I don’t think I will join the next club, want to read on my own a bit. But crossing fingers that you can find more people that want to read along!
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I started to read Kara no Shoujo recently and that’s a 3-part series so I most likely will be busy with that for a while. I’ll keep an eye on this thread and see if anyone starts it back up or if any informal clubs pop up that interests me but for now, I don’t want to commit to anything ahead of time.
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I’m still in the midst of a lot of stuff, but I’ve been rather enjoying the couple clubs I’m a part of at the moment so I at least like the idea of doing it? I think my participation would have to particularly depend on what is chosen, like I said the first Ace Attorney is definitely something I can’t bring myself to do again right now, but…
Would like to see this club manage to continue, for sure.
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If anyone is hesitating to try and playing a VN because their Japanese skills aren’t high enough and figuring out Textractor is too much trouble, then I can recommend Marco and the Galaxy Dragon!
It can be setup to show Japanese and English at the same time.
(first scene of the game)
I’m just going to roll with that this time around.
Plus every line is voiced in this VN, and it’s quite short, and it has a prebuilt deck on JPDB, so really, perfect for a beginner 
Oh and there’s a discount on it on Steam right now 
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Huge thanks for the recommendation, I’ve just bought it!
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Nice! Even forgot to mention that it was read on the Natively forum
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Yeah, and even more useful in my opinion: switch between Japanese-only and English-only with a single press of a keyboard key.
To anyone playing it: Feel free to comment in our old club threads over at Natively! Questions or story comments, all is welcome! 
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Oh yeah that’s even better, will try to figure out how to activate it! How is it for the anime scenes though? At first I was going to go full Japanese with textractor but then it doesn’t grab the text in the anime scenes and it’s a bit too fast for me, that’s why I originally switched to English subtitles
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I think I remember there being a different Textractor hook that either caught both normal + those scenes or only those scenes or something like that. Let me know if you can’t figure it out, then I can reinstall it and check how I got it to work.
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Found the key! E for English, J for Japanese (I know, I have a very big brain)
That should be fine thanks if it doesn’t work for those scenes I can just reload, change language, and replay, I save pretty often (bad habit I have from back in the days when the game / PC could crash at any time)
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You can also jump back to any scene (including the beginning of those scenes) from the log if I remember correctly.
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Oh very cool! I can see it now, in the back log (just need to scroll to display it, found that out after only like 500k into ISLAND (told you I had a big brain)), there is a JUMP button
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I posted in the past about a VN I finished on my own, so figured I’d give a quick review if anyone is interested:
Chaos;Head is the first entry in the science adventure series, preceding the much better known Steins;Gate. It’s not necessarily pure horror, but I think that label is most useful. A high school kid who spends all his time playing an MMO, avoiding people and being as close to a hikikomori as he can get away with gets dragged into a bizarre serial murder case.
He also has delusions all the time, semi-knowingly? The main method of choice in the VN is whether to have a positive, negative, or no delusion at many points. It doesn’t provide real agency like a standard VN with choices, but I had fun playing with it and seeing lots of weird stuff.
From a learning perspective it’s pretty good! You have to use Agent, a different texthooker, but it’s very plug and play for perfect results. A few sections ramp the difficulty with science jargon briefly, and online chatroom/forum speak is also a challenge, but overall it wasn’t too hard and I found that the relevant stuff repeated so much I was able to go through sessions of ~20k characters in a reasonable enough time and not even mine THAT many words by the end of it.
Do be aware there’s a fanpatch with the primary goal of adding a better English translation, but it also readds some stuff censored in this release (for violence I think?) that is allegedly important to the plot. I played with it but I don’t know what I would have been missing.
As for writing quality, I very strongly enjoyed it, but opinions are gonna vary a lot. The main character is a self-described キモオタ who lives up to all of the gross expectations you’d have. The violence is fairly extreme at times. Make sure that’s the kind of story you’re ready for. I found that it maintained the paranoid, bizarre atmosphere well and thought the pacing was really good, but a lot of people find it slow and annoying because the main character is the least proactive person imaginable, who will spend ages ruminating over the forces he thinks are tormenting him and contradicting himself repeatedly. For the right sort of person I think the VN does what it’s aiming to do well, but what it’s aiming to do is put you in the head of an unpleasant self-described loser trying his hardest to hide away from interactions with the world while reality crumbles bit by bit around him.
