OOOooo. Excited about that last one. Didn't realize that was coming to Steam.
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Sometimes visual novels really look appealing to me. And everytime I try one I am literally falling asleep while playing. Seriously, they are just soooo boring. Sorry, I really don't get what people like about them. There's just nothing to do! I rather read a book when I don't wanna do anything.
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I like them a lot, but there is a reason I have so high playtime on each. Alt-tabing, SG-checking, chatting, etc. While the art style can be beautiful and in most cases the story is engaging too, the general lack of stimuli makes it like I'm reading a book, at 1/10th of a speed.
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I love the format of visual novels and what they could be, but man, it seems like 99% of them are anime dating simulators, usually with underage girls and featuring hardcore sex scenes. I really wish VN developers would branch out more. Whenever I investigate them, the VN community seems to consider this to almost be an essential element of VNs and act like you're weird for wanting something different. Spike Chunsoft titles are more appealing to me, but there's a whole world of topics and art styles that could be explored. VNs really need more variety.
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I agree that not everything needs to be a dating sim or have sex scenes, but I can respect that it's a format that people enjoy. That said, I have to disagree about the lack of variety. In the first pay alone, I've looked to supernatural horror and mystery, a trilogy of courtroom comedies, and a collection of short sci-fi stories ranging from uplifting to heart wrenching. If you want a departure from the traditional anime art style, I'll admit the are only a handful that are actually good, but I'd recommend that you take a look at The House in Fata Morgana. There are plenty of full-length VNs on Steam without sex scenes across a variety of genres; aside from the games I've already mentioned, I'd recommend Dies irae amantes amentes, Steins;Gate and 0, Root Double, and maybe Tokyo Babel - and that's just within the realm of genres I regularly enjoy. There's plenty more that include gameplay elements (Zero Escape, Danganronpa), and some others that probably don't suffer much for having their sex scenes cut for Steam. It's hard to know what exactly to recommend without knowing your tastes, but I wouldn't give up on a whole category of games just based on the stereotypes.
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I bought Steins;Gate recently, all I really want is for the Fate visual novels to come to Steam, but seeing how ambiguous and volatile their mature content policies are, I don't even know if they would be removed from the store a week after they are released.
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I get the feeling Type-Moon doesn't have any real interest in expanding into the Western market - pretty much anything that's come over (F/GO, Extra and Extella, Melty Blood, and that one bonus chapter of 428) has been largely produced by someone else. That said, in the event that they ever got an official localization, I assume they'd be using the less provocative console versions; the older versions with the 18+ scenes don't even have voice acting, to my knowledge.
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I'm not a big fan of visual novels, but since I bought tier 1 of mentioned bundle, I decided to give it a try... and I have to say that Amnesia: Memories suprised me a lot. I was expecting typical dating sim with "cute boys", but well... it's not. Some routes are actually pretty dark and disturbling. And bad endigs are not some heartbreaks... most of them are really BAD.
I'm on the last route currently, wchih is a bit mysterious. And I'm going to unlock all endings.
I would love to see the rest of Amnesia games on Steam, so I could spend some more time with the characters.
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Bumping this in honor of (last week's) Hot Date bundle. Despite the advertising, this has a couple great games in it - Clannad is well worth $15 by itself, and G-senjou no Maou is a gem in its own right, even with its flaws.
I'll admit that, despite owning them via past bundles, I've never actually tried Just Deserts, Highway Blossoms, or any of the Sunrider series (although I do enjoy strategy games). None of Creature Romances, Purrfect Date, or Ladykiller in a Bind are up my alley, but if that's your type of thing, more power to you. As for Genital Jousting... no. Just... why.
This is the part where I'd usually toss in some giveaway links from the bundle, but the only game I want and don't own on Steam is Clannad, so I passed. However, I did dig up a couple of older titles, so scroll back to the top post for a couple new giveaways.
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Unfortunately, there was never an official translation. There's a few different patches floating around for the original game, but apparently the guys behind the Steins;Gate fan translation (which is the basis for every official English release of the game) did a full translation of Chaos;Head Noah and tried to pitch it to MAGES, unsuccessfully.
Given that their April fools joke of ten new Steins;Gate related projects actually turned out to be a real thing, I think it's safe to say they've pretty much given up on the rest of the SciADV franchise.
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Haha, don't be ridiculous Apollo.
Now come, let's all enjoy a traditional American meal around a traditional American kotatsu.
.....
Eat your hamburgers, Apollo.
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To start, the requisite giveaway - this time, it's
Amnesia: Memories, the outlier from this week's Nepnep bundle. Amnesia is an otome game - sort of the opposite of the traditional dating sim, with the protagonist being a female surrounded by male characters. Is it any good? I don't really know! It's not really my genre of choice, but that shouldn't stop other people from enjoying it.Since the last time I wrote in espousing the virtues of visual novels, a lot's changed with Steam. Most notably, probably, is that Steam has loosened its restrictions on adult content. In theory, Steam allows for games with nudity and explicit sexual content as long as it's marked as mature, and Valve claimed it would allow anything that's not "illegal" or "straight-up trolling".
Have they kept that promise? Of course not! While there's certainly a lot of games with uncensored content making their way to the storefront, multiple developers - even ones who published regularly before the new content rules were put into place - have had their games rejected or stuck in limbo for nebulous reasons, when reasons are given at all.
In general, dating sims and eroge aren't my thing, so on the surface it doesn't seem like an issue I'd go on a tangent about. But some games that don't necessarily revolve around sexual content have it playing a critical role in storytelling regardless, and games with one or two fanservice-style scenes may run the risk of rejection unless a censored build is submitted. The rejections certainly seem to imply a bias without justification; when Steam is both the largest and least accountable storefront for entertainment software on the PC (at least in the west), that sort of behavior only serves to annoy customers and actively hurt the developers and publishers who suddenly lose one of their biggest audiences for little or no specified reason.
Unfortunately, Steam doesn't seem inclined to change (or rather, enforce) their policies - despite other platforms picking up the slack, the fact remains that they've got more weight to throw around than anyone else. And so publishers continue to push new games to Steam, sometimes exclusively, even when they've distributed on other platforms in the past. Of course, in terms of VN storefronts, MangaGamer and JAST are far too adult-oriented to serve as viable competition in the first place, but at least they could act as an alternative option alongside Steam. Until publishers decide that enough is enough, though, things will stay the same as they ever were.
Cool recent releases (no more GAs, sorry)
Dies irae: ~Interview with Kaziklu Bey~
Chaos;Child
Steins;Gate: Linear Bounded Phenogram*
Stuff to watch out for
Eat Your Hamburgers, Apollo**
*Requires a purchase of Steins;Gate Elite, which isn't really worth it as long as literally any other release of Steins;Gate exists.
**I suspect this will end up being an Android port running in a VM or something similar, which means it might run like garbage.
Bonus GAs: Ame no Marginal and KARAKARA
Bonus GAs end April 8, 5PM EDT
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