#kagetsu tohya spoilers ///

[heavenlydemonyuricult]

I'm starting to feel like there's an alternative universe where the tsukihime and fate stay night universes are one and the same and Illya was probably the one that caused Kagetsu Tohya to happen.

[ciitrinitas]

kagetsu tohya.

while i'd definitely say my opinion definitely tends toward the positive, i am frankly a bit mixed on kagetsu tohya. the structure for the main story is on the experimental end, and i can always respect that, but ahhhh, i wish i had just used a guide to begin with! trying to ensure i saw everything and got the plot stuff with len to trigger was a slog after a certain point! the slice of life stuff was cute, and len is a very cute design with a decent story attached.

i think i liked a few of the side stories more than the main one tbh. crimson moon, imogirisou, and the tohno family con game were my favorites of the ten. the last one in particular was tremendously charming and fun, and it will sit as a treasure in my mind despite not being written by nasu. crimson moon has such a cool cg, too, with arcueid imprisoned. in general, the cgs were a step up from tsukihime! i looove that arcueid one... (a quick shoutout to nanako-chan sos where i did not really care about the horse girl that lives in ciel's catholic gun, but i did like the history of shiki and arihiko's friendship! loved that. horse girl was sort of just there...with her hooves.)

so, uh, largely a fun fandisc! i just wish the slice of life stuff could have involved less "girls bickering over shiki" moments.

[avicebro]

inui has by far been my favourite character in kagetsu tohya so far. i have so many shitposts in my brain for him alone.

(please no spoilers!!!)

[matt-lifesage]

Matt’s 2022 Visual Novel Tier List

We're counting down/ranking all the visual novel's I read in 2022!

C-Tier:

Melty Blood

TATARI is a fantastic concept, and Sion’s a really fun new character to throw in with the Tsukihime cast, but the actual storytelling was more often than not really really boring. The comedy route was nice, but most of the game’s a slog to get through since all the different paths are very samey.

It didn’t help that I knew the gist of the story from reading the manga adaptation several years back. After rereading the manga again after going through the game, it’s a very solid adaptation and my preferred version of the story (though, I don’t think Act 2’s adaptation of the comedy route works nearly as well).

B-Tier:

Kagetsu Tohya

I ended up enjoying this more than I expected, though I'll admit that I don’t remember too much of the main story outside of the major beats with Len, who’s great. Type-Moon would execute this premise much stronger with Hollow Ataraxia a couple years later, but I don’t think you can write this game off because of that.

The Ten Nights of Dreams stories were the highlight for me. With two or so exceptions, they’re fantastic side stories, easily my favorite part of the experience.

First Snow

A nice little lesbian college romance. It’s free so it’s easy to recommend. Short, not very complicated, and as a standalone prequel/demo for the devs' upcoming game, it does a good job. I’m looking forward to Twofold.

A-Tier:

Tsukihime [reread]

I reread the Near Side routes back in 2021 before Remake dropped, then early this year I finished the Far Side. I really fell in love with it going through the second time, especially Kohaku’s route.

(now please localize the remake, Aniplex. In a perfect world you’d translate that AND the original, but give me the new one at least it looks so so so good i really wanna read it)

Higurashi Question Arcs

Fantastic horror, I can’t recommend it enough. Chapter 1 is free so go download it. It’s so worth getting into this eight-game series disguised as one or two games depending on who you ask (just save yourself some time, skip the character arc, and just switch to the original sprites right away).

It might have landed itself higher on the list if my experience reading the first two chapters hadn’t been plagued by half-remembered spoilers from watching the anime over a decade ago. It proved that barely-remembered spoilers can be worse than well-remembered spoilers because a whole backburner of my brain was stuck trying to figure out how that corrupted data fit into what I was reading instead of appreciating the storytelling. Kinda frustrating, but not the game’s fault. Thankfully it wasn’t an issue Chapter 3 onward (what a great chapter omg).

Queen Beast

Queen Beast! Queen Beast! Please read it! It’s so fun and charming and good. It’s under five hours, you can easily read it in one or two sittings. And It’s impossibly free-to-play. Just a delightful fantasy adventure about a young man rescuing his sister from a mysterious knight riding a dragon known for abducting women with big boobies. Some of the most fun I had with a VN all year. I’m probably going to reread it soon, honestly.

