YU-NO - one of the best video game stories ever told!

A more in-depth review of the game than mine which i borrowed from.

link

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I see a lot of people asking what are the best video game plots around.

Usually I see people answer with Planescape:Torment, The Longest Journey, Grim Fandango etc. etc.

I have played them all plus more and while they are all great stories I have found something that I liked even more.

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Some may be turned off by the mention of this term but the game I think to have one of the best stories is a visual novel.

I can already imagine the people closing this thread at the mention of this very term.

When most people think of visual novels they see Japanese porn games.

And I would agree to some extent they are correct.

The visual novel market is filled with games that are high in sexual content and are not that special story wise aside but there are some visual novels that do have good plots.

In my opinion YU-NO excels above all others.

So if you are still reading this let me tell you why.

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For a video game there are many aspects that can help create a great story but the few that I will mention are;

The plot itself

Voice acting

Characters

Music

Art

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YU-NO excels in all these aspects.

Before going into detail about these aspects here is a summary of the beginning of YU-NO.

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Summary:

The main character is a high school student named Takuya.

After three months of being reported missing from a cave-in, his father,Arima Kodai (a successful historian and researcher), is declared dead.

The whole town is shocked by his father's death. The only person who seems largely unaffected is Takuya himself who has always struggled to bond with his traditional and strict father, and lost his own mother at a very young age.

But while the young student may not outwardly show much in the way of emotion, his grades have begun to suffer, and his surrounding individuals at school have taken note of his inner struggles.

Summer vacation is nearing and Takuya finds himself questioning the circumstances of his father's sudden disappearance, feeling it was a typical dramatic ending as his father always seems to strive for, and having been left alone only to live with his stepmother, fills him with anger and frustration.

Aimlessly wandering the hallways at school and treading home to the all too quiet home, he suddenly finds a package left for him. The contents startle him. A letter. An unknown device consisting of mirrors.

The letter tells of a theory of alternate dimensions, gateways and usage of the alien device to bend time and space. While most of the information goes over Takuya's head, one thing clearly grips him; the letter is signed by his father. His mind races to resolve the mysterious revelation, could his father still be alive? How, and most importantly, where?

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And now back to why I think it is above all others.

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Plot:

The plot in YU-NO is not easy to do well, it's massive in length (80+ hours) and deals with complicated subjects.

It's a sci-fi/mystery with parallel/time traveling.

Whenever confronting such subjects there is a fine balance between believable and nonsensical.

YU-NO handles the subject on parallel worlds and time traveling very well.

It introduces you to a well explained theory and even gives you the mathematical equations for authenticity.

It keeps this theory within strict boundaries so it does not fall into absurdity like a lot of poorly made sci-fi stories get caught in.

YU-NO is cerebral in the ways it challenges morals and logic.

Despite balancing the very delicate time travel aspect, it also goes into philosophies of religion, history and introduces both traditional and contemporary mythology in the form of unknown creatures and alien technology.

And yet even with all these elements where one slip could result in plot holes or irrational leaps of logic, the writing is always able to support the immense weight of the responsibilities it has to keep everything in balance.

Every mystery and every twist has an answer, and every answer reveals enough to satisfy the most skeptic of minds.

Ironically, while many games today struggle to establish a concise world and narrative through numerous sequels and merchandise, YU-NO changes its world in an instant multiple times, yet remains a much more complete entity.

YU-NO demands the fullest attention and requires some dedication, not through a steep learning curve or general difficulty, but to immerse yourself fully and feel the plight and troubles of the characters.

For those who truly sit down with it and let themselves be taken emotionally along the ride, it's one of the best crafted stories in game history and the true ending to the game is one of the most exhilarating and incredible experiences you will ever have while playing a video game.

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Voice acting:

A large portion of the 80+ hour game is made up of voiced dialogue and all through out the game it remains high in quality.

The cast of voice actors/actresses are all professionals who know what they are doing.

Most of the actors/actresses are well known in Japan and have played many roles in anime and video games.

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Anime such as;

Yu Yu Hakusho, Sword Art Online, Oh My Goddess!, Ranma 1/2, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Ghost in a Shell, Sailor Moon, Claymore, Trigun, Cowboy Bebop, Dragon Ball, Full Metal Alchemist, Excel Saga, Fruits Basket, Full Metal Panic, Bleach, and Pokemon.

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And video games;

Soul Calibur, Armored Core, Metal Gear Solid, Guilty Gear, Tales of Destiny, Tales of Symphonia.....pretty much most Tales of games, Disgaea, Xenogears, Xenosaga, Dead or Alive, Tekken, Grandia, Valkyrie Profile, Kingdom Hearts, Onimusha.

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For a full list of the voice cast click on the link below.

