As if I haven't been enough of a hikkikomori lately, I'm now playing a bunch of visual novels. They're a great way to get tons of reading practice as the pictures and voice acting will keep you focused, and makes things easier to understand. If you're worried about all the sex scenes these games are notorious for, then don't fret. Most VNs are either story based or sex based, and the story based ones will only have 1 or 2 sex scenes per play through, and usually only at the very end. Also, many VNs are ported to the PS2 or PSP with the sex removed. All of the VNs I'm listed were played on the pc however (it was so the text is easier to read, not the sex... really!). There's already quite a bit of information on just about every last visual novel at vndb, but I wanted to give some information that would be useful for learners, and maybe someone else can give their opinion.

逆転裁判
Difficulty: 4/10
Quality: 8/10
Platform: GBA, DS (works with emulator)
Most people probably already know about this series, but if you haven't played it yet I suggest you do as it's loads of fun. The lawyer/court/police terms that show up in this game are pretty general terms, so anyone should be able to understand it. Narrations are brief, so this game remains pretty dialogue based. You click on what you want the character to examine so it's pretty obvious what he's talking about, and all of the characters have lots of expressions to go with what they say. Some of the games in this series are better than others, but as a whole I give it 8/10

ウィッシュルーム　天使の記憶 and ラストウィンドウ　真夜中の約束
Difficulty: 4/10
Quality: 8/10
Platform: DS (not sure if it works with emulator)
The first one was released in English as Hotel Dusk some years ago. The second one is practically the same game with a new setting, so worth checking out if you liked the first. This one really feels more like an old lucas arts adventure game than most visual novels, so check it out if you're into those.

428：封鎖された渋谷で
Difficulty: 6/10
Quality: 10/10
Platform: Wii, PSP, PS3
If you have a means to play this game then it's a must. It's actually quite sad to know that this game will never get translated. I was so addicted from the moment I started playing that all of my free time disappeared until I finished it. The story never stopped surprising me, and the funny bits had me actually laughing. This and 街 are the only VNs I know of which use real actors and not anime style designs. There's a butt-load of pictures in this game which makes following the text really easy. Nothing is voice acted, but the pictures make up for it. Also, this game is long, very long. I clocked about 60-70 hours before finishing it.

School Days
Difficulty: 3/10
Quality: 6/10
This one is often labeled as a visual novel, but it's more like an interactive anime. You simply watch the show and occasionally make some choices which determine how it unfolds. If you install the v1.1 patch you'll even get subtitles to make things easier to follow (I actually played it for a while without subs before realizing and still found the dialogue really easy). I would say if you can handle an episode of something like Amagami-SS with subtitles then you'll have no problem with this. The game is about 8GB, but that's not really a big deal when you consider it's all animated.
Oh, and I was worried about the requirements but it ran perfectly on my netbook (ASUS Eee 1000HE)
Edit: I just finished a play through of the game, and was pretty disappointed. It's a great concept for a game, but I just felt tortured by annoying characters and sometimes the most innocent choices would cause the plot to do a 180. The dialogue is usually really easy to follow as it can take the main character ages to just complete a sentence, and you can get some sex related vocab from the frequent and lengthy sex scenes.

These are ones I started but have not finished

街~運命の交差点
Difficulty: 7/10
Made by the same company as 428, and done in pretty much the exact same style. I found this one to be a bit too hard for me to understand at the moment so I have not played it too much, but what I did play was equally as excellent. If you're able to understand 428 then this one is worth giving a shot in case you're up to par.

キラ★キラ
Difficulty: 7/10
In general I like this game, but sometimes the narration can ramble on like crazy. There's a lot of times where the game will stay on the same picture while the narrator goes on a 4 screens of text rampage. In general the writing isn't too difficult, but the lack of pictures can make it hard to follow at times.

沙耶の唄
Difficulty: 8/10
Lots of medical terminology had me confused, and even when they're not talking about medicine I found it just plain hard to follow. The story sounds really good and it's a very short game so I will probably struggle through it soon.

I'll try to add more later, can anyone else give some similar reviews?

Air

Difficulty: 7/10
Platform: PSP
Quality: 9/10

A story about a guy who's on a journey to find a girl who lives in the sky. This is quite a sad story really but it also has plenty of funny moments. It also has an anime which is really good.

You have to make choices at various points to push the story in a certain direction which affects which of the 3 girls in the story that you'll run into. It features some rare words, can be quite poetic at times and often uses advanced grammar. Recommended you're at least JLPT2 before giving this a go.

