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Visual Novels

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Oldest VN You've Played (lemmy.comfysnug.space)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Just curious what the oldest game is that you've played, and whether you enjoyed it or not. I'm less interested in the technical experience, so you can use the original release date, even if you played a more modern implementation.

For me, Fate/stay night just barely beats Clannad, by a few months. Both were released in 2004, and both show their age a little bit (Clannad in its convoluted branching, Fate in its resolution options), but are perfectly playable. But of course both are super popular classics, so I wonder if you all had similar experiences with more obscure or older titles.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm in the process of playing Higurashi, released in 2002, and it's good. It's a very different experience from the anime. I actually played the Umineko VN first, which became my favorite thing in any medium quite quickly. Higurashi just keeps getting releases, re-releases, new adaptations; the train keeps going. The original release had very amateur art, but modern console releases in the Higurashi franchise have polished opening movies, redrawn sprites and full voice acting.

This certainly isn't an obscure title, of course. Higurashi doesn't offer you any choices, and it plays out just like a novel with no branches. Personally, I prefer kinetic visual novels like Higurashi and Umineko, but I know many don't share this opinion.

And I suppose I've played Subarashiki Hibi, too, which is a 2011 remake/re-imagining of Tsui no Sora from 1998, which I really liked. I don't really count that one on account of Subahibi being a completely different game.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I've seen Higurashi pop up quite a bit in a discord server I'm in although most discussion there is centered around the manga which I've heard nothing but praise for so far. I haven't gotten out of my way to check it out yet; but the VN on my to read list and by the tempo I'm going at that's looking like I'm going to be able to start it in 2024 because there's a few other lengthy VNs I want to finish first (Mahoutsukai no Yoru, Tsukihime Plus Disc, Kagestu Tohya, Katawa Shoujo, and I wanna read the Tsukihime remake now the translation for that is done) so there's a lot on my plate and too little time to finish these.

is there anything I need to know before I dig into the Higurashi series (besides it's rougher art; I've gotten used to that thanks to Tsukihime)?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

is there anything I need to know before I dig into the Higurashi series (besides it’s rougher art; I’ve gotten used to that thanks to Tsukihime)?

I recommend buying it from MangaGamer because it's cheaper than on Steam. Then you might install the 07th Mod patches for a better experience. Also, this release comes with the original Japanese text, in case you're interested in that.

There are no H-scenes in Higurashi. Higurashi is partially a challenge to the reader to try to figure out what's going on. Everything is answered in the end.

I don't think there's anything else you'd need to know. Except that 07th Expansion has released many other games, and you should read Umineko next if you cared for Higurashi at all.

Edit: The first chapter is free, so you can download that to see if it interests you.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

just one more question about the VN on a technical side: do they still use ONScripter, because if that is the case I don't have to worry about wine. I'm daily driving linux (arch linux BTW) and I can easily use a native (and properly patched) version of ONScripter for the english translation, I've done so for the og tsukihime after fiddling with wine and the pre-packaged ONScripter for way too long and it massively improved the experience (mainly because I could move the window and actually go fullscreen without crashing the game)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Mangagamer has native Linux builds for all the Higurashi games. But, another 07th Expansion game from 2016, TRianThology, used the NScripter engine, and I was able to get it to run natively using ONScripter. Is that what you're describing?

I'm actually using the Windows builds through WINE so I can get Textractor to inject hooks into the games, but it's nice to have native Linux builds.

By the way, if you want more stable window management, fullscreening, upscaling, etc., the Gamescope compositor is an easy way to achieve that. Lutris makes it easy to use it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Mangagamer has native Linux builds for all the Higurashi games.

nice, spares me the effort of figuring that out.

But, another 07th Expansion game from 2016, TRianThology, used the NScripter engine, and I was able to get it to run natively using ONScripter. Is that what you’re describing?

Pretty much, I have ONScripter through the AUR (onscripter and onscripter-en) which I can use to run these games.

I’m actually using the Windows builds through WINE so I can get Textractor to inject hooks into the games

I had a quick look at that, is it for accessibility or are you just trying to get the text out for other reasons (if it's the second I've had success using AETools on the Nscript.dat file).

By the way, if you want more stable window management, fullscreening, upscaling, etc., the Gamescope compositor is an easy way to achieve that.

