For otaku, sekai bundle is great on this special day!!
Bump and thanks :D
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Root Double is probably my favorite Visual Novel.
I've yet to find another one as masterly written and I'm a fan of Nakazawa's works since the Infinity series :)
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There's a lot of good stuff out there, even on Steam. I don't know your personal tastes, but I will note that most of the games I'd recommend are already in your Steam library, if you haven't already tried them - House in Fata Morgana, Steins;Gate, even Wonderful Everyday (although the 18+ stuff isn't at all optional, and the sexual content might actually be the most disturbing stuff in the game).
I don't know if you've tried it or not, but if you haven't I'd recommend looking up the translation patch for I/O, since it'll likely never get an official English release. I think it's probably a more ambitious work than Root Double or any of the Infinity games, but it also has one of the most frustratingly labyrinthine plots I've ever seen.
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I followed a Let's read of I/O because, unfortunately, there was a bug on my machine and the text wasn't displayed right :(
But it was a really great VN. Very complex, but I also found it very interesting. The use of Babylonian mythology was refreshing, too. It's hardly used in any media.
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I actually had the same issue; it turns out the fix, at least in my case, was to run the game without switching the machine to Japanese locale. I don't know how much you'd really miss in a YouTube playthrough or something; there are a bunch of little bits of dialogue that are only accessible once certain routes are cleared and while very specific sets of flags are set. None of it is plot-critical, really, but there are a few nuggets of interesting information tucked away.
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Never heard of this game but I really love the ZE series (and I swear I'm gonna play the Infinity series someday) so thanks for the rec and the giveaway! Even if I don't end up winning the game I might buy it myself.
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This is a good VN I can endorse :)
Still a long way to go with my golden standard of VN - Steins;Gate + 0
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Steins;Gate is definitely one of my top 'beginner' recommendations, though that's not to say it's something only people unfamiliar with VNs would enjoy.
0 was pretty good too, and had a fun little twist if you played the routes in a certain order assuming the reader's not already familiar with the LNs that 0 was based on. I think it squandered a lot of its potential, though; it could've used more real 'bad' ends to actually give a feel for the stakes, and a few of the new characters were only truly relevant for one or two scenes throughout the game - in some routes, they might as well not even exist.
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Well, that's was an interesting presentation. You made me want to try the game so I will test my luck on your giveaway. :)
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Anyone who looks through my comment and GA history knows that I'm a vocal proponent of good visual novels. Largely, this excludes most of what Sekai Project releases for a number of reasons, but Root Double's an exception for a handful of reasons. Despite its flaws, it's a good VN despite Sekai Project's efforts, not because of them.
Root Double's a sci-fi/mystery VN by one of the creators of the classic Infinity series, Takumi Nakazawa. If you're familiar with those games (or the Zero Escape series, headed by the other lead of the Infinity series, Kotaro Uchikoshi), its premise is already pretty familiar: an unlikely group unexpectedly finds themselves in a disastrous situation, with certain death looming if the victims can't cooperate. Bad ends and gruesome deaths abound, and the path to the 'true' ending can be frustrating to predict.
What sets it apart is that it doesn't really use a standard dialogue-choice screen to propel you through decisions. Instead, you'll use a screen to gauge your 'feelings' about certain characters at certain moments. It's a bit of a frustrating design choice, as it's intentionally vague, and some outcomes are less than rationally explained, but it's certainly different. It also leans a bit more into supernatural/sci-fi elements right from the beginning, in comparison to the other works mentioned, but it helps establish the setting a bit more concretely.
The game was translated by Lemnisca LLC, who'd worked on fan translations previously, including I/O, another great (if overly complex) Nakazawa VN. I don't believe they've done anything else officially, although their leader was involved to some degree in the relatively disastrous Dies irae localization, though the issues there largely lie with whoever's in charge of Western publishing and communications.
Sekai Project is to thank as far as actually getting the Xtend Edition officially translated; previously, the game's base edition would've been fan-translated otherwise. Up until last week I'd have said it was one of the few projects Sekai Project didn't mishandle, aside from promising a Vita release that they'd never deliver. However, they screwed it up in announcing a Vita release for next month. Despite having accepted money from international backers on KickStarter, and having two years to say as much, everyone who backed for the Vita version will receive a North American copy, with no plans for publishing it anywhere else. As only one account can be active on a Vita, and the process for switching between accounts is arduous, you can understand how the problem could've been at least mitigated with some degree of communication.
Despite all that, I do have a certain affinity for the game, even if a lot of the Xtend content seems superfluous. If anyone's interested in checking it out, I've got a private GA here. Requirements are pretty simple, but you do have to at least be level 1.
Giveaway ends in about a week; I'll try to keep the thread afloat until then.
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