- Jul 20, 2018
- 1,871
- 2,923
Well, I got around to reading my way through Kansen 4... As always, thank you InsaneMonster for your guide. While this one is notably simpler than K3 in terms of triggers and whatnot, it's still complex enough that working through the various choices the hard way would be time consuming and tedious.
As much as I respect the results of GPT 4, I'd still prefer a full on proper translation, and I'm still hoping that one day the various Kansen VNs will get one.
Now, when it comes to K4, there's one thing that becomes immediately obvious, besides some of the cliches/trends of the series... That's the fact that it's significantly... smaller, in a number of ways, than K3 was. Possibly even than K2. The cast and the situations they end up in is more compact, which is a huge part of the reason why K4 is much simpler to navigate than K3. Furthermore, unlike previous installments, there's no "Others" perspective at any point. No random nobodies getting fucked by infected or scenes from such perspectives that expand the world or anything.
Aside from one typical cliche of the series, there's nothing that doesn't involve one of the main cast. That cliche being the whole "reporter gets attacked by infected and that ends up live and/or on the Internet to be seen by part of the main cast". They changed it up this time so it's a male reported getting ganged up on by 3 female infected, so they were trying to keep it fresh, I guess.
They dialed things back in other ways too when compared to K3. Scenes are generally less brutal than they were there, and even when compared to K2, things are tamer. No bestiality. No stomach bulging. Only one instance of double vaginal penetration. No incest. Less brutal descriptions of gore in the endings where that happens, and in general less situations like that in the 1st place. Definitely nothing as crazy as the fairly in depth descriptions of the rat stuff or MC being torn apart that happened in K3.
By that same token, there's less vanilla scenes too. There's something like 3.5 vanilla scenes for the MC (the 0.5 comes from a certain ambiguous scene where Makoto may or may not be infected.) and there's a couple of scenes involving a couple of their friends. In my opinion though, that part is a good thing, because in K3, they got quite repetitive at times with the whole "awkward teenagers get it on for the 1st time during a zombie apocalypse" thing. No reused CGs in the way it happened in K3 either, and that's a good thing as far as I'm concerned.
Unfortunately, our main cast in K4 isn't as interesting as the one in K3 was. Part of it is somewhat inevitable due to the repeating cliche of "high school students getting caught in a sex-zombie apocalypse" thing. There are, after all, some limits involved when the MC and his closest friends are all high-school students and whatnot... However, the fact of the matter is that the characters are just less well written than they were in K3, at least, as far as I can tell with the MTL. There's no delicate way to put it, but the MC and and related peeps are dumber than the cast in K3, even accounting for the fact that K4 happens during the 1st Outbreak when there was less verified information available.
There's less ending variety too btw. Though the one thing K4 does better than K3 is the fact that MC ending up with one of the girls actually has a noticeable impact on the good ending, unlike in K3 where it did nothing of note. Aside from that, there's the usual smattering of bad endings. There's only one ending where MC certainly survives alone and no endings where MC survives with one-two girls. Also, no endings where others outside of MC survive without him. It feels like they tried to aim for more 'emotional downer' type endings rather than outright horror type stuff that they had in K3... not that K3 lacked in emotional downer stuff too tbh.
Unfortunately, much like K3, we again lack a full on infection path, which to me is disappointing. There's some infected sequences, but they're relatively short and unfocused compared to the stuff in K1 and K2.
Anyway, more stuff under...
All in all, while I'd say that Kansen 4 is better than Kansen 2, it's definitely not better than Kansen 3 in any aspect aside from the details on the good ending stuff and the lesser repeat of awkward first time stuff between MC and the various girls he can lose his virginity too. However, the cast of K4 is worse than the cast of K3 and the whole thing just doesn't flow as well as K3 did.
So up to this point, K3 seems to be the best of the lot, at least for me... but will it keep that spot when I go through the remaining 3 Kansen VNs? Who knows? I'll see over the next few months as I work my way through them.
As much as I respect the results of GPT 4, I'd still prefer a full on proper translation, and I'm still hoping that one day the various Kansen VNs will get one.
Now, when it comes to K4, there's one thing that becomes immediately obvious, besides some of the cliches/trends of the series... That's the fact that it's significantly... smaller, in a number of ways, than K3 was. Possibly even than K2. The cast and the situations they end up in is more compact, which is a huge part of the reason why K4 is much simpler to navigate than K3. Furthermore, unlike previous installments, there's no "Others" perspective at any point. No random nobodies getting fucked by infected or scenes from such perspectives that expand the world or anything.
Aside from one typical cliche of the series, there's nothing that doesn't involve one of the main cast. That cliche being the whole "reporter gets attacked by infected and that ends up live and/or on the Internet to be seen by part of the main cast". They changed it up this time so it's a male reported getting ganged up on by 3 female infected, so they were trying to keep it fresh, I guess.
They dialed things back in other ways too when compared to K3. Scenes are generally less brutal than they were there, and even when compared to K2, things are tamer. No bestiality. No stomach bulging. Only one instance of double vaginal penetration. No incest. Less brutal descriptions of gore in the endings where that happens, and in general less situations like that in the 1st place. Definitely nothing as crazy as the fairly in depth descriptions of the rat stuff or MC being torn apart that happened in K3.
By that same token, there's less vanilla scenes too. There's something like 3.5 vanilla scenes for the MC (the 0.5 comes from a certain ambiguous scene where Makoto may or may not be infected.) and there's a couple of scenes involving a couple of their friends. In my opinion though, that part is a good thing, because in K3, they got quite repetitive at times with the whole "awkward teenagers get it on for the 1st time during a zombie apocalypse" thing. No reused CGs in the way it happened in K3 either, and that's a good thing as far as I'm concerned.
Unfortunately, our main cast in K4 isn't as interesting as the one in K3 was. Part of it is somewhat inevitable due to the repeating cliche of "high school students getting caught in a sex-zombie apocalypse" thing. There are, after all, some limits involved when the MC and his closest friends are all high-school students and whatnot... However, the fact of the matter is that the characters are just less well written than they were in K3, at least, as far as I can tell with the MTL. There's no delicate way to put it, but the MC and and related peeps are dumber than the cast in K3, even accounting for the fact that K4 happens during the 1st Outbreak when there was less verified information available.
There's less ending variety too btw. Though the one thing K4 does better than K3 is the fact that MC ending up with one of the girls actually has a noticeable impact on the good ending, unlike in K3 where it did nothing of note. Aside from that, there's the usual smattering of bad endings. There's only one ending where MC certainly survives alone and no endings where MC survives with one-two girls. Also, no endings where others outside of MC survive without him. It feels like they tried to aim for more 'emotional downer' type endings rather than outright horror type stuff that they had in K3... not that K3 lacked in emotional downer stuff too tbh.
Unfortunately, much like K3, we again lack a full on infection path, which to me is disappointing. There's some infected sequences, but they're relatively short and unfocused compared to the stuff in K1 and K2.
Anyway, more stuff under...
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All in all, while I'd say that Kansen 4 is better than Kansen 2, it's definitely not better than Kansen 3 in any aspect aside from the details on the good ending stuff and the lesser repeat of awkward first time stuff between MC and the various girls he can lose his virginity too. However, the cast of K4 is worse than the cast of K3 and the whole thing just doesn't flow as well as K3 did.
So up to this point, K3 seems to be the best of the lot, at least for me... but will it keep that spot when I go through the remaining 3 Kansen VNs? Who knows? I'll see over the next few months as I work my way through them.