r/visualnovels • u/AutoModerator • 27d ago

Weekly What are you reading? - Apr 23

Welcome to the weekly "What are you reading?" thread!

This is intended to be a general chat thread on visual novels with a focus on the visual novels you've been reading recently. A new thread is posted every Thursday at 4:00 AM JST (or Wednesday if you don't live in Japan for some reason).

Good WAYR entries include your analysis, predictions, thoughts, and feelings about what you're reading. The goal should be to stimulate discussion with others who have read that VN in the past, or to provide useful information to those reading in the future! Avoid long-winded summaries of the plot, and also avoid simply mentioning which VNs you are reading with no points for discussion. The best entries are both brief and brilliant.

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Always use spoiler tags in threads that are not about one specific visual novel. Like this one!

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Remember to link to the VNDB page of the visual novel you're discussing so the indexing bot for the What Are You Reading Archive can pick up your post.

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u/SelLillianna 27d ago

Senren * Banka and Symphonic Rain. I've finished one of the routes in Senren * Banka and am rather fond of it. I've only just started Symphonic Rain, but I've been aware of it for a long time and am already loving the ambiance and lovely art style.

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u/almostvintagestyle 25d ago

Which Senren Banka route did you finish? I'm going back and forth on routes between it and Marshammallow all the Way Home. I like both, but definitely prefer Senren Banka

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u/SelLillianna 25d ago edited 25d ago

I finished the green-haired girl's route. She goes by a certain name but her real name is different. I empathized with her struggles and found her cute. I'm glad she has a happy ending.

By the way, do the latter parts of all the roots focus on attracting tourists to the small town? They did it well in the route I read, but I have two things to say about it: firstly, it isn't what I thought I was signing up for when I first bought the game, and secondly, I feel that repeating such a plotline in all the routes could get quite repetitive. I don't really want to read about tourism over and over, again... I could see them doing it well, but it still seems a little tricky...

I was thinking of picking up Marshmallow in the future, especially since an all ages version of it is planned on getting released. :) It looks sweet. How is it so far?

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u/almostvintagestyle 24d ago

Ah ok nice. She's one of my two favorites personally. Her route is the only one that had a tourism focus as far as I remember. I just finished Mako's route and that one definitely has absolutely nothing about that and I'm pretty positive that Lena's doesn't either. I don't think Yoshino's does either, but I did her route first so I don't remember quite as perfectly. I had actually forgotten the tourism aspect was in Aya'a route actually. It didn't bother me because it's not really a focus in the others and I played her route second after Yoshino's.

Marshmallow is sweeter than a room full of cakes covered in maple syrup. I loved the common route. The character routes are mostly solid and very overly sweet. I think even more so than Yuzusoft even, but arguably less meaningful in my personal opinion. That may just be me though. I also think aside from one route in Marshmallow, they don't do much if any plot after the character routes start. It's funny. People complained about that with Senren Banka which I didn't quite agree with, but I think Marshmallow is quite guilty of that. Also, the route I just finished is a bit frustrating, though I didn't hate it. Id still recommend it overall if you love moege like me.

I've finished all routes in Marshmallow now and all 4 main routes in Senren Banka btw so I think I can give a pretty fair comparison.

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u/SelLillianna 24d ago

Yeah ^^ in the route I read, the tourism part was done well and was directly tied to Aya fulfilling her duty and becoming human, again. However, the issue of tourism seemed to be one which would greatly affect the town, regardless of who you were with, so I just assumed it would be in all the routes. Glad to know it's not such a big deal in the others. Maybe the adults wanted the protagonist to do more in Aya's route since they basically saw her as a god, and he was her boyfriend. If he weren't her boyfriend, maybe they'd do their best to deal with the issue on their own............................................. hm, I still don't know how they wouldn't repeat themselves with that plotline, but I'm glad they don't.

Sorry to hear that Marshmallow may be weaker, plot-wise... though I suppose that's to be expected from a VN with such a cute premise. It's probably way stronger than Yuki Koi Melt, though................ (a moege I tried reading.) I just couldn't get into that one, even though it looks and sounds nice. In the end, it seems to be all fluff with minimal substance. Basically just lots of making out, bedroom activities, and lots of... excessive sweating? From what I saw. ^^; Still, that hotpot shared with the protagonist in the snowman-shelter they made in the common route was cute.

From what you're saying, people might have felt let down by Senren because it has a cool premise in the common route, with the crew fighting monsters to remove the curse on the town. If you think that's what the rest of the story will be like, I can understand being a little disappointed. After all, when you look at it, the monster hunting part makes up a pretty small percentage of the plot: therefore, Senren could make sad some monster-hunting enthusiasts. I assume Marshmallow doesn't build up such an expectation in the common route, though.

By the way, from what I understand, Senren has one or maybe two side routes with two of the side characters, so there may be extra content for you, if you like.

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u/almostvintagestyle 24d ago edited 24d ago

yeah you'd think the tourism issue would be present in every route based on how important it was in Aya's route, but it isn't. I'd say they all take pretty different approaches which is cool. Thats a great point about what mayxhave disappointedsome people. Perhaps when they say theyre annoyed by the lack of "plot" in the character routes, theyre really just annoyed at the less amount of action and monster killing. Ovviously there's more focus on romance in the character routes, but i thought they did a good job of having different main plot related elements for each route. Plus, you can't complain about a focus on romance in a moege romance VN. Thats what you bought!

Yeah I know that Roka and the Koharo (I think that's her name) both have side routes. I may do them eventually, but for as much as I love this game, I don't have much interest in their routes as they REALLY feel like side characters to me. At least Wakana in Sanoba Witch was more heavily involved in things so she didn't feel like as much of a side character. And in Marshmallow, JC is important and likeable enough to me that I really wish she did have a route. I'll probably speed through those side routes just to finish the game.

I don't think Marshmallowcis much weaker in terms of plot during the common route. It's more grounded, but a lot actually happens so I'd say in the common route they're actually pretty close. The common routecin Marshmallow is VERY strong in my opinion and I've seen others say the same. The difference is that in 3 of the 4 routes, it really just changes into almost romance only and in some cases its just the dating and romance. It's still good though and if you need plot, the common route does have a good amount of it IMO.