Dating Sims

Short answer, no.

All VNs are written like shit, they play out like downscaled anime and their buyers are only in it for the eroge and moe. Try as you might, you won't find another like Katawa.

For a simple reason it's on point, with a clear goal. By comparison, the average weeb VN is overlong and cryptic, missing that opportunity to state something interesting. It's all about slogging through yet another anime storyline, which ultimately says nothing new.

Katawa Shoujo was a piece of shit though.

The artstyle is fucking terrible too

Stop having shit taste.

Saya no Uta.

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Not well written in the slightest, just another anime story that borrows from Silent Hill and The Ring. The setting is a bit different, but in the end you just watched an anime with gore.

You could have said the same about Narcissu, but again what's more uninteresting than reading about anime characters going around while still doing their usual routines? Like it or not for its simplicity and entry levelness, KS knew what it wanted to say and didn't need to bother about demographics for potential sales.

I should learn moon already, I want to play more actual dating sims.

really

Elaborate. I didn't see any SJW shit, unless you're actually mad about Kenji.

Not videogames. Stay away from anything weaboo.

MGTOW Ending = Death

How would you like to date this girl until she becomes your GF?
When she becomes your GF, that is where the real game begins.

You have to set up dates in real time.
Miss it, and she feels sad.
You even get to talk to her and influence the way she talks and dresses.

LovePlus is the best waifu simulator.

Every time I tried a VN it felt like I was reading through the same typical anime story with far worse pacing, filler text, and exposition.

That's a fucking Holla Forums attitude towards MGTOW more than an SJW one. Unless I'm misunderstanding.

Also apologies to OP for piggybacking but anyone have recs for VNs in general?

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I read a lot of the "highly rated translated VNs". Most of them are shit. There's a few that are decent or average. But for the most part it's shit.

Muvluv? Shit. Umineko? Shit. Higurashi? Shit. Fate/Stay Night? Shit. Ever17? Shit. Grisaia? Shit. Sharin no Kuni? Shit. G-senjou? Shit. Tsukihime? Shit. Cross Channel? Shit (although that one loop where he sends the guy back is pretty funny, I'll give it that at least). Hoshizora? Shit. Sekien no Inganock? Absolute shit, I'd rather read through Gor books again than waste electricity downloading/installing/uninstalling/deleting that pile of shit.

I think most people who praise these VNs have either never read a good book or have a complete lack of objectivity regarding entertainment and are probably the type of people who find reality TV enjoyable.

Give examples of written material that isn't shit in your view.

In VNs? There aren't any translated examples if, for you, writing simply translates to good prose. Translations and all. Maybe some japanese speaker could comment, but I can't.

To me, the decent writing in VNs come from the characters, the story and the story telling.

Clannad has decent characters and bad story telling (the first half of it is dating sim in a high school setting), but the second half of the story is pretty good and the undertones present in the first half set up the story quite well, no matter how poor the first half is.

Majikoi has great characters but basically no story or story telling, making it average. It's a decent read if you want to read about a group of friends having fun (and sex).

Symphonic Rain and ef - fairy tale of the two both have good story telling and ok-ish stories, but rather weak characters. Romance heavy though.

There's a few more VNs with decent entertainment values, but I wouldn't consider them to be well written: Sengoku Rance, Yume Miru Kusuri, Saya no Uta.

Holla Forums in general agrees with MGTOW's on many issues due to how western women have been corrupted by feminism. Their only main complaint is that they aren't helping combat miscegenation rates, due to MGTOW's giving up completely rather than aiming for the marginalized probability.
SJW's in general on the other hand absolutely hate MGTOW's, as they interpret the idea of heterosexuals rejecting relationships with women all together as containing a sexist pretense.
Most visual novels that have a MGTOW option either have it ending in a neutral or excellent stance for the player. As Katawa Shoujo is a peculiar exception, especially with how it's carried out with Kenji, coupled with the fact that at least on of the developers is a known SJW, it definitely seems like the ending was made to discredit MGTOW's.
I personally don't like all of them, but picture related is a decent place to start I guess.