I'm aware of gamescope; but I'm also aware that it's basically a glorified hack to get something that plays along; generally I prefer if a game has builtin exclusive fullscreen as it still carries many advantages over using compositor hacks. (I haven't really seen a good case not to use it besides the minor alt-tab annoyance)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Pretty much, I have ONScripter through the AUR (onscripter and onscripter-en) which I can use to run these games.

Then we used precisely the same packages to achieve that. I don't even remember where I heard about ONScripter and thought to use it. I couldn't get it to run through WINE, so it was fortunate I figured that out.

I had a quick look at that, is it for accessibility or are you just trying to get the text out for other reasons (if it’s the second I’ve had success using AETools on the Nscript.dat file).

I'm using visual novels as a method of learning Japanese. Textractor extracts the Japanese text from the game, copies it to my clipboard, and then Yomichan reads my clipboard and searches my installed dictionaries for the Japanese words in the sentence, which I can read to understand the unknown word(s). I might then use AnkiConnect to create an automatic flashcard in Anki using my dictionary in Yomichan for the word I just learned to review later.

I’m aware of gamescope; but I’m also aware that it’s basically a glorified hack to get something that plays along; generally I prefer if a game has builtin exclusive fullscreen as it still carries many advantages over using compositor hacks. (I haven’t really seen a good case not to use it besides the minor alt-tab annoyance)

When I was playing the Sonohana games, the only resolution available to me was 800x600, and fullscreening it was horribly broken in WINE. It would also often crash the game when I switched virtual desktops. Since using Gamescope, those issues disappeared. Hack or not, I'm a fan.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

the only resolution available to me was 800x600, and fullscreening it was horribly broken in WINE.

This is the exact reason I started using the AUR version as ONScripter's exclusive fullscreen does not work in wine, I also played half of Tsukihime not realizing you could use 1, 2, and 3 on your numpad to change the text speed or change the game volume or even use page more (which is a delight during certain scenes).

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's nice when it works, but looking back at TRianThology, I've realized that the Linux build of ONScripter kept finding the wrong color profile for png files, and so the game flashes green constantly. It's pretty unplayable. I could only get it to work by running the Windows build of ONScripter through WINE. And yeah, this was the AUR version with the two patches.

And, unfortunately, the Sono Hana games don't use the NScripter engine. I think they might use the KiriKiri2 engine?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

And, unfortunately, the Sono Hana games don’t use the NScripter engine. I think they might use the KiriKiri2 engine?

could be depending on the period those games were released, KiriKiri is definitely an interesting beast as you can't really interpret the KAG scripts directly as there are dozens of plugins that modify the things available in it due to the interpreter for it being written in TJS and that being interpreted by kirikiri. for F/SN I know of https://fatestaynight.vnovel.org/ but that uses an interpreter specifically written for it.

What I can say is that you should be able to extract the .xp3 archives with AETools (I don't know why; but this single program is a godsend for extracting VN assets).

Another thing is KiriKiriSDL2 which is a port of KiriKiriZ to SDL2 with goals of supporting platforms such as linux and webassembly; but last I heard the project wasn't ready for running games like Fate.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

fatestaynight.vnovel.org

That's pretty cool. I know next to nothing about engines (Ren'Py seems nice), so this was enlightening. I know a group rewrote several of the Sonohana games in Ren'Py while working on their translation so it would work cross-platform.

AETools

Is this what you're referring to? It's written in Pascal..! This is not promising:

NOTE! Unfortunately, the build environment for AE is no longer functional, which prevents us from working on it. If you'd like to continue the development yourself, then feel free to grab the archived source code from the Downloads page.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That’s pretty cool. I know next to nothing about engines (Ren’Py seems nice), so this was enlightening. I know a group rewrote several of the Sonohana games in Ren’Py while working on their translation so it would work cross-platform.

Ren'Py is a really interesting beast as it aims to make things easier to develop for and is a really good cross-platform solution. It also is trivial to extract and modify and we can use the tools already on our system to do so, the downside to Ren'Py is that it is not nearly as flexible as kirikiri due to it's nature (and it doesn't need to be; most things are already baked in).

I do like the fact that they ported the game to Ren'Py and I appreciate their effort to rewrite the game's script, there's very few groups that will ever go through that effort just because of the amount of work involved.

