I tend to approach new things with wariness lately, because we've all been trolled far too many times If something good comes out of it, I will be pleasantly surprised and like it. If it sucks, then I lose nothing.

I mean, that's my adventure with the AV sequels. I really had no desire to even try AV2, much less 3 and its multiple chapters. By the time I forced myself to play 2, I believe TLO was already out.

I ended up enjoying AV2 for what it's worth when I did play. It's bland, but I didn't dislike anything. My unreasonable prejudice against AV3 (Rogue complaining about how Mel is such a stuck up brat might have something to do with it ) made me a flailing and excited fan by the time I'm all ready and caught up Too bad the trollage Ed/Mel hints were too strong for me to have hopes for Ed/Stella that I ran off to crack path and cannot whole-heartedly ship canon. Or maybe I'm just truly a crack shipper at heart and would jump shark at any chance I get.

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Yup - ^^this^^

Complaining about Mel being a stuck-up brat? Me? Now when did I... wait, I think I did gripe about it several times, but didn't realize it was to that extreme where you even noticed. I was just mentioning that her prejudice and somewhat "snobbish" personality against nobles is annoying, though to be fair, I don't really like any of the main characters either.

I if there's going to be a thread on the characters themselves, as an individual; because of all the AV games I play, I never seem to have a liking to any of the main characters- not enough to even crackship them like D_A.

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I'm guessing that Amanda have a crack-shipping streak herself, and that's why the AV pairings we so far don't make sense.

@Rogue: Oh, fugly faceset played a part too. And the fact that I'm not really into in to begin with. It's "I'm too lazy to play, blaaah" + "oh noes! potentially unlikeable protagonist!" + "DUDE, WHAT IS THAT FACE!?!?!" = Do not want.

Re characters: You know, I was still in full-on Mel-hating mode when I started shipping her with Gyendal. And I don't even care about Gyendal at all. I started fooling around with Gyendal designs for the lulz. Then daevas got involved and I started tying things back to my AV1 whacky AU and things just ran off to lalaland.

Other than that, I agree. I like the characters because of all the fanon wahzoo I lumped on them. Canonically, everyone are blaaaaand. Any depth people seem to see are in their own heads.

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Amanda already admitted something along that lines a few pages back. Let me pull that up. Here we go.

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Specifically, I tend to ship a bad guy with a good person. My first ever such crackship was Princess Atta and Hopper from Disney-Pixar's A Bug's Life... WHEN I WAS EIGHT/NINE. Oh my, I'm scared of myself.

Same with Esme. I'd rather it be a humorous one than a dramatic romance. The only time I will shed tear is only for those animal movies. (Imma sucker for them. )

@KTC
Hahaha that's a nice way of summarizing the romance in the series. xD You know, I really, really had a tough time when playing AP. I was aiming for Talia but was 'forced' to change cuz Devin's granny only gave him a lame electric ring while if it's Alicia, you get rubies and diamonds.

And I've never finished the 3rd AV game so WOAH THE HECK STELLA AND EDWARD?! o__O I did NOT see that one coming! I agree with Adept about Mel being snobbish though. She is probably the only main character in the series that turned me off.

@D_A: I admit that ugly face-sets was a major turn off, and that's the exact reason why I never draw the main characters whenever I draw Aveyond fanarts.

Re characters: I don't hate them, actually. I'm just disgusted with them that I want as little involvement with them as possible. I'm not the type of person who'd dedicate so much time on characters I don't even like. Might gripe about them once in a while, but I won't write fanfictions or draw Anti!fanarts just to bash them.

Re crackship: Does it count as 'crack' if you write it in a serious context, though? I am under the impression that "crack ship" is a pairing that happens just because- and it's mostly played for laughs. Most of the time, this is fan shipping, but I guess canon crack pairings exist... And if fans support a couple which the characters involved barely shares a scene together in canon but the romance is written properly it's not counted.

To be fair, tvtropes DO say it's still crackshipping in a way. Though yeah, the pairing I support are mostly foe-yay fanship or "the Rumiko Takahashi couple" fanship rather than crack so...
Except for my AV1 stuff. That's still crack. I think.

I wasn't actually against Devin x Alicia, because they at least had a bit of banter (as little as it may be). Devin and Talia, despite being together all the time, barely spoke at all except for those recruitment scenes and all those quest things.

I haven't played AP all the way through so I have nothing for or against either couple. I care too little about the game to bother, LOL. I'm partially with Devin/Talia because of the bandwagon, but I actually don't really care for it.