I’ll definitely be keeping an eye out for anything Envelope does in the future.

Did I mention it’s free and I'm very annoyed I can’t find any way to give the folks who made it some money? Very rude of them to not let me praise their incredible work with cash. But whatevs, maybe next time.

S-Tier:

So I read too many great VN’s this year, so the top tier is PACKED. The ranking for everything (with the exception of first place) shifts based on my mood, so this is ordered by my current feeling/the order I felt like talking about them. Consider it a four-way tie for second place.

Higurashi Answer Arcs

You wanna cry? You wanna cry a whole lot? Do I have the visual novel for you! Again! 'cause the second half is even better.

If Higurashi’s first half is a fantastic horror series, its Answer Arcs continues that while becoming an undisputed masterpiece. The way the story explodes from a small town potentially supernatural horror story to a (spoilers!) complex 1980’s political conspiracy thriller without ever losing its focus on the characters or its heart is applause-worthy.

Please Be Happy

And the award for biggest surprise of the year goes to PBH! It was a solid B-tier, maybe even A, until one of the routes it splits off into caught me in an emotional headlock it still refuses to release me from. A very solid slice-of-life comfy urban fantasy romance that ended up meaning a whole lot more to me than I could have expected.

Full Metal Daemon Muramasa

Motherfuckinggoddamnfuckyeah Full Metal Daemon Muramasa fuck yeah let’s fucking go hell yeah fuck yeah.

Welp, if that wasn't one of the best things I’ve had the honor of reading, I don’t know what is. Fuuuuck!

I went into this one blind. I didn’t even know the premise. I wanted to read some grimdark outside of my at the time comfort zone and it paid off. I’m so glad I gave this one a chance.

Witch on the Holy Night

I genuinely cannot believe this was as good as I’d hyped myself for six years into hoping it was. Easily my personal go-to recommendation for anyone wanting to get into Type-Moon. Some of the most impressive spectacle and presentation I’ve ever seen in a visual novel (and that says a lot considering it's the same year I read FMDM). Arguably some of Nasu’s best character work, the relationship between the three main characters and the supporting cast is masterful. It even has a surprising amount of optional bonus content that stands very well alongside the phenomenal main story. Hopefully, it starts a trend of Type-Moon’s backlog being released in English.

And the uncontested best visual novel I read in 2022 is…

Umineko Answer Arcs

I read this back in April, and I knew as soon as I finished that it would be the best thing I read all year. No contest. And that opinion wasn’t shaken once.

An incredible loving dissection of the mystery genre. The word that kept coming to mind while I was reading it was “confidence.” I can’t think of another story so brazen. I can only begin to imagine how nerve-wracking it was writing a mystery this large a scale, one that gleefully points out the rules and means to criticize itself, commenting on the genre, challenging the characters and audience to find fault with it, the balance between setting up the reveals while hiding them in plain sight... Reading Umineko is watching a writer full-speed sprint across a tightrope, and Ryukishi07 pulls it off with absurd grace.

Do yourself a favor, love yourself, and get into When They Cry.

[noworldasgoodasmine]

Kagetsu Tohya spoilers

I’m currently on Ten Nights of Dream: Hisui-chan inversion Impulse! and i did not think Hisui was into pet play, Nasu…

[royallizalfos]

Kagetsu Tohya spoilers under cut

This design fucking rocks, Im an absolute sucker for cool cloaks

[self-loving-vampire]

Ngl, you listing your own personal harem as the answer to A was exactly what I hoped you'd say.

(My second guess was Hisui X Kohaku, for the same reason i.e. stand-ins for you and your gf, but I don't really know Tsukihime well enough to know if that's even an in-game pairing, and I don't engage with fanfiction much at all either tbh)

Yeah judging from most of your responses I'd say my initial thought process wasn't too far off, so I'll share; it seems like you relate to characters in more of a seeing-yourself-in-them (or vice versa) rather than shipping in the way most of these ask game questions are phrased, so I was actually a little surprised you reblogged something like this.