Is this what you’re referring to? It’s written in Pascal…!

yes, it's a bit unsettling; but newer VN engines tend to use more common filetypes and AETools is written to deal with the older engines that just don't have a lot of easily available tooling for them, especially on the extraction side. I haven't seen any other extraction tools that work this well in wine and a lot of these older formats are archaic and tend to have very little in the way of documentation and even less in english (ONScripter only has this because of the VN translation community and KiriKiri has no good resources at all)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I've been seeing a lot of Ren'Py games lately. All the Ren'Py games I've played feel nice, so I have no complaints. I think the very first Ren'Py game I played was Save the Date, which I really liked. The most recent one was The Expression Amrilato, another release from MangaGamer which has a native Linux build. The main Ren'Py developer is actually being funded quite sustainably, which is good to see.

Are you a developer? You've got quite the encyclopedic knowledge on VN engines.

I do like the fact that they ported the game to Ren’Py and I appreciate their effort to rewrite the game’s script, there’s very few groups that will ever go through that effort just because of the amount of work involved.

It's a crazy amount of effort, I imagine. These games are pretty short, though (~4 hours?). I don't know exactly why they rewrote it in Ren'Py. It might have been for a cross-platform release, or it might have been to make it smoother, or for all or none of those reasons.

What I can say is that you should be able to extract the .xp3 archives with AETools

These Sono Hana games don't have .xp3 archives, but Dracu-Riot does, so I do own a KiriKiri game. The SonoHana games have MGD and MSD files. I don't know if this page or any others on this site would be interesting to you at all.

yes, it’s a bit unsettling; but newer VN engines tend to use more common filetypes and AETools is written to deal with the older engines that just don’t have a lot of easily available tooling for them, especially on the extraction side. I haven’t seen any other extraction tools that work this well in wine and a lot of these older formats are archaic and tend to have very little in the way of documentation and even less in english (ONScripter only has this because of the VN translation community and KiriKiri has no good resources at all)

I don't know if this is something I can even approach right now. I wouldn't know where to start. If I extract the .xp3 files with ae—then what? I admit this is all interesting at the very least.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I’ve been seeing a lot of Ren’Py games lately.

Ren'Py has been consistently good and open so it just became the standard now (much like KiriKiri and NScripter before it), we might very well see it be replaced eventually; but I don't think we're going to get a competitor real soon doubly so when considering it has made western visual novels viable thanks to it's great english documentation.

Are you a developer? You’ve got quite the encyclopedic knowledge on VN engines.

not professionally; but I do have quite a bit of knowledge and experience of poking at systems and hacking things together using whatever tools at my disposal, and when I started getting into visual novels (very much thanks to Fate) I wanted to know how it worked behind the scenes, I also had some technical knowledge at the time poking at Ren'Py a little; but that was of no help as Fate/Stay Night uses kirikiri and it's archives were unextractable with the tools I had (which is how I stumbled across AETools)

It’s a crazy amount of effort, I imagine. These games are pretty short, though (~4 hours?).

4 hours is really short from what I've come to realize and I can't imagine there are too many flags and branching paths to keep track of so it would be trivial compared to something like the original Tsukihime which has a script file of 4.5MiB (encoded in SHIFT_JIS so vim didn't even know how to display half the characters) which has 5 routes, a whole bunch of branching paths and flags it keeps track of, and way to many dead ends you'll run into without a guide because of a wrong choice you made half an hour ago and vndb lists it as 42 hours (those are some real fast readers).

The SonoHana games have MGD and MSD files. I don’t know if this page or any others on this site would be interesting to you at all.

I'd give it a shot with AETools first, unless it's on a custom engine for those games specifically or something used for like 5 games in total it should work.

I don’t know if this is something I can even approach right now. I wouldn’t know where to start. If I extract the .xp3 files with ae—then what? I admit this is all interesting at the very least.

The .xp3 files are just archives, they contain various files and what those are and where they are depends on the game, Fate/Stay Night: Réalta Nua Ultimate Edition (A community version of the game patched with all sorts of goodies from various releases) has files to load assets from the PSVita release which are stored in their own archive. You'll have to explore the extracted files yourself (I recommend doing so in whatever file manager you have as the AETools file preview sucks ass) you'll quickly find the file structure though as it is made to make sense. The big thing I learned is that this is a process of trial and error (largely the latter for me) and when your approach doesn't work out try a different angle and throw more stones at the window until you find the brick that breaks it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Ren’Py has been consistently good and open so it just became the standard now (much like KiriKiri and NScripter before it), we might very well see it be replaced eventually; but I don’t think we’re going to get a competitor real soon doubly so when considering it has made western visual novels viable thanks to it’s great english documentation.

