R7 followed Key’s formula essentially.
Care to elaborate on that? I can’t exactly connect the Key formula with Ryukishi07’s style in Umineko
Casual life turns into drama/horror, generally on repeat. Essentially it’s the balance of funny/enjoyable moments, and the moments of drama and exposition.
well, it’s basically the main plot of the VN, but sure, I can put a spoiler tag in just for safety
To quote Key’s Wikipedia page:
Ryukishi07 of 07th Expansion wrote in 2004 how he was influenced by Key’s works during the planning of Higurashi no Naku Koro ni. Ryukishi07 played Key’s games as a reference, among other visual novels, and analyzed them to figure out the reason why they were found to be so popular. He figured that the secret was due to how the stories would start with ordinary, enjoyable days, but then a sudden occurrence would happen leading the player to cry due to the shock value. He used a similar model for the basis of Higurashi but instead of leading the player to cry, Ryukishi07 wanted to scare the player with the addition of horror elements. In this way, Ryukishi07 wished to be in some way associated with Key who he described as a “masterpiece maker”.
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It’s a lot more blatant in Higurashi due to it’s setting, but the start of the VN, and Bern&co. fill in the “ordinary enjoyable days” imo. Enjoyable segments that can just be a bit of fun, but they also make you think about what’s to come and what has been.
I originally wasn’t even gonna vote due to the lack of VNs I’ve actually read, but then I just said, screw it, I can change my vote later if I need to.
So lest I say my favorite VN is Katawa Shoujo (Is it even possible to say that seriously?), I will vote yes, Little Busters! is my favorite VN. Admittedly, I was skeptical of all the praise everyone here gives it as I was reading the character routes. Not that they weren’t good, most of them (execpt for Mio, and maybe Haruka) just didn’t seem like favorite-VN quality.
But Rin2+Refrain just blew everything out of the water. It literally made the entire rest of the VN worth it. And not just in the sense that “it was so good it was worth reading through everything before it to get to it.” No, it made every single other moment of the visual novel feel like it had some amazing meaning. It made the whole thing a beautiful experience. I guess I should have been expecting it since that kind of thing seems to be Key’s shtick, but it still broke me.
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Yeah that’s really one reason why I can’t decide which of the Key VNs is my favorite. I believe I’ve said it before but Little Busters has Refrain as the best part, whereas Rewrite has the character routes as the best part (IMO) and Clannad is just overall good.
But Little Busters has the best characters, no doubt about that
Definitely. Litbus gets carried by the amazing few hours near the end despite the unamazingness of the routes. Rewrite gets carried by it’s enjoyable routes despite how messy it is overall.
Clannad has some great routes, a bunch of good routes, and then some bad and some totally forgettable routes. It gets carried by After Story… unless, like me, you don’t like the Furukawas, in which case it all just… ends.
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Yes, of course!
hell yeah it is little busters is LIFE MAN
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If we’re talking about pure visual novels, then yes. Kanon is my favorite visual novel so far. But if we’re also talking about visual novel/RPG hybrids, then Sakura Wars 2 is my favorite visual novel.
To be fair, I haven’t really had the money to read any visual novels save for doujin novels that just happened to get an English translation. Kanon has actual production values and top-notch writing, which is what makes it stand out. Sakura Wars, on the other hand, is much more enjoyable because of the visual novel aspects, despite it being marketed as a strategy RPG. It also has high production values, great presentation, and exceptional voice acting, which helps a lot.
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I think your problem is related to Key’s recent change of style. I don’t know if you noticed this, but at least from my point of view, post-CLANNAD Key works have been targeted to a different demographic. It’s still seinen, but the post-CLANNAD works are more appealing to younger people and easier to understand by them.
You can see, for example that until CLANNAD, Key works had more moe than they have nowadays. (I really think Ayu is a lot moer than Kud. I mean, LB! still has moe, but not so much.) And the post-CLANNAD Key works have more ecchi than the previous works. Ecchi is something easier to assimilate by younger audiences than moe (a lot of shounen series have ecchi, for example).
Also, Key recent works have more focus on friendship than the old ones. Friendship is more appealing for younger people than proper romance (as most of them don’t have that much experience on the latter).
I don’t know how old are you, but maybe you are more into more mature stories than LB! as you can identify yourself better with those. For me, LB! was really good and I identified myself a lot with the story, but this may be because I’m still a teenager.
I think the protagonists definitely feel younger as the VNs go on, or at least, today’s standards of what constitutes as “young” personality-wise.
Ahaha, I don’t like any of the “moe” characters, so that’s better for me.