Was there a question in particular you wanted to answer? If so please go ahead/consider this me asking it/etc.

Well, Hisui and Kohaku are sisters so that's a little problematic (not that incest is new ground for Tsukihime), though have an atrocious threesome sex scene in Kagetsu Tohya.

It's not really any better than the other sex scenes in TYPE-MOON media but it does give us this funny Kohaku face.

(Blep! Wait, what are you doing with your sister there, Kohaku?)

What you say is true, though. It's rare that it happens to a really significant extent these days since I'm kind of weird and low empathy characters tend to get stereotyped as purely sadistic to begin with, but I appreciate it when it happens.

I feel kind of understood when it's done right.

Anyway, I'm going to go with...

S - Show us an example of your personal headcanon (prompts optional but encouraged)

And then just link some essays of mine on Kohaku, from the angle of her appearing to have low empathy. They include spoilers.

[thirteen-jades]

Just got to the part of Kagetsu Tohya where Hisui gives Shiki some sandwiches she made for him. Her sense of taste is weird and so it's frequently remarked upon that she's a pretty bad cook, and she's obviously uncomfortable with people trying food she prepares.

It's interesting because while I only rarely relate to any fictional characters I've not personally written, this one situation was actually very familiar to me. I've always had a pretty dull sense of taste, and other people commenting on my food or especially eating my cooking makes me very anxious, even if it's something rather simple.

Hisui is truly the most wholesome character in Tsukihime and a strong contender for best girl in my view.

[gardenofsinners]

so if akiha went to a boarding school, does that mean she still drank kohaku’s blood somehow? is the winpose of v. akiha drinking a blood bag real. or did akiha only start needing to do that once shiki came back to the mansion.

[toskarin]

What would you say is the absolutely definitive watch/play order for all the Shiki-verse medias? (Tsukihime, PLUS-DISC, Kagetsu Tohya, all the Melty Bloods, Tsukihime Remake, KnK, and anything else I might be forgetting lol)

so, this is assuming a completely perfect ability to read KnK, but you'd need to speak Japanese for that so the "perfect" order isn't available to anyone who can't read it

anyway! this is what I'd recommend based on taste. for ease of reading, I've highlighted the optional steps that I would personally take if I could go back in time, but wouldn't necessarily say are required

Kara no Kyoukai, but consider stopping after VII and picking up again on the optional step for that. at the very least, heavily consider saving the post-VIII entries until after this

Tsukihime

PLUS-DISC

Kagetsu Tohya

Notes, if you don't mind a diversion for it here

if you chose to pause KnK, finish the rest of it here

Melty Blood series

Hana no Miyako, if you've also read Fate at this point

TsukiRemake Piece of Blue Glass Moon

TsukiRemake Other Side of Red Garden (just assuming by the time it comes out, MBTL will have spoilers for it patched in)

MBTL

as a final note, the Kara no Kyoukai pause is completely optional and solely suggested because I think it's beneficial tonally. this is not based on release order

this isn't because I recommend trying to watch KnK chronologically (I strongly recommend against it, even) but if you plan on watching the later entries (post-original series) then I find VII a better pausing point than VIII just because you can go straight from VIII into what follows with slightly less whiplash when you go back to Tsukihime

[studentofetherium]

apparently Arc’s FGO profile has Tsukihime 2 spoilers and until that actually happens you can’t convince me that it isn’t an extension of the Kagetsu Tohya joke

[heavenlydemonyuricult]

Honestly, out of Tsukihime, its plus disc, and Kagetsu Tohya, I can't think of a single bad song, let alone a single one I got even close to being sick or tired of. The one people would probably site the most that first plays when Tohno Shiki first walks up the street to his old home at the Tohno Mansion is honestly one of my favourite ones and is one of the ones that still plays in my head the most. That one in particular probably feels the most like Tsukihime in the general sense, while others really feel like Tsukihime in their own sense as well such as the one that plays during the epilogue and other places perhaps that feels more triumphant and like a culmination of the emotions and struggles the characters went through, or the one that plays during the characters' most intimate moments that are the h scenes. Kagetsu Tohya has its own sort of equivalent to the song that first appears during Tohno Shiki's first approach to the Tohno Mansion in the story, fitting the tone of its novel as well as its general emotions and atmosphere as well.

