Skatrzoo

Skattered Fragments - #1

The first of.. who knows. I seem to have problems writing about the games I play finding these fragments. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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Anyway, hi there. I’m Skatr, some people might know me from discord, others might know me from that one little group, and most won’t know me at all :3<
I’ve been told about the Golden Month theme a.k.a the month where I realize I’m running low on visual novels worth reading - time to stock up this summer sale, I guess. so I figured I might as well make a post about it while I’m at it. It looked like a good time to go through some of the shorter games I’ve had installed since forever ago, so I ended up making some decent progress.
Anyway, enough blabbering - let’s get to the games.

Flowers -Le volume sur printemps-

20 hours, no achievements

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Easily my favourite yuri vn as of now - heck, one of the better VNs I've read on steam, period. Gorgeous visuals, amazing voice acting (with talents such as Ayane Sakura and Kaori Nazuka), a decent OST (although admittedly, it does get a bit repetitive due to the low number of tracks and length of the game) and a fairly wholesome story. Would've bought the sequel straight away if summer sale wasn't so close (and the last 2 games actually had an English translation)


Noel The Mortal Fate

14 hours, no achievements

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Not often do you see a mobile game ported to steam and sitting at 'Overwhelmingly Positive' reviews, but I'd say this one is justified. Although the gameplay itself is fairly simple (just move around for the most part - even combat is just "walk into the enemy" and sometimes avoid attacks), the story is worth playing for. I personally played it with keyboard, but you can play this with mouse-only as well (the downside is that the mouse behaves like a "touchscreen", so you'll see the "water ripple" effect with every click). However, the story isn't complete, so if you're not fine with cliffhangers, this game probably isn't for you.


Fatal Twelve

20 hours, 31 of 31 achievements

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Fatal Twelve - a game that has made its way in and out of my wishlist several times until someone decided I should maybe read this. The game was made by aiueoKompany, the same devs behind Sound of Drop, a game which I've never gotten around to finishing as I didn't really enjoy it all that much. Fatal Twelve, however, was a major improvement in pretty much every aspect compared to said previous title. Better visuals, well-written characters and story, with enough plot twists to keep you going (although most of them are rather predictable). If you enjoy mystery visual novels and want a 'battle royale' themed one, you should consider snagging this one.

Oh, also - since I know some people dislike this, do know that one character suffers from 'transparent hair syndrome'


Highway Blossoms

7 hours, 20 of 20 achievements

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While the game itself was pretty good (considering I expected, uh.. something else, when I started reading), I've probably been a lot more bothered by the English voice acting than I should. The characters are from the US, so it makes perfect sense - but I just can't get over not having japanese voice acting in my weeb content :')
At the same time, I couldn't get myself to actually disable voices either so… guess I'm just weird either way ¯\_(ツ)_/¯


Idol Magical Girl Chiru Chiru Michiru Part 2

5 hours, no achievements

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A lighthearted, pure comedy-based spinoff of a much more serious vn (Grisaia no Kajitsu). While I was dying of laughter throughout the whole thing, I'm not sure if it would be as good for people that don't know the original characters/setting. Regardless, you should start with the first part if you do decide to read this.


Cursed Sight

3 hours, 9 of 9 achievements

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I've been following InvertMouse ever since reading the first Without Within (which is free, btw). The Without Within games aren't exactly the best kinetic novels in the world, but the minor gimmicks added in the sequels turn something mediocre into something I personally enjoyed. Cursed Sight on the other hand, eh… not too sure about this one, honestly. Can't say I regret reading it, but it's not something you'll see me run around recommending either - then again, it does go on sale for a couple of bucks so there's not much to lose either way, I suppose ¯\_(ツ)_/¯


PRICE

1 hours, 8 of 8 achievements

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A fairly short "escape room" point-n-click with a counter-intuitive way to use items. The artstyle was nice, story was okay, but I'm glad it wasn't any longer than this personally.


Confess My Love

2 hours, 21 of 21 achievements

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A game that doesn't really respect the player's time at all. Sure, you might think it's not that bad considering it takes less than 2 hours to get all the achievements - until you realize that most of that time is spent looking at the paint drying on the wall. Personally, I have no idea how this managed to get 94% rating out of almost 3.6k reviews but well, I guess I'm obviously in the minority here ¯\_(ツ)_/¯


KARAKARA

3 hours, 7 of 7 achievements

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Just… no.


Crystal City

2 hours, 6 of 6 achievements

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Also no, but without voice acting.


