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Old 01-09-2012, 09:12 PM   #76
big bad birtha
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I intend on doing Hanako's route last. She seems like she has the most story behind her, so I'm sure her path will be the most interesting. I've learned from doing harem VNs in the past that it's best to start with the least interesting route, then end with the most interesting. If I don't, I might end up losing interest after doing the best route.

Also, in Emi's route, I think I might have spotted Nayuki from Kanon. During the race start CG, someone looks alot like Nayuki is on the start-up line.
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Old 01-09-2012, 09:18 PM   #77
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Quote:
Originally Posted by big bad birtha View Post
I intend on doing Hanako's route last. She seems like she has the most story behind her, so I'm sure her path will be the most interesting. I've learned from doing harem VNs in the past that it's best to start with the least interesting route, then end with the most interesting. If I don't, I might end up losing interest after doing the best route.
This is part of what makes each of us so different and interesting. I have to do an interesting route first or else I may never experience it. Like with Ever17, I did You's and Tsugumi's paths ... and then shelved the game, remember? Then I did Sara's and part of Sora's ... and put it down again. And we're talking for like 6-12 months at a time, remember? Similarly, FSN, I did Fate, then I immediately did UBW ... and then I was burned out and didn't touch Heaven's Feel for 6 months. Picked it up in the winter of '11 ... and then didn't return to it until Yuki threatened to lap me this past summer. Finally picked it back up and polished it off. And greatly enjoyed it, too! It's just ...

bbb: can enjoy a VN in its entirety in a very short span of time

Talon: can only enjoy a VN bit by bit. Gets overloaded and has to put it down for a while.

So that's part of why I want to do Hanako's route now. A, 'cause she's my favorite going in and I just can't wait. B, because I want to be able to discuss her route with fellow fans (and to avoid route spoilers!) as soon as possible. C, because if I don't do it now, I may never get a chance to.
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Old 01-10-2012, 12:02 AM   #78
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Critical consensus seems to be Lily has the best path, so I'm probably going to go onto hers first. I've already heard some stuff about Emi, Rin and Shizune. Nothing about Hanako except a positively remarkable CG.
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Old 01-10-2012, 02:09 PM   #79
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I just finished Emi's route. It was a little better in Shizune's route, but not that much better. Also, how Emi's internal crisis was solved just felt so damn anticlimactic.
Spoiler: show
I mean, she spent so much time rejecting telling Hisao about what happened to her father (even though it should have been obvious as hell during Act 2), but she was all of a sudden magically persuaded by "I love you!". That's just....what? I expected something a little more persuasive or clever.


For the most part, the route was pretty boring. I like the characters' mindsets, and the lessons behind what's going on, but that doesn't help if all of that bores me to tears.

Kenji prediction:
Spoiler: show
Kenji mentioned having a girlyfriend in Shizune's route. I bet his girlyfriend was Yuuko! I have reasons to think this, but I'm too lazy.


I guess next will be Lily's route. Also, I found something that makes playing a bit easier. Even though the enter key doesn't progress with text, the space bar does! I figured that out when trying to view an image without the text (spacebar almost always does that).
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Old 01-10-2012, 05:03 PM   #80
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"Rules cannot remove human nature, after all, only suppress it."

The Hanako route has been so good that Act 02 came and went in the blink of an eye. I can't believe that I'm already on Act 03.


The missing CG(s) still don't seem to have appeared. I don't have any images in my Library of Lilly, Hisao, and Hanako having lunch together (from Act 1). A new absence is the one picture above: it's a variant of the first Hanako CG. My first Hanako CG is still only showing three states, but by now it should be showing four or five since I've unlocked one or two new ones since docking onto the Hanako path. (Same exact bean bag chair and everything, just different facial expressions.)

One of only two songs that was missing has now been filled in. It's called "Painful History" and it's a song that first plays in the Hanako Path towards the very end of Act 2. This leaves me with only one song left to discover.

Hanako Path Act 2 discussion: (safe to click once you finish Act 2)
Spoiler: show

The tea party in Lilly's bedroom was interesting. Since the CG shows up in Lilly's half of the CG collection, I'm guessing that there are several Lilly+Hanako shared CGs and that this is the first of them. Hanako was positively adorable during this scene. I think I like her straight hair more, but undeniably there's something a little sexy or "bedroom"y about seeing her hair be more bouncy and wavy like it was in this scene.


Adorableness is really the name of the game with Hanako's path. She's not at all what I imagined she might be like before picking this game up, but at the same time, she's everything she should be. Before playing Katawa Shoujo, I guess I had been heavily biased by early artwork of Hanako that showed her with her more "Sadako leer" look where she's got her head kinda crooked down and she's staring at you semi-menacingly. I figured she was going to be a bit icy -- not quite tsundere icy like Tsugumi was in Ever17, but still icy -- and that it was going to be a lot of work to get her to fall in love with me. Little did I expect that Hanako would be the dead opposite: she is like an easily-frightened puppy, but a puppy who dearly adores Hisao. I guess it makes sense: he had the courage to see past her scars (and never even bring them up in a conversation before she did) and to see her for who she really is. He also had the determination to become friends and to not take Hanako's initial reaction towards him -- flight XD -- too personally. So naturally, I guess it makes sense that she really likes him. But yeah, the point is ...

... that Hanako is totally, totally crushin' on Hisao. From like the day we first began to have lunch together in Act 1, it was kind of obvious, but you can readily detect it in conversations.
  • Like ... Whenever Hisao tries to get Hanako to let him into her inner circle of friends by saying, "We're friends, aren't we?", I don't think he realizes that the reason Hanako always seems to bristle and seem sad when he mentions it is because she already wants to be more than friends and doesn't like being placed inside of Hisao's Friend Zone. Like ... he's saying it trying to be nice! XD Trying to be like, "I want to be your friend, not a stranger"! But I don't think the fool realizes that Hanako long ago considered him a friend and is now nervously wondering to herself, "Will he ever see me as anything more? Or do my scars prevent him from falling in love with me? "
  • Or like ... how Hanako's actions belie how she feels about him. She makes him homemade lunches. Whenever Lilly proposes leaving the two of them alone together (e.g. the time Lilly had to duck out of the Shanghai early because of Shizune calling an emergency student rep meeting), how Hanako gets all nervous and proposes, "Well, I guess that means I'll be off too then? :o" and then when Lilly knowingly and motherly-ly tells her, "Noooo~o, you stay right here and keep Hisao company ^.^," Hanako's all like, "O-okay. *mega blush*" Or like the look on her face and the words she says in this adorable scene:


    The look on her face. The way she chides him, cutely, saying "S-stalemates don't count." How she holds her hand up above her face not because she's hiding her scars from him but because she's actually blushing and this physical behavior of hers is so rote at this point that this very same action she performs when trying to hide her scarred face doubles as the same action she does when she's embarrassed ... Hanako is simply too cute for words. >D< And she's clearly smitten. Clearly. But Hisao is too stupid to be able to tell, the dummy. And so he keeps on asking, "We are friends, right?" like a moron (YES, YOU'RE FRIENDS! YES, SHE CONSIDERS YOU AS HER FRIEND ALREADY!) and keeps making Hanako glumly worry that Hisao may never see her as anything more than just that: a friend.
I guess what I'm ultimately saying here is, Hanako is no Tsugumi. She is no ice queen. And she is definitely not tsundere. Hanako would have no problem letting Hisao know how she feels about him but for her paralyzing fear of being rejected by others. She bears little resemblance to the tsundere queens of old -- from Clannad's Fujibayashi Kyou to Ever17's Komachi Tsugumi to Fate/Stay Night's Tohsaka Rin -- and shares much more in common with the shy, lovestruck "d'awwww " types like Naruto's Hyuuga Hinata.

