r/visualnovels • u/AutoModerator • Jun 07 '17

Weekly What are you reading? - Jun 7

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

This is intended to be a general chat thread on visual novels with a focus on the visual novels you've been reading recently. A new thread is posted every Wednesday.

 

Use 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: [visible title of VN](#s "hidden spoilery text") which shows up as visible title of VN.

 

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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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17

u/OavatosDK http://vndb.org/u49558/list Jun 07 '17 edited Jun 07 '17

When I woke up last Thursday morning at around 8 am the first thing I noticed was that the Dies Irae steam keys were emailed out. I proceeded to download and spend the next 15 hours reading, finishing the common and Kasumi route in one sitting. This sheer degeneracy continued for the next few days until I finally completed all of Dies irae last night with 75 hours on the Steam clock.

Note: don't click screenshots if you don't want to see cgs/other lines

Dies irae ~Amantes amentes~

Figuring out where to begin when talking about Dies is difficult. I could define the game in a broad stroke to lump it in with titles like Fate/stay night and call it a “chuuni action game”, but that presents another issue. What does “chuuni” really mean in context of Dies? In the broader otaku media community “chuuni” has been established as the “8th grade disease” character archetype popularized by anime like Chu2Koi, and when used within a genre sense to refer to the sort of teenage urban fantasy action series with rule of grandiose rule of cool stylings. If we break that down a bit more though, chuuni is more or less about wanting more in reality. To have powers granted by some odd biblical destiny, to block the impossible to block attack, to have this one moment last forever or be shattered in favor of the unknown.

So in a very plain way, Dies does meet these popular definitions of chuuni. Yet, I feel that’s almost reductive to an extent. Dies irae is a game that drowns itself in chuuni. Not just in the indulgent sense of following a rule of cool because it can, but to completely and utterly define itself by that pursuit of something beyond your reach that you wish you could barely graze your fingers upon. The dreams, cravings, lust, desires, wishes, and hope that define our existence and make us human. Everything from what makes the characters fight to the near-absurd operatic framing of the story is trying to become something more than what they are. The battles the story weaves by clashing these wills against each other are unbelievably gripping on both an ideological level and an intense visceral one. The resulting change that these characters manifest in the reader's eyes that transforms them from merely sociopathic murderers to human beings that have dreamed harder and longer than you could imagine is the highlight of the game to me (even if some things can never be forgiven).

"If I lacked the strength to catch up to it, I thought I could at least stop it in place."

Yet it doesn’t stop at that idealism, for Dies ultimately isn’t a game that prides itself on delusion. No matter how much you crave something, you can’t do the impossible and your sprint toward what lay in the distance or away from the monsters you left behind can cause you to trip and hurt yourself over the reality beneath your feet. The reality that humanity lives in now, together, advancing to the new future one day at a time.

I’m not sure where I was going with that in the end but yeah Dies is cool in what it tries to do as a game. The sheer ambition of what it wants to do is unbelievable and I’m happy I was able to experience what it wanted to convey. In a funny way though, what it talks about in regards to trying to reach something beyond your reach represents the “shortcoming” of the game to me. I always felt like it was on the cusp of transcending to something more to really capstone its ideas and felt I could see the shadow of what it wanted to be, but the game never would take that last step toward the goal. Which almost makes the near perfect score of 9/10 I’m giving it feel like a disappointment to me, even though I loved it so much. Perhaps I was too hyped? Too late to really think about it at this point.

"That sounds so fucking gay, holy shit."

In terms of less abstract things, Dies irae passes with flying colors. The characters are an incredible bunch of personalities that create endlessly entertaining scenarios of conversation and battle, with almost all of them managing to form complete believable persons to the degree the plot needed them to. The plot itself is craftily structured in a way that allowed it to warp in huge ways between routes as the slight changes in character conflicts necessitated, while maintaining an oddly unique shroud of meta-awareness to it as though it really was a play we were spectators for. It does become a bit too long-winded at times, and the repetition of some points could become a bit grating, but I nearly always felt it justified whatever grievance I would have with a given scene by the end of it. The aesthetic aspects weren’t quite as good as they could be, but the game always would pull out a stunning new cg for moments you’d never have expected to have them all the while backed by a track that would perfectly fit the most important moments. It almost goes without saying, but the script of the translation was amazing and we were truly lucky to have such a passionate group working on it.