Personally, I don't want to see Ren'Py replaced unless it's by a better free software project. I think it's good that a lot of VNs are being built on a free software engine today, and that the developer is able to make a living off doing development for it. It's even better that it's seeing adoption globally, not just in one region.

not professionally; but I do have quite a bit of knowledge and experience of poking at systems and hacking things together using whatever tools at my disposal, and when I started getting into visual novels (very much thanks to Fate) I wanted to know how it worked behind the scenes,

Fair enough. I'd say I'm much the same, but I probably don't poke as deeply as you. Thank you for sharing this knowledge with me! Honestly, I'm sure I would have never come across it on my own. Reverse engineering is something I'm interested in but is going to take me a while to get any good at. This might be an interesting place to start.

4 hours is really short from what I’ve come to realize and I can’t imagine there are too many flags and branching paths to keep track of so it would be trivial compared to something like the original Tsukihime which has a script file of 4.5MiB (encoded in SHIFT_JIS so vim didn’t even know how to display half the characters) which has 5 routes, a whole bunch of branching paths and flags it keeps track of, and way to many dead ends you’ll run into without a guide because of a wrong choice you made half an hour ago and vndb lists it as 42 hours (those are some real fast readers).

Yeah, those games aren't very complicated, and the routes are short. Or rather, they aren't really routes. You get some alternative dialogue for a scene and that's about it, at least for the earlier games. To be honest, I'm not a fan of VNs with a lot of routes. I'm mostly in it for the story, so I love Kinetic Novels like Higurashi and Umineko (though technically they're a challenge to the player, so there is a 'game'). I do want to play Tsukihime one day.

How do you even get SHIFT_JIS working in Vim/Neovim? Did you use an alternative editor? Or did you just install the SHIFT_JIS locale from Broken Dragon and run vim with LC_ALL=ja_JP.sjis?

I’d give it a shot with AETools first, unless it’s on a custom engine for those games specifically or something used for like 5 games in total it should work.

I initially delayed responding to you so I could get around to trying this out, but I haven't gotten around to it. It's got files like VOICE, MGD, MSD, BGM, DATA, and SE. No file extensions. VNDB hasn't recorded the engine, so it doesn't seem like anyone knows. Maybe I'll find out.

The .xp3 files are just archives, they contain various files and what those are and where they are depends on the game, Fate/Stay Night: Réalta Nua Ultimate Edition (A community version of the game patched with all sorts of goodies from various releases) has files to load assets from the PSVita release which are stored in their own archive. You’ll have to explore the extracted files yourself (I recommend doing so in whatever file manager you have as the AETools file preview sucks ass) you’ll quickly find the file structure though as it is made to make sense. The big thing I learned is that this is a process of trial and error (largely the latter for me) and when your approach doesn’t work out try a different angle and throw more stones at the window until you find the brick that breaks it.

I generally use LF as a file manager, haha. But Nautilus would do, I'm sure. Thanks for all this. This is a pretty interesting conversation, so I've recorded the relevant bits into a document somewhere in case I have need of them later.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I do want to play Tsukihime one day.

really good VN, I loved it (especially the far side routes which isn't an unpopular opinion) it has it's rough edges, but if you can manage to look past those you get something truly amazing. I don't know if I mentioned it earlier but I do have this thread which goes over where you can start reading, a big thing to keep in mind though is that the translation for the original VN is very much one by fans for fans (even though it's been cleaned up quite a bit on the readtsukihi.me version) and that some things may not make a lot of sense due to how well the translation works and some things in the original VN (damn you SHIKI).

How do you even get SHIFT_JIS working in Vim/Neovim? Did you use an alternative editor? Or did you just install the SHIFT_JIS locale from Broken Dragon and run vim with LC_ALL=ja_JP.sjis?

at the time I had emacs installed which would open the file; but that wasn't really a good option as I wanted to split the script into individual blocks using a rust program and decided the easiest route was convert from SHIFT_JIS to UTF-8 and replace ¥ with \ (it made sense to use the same byte)

I initially delayed responding to you so I could get around to trying this out, but I haven’t gotten around to it. It’s got files like VOICE, MGD, MSD, BGM, DATA, and SE. No file extensions. VNDB hasn’t recorded the engine, so it doesn’t seem like anyone knows. Maybe I’ll find out.

