Stories that left you disappointed for a reason

[viha06]

I feel like I need to defend my man Chase here
He's just a fascinating character and I do understand how people might get sick of him but even if you don't romance him, he's a great friend nonetheless and always at your side. And if you're romancing any other RO he even teases you and pushes you in their direction.

And yes completely agree that the male ROs in shoh have a greater preference than the female ROs. It seems very obvious when you play and compare the routes.

I think the worst is poor Sherry and Riel have so few romantic scenes with MC until the latter half of your journey that I feel is just unfair...

As a Chase lover, I also love and adore Trouble and Red routes. I'm always confused which route to take because they're both so fun when you romance them, they seem to be a bit matured and lighter than the Blade and Chase routes when comparing their stories. ( Not that much of a fan of Blade, fed up of the closed off character have to say but I can see the appeal)
True enough if you go through the author's Tumblr, it's very clear that Blade is her fav RO.

Man I just love Chase though, I think it's the flirty characters that do it for me.

 

[seneya]

Not a specific story, but rather a... twist? Plot? That is starting to annoy me.
When there are two sides, except it turns out the bad guys are actually good, just misunderstood or forced into evil or just plain discriminated against, while the good guys are bigoted, self-righteous, and just not good at all. It might have been a clever deconstruction once, but by now I feel that it itself deserves a deconstruction...

 

[Sant]

The remake demo of Summer of Love really did disappointed me, now the characters and the protag feel overly smart and observant to me, making me feel kinda dumb and slow to follow them. The dialogues and writing feel way too deep for a first day impressions, in my opinion. I miss the older version because it felt laid-back and suave, not... this.

 

[BiscuitB]

The remake demo of Summer of Love really did disappointed me, now the characters and the protag feel overly smart and observant to me, making me feel kinda dumb and slow to follow them. The dialogues and writing feel way too deep for a first day impressions, in my opinion. I miss the older version because it felt laid-back and suave, not... this.

I feel bad for the author as she's had a lot of accusations of using AI, when she adamantly saying she doesn't and I tend to believe her reading some of the questions she's had. Tho I do agree, if feels very inflated? Like we're just plying on, I feel we're so observant that there is no MC or freedom of thoughts. It's all been told to you.

 

[blossom1]

Ok finally got to reading na daoine maithe and boy am i disappointed...

Ive been following this game for years tbh, Book 1 was okay (demo right?) but getting to routes? Boooooo

I went with Maeve...apparently you *need* to read all the routes to get the proper story which is...im not reading that.lol Thats a very stupid and frustrating way to present a story. i finished this route with absolutely no answers or knowledge about the mc and their origins + a half assed relationship in which the mc was nothing more than a voyeur.. a simpering idiot one at that... This is where its annoying to read tumblr asks because its a whole different story there

single most annoying experience. I want my money back and i didnt even pay (thank god)

 

[Kein]

Ok finally got to reading na daoine maithe and boy am i disappointed...

Ive been following this game for years tbh, Book 1 was okay (demo right?) but getting to routes? Boooooo

I went with Maeve...apparently you *need* to read all the routes to get the proper story which is...im not reading that.lol Thats a very stupid and frustrating way to present a story. i finished this route with absolutely no answers or knowledge about the mc and their origins + a half assed relationship in which the mc was nothing more than a voyeur.. a simpering idiot one at that... This is where its annoying to read tumblr asks because its a whole different story there

single most annoying experience. I want my money back and i didnt even pay (thank god)

Was already turned off when i learned they gonna release it by characters.

I wonder if it's gonna be like Alaris - you won't learn the whole story unless you do every route(or at least the last two) and romances were so boring. Only Fae routes were kind of better, but still felt like i was eating plain bread. The most interesting part of the whole VN was to learn about mc's heritage, cause after reading everything i don't really remember any of the characters just their archetypes. And don't get me started on characters sprites, that was the most "same face syndrome" i ever encountered and i rarely ever criticize art in vn's.

