Enigmatic_Oddity wrote:
I'd highly recommend Steins;Gate. It's my favourite VN, alongside The House in Fata Morgana, Muv Luv Alternative, and Saya no Uta. It also has an excellent sequel, which I recently played. I like that the setting and premise are fairly unique and incorporate a lot of current day (at least at the time of its release) issues and news, making it feel timely.
I've only read a few VNs but I always enjoy them much more than actually playing a game or watching anime so I'm not sure why I don't just do that more, reading is much more in line with my terrible ADD. Saya no Uta was great, incredibly unsettling and by the end I was somehow rooting for that psycho to murk all of his classmates. Are there any other good VNs that would make me feel uncomfortable? I did Kara no Shoujo 1 and 2 and that first game was pretty disturbing at times, but the mysteries in each game end up being underwhelming because the writers insist on their serial killers having unbelievable or supernatural motivations instead of simply making it so that they love to kill women.
I watched the Stein's Gate anime and it was good but overrated imo, I got the sense while watching it that the VN would be much better because half my time watching the show I was thinking "this isn't how that would work" or "why are you doing this instead of that?" or "this whole plot doesn't make sense now that x has happened" and I want to see if the more wordy VN explains these things better.
My only knowledge about Muv Luv Alternative is that people always advise very strongly that you shouldn't bother with the original at all because it sucks and is boring. That lends Alternative a sort of mystique, I think I'll go for it. My decision making process is extremely arbitrary, yes.