Just curious what the oldest game is that you’ve played, and whether you enjoyed it or not. I’m less interested in the technical experience, so you can use the original release date, even if you played a more modern implementation.
For me, Fate/stay night just barely beats Clannad, by a few months. Both were released in 2004, and both show their age a little bit (Clannad in its convoluted branching, Fate in its resolution options), but are perfectly playable. But of course both are super popular classics, so I wonder if you all had similar experiences with more obscure or older titles.
If you haven’t already go watch the Heaven’s feel trilogy or read the route in the VN (I do think it’s coded so you’d have to finish Fate and UBW first though).
Mahoyo is mostly slice of life and it’s done pretty well, it has the occasional action but the majority of it is about Aoko (she has a brief appearance in Tsukihime) and you get a really good intro to the magic of the Nasuverse (Fate also tries to do that; but after the second explainer from Rin you’ve kind of had it) Tsukihime isn’t going to spend it’s time infodumping (except a couple scenes near the end of the Arcueid and Ciel routes) and you’re just expected to know things like KnK. I recently finished the Mahoyo VN (thanks to the re-release actually offering an english translation even if it has a couple issues (although I’ve read worse)) and it’s pretty banger even if the slice of life scenes didn’t entertain me all that much (although they are used really well to build the characters and their relationships). It is a pretty short VN though (at least compared to the other Nasuverse works) and definitely worth a read.
I don’t know what engine it uses though as it’s hidden behind the switch executable; but I suspect they’re using some form of kirikiri as it is very similar to Fate/Stay Night.
It is a shame, especially with Tsukihime where the far side routes are currently only available through the original game with the remake coming™. Although I have heard that there is some interest in a proper translation if they were to do a PC release (and let’s hope it won’t take them another 10 years to do so). That said I am looking forward to the scrapped Satsuki route which would no doubt be a complete banger (at least from what I’ve been able to gather with the content from the original and what we see on the Plus Disc)
I don’t watch that much anime anymore, but I will definitely give the Fate VN a go. I’ve been curious about Heaven’s Feel for a looong time.
Okay, you’ve kind of sold me on Mahoyo as my first Nasuverse VN. That sounds right up my alley, and it’s a bonus that it’s short, haha. That’s not something you can say about most of Nasu’s games. I keep seeing this game pop up everywhere on VN sites! Maybe I’ll have to give in soon and buy it.
I do hope there’s a PC release for either the remake or the original, since that would make acquiring it much easier for me. I do own a Switch, but I don’t really want to play VNs on it… But it’s good that there are reasons to be excited about the remake.
I’m not gonna stop you, I’ve had my fair sare of fun with it and the beauty of the nasuverse is that you can start anywhere and still have enough context to figure out what’s happening (except when they start pulling out magic, that shit still hurts my brain). Personally I prefer the longer format of Tsukihime as it is used really well to build up your knowledge across routes and throw new things at you at a reasonable pace (fate does the same, but I find the execution of it done better in Tsuki)
if you can get your hands on the NSP file (which you can do by dumping it using a modded switch) Yuzu should run it just fine and you can read it that way, it’s how I read Mahoyo and it’s come a long way performance wise that I managed to do it on a 2015 toshiba satellite. I would recommend using some sort of controller (if you’re on Linux you can use pretty much whatever you have on hand) I tried using keyboard mappings and it isn’t really that great even after setting them up as best as I can.
I usually prefer longer visual novels, but I’m looking for shorter ones at the moment. I want to see more of what’s out there rather than spending months on a single work, even if that’s fun too. I mean, one of my first visual novels was Umineko, lol…
Thanks for the tips regarding emulation! I might find them handy one day when I tackle the Tsukihime console release(s). I’ve never really done emulation before, although I do know a little about it.