Hmm, at this point I'd look at the file headers using a hex editor to see if there are any magic bytes (readable as ascii text) and see if that gives me anything. maybe also see if there are any additional resources packed into the .exe file (you can open those with any archive manager or the unzip cli tool) and see if there are any files that can help trace what engine it is or who made it. another thing you can try is to run the binary through strings to see if there is any text inside it (although I don't know how well this works on windows binaries) and finally (although this will be quite a bit harder) is to use something like Ghidra to look at the assembly and decompiled C code; but that'd be something you best keep as a last resort.

Thanks for all this. This is a pretty interesting conversation, so I’ve recorded the relevant bits into a document somewhere in case I have need of them later.

No problem, it's refreshing to be able to talk about this with someone after spending hours of my time acquiring knowledge trying to extract sexy vampire sprites.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

really good VN, I loved it (especially the far side routes which isn’t an unpopular opinion) it has it’s rough edges, but if you can manage to look past those you get something truly amazing.

I've seen most of the various Fate anime series and all the Garden of Sinners films and I...wasn't a big fan of either of them. I thought the 6th Garden of Sinners film was pretty good, and definitely my favorite of the Anime in the nasuverse I've seen. But I still want to give Tsukihime a go, because I'm sure I'll like these stories more in visual novel form.

Thanks for the links. I had a look on Mandarake and amazon.co.jp and...yeah, those prices are steep for a 25-year old game. I hope Type Moon sells the original again sometime, but it seems unlikely considering they've remade it for the Switch, not including the original game with it. Maybe it'll eventually get an anniversary release with all the versions like Subahibi did.

I'll be playing the game in Japanese when I do get around to it, so I'm not concerned about translation quality.

various reversing methods

Thank you for sharing this with me! I'll keep it in mind for when I go poking around the Sonohana files, and other games.

No problem, it’s refreshing to be able to talk about this with someone after spending hours of my time acquiring knowledge trying to extract sexy vampire sprites.

A noble cause.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I’ve seen most of the various Fate anime series and all the Garden of Sinners films and I…wasn’t a big fan of either of them.

I haven't read the KnK novels so I can't speak for them, but in Fate/Stay Night there's an awful lot of inner monologue that got cut because it doesn't really fit the anime format, Shirou's actions make sense when it's there; but when it isn't it feels like he's downright stupid rather than chase an ideal he's hold so high thanks to Kiritsugu.

I thought the 6th Garden of Sinners film was pretty good, and definitely my favorite of the Anime in the nasuverse I’ve seen.

Not a lot of people like it, it has quite a tonal shift from what the rest of the series it but it fits closer to what Nasu does in other works like Mahoutsukai no Yoru. The VNs tend to highlight the slice of life aspects of the series more than the anime and coupled with their writing style it seems to work best in Tsukihime where all these aspects flow together to form one coherent whole.

I hope Type Moon sells the original again sometime, but it seems unlikely considering they’ve remade it for the Switch, not including the original game with it.

I don't think they ever will, Type Moon has tried to distance themselves from some aspects of their earlier works and those shine very brightly in the original. I haven't read the remake yet so I can't say how things hold up there; but I've heard people say that it's a thing on it's own because of the changes made.

I’ll be playing the game in Japanese when I do get around to it, so I’m not concerned about translation quality.

When you do, make sure to look for all the extra stuff along with the Plus Disc, it might be hard to find but there's a lot of stuff that's interesting but untranslated and never shared with the english audience (I have yet to check it out myself actually).

A noble cause.

Glad to see someone agrees :kohaLove:

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I haven’t read the KnK novels so I can’t speak for them, but in Fate/Stay Night there’s an awful lot of inner monologue that got cut because it doesn’t really fit the anime format, Shirou’s actions make sense when it’s there; but when it isn’t it feels like he’s downright stupid rather than chase an ideal he’s hold so high thanks to Kiritsugu.

I remember being very bored by the second season of UBW but also kind of liking it. I've seen the original Fate series (yes, yes I know), the UBW series, the UBW movie, and Fate/Zero. I think I liked UBW the most.