The only song I could say isn't utilized very well at times is another song in Kagetsu Tohya that unfortunately plays both during goofy "bad" endings of sorts as well as action scenes that are meant to be taken seriously by the reader. When some of your first instances with said song involves Tohno Shiki being trapped in the dungeon to be drugged by Kohaku in a humourous tone for various reasons such as walking in on Tohno Akiha putting on Tohno Shiki's uniform or walking into her unattended room, it makes it more difficult when that same song apparently gets used in life or death situations involving Tohno Shiki's shadow and fears. It also isn't a very action packed or tonally fitting sounding song for the action scenes of Kagetsu Tohya in general I'd argue, and specifically would have been better as the goofy bad ending song. It's not terrible by any means, it just doesn't click with the more serious moments nor the vibe said moments are supposed to emit it seems.

But yeah, the limited soundtrack and bgm of these games is really good and I'd argue they chose really good songs that are tailor made to not get sick of. One still can of course clearly from complaints I've seen, but in my experience they were perfect for what they are and where they were the vast majority of the time.

[ciitrinitas]

[grailfinders]

Fate and Phantasms Far Side #3: Kohaku

Today on Fate and Phantasms we have another bonus episode for you! We’re building Kohaku, the ever-energetic maid who comes packing with probably helpful medicine and the occasional robot. As usual for far sides, everything below this point come directly from Magical-Biche on Reddit!

Check out Kohaku’s build breakdown below, or her character sheet over here!

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Hey, it’s me, the guy who builds Tsukihime builds! Since the remake got announced uhh… already a month ago, I figured it’d be perfect time to free some time in my heavy schedule for a Tsukihime waifu once in a while. For the return of this highly anticipated series, we’ll take a look at a character which has plenty of tricks up her sleeves: Kohaku. A fan favorite for several reasons, she was quite easy to build due to how weirdly some of her core mechanics are already featured in Dungeons & Dragons. I’m mostly using her Melty Blood skill set for the build, but as soon as I can introduce skills we know from the Visual Novels. Needless to say, the whole build is a huge spoiler for what Kohaku does throughout the games, and you may not want to read it if you didn’t finish Tsukihime and Kagetsu Tohya.

Race and Background

Kohaku is a variant human. She technically has a bit of psychic powers, but they are passive and absolutely nothing any race can give comes close to it, so we’re going human here. The variant allows us to get + 1 in constitution and +1 in intelligence, and the chef feat, giving us another +1 in constitution, and the ability to cook delicious meals with or without suspicious substances, which adds a layer of healing and temporary hit points on our already impressive healing abilities. It gives us our first of many tool proficiencies, the cooking utensils. We also get a proficiency in insight, which helps us determine whether people are worth teasing/throwing into a bottomless trap. 

Next, we are going to be an Izzet engineer. Those folk, who come directly from Ravnica, fit our mad scientist personality perfectly. Being an Izzet engineer gives us access to the Urban Infrastructure ability, which helps building more complex traps (and find them, if we ever feel like being nice to our group), and proficiencies in Arcana and Investigation, two extremely useful intelligence skills. We also get our second tool proficiency. We’re taking carpenter’s tools, to create the most intricate traps there are. Bottomless pits won’t build themselves from the ground up. We also get one set of artisan’s tools of our choice, so we’ll take Alchemist supplies, since they’re the costliest of the bunch and extremely useful. Don’t worry, we’re getting the proficiency in a little bit. Finally, we get the pretty unique feature of having access to more spells: Izzet guild spells. The notable ones (the ones we don’t normally get from our class) are Chaos bolt, Create or destroy water, Unseen servant (level 1 spells), and Call lightning, and Otiluke’s resilient sphere (third level spells). Since it is a Ravnica background, the DM might ban the expanded spell list, but none of these spells are necessary to our build, anyway. 