Jigoku Kisetsukan: Sense of the Seasons

4 hours, 8 of 21 achievements

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A surprisingly good f2p touhou clone, but apparently I'm too bad at these games to complete so I didn't bother playing much longer after beating it once.


Blade Kitten (Episode 1)

4 hours, 7 of 20 achievements

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Another mediocre platformer. It wasn't that bad for the most part, but the final boss fight really showcases the wonky physics of the game - I ended up dying maybe 15-20 times, with most of the deaths resulting from sliding off a platform or just straight up teleporting off of it due to weird collision detection.


Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair

10 hours, 5 of 47 achievements

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Wanted to get a few achievements out of the way (no retries/concentration/damage taken) so the first chapter took much longer than expected, but this certainly started off… interesting, to say the least. I'll probably continue playing it this month.


skanda

weeb

Skatrzoo

no u :slscream:

Kaleith

Do I know you from somewhere?

Skatrzoo

Hmm, no. I don’t believe we’ve met before.

skanda

Before? Who’s she?

Skatrzoo

I don’t know - maybe I could answer that after meeting her :blobdogthink:

GiseIIe

Welcome!
visual novels… ☆ヾ(´・∀・)ノヾ(・∀・`)ノ☆

YEAH Flowers is so pretty!! I won the second game but it’s been so long since the first one, I think I’m going to reread it again before heading into the second.

you know what you should get in the summer sale?? ( ・ω・)☞ fata morgana

Skatrzoo

I’ll probably end up re-reading all of them once they’ve been localized as well - I don’t tend to do that with pretty much any games, but I’ll make an exception for this franchise.

fata morgana is one of the options I’m considering, yes

Amitte

Just you wait, the rest of the Flowers series will be localized soon! (As well as some other amazing-looking/sounding titles JAST USA’s got in the works.)

“Transparent hair syndrome”… first I’m hearing about people genuinely disliking it. Personally, eyeless protagonists are more of a bother.

As for Confess My Love, on one hand I agree with the time-respecting… but on the other hand, it’s still interesting how much the developer did with a concept as simple as that.

Skatrzoo

I know Automne is almost done since I’ve been stalking JASTUSA and Meru for updates, but Hiver is probably well over a year away :(

Transparent hair isn’t much of a problem in games and such, but you can often find complaints about it on MAL’s forum (at least for newly released anime). I don’t really have a problem with it myself.

The general idea behind the game was okay, but yeah - not a fan of just.. literally waiting.

Amitte

I meeean… you could play other VNs while you wait, too! I hear sweet pool’s really good, as well as Totono, which is set to release in summer (all hail VerdelishJP for that).

MAL’s forum threads are trash though… can’t remember finding much good stuff there :/

Waiting was cool for me, I was more triggered by having to run away from the creepy spirit version of the girl.

Skatrzoo

While I definitely will be playing other VNs in the meantime, sweet pool is definitely not gonna be one of them. Not my thing at all :p Totono might be one of them eventually, though.

You’re not wrong. Now “why is this show so underrated/overrated?” threads are pretty much the only things you might see outside of episode discussions.

Yeahhh… it certainly didn’t help that I activated that part before doing all the waiting-for-time-to-pass endings, so I had to finish the game a bunch of extra times because I kept waking up in that room so I couldn’t get the regular endings

Amitte

Aw, that’s a shame. Totono looks trippy though, and pardon me for the crude oversimplication, but it’s got some of that DDLC vibe.

Oh, that’s just a big meh from me. Either way, I haven’t been watching anime much for quite a while, so I tend to browse VNDB’s forum threads more often.

Oh damn, now that’s rough. And to think you finished it in a shorter time than me, even though that happened!

Skatrzoo

Thing is that’s why I’m not sure I wanna play Totono. Everyone seems to compare it to DDLC - but thing is, DDLC’s gimmicks worked mostly because it was a fairly short game, while Totono is like 3-4 times longer which might not end up being a good thing in this particular case.

I don’t use VNDB much outside of finding a much more accurate rating compared to steam’s joke reviews (where games like KARAKARA are higher rated than Grisaia, Danganronpa 2, Steins;Gate and so on)

It only took a few seconds per playthrough since I was just skipping the initial text and speedrunning to the door, but it didn’t make it any less annoying.

Amitte

That’s why I said oversimplification - from what I heard Totono’s got cool shit going on at times (and I can only hope it does them at times when they feel the most appropriate).

