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ShardPhoenix comments on April 2015 Media Thread - Less Wrong Discussion

6 Post author: ArisKatsaris 01 April 2015 06:34PM

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Comment author: ShardPhoenix 02 April 2015 01:02:02AM *  2 points [-]

I'm going to recommend the Muv Luv series of visual novels. This is a military sci-fi story where the lead of a slice-of-life harem/romcom finds himself in a war-torn alternate timeline, and has to learn to pilot giant robots in order to fight alongside battle-hardened versions of the girls from his own world. There are 3 parts: Muv Luv (romcom), Muv Luv Unlimited (darker military focus), and Muv Luv Alternative (very dark military/war). Muv Luv Alternative is the #1 ranked VN on vndb.org, with an average score of 9.28. Apparently it's also the highest ranked on the equivalent Japanese site.

The series has many virtues, but also some major caveats.

I'll start with the good stuff:

  • Amazing battle sequences - the animation is very advanced for a VN and the best battles are among some of the most tense and exciting I've experienced in any medium.
  • Interesting exploration of duty and identity in the politics arc.
  • Fun character interactions and humor.
  • Many very emotionally compelling moments - this story made me cry more than any other I've experienced (for both happy and sad reasons).
  • Pretty smart writing in general - characters don't obviously hold the idiot ball unless they're supposed to be idiots or are acting emotionally at the time.
  • Great world-building with well thought-through military/technical elements.
  • Great character development for the main character.
  • Amazing, film-quality music (more so in Alternative).

Downsides:

  • Extremely long overall - at least about 80 hours for the whole thing.
  • The first part ("Muv Luv") is a very silly and fluffy romcom, and while it's often amusing, it's over-long and some parts really drag (ugh, the lacrosse). By contrast to Alternative's 9.28 average score and #1 ranking, this only got 7.14 and #476, and shouldn't really be skipped due to important character and plot setup.
  • Only available in English via an old pirated version that requires some technical fiddling to get it to work (comes with a readme to explain this).
  • Has gratuitous sexual/fanservice elements.
  • Some of the tear-jerker moments may come across as heavy-handed or manipulative if you're not in the right mood for them.

Neutral elements:

  • Not heavily decision driven - the main routes in Muv Luv are extremely obvious, and Alternative only has one route.
  • The prose (and/or translation thereof) is quite simple and straightfoward, compared to eg Fate/stay night.

I wasn't sure whether to post about this because of the downsides, but I read it a couple of months ago and it's still on my mind enough to feel worth recommending. I'd strongly recommend it if you have the time to spare and like both military sci-fi and emotion-heavy stories.

Content warning: Explicit sex and violence.

Comment author: Username 02 April 2015 02:24:31AM 4 points [-]

Fair warning to anyone thinking of attempting these visual novels:

  • The protagonist is the dumbest and most thickheaded person I've ever encountered in fiction (and I've read a lot of dumb fiction, including quite a few visual novels). If you cannot tolerate extreme idiocy, you're not going to like this series.

  • About half the story is meaningless filler (yes, that's 40-50 hours of reading time).

  • The plot is very straightforward and predictable.

(Posting from the anonymous community account since I don't want to get into another argument with a muvluv fan about any of this. This is strictly my opinion, take from it what you will.)

Comment author: ShardPhoenix 02 April 2015 03:23:58AM 1 point [-]

The protagonist is the dumbest and most thickheaded person I've ever encountered in fiction (and I've read a lot of dumb fiction, including quite a few visual novels). If you cannot tolerate extreme idiocy, you're not going to like this series.

He's pretty dumb at the start but I think he grows nicely as a person over the course of the series, though he's certainly never particularly smart.

Comment author: Baughn 05 April 2015 08:06:19PM 1 point [-]

On the flip side there's Luv and Hate, which is an (incomplete! still good) rewrite of the Muv-Luv Alternate story with a guest protagonist from... Supreme Commander. Including the ACU.

It's well-written, mainly character-focused with a few amusing combat interludes, and oh so gratifying after attempting to read the grimdark original.

It's also a quest. If this doesn't mean anything to you folks... don't worry about it, you can treat it as an ordinary story if you wish.

Comment author: Dorikka 11 April 2015 12:31:40AM 0 points [-]

Where/how can one buy this thing?

Comment author: ShardPhoenix 11 April 2015 12:41:41PM *  0 points [-]

There's an online store with various versions of the game and spinoffs: http://www.age-soft.co.jp/dlstore/

But the games have never officially been released in English and I don't know if it's even possible to buy them outside Japan. AFAIK most English speakers download a torrent which contains a pirated version of the disk images plus a tool to automatically patch in the English text. If you can manage to buy the Japanese version you can also find and install the translation patch separately, but IIRC the translation patch is only compatible with the older version, not the version that was remade for better Windows 7 compatibility.

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