Ability Scores

We are a genius, and a bit of a melee combatant. We’re pumping everything in intelligence. Next, we need high constitution and dexterity, which will also serve to multiclass into rogue. We are pretty average when it comes to wisdom and charisma (I do admit we are pretty cute, though). We’re dumping strength, even though it means we won’t be able to fight well with our broom, but it’s a necessary sacrifice. Our hidden katana (read: dagger) will work just as well. 

Class Levels

Artificer 1: We are a crafty inventor. Being an artificer only makes sense to us. The first level of artificer gives us proficiency with constitution saving throws, great to keep our concentration on spells and avoiding nasty poison effect, and intelligence saving throws: we’re the one who make fools of others, and not the other way around! We can also choose two new proficiencies, and we’re taking medicine, since we’re actually a pretty skilled doctor, and sleight of hand, as we will need to tinker complex traps and unlock a few locks from time to time. 

We also get proficiencies with light and medium armors, but we’re only ever going to use light armor. Kohaku doesn’t really wear armor, but she could be wearing several thick layers of kimono, which can probably stop a blade in a pinch. We’re also proficient with shields, and Kohaku definitely never wears a shield throughout the Tsukihime timeline, so we won’t be using them.  We’re also proficient with simple weapons, and those are the only weapons we’re having access to, so we have to do with them. We’ll be mainly using the dagger as our “secret blade”, and our quarterstaff as a substitute for our broom. Finally, we’re proficient with thieves’ tools, useful for disarming traps that may or may not have been installed by us, tinker’s tools, our bread-and-butter for repairing all sort of stuff, from traps to weapons, and alchemist supplies, to further our healing capabilities, and it blends well with our medicine proficiency. 

We finally get to our core features. First level of artificer gives us Magical tinkering, which lets us do pretty nice things. We can basically sleep on prestidigitation, light, message, and minor illusion thanks to this feature. It doesn’t do as much as each of these individual spells, but it does it differently, and it’s still great to have so much utility here. We also get our Spellcasting. We’re a half caster with druid/cleric like spell preparation. We can prepare a number of spells equal to our intelligence modifier + half our artificer level (rounded down), and we can choose those spells from our spell list each time we finish a long rest. Our spellcasting ability is of course intelligence, and we use our alchemist’s supplies as a spellcasting focus, because of our subclass we don’t have yet. 

We start with two artificer cantrips, and we’re taking Booming blade, to emulate bombs, and controlling people movement fits our character well: people will think twice before moving in our direction. Next, we take Acid splash, a pretty weak damaging cantrip, but it’s another kind of bomb we can add to our arsenal. It can also touch two targets at once, which mitigate the low damage of the spell. It is also a saving throw, so it will always be useful anyway. 

Since we have access to every artificer spell, plus the potential Izzet spells, there won’t be a definitive spell list here. It is recommended to get Tasha’s caustic brew, Snare, Cure wounds, Grease and Alarm, as they fit our game plan very well. 

Artificer 2: Our next artificer level is more complex than it seems. We get our infusions, 4 of them. We’re taking the Replicate magic item, to have ourselves a bag of holding to hold all our stuff, the Enhanced defense, that we’re infusing to our armor to help with defense, the Homunculus servant, so we can have our very own Not-exactly-a-mech-Hisui once we get enough money, and Mind sharpener, which will help maintaining concentration on though fight. So far, we can only use 2 of these infusions at the time, so we’ll focus on the replicate magic item and enhanced defense for now. 

Artificer 3: We get our speciality! We are now an Alchemist. We gain proficiency with Glassblower’s tools, as we already have a proficiency with the alchemist supplies, and those tools can be used to create vials to hold our various mixtures. We get an expanded spell list, again, which gives us interesting spells like Melf’s acid arrow, Healing word, Ray of sickness, Gaseous form and Mass healing word. Flaming sphere is not bad, but it doesn’t really fit our concept as a whole. We also get our Experimental elixir, which is one random potion every long rest. All the effects are helpful, even though some are more than others. We also get the Right tool for the job, which lets us create artisan tools, which is neat. 

