Katawa Shoujo released

[Taleweaver]

I personally find the notion that Shizune is essentially the one deaf girl in a class that is taught vocally, and has to rely on a fellow student who isn't even all that proficient to be her translator, to be much less believable than Hanako's situation. I don't know about Japan, but in the U.S. even a school without Yamaku's specialty would at the very least have a professional translator for her during classes. But it's fiction, and it's within the realm of plausibility, and even real life doesn't make all that much sense sometimes, so why worry about it?

Don't get me started on the Shizune arc. There's so much wrong with that arc, starting with the absolutely overboard way Misha and Shizune try to recruit Hisao for themselves and the super-generic "we invade your life" trope these two personify and ending in a multitude of jumbled fake drama, thrown together to present as many twists and turns as possible to keep the reader guessing whether all of this can somehow still have a good outcome. (Spoiler: of course it can.) This is the diametral opposite of Hanako's arc: it's nigh-impossible to relate to anyone inside this sub-story.

[Silvere]

EDIT: I think I know why Misha went to the school:

She wanted to be a teacher and learning sign language would be easier if she went to the school and used it each day with Shizune. Plus, she was in love with Shizune so it was kind of a case of her following Shizune. But yeah, no disability.

Nope.

If I remember correctly she didn't even intend to have anything to do with Sign Language and got "forced" to learn it by Shizune only speaking to her that way. As a result she sorta grew to like it and yeah..

Nevertheless, horrible route. =D

[OtakuD]

Just finished this last night and I must say that overall, I did enjoy it quite a bit. There were some really awkward moments in the writing though, often enough to even make me cringe, but the art and characters more than made up for it. The main character on the other hand, must suffer from a mental disability that they forgot to mention!

So if I had to summarise:

Pros
The character art is great
Individual stories are quite interesting (Though I do feel that they girls weren't "broken" enough to be a accurate reflection of reality)
Animated sequences were unexpected and surprisingly well done
A satisfying conclusion to most of the paths I played

Cons
Somewhat "immersion breaking" BG art
Writing is often a "skip fest" (And often treats the audience as though they are imbeciles)
A poor main character

[Aquane]

Well.. where to start... I haven't heard of this visual novel until discovering this thread, and after seeing the art and hearing how long it was in development, I got a bit excited to play it. I think I made a fatal mistake, I am currently on my first route, with Shizune. I just finished about two scenes after the sex scene. I just had to stop... lol. I can't even express how frustrated I feel over this game so far. Well first, the art is as stated before, beautiful. I love it and the animations, most of the characters, the music, and the concept of it. I just.. feel so bored with it! I mean the writing is just so.. generic at best, no offense to anyone. Its just after reading so many amazing stories, including VN's I just cannot get over the fact that this route is so... empty. Its like everything I've read so far was so insignificant, so boring. The whole student council thing was a bit entertaining at first, but after it being brought up time and time again I was just thinking to myself "Wow, I would have cut these two off by now." After that finally ended I couldn't have been happier..

Ah, then the festivals.. they were somewhat entertaining, and then when that was done it was like.. I just wanted to skip it all. That's how I feel right now, like I just do not want to continue with this route at all. Does it get any better with Shizune? I'm not dropping the game entirely because I have been reading good things about the other routes, but I have to admit I probably won't be playing it again anytime soon due to how much of a headache I have from playing this so far.

Another thing is that after awhile, it just seems like a boring everyday school life type of game, hardly mentioning anyones disability after awhile. and I'm still confused as to why Misha is even attending the school to begin with, what IS her disability? Also, after he gets together with Shizune I was waiting for when Misha would find out, then they ended up having sex and I'm like.. does she even know yet? I'd consider this a major betrayal of friendship to not even know two of my closest friends were together.

Well I guess I was just ranting, lol. Please though, someone reassure me.. this does get better in other routes, right? As of right now my impression on the game is that its.. pretty bland.

[DaFool]

Hanako and Rin

Not bothering with the rest.

[Taleweaver]

Am I right in the assessment that, had this game been "Hanako Shoujo" instead of "Katawa Shoujo", it would have been much better?

[Blane Doyle]

If Shizune's route had been rewritten, or they only had Kenji, Rin, Emi, Lilly, and Hanako it would have been much better. (But Hanako and Rin honestly DID have the best routes out of the bunch).

I always suggest playing Shizune first, because if you play the worst first you only have better ones to look forward to. (and best to get that out of the way if you want 100%). If you don't want 100%... best to skip that one.

I find it very sad that my least favorite route, and the worst, deals with someone who is deaf... I know quite a few people who have numerous hearing issues (and I have them myself in fact), and if they had just done a bit better on her I wouldn't be so annoyed by the route. It was just so... bland. I have had the misfortune to come across people (one's who don't know people with hearing issues and have admitted as such) say that "deaf people must be the most boring ever" because they played her route and disliked it.

