG PC port had you literally deleting game files at one point. It would also get your Steam info to tell you your name and what games you enjoyed playing. Also would look for Twitch stuff to see if you were streaming. Creeped the hell out of people.

Sorry I didn't see this till now C. I have heard the lone really good Vampires game is Bloodline, which I heard is a fantastic WRPG in terms of story even if it suffers from 00's jank. 

And yeah I played Doki Doki when it was/is free but never the Plus edition. I thought it's solid though I think the twists it has are a bit overhyped. But yeah the file deletion part by the end is pretty zany, that was one of my 1st true "3rd wall breakings" I had, having to delete the file to progress is clever as heck. Still a game worth the 1st experience if you can have it though and one of the textbook definitions of a game that requires you to go in totally blind to enjoy yourself. 

Keep forgetting about doing that Master Code Archives review since I beat it last month(Going to be on my top 10 GOTY list barring something wacky like SEP-DEC just producing killers). It's coming. 

Why I bring this thread up though is..........


Coming stateside FEB 2024, going to be among one of my more anticipated games on the year for sure. I have enough time to dabble with Spirit Hunter: NG too so this is good news. 

About to get into Chapter 5 of Spirit Hunter: Death Mark II after pushing the game aside due to both Persona 3 Reload and FF7: Rebirth....quick thoughts.

So far so good. The QOL improvements from Death Mark I and NG is evident, no more dungeon crawler movement aspects, they have character movements ala 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim and so far, no gimmicks like Corpse Party where it forces you to navigate away from danger. 1st case is kinda basic but hoping that's just because it's the introduction. Love seeing the returning cast from Death Mark I assist your main character in the cases here, I still remember each one!

There's a new gimmick with this game that instead of the 2 person tag team combination attacks that were vital towards winning the battles vs the paranormal you encounter, Death Mark II has a new combat system. It's still you and a companion venturing out to find out the cause of the disturbance and how to purify them....but the 1-2 combat scenes you get in each chapter have a new success rate gimmick that was never featured before. You get different action choices to make with a percentage and how much health they take away from your character(s) in making them. However, I think the SUCCESS/FAILURE percentage rages seem kind of pointless. I get the intention behind them, using your wit to pick the best choices to try and combat an enemy vs picking a body part of the spirtual entity to throw an item at seems easier for the player to grasp and gives more diverse options to pick from. However, you can still pick the right action based off the story/spirit's biography(One spirit is attached to an item from someone they loved so giving them that item helps them remember themselves as a human, something like that) AND still get a failed option...all because of the chance/percentage it doesn't happen. You have to repeat the same thing only with your health getting cut twice in a row now due to this. See, I don't know if this is truly RNG or not, I have yet to get a game over but it seems really pointless to throw this in. I nearly died due to 2 failures in one session despite having over 65% odds both times in saying I would succeed if choosing this option. It just seems like a gimmick that works on paper to add tension to the combat and I appreciate no real timer being thrown at you to pick something or else....but picking the right option AND still not getting rewarded, all because of "percentages" seems lame. They said my character dropped the scissors in terror but I do the action again, and they execute perfectly fine this time. Sure. :lol:

The jumpscares this game threw at you in Chapter 2 got me, it's some trollish shit much like the previous games. The hilarious part is they warn you about jump scares and consider turning them off if you have a weak heart AFTER a real nasty jumpscare of the supposed reocurring antagonist of the game. There hasn't been any jumpscares that got me as good as the 1st one did, seems like there's 1-2 cheapies per chapter. Right on par with the series thus far.

You can def. tell there's a small budget for this game. These were never big budget visual novels to be fair and certainly not on the Ace Attorney/A.I. The Somnium Files/Danganronpa levels of flare & dramatics. I never noticed it for the 1st 2 games but stuff like reused pictures of the collectible of Death Mark II and victims/side characters not getting shown or any kind of art design/bio does sorta stand out. Half the bios has a character bio that does describe the character, and their prevalence to the story but there's no picture, no details, nothing. Some of them get shown 1-2 times, including their gruesome death scenes but they get talked off camera for the most part. Can def. see the corners getting cut here. And again, it's not a big deal. Games, especially of this genre don't need a big budget to be good. This series is living proof of that as I think this is one of the best VN series out there but between that and the story revolving around one major area(The reoccurring school, this school is the setting for like almost all the 4 chapter scenes!), you can't help but notice the budget cuts to get this out. The school that most of this game takes place in rivals the Resident Evil 1 Mansion as far as most visited area in a game that I've played. I wish there would be a little bit more diversity with the setting but it's a extremely minor nitpick.