Other path stuff to discuss before I wrap this post up ...

Lilly is like a mother screening a suitor to see if he's worthy of her daughter's hand or not. I'm not sure that Hisao realizes it, but this is definitely what she's doing. And she's doing a pretty good of it, too. Maybe it's easier to let your daughter spend alone time with the suitor when the girl in question isn't actually your daughter. But I've been impressed with how she's done things so far. I'm sure it'll only continue. I guess more than call her a screener ...

... it might be more correct to compare Lilly with Nagisa's mother Sanae in Clannad. Like Sanae, Lilly seems eager to help her daughter's suitor out. She gives him clues or helpful information, she sets things up where her daughter and the suitor will both be, things like that. For instance, in one of the latest scenes I just witnessed, she filled Hisao in that Hanako's birthday is coming up and wondered if he'd like to accompany her on a shopping trip for gifts. Would he!? He accepts, of course, and so now Hisao not only knows it's Hanako's birthday coming up soon but he's even about to get her a gift. (She will be over the moon about that. )

Another thing to discuss in this path, I guess, would be the rivalry between Lilly and Shizune. I'm sure it'll be explored in greater detail during Lilly's and Shizune's respective paths, but it's kind of a shame to see what a bitch Shizune is -- at least in this route. There's actually a choice very early on in Act 2 and it's one which forces Hisao to pick between trying to be friends with Shizune still or not. If you try to be friends, you still end up learning some interesting (if superficial) things about Hanako from Misha, but ... more or less, that choice represents Shizune being jealous that Hisao has fallen for Hanako instead of her -- and she's cattily trying to split the two of them up. It's real obvious how she does and why she does it, and it left such a sour taste in my mouth that I suspected the other choice was how I was supposed to go and so, after reaching the end of the day and the first few lines of text for the next day, I actually loaded my save at the choice point right back up and picked the other choice. This time, I was treated to a good Hisao+Hanako relationship-building scene that really set the stage for their later chess games. I figure this is "the right choice" to make if you're playing the Hanako path, though I've no idea what the repercussions are for sticking with the wrong choice other than that maybe you lock yourself out of getting the Good End.

Finally, I probably can't end this lengthy post without at least mentioning that it is at the tail end of Act 2 that Hanako opens up to Hisao about the accident. We now know ...
  • she lost both parents
  • she barely survived herself
  • it was a house fire
  • it happened when she was a little girl (you can infer this from the crayon drawing used to tell the story)
We still don't know much about her parents, who she stayed with, etc, but it's a start.
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Old 01-10-2012, 08:42 PM   #81
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Oh my God. ;-; Halfway through Act 3 (or perhaps close to the end of Act 3 if Hanako's Act 4 is especially long), and ... that scene was just intense. So intense that when they then up the ante with the phone call, I had to save, take an emotional breather, and write up a bit of an update. Just ... wow. Not that Emi hasn't suffered, not that Emi's path wasn't good ('cause it was good!), but ... that was a maelstrom of raw emotion.

"Spoiler" MEANS SPOILERS! Please don't click if you haven't yet unlocked the scene named "Treading Softly," the name of the scene which immediately follows the ones I'm going to talk about in this update.

Spoiler: show
So, I pick up from where I left off earlier this morning. Lilly and I catch a bus to the nearby city (note: not town, but the metropolitan area) and we go hunting for birthday gifts for Hanako. This was a really nice scene, even if it oddly had elements of what felt like Hisao x Lilly material at times , and I took a very leisurely pace with it, reading the text slowly and deliberately, maybe clicking to see the next text window once every five seconds. Not too fast for a VN like Katawa Shoujo, right?


Hisao goes to bed, the KS clock-heart does its spinny thing, it's a new day, and I'm in the classroom. That "starts off ominous, then turns kinda happy and upbeat " song starts to play, making me a little edgy. "Uh oh," I wonder, "is something bad about to happen? " (Oh, you have no idea ... ) Of course, nothing bad happens right away. Mutou calls on Hanako and she shyly answers a question. Then he tells us to get into workgroups of three to four people (!!!) and you know what that means: something is going to happen with Hanako and Shizune+Misha. And sure enough, you're proven right fairly quickly: Misha and Shizune surround Hisao and beg him to join their group, so he does, but then Hanako meekly approaches and asks if she can join too. I half expected Shizune to be a bitch and say, "No! We don't like you! Now go away!" (not in those exact words, of course), but much to my surprise, she and Misha are thrilled to have Hanako join us. Woo-hoo! Things couldn't possibly get any better!

... and then the screaming chubby has to ruin everything. ^^;

"Hanako and Hisao, sitting in a tree! K-I-S-S-I-N-G!" They didn't sing this, of course, but they may as well have. And so Hanako begins to start getting very uncomfortable. Then Misha one-ups it: "So, Hisao? If you're denying that you two are lovers, then does that mean you weren't with Hanako yesterday? And if not, then who were you with?" Now Hanako wants to know ... and being the yandere adorable, intelligent girl that she is, she immediately puts two and two together. "Lilly ... you were with Lilly! " Oh shit. So now I have to do damage control and spoil the surprise -- thanks a lot, MISHA! -- by telling Hanako:

"The truth is, Lilly and I were shopping for your birthday party. It was supposed to be a surprise, but ..."

And then everything just goes to hell.


I didn't really notice it at first. Neither did Hisao! It seemed like Hanako was simply mega-super-duper embarrassed and didn't want the others to know what her and Hisao's relationship was like. I guess she was also embarrassed to know that I had one-upped our relationship (surprise? ^^; ) by going into the city, so far away it's accessible only by bus or car, to get her something for her birthday. So ... even though it didn't look like she was doing the assignment, I didn't think too much of it. After all, it's a group assignment, right? (In my defense, 4LS threw me for a loop with a red herring, mentioning that Misha had nice handwriting. This gave me the impression that it was a group assignment to which Hisao and Shizune were going to provide the answers and Misha was going to write it all down on paper.)

But then Hisao mentions that they've only got a few minutes left before it's time to hand in the assignment, so they'd better hurry up or they won't finish. And then he sees Hanako's assignment. And he sees that it's half empty. And he sees what I posted up above. ;_; And it just ...

It just about broke my heart.

I've never had a panic attack before, but I've had personal friends and acquaintances who have. It is humiliating, it is crippling, and it's really every bit as frightening and terrible as they showed it in this scene.

The writing during this scene was phenomenal. The best writing I've ever seen in a visual novel so far, I dare say. (Disclaimer: "writing," not "plot," Doppel. ^^; Also: discounting technical stuff. Obviously that award would go to KID with their super-scientific research for Ever17 and Remember11.) But yeah. Whoever wrote this scene ... get this man a publishing deal NOW! Amazing writing. He really drew us into the scene and made it feel like we were bearing witness to a real-live panic attack.

If the birthday gift shopping scene saw me clicking along at a leisurely pace of maybe only once every five seconds, here my brain was racing at a mile a minute, devouring the words on each screen (with not a crumb left behind!) and then blazing on to the next screen at a rate of maybe one mouse click every 1.5 to 2.5 seconds. This was edge of your seat gaming reading. Blood pumping, gut sinking, I had to know how things were going to play out. I had to hope that they would play out well in the end.

And then? After what seemed to be a halfway decent resolution to things? A phone call from Lilly.

"Hisao ... we need to talk. I'm afraid I have some bad news."