*one

My patience for waiting for something to "get good" has thinned from my childhood. When I was a teenager I remember wading through fantasy novel series with people going, "Don't worry, it gets good at book 5!" or video games that get better after nth hours. Rarely ever were did they get better. Now if I'm going through anything that starts off poor, I'm going to assume it gets marginally better or rails into far shittier territories.

This sentiment pretty much sums up why VNs are such shit. The ONLY exception of the "it gets good later on, really!" is Clannad. The second half is actually good.

Fuck faggots who say this about Wheel of Time and Malazan.

Wheel of Time is good until Ebou Dar. The only reason I kept watching past that point was for Mat antics, who single handedly carries like 3-4 books in a row on his shoulders.

Malazan starts awesome. Stays awesome. Then we get to the mad emperor/cursed sword book and it's like meh. But after that it picks right back up. Problem with Malazan is that every book is setup so that the first 75-90% of it is basically exposition and Wordination: The Wordening, but it ends with a ridiculously awesome and over the top finish where shit goes down.

The fucking corpse tower?
The duels in book 9? Charge!.
Pust's gambit?
Toblakai vs doggies?

That kind of stuff is enough to give a man reason to live. Those moments where you can sit back and go "holy shit, that was so fucking awesome" and just have this huge grin plastered all over your face.

IMO, the most important part of a piece of entertainment is the very start. The first page of a book, the opening of a song or a movie, the first impression of a sculpture or painting. A good piece of entertainment needs to draw the person consuming it in and the person behind that piece of entertainment needs to entrap the consumer with the first few chapters/minutes so the consumer stays throughout the whole thing.

On the flip side, that's why most prologues in video games are shit: they serve as a tutorial and tutorials fucking suck. A great game will teach the player how to play organically (think of the first time playing Super Mario Bros 1 or other NES platformers where you just mash buttons are random and start jumping and running around and go from there) and a shitty game will force you to go through a tutorial. Exceptionally awful games will force you to go through a tutorial AND break immersion by having NPCs telling you which buttons to use to advance through the tutorial: "ok player, get close to the door and press the A button to open it".

Lily is only good if you like the most cliched romance imaginable.

People really underestimate how important a first impression is for a story. It always seems if you criticize a story being shit at the beginning that means you're an idiot with ADD who needs constant explosions and action for a story to grab their attention. If the writer can't be assed to make the beginning of their story or game good then why should I?

woodmusicbox.tumblr.com/
This is coming out in a few weeks as an incomplete demo. Looks promising, but I'm not holding my breath.

The only reason I'm looking forward to it is being able to fuck a new batch of crippled qts.

my nigga

Perhaps your shit taste blinds you.

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Love Plus, Pia Carrot, Amagami, Bloody Bride, and Sakura Wars got translations.
Then for otome there's Girlish Love Revolution, the DS Tokimeki Memorial games, Dandelion, and a shit ton of others.

English forays into the genre are limited to Brooktown High, Roommates, Fading Hearts, Sprung, and a few other shitty indie games.

MuvLuv, the Umineko games, the Grisia games, and most games by Key are all pretty good. As far as non-weeb games go Everlasting Summer is pretty good.
Shit talk VNs all you want, but Katawa stole a lot of it's from other similar games and how you can pick apart other VNs others could pick apart Katawa Shoujo.

I knew that, but I didn't see it as SJW shit. It's a VN about meeting a nice girl and falling in love with her; it makes sense that failing to take an interest in anyone and/or failing to make them take an interest in you would be a fail state.

Have you played the Katawa Shoujo Alpha Repair Build, OP? It's just an earlier script that they decided not to go with, it was leaked and edited onto the release version or something.

First I've heard of it, seems like an attempt to bottle lightning but I hope they do well. Anyone from 4 Leaf Studios on the team or is it a bunch of new people?

But VNs are better than anime.

Totally new, as far as I know. I've only known about it for about half a year, but reading through content in earlier blog posts, they probably aren't complete faggots, pic related.

If I remember correctly Kenji was actually based off one of the writers, who was a Holla Forumsack or MGTOW person.

God dammit, forgot to take the flag off.