#honestly up until theguy showed up i loved e v e r y t h i n g

[foxstens]

so let’s talk abt visual novels

i didn’t think i’d be interested in any of them after fsn but i guess the format just works for me? personally i love words and the things you can do with them and the way books do storytelling but i’m also horrible at visually imagining things when reading, and that makes books more forgettable to me i guess.

but the vn format seems to be the perfect middle ground. it’s less limited than anime when it comes to things like narration and internal monologue and even length i guess, but it’s also easier to pay attention to than books thanks to the audio-visual elements. 

then there’s the fact that you can control the pace at which the words show up, which is one of the things that frustrates me about books. when i got into reading as a regular hobby i developed this habit where i’d kind of skim everything i read, as in i’d really only pay 100% attention to the dialogue, bc trying to read and absorb every word was slow and boring and every time i tried to do that my eyes would always jump ahead and i’d find myself having to return to certain sentences to make sure i really understood them. so even though having to hit enter after every sentence isn’t my favourite thing, the autoplay function on vn’s without voice acting is a godsend

another thing i love is how in a lot of them the backgrounds and the characters tend to look completely different. like in some the background might be more realistic while the character sprites are very obviously anime-like, and in others the sprites might be very colourful and detailed while the backgrounds are pretty bare-bones and simplistic. i kind of hated it at first but now it’s just one of those things that make vns different. (not to say that every vn looks amazing but yea)

as for things i don’t really love....... well. i guess the biggest one would be the choice-making aspect. bc as far as i’ve seen the choices can lead to a good end, a normal end, or a bad end. or they might be meaningless choices that just give you different dialogue or smth. and sometimes it might be impossible to guess which choice or which combination of choices does what. which is why i’ve used a walkthrough for every vn i’ve read so far (other than f/fha)

if you happen to want to get every possible ending you might end up having to basically replay every route multiple times while abusing the skip button (if it even has a skip button). and even when you get to choose the route there might be a recommended order for the routes (which you’d have no idea about unless you looked it up) or you might have to read all of them to unlock the entire story

so i guess route-wise fsn’s approach is my favourite, and choices-wise it’s fha’s bc basically all i got to choose was when to interact with which characters, instead of when to die.

i guess kinetic novels might be the answer to this but i haven’t tried any of them yet and having choices makes me pay more attention? and if i happen to really really really love a vn i’d actually be glad to go through every possible choice and ending :’)

there’s a lot more to talk abt but i’ll prob do that later on so in the meantime here’s a list of the ones i’ve tried so far

1. fate/stay night

2. fate/hollow ataraxia

3. amnesia: memories

4. flowers - the volume of spring - (dropped bc i wasn’t in the mood for it)

5. english detective mysteria (same as above)

7. fashioning little miss lonesome (loved it but the first LI is so ugly i had to drop it)

6. cinderella phenomenon (currently reading)