Visual Novelas General

Discuss your porn games here. Remember to tag your spoilers.

Time for some copypastan.

Basic FAQ
Q. What is a Visual Novel?
A. A visual novel is essentially an interactive story book. They cover a wide variety of genres and most have branching story-lines. Being a medium in Japan that's overwhelmingly marketed towards Japanese Otaku, a high school setting and segregated plotlines focusing on each of the game's different Heroines is very common. A Visual Novel with no branching plotlines or choices is known as a Kinetic Novel.

Q. Aren't these just Chinese porn games and masturbatory aids?
A. While a Japanese PC Visual Novel market thrives on what would be considered 18+ content, most games discussed here are ones that put telling a good story above all else, setting aside the "ero" content as a bonus (Or a cheap method to drive sales) and not so much the dominating focus of the game. There are also a number of titles that do not have any 18+ content at all, these are listed in VNDB with the tag "No Sexual Content" and on the chart with "No Erotic Content."

Q. What Visual Novel should I play first? What about after?
A. First of all, download and have a look at the recommendation chart. If you're new to Visual Novels, the games outlined in GREEN are games that are recommended by to guide beginners into the the medium. When you feel feel like branching out, browse through the games outlined in BLUE and use the summaries and genre tags to see if you can find something to your liking.
Note: The chart's purpose is generally to spread awareness of games that put story first, not fap material or "nukige." There's more to English translated Visual Novels than what's on the chart, but many titles have been excluded in order to keep it brief. If you have further questions about game content or further recommendations, consult VNDB.

Download links and other resources:
Info:
http://vndb.org/ .............Comprehensive database with information about game content, English patch information, release info, etc.
http://vntls.tindabox.net/ ...Status updates on all current Visual Novel translation projects.

Downloads:
http://erogedownload.com/ ....DDL
http://craneanime.com/ .......DDL
http://anime-sharing.com/ ....DDL, Torrents
http://nyaa.eu/ ..............Torrents, non-eroge only
http://sukebei.nyaa.eu/ ......Torrents (try searching using the original Japanese title found on VNDB)
http://thepiratebay.se/ ......Torrents
http://fuwanovel.org .........Torrents

Drive emulation and mounting software:
http://www.daemon-tools.cc/eng/products/dtLite
http://www.magiciso.com/
http://www.slysoft.com/en/virtual-clonedrive.html

Installation & Troubleshooting
Installing a Visual Novel:
Note: BEFORE STARTING, ENSURE YOUR SYSTEM IS PROPERLY SET TO JAPANESE LOCALE.
Note: Some Visual Novel downloads may come prepatched and won't require further installation (This is true for most torrents coming from Fuwanovel).
1) Most Japanese VNs will require a fan-made translation patch to be applied on top of a clean install of the game in it's original language. Make sure you have both the game data discs and the most up to date translation patch from the translator's blog.
2) Acquire and install optical drive emulation software, such as Daemontools Lite, MagicISO, or VirtualCloneDrive. What this software does is create a virtual CD/DVD drive with which to "mount" and run disc images (1:1 copies of the original game disc converted into a large data file). Typically these files have extensions such as .iso, .ccd, .img, .mdf, and so on.
3) Set your system to properly display in Japanese for non-unicode programs. This ensures that the game works properly in the environment it was coded for, otherwise you may run into any particular Visual Novel not working properly, such as installation failures, the game engine failing to run, garbled text, and so on.
4) After mounting, seek out any readmes included with the game and/or patch for installation instructions. Most often the patch will require you to run an application after installing the game or to copy the patch files into the installation directory. If the translation group allows it, there may be an option to use the translation patch itself to install the game for you (provided you have all the necessary disc images containing the game data mounted of course).

System Locale:
Q. How do I change my system to Japanese locale?
A. On Windows 7, this option can be found in the Administrative tab of the Region and Language sub menu on Control Panel. The option you want to be changing is "Language for non-Unicode programs".
JP Keyboard options (used for typing in Japanese but not necessary for playing Japanese games) can be disabled under the tab "Keyboard and Languages."
In XP, local settings can be found in the Advanced tab of the Regional and Language options sub menu in Control Panel.

NOTICE: Applocale
Applocale is a Microsoft tool designed to temporarily run a program under different Locale settings. However, it should be noted that it is not a SMASHING alternative as many games will experience text errors, crashing, or just plain not work while run using Applocale, as opposed to properly setting your system to Japanese locale. You have been warned.

I chose to copypaste this since, well, I assume that's what Pastebin's for. And also because it looks neat as an opening post. So credits to the people on /vn/ that made it so I can be lazy.