Rogue 1: Of course, we’re going rogue. We’re a sneaky trickster, after all, and we’re pretty skilled at it. Our first rogue level gives us the famous Thieves cant, which we will quickly forget. More interesting, we get a skill proficiency, and we’re taking Deception. It’s less useful than persuasion, but we need to lie more than we need to persuade. We also get Expertise in 2 skills of our choice, which will be Deception and Medicine, two of our most important skills. With expertise in medicine, we mitigate our low wisdom, and we’re able to pretty much always stabilize our fallen allies, especially when we get past level 5. What’s more, we get the rogue’s main feature, the Sneak attack! Sneak attack can be used with booming blade for pretty huge damage, in the right conditions, and it’s getting even better starting next level. 

Rogue 2: Speaking of next level, here it is. The second rogue level gives us cunning action, and we now always have some use for our bonus action. We can hit with booming blade + Sneak attack, then retreat. We can add some movement to our turn, and we can try to hide in the shadows, not that we’re particularly good at it. 

Rogue 3: We get our second archetype. We’re now both an alchemist and a Mastermind, which gives us yet another round of proficiencies: Disguise kit, Forgery kit and a Gaming set. Those three are not the most useful tools we have access to, but they can always be used creatively. We can also Mimic speech, but that’s not exactly a meta redefining feature. More importantly, we are also a Master of tactics, giving us yet another use for our bonus action in the form of Help. We can help our ranged allies to hit close-ish targets with that feature, too. 

Artificer 4: Our first ability score increase comes at level 7, and luckily, we’re not too dependent on feats. We’re simply increasing our intelligence by 2 and call it a day. 

Artificer 5: This level is very interesting, because we get a neat little feature that tremendously increases our distance damage. We are now an Alchemical savant, and provided that we use our alchemist supplies as a spellcasting focus, we can add our intelligence modifier to the damage rolls of any fire, necrotic, poison and acid damage, and to every one of our healing rolls. Sadly, this doesn’t buff our melee damage, but we can’t have everything. Also, the ability is weirdly worded: as it is written in the book, it looks like you must use your spellcasting focus to cast the spell for the damage and healing to be buffed. However, if it does work like that, we'd have a total of 5 spells of level 0-3 that are affected by the feature, so I’d say it works with every one of your spells that is cast with intelligence. 

We also get our new level 2 spells. The ones that are interesting for our build are Enlarge/reduce, Heat metal, protection from poison, pyrotechnics, rope trick, Spider climb and Web. The first is based on one of our actual feats of enlarging our mistress, one time. Heat metal is an overall tricky and useful spell to have. Protection from poison is useful to protect our allies from friendly fire, and the last 4 spells are all great traps and terrain manipulation, which is what we want to do. 

Artificer 6: This level is more straightforward, as it only really adds the Tool expertise feature, which allows us to double our proficiency bonus on all tools we’re proficient with. That is, a LOT of tools. We also get new infusions, and we’re getting the Spell refueling ring, a great tool to mitigate our too few spell slots per day, and Resistant armor, which is situational but very useful. We can also have 3 infusions active at the time, which is the maximum number of attunement we can have anyway. We can also now create two experimental elixirs per long rest, hurray!

Artificer 7: The seventh artificer level gives us Flashes of genius, which is a great tool to help the party. It can also be used to mitigate our own AOE damage on them, proving the party that we’re not here to kill them, we swear!

Artificer 8: Artificer 8 gets us a simple ability score increase, which we gladly take to increase our already high intelligence to new levels. We increase it by 2 points, to reach a total of 20. 

Artificer 9: Our final level in artificer grants us a final subclass feature, the Restorative reagents. It makes it that our experimental elixir gives 2d6 + 5 temporary hit points to whoever drinks it. Also, we can now cast lesser restoration 5 times per long rest without having the spell prepared, which is a great way to remove harmful status ailments from allies for pretty much free. 

We also gain our level 3 spells. The interesting spells from the list are Haste, which emulates the drugs you use on your poor party members,  Catnap, to represent the sleeping medicine you give them,  Protection from energy, for the same reason as protection from poison a bit earlier, and finally, the trappiest spell of them all, the one that really let us do crazy shenanigans,  Glyph of warding. This amazing spell is a literal modular trap which does pretty nice damage, doesn’t require concentration and it’s just so flexible. This is the only obligatory spell on the list. 

