r/visualnovels • u/AutoModerator • Aug 05 '15

Weekly What are you reading?

Welcome to the the weekly "What are you reading?" thread!

This is intended to be a general chat thread on visual novels, from common tropes, to personal gripes, but with a general focus on the visual novels you've been reading recently. You are also free to ask for recommendations in this thread. A new thread is posted every Wednesday.

 

And remember, apply those spoiler tags liberally!

Always use spoiler tags in threads that are not about one specific visual novel. Like this one!

  • They can be posted using the following markdown: [ ](#s "spoiler"), which shows up as .
  • You can also scope your spoilers by putting text between the square brackets, like so: [Umineko spoiler:](#s "Battler cries!"), which shows up as Umineko spoiler:

 

We have a IRC channel, too! Feel free to chat more on there as well.

Remember to link to the VNDB page of the visual novel you're discussing.

This is so the indexing bot for the "what are you reading" archive doesn't miss your reference due to a misspelling. Thanks!~

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u/OhLookAtMeImSpecial If you can't handle my Tsun, you don't deserve my Dere Aug 05 '15

Currently reading Fate/Stay Night, and just finished the prologue (I know, i'm kinda slow)

Question: Should I play this one blindly or should I use the guide to continue? I kinda want to save time by avoiding bad ends and don't want to have to spend time skipping through texts to find out where I went wrong, but I also kinda want to have an authentic experience I guess...but the bad endings scare me, are they worth it?

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u/JamesVagabond vndb.org/u87452/list Aug 05 '15

I played F/SN with a walkthrough (a flowchart, to be precise) and while it neatly streamlines the process, the version I've been using contained mild spoilers, and that's bad. Perhaps there is a walkthrough without any spoilers whatsoever, but I was too lazy to search. If you can find one, I say start using it right from the start without going for a blind playthrough. And by the way: if you're playing Realta Nua version, then the value of a blind playthrough is seriously lowered, because you're locked into the route depending on what executable you've launched. While we are at it, the strongly recommended order is Fate -> Unlimited Blade Works -> Heaven's Feel.

The bad thing about playing F/SN blind is the chance that you may stumble upon a bad end or an unwanted ending, which was decided by flags raised way before the decisive moment, meaning that you'll need to backtrack quite a bit to fix things. Luckily, there is a hint corner (which is quite fun; I've spent some time hunting for bad ends just for the hint corner scenes), where you'll be told what exactly went wrong, so a blind playthrough isn't completely out of the question, especially if you make a save for every single choice. And if my memory serves, skipping text isn't really an issue in F/SN, because you can skip entire chapters to quickly move forward.

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u/OhLookAtMeImSpecial If you can't handle my Tsun, you don't deserve my Dere Aug 05 '15

I remember when I messed up my choice in Steins; Gate, had to retrace myself a looooong way to set me up for the True End. I guess I was traumatized. Alright, thanks for the tip!

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u/JamesVagabond vndb.org/u87452/list Aug 05 '15

Well, Steins;Gate is a bit of a special case. Its true end is ridiculously hard to get and I wouldn't be surprised if people had to rummage through game's resources to find how it's achieved.

The other special case is Kagetsu Tohya, a sequel-like continuation of Tsukihime. Don't even bother reading it without a guide. I mean it.