

In a sentence, this is a dating sim featuring a cast of disabled girls.Īt its core, Katawa Shoujo is a set of heartwarming stories about self-discovery, acceptance, the thrill of youth, and most importantly, love. He’s sent to a school for the disabled where he befriends an energetic track star with prosthetic legs, a laid back artist with no arms, the deaf student counsel president (and her translator), the blind yet graceful class representative, a shy burn victim, and the legally blind conspiracy theorist. You play as Hisao, a high school senior who was just diagnosed with a heart condition. What happens when a group of 4channers can’t get enough of a doujinshi artist’s concept sketches? They formalize a team, call it Four Leaf Studios, hire Mike Inel, and make a visual novel based off of those sketches. It’s also among the most accessible visual novels on this list, as it’s available on Steam, PSVita, and PS3.
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If you’re looking for a visual novel with a gripping story and lovable characters, this is precisely what you’re looking for.

The story of Steins Gate is one of the most praised in visual novel history. He quickly discovers the dark truth behind the research of time travel, and takes on the task of preventing a dystopian future that it’ll cause at the cost of his sanity and his friend’s lives. Set in Akihabara, Japan during the Summer of 2010 (the not-so-distant future at the time it came out), Steins Gate is the story of a young, down-on-his-luck scientist, Okabe, who finds a way to send text messages to the past. The world of Steins Gate is vast, interesting, well-written, and in one word, memorable. Although heralded as one of the better visual novel adaptation anime, it still doesn’t capture everything in the Steins Gate story–especially now that the sequel, Steins Gate 0, is out. For everything that makes the anime great, it makes the visual novel arguably one of the best of all time. There’s a good chance you’ve already heard of the prodigal son of the SciAdv series, Steins Gate, thanks to its critically acclaimed anime.

And of course, fans of visual novels will probably recognize most–if not all–of these titles, and if they haven’t played them already, I’d highly recommend each and every one of these. Alternatively, think of this as a list of worthwhile visual novels that a visual novel novice might find as a good starting point for getting into the world of visual novels. I’ve compiled a list of visual novels that fall into such categories: Visual novels that even people who don’t like visual novels might find worth a try because they break the stereotypical image of the cheap, anime dating sim that most people associate with the phrase “visual novel”. There are visual novels with more gameplay than others, there are some visual novels that have had official releases on handhelds and consoles in the English speaking market, they’re not all drawn in an anime style, there are some that are American-made, and they’re certainly not all dating sims, for example. And although it’s okay to simply not like visual novels, I also think it’s important to remind people that there are exceptions to these common misconceptions.
Hatoful boyfriend absolute zero Pc#
There’s a number of (not entirely unfair) stigmas on visual novels: “They have 0 gameplay”, “They’re all anime”, “They’re all dating simulators”, “The stories aren’t interesting enough”, “They’re all on PC and I only play console” and so on. There’s no definitive reason why this large difference in markets exists, but that’s not what we’re here to talk about today. In Japanese gaming communities, visual novels are a staple. Visual novels are one of the most niche genres you can find in Western gaming.
