YU-NO

[Discoalucard]

www.hardcoregaming101.net/yuno/yuno.htm

This is an expansive visual novel article courtesy of Audi. There is an English fan translation too that creates a definitive version out of all of the different ports.

[pennywise]

I was just browsing this article the other day and spotted a typo on the 2nd page. You'll find a "aachieve" under the part about the fan translation.

[Vokkan]

Just wanna say thanks for the article. The game seems incredible.

[Narushima]

That was indeed quite a good read. I didn't know anything about the game before, now I want to play it !

I was thinking maybe if it hadn't been a hentai, it would have been more "respected", so to speak, and reached a broader audience.

[kal]

Will definitely check this one out, big fan of Visual Novels (even the H ones) that set out to actually be GOOD rather than poorly written slop.

[mesmer]

I have a question, might be a slight spoiler.

Spoiler in black text below:
I just finished the prologue, just past the part where Ryuuzouji points the gun at you, and then something happens. I'm in the new interface now and at the stones. I clicked on one of the 'jewels' and it disappeared. I read the article in more depth, and now find out that I set some kind of save state for branching. Am I totally screwed?

[mesmer]

Update (might be spoiler, so in black):
So I figured it out, clicked the feather in the map, and got my gem, back to two. I placed a gem before talking to Eriko on the roof about where Ayumi is. But must have placed it too late, as soon as I'm done talking to her the button stops blinking. I managed to go both ways on the next divergence but I end up in the same place (sector 19 I believe?), and am kinda stuck.

Ah well, more fun tonight! This game is great. This is the first game like this I've played, really enjoying it.

[Audi]

mesmer.

You can still play through the game without one of the first jewels, as you find new ones and can manage. Be sure to think carefully where you place the jewels The fact that you decided to play the game makes me very happy! Glad you are enjoying it.

[mesmer]

Thanks. I took a look at the walk-through just a little bit, and figured out where to go. Also realized that I can't go down every branch on the first try, need items from other branches.Not sure which main branch I'm on, but that is ok. I just want to play through myself as much as I can.

[Audi]

I hate to bring sad news on Christmas, but YU-NO's writer, Hiroyuki Kanno, has passed away.

He passed away on December 19th, but it was announced today by his company Abel. Within 6 months, the team that made YU-NO the incredible experience that it is, has both left us.

Kanno was 37 years old, born in June of 1974.

[roushimsx]

I had always kind of written this off as just one of those porn games that people obsessed a little too much about, but the article really piqued my interest and makes me want to play the game. It's a shame that it's so damned cost prohibitive to buy (in addition to being a bit of a pain to find someplace to import from in the first place). It's a darn shame when piracy is really the only financially reasonable way to experience something this critically acclaimed.

It might be a while before I finally do play it, but it's totally on my radar and I'll keep my hopes up for a rerelease of some sort. That translation patch sounds pretty remarkable.

[Gendo Ikari]

Dec 12, 2011 4:17:03 GMT -5 Narushima said:

I was thinking maybe if it hadn't been a hentai, it would have been more "respected", so to speak, and reached a broader audience.

Let me have some doubts. Even without the sexual element, it would have been still a heavily text-based game with much less interaction than the adventure games we are used to in the West, and even if localized in the years of its Japanese release, would have still been a niche game at best. You may rather ask why games like this were ignored by the publishers who import/ed eroge in the West, in favor of titles of lesser quality.

I knew of the fame of Yu-no but never thought it was so interesting; the "jewels" system seems to add an element of true reasoning and challenge to the usual "save at every choice, reach the end, and go back to try other paths" stuff. I suppose Yu-no has still those limits but, if the story to follow is so good... On top of that, I didn't knew of that fan translation/reconstruction project which is described as really terrific.

Again (in the sense I made the same point when commenting the Skygunner article), sometimes I felt it descended into a bit too much of a fawning, and a "we are above the average gamer" attitude - "It's a hard sale for some to see the benefits of simply reading and clicking a mouse at certain intervals compared to leading a platoon onto the Normandy beach in high definition" - which I find really unnecessary. The rest of the article before that already pointed all of the game's high qualities. I concede, however, that it must have been partly emotional to write, given Ryu Umemoto's recent death - and also the writer now! Both 37, my god. Were there more high-profile games Kanno wrote for?

[Not to be unrespectful but... are other key members of the team who made Yu-no alive and well, lest we start to think of a curse? ]

[Audi]

YU-NO being ignored at the time had something to do with how the market for eroge games at the time in the West. 1997 was really the first year in which those sort of games had any sort of "wide" release, meaning that they were presented as a full product with packaging and any sort of market value, after the relative cult success Megatech had in 95 with Knight of Xentar and Cobra Mission. But YU-NO was a large scale project for the genre and as such required larger budgets and more time than the lower tier games that were brought over at the time, like True Love, Immoral Studies and etc. By the time such things could be considered, I think YU-NO was just seen as too old to be sold as new.

I'm not sure why you see that particular comment as unnecessary. It is really just the more immediate recognizable example of game narratives in the average large game today, but the point is also that gamers, particularly those in the West are not often able to immerse themselves into a game unless it has the setting and point is spoon fed visually and broadly. The way YU-NO is told and the detail which it presents in the writing is so strong that the intensity of the circumstances which the characters are in feels much more threatening and the consequences more dire. The time that YU-NO spends on connecting the characters together with the situation and bond them with the player makes what happens to them much much more powerful that seeing 50 NPC die in any given interchangeable FPS game today.

Mind you this has become a problem in nearly all entertainment mediums over the last decade or so, with pacing out the window and everything just rushing into the action.

Kanno wrote many games which were influential and popular, some of which are mentioned, Eve burst error, Desire, Xenon, Exodus Guilty.

I haven't read the Skygunner thread yet but I found that article to be a humorous and light hearted love letter to a game which the writer feels is an essential game according to his tastes, while still providing enough info for others to see the game through their own view of what makes a game to their liking or not.

[mesmer]

I completed the game about a month ago. Thank you so much for writing this article. The game was incredibly fun, and engrossing. I've even got the music loaded in my car now. Now to decide what to play next.

[ryviusran]

I noticed this thread was no longer linked to the review article of YU-NO. 
At least the Forum link at the bottom of the article no longer directs people to this thread.

Also the reviewer from the article got something wrong.
He says that Takuya is a college student when he is a high school senior (I am not sure how you get that wrong if you've actually played the game).

BTW I've been doing a full 100% playthrough of the game and have over 63 hours recorded so if someone doesn't want to spend the time figuring out the confusing walkthrough then they could watch the videos I uploaded.

I'm already at the Epilogue in the uploaded videos so I don't have that much more to record.

Recorded videos


Here is part one just for those who want to see the video quality.