Rogue 4: The fourth rogue level gives us our third ability score increase, and we’re getting a bit tankier and stabbier now. We increase our dexterity score by 2, this time, putting us at a nice 16. 

Rogue 5: Fifth level rogues get uncanny dodge, a very powerful tool for survival. Nothing much to say, it’s great! (Editor’s note: might as well just say it anyway- use your reaction to take half damage from an attack- very useful!)

Rogue 6: We get 2 brand new expertises, which will be in Arcana, for being even better at understanding the mechanics behind the spells we use, and Sleight of hand, so we’re also a lot better at setting non-magical traps and disarming them. 

Rogue 7: Now that we can mitigate damage with uncanny dodge, it’s time to get better at saving throws and get Evasion. Another extremely good ability we’ll never use too much. (EN: dex saves cause half damage on failure, 0 damage on success!)

Rogue 8: Our next ability score, and we’re getting yet another 2 points in dexterity, so we now have a more than decent armor class and solid melee attacks. 

Rogue 9: Rogue’s ninth level gives us our second subclass ability, and we are now an Insightful manipulator. We can now assess our current target’s strength, but at this point, we’ve probably fought most of the bestiary and know everything there is to know about most threats. It can still be used against bosses, but it’s not exactly great since we’re not that good at sneaking. 

Rogue 10: Our tenth level in the rogue class gives us yet another ability score increase. We are actually a pretty crafty person, and poison is just another tool in our arsenal. We get the Poisoner feat, which lets us ignore resistance to poison damage and craft poison for our weapons. At that point, we should be filthy rich and can certainly afford the cost to do so and poison basically every single one of our strikes. With Booming Blade, sneak attack and the poison damage, our damage output is actually pretty crazy. 

Rogue 11: Our final level gives us a very, very nice little boost: thanks to Reliable Talent, we basically can’t score under 16 + ability modifier, or 22 + ability modifier with expertise, for skills and tools we are proficient with. We now have a passive Arcana of 27, Sleight of hand of 26 (whatever a passive sleight of hand score means), Deception and Medicine of 22, a passive investigation and insight of 21 and passive abilities with our numerous tools that are just as high (since you can use most tools with most abilities, the scores won’t be listed here, obviously). We can now pretty much recognize spells on sight, pickpocket on the go, lie as we breathe and treat injuries in a few moments, among other things. 

Pros: We’re a tool monkey, and we use all of them like a pro when we reach level 20. We can craft a bunch of crazy stuff with all that. We’re also quite bulky, with decent hit dice and the rogue survivability, plus our artificer infusions. We are also good at dealing big bursts of damage thanks to booming blade, sneak attack and poisoner. What’s more, we’re quite good at healing and dispensing temporary hit points. 

Cons: If we can’t trigger our sneak attack, our booming blade damage is not exactly huge. We don’t have many spells slots, and we quite like to use them. Also, we’re good at dealing damage, healing and controlling the battlefield, but we’re obviously not great at any of these things. 

[foxstens]

it ended lol

idk what to say. amazingly enough the stuff i expected to dislike (the music and art) i ended up liking, and the things i expected to love (the story and characters), i was disappointed by.

for one, shiki doesn’t have eyes. WHY IN THE FUCK. WHAT IN THE HELL. he has a name and a personality. was it that hard to give him eyes. i really didn’t expect it and i kept waiting for it to change in the next route but then it didn’t and it pisses me off. (he might have eyes in some of the cgs i missed but i dont care enough to find out)

in fact, i spent a lot of it waiting. waiting for me to attached to the characters, waiting for the far side routes to be amazing, waiting for kohaku’s route to tie everything together, waiting for it to become the best thing ever.

in the end i got none of it. overall the scenes i enjoyed most were the slice-of-life scenes where they’d be talking about everything but plot relevant stuff, and then when the plot started to kick in in the last few days of every route, i’d just find myself ctrl-skipping through it bc i just didn’t care.

