Katawa Shoujo: HNNNGGGGGGG!!!

For my personal favorites order

Lilly = Shizune > Emi = Haneko > Rin.

"But if that happened, Melia might actually be happy. We can't have that." - Handsome Rob

Rin's route is just too depressing.

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The best stories are depressing ones. It doesn't even have to get better to be good.

I have my title for a reason.

This "faculty lot" you speak of sounds like a place of great power...

I'm in the opposite corner. Depressing stories that don't lead anywhere are just depressing. The best stories are heartwarming.

Hanako > Misha > Lilly > Emi > Hisao > Shizune > everyone else > Rin

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I try to avoid depressing stories but that's probably because they actually make me feel the emotion they set out to unlike stories that try to make me feel sad or angry. I don't like being depressed since it it is, by definition, not fun. I still have to acknowledge writing good enough to make me feel that way when I stumble into it, though.

Never read Rin's route. I suppose I liked Lily's route best? The writing for this is sorta mediocre and it's hard to get excited about it. Lily > Shizune > Hanako > Emi > Rin for girls.

The one good thing I can say about Rin's route is that it does a good job of deconstructing the Cloud Cukoo Lander. In act 1, it's just played for laughs, but once you get to know her, you find out it really sucks.

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Hanako>Emi>Shizune>Lilly>Rin as far as routes go, I did the 100% run, Rin's route and its multiple questions did a number on me. Lily is just too vanilla, Shizune's really not like the other routes, but the writer's distaste for her seeps in, Emi's route is fine by me, and Hanako just hit me in the biases.

In the... biases? What?

This "faculty lot" you speak of sounds like a place of great power...

I must be relatively alone in liking Rin's route a lot more than any of the other routes. Hanako's was too abrupt (a lot of dancing around stuff without really confronting issues until the end), Lilly and Emi's too vanilla, and Shizune's too disjointed.

Rin's, on the other hand, was unlike anything I'd ever seen before in terms of the nature of understanding, and how people can be together despite not having a full understanding of each other.

edited 16th Apr '16 10:47:04 AM by Muphrid

Author of The Second Coming (NGE) and The Coin (Haruhi).

"Right in the feels".

The one good thing about Rin's route I can say is that it explored Hisao rather well. For him, it's one of the best routes.

Except for, you know...

edited 16th Apr '16 10:54:37 AM by AnotherDuck

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I find Rin's route to be really the best written, but I find mercurial people hugely distasteful, I like my people like cogs in a machine, reliable to produce the same result most of the time. The madness that strikes the auteur is not more than flakery to my mind.

As much as I like Rin, I feel that her route had way too much text. I also felt that it got way too angsty at times. While I don't hate her route, I don't like it as much as the others.

I like stories that get really dark and sad and hard to sit through so long as it ends up being worth it in the end. I loved Rin, and I loved her route, but I'm not sure if that isn't just because I love her so much. Ultimately, Hanako's is probably the better written one. But Rin is the best person. Like, just. In general. Not even just within this game. Just the best there is.

What bugged me about Hanako's route was that the central conflict—whether Hisao can engage Hanako as a friend or potential lover, instead of someone to be coddled—isn't really confronted until the very end.

Yes, you can make the wrong choice and have that thrown in your face with a bad end. But in the good end's course of events, Hisao doesn't understand it, and his choice to be with Hanako doesn't reflect a deliberate choice to engage her as a peer. It's too impulsive. Or, alternatively, he happens to do the right thing (in part through the player's choices) without really seeming to struggle with the options.

If instead the route should be about people latching on to each other without real understanding, then Hisao's choice to go along with Hanako to her room reflects a desire to change that, but then the reason why Hanako accepts Hisao's overtures doesn't fit the same theme.

So it may be there are two competing themes in that route which don't complement each other as well as they could.

Author of The Second Coming (NGE) and The Coin (Haruhi).

It's been so long, so I can only go by memories of my old impressions, but I remember Rin's route being the most heart-wrenching (in a good way), Hanako's had that one "oh crap I really screwed up" moment, and Emi's was just enjoyable in a general sense. Lilly's and Shizune's were not quite as memorable in comparison. Shizune's route actually felt like kind of a slog, for some reason.

Character-wise, I really can't rank them at all. I like all the characters, just in different ways.

This "faculty lot" you speak of sounds like a place of great power...

I find that Hanako's route is a lot about the illusion of understanding someone (compared to Rin's which is straight out not understanding), so for me it makes sense that there isn't actually as much understanding in the route as you might expect. You can mess up if you think you understand someone you don't understand, but you can just as well make the right decisions even if you don't understand someone. In the end, talking it out, honestly, is the best way to understand someone, but reaching the kind of trust to actually do that can be a journey in itself.

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Yeah, I liked Hanako's route. Not as much as Emi's or Lilly's but it was a good route.

I found the lack of payoff annoying. Relationships aren't done just because you started dating. And maybe I'm forgetting something but did the protagonist ever realize that he was being a moron for coddling her and needed to stop or did he just kind of guess right and things worked out?

He doesn't figure it out, or if he does, it's kept even from us in the audience.

Or perhaps you could look at it this way: we are the ones who have to figure that out and make the right choice to avoid the bad end.

I'll give Hisao credit for wanting to get to know Hanako, and maybe being upfront about that is part of treating her like a peer or a genuine friend.

But him deciding to get with her always struck me as impulsive, and that's why it felt unsatisfying to me—if it is indeed impulsive, then it doesn't reflect a deliberate choice to treat her more like an equal. It just...kinda happens to work out that way.

Or at best, it reflects that in his heart, he no longer feels like she needs to be sheltered. That's not bad, but still not quite as satisfying to me.

Author of The Second Coming (NGE) and The Coin (Haruhi).

I think he implicitly figured it out based on the actions he takes. That's still what you choose, but the choices you make affect what he knows and feels. It's a visual novel, not a novel.

The route isn't about making the relationship work. It's about making it happen in the first place, and about how both of them relate to others, each other in particular.

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Or just be bad or rushed/hurried writing to meet the final deadline.

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Exactly! You're catching on! But seriously, Lilly's route is pretty vanilla until you realize she gets addicted to things really easily...like booze....and sex.

Until you realise the prim and proper looking Lilly is more of a wild girl than any of the others.

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