Katawa Shoujo - Any New News?

As far as I'm concerned, that's excellent company for it to be in.

Never a moment's rest, hmm? Well, I hope you enjoy it.

This post has been edited by Random Wanderer on Apr 5 2012, 07:31 AM

Remember that I foremost mentioned them for joke purposes, though, not for comparison purposes (so don't quote me on that) for, as I added, they're not comparable and shouldn't be compared. No more than you should compare Counterstrike with a computer chess game.

As Moroboshi Ataru says, "Too many girls, not enough time!"

Three weeks after I completed the game, based on how memorable it remains in my memories, and comparing it to the others games I scored 8, 7.5 and 7 (and how memorable they still are to me), I've decided to lower Katawa Shoujo score to 7, which would pretty much be its definite score in my list~

Olf, thanks for directing me to this thread, which I had overlooked.

I loved Katawa Shoujo. It took me a few weeks to complete it, and I would find myself thinking about it when I wasn't reading/playing. I haven't been so deeply immersed in a fictional world in a long time.

(1) Before I get to specifics, I'd like to comment on what I think is the central theme of the game: the problem of the white knight. My view is that some a few girls want you to be the white knight all the time, a few girls never want you to be the white knight, and that most girls want you to be the white knight some times but not others. Trying to figure out when to mount your horse and when to let the princess rescue herself is KS's central challenge.

(2) I started with Emi and she is still my favorite. Although some have noted how easy to wind up on her path by default, I liked how natural it seemed. There wasn't any sense of auditioning all the girls and making sure to choose Emi at every opportunity. Instead, I did what came naturally to me and wound up with my favorite girl. Nice!

(3) Emi's path deals expressly with the white knight problem, and I love the rooftop conversation for her good ending: "I don't want to be a white knight rescuing a damsel in distress, but even knights helped each other out, you know." I found that sentence to be so eloquent -- I can't think of a better way to offer help to someone who is trying to refuse it.

(4) Shizune's path I found disappointing. I really like Shizune as a character. And her story arc has a promising start -- how to handle someone whose flaw is that she's over-competitive? Yet somehhow that arc dissolved into an endless series of student council paperwork, tea at the Shanghai, and long conversations about the Shizune-Misha situation. And there were two loose threads that bugged me: (1) Hisao never really gets around to explaining his medical condition and the pill bottles, IIRC. (2) Hisao never sees her without her glasses. Not even during the sex scenes!

(5) Rin's story was a fascinating take on how to love someone who has almost no emotional intelligence. There must be other stories of this kind, but this was the first I've read. I did not much like Rin and probably would not have spent more than 5 minutes talking to her in real life, but the author really made me care about what happened to her.

(6) Lily: her story was so powerful, for personal reasons, that I don't think I can ever replay it. Long ago, in a more romantic phase of my real life, I experienced Lily's bad ending. I found the story to be so true to life, I could barely handle it. "[A]ll of us know full well our lives are irreversibly changing." Yes, that's exactly what it felt like.

(7) Hanako... I just finished her story and I realize now that I have to think about it some more.

(8) I liked how the game sticks to a common timeline so that you experience the same events (Iwanako's letter, Emi and Rin get sick, Hanako's birthday) in different situations and from different perspectives.

(9) KS is not without its flaws. (Like Olf, I don't understand why Hisao was so mean to Iwanako. I played Hanako's path last, and in that path he actually starts to write back to her -- finally, I thought, here is the nice-to-Iwanako scene -- but fails. What a jerk!) But overall, I truly loved it.

Actually I'd like to add a whinge here. When I first played KS the first part was the best, having a heart attack right at the start of the game. My sort of game I thought, I was expecting there to be multiple ways of killing yourself. Lets face it the whole purpose of these games is the sex and here we have a protagonist for whom overexertion could prove fatal. The Lilly route was the nearest to this goal - pretty well written it was too.

Falling off a roof was lame, it should at least have started with drunken intimacy with Kenji as they bemoan their last of progress with girls.

Still not too bad but an opportunity missed I think.

Finishing this game was like pulling teeth. I was only somewhat interested in it and the longer I it took the less I cared and there was always something else, something better, something more important to do than play Katawa Shoujo. But I did.

