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About the term visual novel and Japanese adventures
but at the core, it’s no different from The Secret of Monkey Island? You use commands to move between screens and interact with
There is a fundamental difference however….the focus on puzzles in game design. Which leads to you spending the majority of time on actually solving puzzles rather than just reading text.
Very much disagreed. Technically in a traditional point and click a majority of time is spent watching the character walk.
but at the core, it’s no different from The Secret of Monkey Island? You use commands to move between screens and interact with
There is a fundamental difference however….the focus on puzzles in game design. Which leads to you spending the majority of time on actually solving puzzles rather than just reading text.
Very much disagreed. Technically in a traditional point and click a majority of time is spent watching the character walk.
Yes…in an attempt to solve that puzzle.
Yes…in an attempt to solve that puzzle.
And in a Phoenix wright type of game you’re reading your way to the next puzzle 
And in a Phoenix wright type of game you’re reading your way to the next puzzle
What puzzle?
And in a Phoenix wright type of game you’re reading your way to the next puzzle
What puzzle?
presenting the right piece of logic, investigating and exploring crime scenes, presenting the right topic to characters, finding the right hotspot in a picture that supports logic, etc etc etc.
I guess I’d qualify them as being hybrid Visual Novels/Adventure games. I wouldn’t call them purely visual novels because there are indeed some puzzles and the thought process in Phoenix wright is pretty similar to a lot of point and click games. The mechanic behind the game is more similar to the Visual Novel genre.
(I wish more of the JH games were released so more people would familiar with them. The PSX games were fantastic…) Memories of the Past was also extremely linear because most of the game was ported from (pre-smart phone) mobile phone games.
A bit out of topic, do you have any good game to recommend with Japanese voice over? I can speak and understand Japanese fine but unfortunately I can only read like a 7 years old.
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Ever17, written by the creator of 999.
And in a Phoenix wright type of game you’re reading your way to the next puzzle
What puzzle?
presenting the right piece of logic, investigating and exploring crime scenes, presenting the right topic to characters, finding the right hotspot in a picture that supports logic, etc etc etc.
I agree with this. A “puzzle” can take on many forms, as mentioned above. While for the specific example of JH: Memories of the Past, I agree that the “puzzles” might be too easy (two, maybe three choices; no penalty etc), I still think that technically it features puzzles: using the right “items” (topics & objects you gathered from earlier dialogues) on other people, finding the correct location to further the story etc.
And novel games can also feature puzzles, only in a different way. Kamaitachi no Yoru (Banshee’s Last Cry)‘s puzzles work on two levels: ‘in-universe’, where you try to solve the murder based on the story you’re reading (where you collect “information” instead of inventory) and ‘meta-level’, where you are looking for the right combination of choices to get you to the solution (choices made based on what you are reading, so linked to the ‘in-universe’.) Later Chunsoft novel games like Machi (PSX/SAT/PSP) and 428 (WII/PS3/PSP) put the puzzle also outside the story-universe, where you need to find the correct combination between multiple timelines (zapping system) (I think VLR did that too? I haven’t played that game). Kamaitachi no Yoru X3 (PS2) in particular was brilliant in using the zapping system in combination with the story in presenting a true detective puzzle plot.
A bit out of topic, do you have any good game to recommend with Japanese voice over? I can speak and understand Japanese fine but unfortunately I can only read like a 7 years old.
Hmm, most Japanese adventures/novel games I play have limited voice-overs, so sorry, can’t really help you there.
“Rationality, that was it. No esoteric mumbo jumbo could fool that fellow. Lord, no! His two feet were planted solidly on God’s good earth” - Ellery Queen, The Lamp of God
A bit out of topic, do you have any good game to recommend with Japanese voice over? I can speak and understand Japanese fine but unfortunately I can only read like a 7 years old.
I doubt many games would have full voice overs, it seems there’s at least some kind of narrative part in pretty much all the games I’ve played and it’s silent even when all the actual conversation is voiced.
Can you read furigana well enough? I think there’s a few games that are using it even for the kanji parts. Though I’m not an expert, my level of understanding is so low that I go for English translations still. There are plenty of good fan translations out there and even those programs that translate the ingame text (though I’d guess they’re not much better than Google translate and I’ve never used them).
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Furigana is fine actually (albeit slow but would be good practice). It’s really Kanji that I can’t really read since I never really studied Japanese, mostly learned speaking by having lived and worked there (not having any english-speaking coworkers is a great way to improve quickly).
^
I recommend Skritter for studying Kanji. There is an app now as well. Good for some practicing on the go.
A bit out of topic, do you have any good game to recommend with Japanese voice over? I can speak and understand Japanese fine but unfortunately I can only read like a 7 years old.
I doubt many games would have full voice overs, it seems there’s at least some kind of narrative part in pretty much all the games I’ve played and it’s silent even when all the actual conversation is voiced.
Can you read furigana well enough? I think there’s a few games that are using it even for the kanji parts. Though I’m not an expert, my level of understanding is so low that I go for English translations still. There are plenty of good fan translations out there and even those programs that translate the ingame text (though I’d guess they’re not much better than Google translate and I’ve never used them).
Again Ever17 is recommended. It’s a ‘pure’ visual novel. Just text to navigate through, amazing story though. The game has FULL voice over and the text was translated to English.
Thanks Origami, I’ll definite check Ever17 out.
I think “visual novels” suffer the same thing that “manga” and “anime” has in terms of marketing in the West. It refers to Japanese comics or animation, but the real words itself just means comics and any animation after all. As someone that hangs out on an EVN engine forum with other developers, they do spend time talking about what makes a VN a visual novel, and if there are better names in terms of marketing to a mainstream audience.
My general impression of the term “visual novel” is that it’s a game mechanic as well as a presentation style. You’d be surprised the number of times Mass Effect was mentioned on the forum as having VN aspects (I kid you not). VN shares many traits of CYOA as well if you find one that has many choices and consequences. It’s a tough definition really. VNs come in so many shapes and sizes, I think it suffers the same as adventure games not having a tight definition, and has a few criteria requirements instead to define it. VNs pride themselves on storytelling, but they also fit in niches as well. VNs can also have stats simulations, dating simulations, as well as having mini-games, dialogue puzzles, and even RPG elements. So yeah, I go with VN meaning presentation style in showing somewhat static characters, and spending a lot of time interacting with other characters as the main goal. I think this style is common in Japanese adventure games as a result. Ace Attorney has it, 999, and some degrees even Hotel Dusk types of games. I’d personally prefer separating the ones with actual gameplay problem solving elements as Japanese style adventure games, and leave the term VNs for the rest.
Games Played: Ace Attorney (PW 1-3, Apollo Justice, Miles Investigation), Hotel Dusk and Last Window, Professor Layton (Curious Village, Diabolical Box, Unwound Future, Lost Specter), 999 and Zero Escape, Walking Dead S1-2, Trace Memory, Area-X, Time Hollow, Ghost Trick, Indian Jones FoA Currently Playing: Portal 2, PL - Miracle Mask, Dangan Ronpa
Did anyone ever play Snatcher by the way? I managed to play it a few years ago and despite being dated, I still enjoyed it quite a bit. It was one of those games I just couldn’t put down.
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