D:, *gut sinks so low it falls out of my butt and plummets into the black hole of despair*

And that's where we're at right now. Will resume playing momentarily. It's taken a good fifteen, twenty minutes to write this up and such, so ... yeah. I think I'm good now. *deep breath* Yeah. Onward! Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeease salvation! Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeease Good End in the end!
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Old 01-11-2012, 02:30 PM   #82
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The Hanako route continues. Picked it up again late last night and then just now when I had a break. Currently registering 41% completion with the game and am at the very start of the fifth event in Hanako Act 4. A full rundown of what all I've seen as well as thoughts about what I've seen in the spoiler box below.

Spoiler: show
So, I take Lilly's phone call and ... the bad news she has is not nearly as bad as I thought it was going to be.
....(1) Hanako's hospitalized, tried to kill herself, etc.
....(2) Lilly has to move away.
....(3) Other.
It ended up being Other. Which was, "My aunt has fallen gravely ill and I have to fly out to Scotland this Saturday and will be gone for 1-2 weeks." Umm ... in universe, that's sad news, sure, but IRL as me the gamer playing the Hanako Path? Forgive me if I sound relieved. ^^;

After Lilly and I talk in person, we decided to check on Hanako and we see this:


You're breakin' my heart. ;.;

But Hanako seems eager for me to stay while she cries on Lilly's shoulder, so you know that's a good sign that our relationship is progressing. And at least she hasn't tried to kill herself, so that's good.

The next day, I go to check on Hanako again and this is what I see:


Awwwww. (Though LOL at Hisao's comment. )

Hanako seems to be really glum and it's around this point that I begin to figure out what must have happened all those years ago. Just like with the Emi Path, Hisao isn't especially bright (*sigh*) and it'll end up taking him all the way until Act 4 to figure out that Hanako blames herself for her parents' death. But I'd actually taken it one step further even than early Act 4 Hisao has, and that is my supposition that what if the house fire was on her birthday? What if her birthday also happens to be the anniversary of her parents' deaths and her scarring? What if the fire was a direct result of their celebrations? (E.g. a knocked-over candle, a neglected stove top, anything.) What if Hanako's reason for wishing she'd never been born goes much beyond "I caused my parents' death" and is instead "my parents died because they were celebrating my birth"? That would be some seriously traumatizing shit. Unfortunately, where I am in Act 4, Hisao still hasn't put all of the pieces of the puzzle together yet, so there's no telling whether my theory is right or wrong. Hell, he only just now confirmed that Hanako blames herself for her parents' deaths.

So rewinding back to where we are in Act 3, Lilly and Hisao decide that they don't want to let Hanako weasel out of the birthday party they had planned for her and so ... they decide to move it up by about 4-5 days, several days before Lilly has to leave for Scotland, and they make it a joint affair:
....(1) celebrating Hanako's birthday; and
....(2) a farewell party for Lilly, wishing her a safe flight to Scotland


So we finally get to meet the mysterious Akira, Lilly's older sister. She seems like a nice enough person, though definitely not my type ^^;, but everyone has fun at the party, and even Hanako is able to find pleasure in the gifts she receives from Lilly and me. However, she finds perhaps a little too much pleasure ...



... in Akira's gift: two bottles of wine. Hanako has more than her fair share of the stuff and before the night is over she's pretty much wasted. She's a happy drunk, and as I pick her up and carry her off to her bedroom to put her to bed, she wraps her arms around me all "u fu fu fu :3"-like and doesn't let go. I was kinda worried that this might be our first intimate moment together since I don't approve of taking advantage of women while they're drunk, but thankfully Hisao feels exactly the same way ... much to an intoxicated Hanako's dismay. (That pout in the third picture! Too cute! >.<) When she looks crestfallen and says, "I don't want you to go, " I about lost it. Hanako is just too adorable. But Hisao was able to tuck her in and promptly leave.


The next big event was our night out on the town. Originally, I thought it was just going to be me and Lilly, so I was kind of surprised to see Akira and Hanako along for the ride. Lilly had mentioned needing to talk to me about something serious, so I wasn't expecting this. (Hold that thought as it'll come up again later.) What resulted was a good, memory-building moment between Hisao and Hanako. While the two sisters hung out at the bar, the two of us went to the pool hall and played a game of pool. It was here that we learned from Hanako that ...
  • after the fire, she went to live in an orphanage
  • that even though the other kids all got adopted, she never did ;.;
  • that she came to Yamaku directly from the orphanage
Awwwwwwwwwwww. So, we now know that Hanako pretty much has no family in this world whatsoever. (Or at least, none who are willing or able to take her in.) The poor thing grew up in an orphanage where she was surely made fun of by the other children (she doesn't say this, but children are so cruel that you know it's got to be the case) and became the withdrawn, apologetic, fearful person she is today. Hopefully Hisao can help bring her back into the light.

Well, Hanako ends up skipping school the day before her birthday as well as the day of her birthday. Hisao pays a visit to her after school the first time she's absent, but the second time he's starting to worry so he decides to call Lilly all the way in Scotland to demand some information in order to better facilitate helping Hanako out. Lilly confesses to Hisao that she doesn't know much more about Hanako's past than he does: only that, as Hisao had finally begun to surmise himself, Hanako blames herself for her parents' deaths and so appears to be pained by her birthday since it reminds her of her very existence. (Neither one of them seems to think that the accident may have actually taken place on her birthday. We'll have to see if my hunch proves right or not.)

But then Lilly reveals something else ...


She reveals the true purpose behind inviting Hisao and Hanako out that night. She tells Hisao, "I'm worried that the two of you are negatively feeding into one another's problems." Say WHAT now!? Lilly continues: "Hisao. Your problem is, you aren't giving much thought to your future. Instead of confronting that, you're running away to Hanako and trying to make her your future. But that's no way to live." A good point. Lilly makes the same point about Hanako, suggesting (without very clearly stating) that she believes Hanako may become too dependent upon Hisao (just as she already is with Lilly) and that she may never come out of her shell if Hisao is there to intercept the big, scary world for her.

Then, out of friggin' nowhere, in the middle of a cell phone call, the game prompts me with a choice. Do I (a) disagree with Lilly and trust my own gut? or do I (b) listen to Lilly? Wow. This is the toughest decision I've had to make all game. Given the late hour of its arrival and the huge repercussions it might have, I feel like this could be what makes or breaks whether I wind up with the Bad End or the Good End. And I'm torn as to what to pick. Do I:
  1. play as Hisao? and therefore "listen to my gut?" Or do I
  2. play as Talon? and therefore do what Talon would do in this situation? Or do I
  3. play as Talon the Gamer? and therefore pick what I think is the right decision?
Option A, I reject because Hisao's an idiot. Option B, I honestly am not sure what I would do in Hisao's position. (If his gut were mine, I'd probably listen to my gut, but ...) But I ultimately go with Option C and choose to listen to Lilly. It kills me, because as soon as I do, she starts talking about how I need to give Hanako space, focus on my own studies, etc, and I'm all like "B-but Hanako ;_; ..." But I get the feeling that Mother Lilly Knows Best and that this is the right thing to do. So ... we'll see.


And on that note, the last picture in this post shows you my current Hanako Act 4 event listing in the Library. As you can see, by deciding to listen to Lilly, I apparently skipped over two earlier events (Act 4.3 and 4.4) and skipped straight ahead to the next one (Act 4.5, titled "Continuing Melody"). This is where I've saved, and where I'll pick up from when next I play. Here's hoping for the Hanako Good End! But if I should miss it, then it's pretty clear what I've got to do. However ... I'm willing to bet good money that I averted the Bad End and that the Bad End is actually what you see in the two skipped-over events. This is little different than in Emi's path how the only event I never got to see, the very last one in Act 3, was probably the Emi Bad End event. I hope I'm right.
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Old 01-13-2012, 12:16 AM   #83
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Hanako Path Good End: Get!