Not a lot of people like it, it has quite a tonal shift from what the rest of the series it but it fits closer to what Nasu does in other works like Mahoutsukai no Yoru. The VNs tend to highlight the slice of life aspects of the series more than the anime and coupled with their writing style it seems to work best in Tsukihime where all these aspects flow together to form one coherent whole.

I actually meant the 5th movie, haha, sorry! But the 6th movie is my second favorite, and I remember very little about the other ones. I've been wanting to read Mahoutsukai no Yoru for a long time, ever since I saw the cover. I like Slice of Life stuff a lot!

I don’t think they ever will, Type Moon has tried to distance themselves from some aspects of their earlier works and those shine very brightly in the original.

That's a crying shame. I wish more companies preserved their work for future audiences, though if they don't want it preserved, I can understand why, haha. Even if I don't agree with it.

When you do, make sure to look for all the extra stuff along with the Plus Disc, it might be hard to find but there’s a lot of stuff that’s interesting but untranslated and never shared with the english audience (I have yet to check it out myself actually).

Will do!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I remember being very bored by the second season of UBW but also kind of liking it. I’ve seen the original Fate series (yes, yes I know), the UBW series, the UBW movie, and Fate/Zero. I think I liked UBW the most.

If you haven't already go watch the Heaven's feel trilogy or read the route in the VN (I do think it's coded so you'd have to finish Fate and UBW first though).

I’ve been wanting to read Mahoutsukai no Yoru for a long time, ever since I saw the cover. I like Slice of Life stuff a lot!

Mahoyo is mostly slice of life and it's done pretty well, it has the occasional action but the majority of it is about Aoko (she has a brief appearance in Tsukihime) and you get a really good intro to the magic of the Nasuverse (Fate also tries to do that; but after the second explainer from Rin you've kind of had it) Tsukihime isn't going to spend it's time infodumping (except a couple scenes near the end of the Arcueid and Ciel routes) and you're just expected to know things like KnK. I recently finished the Mahoyo VN (thanks to the re-release actually offering an english translation even if it has a couple issues (although I've read worse)) and it's pretty banger even if the slice of life scenes didn't entertain me all that much (although they are used really well to build the characters and their relationships). It is a pretty short VN though (at least compared to the other Nasuverse works) and definitely worth a read.

I don't know what engine it uses though as it's hidden behind the switch executable; but I suspect they're using some form of kirikiri as it is very similar to Fate/Stay Night.

That’s a crying shame. I wish more companies preserved their work for future audiences, though if they don’t want it preserved, I can understand why, haha.

It is a shame, especially with Tsukihime where the far side routes are currently only available through the original game with the remake coming™. Although I have heard that there is some interest in a proper translation if they were to do a PC release (and let's hope it won't take them another 10 years to do so). That said I am looking forward to the scrapped Satsuki route which would no doubt be a complete banger (at least from what I've been able to gather with the content from the original and what we see on the Plus Disc)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I don't watch that much anime anymore, but I will definitely give the Fate VN a go. I've been curious about Heaven's Feel for a looong time.

Okay, you've kind of sold me on Mahoyo as my first Nasuverse VN. That sounds right up my alley, and it's a bonus that it's short, haha. That's not something you can say about most of Nasu's games. I keep seeing this game pop up everywhere on VN sites! Maybe I'll have to give in soon and buy it.

It is a shame, especially with Tsukihime where the far side routes are currently only available through the original game with the remake coming™. Although I have heard that there is some interest in a proper translation if they were to do a PC release (and let’s hope it won’t take them another 10 years to do so). That said I am looking forward to the scrapped Satsuki route which would no doubt be a complete banger (at least from what I’ve been able to gather with the content from the original and what we see on the Plus Disc)

I do hope there's a PC release for either the remake or the original, since that would make acquiring it much easier for me. I do own a Switch, but I don't really want to play VNs on it... But it's good that there are reasons to be excited about the remake.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Okay, you’ve kind of sold me on Mahoyo as my first Nasuverse VN. That sounds right up my alley, and it’s a bonus that it’s short, haha. That’s not something you can say about most of Nasu’s games. I keep seeing this game pop up everywhere on VN sites! Maybe I’ll have to give in soon and buy it.

