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Oldest VN You've Played

Just curious what the oldest game is that you've played, and whether you enjoyed it or not. I'm less interested in the technical experience, so you can use the original release date, even if you played a more modern implementation.

For me, Fate/stay night just barely beats Clannad, by a few months. Both were released in 2004, and both show their age a little bit (Clannad in its convoluted branching, Fate in its resolution options), but are perfectly playable. But of course both are super popular classics, so I wonder if you all had similar experiences with more obscure or older titles.

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  • I'm in the process of playing Higurashi, released in 2002, and it's good. It's a very different experience from the anime. I actually played the Umineko VN first, which became my favorite thing in any medium quite quickly. Higurashi just keeps getting releases, re-releases, new adaptations; the train keeps going. The original release had very amateur art, but modern console releases in the Higurashi franchise have polished opening movies, redrawn sprites and full voice acting.

    This certainly isn't an obscure title, of course. Higurashi doesn't offer you any choices, and it plays out just like a novel with no branches. Personally, I prefer kinetic visual novels like Higurashi and Umineko, but I know many don't share this opinion.

    And I suppose I've played Subarashiki Hibi, too, which is a 2011 remake/re-imagining of Tsui no Sora from 1998, which I really liked. I don't really count that one on account of Subahibi being a completely different game.

    • I've seen Higurashi pop up quite a bit in a discord server I'm in although most discussion there is centered around the manga which I've heard nothing but praise for so far. I haven't gotten out of my way to check it out yet; but the VN on my to read list and by the tempo I'm going at that's looking like I'm going to be able to start it in 2024 because there's a few other lengthy VNs I want to finish first (Mahoutsukai no Yoru, Tsukihime Plus Disc, Kagestu Tohya, Katawa Shoujo, and I wanna read the Tsukihime remake now the translation for that is done) so there's a lot on my plate and too little time to finish these.

      is there anything I need to know before I dig into the Higurashi series (besides it's rougher art; I've gotten used to that thanks to Tsukihime)?

      • is there anything I need to know before I dig into the Higurashi series (besides it’s rougher art; I’ve gotten used to that thanks to Tsukihime)?

        I recommend buying it from MangaGamer because it's cheaper than on Steam. Then you might install the 07th Mod patches for a better experience. Also, this release comes with the original Japanese text, in case you're interested in that.

        There are no H-scenes in Higurashi. Higurashi is partially a challenge to the reader to try to figure out what's going on. Everything is answered in the end.

        I don't think there's anything else you'd need to know. Except that 07th Expansion has released many other games, and you should read Umineko next if you cared for Higurashi at all.

        Edit: The first chapter is free, so you can download that to see if it interests you.

        • just one more question about the VN on a technical side: do they still use ONScripter, because if that is the case I don't have to worry about wine. I'm daily driving linux (arch linux BTW) and I can easily use a native (and properly patched) version of ONScripter for the english translation, I've done so for the og tsukihime after fiddling with wine and the pre-packaged ONScripter for way too long and it massively improved the experience (mainly because I could move the window and actually go fullscreen without crashing the game)

          • Mangagamer has native Linux builds for all the Higurashi games. But, another 07th Expansion game from 2016, TRianThology, used the NScripter engine, and I was able to get it to run natively using ONScripter. Is that what you're describing?

            I'm actually using the Windows builds through WINE so I can get Textractor to inject hooks into the games, but it's nice to have native Linux builds.

            By the way, if you want more stable window management, fullscreening, upscaling, etc., the Gamescope compositor is an easy way to achieve that. Lutris makes it easy to use it.

            • Mangagamer has native Linux builds for all the Higurashi games.

              nice, spares me the effort of figuring that out.

              But, another 07th Expansion game from 2016, TRianThology, used the NScripter engine, and I was able to get it to run natively using ONScripter. Is that what you’re describing?

              Pretty much, I have ONScripter through the AUR (onscripter and onscripter-en) which I can use to run these games.

              I’m actually using the Windows builds through WINE so I can get Textractor to inject hooks into the games

              I had a quick look at that, is it for accessibility or are you just trying to get the text out for other reasons (if it's the second I've had success using AETools on the Nscript.dat file).

              By the way, if you want more stable window management, fullscreening, upscaling, etc., the Gamescope compositor is an easy way to achieve that.

              I'm aware of gamescope; but I'm also aware that it's basically a glorified hack to get something that plays along; generally I prefer if a game has builtin exclusive fullscreen as it still carries many advantages over using compositor hacks. (I haven't really seen a good case not to use it besides the minor alt-tab annoyance)

              • Pretty much, I have ONScripter through the AUR (onscripter and onscripter-en) which I can use to run these games.

                Then we used precisely the same packages to achieve that. I don't even remember where I heard about ONScripter and thought to use it. I couldn't get it to run through WINE, so it was fortunate I figured that out.

                I had a quick look at that, is it for accessibility or are you just trying to get the text out for other reasons (if it’s the second I’ve had success using AETools on the Nscript.dat file).

                I'm using visual novels as a method of learning Japanese. Textractor extracts the Japanese text from the game, copies it to my clipboard, and then Yomichan reads my clipboard and searches my installed dictionaries for the Japanese words in the sentence, which I can read to understand the unknown word(s). I might then use AnkiConnect to create an automatic flashcard in Anki using my dictionary in Yomichan for the word I just learned to review later.

                I’m aware of gamescope; but I’m also aware that it’s basically a glorified hack to get something that plays along; generally I prefer if a game has builtin exclusive fullscreen as it still carries many advantages over using compositor hacks. (I haven’t really seen a good case not to use it besides the minor alt-tab annoyance)

                When I was playing the Sonohana games, the only resolution available to me was 800x600, and fullscreening it was horribly broken in WINE. It would also often crash the game when I switched virtual desktops. Since using Gamescope, those issues disappeared. Hack or not, I'm a fan.

                • the only resolution available to me was 800x600, and fullscreening it was horribly broken in WINE.

                  This is the exact reason I started using the AUR version as ONScripter's exclusive fullscreen does not work in wine, I also played half of Tsukihime not realizing you could use 1, 2, and 3 on your numpad to change the text speed or change the game volume or even use page more (which is a delight during certain scenes).

                  • It's nice when it works, but looking back at TRianThology, I've realized that the Linux build of ONScripter kept finding the wrong color profile for png files, and so the game flashes green constantly. It's pretty unplayable. I could only get it to work by running the Windows build of ONScripter through WINE. And yeah, this was the AUR version with the two patches.

                    And, unfortunately, the Sono Hana games don't use the NScripter engine. I think they might use the KiriKiri2 engine?

                    • And, unfortunately, the Sono Hana games don’t use the NScripter engine. I think they might use the KiriKiri2 engine?

                      could be depending on the period those games were released, KiriKiri is definitely an interesting beast as you can't really interpret the KAG scripts directly as there are dozens of plugins that modify the things available in it due to the interpreter for it being written in TJS and that being interpreted by kirikiri. for F/SN I know of https://fatestaynight.vnovel.org/ but that uses an interpreter specifically written for it.

                      What I can say is that you should be able to extract the .xp3 archives with AETools (I don't know why; but this single program is a godsend for extracting VN assets).

                      Another thing is KiriKiriSDL2 which is a port of KiriKiriZ to SDL2 with goals of supporting platforms such as linux and webassembly; but last I heard the project wasn't ready for running games like Fate.

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