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Writing Difficulty
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BeginnerNoviceModerateModerate+ (don't try these for your first VN, please)DifficultVery Difficult
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First list (http://forums.fuwanovel.org/index.php?/topic/3493-for-love-of-vns-for-beginners/)Second list (http://forums.fuwanovel.org/index.php?/topic/3493-for-love-of-vns-for-beginners/)痕 ～　きずあと (long stretches of description, exposition (during the later routes), and of the protagonist's thoughts. Other than the exposition, it's not really hard, just that you are going to want to be comfortable understanding written trains of thoughts as it plays a larger role here. Dialogue is straightfoward.)ハピメア (somewhat purple prose, I found it suprisingly hard to follow the MC's thoughts when he ruminates. Maybe because he's not a strong character. Might be just me though.)きっと、澄みわたる朝色よりも、(Between Difficult and Difficult+) (First of all, the sentence complexity is highish. A fair amount of the monologue begins from concepts from the Japanese language. The description is rich and relentlessly evocative. The normal conversation isn't really that hard at all, and you should be able to understand the most of the gags alright. Though sometimes they do talk about truly strange things.)いつか、届く。あの空に。　Fuck this. I hope you like complex sentences, cause 60% of the novel is made out of them. Most of the VN is not so hard, but the hard parts are stupid flowery. In terms of pure floweryness, those parts are about as flowery as I've seen. Add to that the vagueness and confusingness of the monologues and setting. It probably will make sense after you read a full explanation, but it's vexing sitting through the whole playthrough while not getting what half what the characters are talking about refers to. Characters talk in indirect manners sometimes, but that's similiar to Muramasa.
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*翠の海 （Has some minor casual speech, and some of protagnists and others ruminating. Ignore the begginning, it get's easier.)この大空に、翼をひろげて (I found the writing style a little wierd wrapping my head around, even though it should be pretty typical)Gore Screaming Show (Not that hard, not easy either. There's a lot of casual speak. Also written in third person, which is rare for VN's.)銀色　(The writing is overall a bit on the difficult side. N1 grammar and expressions are scattered around freely where they are natural. The prose isn't purple, but there are a lot of artistically and emotionally descriptive lines. There is some older speech, which is unvoiced. Only the heroines are voiced, so you have four (five?) protagonists, all with their lines of thoughts. Also, the whole VN has themes running in it, meaning there's a lot that could use paying attention to besides the Japanese.)群青の空を越えて Throuroughly full of politics and military terms. This basically comes hand in hand with vocab difficulty I suppose.Rui Tomo (Considerably harder for the non-native. Famous for it's 難解)
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*そしての世界より―― (gets a little harder in bits and places, but they aren't essential.)放課後の不適格者 (Lots of audio and visual ques, but language is a little harder than other titles at this level. There's a lot of description of characters' feelings and emotions but they should be clearly stated. Also there's a lot of names to remember at the start. The combat scenes are a little more difficult as well.Gurenka (The text is fairly simple, I got used to the author's writing in a few days. Kuon might give you some trouble as she has a little achaic speech. Also some of the supernatural/chuunibyou parts are pretty abstract: you kinda have to know exactly what the japanese says because it's not something you could guess. The conversation can be a bit indirect, referencing past things, with everything airing on the side of briefness. The VN kind of has a clean good pacing feel: even though there's plenty of everyday scenes, the scenes themeselves are not drawn out.)新世界より {Novel} The book is nicely presented, if you understand it the scenes should be clear and vivid. Infodumps and description of physical objects, animals, detailed parts are one part I would consider "Difficult", but they aren't essential to enjoying the story.Hello Lady (Feel the grandioseness! A few considerably hard places, the rest is not as bad.)
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*星織ユメミライ (nice and simple, a decent game too, I'd recommend to beginners unless they want a more serious story)ヨスガのソラ (Not hard.)Evenicle (Some of the country/company/rank/setting description might be harder, but otherwise pretty normal difficulty.)Ikusa Megami Zero (some slightly arhaic conjugations and formal speech. Neither is essential, though. The regular text isn't very hard, I just put it here because of the large amount of lore, some archaic stuff, and exposition.)高級娼婦　(Normal scenes are prosy but the dialogue can be straightfoward. I found the somewhat indirect dialogue between the MC and the other characters (sometimes dealing with the setting) hard to understand at times. I'm terrible at inferring things)
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*Ley Line 黄昏時の境界線 (very nice simple text, developments are pretty easy to follow. The first game is a bit undeveloped for my tastes, but I here it gets better in the next vns)さくら、咲きました （Too many jokes and digressions to be at novice level. Though you'll probably get the gist of it anyways.)セミラミスの天秤 (Casual style at times, conversations and thoughts that are jumpy and/or meaningful, uncommon words from a couple domains. The conversation topics are sometimes implicit and it's hard to tell sometimes what the characters are referring to. Also a lot of debates about intelectual stuff and complicated sentences. Something I like about this Vn is not much is obfuscated, everything is out there on the table for you to think about without needing to have good memory or perception.)機関幕末異聞ラストキャバリエ {Formal and older style of speaking. The author thankfully keeps the casual speech a splicing of modern with dated elements so that shouldn't be especially hard. The hardest part is just all the huge amount of history information.}
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無限煉姦～恥辱にまみれし不死姫の輪舞～ (Not difficult, though there are a lot of thoughts and some abstract topics discussed near the end...I think it's a work with strong emotions. Imo it's not a good work to water-down for yourself for learning Japanese.)Sousei Kitan Aerial (Military explanations, lots of info dump. If you ignore that it's just above moderate.)