Overall, game is pretty good and seemingly I am past the halfway point so this might end up being a semi-short visual novel of under 20 hours, which feels like easily the shortest of the 3 entries of this series.

And got the platinum for Death Mark II.

Much of what I said stood true although couple of things I want to add are:

1) I didn't realize this was a game that was backed by Japanese pledges(Maybe the equivalent of Kickstarter over there?) so in that respect, now I fully understand why the budget felt off in this game.

2) You do go into a forest in the final few chapters which is cool but much of this game hangs around the school that you start off exploring in.

3) I died twice via RNG in the spirit battles, again I don't like this change at all. You can pick the right outcomes and use logic to pick why it is but because of RNG, you can end up failing. In real life, I get it....facing down horror/evil you will stumble and panic so I won't dock much off this game due to this. It's realistic....but like I have an 80% chance of succeeding and still getting a failure is frustrating, especially when you lose health points off cheap scenes that you have no control over. The great news is you can boost your characters abilities(How much energy is drained or increasing the percentages of RNG) via the collectibles in this game. However, they really hide these collectibles super well. Like one has you clap 3 times on a random post or something in the later chapter, there's absolutely no way you would know that. I had to burn all of my collectibles at the end to beat the final boss because it would eat your health in cheap scenes to and during the battles.

4) The jump scares start coming in later more so and all but like 1-2 times, they continue to get me. The game prepares you by saying watch for the vibrating controller to tell when it happens but nope, it's simultaneous. LOL. By the end, I can sort of feel the lull of quietness into a jump scare. Def. keep em on though, no shot I was turning these off. It's what you play the game for!

I thankfully followed a spoiler free guide for this reason and yeah the twist was somewhat predictable albeit not in the way I thought it would be. Overall, great 3 game series.

If I have to rank them for me:

Spirit Hunter: Death Mark 1(9/10)
Spirit Hunter: Death Mark 2(8.5/10)
Spirit Hunter: NG(8/10)

The DLC of Death Mark 2 is like a 20 minute fluff piece that had no real meaning and I am going to read another DLC that was exclusive to Japanese backers but whenever this series gets another entry, I am absolutely in.

So while I wait for my 2024 video game crush to come out at the end of the month(Eve of Stellar Blade), I said we got some free time to kill so my next visual novel is Bustafellows, a 2021 mystery game that has gotten lots of good acclaim. There's one thing though worth pointing out about this one:



It's an Otome game. That means you play as a female main character and get choices of multiple men to date and (supposedly) there's lots of fanservice of very PG romantic scenes. If the story is good and engaging(Thus far I am like 2 hours in, so far so good), count me in. But yeah this is going to counterbalance Stellar Blade this month.

Jun 27, 2024 2:51:39 GMT Blindy said:

In all seriousness, I think the Phoenix Wright/Ace Attorney series is the perfect way to start. There's a current Ace Attorney Trilogy collection that I just checked it 50% off, they are pretty easy to digest and are (mostly) well-written with a handful of terrific characters. I've only played these, have everything else on my 3DS and Switch(The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles released last year for the Switch)

Guess what? Emperor and Empress have started playing the Ace Attorney trilogy. It's great fun! The talking does get a bit much sometimes, but I suppose that's the point of a visual novel. Not so much gameplay.

The court cases and fantastic and challenging. Despite the seemingly limited options it's sometimes impossible to figure out the next step. I've lost a couple of times already. Nevertheless we are excited to continue the visual novel journey.

You two are in for a ride. And Empress getting you a Nintendo Switch means you got access to the ENTIRE catalog of games with the upcoming Miles Edgeworth(Which if you haven't seen him yet already is a GOAT of visual novel characters) games, AA fans are eating.

Looking up a guide for what to do isn't the end of the world but you gotta stay far, far, far away from the spoilers. Some of the twists in the trilogy are insane. There are a few dud cases here and there but for me the cast of characters are just amazing in this. Even the antagonists are memorable, some you even love to hate. 

If you guys like that, Danganronpa is going to be the closest thing you will get. That too is all on the Nintendo Switch.

Seriously, you are eating with this handheld. Even if its late in it's cycle, it's a visual novel monster.