Okay finally found time to play some more. Still pretty far from the end of Door 1 I would assume.
The identity of the white-haired girl remains a mystery. Nely is getting pretty annoying with her bratty ways, Mel is pretty endearing with his clumsy “homeschooled” ways.
I’m not sure how I’m supposed to interpret the quick cut to that red-stained, blurry image when he was telling the 侍女 the weird story about his grandfather and how he came to buy the 館. Was it a joke or is there more to it? I’ll know more soon enough I suppose.
The 侍女 can’t go in the sun and comes from a mysterious place a long way away southwards? Is she a vampire? Will she glitter in the sun?
I could have made good progress today but I started reading Pride and Prejudice yesterday evening and couldn’t put it down until I was done. What a great book.
The good thing with painstakingly reading so much Russian and Japanese lately is that it makes swallowing entire English and French novels feel trivial in comparison. Not having to reach for the dictionary multiple times per page? How relaxing!
Haha I know what you mean, feels crazy when you can read a 100 page book in a couple of hours instead of in 3 months.
(I don’t remember what that book did to me, but it must have been pretty bad, I can see that I rated it 2/5 when I read it 5 years ago )
The more I see of the world, the more am I dissatisfied with it; and every day confirms my belief of the inconsistency of all human characters, and of the little dependence that can be placed on the appearance of merit or sense.
Not sure which of Nelly or Arthur I’m supposed to dislike the most so I’m going to play it safe and dislike both equally as much.
Also how is it possible that we still don’t know the name of the 白い髪の娘？ It’s getting a bit ridiculous.
EDIT: Wow ok Nelly is 我がまま by l but I did but except her brother to be so cold hearted. She needs to grow up but I’m not sure that shipping her to a random husband is the way to go…
So are we to believe that the beggar was the (forever nameless) white haired half sister since the start? But if so, why? Once she’s hired as a lady in waiting, why would she bother going back to her begging ways?
Originally I assumed it would be her father until it was revealed that he was dead.
That also confused me because clearly his mother also knows. Maybe he’s just losing his mind and not thinking clearly at this point though.
The Switch version suddenly vibrated strongly during the quick cut to the disturbing semi-abstract images. The game doesn’t use vibration usually so it genuinely spooked me.
I really enjoy the music and the visual style so far, although I’m a little underwhelmed by the lack of character drawings. I feel like every main character has like 3 or 4 poses max (with a handful of variations for facial expressions) and the secondary characters like the 神父 are just not shown despite coming up in multiple rather long scenes. That feels very low budget.
The writing is okay although I can’t say that it’s blowing my mind so far. Onto door 2…
First of all congrats on finishing reading door 1, and on the Switch too!
Replies on end of door 1
I actually didn’t understand it that way (and I might be wrong), for me Mel was just used to see a beggar and then assumed that it was the same guy as usual. Because I believe than in one of the early scene he mentions that he could see under the hood that the beggar was bold. So at the end, when he sees a bold beggar, he just immediately assumes that it’s the same guy, can’t blame him.
Could also be that the mother doesn’t completely knows but just took pity for a white hair girl as she has lost a white hair baby. Just a theory again.
I would say that it’s a fair comment if you are comparing a VN to a video game. But if you now compare it to a novel instead, isn’t it a great upgrade?? There’s music, and wow, you get an actual sprite for main characters, and sometimes they move their eyes too
Ok that makes sense, I was under the impression that Mel could never see the features of the beggar but I forgot that detail.
The thing is that earlier Mel realizes (while arguing with Nelly) that it was strange that her mother took some random girl in so easily, and it’s one of the elements that makes him realize that what her sister is telling him may be true. Of course it’s not really confirmed either.
Yeah I definitely don’t have a good grasp of the standard for VNs. Is this typical?
I did find it a bit distracting when a scene lasts quite a while and the feelings of the characters change a lot but the sprites remain basically static. Or for instance that scene where White-haired girl goes to strangle Mel in his sleep but then he wakes up and they eventually make up (kinda) but it’s all set to the same background image that doesn’t change at all even though they both go through a whole lot over the course of the discussion.
Yup, that’s a really good way to look at it. In my opinion, when applied right, these elements can enhance the experience by a lot, whilst still leave just enough to the reader’s imagination. Might be why I enjoy VN’s so much.
I want to say yes. I’ve played some other VNs where you had a lot more CGs. Then usually when you have played the game through at least once, a new menu point appears where you can see all the CGs you have unlocked so far (and see how many more you are missing).
I’ve also had one instance where there were actual video clips for important plot points (that must have been a big budget VN, it was BU$TAFELLOWS)
More or less, though this is probably more pared back than most. Generally everyone would have a sprite outside random side characters who only have a few lines, like if you pass someone on the street and exchange 3 sentences with them, so I could see the priest having enough dialog to get ones in another VN. Probably a few more expressions on average too. In your CG example, often they will change through a few CGs, or at least have a few variants where the image is a little different. Like it could have shown her strangling him then had another image that’s similar but her hands have moved, expressions changed, etc.
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symbol next to the text and you can relisten to any line you want any number of times you want