The 'visual novel' is a rather unknown videogame genre. Or is it? Professor Layton, Phoenix Wright and many other games are sneaking into the limelight by combining traditional visual novel storytelling with innovative gameplay elements. Do they have the potential to go mainstream?
Over 12 years after its original release, dating sim visual novel Katawa Shoujo is going to be available via both Steam and Itch.io for PCs.
The Zero Escape series is classic and should come to Nintendo Switch.
Or better yet, they should bring the two first games, pretend the third never happened and make it again with better writers who actually know the characters.As a big fan of the series, I couldn't believe how bad Zero Time Dilemma was not only with its writing, but also its messy game structure, unsatisfying conclusion, ignoring the greatest mystery of the second game, bad new characters, and an epilogue that's actually hidden and made by just some text.
[SPOILERS]
And let's not forget the addition of sudden alien technology shoehorned into the plot.
[/SPOILERS]
EDIT:
"and the final game in the series, Zero Time Dilemma, won our 2016 Game of the Year award"
Oh wow, now I'm truly questioning your site's taste. At least at some point in the article you recognized it's the weakest of the three.
I enjoyed the third, but I completely agree it was a bit of a let down. The characters were so weak.
Agreed. It would be perfect on the Switch. I especially loved Virtue's Last Reward.
KeenGamer: "We have the best visual novels to suggest to you, but we do recognize that many gamers don’t consider visual novels as games. Sluggishly leafing through dialogues, from time to time making choices. Additionally, many don’t like the anime style of the genre. Maybe we can change your mind."
Although I love them, I don't really consider pure visual novels like Higurashi or Umineko to be games... however I like that there are more and more games nowadays that use visual novel aesthetics as their story telling device