 

[yourstalkeroutside]

Now to put the same complaint I wrote on COG forums somewhere sane: Choosing coily hair or and an afro and getting lines about how my hair cascaded down my back or picking dark sin and having your biological parents be pale as paper. There's no excuse for not googling something if you aren't sure about it or just saying I can't write this. Putting these options just to say you have them and ignoring it after is stupid.

 

[Zoklitsos]

Now to put the same complaint I wrote on COG forums somewhere sane: Choosing coily hair or and an afro and getting lines about how my hair cascaded down my back or picking dark sin and having your biological parents be pale as paper. There's no excuse for not googling something if you aren't sure about it or just saying I can't write this. Putting these options just to say you have them and ignoring it after is stupid.

Omg YES. I've been thinking about this a lot lately because it had been a while since I had sat down to read an IF properly and I've been binging a few games in the past week so I've noticed a lot of small stuff like this and it's been on my mind. Especially for the hair, when it says something about how you run your hand through your hair or how a RO tenderly runs a hand through your hair and stuff like that Like I don't even have coily hair, just veerry curly thick hair (if my hair was coily this would pmo even more) and if someone tries to run their hand through it they're either getting it chopped off for ruining a good hair day, or alternatively their hand is getting permanently trapped in a tangle until the scene goes from "intimate eye contact" to "calling emergency services with a pair of scissor''

I know a lot of these things are stuff that authors write without a second thought bc they're such common gestures - running your hand through your hair as a sign of frustration, your RO doing it as a sign of affection, etc. But in interactive fiction, you can’t just offer diverse cosmetic variables at character creation and then paste straight-hair default physics into the prose. Remembering how those traits actually interact with the world is what separates basic cosmetic fluff from genuinely great IF writing.

I know it might seem like a small thing, but thinking about things like this is part of what can elevate you as a writer in the IF genre specifically. True character customization isn’t just setting a variable in Chapter 1 so a stats screen looks nice. Like you have to respect how that character actually exists, moves, and interacts with the world (and other characters) throughout the story. Being conscious of how those choices ripple through the text is what elevates an author from someone just writing a novel with button choices to a genuinely skilled IF designer.

 

[yourstalkeroutside]

if someone tries to run their hand through it they're either getting it chopped off for ruining a good hair day, or alternatively their hand is getting permanently trapped in a tangle until the scene goes from "intimate eye contact" to "calling emergency services with a pair of scissor'

Reading "You put your hair into a quick ponytail" and you picked short coily hair for your PC. I have coily hair, it doesn't do ponytails unless you have 4b hair (and not in the way these IF writers think) or straightened it and short coils definitely not. Our hair shrinks. Short coily hair would pretty much sit on top your head. The amount of work needed to get it to ponytail length is not something that would take 5 minutes on. Also, dreadlocks (also known as ras or locs) are not braids, but that's a less common error since most IF authors ignore the option and just default to straight hair anyway.

Another funny thing with Ifs is hair colour. I have had to restart so many IFs because I picked brown hair and got the description of honey brown or mahogany brown hair and I created a black character. You'd be hard-pressed to find that hair colour in non-mixed black people, our version of dark brown hair can be mistaken for black. I have only seen 1 IF that actually has that as an option and that's BoC. The funny thing is that they don't need to describe hair colour 98% of the time. Just writing 'Your brown hair reflected in the light' is good enough, no need for extra description as brown hair is a very diverse description.

Funny thing, if they just looked up these things on Google, they'd avoid so much of these little errors. It's just laziness (and tbh it's also kinda racist especially when you bring it up).

 

[A-Kun]

Going Off Topic
So I finished playing/reading Sister Other Paranoia and while I did ultimately have a good time with it, I cant help but feel we didn't really end up spending time/ getting more in depth with the characters -especially your sister which the game said you have a close relationship with and spend most of your time around but I feel like it doesn't show us that that well imo. Now this could be meant as a misdirect/subversion because this game was advertising the sister character as a main focus, not to mention the main character hates people so of course he aint going to want to be around people that much but i feel like with what happens near the end of the game it would of been more impactful if we were around them more.
Also the epilogue felt kinda rushed.