Approximately 8h50m to completion. (My last save was at 8h27m and was before the final scene of the game.)

Just like with the Emi path, I'll say this: whether the Good End is a happy ending or a sad ending, you'll just have to see for yourself.

Spoiler: show

Act 4, "Scars," was a really good, real, yet at times also confusing and even discomfiting act. It was really interesting to see Hisao and Hanako become closer to one another (see above picture, a particularly epic moment in the game), but it was just as interesting to discover that the Hanako Hisao believed he was dating and the real Hanako hidden behind that shy exterior were two very different people. This is revealed either in the Bad End for Hanako's path or else at the very end of Act 4, whichever you should see first (for me, the end of Act 4), wherein Hanako reveals to Hisao that she doesn't want somebody to protect her but instead wishes, desperately, that she could be the one to take care of herself and others. It's kind of weird, actually. Hisao notes -- and you feel this for much of the route -- that he doesn't really know Hanako. This was especially evident to me having just come fresh off of the Emi Path, in which the two's relationship seems to build very naturally towards their first sexual experience. The sex scene with Hanako came very very late in the game -- mid-to-late Act 4! -- and it felt very ... off, for lack of a better term. You could tell that Hisao like-loved Hanako, and that Hanako like-loved Hisao, but ... it wasn't really clear yet that either of them loved the other person yet, nor was it clear that Hanako was happy with what was happening. He didn't really discuss it with her. He just sort of ... dropped his pants and was like "This is happening." She was complicit, sure. It wasn't rape, I agree. But at the same time ... you could tell that something was off. And it was all explained ...


... in the very end of Act 04, when Hanako confesses everything. She explains that she isn't content to be the little shy girl. She explains that she didn't want a savior or a protector. She explains that the only reason she had sex with him that night was because she was so afraid that if she denied him it that he would go off with Yuuko. (LOL, WHAT!? Poor Hanako. ^^; Thinking Hisao would pick Yuuko over her, now really ...) We find out that Hanako and Hisao are a lot alike. And we basically find out, here at the very tail end of Hanako's route, that the two are ready to start growing up, thinking about their futures, and getting to know one another better.

Basically, Hanako's Path ends up being less about "Hanako x Hisao" and is more the story of how Hanako finally came out of her shell. Which is a great story to tell: it's just not the one I was expecting. And I was absolutely gobsmacked when my darling Hanako emotionally declares how she doesn't want somebody who's there to protect her and look after her, etc etc. I knew where she was coming from and, as a story about people with physical disabilities, it really gave me a lot to think about. It felt very, very real. But at the same time ... this is why I had liked Hanako so much. ^^; So I felt like she was rejecting me at the same time. Still, I was able to find peace of mind in the fact that Hisao had been the exact same way as me -- numerous times in Act 4, even after Hanako pours her heart out on the line, Hisao talks about how he wants to support Hanako.

I guess that's actually part of what made this scene so confusing and yet so visceral, so real. Hanako's tearful confessional seemed to contradict so much of who we had thought her to be and what we had seen her say or do. She clearly seemed to love Lilly very much and totally seemed well-suited to the part of surrogate daughter to Lilly's part as surrogate mother; yet in her teary-eyed confession scene, Hanako pretty much declares that she doesn't want Lilly to mother her. (And you get a much more hostile version of this in the Hanako Bad End; will discuss later.)


That stated, it's not like there wasn't some love before the end of the path. The look on Hanako's face after they do it, after all, clearly suggests that she cared for Hisao very much even then. Like I said: all path long, you got the impression that she really, really liked Hisao. And she did. It's just ... she's 100% right that she really didn't know anything about him by this point in their relationship. It's good to know that the two will be doing more from now on to rectify this. I just wish we could have had an Act 5. ^^; A special exception, just for Hanako's case.


Speaking of the sex scene, the drama that led up to it was just incredible. First there was the part where Hisao shows Hanako his own scar. (See top of spoiler box.) Then came the inevitable, something the path had been preparing us for all along with similar little incidents: Hanako's compulsion to always repay tit for tat. It was thus a guarantee that Hanako would bare herself to Hisao, quite literally, and ... what a scene it was. Really epic. Really emotional. And ... I have to say, she was actually rather beautiful in that scene, pictured directly above. Not because I'm into that sort of thing (I'm not), but because ... I dunno. Just ... she was.


All good things must come to an end. The Hanako Path was quite good. Was it quite as epic as I'd been hoping it would be? No, not exactly. Would I dare to call it a letdown? While it would be correct to say that I was let down by the path, as it didn't quite deliver some of the things I'd been anticipating, I don't think it'd be correct to call the path a letdown. It surprised me. It really, really surprised me. The path ended up being unlike anything I might have expected. Pre-game, I thought Hanako might have been a tsundere. She quickly proved not to be. Then during the game, I thought that maybe she'd prove to be a yandere or just a cute shy girl. She wasn't either of these either. Hanako turned out to be a complex person. A real person. A very human person. And for that, I'm grateful to the writers of Katawa Shoujo. Thanks for writing such a compelling human story, and thank you for roping me into it via such an attractive lure.

I'm only two paths in, but already I'm finding it pretty difficult to say which path I liked more. I liked them both fairly equally in the end, but in different ways / for different reasons. I'd say I liked Hanako's path more for the girl and the events but that I liked Emi's path more for the psychological and emotional issues explored. Both were very good paths.

Note: This is the first of three posts written last night. I completed the Hanako Path yesterday afternoon / evening.
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Old 01-13-2012, 12:51 AM   #84
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The Bad End Blues

So, normally I'm not a completionist when it comes to VNs. I never did unlock the Bad End for Sora and Tsugumi in Ever17. Nor did I try and get all of the conversations squeezed out of Remember11. Content to unlock the best, truest end from a VN, I usually tuck it away once that mission is accomplished. But for whatever reason, I felt differently towards Katawa Shoujo. So after I completed Hanako's path, I thought to myself, "How about we go ahead and unlock the Hanako Bad End? And after we do that, how about the Emi Bad End?" Well, let me tell you, dear reader: you won't like what you find at the end of these dark rainbows.

"Spoiler" means SPOILERS! Don't click if you don't want to see what some are calling the most epic CG in the game. At least, not until you unlock it for yourself.

Spoiler: show
Hanako Bad End:

SHUT UP! I hate you! You're ugly! - Hanako CK

This one is pretty simple: all you've got to do, it would seem, is to pick the wrong option when talking to Lilly on the cell phone. I actually didn't do it the easy way but instead went all the way back to the very first choice in Act 2 and proceeded from there to always choose the worst possible choice. By doing so, I unlocked some new text paths but most of them were pretty short and they always ultimately led back to the same story thread as the one I'm used to thinking of as canon. In most cases, picking the wrong option simply means that you don't get a good Hanako scene out of it -- although in some cases, like when you choose to go with Shizune and Misha instead of with Hanako, it does have some very small bearing on later parts of the plot. (For example, a new wall of text was shown during the first tea party at Lilly's when I replayed it post-Misha instead of post-Hanako as I had done before.) But in any event, eventually I reached the cell phone conversation with Lilly. And I picked "listen to my gut" instead of "agree with Lilly."

Ohhhhhh boy. The moment I picked it, I knew I'd done something horribly wrong. I can't quite put my finger on what it was, but the text ... just seemed very ominous and conclusive. Like it was saying, "You dun fucked up, this is the end, there ain't no goin' back, so sit'cher ass down and enjoy the movie. " Hisao goes to Hanako's and he's pretty much a huge douchebag (on accident). This results in her telling him, at first politely, then annoyedly, and finally in HANAKO RAGE MODE, to get the fuck out of her room and leave her alone. By the time she enters Rage Mode, though, it's gone far beyond simply wanting me out of her room: me, Lilly, anybody and everybody who's ever patronized her -- she wishes we'd all just leave her alone forever. The door slams shut in Hisao's face and he walks back to the boys' dorm, knowing that he and Hanako are over.