Link to the voice cast

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Unlike a lot of games where the voice acting is emotionless, awkward or not fitting with the character YU-NO nails the job.

Each character has a voice actor that fits in with their personality and looks.

Other than being professionals one of the reasons the voice acting works so well is because the dialogue is written with care.

In YU-NO, every spoken line has meaning, comes from something real and is never treated as a throwaway aspect.

And though the spoken lines are Japanese, the emotion of the delivery is universally understood, from the times of laughter to the times of deadly fear, the performers are able to communicate the intended message without any doubt.

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Characters:

At first look the characters seem rather cliched and you might be quick to compare them to their well know stereotypes.

But in a short period of time you realize the characters are well made with a good amount of depth and intelligence to them.

This is partly due to the well made script which creates convincing characters who are easy to relate to.

The main character in YU-NO is especially noteworthy of this.

Takuya leads a life of duality.

The exterior behavior, in which he shows little to no sign of pain or sorrow over the loss of his father, acting foolishly naive to the people around him and the inner dialogue, which shows his anger, frustration and intelligence.

The characters around Takuya are also more than what they seem. Double lives, hidden secrets, conspiracies, everything has more than one side to it.

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Music:

This game was created on old hardware with a sound chip from the late 1980s so there is plenty of limitations for what can be done.

Despite this the music composer was able to create a large list of quality music.

His approach to music was with shocking amount of care and detail.

The soundtrack is not the kind that immediately kicks up to 5th gear and remains high in adrenaline and tempo, but rather one that always keeps the emotional background relevant and in place, telling a story in music as much as the game does in writing and speech.

To show what I am talking about here are some songs from the game.

I cannot show the whole list of music here as it contains 83 tracks that is 5 hours in length.

This music is composed from sound hardware that is older than the Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo so I was quite surprised to see what the composer accomplished with the limitations in place and how well each song fits within the scenes being played out.

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Art:

As I said before this game was made on old hardware. The PC-98 is computer from the mid to late 1980s.

There a various models of the PC-98 but most of the changes weren't great enough to effect the overall visuals aside from advancements in color display made in the earlier models.

The limitations of the hardware only allowed for 16 colors to be displayed at any time and despite that the artwork in YU-NO is full of detail.

The artists got past the color limitations by introducing dithering which really adds depth.

At the time of the late 1980s and early 1990s the display resolution of most console games were pretty low with an average resolution of around 256x224.

YU-NO blew past this with a resolution of 640x400 and the bump in resolution really shows in the amount of detail they can fit on screen.

There is a lot of variety in the artwork.

The backgrounds and locations are beautifully composed, showing the seaside town in both peace and unrest.

The sci-fi parts are also made more believable by the art making the unknown fit well within common place scenery.

The only nitpick I could find was some of the character art.

A lot of the character art is not the most original or realistic, with large busts and unhealthily slim waists being the standard template for most the women found in the game.

But they all feature unique personalities which are instantly recognizable in the art.

The romantic expressions, hair style and clothing is very well done and helps support the personalities displayed in voice and reading.

Another very important aspect to their design is the fact that they remain neutral enough to which that the parallels they showcase come off as believable and in character, and their actions never combat the way they look.

In pure comparison to other visual novels, they might not be the most attractive, but they are certainly among the more unique and definable.

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Here is some of the artwork displayed in the game.

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If you are interested in the game and want to watch it here is my YouTube playlist.

I currently have over 66 hours recorded and I am getting close to the end.

YU-NO Playlist

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Also here is the first video just for people to get a taste of the game.

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You could also try playing it yourself but the game can be a bit hard to get through without a walkthrough and even with the walkthrough it is pretty confusing.

Here is the walkthrough just to prove my point.

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Not a fan of big breasts?

Interesting OP, will definitely check it out, looks very cool.

YU-NO make smaller threads?

Haha!

Very good.

Good God thats a massive OP.

This game deserves a thorough explanation.

A short thread for it would be a travesty.

i'll check it out since you went through all this trouble to advertise it. Also does anyone know if there are any good Sci-fi/Cyber punk visual novels out there?

It's such a great game that I wanted more people to know about it.

But not everyone will enjoy it.

The anime style will put off some people not to mention the game is a heavy read with over 1 million words in the script.

A lot of the dialogue is spoken but for those who don't know Japanese they will have to stick to reading the English subtitles.

To answer your question I do not know of any Sci-fi/Cyberpunk visual novels that are in English.

There are probably some in Japanese but right now I cannot come up with any.

It doesn't fully qualify as a visual novel but Hideo Kojima's Snather is Sci-fi/Cyberpunk.

I uploaded a video of the game's introduction.

It's on the Sega CD.

lol anime po*n.