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*こなたよりかなたまで (Lots of sections of inner monologue and the protagonist thinking about other characters. I suppose the most important thing of each of the routes is not the physical events but the mental states, outlooks, and reconcillation of beliefs(?) of the characters. It should come through across fine, I think. Otherwise, not hard at all, just not much visual aid. As an older VN it's not that long a read either.)酷罪を受けるべき者 {Doujin VN} Lots of slang, not voiced. It's written in first person with a bitchy(but great) female main character. Otherwise, not so much easy as it the context is straightforward and easy to follow. Going to be signfiicantly harder if you aren't used to reading without voices though.とある飛行士の追憶 {novel} (A usual level of literary style. Some of the airplane and sky description is hard to visualize though. Overall, I found the text read smoothly after a while. Quite liked it.)
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*穢翼のユースティア (Buff up on your grammar before or while playing this (knowing all N2 will cover virtually everything, but you can make do with knowing all of N3). The writing is so plain and consistent that it'd be a shame to miss out on the chance to engrain the grammar in your head. There are a lot of different types of formal address later on in the novel, but it should be understandable with TA and as time goes on. It's not a bad place to pick up those things.)Grisia no Kaijitsu (Kinda tricky. Well mainly the jokes.)ソーサリージョーカーズ {Surpisingly hard. Some of the characters speak in hard to understand ways.}*装甲悪鬼村正 The protagonist uses very formal language. Many of the character speak in affected or archaic tones, and in indirect fashions. There are infodumps on history, mechas, characters' pasts, combat, folklore. There novel deals with politics, government positions, some military, etc. While it does do all that and with a huge vocabulary, there aren't any obtuse metaphors or themes running through the novels. If you haven't read any non-fiction or fiction dealing with politics before, those sections will especially difficult. Same with the sword arts, but I don't really care about those.
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*遥かに仰ぎ、麗しの (One of the characters speaks politely like a maid which may be an obstacle, your best buddy speaks in a coworker casual fashion. Other than that should be fine. I found it not-so-easy though.)破壊の御子{LN} (Not difficult to understand, just a lot of exposition. As always, it will feel harder if you aren't used to reading text without visuals.}Evolimit (Gets a bit harder later on as the text gets more intense. Also, lots of comedy.)*Hotel Ergriffen {Short VN} (Very prosy, lots of striking metaphors. But I find it reaaaly helps drive the atmosphere in the novel. What little plot is sort of vague too. But at the same time there isn't really a setting which means you don't have to figure that out.)
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*向日葵の教会と長い夏休み (I think? The character speech is very casual/affected, but you should be able to tell easily from context. There are some detailed scenes about emotions and feelings which may be more difficult. Also one chapter has like an explanation of the local folklore.)空ろの箱と零のマリア　{LN}　（Well the story is a constant evolving mystery and shifting plot, so the content itself can be hard to digest. The writing style is a little tricky. Will feel harder if you are only used to reading VN's. The dialogue is often very classroom casual (but not like heavy accented i think), and there are tons of gobi at the end of sentences.)少女神域∽少女天獄 -The Garden of Fifth Zoa (Lots of exposition, lots of information about the setting. The conversation and thoughts are otherwise normal difficulty though.)
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*?Baldr SkyPrincess Sacrifice {Doujin Ero VN/RPG hybrid} (Unvoiced rpg, though it isn't that long. The expositions (also the optional ones for each of the bad-end h-scenes) are a bit harder. There's also a few old in-game book excerpts, which are stiff and archaic. These aren't nearly essential though.}東京バベル (Descriptions of Christanity and abilities and stuff.)
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*Himawari (if you are playing the original, play with the voice patch, it's easier and funnier!)遥かに仰ぎ、麗しの (has a fair bit of politics/economic backdrop, formal/stuck-up langauge, wide range of speaking styles and vocabulary. The scenes are a bit shorter and have less context sometimes. Not nearly as easy Clephas states. Still a super cute game though.)The House in Fata Morgana {Unvoiced. It will be hard to enjoy the VN as much if you can't pick up the different speech tones of the characters.}
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*Dark Blue (On the easier side. Just, like in older works, there's a little bit of exposition. Sentence structure is simpler though, and it should be easy to follow what's happening in all the scenes)Kurenai no Tsuki {Writing's not hard per se, but the exposition is going to be more difficult because of the high amount of japanese terms. They talk about family relations, folktales, the village, etc. However, some of the exposition is written in an archiac style.}
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*紙の上の魔法使い　(The writing is a little tricky occasionally, just not a super simple writing style. The frequent change in perspective might throw you off... some of the changes that occur in the text don't have very good visual cues.　Edit: moved it up from moderate: it's actually quite tricky...incomplete information, mystery, characters that fuck around, with you, detailed description but some requiring good inference to follow along with what it's describing.)
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*魔法少女 {Free VN/SRPG} (Difficult parts are lots of unvoiced casual conversation, and some unhookable character profile text. There's also sci-fi exposition scattered around (not particuarly simple nor hard). If you have a solid grasp of casual conversation, it'll be a cakewalk. Otherwise the lack of voicing will be challenging.)
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*Fault Milestone 1 (Warning: game is unhookable. Lots of infodump and describing a corporation + magi-science technologies. Still highly reccomend reading the original japanese. The translation deviates way too much from the original (maybe the result of lots of editing)) EDIT: The writer of the game released an update which totally replaces the translation of fault 1: it should now be totally fine. Props to them for that.
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*Swan Song (huge walls of text, but I don't think anything was particularly hard. Similiar to きずあと in that sense.)
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