G-Senjou no Maou

Age, Nitroplus and Liarsoft are pretty well known for that; you might want to try their V Ns. About ABS 2's works, there's still one more that's translated: A Profile. I haven't played it yet though.

I've heard not-so-stellar things about a lot of the games on those lists. Some of them sound like they might be good, and of those there are some that I might try playing (there are elements that'll turn me off of a game even if the writing quality is high.) But while there are visual novels that have reputations for being very good which are, in my opinion, very good, there are also countless games with reputations for being good which are, in my opinion, frankly inane. So I'm dubious about checking out games which have received less than glowing endorsements.

A Profile is kind of meh. For some reason, I can't recall it out of my own free will whenever I try to recommend Vns to someone.

Anyways, I'm pretty sure the things you've heard of those three companies boil down to...

Age: Pacing Problems
Nitro Plus: Grimdark
Liar-soft: True Art Is Incomprehensible

In of the English VN community, games which are considered unambiguously So Cool Its Awesome are ........ none (Or maybe I just lurk too much in 4chan) There's no singular overwhelming opinion over what is great and what is not. Muv Luv Alternative is the highest in rating, but everyone knows it has TERRIBLE AND AWFUL PACING. Key Visual Arts made the classics Little Busters and Clannad, but there will be people who let the flaws of those vns bother them more then they would other Vn readers. Nasu is occasionally said to have bad word-smithing. And so on. The people who read Vns can be quite pretentious.

edited 30th May '12 5:09:42 PM by encrypted12345

See, I will never ever speak for a community or speak of a general consensus, mostly because I hate being wrong and you can easily find evidence some time later that completely overturns what you had believed the 'general consensus' to be.

It's not just visual novels, nothing has unanimously glowing reviews. But if some people are saying "this game is really incredible, it absolutely blew my socks off," and other people are saying "eh, it had some pacing problems and some of the conflict seemed a bit drawn out," I'll be inclined to investigate further. If the best I hear about a game is "it was fairly good, I'd say it's worth checking out," on the other hand, I'm not going to be that enthused, because the works nobody thinks are better than fairly good are generally not, in my opinion, that good. This applies to more than just visual novels, but visual novels, even translated ones, I think are hit pretty hard by Sturgeon's Law.

I think you just need to ignore what people hype and just play stuff. Check out premises you like and try them out. Generally the top-rated VNs on vndb are agreed to have their flaws outweighed by their strengths.

IMO, I don't think fan translated Visual Novels are hit hard by Sturgeon's Law. That's because of the ridiculous strength of the Import Filter.

But yes, what liberated said. I don't expect everything I read to be a masterpiece and neither should you. Like in any medium, the new ones get the most discussion regardless of quality.

If you do want to narrow it down, look for anything rated above an 8 on vndb.org, but just know that there are plenty of good ones in the 7 range.

Oh, and since I'm a nice guy, I'll make it easier for you

edited 30th May '12 7:57:24 PM by encrypted12345

Okay, just finished reading it (now I'm thinking about reading the Shiratori route, but I'm not that motivated because seriously, having a crush on Kyousuke from the very beginning? It would have been much better if she started hating him, then he managed to miraculously change her opinion. I remember the only routes I liked were Usami and Tsubaki's, Kanon's is kinda good too). I just don't understand why Kyousuke posed as Maou and thought as if he were him all the time, as if trolling his own mind and everybody around him. Doesn't it show him thinking he's Maou (and thinking as Maou) at some point during Chapter 1 (or was it 2?)? On chapter 4, he says he wanted to have Yuki on his side for more time, and on chapter 1, he narrates his surroundings as if he were Maou

I wish he was truly Maou, because otherwise he isn't as interesting as if he were. At first he looks like Light, then he outright falls to Mello's position.

edited 30th Dec '12 6:58:17 PM by Rapier

There was too much pointing towards the conclusion of Kyousuke being Maou that I refused to believe it. Especially once you've heard some of Usami's background. How could Kyousuke be old enough to kill her mother?