I don't know about this one but with some visual novels you barely interact with the world. It's pretty much 99% "press X to read next dialogue". Just like the name says, it's a novel.

Journey is a game. Heavy Rain is a game. Ryse is a game. Many stupid people claim these are not games but in each game, you can control a character and you interact with the world around you. A Visual Novel that only consists of pressing one button over and over to keep the story going leans more towards e-books where the only interaction is pressing buttons to flip pages. Therefore I have no ****** idea why some people call these games.

This is not necessarily about the visual novel specified in this thread, I don't know how much you interact with it, but I do know that I have seen threads here that introduce visual novels where there is no actual gameplay.

The prologue and the epilogue of YU-NO are pretty straight forward but you do have a choice in selecting where to go and what to look at.

The Main body of YU-NO which is between the Prologue and Epilogue plays more like an old school point and click adventure game.

You have to gather and use items at the right time and depending on the choices you make you will go down a different branching route.

Most of my screenshots posted will show the item storage on the right side of the pictures.

If you look at the walkthrough screenshot I uploaded you at the bottom of my first post will see how complicated it is.

It's funny, I was reading more ZE3 theories last night.

Anyways, I'll try it due to it being a V

I think I'm going to finally give this thing a go. Three weeks to go until Black Flag is out on PC, and I hope that time will be enough to complete it. Initially planning to go blind, but I guess I'll have to use a walkthrough sometime or the other.

If you do not use a walkthrough it could easily take you over 100 hours to complete.

Even with a walkthrough it is going to take me about 80 hours to complete my second playthrough (for recording) and that is with doing everything in the game with no excessive backtracking or idling.

I already have over 66 hours uploaded to YouTube so if you just want to watch it you wouldn't really miss out on too much.

After you have finished YU-NO you will realize you just read over 1 million words of dialogue.

I really have to commend the translators because they did an awesome job with the Japanese to English translation.

The team put in more work with better quality than just about any professional translation groups for big name companies.

I actually laughed out loud haha

eh I think ill pass.

I expected such a comment early on because of what the term "YU-NO" is usually used for.

First thing that came to mind when reading title.

@foxhound_fox said:

@bobbetybob said:

YU-NO make smaller threads?

First thing that came to mind when reading title.

Maybe I should of used the game's full name, but Kono Yo no Hate de Koi o Utau Shōjo YU-NO isn't as each to remember.

Where do I get it? And how much is it?

Not sure where since the game has been out for over 17 years and stopped selling officially over a decade ago.

How much interactivity does it need for a visual novel to become a game? Like I enjoy these kinds of VN stories, but I would hardly consider them video games. I mean even compared to something like 999, which at least has puzzles and environment interaction, this seems devoid of gameplay.

All in all though, this just seems like a veiled attempt to sell your own walkthrough. I'm willing to bet there are better VN stories around.

A large portion of the game plays like a point and click adventure.

The reason I posted a link to my walkthrough was for people who don't want to play the game themselves but would rather watch it.

YU-NO has been out for almost 2 decades now and it is well known in Japan for being one of the best visual novels despite its age so you don't have to trust me when I say it's great.

It's won numerous awards and has sold hundreds of thousands of copies which is a lot for this type of genre.

Seems like Yu No is worth checking out. But IMO 999 has the best writing in a game, while Majora's Mask has the best melding of plot and atmosphere.

I have played 999 and while I find it to be a great story it does not stack up to YU-NO IMO.

Most people who think 999 has the best story probably have not played many games like it.

The author of 999 has many earlier works which carry the same theme.

It's been years since I played Majora's Mask but I don't particular remember it for the plot but rather for the great gameplay.

VNs are great, but not really sure if they can be compared to normal video games. Most of them are pretty much novels that you make choices every once in a while, but few have actual gameplay.

I rather read a real comic book or manga instead of playing a visual novel. Simply because visual novels have a slower pacing (you have to do a considerable amount of clicking "next" just to advance the dialog in these type of games).

Another important aspect is the level of interactivity of the game, which is very limited in a visual novel. 8-\

Well a visual novel can do some things better than a manga or comic book due to the amount of dialogue that is added, the voice acting and music can also add a lot with the immersion.

I just uploaded the ending song for YU-NO as the only version I could find of it on YouTube was low quality and contained a spoiler image.

The song may not seem special but to those who beat the game it really has impact.

As I have said before this music was achieved using a sound chip from the 1980s so there were quite a bit of limitations on what could be done.

You said this was the best "Video Game Story" Ever told. But this looks like another To The Moon type of scenario. You know its pretty easy to tell a a good story if you axe 90 percent of the interactivity. Looks like its got a multilayerd narrative, so atleast theres some autonomy. But going to these lengths just to get off a good story calls the validity of its nature into question, in other words, is it really a video game ?