Finishing the game in it's entirety actually takes a seriously long time. I finished only the scenario with the main girl.

A walkthrough can be found here http://games.gaym.jp/PSP/air_psp/ and i'd advise you use it rather than just guessing which will ultimately lead you nowhere haha.

visual novels eh, I guess I can try it out, more immersion,more reading, more japanese=yes!

aaaaaa air made me cry.



I went through this really easy visual novel about a black cat a while back. I would rate it maybe 1/10 on difficulty, and I actually rather enjoyed it. Unfortunately, I have deleted it from my computer entirely and have forgotten the title.

hereticalrants Wrote:I went through this really easy visual novel about a black cat a while back. I would rate it maybe 1/10 on difficulty, and I actually rather enjoyed it. Unfortunately, I have deleted it from my computer entirely and have forgotten the title.

Is it... this?

If I've never played a visual novel before (besides Phoenix Wright, in English) what's a good one to start off with?

Ryajinor Wrote:If I've never played a visual novel before (besides Phoenix Wright, in English) what's a good one to start off with?

The ones made by Key (Air, Kanon, Clannad) are quite popular. I would say 428 has a very mainstream appeal, and even people who don't like VNs will enjoy it. ユメミルクスリ is also a very popular first choice, but I haven't played it yet. You really can't go wrong with any of the popular ones, just find something with a plot that sounds good and is at your skill level.

There's always ひぐらしのなく頃に, now available for the DS. I'm not sure I can judge the difficulty but the story is pretty entertaining.

quincy Wrote:School Days
Difficulty: 3/10

School Days is fast-paced, though. The text 'scrolls' automatically unless you pause the game; and if you take too much time [more than a couple seconds] to decide which route to take, the game assumes that you could not make a choice, and leads you through a third route instead.

iSoron Wrote:

quincy Wrote:School Days
Difficulty: 3/10

School Days is fast-paced, though. The text 'scrolls' automatically unless you pause the game; and if you take too much time [more than a couple seconds] to decide which route to take, the game assumes that you could not make a choice, and leads you through a third route instead.

You can pause the game as much as you need, read the backlog whenever you want, and pause on choices. As far as the vocab and grammar used I'd say it's a fair score provided people consider it's more like watching an anime. The hardest part about the game is just reading the handwritten notes I'd say, I always have to pause on those.

guess I can throw some stuff in here.

漆黒のシャルノス
Difficulty: 9/10
Quality: 7/10
Platform: PC
Oh god liar-soft stuff is so tedious to read oh god I should not have read this as my first japanese VN. Not as bad as their side-company rail-soft, I swear it took me like 30 min to parse the first 2 screens of text of 信天翁航海録. It starts off fully voiced but eventually only certain scenes get voiced, kinda annoying.

スマガ
Difficulty: 5/10
Quality: 9/10
Platform: PC
The language in it is pretty simple as its (mostly) a generic highschool VN (well, its a parody on the genre (and it gets very meta about it)). Voiced protagonist about halfway through.

アマガミ
Difficulty: 2/10
Quality: 5/10
Platform: PS2
I actually dont know why I bothered playing this, it wasn`t that good (I blame its lack of magic/science) super-easy to read though. The routes are somewhat short, finished 4 before I got bored. No voiced protagonist.


currently reading:
Chaos;Head Noah
Difficulty: I havn`t gotten far into it cant say
Quality: 7/10
Platform: PSP/XBox360 (and PC)
I already read Chaos;Head when it was translated but Noah actually gives the characters routes so I am going to be re-reading it in japanese. I sure hope the sequel gets ported to a system I have one day. Voiced protagonist, very whiny sounding.

Steins;Gate
Difficulty: 7/10
Quality: 10/10 (so far)
Platform: PC/XBox360
Had to look up a lot of stuff on wikipedia for this, lots of 2ch jokes and particle physics. Voiced protagonist, WHO IS TOTALLY AWESOME.

I'd love if someone rated Umineko (うみねこのなく頃に) in terms of difficulty. It's my favorite VN(SN) by far, but with my current Japanese skills the dificulty feels ∞/10 to me.
It's a mystery novel mixed with fantasy and drama in case you don't know about it. The first chapter is avaiable for free at http://www.07th-expansion.net/umi/soft/umi_taiken_r.htm
1-man independent project (except the music), so it's a bit rough around the edges, specially the art.

quincy Wrote:Is it... this?

Yeh.

Just remembered that there's no furigana or voice, so maybe 2/10 for difficulty?

Regarding what's been discussed about the presence or absence of voice acting, has anyone found that to be a problem?

