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To give a bit more serious take on the current western VN scene: The most disappointing part, to me, is how localized Japanese VNs are simply met with *indifference*. No one discusses them outside of threads buried in the depths of Twitter. No criticism, no reviews, no anything.

1:04 PM · Aug 25, 2018TweetDeck

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There are so many titles where I've been optimistic that they'll finally be "the one," the game that breaks through to a wider audience, but it never happens. So I've just given up on hoping at this point, quite frankly.

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@moogy0

Aug 25, 2018

There's been more discussion of Subahibi since its western release by people who played the game in Japanese than people who played it in English. A few Steam reviews and reddit posts here and there are all it gets, and it's not the only one, not by far.

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@moogy0

Aug 25, 2018

I know Japanese and hang out with others who do, so in the end the western scene isn't an immediate concern to me, but I am somewhat perturbed that the most popular Japanese VN translations were fan projects from a decade ago (Fate and Sengoku Rance).

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@moogy0

Aug 25, 2018

I've been forced to conclude that games where the brunt of the content is reading will simply never catch on anywhere, and it's essentially just a fluke if any VN attracts attention from a wider audience. After all, it's not like these games are very popular in Japan, either.

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@moogy0

Aug 25, 2018

idk where I'm going with this, but there's some rambling from a person who has watched the western VN scene grow up over the past decade or so.

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@moogy0

Aug 25, 2018

I guess mostly I'm just sour that a game like Subahibi has gone largely unnoticed. A work as provocative, experimental, and challenging as that shouldn't remain buried... though it's not like it was really marketed to anyone in any way...

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There are reviewers out there, but the small & closed nit nature of the VN community makes it a) hard to find reviewers b) hard for reviewers to get popular c) hard to get motivation to write other than pure passion It's a bit of a chicken/egg situation.

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and

If you live that passion it doesn't really matter. Especially stuff like your top10 visual novels or Conjuerors reviews inspired me to write about visual novels in general. People who put themselves out there can work as inspirations for others to try it out.

Heavyman, Martyr of Hope

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and

Danganronpa broke through, it seems, because of its sheer style. Not everyone can be that 💣

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and

There are special cases of course, like Steins;Gate and Danganronpa but most VNs that catch on do so mainly because an anime adaptation pulls attention towards them. VNs like Phoenix Wright are “known” by plenty but “played” by less in the West.

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