I'll probably make a list for SFW popular VNs later. For now, commence waifu wars.

Otoboku is meh at first, but gets amazing at Chapter 3. Read it.

Also Shion best waifu.

List of popular visual novels with no sexual content (for those of you too lazy to look at the recommendation chart):

• Katawa Shoujo (optional; you can change the settings for this in the menu)
  
• Infinity series: Never7, Remember11, Ever17, Forever21
  
• Several Key visual novels: Clannad, Little Busters! (later gets an 18+ port called Little Busters! Ecstasy), Rewrite, and Planetarian. Kanon and Air have SFW versions on the PS2 console.
  
• 07th Expansion series: Higurashi no Naku Koro Ni (and Kai) and Umineko no Naku Koro Ni (and Chiru)
  
• Nitro+'s sci-fi series: Chaos;Head and Steins;Gate (Chaos;Head contains several gory scenes however, so it is still technically not SFW, not like most of these are if you actually do read them in your office)
  
• True Remembrance and Narcissu are visual novels that are not very long.
  
• Aselia the Eternal and Utawarerumono are both visual novels with SRPG like gameplay. Utawarerumono was first released with 18+ content, but it was ported to the PS2 with the erotic scenes removed. It also contains voices; the PC version can be patched with PS2 data.
  
• The Ace Attorney series, the Zero Escape series (999 and Virtue's Last Reward), and the Dangan Ronpa series are all similar in terms of genre (murder-mystery/detective) and are all for handheld consoles.

That's all I can think of for now. I'll probably edit this later.

Guyyyysssss I just realised that Virtue's Last Reward has come up free on Playstation Plus. Should I bother downloading it? Anyone played it?

Have you played the first 999 game? It's kind of a sequel to that, if I understand correctly.

Oh, I didn't realise. No, I haven't...
Any idea what kind of story it is? I watched a couple of random points on a Let's Play and I'm still none the wiser :-/

It's more of a successor than a direct sequel to 999. I'll probably have more details when I come back from school if no one does a quick Google search on it later.

Yeah, got off my arse and did a search like Vat suggested: Indirect sequel.
I mean, I know it got good reviews, but they're mostly from hype machine websites so I was just wondering if one of you fine gents had played it... Guess I'll give it a go~

Because To the Moon is close enough to a VN.

So I was reading the TV Tropes page for it and found this.

Spoiler:

VIDYA STORY OF THE YEAR ALL YEARS.

A guy translated the few first scenes from Ourai no Gakthun -What a shining braves-, the latest of Liar-soft's Steampunk series.

You can read it here.

Overall I think it's a pretty good translation. He also translated Nitro+'s Full Metal Daemon Muramasa. It's a shame he's not in a TL group that makes English patches.

*recommends everything overrated*
Okie Dokie, that's all I know of VNs.
Bye.

I started Desire. Great visuals, the music isn't bad. I can't really judge the story yet, though.

A friend keeps telling me to get into Katwawtatatw-
I can't spell it so I'm just going to call it
Handicap Porn and emotion: The Thrilling debacle

Is it any good?

Katawa Shoujo is pretty awesome.

Spoiler:

It's aight
It's a really good leeway into the VN genre too

I agree, it's pretty good. As Vat said, entry level. It's certainly the only VN I've played to date. However I've a friend who plays many, and she said she didn't really dig it. Sooo... Probs depends how much you into VNs? :-/

I guess I'll post a VN music track or opening in this thread once a day because they're nice and stuff.

Spoiler:

Spoiler:

I may or may not be subtly hinting at a certain someone of something.

Shh. Muscle Revolution now.

Spoiler:

Okay fine, but this is a necessity to read if anyone ever cares about these things

Spoiler:

I really like this company's VNs, but sometimes they try too hard to be figurative.

Spoiler:

Also I love their violins.

Spoiler:

This is a nice VN series to read. It has nice art and music, it's very comedic and laid-back to read, and it has a plethora of famous voice actors. I actually like the character sprites more than the CGs.

The only downside to it is when you get to the parts with H-scenes, they drag out for way too long. It seriously takes like a full minute or two to skip by holding CTRL to get through some.

>Not a single mention of Ghost Trick

Shame on all of you.

Lynne is best girl and Leo, you stay the fuck away from her:

grashbar wrote:>Not a single mention of Ghost Trick

Shame on all of you.

>Implying there's even any people on this thread regularly

If you have one to talk about or recommend, then by all means do so. I'd rather not be the only person posting here as it makes me feel lonelier than usual.

http://www.siliconera.com/2013/05/28/playstation-vita-is-becoming-a-system-for-visual-novels/

I... I'm not sure how I feel about this...