Oh yeah I would be! Honestly I’m enjoying 999 and originally I got the pack with the trilogy and it even contained AI: The Somnium Files too . Looking back on it it was a terrific deal for like only 22 eur. But yes at least I’d like to finish the Zero Escape trilogy, I already got it anyways, even better with other people.
Also, I’m all caught up (but haven’t read this week yet) with 999 so I’m back for the weekly discussions, finally. Just no point adding much commentary to the previous threads at this point but will do again from now onwards.
I’m a maybe – yes I would like to experience the series, particularly VLR, in Japanese, but I am very familiar with these games from multiple plays at this point. By the time I’ve gone through all of 999 I may end up wanting to shift the time to more stuff that’ll be totally new to me. Don’t think I can make that decision until I see what the club ends up picking next, where we are at that time in 9-Nine-, and whatever else I’m up to / feeling like at the time.
I hope it can happen either way though! I’d probably try to keep an eye on it regardless cause it’ll be fun to see reactions from anyone experiencing it for the first time.
I’m interested in playing VLR at least. I’ve played ZTD twice and it’s not my fav, but if enough of the club sticks around I probably would join. I’d also be interested in AI:TSF, which I really like despite it’s flaws, and Nirvana (which I own and still haven’t played).
My only hold up is I’ll be vacationing internationally the first half of September which’ll put me three weeks behind. If we plan out choices ahead of time again, at least thru when I’m gone, I could play ahead before I leave though.
That said I also wouldn’t mind if we wanted to take a break between games.
Same hat But yeah theoretically most everyone should already have VLR at least unless they’re playing the DS version, since the remaster is packaged with the first two together.
Totally fair! We could always wait a bit before going on depending on how people are feeling as we get closer to the end. And it’s all really flexible considering it’ll be a spinoff situation; we could of course do a scheduled club again, but we could do something more open as well, again depending how everyone feels.
ZTD is… different for sure I had a good enough time with it (definitely a confidence booster keeping up with it once I got there), but it’s also definitely not a visual novel. Which really doesn’t matter for a spinoff club if people are still interested, but in case that’s not what you’re looking for
AI is an interesting point though; I certainly enjoyed it (spike chunsoft-typical anime nonsense warnings in place of course) and I think it’d be a lot of fun to do like this! I also still haven’t played Nirvana but anyway I feel like AI might lean less VN-like than the main club has been going for? Like yeah it has VN vibes in a lot of ways, but there’s a lot more movement (? if that’s the word I’m going for) than in something like 999. So I’m not sure if it would be read in the main club, but that doesn’t mean we couldn’t make something happen if people are interested!
It’s pushing against the edges a little, but I think it’d still be allowable? I mean if people wanted to do it sometime, I care more about reading what we want than defining VN with the right amount of purity. It’s on VNDB as a VN, for whatever that’s worth. The line is fuzzy for sure though.
We could make it a Uchikoshi club by including Never 7, 12Riven, Remember 11, and Ever17. They’re even VNs!
For the record I’m personally good playing non-VN games as long as most of the text can be set to manual advance. I don’t read quick enough for auto just yet. That said I’m not sure how well non VNs can be hooked or OCR’d so that may limit the people who would join
I don’t want to make false promises and say I’d be able to join a VLR or ZTD club, especially seeing how far behind I am with 999… but that being said if I can get caught up I’d love to play these too, especially VLR. tbh I don’t like ZTD but I am willing to play it for the sake of learning Japanese. And because I’ve actually never played ZTD myself, I’ve only watched a let’s play.
I do not read along with the rest of the VN club, 999 is basically a one-off for me, so for me I’d just have to worry about catching up which hopefully should be easy now that it’s summer
Speaking of which, there is a chance I might not be able to catch up with 999, although I will try! I might even skip knife end for now so I can play sub end at the same time as the club (only b/c I’ve already played this and know what happens). But even if I end up stopping 999 for now I’m still more than happy to continue to help with route/pacing decisions!
My current VN library consists of this trilogy and as it turns out, I purchased AI: TSF on the Switch forever ago and haven’t touched it. My impression of VNs is just developing but so far it’s my favorite thing.
So, I can say I’d join for those titles also.
I’d also like to say I would join an ongoing club for the Zero Escape series but I’m still so so far behind on 999 right now that I can’t make any promises. I’ve actually played the first AI game in Japanese so I wouldn’t necessarily be an active participant in that, but I would certainly be willing to assist with determining pacing and structure.