Emi Bad End:


"Baka! Baka! Baka!" ... oh wait, this loli not voiced by Kugimiya Rie

The Emi Bad End was a lot less interesting in my opinion but no less eerie, if that makes any sense to you. With Emi, you have to screw up twice in order to see the true bad end; if you screw up only the one time but then do a saving throw, you unlock the missing CG (pictured above). Here's how it works:

First, you have to fuck up the advice you got from Mutou to try and observe things indirectly. The quickest way to do this, I found, was to chase after Emi when she leaves the table at lunch at her mother's house. Ordinarily, you're supposed to stay seated and talk to Mrs. Ibarazaki to try and figure out what to do. This is what I did last time. If instead you chase after Emi, you get into a pretty nasty argument with her in the kitchen that still results in you being thrown out of the house -- but unlike last time where Emi gets all teary-eyed and immediately regrets ordering you out of the house, here she pretty much throws you out as hatefully as she can. The plot of the game is now completely different from the one I remember playing, and there's a whole week of Hisao going to school, ignoring Emi, no longer having lunch with her or Rin, and running on the track at nights instead of in the mornings. It was a real shocker, especially compared with the Hanako Bad End which doesn't go on this sort of divergent path at all.

Anyway, eventually, after quite a bit of time has passed in this alternate Emi Path universe, Misha eventually confronts you. This is the saving throw I was talking about earlier, and this is the second place where you can fuck up. If you don't tell Misha what's wrong, she gives you a huge tongue-lashing, she basically considers you less than dog shit, and when you go to the track to find Emi, you get the Bad End. In Emi's Bad End, she basically dumps you the exact same way she dumped her ex-boyfriend. It's really creepy-eerie and has to be seen to be appreciated in full. I really would have to replicate the exact dialogue and everything here to give you the right sense for it and it's neither worth my or your time for me to do that. Just go ahead and unlock the bad ending and prepare to be amazed at what an icy bitch Emi can be.

If, on the other hand, you clue Misha in on what's going on and ask for her help, she shares with you some girl wisdom which you're then able to use to go and find Emi on the track and ... the exact same thing as before happens. Same conversation and everything. Emi dumps you and takes off down the track. However, unlike on the Bad End where you just watch her run laps and are like "What a bitch," here you don't even let her get past the first bend before you leap onto the track yourself and take after her. You're wearing your school uniform. You also run as fast as your legs will carry you, totally risking another heart attack. Emi sees this and is so moved by it that you trigger the scene depicted in the CG above and you pretty much get a second chance with Emi. The game then immediately cuts to the morning of the cemetary visit, quite quite different from what happens in the Emi (Unadulterated) Good End. The remainder of the game is the same as before, though, all the way down to the ending credits.

If the other bad ends are like this, I'm afraid that Shizune's and Lilly's are going to give me nightmares. As for Rin's, I really have no idea what to expect, but I can't imagine that it will be pleasant.

Note: this is the second of three posts written last night. I did this Bad End stuff late at night January 11.
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Old 01-13-2012, 01:03 AM   #85
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"What? ¬_¬"

So, I decided to go ahead and try for the Rin path last night. Having heard that Rin's path was more particularly difficult to dock onto than some of the other characters', I was surprised when I managed to land onto it on my very first try. I think that the only reason people felt that Rin's path was hard to achieve was that they didn't appreciate how VN route docking hierarchies typically work.

After my chance encounter with the Day of Despair, I knew that I couldn't simply turn away all of the girls. I knew that if I did that, I'd only wind up with the Day of Despair once again. So I planned accordingly and, what do you know, I docked onto the Rin path on my first try.

From what I was able to discern (through my own successful docking), Rin's path is the second-from-the-last path you get, the last path (or the default path) being the Day of Despair path. This might explain why others have found it hard to get -- because they either end up getting one of the other four girls or else they overcompensate and end up getting the Day of Despair. But if you play intelligently, you shouldn't have any trouble docking onto the Rin path either. More details after the break.

Spoiler: show
I tried to explain it in words but it became an essay. Pictures make things so much easier.


I think the first two paths you're capable of losing access to are Shizune's and Hanako's. Shizune's I can't really confirm since I've never docked onto it yet, but I'm pretty confident that she's the first one you lose and that, in order to get her, you have to be really gung-ho about doing stuff with her. Alternatively, Hanako may be the first one you can lose, and if she's not the first then she's definitely the second -- all you have to do is tell Kenji that you don't think Hanako is cute and, from what I can tell, you don't even get the option of having lunch with Lilly and Hanako.

What happened with me was, I deliberately displayed lack of interest in both girls. In fact, let me just tell you what all my choices were up until this point where this scene occurs:

Choice 1: Ask Mutou "Why?" when he asks if you want to introduce yourself to the class.
I did this because I figured it was a very Rin-like thing to do. After I did it, however, I discovered that it's really just a different way of telling the story -- and one I really dislike. From now on, I will always choose to introduce myself to the class, as I always had before.

Choice 2: Tell Shizune you think you've heard all you need to know.
When Shizune asked me if I had any questions for her, I think that by saying, "No, I'm good, " I pretty much killed any chances I had of docking with Shizune. Sure, they still offered me the game of Risk (see below) but that's just because this is a scripted VN. I think this was a really stiff "I don't give a shit about you " cold answer to give Shizune and that accordingly she's like "Well then fuck you."

Choice 3: Play Risk defensively against Shizune.
I did this simply because Misha seems less pleased with Hisao when he does this than when he plays aggressively. All of this I did in order to sabotage my chances with Shizune.

Choice 4: Choose to introduce yourself to Hanako rather than apologizing for disturbing her.
IMO, the latter choice seems to be more Hanako Path-suiting than the former, having picked both by this point. In an attempt to sabotage my chances with Hanako (sigh ), I had to go for the lesser of the two options.

Choice 5: Tell Kenji that you didn't find Hanako cute.
I'm pretty confident that this kills your chances with Hanako, no ifs, ands, or buts.

So now we come to the diagram I posted a thumbnail for above. (Go ahead and click on it now if you haven't already and keep it handy while I explain.) Ordinarily, the next choice in the game is the following: do you want to (a) wait for Shizune and Misha, (b) read your book, or (c) go and talk to Hanako? Historically, I've always picked Option C. Doing so doesn't guarantee you get Hanako or Lilly (as I experienced with the Emi Path on my first playthru), but it does seem to be the final nail in the coffin for the Shizune Path's prospects. Vice-versa, I imagine that if you choose to have lunch with Shizune, it's probably your last chance to dock onto the Shizune Path, not to mention it probably leads up to the official flag trigger for that path (which I imagine would be them asking you to join the Student Council and you acquiescing).

Well, this time when I played, the Venn diagram was missing. I was inside of the white box: neither option presented itself. There was no choice event at all. Hisao just went into the hall all on his own and Emi crashed into him. Shizune and Misha were there to witness it -- a first-time occurrence for me since I've always been with Lilly and Hanako when it's happened -- but instead of having me tag along with them to lunch, they boasted about how they were going to enjoy lunch by themselves. This is when I knew that I was doing things properly.