I'm not gonna stop you, I've had my fair sare of fun with it and the beauty of the nasuverse is that you can start anywhere and still have enough context to figure out what's happening (except when they start pulling out magic, that shit still hurts my brain). Personally I prefer the longer format of Tsukihime as it is used really well to build up your knowledge across routes and throw new things at you at a reasonable pace (fate does the same, but I find the execution of it done better in Tsuki)

I do own a Switch, but I don’t really want to play VNs on it…

if you can get your hands on the NSP file (which you can do by dumping it using a modded switch) Yuzu should run it just fine and you can read it that way, it's how I read Mahoyo and it's come a long way performance wise that I managed to do it on a 2015 toshiba satellite. I would recommend using some sort of controller (if you're on Linux you can use pretty much whatever you have on hand) I tried using keyboard mappings and it isn't really that great even after setting them up as best as I can.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I usually prefer longer visual novels, but I'm looking for shorter ones at the moment. I want to see more of what's out there rather than spending months on a single work, even if that's fun too. I mean, one of my first visual novels was Umineko, lol...

Thanks for the tips regarding emulation! I might find them handy one day when I tackle the Tsukihime console release(s). I've never really done emulation before, although I do know a little about it.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

for me it is Tsukihime (if you enjoyed fate and especially it's darker side this will be right up your alley) it is made by Type moon as their first VN and definitely shows it's age now; but if you can look past it's technical issues it is truly a masterpiece. I read the original VN which was released in 2000 and my profile pic is of one of the girls from that VN.

there's the "sequels" plus disk and Kagetsu Tohya as well as a spin-of fighting game you might have heard of called Melty Blood. and this is the VN responsible for spawning the creature known as neco arc.

PS: I made a community specifically for Tsukihime and it's directly related media if you want to discuss it [here ([email protected])](https://iusearchlinux.fyi/c/tsukihime) and I made a post going over where to start reading if you are interested in picking it up.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Tsukihime is definitely on my radar, every time I see the "not quite Saber" girl it catches my eye, in almost an uncanny valley sort of way lol. If the UX is approximately as good as Fate then it would be no problem, although it seems like it's not voice acted, which is a bit of a shame. I know Fate wasn't originally voice acted either, but to me the voice acting work is one of the best parts of the game.

In any case, it's always fun to see a dedicated fan of a single series, and thanks for your suggestion. And as a slight aside, I've still gotta figure out my profile picture for this site. I don't quite know what kinda impression I want to give yet =)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I had to retype this entire comment as my browser froze near the end of it , anyhow here we go again.

every time I see the “not quite Saber” girl it catches my eye

That's gonna be Arcueid (the non-neco neco-arc), she's the poster girl of the VN. Her design is similar to Saber in more ways than one and it is even more ~~horrible ~~obvious in the remake.

If the UX is approximately as good as Fate then it would be no problem, although it seems like it’s not voice acted

OG Tsuki does not have good UX, ONScripter is downright primitive compared to Kirikiri and has next to no real styling options. Another thing to note is that Tsukihime was originally made right off the heels of Kara no Kyoukai with little budget. Tsukihime pretty much built Type Moon as a company to the point that the name "Type Moon" itself is a reference to Tsukihime. That said all of this is something you'll quickly get used to and by the time I made it to the second hook (~2h in) I was too captivated by the story to really care about this aspect of the VN.

That said, if the UX and lack of voice acting make it really unplayable you can start with the remake (although you will have to jump through some hoops in order to read it in english) and it does alter things quite a bit. Another thing of note is that the remake is going to be 2 games with the current game only being the first 2 routes (referred to as the "near side" routes) and no date for the second game has been given as of yet. I'd definitely say to give the original game a proper try and see from there.

In any case, it’s always fun to see a dedicated fan of a single series

I'm not just dedicated to Tsukihime, there's a good few other series I really like; but I haven't done too much in regards to those here yet, another aspect is that it is a really good VN that besides the manga doesn't have any adaption the community almost memed out of existence (if you thought the DEEN Stay Night adaptation was considered bad you're in for a ride). What I really like about Tsukihime though is that it doesn't spend it's time explaining every detail of the world and magic system (there is some exposition; but nowhere near what Fate has) and expects you to pick up on these details yourself.

PS: depending on how you interpret the question above Tsukihime may not be the oldest VN as that would go to Mahoutsukai no Yoru even though it's never been properly released until it's VN remake in 2012.

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