No spoilers here! And I hope no spoilers in the comments. Sorry for the light novel I wrote myself here but I just felt like ranting. T.L.D.R at the end.

So for the last 3 days I have been playing Totono. About 4-6 hours a day if I go by the save file time ~17 hours in total. And everytime I find myself wanting more, curious as to what happens next, I enjoy it greately. But 6 hours of sitting and reading and looking at a screen = tired.

I just finished for today and my head kinda hurts. What annoys me is that today I hit a point that was perfect to just put the game down and pick it out tommorow or another day, but I just could not do that, I am too..., idk, grasped by the story.

I am at a point where there is a lot of green text (which means already seen) that I have to skip through and the game stops when there is something new, and shows like 2 lines of new dialogue. And because I was tired I am afraid that I did not really fully undertood the little differences.

The annoying part is that now those lines of new text have become green and I wont be able to know now which lines are new if I want to do a retake of the information. I think it kinda sucks that totono saves these lines globaly and not save by save. So I wanted to bitch and moan about this inconvinience, on one hand.

On the other hand, and more importantly, I am sure that you guys went through this experience too with being tired but wanting to go on, I mean is only natural methinks. How do you manage to stop yourseves? You see I like to think that great stuff must be savored. That means that you consume it slowly.

For example, it took me months to finish the Mirai Nikki anime, I enjoyed it really much, but months is kinda extreme for ~25 episodes. Even so, I am sure that if I would have binged the show in a week I would have not enjoyed it as greatly, information would kinda be harder to asimilate in a shorter amount of time + even if you are curios of what happens next you grow a little bored going at it non stop.

Counter example is danganronpa animes, i remember I have binged them one after another in a summer vacation and had a terrible experience. Is kinda hard to explain, I desperately wanted to know what happens next, but craming everything made me go like, when will this thing end??? I just want to see it wrap up, but skipping to the end just didn't feel right.

So now here I am with totono, it an amazing VN that deserves to be savoured, but I just can't help myself. But if you look at it another way, playing it in a short amont of time helps you to more easily see the diferences in the choices.

Anyways that is what methinks, what do youthinks?

P.S: Sorry if there are any spelling mistakes I am not an english native speaker.

P.P.S: Thanks for the guys who gave me likes on the comment I left on the post of the guy with the surgery so I can create this post myself, cause I needed positive comment karma to make this post. Kiss from Paris.

T.L.D.R: It is hard to put down a good story even when you are tired. But consuming it tired sours the experience. What to do then?

https://preview.redd.it/qcacj4byoa4e1.jpg?width=1280&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8990ce9acb57a916ef95af8818f670b94d5eaf02

Other than Umineko it’a what I’m most excited to read eventually

This Year Visual Novel Scene in Review -- talk about things that happened this year!

Upcoming Weekly Discussions

12/08 - LEAF/AQUAPLUS/STING

12/15 - MAGES/MAGES. GAME

12/22 - age

As always, thanks for the feedback and direct any questions or suggestions to the modmail or through a comment in this thread.

Schedule

Welcome to the Monthly "What's Been Going On?" thread!

Every Friday we used to have a "Off-topic" thread, but it's been inconsistently active.

We're going to try a topic where you can say what you've been doing outside of visual novels every month. Feel free to say anything about yourself you feel comfortable sharing like favorite games, movies, your job, how's school going, or any other interests you might have.

You can keep using this thread as the regular Off-Topic Thread if you like.

Welcome to the /r/visualnovels Weekly Questions and Recommendations Megathread!

Any and all questions/recommendations related to visual novels are permitted in this thread. This includes recommendation questions, technical questions, as well as meta questions about the subreddit. No matter if your question is small, big, or seemingly impossible to solve. Anything.

But please don't forget that our rules still apply. Summarized, that means no unmarked spoilers, no piracy in any shape or form, give warnings for 18+ stuff, and be nice!

Useful links to check out before asking questions or for recommendations

General:

• VNDB: The Visual Novel Database - A fantastic resource for anything and everything visual novels. The visual novel equivalent to IMDB or MAL. It's where you'll find the answers to 90% of your questions.
• Guide to Japanese
• This recommendation site may be useful if you're new to reading visual novels!
• Consider this recommendation site if you're interested in reading a visual in Japanese.
• Looking for a relatively easy VN to read in Japanese? Click here!

From our wiki:

• Having trouble with a visual novel? - A page with some possible solutions and links.
• How to Hook and Extract Visual Novel Text - A how-to on dealing with untranslated visual novels.
• Buying visual novels - Where and how to buy visual novels, translated and untranslated.

More awesome and useful links can be found here.

I am right now working an an Google Sheet that has all of the VNs I own in it. Because I wanted to know how big my Backlog is and I'm cooked, how did it get that big!?