This is also where you have to start playing smart. If you have the attitude "I'm just going to do crazy shit, because that's what Rin would do" and stick to that 100%, you're only going to wind up getting the Day of Despair again. This is just my theory, anyway, but ... I'm pretty sure that Emi and Rin share a parent path. So in order to get Rin, we have to prevent ourselves from losing access to both her and Emi first. And the key to that is ...

Choice 7: When the nurse asks you if you're going to take exercising seriously, say "Yes!"
The reason for this is, if you don't, you won't dock onto the shared Emi+Rin parent path, thereby locking you out of the Rin path. (In fact, by doing this at this stage in the game, I think you'd pretty much leave yourself with only two options - Lilly or Day of Despair. But more on that in a sec.)

So anyway, at this point in the game, our options are currently: Emi, Rin, and Lilly.

Choice 8: the catfight. Play the middleman.
By playing the middleman, you lock yourself out of the Lilly path. (I think. Pretty sure you do, anyway.)

Choice 9: jogging with Emi part 2. Take it easy.
By choosing to take it easy, you lock yourself out of the Emi path. Congratulations! Now all that remains is to confirm to the game that you want the Rin path and not the Day of Despair!

Choice 10: When walking back up the hill, tell Lilly and Rin why you're breathing so heavily.
Remember: if you choose the "I'm Fine" option, you pretty much are guaranteed, after all of this snubbery, to unlock the Day of Despair. This is because you're showing Rin that you don't trust her enough as a friend to open up to her and so ... yeah.

I wrote more here but it's a lot of pointless conjecture. If we want to try and deduce how the tree structure works, then we can, but otherwise, I'm okay with just saying -- this is how I attempted to get onto the Rin path on my first try and it worked like a charm.

So in any event ... I guess the plan now is to go ahead and get Rin out of the way since she's my least favorite girl (sorry, Rin =\) and to save two of the better girls for last. From where I'm sitting right now, I'm feeling Hanako > Shizune > Lilly > Emi > Rin. Given this, I'd like to get Rin out of the way, then do Lilly, and save the second best, Shizune, for last; however, bbb has reported that Shizune's route was majorly disappointing, which is alarming , and Doppel has reported that the "word on the street" is that Lilly's route is the strongest. If that's the case, then I may wish to do Shizune fourth and save Lilly for last instead. Either way, though, going for Rin third seems to be a safe bet.

Note: this is the third of three posts written last night okay, this one I didn't write until January 12, but I was playing the beginnings of the Rin path at around 1:30am Jan 12 so you can't blame me for writing this one up tonight what is now yesterday evening.

Sorry for making what are now six posts in a row, but ... I deliberately held off on posting the first post because I was hopeful somebody else would post first. When no one did and I had three posts sitting on my hard drive, I said "Enough is enough " and figured that I may as well go ahead and post these.
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Old 01-13-2012, 09:56 AM   #86
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I just finished Lily's path. It was a nice path, which actually caught my interest. The romance wasn't badly done, and unlike the other two paths I played, it actually made use of Hisao's heart condition. The path also had a nice message going on about how they should be strong and independent, despite their circumstances. Unfortunately, near the end, that message goes to complete shit. That message completely turns into "I can't live without you, baby!"

Someone mentioned an inconsistency in how long it took Hisao to get to school. I think I'll shed some light on why the times might be different by showing Hisao's trip to school on different days:
Hisao wakes up, Hisao puts his cloths on, Hisao reaches for the door knob, HEART ATTACK!, Hisao leaves his room, Hisao goes down the stars in his dorm room, HEART ATTACK!, Hisao leaves his dorm room, Hisao goes down the path to school, Hisao enters school, Hisao walks down the hallway, HEART ATTACK!, Hisao is dead for 10 minutes, Hisao walks to the third year section, Hisao reaches his class room, HEART ATTACK!, Hisao enters his class room.

You see, the times the "HEART ATTACK!" occurs is always different, so of course the times will be different.

Next, I'll be hitting Rin's path. Only two more to go!
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Old 01-13-2012, 10:10 AM   #87
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Quote:
Originally Posted by big bad birtha View Post
Someone mentioned an inconsistency in how long it took Hisao to get to school. I think I'll shed some light on why the times might be different by showing Hisao's trip to school on different days:
Hisao wakes up, Hisao puts his cloths on, Hisao reaches for the door knob, HEART ATTACK!, Hisao leaves his room, Hisao goes down the stars in his dorm room, HEART ATTACK!, Hisao leaves his dorm room, Hisao goes down the path to school, Hisao enters school, Hisao walks down the hallway, HEART ATTACK!, Hisao is dead for 10 minutes, Hisao walks to the third year section, Hisao reaches his class room, HEART ATTACK!, Hisao enters his class room.

You see, the times the "HEART ATTACK!" occurs is always different, so of course the times will be different.
Not really sure what you're talking about here. The way you wrote it, you make it sound like Hisao suffered from four different heart attacks in the span of one day. Could you maybe explain better what you meant by "someone mentioned an inconsistency"? Are you just talking about how people have pointed out that the span of time covered by each of the routes is different?
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Old 01-13-2012, 11:02 AM   #88
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I'm not completely sure myself. I read somewhere that said that the times it took for Hisao to get to school were different. I never paid close enough attention to agree or disagree, so I decided to make a scenario where it'd make sense if the times it took him to get to school really were different!
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Old 01-15-2012, 03:23 PM   #89
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Here's a pretty neat flash game about KS. Obviously some of the regulars will hate this, but I think it's awesome.
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Old 01-15-2012, 06:23 PM   #90
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Tr-tr-tr-tr-TRIPLE POOOOOOOOOST FUUUUUURY!

I just finished with Rin's path. I have to say, DAMN I'm good! From the paths I've done, they started with boring, and have progressively gotten more interesting. I think Rin's path has been the best path so far. Though, that's only because I really like Rin's way of thinking. She questions everything, and rarely gets caught up in petty emotion. My biggest complaint of this path has to be Hisao's attitude towards her at the end. He really should have seen her attitude towards him coming, so I think his reaction to it was unreasonable.

Now that I have finished Rin's path, Hanako's path is all that stands in my way!
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Old 01-15-2012, 07:01 PM   #91
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I'm sitting at 54% completion and am roughly two-thirds of the way through Rin's Library events. (I don't know how long Act 3 is, but I'm quite a ways through it already.) While I've been casually enjoying Rin's path, the fact that I haven't felt compelled to post about it should probably speak to how unsatisfying I find it compared with the other paths. I don't like enigmatic girls and Rin is one hell of an enigma. She's impossible to figure out, I feel like I don't even know her, etc etc. I just don't like her. I don't see how Hisao could have even fallen in love with her yet. The part where he confessed to her and ...

Spoiler: show
she was all, "No. We're not going there" ... to me, if I was Hisao in real life, that would have been relationship-ending shit right there. Not because alone of what she said but because of also how she said it. So cold. So decisive. So uninvested in us. Fuck dat shit. I get in the bus into the city to come and confess to you and not only do you shoot me down but you don't even have the decency to stop me as I make for the door? You call my name and ask me "Will you come back tomorrow?" My answer IRL to that would have totally been "No. " 'Cause I would have perceived the relationship as over. Good for Hisao that he stuck with her, I guess? But ... I wouldn't want someone like Rin for a wife. Way too frustrating. I don't want to be married to a fuckin' Rubik's Cube.