To The Moon certainly wasn't one.

Your first argument makes no sense otherwise all books would have crap stories.

Anyway.....most of the gameplay is a point and click adventure.

Some of the best video game stories like The Longest Journey and The Grim Fandango don't have much gameplay either but no one ever complained about that.

Heck Planescape: Torment is praised for its story but the actual gameplay is nothing special and IMO you get more entertainment from it if you choose the easy difficulty for the game and just skipped any combat that you were able to.

MGS Digital Graphic Novel>>>>>>>> Yu no. You know? lololol

The MGS series as a whole is a convoluted mess.

There are plenty video game stories that are much better than MGS.

@RyviusARC: well that sucks.

@ RyviusARC

I didn't say anything about books, infact in regards to your analysis of my 1st argument , I have absolutely no clue what you mean. Nor did I say anything about gameplay, the specific word I used was Interactivity. Heavy Rain had no gameplay but was full of ways to interact with the world/characters. There was plenty the player could do. So whats the ratio of actual interaction to passive reading in YU-NO ? Can't be much if the story is as good as you say it is.

Sorry misread what you said to mean the opposite.

To answer your question YU-NO has plenty of interactivity. There is lots of stuff you can examine to gain more info on the setting and characters that inhabit it.

The game also branches off in many ways depending on what places you go to and what choices you make.

For example if you decide not to give a character her journal then you are taken on a completely different character route.

There are 14 separate endings to the game depending on the choices you make and each route reveals more about the story.

You will need to cover each route anyway since you need to gather the jewel stones found in each route in order to go onto the Epilogue.

If you check the walkthrough screenshot I uploaded at the bottom of my first post you will see what I mean.

@ RyviusARC

hmmmmm. Still not quite sold. Besides I don't have a PC to play it on anyways.

Is it really fine to post so much information about an eroge on Gamespot?

Well the game is not for everyone.

Why wouldn't it be?

It's potentially breaching the site's terms of use, under acceptable use where inappropriate or sexually explicit content/link is not allowed. I think the images you posted are probably fine. However, the review you linked does contain sexually explicit images and should constitute a breach. I haven't checked the Let's Play video, so you decide.

Gamespot itself keeps tons of eroge's in the site's game list, so i would assume it is fine as long as people don't post nsfw content

That's my point. The link contained in the thread does link to NSFW content.

A link to a website that has a link on it that leads to nsfw content is hardly posting nsfw content. The site even puts warnings on the links that contain explicit content

Interesting...but not my cup of tea and like many have said...this is a visual novel, i don't know how fair would it be to compare it to games like Grim Fandango, The Walking Dead or Journey...in this games there are a lot more elements to consider other than ilustrations and script which is pretty much what Visual Novels are all about.

And like I have mentioned many times before this game has as much interaction as games like Grim Fandango or The Longest Journey.

YU-NO mostly plays like a point and click adventure game.

I think anyone who tells you Grim Fandango, The Longest Journey or Planescape Torment have the best stories in gaming is a dumb hermit strictly limited to PC gaming throughout the years. I can literally think of a dozen games with better stories... Metal Gear Solid 4, Final Fantasy VII, The Last of Us, Metal Gear Solid, Heavy Rain, Final Fantasy X, Metal Gear Solid 3, Half Life 2, Bioshock, System Shock 2, Half Life, Batman: Arkham City/Asylum, Metal Gear Solid 2, Shadow of the Colossus, Bioshock: Infinite, Uncharted 2 and probably a few more. Not surprised that one of the largest fanboys on the forum only posts PC exclusives though.

Never played YU-NO, but doubt its story is any where near the quality of MGS4.

Guess you've never played Grim Fandango, The Longest Journey or Planescape Torment judging by the statement you made.

Also lol at you even comparing the convoluted mess of MGS4 to YU-NO when it comes to story.

The script in that game is very badly written and unrealistic. The way the characters talk is so cheesy.

Kojima needs to stop retconning the story and let it end then move on to other stuff. I know he can do more than MGS since he made Snatcher and Policenauts and those were pretty good games.

The fact is also that writing in video games has always been an awfully unsteady part of the overall product, and what mass audiences perceive as good writing in video games doesn't necessarily manage to keep its head over water for the majority of the story it tells.

A twist in character alignment, a supposed good guy secretly working for the bad guys, a president on the other end of the phone line, or a silver haired man with a 14 foot sword growing inside a mountain, a reputed good story is often at the disadvantage of logic and as they continue on, they fall into their own hyperbole, further complicating the story by simply adding more twists, more characters and more questions.

The MGS series is definitely at the forefront of this problem.