I don’t love the way the multiple endings thing worked and how/when they were paced and given out, something is a bit off there, but it had way too many delirious highs for my tastes to not like it a lot. I’m honestly not certain if it all comes together as well at the end as my positive regard for it reflects, but the mood was on the exact right wavelength for me to vibe with so the journey was great. I recommend it if you can put up with the gore and the MC who thinks of life in terms of nukige, but your mileage may definitely vary.
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I’m interested in reading Steins;Gate at some point, would you recommend read this one first or it doesn’t matter?
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This is all I’ve read, but I do plan to get to Steins;Gate after. To my knowledge the series is kinda same universe but most entries aren’t too directly connected. Certainly most people found out about and read/watched Steins;Gate first and it seems doing that worked fine, as far as I’ve heard. The big exception (besides the many S;G followup/addon games), is that I’m pretty sure Chaos;Child is a more direct sequel to Chaos;Head. Since the tones seem wildly different, I’d at least want to say don’t bother with Chaos;Head if it doesn’t sound like your kind of thing on its own.
When you get to Steins;Gate, it is also supported by Agent, so try that out if you haven’t used it before! It works for some things that textractor can’t (including some more traditional videogames) and is less fiddly, but the big downside is that it needs to actually have the game’s script in it so within the program is a list of everything it’s usable with, which obviously drastically limits how many things it works with.
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Thanks! Also tagging @polv in case they know something
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I haven’t read Chaos;* and haven’t planned to yet.
Anyway, for STEINS;GATE, I recommend starting with the original one, and decide later whether to continue with a sequel (rather than purchasing a bundle in advance).
0 assumes you have played the original. You can start Darling without playing the original first.
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Now, I am getting interested…
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CHAOS;CHILD does definitely not require extensive knowledge of CHAOS;HEAD. However there are some references that one would appreciate having played chaos;head before. There are concepts from the former game which are built upon in the sequel, although not in a way that an intimidate knowledge of the former is required (the main fantastical element works somewhat differently in chaos;child than chaos; head, which had me rather confused until it was eventually explained). Essentially all characters are new. There is one major event at the end of chaos;head which is important in the plotline of chaos;child (not to the extent that one actually needs to know the details, however, just in a “this thing happened” sort of way. You may also think that this means that Chaos;Child spoils Chaos;Head in a major way, but for this particular event, Chaos;Head itself spoils it in its opening scene, so…). So in this case I don’t think playing chronologically is required, but does enhance the experience in a (somewhat minor) way. Which is perhaps good because I think chaos;child is more approachable and less potentially off-putting (the protagonist has less hikikomori vibes and actually has friends).
As polv said, Steins;Gate 0 essentially requires familiarity with Steins;Gate. It would be very odd to play those out of order.
Anonymous;Code ties into Steins;Gate a little bit, but is almost all stand-alone other than that. I think I remember there being a reference to a Robotics;Notes character.
I’ve only played some of Robotics;Notes so I don’t really know how it fits in, but there were no points in subsequent games where there was a blatant Robotics;Notes-shaped hole in my knowledge. I believe it has a sequel, Robotics;Notes Dash with the same characters (and a particular Steins;Gate character), so presumably that one requires knowledge of the original and some familiarity with Steins;Gate (as an aside, I don’t think many people are very fond of Dash from what I’ve heard).
There are also several non-canon(?) romance spinoffs for some of the sub-series. For these I don’t know if knowledge of the original game is required but they don’t really make sense to play on their own due to being a load of fanservice.
So basically you can play most games, or at least the “sub-series” out of order (My play order was Steins;Gate → Steins;Gate 0 → Chaos; Head → Chaos;Child → Anonymous;Code).
In summary, the major thing is to not play Steins;Gate 0 before Steins;Gate. I would say that if one intends to definitely play both to play Chaos;Head before Chaos; Child, but if one is not interested in or put off by the former then skipping it is not that big of a deal. I think Steins;Gate before Anonymous;Code makes sense in terms of getting excited by certain things, but its story is pretty much standalone. The only major gap in my knowledge is how much Steins;Gate knowledge is needed for Robotics;Notes Dash (there are too many visual novels I want to play that I haven’t gotten around to finishing Robotics;Notes! Unfortunately I’m a very slow reader, even moreso in Japanese).
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Oh my god there are so many of them 
Thanks a lot for the input!
I really want to read Steins;Gate because it’s one of the highest rated VN on VNDB (9.00)!
If I like it I will follow with Steins;Gate 0 then. And if I like both, sounds like I won’t run out of things to read anytime soon
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