which ones have you played? do you have thoughts about them?
I'm currently playing the original yu-no (n[0] relation) and other than the protag being an incredibly sexist 90's protag it's fun. sure it's an MC escher puzzle box with hours of back tracking, no auto-play for repeated scenes, with 90's point and click find the special pixel gameplay. but it's also an atemporal narrative clusterfuck!

havent played any yet but the three that i have on my list are doukyuusei, isaku, kakyuuesei, and yu-no.
id like to get around to playing yu-no this year, but only after i manage to get through the 5ish other vn's that are higher priority atm.
i remember reading sca-ji mention that he felt like isaku really changed the vn scene when it came out during his university days, so thats probably the next highest priority elf game for me.

I've never played yu-no, but it always ends up near the top of japanese VN rankings, so I've got to check it out at some point.

I've played yu-no. Kamige fr fr. But in a way it's not a true elf game, more an honorary c's ware game since it's from Hiroyuki Kanno and Ryu Umemoto and has more similarities to their previous work than it does to prior elf games. There are elements that were supposedly inspired by Doukyuusei and Words worth though, and the ui is pretty elf-ish (elaborate border, no ctc button, cursor graphics reused from previous elf games). I didn't mind the occasional pixel hunting. It wasn't as bad as what you'd typically find in a western game from the era.

no auto-play for repeated scenes

Not sure if this is what you mean op but you can hold ctrl to fast forward through the text. You have to be careful since it's not like a modern game where you can set it to stop on unread lines, it just skips everything. But it's useful for stuff you know you've already seen.

I've also played Dragon Knight 2. A competent but very basic dungeon crawler. It works well enough and the setting is fun but character customization and strategy is basically nil. I liked some of the dungeon gimmicks though. Overall fun. But a lot of grinding is required. Level grinding can be interesting but here it's not at all, just repeatedly fighting the same weak monsters for a pittance of exp until you're strong enough to move on.

And I also played Foxy. Wasn't really sure what to expect with this one but it ended up being some kind of Famicom Wars clone with h. Surprisingly pretty fun but I never finished it as the computer takes forever to complete its turn and it became unbearable on the larger maps.

Another thing about yu-no is yes the MC is a delinquent. But I much prefer how it's handled in yu-no, with him having a reputation as an asshole because he actually is one. As opposed to stuff like Clannad or Iroseka where the script constantly calls the MC a delinquent/problem student, meanwhile they're kind and supplicating to everyone and the worst thing they do is skip class sometimes.

ok. so i got to the "puzzle" in the stone chamber after visiting the study.
i got here without a walkthrough and would /really/ like to keep it that way, but this doesn't even feel like a puzzle. i can very easily open the png and see the answer, but i don't even know what the question is ;-;

motherfucker, as soon as i lie down to rot i think i figured it out T-T
now i just need to test my thought...

yup. i feel retarded for how simple it was now. the first 2 cavern puzzles took much longer to solve (easy to understand, but still took a bit of time to actually /solve/)

>>6

i got here without a walkthrough

based. yu-no is definitely best played without using a walkthrough or any external tips, and nobody should ever believe the unfortunately common refrain that it absolutely requires outside help. It's really smartly designed in terms of how and at what point it feeds you clues, making it fun to go through blind. Using a walkthrough to complete everything in the fewest steps possible and avoid backtracking and searching through the timelines really weakens the impact of yu-no on a thematic level too. The only part a prudent player might get walled at without a guide is unlocking one specific pathway from the Mio/Ayumi branch back onto Mizuki/Eriko for 100% map completion, because one specific branch can only be triggered once you've completed dela grante and the game never tells you this or signals it in any way, and no other map branches function like this (aside from the individual character endings, but those aren't really map branches strictly speaking).

>>9

really weakens the impact of yu-no on a thematic level too

i'd agree. it has taken me a lot longer to go through the game this way, but it's kinda interesting how playing this way you build an internal map of time. left turn here to get there right turn there to do that. be first 5 hours or so were most definitely the most "painful" as there are many exhaustive searches of screens to find that "one interact" that time requires to move on. and the map showing where branches are and flashing gem really does give you everything you "need" to do it. I only accidentally used all my gems once. and even in such a situation you can still just either move forward to an end or reset at the beginning.

Literally all games on Linux are ELF games.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urcL86UpqZc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ieqsL5NkS6I
I feel myself like Elf among Elves, slaying daemons by casting kill -9
I wish Tsuki was here to leave comments. He seem to like making array languages.