Category: Visual Novels

Kara no Shojo: Reiji Tokisaka’s Erotic Detective Agency

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I am always a bit hesitant to start visual novels. I don’t mind some sex in my story telling and I know that the way the Japanese PC game market works is that the conventional wisdom is that you have to throw in some sex to get people to play. I just want to play something with more story than sex and the sex should not make me throw up in my mouth a little. I was interested in Kara no Shojo because it is a historical murder mystery set is post WWII Japan. The question in my mind was is this murder mystery with some sex thrown in for flavor or a sex game with some murder mystery for an air of legitimacy. So when the demo came out I was curious to test the game out to see how much of an impression I could get.

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Kagetsu Tohya, Tsukihime 2: Beautiful Dreamer

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It is confession time. For all my Type-Moon discussion on the blog there was a distinct hole in my studies of the translated works of Kinoko Nasu in the fact that I had never played Kagetsu Tohya (Ten Nights of the Singing Moon). When I first checked the status of the translation it was incomplete and so playing the game slipped my mind. But I finally got off my duff to play the game for my Type-Moon panel. Kagetsu Tohya is as sequel to their original visual novel Tsukihime but it has a different feel and mechanic to it than the original which is a trend that would carry over to Fate/Hollow Ataraxia as well. Unlike Tsukihime that has 5 different paths than are mostly linear within their own storyline Kagetsu Tohya only has one path but it branches and loops in a variety of ways. It also has quite a bit of side stories and bonus materials that you can unlock as well.

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Character Building Exercises

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I would like to proudly announce that recently I finished off two video games in one day. Although I started them on different days  coincidence made it so I finished Galaxy Angel and Radiant Historia at the same time. Finishing both games back to back made me realize one thing. I would easily recommend both games so the next statement comes from someone who was thoroughly satisfied with his gaming experience (although if the last mission of Galaxy Angel were not an escort mission I would be happier.) Both games are sort of thin when it comes to their characters. They were enjoyable but in realized that had these character been from an anime or manga I would have considered them much weaker.  We simply accept a smaller amount of characterization in video games than we do from any other medium of entertainment.

We all know that video games have changed and evolved quite a bit over the years, but its been in many different directions. Even excluding the change in graphics capability and the potential length of games, plenty of growth in how people perceive games and how the creators make them has happened. They are a new and special type of storytelling, they are art to some and entertainment to many, and by any standard they have become integrated into the fabric of people’s lives on some level. But let’s go back to the storytelling element, certainly there have always been goals and structures for games, but we’ve seen epic stories come to life, too. And things just seem to grow more complex, with bigger ideas, and greater casts. But how characters develop in the story and through the player is still another idea all together.

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