Agora Road VN Club: Phenomeno Edition.

[remember_summer_days]

Download Instructions:

A. Go to this website and either 1. pay premium to download the game in one go or 2. Make a folder to put all the parts of the game in, the game will be downloaded in about 6 different rar. files, once all the parts are downloaded, start by extracting part 1. It should automatically patch itself into a single game if you have all the other parts. Then download the english patch from the same website and patch the game to play it in english.

B. Get it from the official website. (For free!) Note, it will be in japanese, and you will need to have your PC locale set to Japan for the game to run.

Schedule:

One week to read the Visual Novel! From August 26 to September 4!

Happy reading!

 

[SomaSpice]

>First option comes up in the first sentence of the game.
>Choose "I don't wanna hear it"
>Game closes

Man, that was quite the visual novel! I'll check up next week to see everybody else's opinions!

 

[remember_summer_days]

Bumping this to remember people it exists

 

[remember_summer_days]

How many of you are actually reading this? Despite the high number of votes in all of the agoralit clubs, there's very little engagement outside the Infinite Jest thread.

Anyways, I'm like, probably not halfway done with this (In my defense I'm reading it in japanese), so I'm gonna give this another week for the thread to get more engagement.

My impressions so far (In the VN's defense, I'm reading it in japanese so I'm probably not getting everything right), it's a very... meh horror narrative. But because our current media landscape is so shit, meh often feels remarkable. The premise is interesting, and the narrative works with suspense, it manages to create anticipation for the reveal of yoru ishi. Night stone? Idk what's her name in the translation, I'm gonna use the japanese names... 夜石 falls too much into 'waifu' territory for my taste, after a hellscape, when the protagonist finally encounters her, it was silly how he kept going about his imagination going wild with her, how cute she is, how she smells nice, how he flusters at the thought of them being a couple... I think they're going for, 'she's so beautiful and outstanding she must be a supernatural being' sort of feeling, but the protagonist comments come off as the usual self-insert blushing after the game's titular waifu, this sort of tonal shift from the usually creepy narratives feels like something out of the DCU, unlike the DCU though, this made me laugh. I'm not sure this is a good thing. Probably not a good thing for a horror story.

The story has potential, but it still feels too anime-y for me. The fact that the only two characters with sprites are attractive females makes me feel like a woketoid, but it does bother me.

 

[Kyou]

So I got around to finishing this at some point and to be honest I'm not really sure what there is to say about it—rather, it's one of those pieces where I would rather not say anything about it. Since this thread is dead, though, I suppose someone has to. From what I understand, this is an adaptation of the first chapter of a book, and so the abrupt ending isn't supposed to be an ending in the first place. Unusual pick for a first VN club.

I liked the backgrounds I guess? Honestly I don't think the soundtrack was used properly, though I did like the scene where this played.

Even then, aside from the production value, everything that I could mention about this is I think done better in Tsukihime or Umineko. When I was reading through the part where Kurishuna was giving her version of events to Nagito, I was seriously expecting that to be the payoff and conclusion of the story. I thought, "wait so you're telling me all of this happened because of the housing crisis? Damn. That's Ryukishian" but no.

I'm not going to say that I liked it, nor that I did not like it. Honestly when it comes to things like this, I think it's a blunder to assume that you must (or can) hold an opinion on it in the first place.

 

[remember_summer_days]

From what I understand, this is an adaptation of the first chapter of a book, and so the abrupt ending isn't supposed to be an ending in the first place. Unusual pick for a first VN club.

Yeah, I mean idk a lot about VN's so I just let people vote on it. It got the most votes out of all the VNs, and the most votes overall in all the bookclub voting threads. Needless to say, I was very disappointed when literally only 3 of the 11 people that voted showed up, and none of us bothered with engagement. And for a VN that's really short. In my defense, I was reading in japanese so it was taking me a while, but still... Not sure if I should attempt another visual novel reading at this point.

Well, I remember second place Saya no uta was meant to be read after this, so maybe I'll do one last attempt and create a say no uta thread...

 

[remember_summer_days]

Tsukihime or Umineko

You and your Umineko ITS ALWAYS UMINEKO ISN'T IT

HOW ABOUT YOU UMI YOUR NEKO INSTEAD

 

[remember_summer_days]

Honestly I don't think the soundtrack was used properly

How would you have used it? I thought it was fine, albeit a bit generic, but most VN's have a generic soundtrack. The exception to this has been AIR.

