I'm pretty sure I'll sound like someone who understand nothing in BLVNs, but for me, Our life: beginnings & always is such a masterpiece among VNs I've played. Art, writing, replayability. Was in my head for a good while.
God, I would sacrifice the world to get Alice Blue back. I like this game bad enough that I picked Japanese back up again so I can hopefully tl it some day lmao.
My favorite blvn atm is armored core 6 Ore No Shita De Agake and honest to god all Alice Blue releases, they have a flavor all of their own that you kinda don't get anywhere else. I love vns with small interactive ADV elements (and i am not immune to the number go up mechanics) esp bc it has so much shit you can just run into (
you can get sick on eating random mushrooms you find on the ground and have an entire nightmare B plot, for example
) and you get so good at racking up debt on the guys the repeated runs don't feel cumbersome at all, 90s anime brand humor is frankly hilarious(actually giving Excel Saga at times ngl), I love the slightly wonky art style and you got Hikaru Midorikawa topping Kamille Bidan from the bottom come on. Ichiya himself is a treat too, vers mc that has two types of ero scenes is already huge plus point for me but just how much he embodies the concept of "what if there was a guy who was not only a pervert, but also a huge bastard", always good to see a main character that is weird little freak.
If anything the part I like the least about it is surprisingly not how light it's on plot, because I like my plot heavy games but here everything else makes up for it, but on later runs you can kinda start seeing the places when they had to cut corners, wish every LI had gotten two ending according to how you went about their bad end route. I haven't even tried the PS2 version yet which seems to be even more insane and outlandish so honestly it's just a gift that keeps on giving. God, I would sacrifice the world to get Alice Blue back. I like this game bad enough that I picked Japanese back up again so I can hopefully tl it some day lmao.
Definetly Ooe, cause I really fell in love with almost every aspect of this game - story, art style, characters, sound desing. And the most important thing to me - this game doesn't afraid to bring up controversal topics and tropes. Also this is the reason I love Slow Damage, great BLVN.
In case of maybe not so obvious and popular BLVN - I'd say Omerta. Great story, great characters, JJ is one of my favourite MC for his cool and chill attitude
I really like the way they integrate rpg and adv mechanics into their games, they also all feel like within their own genre niches they strive appeal to more than their usual demographics while staying true to what they do, though sometimes being a fan of them when you don't like Rance can be an ordeal since that's their golden goose. Oujisama lv2 someday......
Hands down Slow damage. It's the kind of game, that If I could erase my memory of it in order to play it again "for the first time" I definitely would. Especially Towa as a main character, and his story of course, are so interesting to me. It didn't get boring at all.
Some here mentioned sweet pool and I fully agree on that one too. There's so few good horror vns out there, sweet pool definitely stands out. I wish there were more VNs with that kind of atmosphere and mood.
My all-time favorite BL game is The Law of Silence. The protagonist, JJ, is hands down the most compelling main character I've ever come across. He's a lone-wolf assassin who still sticks to his own code and refuses to be consumed by the darkness around him. I've played through every route, but honestly, the love interest I'm most drawn to is Liu Jian. At their core, he and JJ are so much alike — they both live by their raw, animalistic instincts. In the main story, their dynamic seems like nothing more than pure dominance and submission, but then in the sequel CT, Liu Jian's bad ending and sad ending hit me hard. They showed me that he really does have feelings for JJ after all! I just can't stop thinking about it — it's left such a lasting impression on me.
Without spoiling anything, my old favorite BL game was NO, THANK YOU!!! from parade, but recently it was overtaken by Paradise from PIL/SLASH as my favorite game. And Paradise has my favorite BL LI of all time, Mitsugi!! with Matsuda being my second favorite. I love the emotional complexity and character depth in both games. Both are dark with plenty of intense, explicit bad ends but with occasional humor and hopeful moments to cut through the suspense and despair. Actually, I want to say so much more about both but I don't want to spoil for those that stumble onto the thread and haven't played them before. As someone who likes lore and playing every route to uncover more about the story's secrets with each end, both games didn't disappoint with that either.
I liked their games bad enough to go and play hentai games from their parental company Alice Soft
with Matsuda being my second favorite. I love the emotional complexity and character depth in both games. Both are dark with plenty of intense, explicit bad ends but with occasional humor and hopeful moments to cut through the suspense and despair. Actually, I want to say so much more about both but I don't want to spoil for those that stumble onto the thread and haven't played them before. As someone who likes lore and playing every route to uncover more about the story's secrets with each end, both games didn't disappoint with that either.
