When I began to explore the worlds of anime and manga, it wasn’t long before I heard the word “Visual Novel”. I had no idea what they were and it wouldn’t be until many years later that I was able to play visual novels (back then, Steam was highly curated and visual novels weren’t available on the platform).
I eventually learned that a visual novel was a text based game usually with anime style visuals. This genre is very popular in Japan with visual novels making up a majority of the PC gaming market. As you might expect, these types of games are controversial for many reasons from the level of sexuality in some of these games to how cheaply many of these games are produced and many even question whether a visual novel is even a video game!
I can certainly understand this viewpoint. Many visual novels have little to no interaction beyond clicking through text. However, an important distinction that is often ignored is that there are two types of visual novels. The type I previously explained is often simply referred to as a novel (NVL) in Japan. On the other hand, there are adventure (ADV) visual novels that feature gameplay (usually puzzle solving).
I must confess that I am not a particularly big fan of NVL visual novels. The walls of texts eventually cause my eyes to glaze over. While they do sometimes include choices, the lack of interaction seemingly defeats the purpose of video games as an interactive medium. Perhaps viewing NVLs as regular novels would help their reception but it is hard to disassociate them from video games when they are sold in the same manner.
I would like to point out, however, that I greatly enjoy ADV visual novels. As mentioned in “Why You Should Play Puzzle Games“, I am a big fan of both the Danganronpa and Zero Escape series. Both of these series are extremely wordy but are excellently broken up by engaging puzzle segments, whether that be the investigation and trials of Danganronpa or the escape rooms of Zero Escape.
We have also seen western developers begin to try their hands at the visual novel genre. While most have failed to catch my attention (Long Live the Queen being a notable exception, watch my let’s play here!), there is no doubt that there have been many successes. Easily the most popular western visual novel I can think of is Doki Doki Literature Club! which surpassed 2 million downloads in 4 months.
Visual novels are an endlessly fascinating topic of otaku fandom and, while there are a myriad of problems associated with them, there is no doubt that there are many titles that are worthy of playing. Let me know what your thoughts are on visual novels and which ones you have played.
Thanks for reading and if you wish to seek any of the titles I mentioned, don’t hesitate to use amazon.co.uk or amazon.com for all of your needs! Also feel free to follow my curator page on Steam “JRPG Reviews” for thoughts and opinions on any JRPGs that I play and my YouTube channel “Victory Achieved Gaming” where I guide my friend through challenging games.