Visual Novels have a bad stigma attached to them.
Visual Novels can commonly be referred to as Dating Sims. While visual novels as a whole can be so much more than that, since there are mysteries, horror stories and more, many visual novels do feature a protagonist trying to win the heart of a lovely lad or lass, often with multiple choices. And they can be great stories with wonderful characters.
Go ahead, pick your pigeon boyfriend. No judgements here. (But seriously, Hatoful Boyfriend’s romance is a complete cover up for an extremely interesting and crazy final route) [Image Credit]
It’s less weird when you think about it like Mass Effect or Dragon Age without the combat. Because who doesn’t love awkwardly wooing aliens, elves, humans, and more during an end of the world crisis? Many VN’s that feature date-able characters do have a plot besides trying to date someone, like surviving school or going on an epic quest.
And truly, if you’re looking for a laugh, some of the most hilarious interactive stories can be these “Dating Sims.” Some of the Youtuber KPopp’s best videos are of her playing visual novels and dating Sims. It also helps that people doing Let’s Plays of these types of games will often contribute delightfully awful voices to the characters.
But, if it sounds like that can get super creepy super quick, believe me it can. There’s a disturbingly large amount of visual novels with explicit adult content, which gets the medium mislabeled as just a bunch of porn games.
Now, I don’t like the adult games for more than one reason, and luckily, it’s usually easy to tell without even playing them it’s going to be less about story and more about seeing drawings of anime girls(or guys) in compromising positions.
I want an engaging or fun story first and foremost, and if it includes romance and romance-able characters, fine. And though I prefer stuff that doesn’t get too revealing, from my experience with other games I can deal with a little bit of racy content (I’m looking at you Dragon Age Inquisition).
I mean, Hatoful Boyfriend throws a Frankenstein-like creature at you in its extended ending. That’s so cool. (And Hatoful Boyfriend never gets “adult,” though there are some descriptions of blood and gore).
I wonder who’s under that burlap sack. [Image Credit]
Another fun visual novel with dating elements (and that keeps it PG) is RE: Alistair. While in the end your character can become the girlfriend of one of three boys, the fun part of the game is deducing which of the three is actually Alistair, a player in an MMORPG that stole a special item from you (and has left your character furious).
Thank goodness for in-game chat censors.
And like I said, not every Visual Novel has romance. Perceptions of the Dead is a spooky, fully voiced experience with great art. And its about a ghost hunter and a couple of the creepy things he observes.
Well isn’t she a delightful gal.
In the end, an open mind goes a long way with visual novels. There are gems, and there are those that will be very few people’s style. But why bother writing off a whole medium of storytelling?
It’s like movies. There’s straight up adult videos with the thinnest plot possible (if at all). There are films with creepily hardcore sex scenes and a substantial plot, and then there will be films with a short scene for the sake of the plot. There’s also films without adult content entirely, and absolutely every other combination. We don’t write off the medium of film-making as just a bunch of porn because there are X-rated and NC-17 films do we?
Until next week. -L
Game Tangents 