But what I noticed is that I bought a few VNs that were cheap and now I look at them and think "why did I do this?", for example Harmonia. I am thinking about Including the playtime I find on VNDB. If you do have a list, what did you include?

I have only finished Sumika route in Muv Luv extra. I'm taking a break now.

Can I play this VN or is it part of the Muv Luv series?

No spoilers for Muv Luv please

Looking for something new so please don't say a character from one of these titles:

FMD Muramasa

Umineko

Subahibi

Sakuuta/toki

Dies Irae

Cross Channel

Anything Typemoon

Fata Morgana

Basically as the title says is it strange to read nukige for the story? Because this might be tmi, but I’ve flicked my bean to a VN… though I have to some videos of animated h scenes from certain VN on xvideo 😜

Hello all I'm having surgery next month & am looking for a good love story dating VN or something more steamy. PC or Switch please.

I'm not sure if this is hot topic but I figured that this sub reddit is more acquainted with methods for learning japanese through text hookers on visual novels. My question pertains to gacha games though, I can't give it a try yet because I don't have any computer but it's in anticipation of getting it. Has anyone tried hooking the visual novel scenes of gacha games when learning japanese or any other language? If this is case by case, the games I precisely want to read are Blue Archive and Reverse 1999 in Chinese.

I have a question about Tsugumi and Takeshi. Why was Takeshi the one who got out of the submarine and used the Archimedes Principle to push the submarine to save Tsugumi? Shouldn't it be Tsugumi doing that instead, since she is immortal and wouldn't die from drowning?

Update: Clear runs fine after I unchecked the Unicode-UTF8 box when changing system locale, that was the root of my text problem. Gift is still experiencing the crash issue, even when I run it as an administrator and my current fear is that it needs to run on an older version of Windows.

I have tried everything and I have no idea what to do at this point. I bought Gift and Clear from DLsite recently since I'm a fan of Circus's work, I wanted to check out Moonstone. Unfortunately after getting everything set up, Gift simply will not run. I have reconfigured my IME to Japanese, fully updated my computer, and even reconfigured permissions in the root files to try and sort out the CLSID and APPID errors. Nothing works. I run the game as administrator, the text on top does not display properly, and after the voice says "Moonstone" the game automatically shuts down and closes the window. I even tried to uninstall and reinstall it, but it won't uninstall - it just gives me garbled text in two windows. I am at my wits' end, I have no idea what else to do besides ask here.

Edit: Yes I have changed the system locale and display language to Japanese, unfortunately neither of these things have helped. Text is still garbled characters and window still immediately shuts down.

Edited edit: Can't be the Windows 11 update either because I don't run Windows 11.

View Poll

I made a post some time ago about Kakenuke crashing on startup. Apparently it’s all NekoNyan games I try to play. On start, a white screen will appear and disappear shortly after.

Other VNs or Games work fine… Anyone else have this issue or know one or two tricks on how to get those programs up and running again?

Appreciate every comment!

So im reading chaos;head noah and im a chunk into chapter 3, however im curious as to when the story really starts as it's moving pretty slowly

What I loved about Kara no Shoujo was the mystery and characters (Toko... Tojiko...). I also very much enjoyed the psychological horror elements of the first one. Now, are there any parallels with Flowers? I know it is a yuri series, but what is it driven by? Mystery, drama, CGDCT, or perhaps some shitty romance with misunderstandings?

With the current autumn sale beginning on Steam and there also being a winter sale at the end of December, are there any visual novels or JRPGs worth potentially picking up for people such as myself that are using them to learn Japanese? Unfortunately, I know that in most cases for visual novels they usually have censored versions that end up on Steam, and for those games it would be ideal to find their uncensored versions elsewhere. However, that isn't true for all of them on Steam. Are there any that didn't get censored or can easily have censored content restored that are on Steam and may be worth purchasing to read in Japanese?

I already own and plan on reading these in Japanese: 9nine, science adventure, muv-luv, zero escape, danganronpa, higurashi, umineko, zero escape

I'm open to any suggestions as I'm not a picky reader. Thanks!

I am currently playing the VN. I'm on Misuzu's route which I started first.

The things I like:

1. The banter and humor

2. The music (perfection)

3. The atmosphere and aesthetic

4. The plot points (girl in the sky etc..)

The things I don't like:

1. The characters' dynamics and relationship feel very forced and cringe

2. Characters' actions are unrealistic

3. The story feels rushed (This is one of the first VNs I played. So maybe the initial routes are supposed to feel rushed? Because we don't have enough context? IDK. Let me know)

Edit: I just finished the Misuzu route and it felt very rushed. I am following one of the guides online which gave the order as: Misuzu, Kano, Minagi, Summer, Air

-----Can you rate each of these 5 routes so that I have an idea of what to expect?

Misuzu

Kano

Minagi

Summer

Air

-----Will I like the other routes or will I have the same issues?