GamerBraves Newsletter vol. 54 – Visual Novels And Bias Against Certain Genres

The long-awaited Digimon Survive has finally made its debut, only to be met with controversy. The game was review bombed, mainly for one reason: it was a visual novel (VN), and visual novels, despite seeing a number of titles in recent years, are often seen as off-putting by much of mainstream gaming.

Survive was marketed as a hybrid between a Visual novel and a tactics RPG however it was later confirmed by the producer that the game was primarily a VN which was reaffirmed by later marketing. Regardless many people who didn’t follow the game as closely assumed it was RPG and were put off when that wasn’t the case.

It’s interesting considering Vanillaware’s 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim was also a VN/RPG hybrid and skewed more on the VN side but it was praised when it came out. This is likely because it was a standalone game while many who went into Survive assumed it would play like Digimon World and were put off by it simply being a VN first and foremost. So why all the dislike of visual novels? If you’d like to read our thoughts on that matter, do consider subscribing to our newsletter so you can read more about it. You can read it for free by putting your email address in the box below:

Give it a read and let us know what you think! New newsletter feature articles are released weekly every Wednesday at lunchtime regarding various topics surrounding video games and the greater entertainment industry as a whole.