I consider my post here to be a good take on the whole thing, explaining the connection between Kyousuke and Maou.

Then again, up to that point, everything made sense. Kyousuke had a reason to hate Usami, and her reasons to hate Maou linking to Kyousuke were ambiguous

Also, I didn't mention the side chapters in my post. I asked why Kyousuke basically "roleplays" Maou inside his mind during the whole story, from Chapter 1 to 5. I thought he foreshadowed that he was actually Maou a lot during Chapter 1. I found it normal to have him reveal his "identity" in the end of Chapter 1 because maybe the story was about his double-faced life

edited 30th Dec '12 8:26:05 PM by Rapier

Hm? The perspective simply jumps. They just don't tell you, though you can tell when it happened.

Also, why would the story tell you it's Kyousuke (Maou says his name is Azai) and then keep piling on more evidence unless that first piece of information was a lie all along?

edited 30th Dec '12 8:28:27 PM by Arha

In Kanon's story there is a point where it's impossible that Maou and the MC are the same person because they are in two different places at the same time.

I wonder if it's possible for some of the Maou-perspective events to actually be Kyousuke-as-Maou. One thing that especially comes to mind is the near Mind Rape of Tsubaki; It would be convenient for Kyousuke, as it would both get rid of some cognitive dissonance caused by her world-view and make her push for selling the house.

I personally didn't really suspect the twist for quite a while, but I'm like that in general: I just accept what the story tells me. One of the reasons I wanted the twist to not be so is that Kyousuke is so much inferior to Maou in general planning ability / intelligence - I was imagining Kyousuke unconsciously dumbing down to make Maou's schemes work better.

Actually, something related to that did trouble me. Maou makes Kyousuke look incompetent and kind of ruins the idea that Kyousuke is Usami's intellectual equal. This wouldn't be so bad it the story wasn't trying to sell us on the idea. Kyousuke just isn't that special when you realize he was never Maou.

Rapier, my post (if that was part of what you were replying to) is relevant even if you only count the main route. The narrative observation of Maou is consistent between each side chapter and the chapters preceding them - as I stated - so in Tsubaki's arc where Maou is presented as being the same person as Kyousuke for example, it's the same whether you're in "Chapter 2" or "Tsubaki's chapter". The same goes for the other side chapters as well, which match up with each chapters 3 and 4.

He might be about as intelligent as her, but in story we only ever really get to see their intelligence when it comes to detective work and deductive reasoning which she has much more practice at perfecting than him and it shows.

Well I guess the story says that he's good at business stuff, but that doesn't exactly make for exciting reading so that rarely comes up either.

He's much better at executing a plan than she is though. She tends to lose her head if Maou gets involved.

Started playing this a few days back, currently on chapter 2.

Calling it now, the Kyousuke = Maou will turn out to be a Red Herring, it's too obvious.

edited 20th Mar '13 12:53:46 AM by TheCuriousFan

You are, on that guess, correct. It was pretty obvious though.

Arguably, he is still Maou in the Tsubaki & Kanon routes, only becomes inactive for various reasons.

...You have no idea how tempted I am to look at the spoiler.

Good to see more people playing this.

^^ He's not Maou there. That makes no sense. Usami mentions how her mother was killed by Maou, which took place at a time when Kyousuke was too young to have committed such a crime.

Some of the Maou's activities, like Mind Raping Tsubaki, could reasonably be constructed as Kyousuke's doing, though. The Maou himself says that Kyousuke "deludes himself into thinking he's the Maou" at points in the story, after all, and the Mind Rape was beneficial to Kyousuke.

Doesn't matter, Usami's backstory is brought up before Tsubaki's route ends.

Until later parts of the main plot, however, Kyousuke's past is not gone into detail upon. It's why the idea of "Kyousuke is Maou" even works slightly in the first place, as the main thing which tells readers that it's not the case is because it's too obvious. Until later on, we don't know when he joined Gonzou, nor what he did after he did.

But it doesn't matter what Kyousuke was doing. He was thirteen when her mother died. A thirteen year old can't pull off a major terrorist attack.