 

[Kyou]

How would you have used it? I thought it was fine, albeit a bit generic, but most VN's have a generic soundtrack. The exception to this has been AIR.

My take on this might be off because I was also reading in JP, so I spent a lot longer listening to each track than was intended. In any case, every really good VN I've read has been very particular with music, including the points where the BGM is intentionally not used. Maeda is a musician himself, and reading through multiple interviews of him, he's very particular about his tastes. In one I found recently, he refers to himself as a "music otaku" who would purchase hundreds of CDs per month. And so honestly, I find recommending the VNs I enjoy to people because most people simply do not have the sort of pseudo-synesthesia that I do.

AIR is of course a good example of this, though I'll admit I think the version of AIR which I have constructed in my head has mutated in my memory to be a lot better than the actual thing. When I went through it a second time, I noticed that I didn't actually come across one of the scenes which most stood out to me in my original reading at all. But, this is how I remember it...

Around the halfway point in Minagi's route—a 10-15 hour maze in which nothing really happens and the only progression involves references to a "mental illness" which is only mentioned in a few sentences and is never elaborated upon.
In one of the slice-of-less-than-life scenes which one must have grown accustomed to by now, if they've managed to not fall asleep by this point, in the middle of an normal conversation with Michiru, the music fades out for a bit: the text continues from the narrator's perspective, saying that Michiru is staring at a cat she saw under a staircase. Now I don't remember the exact imagery, but I vaguely recall it being something involving a mother cat and kitten—and maybe one was dead. IIRC in the anime adaption there weren't any dead cats, but as I try to recall this scene it's piecing itself together in some form like this:

And so the narrator points out this cat, and while Michiru makes some vague general statements like every other character at every other point in the story, Yukito, who up until this point would usually have some half-poetic, half-aesthetic waxing remark when faced with this obvious type of imagery, instead doesn't really say much at all. And there is no music. It lasts maybe 5 textboxes. And the scene ends abruptly like every other scene, and the music fades back in.
It's not really a punchline or a payoff to anything, and it's never brought up again.

And it maybe didn't even happen! It's probably not even in the actual game apparently! But anyway the soundtrack and imagery of that VN left enough of an impression to at least somehow fuck up my memory enough to make me half-believe that this scene existed, and those five or so textboxes of silence which I recall, have been as interesting to me as any fragment from any of the books and poem which I've read up until this point in my life. I think about them often.

And idk nothing in Phenomeno was used in a way which invoked something in me in the same way. Could just be a skill issue though, filtering happens

 

[lain is here]

Bumping this to remember people it exists

For one reason or another I didn't even know this thread existed until today (mid-october).

I feel bad since I definitely could have contributed to the discussion. I really enjoyed Phenomeno as a short, pretty decent story that sucks you in at the end begging to see more.

On the other hand, I don't think I could have single handedly saved this thread. If broader interest isn't there, then it's not there. Still I do feel bad. @Remember_Summer_Days Sorry, I really didn't catch this when you posted it. All this time I just thought the VN club idea was abandoned before it really got started. Little did I realize it went completely under my nose

 

[Mana Moonlight]

The premise sounds cool and the CGs are made by an artist I like. Downloaded it off VNDB. Unpacked it, and then Windows Defender and VirusTotal marked a whole bunch of files as Trojans. Just a little apprehensive of giving my PC digital AIDS. Doesn't help that to download each file from the linked website, you'd have to wait 3 minutes, for each file. If there was like a MEGA or Google Drive link, that'd be awesome.

 

[lain is here]

And it maybe didn't even happen! It's probably not even in the actual game apparently! But anyway the soundtrack and imagery of that VN left enough of an impression to at least somehow fuck up my memory enough to make me half-believe that this scene existed, and those five or so textboxes of silence which I recall, have been as interesting to me as any fragment from any of the books and poem which I've read up until this point in my life. I think about them often.

Audio is huge in VNs, arguably it's even more important then the actual writing. At least just as important. People see "visual" in "visual novel" and assume that visuals along with story are the key elements. But a VN with bad art can still make a great experience so long as the music and writing top notch. Just look at Umineko (with it's original art) as an example. But a VN with great art and story just won't hit the same if the audio department is lacking.

Also, I totally get having this poetic experience with VNs, to the point that they even distort (in a positive way) your memory of the experience. Likewise, simply listening to some OST's will almost transport me right back into some scenes