Since I played AV1 before playing AP, I already knew that Devin and Alicia were the true couple and was kinda surprised that there was a Devin/Talia option. Still, I like how they're brought together through the union of their children (one of my rare moments as a hopeless romantic there).

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Well, that's the biggest problem with Aveyond series, really. There's just very little to no interactions between the party members- unless you buy a house (which is optional).

Anyway, in AP, Devin and Alicia did have one banter, but that was all. Other than that, nothing goes on between them- not even another playful bicker like Vance & Fayette from Three The Hard Way. There's also this fact that Alicia is an OPTIONAL party member- who, if you didn't complete a certain side quest, cannot be recruited at all because she is married to the Candar prince. The last time I finished the game, I didn't even use her at all because Jack and the shapeshifter were more useful party members.

Talia and Devin, on the other hand, have the dynamic of the typical male-female lead of an RPG. The heroine destined to save the world and the childhood friend sworn to protect her. Their situation is really similar to Ean and Iya (canon pairing) from AV2.

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To be honest, though, I rarely see an RPG-Maker game with good romance/interactions. The only exception is Romancing Walker- where attraction points is added when a girl is fighting in your party for an extended period of time, and at a certain level of point, you can unlock a special interaction scene with them.

Romancing Walker can be a fun romance game if you don't mind the butchered Engrish.

The problem with romance is that people will always link it to 'endings' (like VN types). Can they be together in the end? Can I marry them?

TTHW has none of those typical + points + scenes thingy; the story develops itself naturally. But it's kinda a stretch to call it a romance though. The 'romance' leans more on comedy actually (and why can't boys and girls have a platonic relationship?)

The Way is also a great game that romance is the driven force of the protagonist, but the story itself doesn't revolve at romance AT ALL.

I think we've beaten the "lack of interaction, woe!!" topic to death and into pulp. It's the same in AP, Av1 and AV3's. Most fans think the canon pairings, when given a choice, are derpfail. Dameon-Rhen had some sappy interactions. Edward-Stella had some cute interactions too. HOWEVER, the fan-preferred pairings have even MORE interaction, which makes them trump over the canon.

@Ivana: What's so wrong about VN-style romance endings?

Anyways, I'd say Aldorlea's Book of Legends is another example of good use of branching event system. You have lord-knows-how-many potential party members, but you can't take them all. You'll have to dump someone to make room for a new member. And to get someone to join you, there's a set of requirements you have to fulfill that may or may not be obvious. Who is in the active party changes the way events play out. E.g: there is a hole in the ground. If you have a dog, dog will dig up the hole and find something awesome. If not, your character will simply say "Look, there is a hole, derp." If you want to date girl A, you have to earn x attraction points by making the right choices when given the option. And to get those choices to show up, you have to meet another set of conditions or else you won't even see the event.

It's so complicated that it's making my eyes spin. And yet, THAT is how I want branching events to work out. That game proves that you can too make complex games with RPG Maker. This doesn't even need to be romance-related. The branching path affects what items you get and how the story plays out. The romance matter is, as stated above, filling up attraction points. If you don't fill up the attraction points the people will just part ways as friends. And then you don't even know which choice is romance-related or not. There's some that are just quest-related, or even pointless choice that only affect what someone says and nothing else. And that is GOOD.

@D_A
Because RPGs focuses more on 'saving the world' while VNs usually are about getting yourself a gf/bf. Are you seriously telling me to woo someone when there's a big baddie out there? Love is a huge distraction, so the characters shouldn't be flirting around or 'marry' in that matter.

And LOL Book of Legends' got NOTHING on TTHW when it comes to branching haha. The branches on TTHW is insanely huge that you'll probably have to open the game itself if you really want to know the secrets.

VNs aren't usually about getting a gf/bf. But what a VN does specialize in which RPGs cannot is that it has plenty of text available to set up a plot, and thus dramatic stories can occur, while for RPGs, you can't really do that without risking other people calling your game wordy and boring.

@Ivana: Oh wow, have you had the misfortune of ONLY encountering otome games and galge? Yes, otome and galge are also visual novels, but visual novels who focus on romance pretty much has their own genre. There are visual novels that isn't about romance, like Kansei and Jisei.

Also, some nicely-done romance VNs are actually more like "adventure/action story that happens to contain romance". Like those action movies that at some point end up with the hero and heroine hook up. There's an issue going on, they solve issue, and romance happens without them ditching the issue in favour of the romance.

I haven't tried TTHW (and probably never will) so I can't judge, but the way you describe it sounds like the two games are about on par with each other. Don't start having fan-myopia just because TTHW happened to impress you so much

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It IS called visual novel after all.

@Kirroha
Nope, they aren't usually but they are mostly.


