Tag Archives: characterisation

Waifu Wednesday: Ist

Dungeon Travelers 2 is one of the best dungeon-crawlers of all time — I’d even go so far as to say it’s one of my favourite RPGs I’ve ever played.

A significant part of the reason for why I regard it so fondly is its large cast of memorable female characters, each of whom offer something unique both in mechanical terms and in how they contribute to the overall “party dynamic” with their characterisation.

It’s hard to pick a favourite from such a consistently loveable cast, but somewhere near the top of the list for me is Ist.

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Doki Doki Literature Club: Cute Girls Write Poems

I normally don’t bother with spoiler warnings here on MoeGamer, since it should be fairly apparent that in the process of analysing certain works in depth, “spoilers” are something of a necessity.

I will, however, make an exception in the case of Doki Doki Literature Club, a Japanese-style visual novel from independent Western developer Team Salvato. This is a game that is best experienced completely and utterly blind, so if you have the slightest interest in a visual novel that subverts expectations and makes astonishingly good use of its medium, I recommend you go play it through now before reading any further. It’s completely free, can be cleared in an afternoon, and is available either via Steam or itch.io.

Beyond this point lie hefty spoilers, so consider yourself warned!

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Waifu Wednesday: Rin Tohsaka

As we bid a fond farewell to September’s Cover Game Fate/stay night, it’s only fitting that we celebrate one of this incredible visual novel’s most enduringly popular waifus.

Rin Tohsaka is a constant presence in all three of the main narrative routes in Fate/stay night, despite only Unlimited Blade Works technically being “hers”. As such, aside from protagonist Shirou, she’s arguably the character we get to know the best over the course of the complete narrative.

She’s noteworthy not only for being a great character in her own right, but also for arguably being one of the most significant defining influences on what has become an incredibly popular — some might argue clichéd — character trope today: the tsundere.

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Fate/stay night: The Friction of Real and Ideal

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Fate/stay night’s final route Heaven’s Feel is a culmination of everything that has come before.

Longer, more complex, more challenging and concluding with a definite sense of “finality”, it’s a fitting end to an enormously ambitious visual novel — as well as just the beginning of something that would go on to become a worldwide phenomenon.

So let’s dive into the Holy Grail War for one last time and see where this epic (in every sense of the word) ends up…

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Fate/stay night: Struggling with Oneself

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Unlimited Blade Works, the second of Fate/stay night’s three distinct narrative routes, concentrates on the concept of the struggle between oneself and an ideal.

It’s a story with an altogether different feeling to the Fate route, featuring a great deal more internal conflict.  And not just for the protagonist Shirou Emiya, either, but also for many of the people around him — most notably heroine Rin Tohsaka.

In fact, this time around, it’s only really Saber, who had plenty of her own struggles in Fate, who gets off relatively lightly (in terms of mental and philosophical challenges, anyway — though she does spend much of the story being physically and sexually tortured). Everyone else has a lot of very serious and meaningful questions to try and answer before the two weeks in which the story unfolds come to a close.

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Waifu Wednesday: Al Azif

Nitroplus’ Deus Machina Demonbane is an absolutely remarkable visual novel.

Combining elements of Lovecraftian horror and giant robot anime with a generous dash of noir, it is quite unlike any other piece of interactive entertainment I’ve had the pleasure of experiencing.

And a big part of that is due to one of its major characters: Al Azif, typically referred to just as Al.

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Fate/stay night: Oneself as an Ideal

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Fate/stay night’s complete three-part narrative opens with the simply named Fate.

In the original 2004 release of the game, this 30+ hour path was a prerequisite to unlocking the other routes of the game Unlimited Blade Works and Heaven’s Feel, though the 2012 Réalta Nua release on PC split the three routes into separate executable files, allowing them to be played independently, albeit with some shared save data.

It’s still best to play them in the order they were originally intended, however, since Fate, as we’ll explore today, carries the important role of allowing us to understand the context in which the other narratives unfold.

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Waifu Wednesday: Peridot

I love puzzle games, if that was not already evident.

However, I particularly love late ’90s arcade puzzlers such as those put out by Taito, Data East and their peers, for one reason in particular: as well as providing solid, addictive gameplay, they also had a tendency to have a cast of wonderful characters to accompany the action.

While you may want to debate whether or not Taito’s 1997 block-breaker Puchi Carat is truly a puzzle game or not, one thing we can hopefully agree on is that it features a spectacular cast of waifus.

And Queen of the Puchi Carat Waifus, so far as I’m concerned anyway, is Peridot.

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Waifu Wednesday: Vert

Everyone has a favourite in the Neptunia cast, but even if she’s not top of your list, it’s hard to dislike Vert.

The blonde-haired, big-breasted goddess of Leanbox personifies Microsoft’s Xbox platform as well as embodying the anime trope of “beautiful foreigner” thanks to her physical characteristics.

And as with the rest of the Neptunia cast, there’s a lot more to her than first appears, too, making her a delight to get to know and spend some time with.

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Waifu Wednesday: Hanako Ikezawa

In this new weekly series, we’ll be taking a look at some of the most memorable, interesting, attractive, sexy, badass and just plain awesome female characters in Japanese gaming, as well as highlighting some great fanart.

And what better place to begin than with Hanako Ikezawa from Katawa Shoujo, my favourite character from the game that truly got me into visual novels and the Japanese style of interactive storytelling once and for all — even if the game in question itself was actually developed as something of a worldwide collaborative effort.

Hanako is a character that I found to be deeply relatable, enormously sympathetic  and highly memorable; she’ll always occupy a very special place in my heart, and I know I’m not the only one who feels this way.

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