In CGs maybe… but storywise, I think there’s not much difference. VNs are longer, so they have more common route styled moments, but the amount of actual story progression has increased as well.
Hmm… That’s true in some ways. Kanon and AIR were very insular, as were some of the CLANNAD routes.
I’m only 17, and I’m not very mature, sooo it’s probably not that. I could obviously see parallels between the Little Busters and my school life, but at the time I read Litbus, I was still at school surrounded by that group. The moments of randomness, and disruption, and crazy plans, weren’t something to look at and enjoy, they were “Oh, more of this?” The story rushed at a boring “I wish it could stay like this” goal.
It wasn’t original, and I don’t think it was meant to be. It was created to echo those daily endeavors with that group of friends you had, and I was bored of those daily endeavors.
That’s just the background stuff for the common route though - really none of that matters.
My problems with the post-CLANNAD VNs are that they just don’t have a special touch, there’s nothing within them that resonates with me, and singular routes don’t stand up on their own anymore.
Litbus was a nice common route, with some unappealing heroines, a lot of disappointing routes, and a single scene at the end that makes it all worthwhile. I went into it wanting to enjoy it. The teasers and the OP reveal and all of those things - I was pointing out who looked interesting, as I do with every VN that catches my interest. When you can just tell that “Oh, Kud’s route is probably going to be my favorite” or “Rin looks refreshing for a Key heroine.”
Then you get to the end of a route and it’s just… there’s nothing there.
Rewrite did almost the opposite. A nice common route, a bunch of appealing heroines, and a lot of great routes… and then some things tacked on to the end that just let the story whimper out.
Routes aren’t satisfying to me, and I’m one of those people that generally only plays one or two routes of a VN, so if I’m disappointed by what looked like the most promising part of the VN, I don’t trust the writers to achieve anything else. I’m gonna be annoyed that the writers didn’t hit the mark, and I’m going to half-heartedly stutter-skip through the rest of the routes.
You don’t get things like a Shiori or a Tomoyo where you read the route, get to the end, and close the game satisfied. Instead you get Komari and Kotori, and while there are a couple exceptions to this, it’s not enough.
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Hm… I think I can understand. The same thing didn’t happen to me, because I’m not good with social stuff. I have never been able to make any friend in my whole life. So, LB! offered what I couldn’t have. A group of true friends spending time together is a perfect dream for me.
Fiction offers us what we don’t have. If you have already experienced the same stuff, you won’t probably like it as much as someone who hasn’t.
Perhaps you just prefer more mature stories, with more romance maybe. At least from my point of view, as new Key works are released, the girls are slowly losing the center of the plot, but they still are in it. Even the male characters are growing in quantity. Maybe Charlotte! will be the heyday of this phase (I was surprised: just two main girls?!)
Favourite is a bit of an iffy topic. So whilst I’ll say Rewrite is my favourite VN, I could just as easily if the phrasing was slightly different say stuff about Steins;Gate, Chaos;Head, Narcissu, and Cross Channel. There’s just alot of ways at looking at and talking about different visual novels, even without thinking about ‘what counts’.
Yeah, Rewrite
I loved G-senjou no maou for a fact.
Right now, yes, Rewrite is my favorite VN I’ve ever read 100%.
But I’m currently reading Fate/Stay Night and it just might usurp that title. It’s reeeeeeeeeeally good. But then again, when Angel Beats gets a good English TL that’ll likely usurp both. Its quite a problem, since I generally love everything I read.
I’ve only read 5 visual novels and 3 of them were Key. That said I have a tough time deciding. The five I read are Kanon, Clannad, Little Busters, G Senjou no Maou and Hatoful Boyfriend. Hatoful doesn’t come close to the others. While I love Kanon and Clannad, I much prefer their anime adaptions to the visual novels.
That leaves it as a toss-up between LB and G Senjou. They’re so completely different from each other in almost every way that I can’t decide. On one hand, Little Busters has an edge because I got more of an emotional reaction from it, and I’ve completed all the routes. In G Senjou, I’ve only completed the main route. On the other hand however, G Senjou is more unique in general concept. LitBus is great, but it plays it safe in terms of keeping with the norm for Key, whereas G Senjou is a totally different animal. I am really really conflicted on this
Personally, I think G-Senjou was more entertaining overall. It’s routes were kinda disconnected, but they were all entertaining as individual stories. The build-up to the ending was bad, but the actual ending was good.
Most of the routes of Litbus didn’t really entertain me, but the build-up to the ending was great and the actual ending wasn’t so good.