Over the past few years my interest in this type of game has gone from 100 to zero. Amusingly enough one of my term papers for an english class I had in college was on Tsukihime. I got a low 'A' and would have gotten a better grade, but all the sources I cited were in japanese and the prof was buttmad. But now my interest has waned away to ... well, nothing. It's sort of disappointing, I've got hundreds of dollars of these games and I'm just gonna throw them away. Fucking Demonbane- I wanted to play that at one point, but you know, it's been sitting here, unopened and unmolested for about a year now? I dunno- and I know with absolute certainty I will never play it. Waste of money.

Uh? What?
If it's the reason why you play galgames, I don't doubt you're more often than not bored to death and disappointed. Just saying.

Good to know. Why are you still posting here then?

So you're into something else now. And? What next? You're going to tell us how you used to be into anime and aren't any longer so whatever money you put to buy anime goodies is just a waste of money? Or that you used to collect stamps like mad then your interest waned and now you look at your stamps as a waste of money? Or that you were into cars? Into camembert labels? Into computers? Etc. So, you're now not into galgames any longer. Good for you. Then go post wherever you can talk about your newfound hobbies, rather than rant here. It's not your livejournal, you know?

Let's not insult each others intelligence here because I know you can at least fucking read. I finished Katawa shoujo. This IS a discussion thread for katawa shoujo.

Indeed. But only your first paragraph was about it... and only to say you played it. No more. Making it sound you merely used it as an excuse for your second paragraph, which is nothing more than a live journal rant. So, discuss about Katawa Shoujo or stay out of here.

I did discuss it. I played it. I finished it. I put in a little extra tangentially related shit. You derailed the thread with your juvenile territorial menstrual bullshit, so good on you. I'm done, the end.

This post has been edited by Nestor on Jun 17 2012, 11:02 PM

Actually that is not why I play them, I play them for the story. To be honest a game without sex in it would be fine by me. It's just that all the good endings seem to involve sex, or is it that the games end when the sex occurs.

I think that KS should have gone beyond the bad endings, dealing with the aftermath of the bad Hanako ending would have been a challenge to say the least. Having undone years to Hanako's therapy and undoubtedly turning Lilly into an enemy you have to survive until you graduate. You might inadventently bring Lilly and Shizune together in the process but you will get no thanks for it.

The paths in KS seem to be unnecessarily complicated, I still haven't managed to pin down that last CG of Emi's, and Hisao seems like he has multiple personality disorder. And where did that Mika (?) girl come from!

I've played worse. I suppose you could call it a good sign that I believe that it could have been better, some games should simply not have been written.

"I played it" is hardly a discussion. You've been trolling here for a bit too long with your childish behaviour for me to keep being kind on you. So, either behave or go away: I'm fed up with you trolling here.

I didn't play Katawa Shoujo with the option set but, IIRC, you can remove the sex scene in the game, can't you?

According to what I've heard, it also cuts out some important character development in and around the sex scenes, so it's an unideal way to play the game. I never tried playing it that way, because understanding the emotions of the characters as fully as possible was one of my main interests in the game.

First play-through : Emi (wasn't aiming for anything in particular, just chose the "best" options)

Second play-through: Fell off the roof (by choosing the opposite of whatever I chose the first time)

Third play-through (unfinished): I'm on one of Lilly's paths, but hard to tell yet what ending I'll get.

While trying to fix my PS3 connection, I downloaded KS. I don't know if it's because I haven't done either the Rin or Hanako routes yet that I haven't gotten the "feels" others have yet, but I'm a bit disappointed. That said, it was entertaining.

I also managed to get on the Emi route first. I liked how it dealt with the health issues, but I found the emotions a bit lacking. Becoming the Boyfriend seemed too easy/I never got a feel for what Emi saw in Hisao. I think that's why I only sort of worked for me. The later stuff where we deal with her emotional issues was nice, but I don't really understand how important what Hisao did was for Emi to work through it.

I did like her family, though. And Rin's role as a distaff Kenji was kinda fun.

My problem with the Shizune route was first the lack of choices. I really felt how often I was hitting the spacebar. I know this is a VN, and I know that Hisao often felt like he was being pulled along, but at least in Chapter 1 I had options to pull back. I felt more like an observer than a protagonist. I was also disappointed that Shizune never really lightened up. She was the same pushy ..... that we met day 1. I found her...tiring I think may be the most diplomatic word.

I think deep down I'd rather play this arc as Misha. That seems like it would be more fun.

I'm halfway through Lilly, and I have high hopes.