I’d like to say you could find some cool info there, but when I think of it, most of it just boils down to freaks who only read nukige or moege/eroge/galge readers acting like they know Japanese just because they use some translating software on their untranslated VNs (I’d probably cause a huge war if I wrote that there, but yeah xD).

Wait… did you have to keep repeating the sequence needed to get to the alternative world or did you keep waking up there all the time? I always had to repeat, not sure if that’s how it was meant to be…

Skatrzoo

Well, you might’ve said oversimplification, but it doesn’t change that all these other people claim it’s more or less the same thing. I certainly hope it has a lot more going for it, because otherwise I probably won’t bother :P

Yeah, I think it’s better if you stay clear of drama involving those people :p

After the first time you activate it, you have a 25-30% chance (or something like that) to wake up in the modified room - For me it felt more like 60-70% tbh

Amitte

Gah, Westerners and their shitty comparisons. Anyway, just looking at its VNDB page: it’s longer, the art is delightful and it’s from Nitroplus, which is a company I particularly like. So there’s no way it doesn’t beat DDLC :P

Reading is way more fun, I’ll tell ya that. Unless someone’s on their high horse, like I said before.

Totally 50/50 for me. Every time I went in, I had to repeat the unlocking sequence in the normal world to wake up in the alternative world the next time around… unless it just felt like that, hmm…

EvilBlackSheep

It was all it took to finally make you write here? A WEEB MONTH?

Impressive quantity of reading you did there!

Skatrzoo

H-hey, it was a good excuse to go through all those small games I had installed that I would never consider playing otherwise, of course :blobsweat:

And you can’t just rush me to post here, I’ve only had this BLAEO account for like.. 3 years? :blobsweat:

EvilBlackSheep

Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight it’s not like you’d play weeb games by your own choice, I know that.

At least your post reminded me I still have Highway Blossoms in the backlog, and it seems shorter that I thought, which is a good thing. I should get around to play it this summer. And I’ll keep an eye out for a sale on Flowers.

Kaleith

I had to scroll slowly when I saw the tip nolewd, it could have been much worse :catsweat:

Arbiter Libera

Seen enough hentai to be wary, huh? :P

EvilBlackSheep

While it’s all friendly… I really don’t see what you were worried about :sheepsweat:

Blue Ϟ Lightning

Skatzooo do do do do

skanda

:3

Skatrzoo

oh no, blueweeb has been corrupted too :notlikeblobdog:

LastM

most won’t know me at all

Welcome to BLAEO tentacles guy!
I see a lot of your tentacle emoticon on my steam feed. xD

Skatrzoo

Oh no, the tentacles have been spreading farther than I have anticipated :zeemonster::sgsmile:
Can confirm, I only post that emote combo and “weeb” in the activity feed :3

Kaleith

I’ll have you know I was the founder of the Tentacle Mafia, Skat is merely my slave second in charge. If people start getting the idea that that emote combo is his own I guess I’ll have to dispose of him meet him for coffee

Skatrzoo

We can meet up I guess, but I don’t even like coffee :slight_smile::knife:

lmxn

The weebiest post I’ve ever read here

Skatrzoo

What do you mean? I’m not even a weeb :blobdogthink:

Kaleith

Don’t look at it too long or you’ll get the weeb too

Bangledeschler

Welcome to BLAEO and look forward to seeing more of your tentacle filled posts. :3
Idol Magical Girl Chiru Chiru Michiru Part 2 - I love how much a piece of trash the main character can be, and I totally did not know that this was spin off game of the grisaia series. So, without having played the main series I can say this two part VN is still pretty good without all that weeb information.
Highway Blossoms - I agree the English voice setting is surprisingly off setting, but I suppose that’s what is expected when we are used to Nihon being thrown at us when we VN, though not nearly as off setting when I heard the english in Impulse!. Of course I don’t think that game was nearly as good as Highway Blossoms.
Be Kind and Be Well! ^_^

Skatrzoo

Glad to hear Chiru Chiru is still good even if you haven’t read the main series :3 Now I have extra ammo to convince a particular someone to read it, nice

I remember that Impulse! game being in several indiegala bundles and recall it being from a very small studio, so I’m not sure I even wanna know how the voice acting was in it :P (I assumed it wouldn’t even have any in the first place, actually). It also seems to have been removed from steam in the meantime, but not much was lost I suppose :p

Thanks, you too :3

Kaleith

Now I have extra ammo to convince a particular someone to read it, nice

:catsweats:

Skatrzoo

:bloboctopuspeek:

Oh, hi. Fancy seeing you here.