I don't know, or care, if they are joking... but yikes.

[applegirl]

I think I fast forward the majority of Shizune's route. Which is sad because her Act I characterization was pretty interesting. I honestly don't know what went wrong there. There must have been a really subtle message or something lost on me, because I finished it just to get 100% completion.

All routes are far superior to Shizune's route. Easily. Should have replace Shizune's route with Kenji, that would have been hilarious. Or heck, Misha. She got the most screen time in the later acts for Shizune.

[LateWhiteRabbit]

I find it very sad that my least favorite route, and the worst, deals with someone who is deaf... I know quite a few people who have numerous hearing issues (and I have them myself in fact), and if they had just done a bit better on her I wouldn't be so annoyed by the route. It was just so... bland. I have had the misfortune to come across people (one's who don't know people with hearing issues and have admitted as such) say that "deaf people must be the most boring ever" because they played her route and disliked it.

I don't know, or care, if they are joking... but yikes.

It's quite sad how some people can act. One of the artists at the studio I worked at was deaf, and a lot of people ignored or avoided her because I guess she made them uncomfortable, but she was a delight. I didn't know any sign language when I started at the company, but we would sit and chat together or critique work by typing back and forth in Notepad, and she taught me a sign or two everyday.

It was funny and sad at the same time that she had to make up nicknames for a lot of people because they wouldn't introduce themselves to her. Two of my friends didn't even know her name and I was flabbergasted because she had introduced herself to them the day before. I told them this and they were all, "Really? We weren't paying much attention." It makes you want to smack people sometimes.

[Aquane]

Wow, I absolutely hated Shizune's arc but to think that people would associate that with how interesting REAL deaf people are... thats just terrible. Shizune isn't even that bad of a character, the writing was just bad for her route, almost nothing is learned about her other than what her personality type is, even later on it doesn't go any farther than that. Well I guess I'm glad I'm done with that, heh. I always do worst to best character routes, but I just wasn't expecting Shizune's to be that badly done.

I have a question too, when playing Lilly's and Hanako's arcs, do they differ that much? I mean are most of the scenes the same because they are close friends or does it play quite differently depending who you go for? Just wondering because if it isn't much different I'd rather play Hanako's first, shes more interesting to me and its killing me to find out what happened to her, lol.

[applegirl]

Yes, they differ greatly. Each route (besides Shizune's route) was great and very different from each other. I should warn you against going the whole white knight route for Hanako because the bad ending is...traumatizing to say the least T-T.

[Showsni]

So did anyone see CNN's iReport site was running a story based on Katawa Shoujo? Turned out it was made up, though...
Here's the story they ran: http://theglobaldaily.net/010412.html

And Kotaku showing why they shouldn't have:
http://kotaku.com/5876780/cnn-thought-g ... issed-joke

[Taleweaver]

This follows the controversy over another visual novel called 'Rapelay' which Taina Bien-Aime, Executive Director of Equality Now, called "An abomination," continuing to say "These type of games have no place in our society, we are working with community leaders and government to stop the spread of toxic games like Disability Girls (Katawa Shoujo)".

"Toxic games", my ass. Visual novels are literature (in the case of Katawa Shoujo, controversial literature), but there's nothing more toxic in these games than in other forms of written fiction.

Burnt a few good books lately, Miss Bien-Aime?

[Nightydreams]

Everyone knows that CNN, Fox and other supposed news companies are full of bogus bu***hit, the sad thing is people seem to love spooning truck fulls of this bu***hit into themselves and taking it for caviar.

"People who make these games should be ashamed", my ass. If your raising the crusade over something like this then I'd hate to see what you do about Television or maybe the INTERNET!

[papillon]

This follows the controversy over another visual novel called 'Rapelay' which Taina Bien-Aime, Executive Director of Equality Now, called "An abomination," continuing to say "These type of games have no place in our society, we are working with community leaders and government to stop the spread of toxic games like Disability Girls (Katawa Shoujo)".

"Toxic games", my ass. Visual novels are literature (in the case of Katawa Shoujo, controversial literature), but there's nothing more toxic in these games than in other forms of written fiction.

Burnt a few good books lately, Miss Bien-Aime?

Considering that the quote is completely fabricated, isn't it a bit silly to accuse her at this point?

Sorry, I don't mean to pick on you, but here we are talking about a fake news story that some people jumped on to report the HORROR because it fell in line with their preconceptions...

[Clarification - Yes, I know EN was the group that went against Rapelay. I have no idea what they'd think of KS if they knew it existed (it's not a rape game, they might not care), but I suspect they don't. It's certainly not on their current list of action items, and the design of the fake news story is such that it seems quite clear they just grabbed that name as part of mocking hentai controversies.]