I talked with some guys online the other day. They were very polite, as spoiler-averse as I am, and had made roughly the same progress as me too. We talked a bit about KS and I got the impression from them that, given my remaining available options, it would be smartest to do Shizune next and to follow that up with Lilly. I'm disappointed to hear that since Shizune is tentatively my #2 girl but it would certainly fit with bbb's utter lack of enthusiasm for Shizune's route. Then again, if bbb loved Rin's route and I found it so boring I didn't even want to post more about it , maybe that speaks to how different we are and how what we're looking to take out of Katawa Shoujo is very different as well. So ... who knows. *crosses fingers, still hoping for the Shizune Path to be amazing*

Since you do have me talking, though, I guess I'll say one thing I've noticed about Rin's path: the choices are immensely more difficult than any of the choices from other paths. The choices in Emi's and Hanako's paths were pretty cut and dry. For example, they might be something like "(A) Call it a day; or (B) Ask Hanako to go into the city with you." Very obvious choices where A is the "you get to see nothing and you get -1 Hanako points" pick and where B is the "you get to see a cute Hanako scene and you get +1 Hanako points" pick. For the most part, this is what all the choices in those two girls' paths were like. But with Rin, the choices are like this:

(I don't consider this a terrible spoiler, but if you're mega-spoiler averse, then don't click.)
Spoiler: show
  • Tell Rin, who is also struggling to find out who she is, that ...
    1. I want to be more like Emi.
    2. I want to be more like Rin.
    This was a hard pick because ordinarily you'd pick the "I want to be more like you " flattery option and would avoid the "I want to be more like your female best friend and who you might mistake me for having an interest in" choice. But in this case, Rin was telling Hisao how she feels like she doesn't know who she is and Hisao was feeling much the same way. So it wouldn't make much sense to pick the Rin option. Thus, I actually went with the Emi option. Since it seemed to make the most sense. But hell if I know if this was the correct pick or not.
  • When Nomiya is talking to Hisao in the art classroom about Rin's gallery ambitions, you get two options:
    1. I want to support Rin.
    2. I want to understand Rin.
    HOW IS THIS AN EASY CHOICE!? XD This is not an easy choice! It's like asking me to pick between Sour Crunchy Apple A and Sour Crunchy Apple B! Not between sour apples and sweet apples, let alone apples and oranges! On the one hand, saying I want to support Rin would be the maturer pick and saying I want to understand her -- at the exclusion of the support choice -- the less mature pick. But then again, I feel like choosing to support her over choosing to understand her is very impersonal. It's what Emi is doing, what Nomiya is doing, etc. And I don't want to be just another Emi or Nomiya in Rin's life. I want to be her boyfriend ... and possibly some day more. So I want, nay, need to understand her. Hence, I went with Choice B. Even if it makes me look like a childish dick. ^^;

Yeah. Not easy at all. And I feel like two-thirds or more of the choices on Rin's path are like this: no-win situations where it's impossible to know what the devs want you to pick in order to unlock the Good End (IRL attitude) as well as where it's impossible to know what the right thing to do is (in-universe attitude). Maybe this is why I don't like Rin: being very rational, I don't like someone who defies logic, who is un-figure out-able. She's just ... very frustrating. I'm glad I chose to do this route third instead of last because I think I would have hated ending the game on this note.
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Old 01-15-2012, 11:09 PM   #92
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As instructed by Yuki, I should post. Only an hour and a half in, but already loving it. Nice premise, awesome music, interesting characters that keep me engaged, quite the good game.

And now to feel inferior to longer posts.
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>that moment when you hear your female roommates get back and realize you have to put on pants

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Or...do you?
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Old 01-15-2012, 11:17 PM   #93
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Not at all! :o Not at all! Welcome aboard. A little apprehensive about minors playing an adult PC game, sure, but having completed 2˝ of the game's five routes so far, I can earnestly vouch for its integrity and quality of writing. I think it's well worth anyone's time to play/read, adult or teenager. Let us know as much or as little as you like about your playthrough experience: memorable scenes, favorite characters, objects of your affection , and so on. And please do feel free to read back through the thread and reply to as little of or as much of the posts written by bbb, Doppel, and myself. We would love to hear your thoughts both in general as well as in how they relate to our own.

An hour and a half in ... I'm guessing you're still on Act 1 then? I guess I should ask, how many of the main five girls have you met yet? (I'm thinking you should have just barely met the fifth one by now, but maybe not. Depends on how quickly or how leisurely you play.) What did you think of that opening scene to the game, huh?
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Old 01-15-2012, 11:34 PM   #94
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I'm kinda quick when it comes to games, so I've met all five by now. I'm growing close to all equally, I think. I first liked Shizune, gave me a mischievous air to her serious demeanor. Hanako is starting to grow on me, intrigued by her backstory(Have not seen it yet). Lily is kind, but it seems as if shes holding something back, especially when in a room with Shizune. Rin and Emi are odd in their ways, but are enjoyable. As a redhead lover, might go for Rin, but just started, I'll see who I open up to. Or vice versa. As for the opening scene, was quite dramatic. A lot more heartfelt then others I've seen like it.

Edit: Kenji is a very, very, very odd boy.
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>that moment when you hear your female roommates get back and realize you have to put on pants

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Or...do you?

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Old 01-16-2012, 01:31 AM   #95
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Apparently there are people out there who hate Kenji. I have no idea why. (Light may be shed on this once I complete the game, I don't know.) So far, though, I have to say that I think Kenji is incredible. He is basically this game's Sunohara (Clannad) and he does it very, very well. Every route has Kenji offering something new and outrageous to share with Hisao.

Looking forward to hearing your status update report tomorrow. Interested to see which route you docked onto.
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Old 01-16-2012, 10:48 AM   #96
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It's not that I don't like him, just that he's realy strange. The silly anti-feminst. Currently owns me 900 yen.

Well, it looks like I'm on Emi's path, not seening much of anyone besides her and Rin, and having gone to the track meet and meetting her mom. And its bad enough that her adorablness is rubbing off on me. Indeed, I'm becoming Emi-ish.

Why am I speaking if I'm Hisao?

Edit: By the way, the nurse is awesome. Kick ass theme too.
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>that moment when you hear your female roommates get back and realize you have to put on pants

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Or...do you?

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Old 01-16-2012, 11:25 AM   #97
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Originally Posted by XanderKetsu View Post
It's not that I don't like him, just that he's realy strange. The silly anti-feminst. Currently owns me 900 yen.

Well, it looks like I'm on Emi's path, not seening much of anyone besides her and Rin, and having gone to the track meet and meetting her mom. And its bad enough that her adorablness is rubbing off on me. Indeed, I'm becoming Emi-ish.

Why am I speaking if I'm Hisao?

Edit: By the way, the nurse is awesome. Kick ass theme too.
Spoiler about the nurse (discussion of my initial thoughts and then what I later found out)
Spoiler: show
See, when I first heard the nurse's theme, it's so sinister-sounding that I totally thought he was going to prove to be the game's villain. But it turns out the game doesn't have any villains, only adversities for the girls and Hisao to overcome, and that the nurse is an okay guy. If a jackass. At the very least, he has not proven to be a bad guy on Emi's, Hanako's, or Rin's paths. And I very much doubt that he'll suddenly transform into Nosferatu in Shizune's or Lilly's paths, either.

Docking onto Emi's path first seems to be the commonest outcome for players. From those I've talked to or from those posts I've read, it seems that a disproportionate (i.e. > 20%) number of people wind up on her path first. I think the reason for this is ...

(explaining Emi Path docking)
Spoiler: show
Nearly everybody tells the nurse "Yes" and not "Maybe" when he asks you if you're going to take exercising more seriously from now on, and a sizeable number of people -- if not an outright majority, then at least the largest of the five minorities -- takes up Emi's challenge to catch up to her when on the track for the second day. That of course triggers the second cardiac crisis and results in Emi and Hisao spending all day together and ... yeah, it's the docking event for Emi's path, I think.

