/jp/ - Otaku Culture

>>16747924
I played Yu-No and lost ~5 hours of progress after I forgot about the bug and hit the X button. Learning to emulate PC-98 is a good idea anyway because of all the games (Touhou!) and VNs only released on the platform.
Elf is from the pre To-Heart era of visual novels and is not afraid to throw really dark shit into otherwise happy stories. Rape, guro, you name it. They use old VN systems, which means you have to move your character around yourself, use a menu to talk to people, pick up items from the background, et cetera. If you've played an Ace Attorney or LucasArts game imagine that but much worse.
Back in the ninties it was common to design your game awfully on purpose so you could make people buy a strategy guide. This is a problem if you're just looking to kick back and have an interesting read. Walkthroughs will help, but risk spoiling events and, I've found, often forget to tell you important information.
Story quality depends heavily on the author, as one would expect. Also, no voice acting on floppy disks.
What can't be denied is that the PC-98 era reached a height of art and music that wasn't seen again until recently. Elf was the best of the best.
After the Doukyuusei 2 incident (where the main heroine of the game screams out another man's name while you have sex with her), Elf went into a slow decline by sheer force of boycott, becoming a nukige company before eventually dying. When a person says they "like Elf", they're generally referring to games made before 2005.
If nothing else, they're worth looking into as a part of VN history. I ended up quitting Yu-No out of frustration, but the visuals, music and just intensity of it is unforgettable.