Thanks for your comments on Katawa Shoujo; I was interested to read them. It does, indeed, take a long time toe-ahmet said:
It does, indeed, have a great deal of polish. Just lovely.
I read a couple of others, when I was searching for game engines for the game I'm making. The RenPy engine can make something that's a lot more like an actual game than Katawa Shoujo is, and even the other visual novels I've experienced had more choices per hour of reading than Katawa Shoujo does. Of course, I only read a handful of them, so I don't know what the average really is. There was a cute one about a girl and her robot.
The first time I went through Katawa Shoujo, I didn't use a walkthrough, and I died at the end of the first act, even though I didn't make any obviously silly or or stupid choices. So I recommend a walkthrough. :'(
Using a walkthrough, I played the Lily path first. Although I liked Lily herself -- and the nude Lily is gorgeous -- I didn't like this path as much as some of the others. Lily's sedateness made it feel as if I were going out with a middle-aged lady, even though we were both supposed to be in high school. And I thought the ending was forced and didn't really grow out of who the characters were.
I played the Rin path next. I liked Rin a lot when I first met her -- she seemed like a free spirit who thought deeply and spoke unconventionally. Even the "good" path relationship with her is extremely unsatisfying, though. She seemed a lot weirder in a relationship than she did when I first met her. I usually like quirky and unconventional people, but Rin got more standoffish and strange, and it was like having a relationship with a photograph.
I played the Emi path next. I had avoided Emi because I thought she's probably give poor Hisao a heart attack, either through his trying to keep up with her, or through whacking him in the chest or something. I thought her path was the most realistic of the ones I played. She seemed to me to have realistic problems that matched what she'd been through, and it felt like she was reacting to those problems in ways that people actually do. A relationship with her was the most satisfying of the ones I tried.
I didn't like Shizune at all, so I'm definitely not playing her path. I'm not sure if I want to try Hanako's path or not -- have people played her? What's she like?
The one I really wanted to have a relationship with was the librarian, Yuuko, but she wasn't an option. Something about her just seemed endearing to me. Maybe it's just that TW1 gave me a taste for redheaded women.
Her route is basically about white knighting, but I don't want to spoil it.