@D_A
Puh-lease. If the 23353463% of dating VNs out there doesn't tell you something, then I don't know what. The VNs that aren't about dating probably can be counted in both hands.

Yeah there are some games that you can still hook up but not ditch the main quest, but how realistic is that? Stop by and marrying (like srsly?) when Ahriman's out there? What, is he gonna wait for you or something?

Lol and what fan-myopia? Fan-myopia happens only for crappy things. That chick who posted the game here in AM? She only signed up in here because she wanted to share the game with us. And many people have stated it is better than any commercial games out there *cough*aveyond*cough*(before I've played it). If you are going to judge a book by it's cover without even trying it at least and miss a classic because of that, then sure, go ahead.


Edited to remove profanity.
~Mopiece

Fan-myopia happens to include "not wanting to admit that any other work is just as good or better than the particular work they're fans of". Your insistence that BOL is definitely lesser than TTHW still counts as fan-myopia

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The creator made an account only to advertise the game in Amaranthia. Okay. And this matters why?

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Who's the judgemental person now? I never said why I "probably never would" try TTHW ever. See, you can't find out just how many branches ARE there without playing it over many times to see how your choices affect your gameplay. If you were indeed right about it being way more complex than Book of Legends, then I might as well not even begin to try it. I don't have the time for that. Time issue =/= "judge book by cover". I mean, I ditched Book of Legends before the trial ran out and I only knew how crazy the branching went because I knew people who could crack it open (Yay for having computer geek friends).

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Oi, read the post properly. I was talking about visual novels where the timeline is actually clear, unlike Aveyond where there's no such thing as day and night and you have no idea how much time has passed In the VNs I was talking about, they don't sit around making out while problem is still out there. The characters fall in love during the progression of the story, but only after big bad is KO'd do they go out on dates/get married/whatever.
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I have more to say that is not just rebuttal to previous posts, but my mind is incoherent right now. Will return when I'm less of a rambling mess.

Do you see people making an account just to share Aveyond, or, any other games on other websites? No. If someone's that dedicated to a game that much, it must have mean something at least. (One would still wonder how the heck Laxius Power's got band of worshipers.)

Ok, shoulda mention you didn't have time. I must ask, how did you find BoL? Is the story mediocre or good? If you've stopped playing just because you don't want to play a gazillion hours for the story and prefer to jump straight at the events, that'll take out the fun factor of gaming.

Oops, didn't see the 'solve issue first then hook up after' line

Eh, it's not like I want to purposely jump at the events. If I know there's going to be a bajillion branching paths, then I'd rather not play unless there's something I'm particularly interested in. Then I'll go find a walkthrough and make sure I get whatever I wanted. I'm someone who won't rest until I find all the paths and I'd rather not do that.

Do you mean how I stumbled across Book of Legends or how good do I find the story to be? For the first one, I subscribe to Amaranth and Aldorlea's newsletters, so I got notification about the game. About the story... well, it's very reminiscent of Drunken Paladin. Guy sets off to do something, then at some point finds that he's got himself tangled in something bigger than what he signed up for. Except it's far more crazy-complicated. DP is pretty much linear. BoL... I haven't gotten far enough to see how the choices affect what goes on in the story. I know a lot of hidden events involve choosing party members wisely and you can't get/access certain things without having a certain someone with you and/or have done a certain thing correctly.

Contains crude humour and somewhat lame jokes because the main hero-guy is a big jerk. It feels almost like Indy played Drunken Paladin, loved the concept so much but thought it could be made better, didn't feel like straight-out remaking the game and set out to make a similar game himself with different characters and plot. I was most iffy with the art because everything was taken straight out of RMVX's samurai RTP with the exception of one or two illustrations. Geh.

Now that I think of it, BoL is more like the adventure/romance VN. Plot happens, but it's ultimately a galge game (you play a guy chasing girls). If there were any difference in how you end the story at all, it's minor (or so I gathered from the talk in the forums). You'll have to explain to me how the branching paths in TTHW went.
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Annnnnd this post has spiralled into a "branching paths" discussion.

Back on pairings.

For an RPG, well, developers have to be willing to create many cutscene/conversation events so that the romance can happen in a natural way. And setting up events to "fake" time passing if implementing an actual timer is not possible.

For other stuff... it depends. So long as the progression is natural, I'm good.

On that note, I notice that most VNs, especially the Japanese one, use a path system. Which I don't particularly like. I like point system more, like what Hanako Games' stuff do. With path system, if you landed yourself in path X, you can't go away from that particular storyline. The only difference you'd make is whether you get a good pr bad end. With points, there's so many possibilities of what could happen to the story.