Based on something FooSoft said in another thread about visual novels being a stepping stone to light novels, I looked up some Clannad visual novel scenes on YouTube, and I see that the game has very good voice acting. But do people find that that it's tantamount to cheating, and turn off sound, or do they find that there's enough material to read that isn't voiced - for example, narration and decision points, or what?

Because I found that you just pretty much just listen to the dialogue, which I think would make you pretty much ignore kanji, kanji compounds and such, that you want to learn in order to get your reading ability up to the next level. Considering that voice adds intonation and other cues in addition to supplying readings, it seems to me that it can be even more of an attractive crutch than furigana?

I wouldn't call it a crutch, I'd call it "listening practice." Actually, I think the text is more of a crutch, especially if you're learning vocabulary with kanji from the very beginning.

The original Clannad (2004?) was not voiced, and the main character(a good portion of text) remains unvoiced, by the way.

In any case, if you don't want anything but reading practice, go find yourself some good books-like, printed books. Novels, non-fiction--anything that interests you.

The majority of any visual novel is not voiced, and if that's still not good enough, you can disable voices in all of them as well. I actually find the voice acting to be very helpful as you can replay lines in the transcript to help yourself understand a word's pronunciation or just practice listening to more difficult sentences.

Thanks! Maybe I'll try it out then. Anecdotally, I thought a lot of people here were on the boat of, "I've been in Japan for X years, and I can converse ok, but I'm really intimidated by the thousands of kanji, and I hope that Heisig can help me..."

If someone reads me a book, I can understand it, but looking at an actual page of hieroglyphic kanji with their gajillion on-yomi and kun-yomi is enough to make one's head spin. Once familiar words transformed into various runic monstrosities...

Incidentally, where do people buy Japanese visual novels? I've been going to amazon.co.jp usually for written media, although their overseas shipping is a bit expensive.

"I'd really like to learn Japanese, and I've made some attempt at it already, but I'm really intimidated by the thousands of kanji(I mean, all these hieroglyphic symbols with their gajillion on-yomi and kun-yomi---it's enough to make one's head spin), and I hope that Heisig can help me..."

Mushi Wrote:Incidentally, where do people buy Japanese visual novels? I've been going to amazon.co.jp usually for written media, although their overseas shipping is a bit expensive.

what kind of loser actually buys things in this age of the internet?

anyway:
http://www.himeyashop.com
http://www.paletweb.com
are the only ones that come to mind that sell overseas.

ToasterMage Wrote:what kind of loser actually buys things in this age of the internet?

What kind of monster steals stuff from hardworking media producers? Do you want to provide incentive for people to create more high quality stuff or don't you?

IT'S BECAUSE OF PEOPLE LIKE YOU THAT STARGATE GOT CANCELLED!!!!!!!!!!! WAAAH!!!

Please don't let this be a piracy topic, I just want a discussion about sex games, ok?

"Most VNs are ... story based ..., and ... will only have 1 or 2 sex scenes per play through, and usually only at the very end."

Thus the sex can be ignored (this attitude makes it slightly less awkward when other people notice you playing these games).

Damned society gotta go condemning everything that's fun.

ToasterMage Wrote:http://www.himeyashop.com
http://www.paletweb.com
are the only ones that come to mind that sell overseas.

Thanks, these stores had good selections. I ordered from paletweb.

Mushi Wrote:Based on something FooSoft said in another thread about visual novels being a stepping stone to light novels, I looked up some Clannad visual novel scenes on YouTube, and I see that the game has very good voice acting. But do people find that that it's tantamount to cheating, and turn off sound, or do they find that there's enough material to read that isn't voiced - for example, narration and decision points, or what?

OMG there is a voiced version of Clannad out there. I think it must have been a patch afterwards or something. I definitely wouldn't have turned off sound if I had access to it, but what I meant by cheating applies more to things like manga, where you can get the gist of what's going on just by looking at the panels and looking at people's reactions.

Visual novels aren't well... as visual as manga, but you still get hints as to what people are saying based on their reactions. And at least you always know who is talking. You also usually get ideas about your surroundings.

So maybe "cheating" isn't the correct word, it's not necessarily negative, as long as you don't use the additional context as an excuse to not make a full effort to understand what's written

The most important thing by far though is just to have fun though. Light novels would have been too big of a jump for me from when I was just finishing KO and Smart.fm sentences - frustrating even. So I think it's all about just about slowly ramping up difficulty while keeping yourself entertained!

The PS2 version of Clannad was voiced, then someone extracted the audio and made a patch for the pc version to apply the voices.