(edit: thought I was in a different thread for a sec )
I’ve been looking at next week’s section and I’m not quite done yet, but unless I’m vastly underestimating it looks like it’d be on the relatively shorter side if we stick at four scenes. Based on the super tentative schedule, we’re aiming to increase to 5 scenes the week after next, but we could do 5 scenes next week to give us some more wiggle room as we get into late game things. Either way lines up pretty well with the current assignments, though there will be a kind of weird break point in a couple weeks regardless. So, what do you guys think?
How much should we read?
Do 5 scenes from week 10 on
Do 4 scenes week 10, then 5 scenes from week 11 on
As no one expressed objection and the length is still within our normal range, I went ahead and made this week’s reading 5 scenes. If you have any comments or questions let me know!
Just wanted to say that I’m lagging behind again unfortunately, though I’m sure that was evident anyways. Just generally have had some kind of unstable weeks and my focus drifted towards keeping the 9-nine- club going and not much else at the moment for Japanese. I do plan to keep reading this and catch up because I was enjoying it, hopefully before it’s finished, but I admit I haven’t been as active in the club as I would’ve liked and I can’t help but feel a tiny bit guilty about it. I know that only one person shouldn’t make that much of a difference in a club, and no one is ever forced to post or anything, but considering the little activity in the VN clubs as a whole I’m sure any participation at all is appreciated, especially for you Natarin that are organising this for the rest of us. But do know that I appreciate your efforts a lot <3 . Hopefully I can fix my schedule soon and catch up what I have left.
I’m also a bit behind, unfortunately. A combination of reduced free time, other priorities and a bit of loss of momentum now we’re past one ending. This being my first visual novel, I’m not yet used to the idea of multiple endings, so any ending feels like an ending to me I guess.
I still plan to catch up soon though.
Advance notice: I have a number of things going on this coming week so I might be late finishing up the next post. I know where the next cut-off will be since it’s another ending so the assignment itself can be posted whether I finish in time or not, but I may not have all the normal ending screenshots and choices worked out yet. I’ll try to get on it ahead of time, but I wanted to let you all know just in case!
Aww it’s okay, I appreciate the sentiment :') It sounds like a lot of us are a bit busy at the moment and that’s totally okay; as long as people are generally having a good time with the club however they’re interacting with that’s all good with me!
No worries! It’s definitely a different narrative experience; once you start getting into some other endings you’ll probably get more of a sense of why one “ending” isn’t The End. I hope it’s been fun experiencing a new medium!
I thought it might be interesting to put the character counts here since I’m tracking them anyway. Counts contain info on which routes we took/will take, but no ending spoilers. I have the “by block” version too if anyone wants that for pacing estimates instead of just the overall.
Character Counts
Which doors we took are under another cut, just to be extra safe on spoilers. Counts use MS Word’s “asian character count” so it loses numbers, English, special characters, etc, but also strips the gibberish from textractor.
Route 1
Doors 486: 115,969 characters
Note: I chose different for the elevator scene, so counts may be slightly different
Route 2
Doors 432: 33,407 characters
Note: This starts with the Door 3 choice on the flowchart
Route 3
Doors 571: 41,164 characters
Note: I tried to avoid all duplicate text and only capture new scenes (even minor ones where the discussion is the same but from a different group due to who went where).
Route 4
Doors 471: 37,109 characters
Note: Did not do alternate choices, only jumped around to capture the new mandatory conversations needed to trigger the keys
Route 5
Doors 586: 48,583
Note: includes the missable scene
Route 6
Doors 471: 67,939
Note: Starts from where route 4 left off
Overall
All Doors: 344,171!
Note: Doesn’t include all possible choices, or choosing Door 2 on non-Door 3 routes, or the puzzle gameplay dialogs
That’s fine with me. I’m pretty sure the game remembers the dialog flags, so switching to True I’m about 80% positive we only have to re-trigger the door flags…I think. Hopefully no one is playing the DS version
. Looking back on it it was a terrific deal for like only 22 eur. But yes at least I’d like to finish the Zero Escape trilogy, I already got it anyways, even better with other people.
But yeah theoretically most everyone should already have VLR at least unless they’re playing the DS version, since the remaster is packaged with the first two together.
but anyway I feel like AI might lean less VN-like than the main club has been going for? Like yeah it has VN vibes in a lot of ways, but there’s a lot more movement (? if that’s the word I’m going for) than in something like 999. So I’m not sure if it would be read in the main club, but that doesn’t mean we couldn’t make something happen if people are interested!
)