and even more than that, i never grew to love the characters. i certainly do have a fondness for them and i like their interactions enough that i read until the end, but i don’t feel a need to see even more of them. in fact i’m not even sure i want to play kagetsu tohya or melty blood at all so like. yea. and i don’t particularly like shiki. he has a personality so i gotta give props for that, but i don’t understand how people can say he’s better than shirou. also maybe im just blind to the way nasu writes romance but i didn’t see or feel it in any of the routes. at all. 

also a lot of reviews mention how this vn thrives on atmosphere, and i don’t really get that. it certainly uses music and silence really well, but i rarely felt genuinely creeped out by it or anything even tho i read most of it at night and in silence.

i rarely felt anything in general? i didn’t really laugh, there were few times i felt happy when a character popped up on screen, i teared up exactly once, and even tho i enjoyed the slice-of-life scenes, they felt too short and i didn’t love them or anything. the only such scenes i genuinely loved were the ones with arihiko in them.

i didn’t completely hate it tho. for one, its overall technical aspects weren’t so horrible. the skip read scenes option is a godsend and ctrl skipping is also really fast, so those two basically make up for the lack of everything else. the art might  not be that great but it is bearable and looking at it just made me think about how much work must’ve gone into it. 

the sprites have a lot more variation than i’d have expected, and they’re used really really well. same goes for the soundtrack, which is very limited but it does its job and i might actually find myself listening to it on my own sometimes. also the plot-relevant scenes i happened to like were really good, and i actually liked most of arcueid and hisui’s routes.

but really the only thing i feel like i gained from this is that i no longer have to worry about spoilers for this particular part of the nasuverse. eh.

[whirlystudios]

What makes a visual novel “good?”

This question is, unsurprisingly, hard to answer, and every visual novel reader will answer it differently. Therefore, my totally subjective stab at answering this question should not be taken as prescriptive of visual novels in general, but instead as descriptive of our decision-making process while developing Book of Stones. Note that there are very light spoiler warnings ahead for Danganronpa and Umineko no Naku Koro Ni.

The first and most obvious criteria is that people should want to play the game. This does not mean that the game has to be fun, although it can be. This simply means that something about the game appeals to both potential and returning players in an immediate, tangible way. For example, Danganronpa promises potential players a mystery full of quirky characters, exciting plot twists, lots of death, and cool artwork. Returning players will be driven by some extension of the above. They might see how the mystery resolves despite growing tired of the artwork, for example, or they might want to see if their favorite characters meet the despair-ful ends they probably deserve.

Of course, some characters deserved far better than what they got.

The second criteria is that the game shows off to create memorable experiences. This ought to be a basic tenet of game development (or perhaps writing in general), but this can easily be overemphasized or de-emphasized. In my experience, most popular visual novels tend to find a very good balance with this criteria. Fate/stay night, for instance, is both a fully-fledged househusband simulator and a “who would win” simulator. It succeeds on both fronts, but the domestic scenes’ strong juxtaposition with crazy fight scenes enhances the story’s drama and creates plenty of memorable experiences.

This is one of the fight scenes, I think.

Furthermore, I believe that visual novels have two unique criteria compared to other video games. The first is that the plotting must be interesting. The prose itself doesn’t really have to be strong - something something this chair - but the plot has to go down smoothly. Umineko provides a good example of this. There are many, many times throughout the 80-hour-long novels where the plot simply drags because 07th Expansion is not that great at editing. Nevertheless, Umineko’s twists and turns are more than worth the wait.

Goddamn trolls.

The second unique criteria for visual novels is that the interactivity of the medium must be exploited. Translated, this means that the choices players make must matter. Not every game has to be a nigh-incomprehensible mess of choices like Kagetsu Tohya, but even if the player is only presented with one choice throughout the entire game - again, Umineko is a good example of this - that choice must be important.

All in all, that’s four guiding criteria that we follow while developing Book of Stones. Take these with a grain of salt, of course. If you feel otherwise or think we’re bad and should feel bad or something, feel free to offer your ideas on what makes a good visual novel.

See you,

-Stormy