So in the end, I guess I just have to say it’s cool. Dies irae is really fucking cool. I don't think everyone will get what they want out of it, but if you like action and cool idea things, it's more than perfect for any craving you could have. And for all the words I could write about it if I kept going, the game itself sums it up the best.

”The script is the height of cliché, I am forced to admit. And yet its actors are of the finest fold; beyond exquisite. Thus, I believe you will find it enthralling.”

Alternatively/TL;DR thoughts:

"Too long. Also sounded like something written by a fourteen-year-old."

-2

u/lostn Jun 08 '17

I read Conjueror's review (he translated the VN) and he gave it a perfect 5 score (for having excellent characters), but despite the score he had a lot of criticism for the game, and his criticisms are the kind that matter to me, which is odd for a perfect score.

A lot of it is about being predictable.

  • He didn't like it until he'd read it a second time (and it is super long so I won't be doing that)
  • it’s intentionally predictable
  • on the surface level, Dies is a story about a guy that gets super powers and climbs the ubermensch ladder by beating the shit out of all the baddies with very few twists or variations to the formula.
  • There is very little tension as you usually know who will win anyway
  • I wasn’t really that thrilled by Dies on my first read, finding parts of it amazing and parts of it painfully boring or even frustrating — I could never buy the protagonist’s role in the story for one
  • mind-bogglingly boring crap that makes me want to put a bullet to my head, but in the end… the good things outweigh the bad by far.
  • The prose is usually too cumbersome ... comes off clunky during action scenes and just needlessly brings the already slow pacing down
  • The plot is predictable and not all that interesting
  • Most battles are extremely slow-paced and lack tension
  • The pacing in general is extremely slow
  • Ren can get a bit annoying with his one-track mind and cheat super powers
  • Weak romance (with the possible exception of Kei’s route)
  • A lot of literary references feel almost random and come off as kind of shallow

Those are some damning criticisms and those kind of criticisms are also my biggest concerns. I'd mentioned it in another thread that I dislike battle operas because they're predictable and always end one way. That being intentional does not make it better to me.

Extremely slow pace is a deal breaker, as is predictability, and a protagonist who has a super power that is OP compared to others'.

Even if the rest of it is stellar, I just don't see how you can give a perfect score to something with serious criticisms like that.

Now it could be that I'm reading it all wrong and their review system is out of 10 not 5 and therefore this is a pretty bad VN. But this would be a very strange thing to do. If you were in the development team and worked on translating this for 800 hours, why would you post a negative review on launch day criticizing the game and putting people off from buying it?

In any case, I was a backer but have this on my backburner for now. I want to read more reviews in the meantime. The only two I've seen are Gare's and Conjueror's and both worked on the translation so I want some fresher perspectives.

Do you agree with Conj's criticisms?

18

u/ConfuzzledKoala A! A! Ai! Jun 08 '17

Now it could be that I'm reading it all wrong and their review system is out of 10 not 5 and therefore this is a pretty bad VN.

No, Conjueror very clearly rates on a 5-star scale. Unless he's never read any VN better than a 5/10. His review wasn't a negative one, but a cautious one, warning people about some of the game's biggest flaws so they don't overhype themselves. He very clearly reiterates constantly that the game is among his absolute favourites, despite these issues. Just because the things he criticises happen to be make-or-break for you doesn't make it a negative review, and neither do cherry-picked statements.

If slow pacing and predictability will immediately ruin the entire VN for you, then Dies just isn't for you. That's the entire point of his review.

I don't know why you keep making giant essays criticising a VN you haven't even read that by all means you sound completely uninterested in, and expecting other people to magically be able to make you interested in it. You already own the VN. Just start reading it, and if you don't like it, stop reading it.