Games NOT Beaten: 2016

[Exhuminator]

Tentacles are the recipe to great things.

They can certainly spice up VNs, NSFW:

https://tinyurl.com/jtxwo7s

https://tinyurl.com/jm3sp9y

[Xeogred]

[Exhuminator]

"Impregnate! Multiply! Create little squirming tentacle babies!"

If that doesn't sell you by god, nothing will.

[BoneSnapDeez]

Also not trusting Steam reviews for VNs really helps. People on there either seem to say "There's no gameplay! This is the worst game ever!" or "This is my first VN ever and it's the best game in the universe!!". I swear, there's rarely any middle ground

Those are pretty articulate for Steam VN reviews.

Most of the ones I've seen are some variation of " dem feels" or "bewbs 11/10 would fap again."

I have downloaded some of the (allegedly) "good" VNs like Planetarian and Clannad, but I have yet to play them. Need to get to Higurashi some day as well.

You've played some of those, right?

[laurenhiya21]

Also not trusting Steam reviews for VNs really helps. People on there either seem to say "There's no gameplay! This is the worst game ever!" or "This is my first VN ever and it's the best game in the universe!!". I swear, there's rarely any middle ground

Those are pretty articulate for Steam VN reviews.

Most of the ones I've seen are some variation of " dem feels" or "bewbs 11/10 would fap again."

I have downloaded some of the (allegedly) "good" VNs like Planetarian and Clannad, but I have yet to play them. Need to get to Higurashi some day as well.

You've played some of those, right?

Ah yeah, I forgot about the also unhelpful joke reviews. I usually only do a quick glance at them from time to time since most people seem to not know or want to do a proper, helpful review.

And I have played Planetarian and the first chapter of Higurashi. I enjoyed both VNs, even though not much happens in Planetarian (I liked the characters, setting, and how it was written) and Higurashi Ch1 takes a little while to get going. I really need to get back to the other chapters though haha.

I haven't played Clannad yet, but it sounds like the VN is better than the anime (which I really liked) so I'm not too worried about the quality of that one. Only reason why I haven't started it yet is it's apparently 50+ hours long, and I want to tackle Umineko first (which is also about as long).

[BoneSnapDeez]

I read 17 or so volumes of the Higurashi manga. Sadly, it took a nosedive from intriguing to shitty really fast. Interested to see how the VNs play out. I haven't grabbed Umineko yet but it's on my wishlist. Seems like all the good stuff is pricey.

[laurenhiya21]

Seems like all the good stuff is pricey.

That's the unfortunate thing with VNs. I would imagine that it would cost quite a bit to hire all the voice actors and pay for the artists, so I'm not terribly surprised with how much they cost (at least for many of them), but it certainly makes it difficult to convince anyone to try them at those prices. Not that I have many people I want to convince though haha.

But at least the Steam sales are pretty nice.

[ElkinFencer10]

"bewbs 11/10 would fap again."

In fairness, though, that's a pretty accurate review for HunniePop, and I think I might actually have used those exact words to describe it to a friend of mine.

[isiolia]

But the randomness of the actual game part of Huniepop...

[Exhuminator]

There are legit good ecchi VNs out there. For instance, check out the Muv-Luv series folks. Also I think it's a bit weird to rely on Steam to research VNs in the first place. There are far better dedicated databases for such a thing.