It sounds like you're on Emi's path. Well, you can confirm it for yourself pretty easily by this point: whenever you see a movie for a girl preceding Act 2, that's the confirmation that you've docked onto so-and-so's path. In some cases, notably Rin's and Emi's, the actual docking takes place much much sooner than the time you reach the end of Act 1. In other cases, like Hanako's, you don't appear to officially dock right up until the day before the f______l, although you certainly do many things with her prior to that point. So ... yeah. If you saw the movie file with Hisao and Emi on the track, which I'm all but certain you did, then yes, you're on the Emi path.

The other way you can easily confirm for yourself what path you're on is to go to your Library (Main Menu --> Extras --> Library) and to click on the tab of the girl's name which is now in bold for you. The others should all be grayed out and will remain grayed out until you successfully reach their Act 2's.

Regarding what's now 100% safe for you to read, well, since I know you've seen the track meet, you can definitely read this post (post #56 in this thread) as well as anything else I may have written before it. Actually, you can read Post #58 too. After that would be the first of the new stuff for you.
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Old 01-16-2012, 12:25 PM   #98
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>Nurse

I had my inklings whether he would be a "problem" or not, but even after being scolded for pushing limits, he's till cool. Makes the awkward jokes and innuendos but he's a pretty cool guy.

>Post 56
Spoiler: show
>Emi's mom

My thoughts exactly.

>The accident

Generic, but works, I guess. Maybe a more dramatic reason why the crash happened, but time will tell.

>Pedo guro stalker

Never ran into. Yet. Or his he only in Act 2?

>Cardiac Crisis

I can see how many would choose those options. Guess I fell for it, huh? Yes to be truthful and keep yourself alive, and challenge yourself to boost limits and survival.

>Default paths

Will have to remember this for later playthroughs. I know a friend to get to Rin, but not sure how he did it.

Status Update
Spoiler: show
I speed through games. I think. Then again, first time playing a visual novel. On Act 3, had a date with Emi. Went very well. She ran a bit too much, now in wheelchair. Then I got to that point. You know the one. This is bad and I should feel bad. But it was handled well. Surprised nothing extremely bad happened. Got the point across. And it was hilarious when Rin barraged in though.
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>that moment when you hear your female roommates get back and realize you have to put on pants

DAMMIT
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Or...do you?

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Old 01-16-2012, 12:37 PM   #99
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I dunno, we can compare times-to-completion once you finish the path. I took a little under eight hours to complete Emi's and a little over eight hours, nearing nine hours, to complete Hanako's. My Rin path will be considerably shorter but that's mostly because I used the Skip Text function to completely blow through any and all old text in Act 1 that time. (Didn't do the same thing with Hanako, so my Hanako completion time's a better reflection, I think, of how long it'd really take to complete that path on a first-ever run.) You may be a fast VN gamer, you may not be, who knows. Probably are.

Regarding the "pedo guro stalker" speculation of mine from ages two weeks ago ...
Spoiler: show
Oh no. No, no, no. You'll never see him do that. That's what I was explaining in the other spoiler box, the one I think you expanded already and responded to.

When I started the game, I thought the nurse was kinda creepy. Why? Because ...
  • his smile struck me as insincere
  • he made off-color jokes about tampering with my medicine
  • his theme song seemed ... "bad" to me, as in, the kind of theme song you'd give a bad guy in a video game. Kinda cacophonous, kinda ... I dunno, just bad. Like they were trying to subtly (or not so subtly) clue you in, "THIS IS THE BAD GUY!"
But it turned out that I was completely barking up the wrong tree. The nurse is a good guy, if a bit of a jackass at times, and I no longer suspect what I once did -- that he might be a creepy guro pedo stalker who has his eyes set on one of the five girls. In fact, it was a good thing, I guess, that I docked onto the Emi path first -- because that more or less confirmed that the nurse has already got his eyes on Emi's mother, Meiko, confirming not only that he is not a pedo but that he has good taste in women indeed. Now granted, he could be a different man each path -- just like Hisao sort of is -- but for the most part in this game, and even with Hisao himself, the continuity of events and personalities alike are kept consistent throughout all five paths. Which is to say that not only is Emi in Rin's path the same as Emi in Hanako's path the same as Emi in Emi's path barring how Hisao begins to influence her in that path, but that she's even in the same places on the same days. (For example, in Rin's path, the picnic in the rain still happens ... only it doesn't. You'll have to get there to see what I mean. But they still end up going into the Shanghai and everything. And Emi still winds up catching a cold. And Rin still ends up missing school the following day. History repeats itself in very general terms even if the specifics are different between each of the five paths.) This more or less, then, rules out the possibility of the nurse being a creepy pedo stalker of one or more of the girls.

If you need to know how to get onto the Rin path, I explain how I did it in one of my more recent posts in this thread. Alternatively, there are multiple walkthroughs available on the official site. I haven't peeped at a single one of them, so I can't tell you which if any of them are good and which if any of them are bad, but I know that they exist.
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Old 01-16-2012, 03:46 PM   #100
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Rin Path Good End, Get

6h30m after starting it, I got to the end of the game with Rin. Now, I should point out that the Rin path is (by sheer number of events) the longest of the three paths I've played so far, so don't be fooled by that comparatively small completion time. You could easily tack on an additional two hours for Act 1 if I'd played it at the same pace I did with Emi or Hanako, and you could probably tack on additional half hour for several of the Bad Ends I unlocked along the way.

63% completion is what I'm registering right now in my Library. For Rin's path, I'm missing one stray event in Act 3 (which I would think is either a fun optional scene I happened to miss or else is a very early Bad End) and I'm missing three consecutive events in Act 4 which I'm assuming are Rin's Ultimate Bad End. I say "ultimate" because the Rin path is frought with Bad Ends -- I encountered no fewer than two myself, and who knows how many others I may have avoided -- but given that these three consecutive events take place after a particularly big choice you have to make, I'm guessing that they formulate a rather lengthy Bad End for Hisao and Rin. In my Gallery, I appear to have every single CG for Rin but one. I forget its location in the Gallery but I do remember that it precedes the first of the multiple CGs that go with the final sex scene. I am assuming that it, too, ties into the ultimate Bad End of Rin's path.

Thoughts. I would say ... the Rin path ended up improving in the end but it's still probably my least favorite route. It improved because (1) they actually tackled the fact that Rin is so frustratingly weird and how her weirdness more or less cripples any chance she has for a normal relationship with people and (2) because holy shit did it have an epic emotional scene towards the end. (Clue: art club room.) There were many times in these two's relationship where I thought things were surely over and that I was watching a Bad End unfold. (In fact, there was one time where the dialogue from a Bad End I'd previously unlocked was replicated word-for-word in the Good End path, the only difference being that whereas with the Bad End the game just ended, with the Good End a few days passed and then Hisao did something about it. In other words, even when you're Good Ending, you feel like you're Bad Ending!) But at the end of the game, especially, things got pretty big. It was the first time I found myself really invested in this path. It's a shame that it was both too little and too late to salvage my overall impression of the path.

The Rin Path seems to have been an IRL artist's confessional. Thus, I think that if you are an art student and you either have experienced what Rin experiences or else you know someone else who has, then this path will resonate with you on that level. For the rest of us, though, the path is romantically limited (far more so than either the Emi or the Hanako paths) and is also plot-wise kinda dull. There are very few comedy moments and even the sex scenes are rather disappointing. In other words ... the path is pretty much Rin or bust. Either you like and are fascinated by what she's going through or else you don't care for her and find the path to be a bore.

I should have liked to have posted some pictures to go along with these comments but since they were for the most part non-spoiler comments, I opted to withhold images this time if it meant that I could post this post as is, without any spoiler tag.
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