OMG I can’t wait to play this! It’s my favorite series I bought all the books will be getting book 5 ASAP.
and yet even infinity saga is extremely railroady in book 3 and will probably be even more in the next installments
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How is Lord of Infinity railroady? You got the two paths which split the first half the book plus an secret chapter based off a rare choice in book 2 which you also can’t get if you gotten an certain ending in book 1. You also have the semi hidden saboteur path. The different clubs you can join in the Capital path one of which has it’s own gameplay mechanic. What side you take in the second half too or before hand if you are in the Capital path. I might not call it pace well but I wouldn’t call it railroady compared to the other books in the series
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My bad I got it wrong then. You think you’ll do anything after soh with choice of games? At least without the “you” view point. Mabey first person or do you think this ride along with a character is where your writings best.
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The horses name, and every memory check in book five is so important if you bothered reading more than what is going on scene to scene. Ronin is the character, and he’s gone practically insane from his/her experience in hell /losing his loved ones ect.
Insanity and memory go hand in hand, if Robin forgets the names and spirit animals of all his friends and allies and such it shows he’s/she’s gone through such a trial they’re broken and more insane. The one who cherished his time. Remembers kuniko and the type of pony and any other choice/test redeems the ronin and shows his mind is recovering.
Sure it’s pointless to the image in your head of Ronin carrying Masami through a horde of zombies but it is important for character development and to the story having legitimate meaning beyond cool “samurai slicy slice backflip fireworks.”
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These games are like braids, many strands of hair or paths but they all meet back up at certain points, sometimes with a red ribbon other times a blue ribbon but they aren’t ever going to remain 400 different strands of hair/paths because that would be insane.
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Imao no matter if you choose to stay or not in your barony you are gonna end up in the capital either way and no matter how you perform in the battle you are going to either lose or win depending on the side you join, how is that not railroading
Hi,
Let’s concentrate on SoH instead of other titles in this thread please. I would suggest moving the Infinity discussion in their proper thread.
Thank you.
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I wouldn’t take that bet, because if it was a mainstream game, I’d put money on it being under 1.0. Because CS games are so niche and relatively short, I’d bank that the # is 1 point something. Even then, I suspect that a chunk of those people replaying the game are more like me - revisiting to try to get a more optimal result or replaying because the “save the end state” feature has become available. “Wide” games are interesting, but more often than not, if they go on long enough, you’ll see some version of a reset when the branching gets too big. A friend of mine gave me a good laugh after he played the third episode of the original The Walking Dead video game, and called it “Episode 3: Resetting the Variables”. There’s rooms for all kinds of approaches with Choicescript (something I know you agree with), but yeah, I can’t imagine that we’d be on Book 5 of SoH if you had gone with a different design approach.
It’s funny that you asked this because not too long ago, someone left a negative review on one of the games I worked on. The game has overwhelming good reviews, and this guy went so far as to point out the percentages of people who got certain achievements, acting as if he was cracking the Watergate case wide open. It’s an open secret to anyone in the industry that most people don’t finish games or, in some cases, get very far into them. It’s especially easy, too, with things like Humble, free giveaways, and sales with ridiculous discounts. People who don’t make a big investment when they buy more often than not don’t make a big investment when they play. If it doesn’t grab them or it’s too challenging, they’ll just move onto the next proverbially unwrapped game on their list (or retreat back to an old standby).
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Meanwhile me here who didnt remember the horse’s name but Google’d it …
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…I opened the fourth book and looked in additional stories (Steam version)
A maybe-not-coincidental thing Tosh did that made me chuckle.
In Book 2, Tosh mentioned using ‘a mixture of ginseng and wasabi’ as an aphrodisiac to get Hatch and Momo together, and ronin was like ‘now I know what happens if Tosh spikes my food with horseradish’.
During the Sister Sara episode, Tosh spiked our food with horseradish.
I don’t know if it’s just a coincidence or not but it’s hilarious if it isn’t, especially if you’re romancing Tosh. It may as well be a very subtle and ninja-like love proposal (which flew over the ronin’s head anyway)
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Mmm… Nah.
After (in order, spoiler before b5 unmarked):
- Kneeled before the Ronin and claimed him/her as the messiah;
- Given the Ronin a “massage”;
- Maken out after mission;
- Unleashed the elder Kondo onto him/her;
- Tried to save/kidnap him/her from J;
- Comforted him/her during the imprisonment in a not-so-subtle disguise;
- Planned his/her rescue;
- Tricked the hunters and the hounds by cutting his/her own arms (multiple times, for days);
- Stopped him/her from commiting suicide;
- “Spoiled” him/her in the bath ;
- Anything else? The time loops don’t count
I think that, by that point, they’ve already passed the subtly phase
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While Tosh is definitely not so subtle when it comes to worshipping the ronin (among other things), I think they are as hopeless as Jun/ko when it comes to doing something ‘romantic’ for the ronin outside of lust / expressing honest desires, and like Jun/ko (who tried to take the ronin out for a date), I think Tosh tried to do something which they canonically assumes is romantic here, which is using an aphrodisiac. I just think it could be Tosh’s unique way of “miserably failing at romance even though I’m not afraid to bang the ronin”, trademark of Jun/ko, but again hmm I may be thinking too deeply into this :')
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You know… Now that You made me see it, that’s basically the MO of every RO in the serie: high expertise in passion and sex, low in expertise in romantic.
PS except Kohaku, that one has too little screen time to be either
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I don’t think that Tosh made it on purpose, but it can definitely be a throwback from the author, Devon is careful with his details.
I also think that Tosh could do well with proper courtship if they needed to, but it’s not the language the Ronin would understand, and so Tosh had to course-correct.
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I don’t think momoko is that experience in sex she told us herself in the hotel scene should you sleep with her still very passionate tho lol and i’m pretty sure momoko is fine with romantic at least much better than the rest of the ros tho that’s not a very high bar 
also there’s just no freaking way kohaku has any experience in either romance or sex even from what little we’ve seen from them lmao
I feel like:
Good Sexually, Terrible Romantically: Jun/ko, Tosh/io
Terrible Sexually, Good Romantically: Momoko
Terrible at Both: Kohaku
Jun/ko is very obvious why I put them there.
I feel like Tosh/io would be good at sexual advances due to ninja training, and possibly has knowledge of how to court people via promixity to Satsuma but has either ignored or just hasn’t realised the normal dating side of things.
Kohaku strikes me as sheltered. I mean come on Kohaku meets a pretty Ronin once and is immediately trying to awkwardly seduce them.
Momo is Momo. She’s easily the best of these four at romance but that’s no high bar, one of them thinks literally leashing the Ronin like a dog is romantic enough!
Good question, I have no idea. The game does remember if you turned them down or accidentally encouraged them though.
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Is Kohaku even a legit RO though?
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I believe you are onto something here, which an idea that some struggle with: Choice of Games, despite the name, most of the time work as interactive novels rather than, well, actual games. I did expected that from the get go so, of course, I was not exactly surprised to find an approach like yours (which I enjoy a lot, you are an amazing author) but one can easily see how coming to this niche with a “game” mindset can end up in disappointment.
Still, there is enough variety out there, thankfully. Works like War in the West are good examples.
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