I was reading Tayutama. I then realized the kind of routes Tayutama had, and it made me want to rant about how… dumb the kind of structure it has and the impact it has on reading the rest of the routes. Instead of just a paragraph of me repeating the word stupid a bunch though, I figured I’d talk about VN routes a bit in general as it’s a pretty important thing to know going into the hobby.

Also Tayutama should be done, but it has image catches in the gallery. These are either random or are entirely skipped if you skip text and so despite the rest of the gallery being done, it’s not 100% complete. So now I’m autoing the game trying to get mostly pointless images to show up. I want to rant a bit.

-Edit- I forgot to include an explanation for the word route in this context, not that one should be needed but if your are writing an explanation it’s probably a good idea to define words, right? Route’s in visual novels are specific areas of content, usually named after love interests you are getting with in that content. Rarely some games use other names then characters, usually in mysteries or when talking about True routes where everything gets rapped up and no one is really the romantic focus. Or like in Tsukihime, where the common splits into Far Side and Near Side and then splits again into the actual heroine routes.

The most standard structure is probably the best place to start? It also has no standard name I’m aware of, so I’m going to wing naming it. I guess decisive moment? Split point? Basically the visual novel has a specific point in the narrative where either you are given a list of who’s route to pursue, or it tallies all your points and sends you down the route of whoever is in first place.

Usually this happens after the biggest event in common, like in Da Capo it happens around the festival the entire common route is building up to, or in Sakura no Mori it’s after the big fight is done and things are calming down. You just suddenly go from seeing the entire cast to only seeing relevant characters to your chosen route.

There’s a bunch of variants on this type, like some routes starting a bit earlier or two girls sharing a route to another split off point or locked routes hiding choices until you clear other routes, but generally not much really changes. Otome tend to have a bit more after route split then male standard VNs do, as they tend to have a bunch of bad ends lurking around.

There’s no real downside to this style other then having to clear the common route multiple times, and even that’s only a negative if the game is designed to be so. Fate Stay Night skips everything other then choices until you get to new content, meaning it takes seconds to get to new stuff. Yuzusoft’s flowcharts make getting to new routes take seconds. I find the only games where common route replies are really bad is when skipping is interrupted by screen catches(usually in episodic types), or where choices are ambiguous making finding the other routes kind of a pain.

The next most common I’m aware of has been named ladder structure. Basically the visual novel gives you multiple points where you can can step off the main route to usually the girls routes. Grisaia 1 is probably the best example, though Devil on G-String is the better in terms of the point of this style. In Grisaia 1, not going down any side steps of the ladder leads you down Sakaki’s route, which is still just a normal route as far as Grisaia 1 is concerned. In G-String, ignoring the side routes puts you down the main heroines path, where a bunch of things are revealed and the main heroine takes center stage. Generally this is where ladder shines, though it can also be a bit awkward.

Most ladder type VNs will have character focused chapters and in the middle of those you can pick to hop into the routes, meaning they almost always feel haremy. While the most common type can kind of write the common route to be anything, the ladder needs to appeal and cover plot before asking if you want to step off and go for this very obviously side girl route. For people who do 1 route and stop, ladder is basically do the main story or ignore the entire plot for their favorite.

Now Tayutama is technically both. But Sharin no Kuni is honestly a better example of what Tayutama tries to do, so I’ll start with Sharin’s method. Sharin is a ladder, but also a linear visual novel, aka it tells the same story and ends the same way every time. It can have choices, and those choices can change things, but the end plot will remain the same. In Sharin you have 3 shots to take a side ladder basically. You don’t step off the main plot, but you do choose who your character bangs.

Once you make that choice that run is now set to that girl. So if you pick the first you don’t even get the choice of choosing the second, as her side step off the ladder isn’t until the middle of the next arc. Now for the rest of the game you’ll get slightly more content for the first girl, usually emotional support and maybe a date and of course h scenes, but the actual plot doesn’t change at all. For replays, you basically watch the entire visual novel play out and just read the extra couple of lines and scenes spread through the game. It’s actually kind of an empty experience.

Now Sharin’s route method is really rare. Other then the recent Waning Flower’s localization, I’m not aware of anything else like it. I’m honestly considering doing saves for these games a bit like how I did Love Elections and Chocolate, where I run through the mandatory game and then make a unique save so that if someone wants to read only the unique heroine stuff they can just load to that heroine choice and then skip all the mandatory plot.

Anyway, Tayutama is kind of like that. It’s like a linear ladder that uses the split off point. The visual novel is split into 6 segments. Prologue, girl 1, girl 2, girl 3, girl 4, and epilogue. The only fully unique part of the game based on route is the epilogue. The route’s actually do split after girl 1’s section at which it changes the order of the next three while playing the route’s unique content around the rest of the story. This could work. If the game marked all the text properly so you could skip the massive amount of redundant plot and only read the new unique stuff on rereads it’d probably be fine. It doesn’t. So you basically read the game once. Then if you go for another heroine read the same core big chunks of story again with basically no changes until the end of the first arc where the romance will start. Then you get tidbits thrown in between the big events until you hit epilogue.

This was incredibly unsatisfying for me. Actual unique route content amounts to maybe 2 hours of reading, probably less. 1/4 to half of that is h scenes, which are at least character advancing. Honestly Tayutama is pretty unique when it comes to it’s 18+ content. I skipped Ameri, but the other 3 all suffered during their first times. Usually protags are at the very least gifted savants of erotic arts or have some trick or make some actual okay decisions to make the scene vaguely work when the girl finishes on her first night. Or actually stop when it’s obviously a bad idea to do it. Not in Tayutama. It’s painful and just generally miserable first times. Which was interesting to read for once, and would have been great in a more focused story that could sit down and really look at intimacy and other issues the couples were facing. But Tayutama has kaiju that need to be dealt with. So a short time later the second h scene usually magically fixes the issues. Meaning each route has a decent chunk of it’s unique content taken up by suffering sex. Which Tayutama did not need when it’s heroines barely get enough screen time in their own routes as it is.

So yeah, all that for me to say Tayutama might have the worst route structure of any Vn I’ve read. I didn’t really go in depth here, there’s plenty of other variants like multiple split points, map based picking where the common route blends a lot into love interest routes but you can mix and match(Summer Pockets is probably the most recent version of this), skipping common entirely and just giving you a route selector, kinetic VN’s, looping stories and so on. Honestly route’s are probably the most unique thing about the visual novel genre, few RPG’s make branching content meaningful enough to be worth mentioning and of those few like half of them are visual novel/RPG hybrids anyway. Having content just change based on decisions and have the story be completely different is great. Tayutama just did not handle that well. It’s a fine one and done, but multiple reads? No thanks.

And that’s it. I’m in VN hell right now. Code Z is at the 75% death end mark and I’m ready for October first with like 5 saves for the whole get old stuff finished project I vaguely wanted to do for October. I didn’t know qureate released a game in my, and have a new one coming out in like a week. I’ll try to get on those. Status update complete.