Basically to me, the game would have been better if it were longer.

 

[Zoklitsos]

Another funny thing with Ifs is hair colour. I have had to restart so many IFs because I picked brown hair and got the description of honey brown or mahogany brown hair and I created a black character. You'd be hard-pressed to find that hair colour in non-mixed black people, our version of dark brown hair can be mistaken for black. I have only seen 1 IF that actually has that as an option and that's BoC. The funny thing is that they don't need to describe hair colour 98% of the time. Just writing 'Your brown hair reflected in the light' is good enough, no need for extra description as brown hair is a very diverse description.

Yeppp I completely get you on this too. Back when I first discovered IF years ago, I used to think that the more hair/eye colour options, the better, especially since I was coming from mostly playing VNs and otomes that usually had set appearances for the MC, so getting all these options to tailor the appearance of your MC was like a miracle to me lmao. But then as the years went by and I played more and more IFs and started code diving and seeing flavour text (or lack of it thereof) and just how irrelevant aspects like hair and eye colour can be, I realised that less is in fact better lol. Like pls.... unless it's a fantasy setting or just a setting in general where wacky hair and eye colours are a naturally occurring thing, for the love of god just give me the basic choices of black hair, blonde hair, red hair, dyed hair and so on, and normal a s s eye colours like brown, hazel, blue, etc. I promise you, you do not need to give me 50 subshades of brown for me to choose my MC's hair colour lmao, I can imagine those finer details for my MC just fine on my own. Now every time I play an IF and reach the part where you choose eye/hair colour and am met with like 50 options on the screen, instead of getting excited like before, I just groan in resignation at this point.

A lot of games are guilty of this but Shepherds of Haven will always be one of the biggest offenders when it comes to this and always immediately comes to mind when talking about this kind of thing. I enjoy the game a lot, but bro... You have something like 10-15 eye colours to choose from alone (I don't really remember the hair options but I think it was a similar thing), like sure it's cool and all that my MC's eyes are described as the colour of glittering amethysts in the stat screen or whatever and all but what is the point of it other than that and some marginal immersion??? Granted, I have not played in at least 2-3 years so idk if it's changed, but if I had to guess I'd sat that the MC customisation aspect of the game hasn't really been touched so it's prob the same. When I was playing the game for the first time ever, I straight up had to google like half of the hair and eye colours bc I couldn't figure out wtf some of the shades were supposed to be Granted I'm not a native english speaker so that played a part too but omg.

When you just have simpler stuff like oh the MC has black hair/red hair, brown eyes/green eyes, etc and so on, there is so much more opportunity for flavour text related to your MC's physical traits instead of having to omit it altogether bc you have like 30 shades of hair options you'd have to account for or some sh!t like that. Like at the end of the day I know it's a small thing and that customising your MC in the vast majority of IF games is basically just done for immersion bc their appearance tends to be irrelevant and skills/personality stats is what affects flavour text more. Still, it's just a nice touch when your MC's traits are actually acknowledged in the story. Even minor flavour text goes a long way in making your MC feel like part of the world and genuinely perceived by others. For example in Defiles Hearts I remember your MC's eye colour being mentioned and the topic of conversation in at least one romance scene (even if said romance scene was mostly the RO poking fun at the MC lol), and I think in The Golden Rose there is also some moments where your hair/eye colour is relevant in the context of a character complimenting you and there was some other stuff too. I think I vaguely remember my blonde MC's hair being compared to the colour of sunlight??? Unless I am hallucinating or mixing it up with another game lol. And I assume other hair colours had their own flavour text too. This might have been in the Book 2 demo idk. It's been ages since I played Book 1 or the Book 2 demo so my memory is fuzzy and I can't remember the details. But in both cases it was just a really nice surprise even tho it's a small thing.