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Link to the original author's blog post: https://cythoplazma.wordpress.com/2016/01/29/sekai-projects-unwanted-child/ While I'm not one to get on the SP bash hype train, I did find this post on Reddit to be a pretty good analysis of SP's past, present and future and how they handle their releases and it exposes a lot of the problems their business model tends to encounter, something that's becoming more apparent with Root Double's rather deplorable Kickstarter which seems to be set for failure as there's only 6 days left and they're still falling almost 40k dollars short. This post deals mostly with World End Economica episode 3, a VN that was funded on Kickstarter almost 2 years ago on June 2014 and is still only 10% complete while SP is still pushing out more and more Kickstarter campaigns, leaving the backers of their initial projects kind of concerned. Actual post: So it took the new translator a full month to read two short visual novel episodes, something which should have taken less than a week. Notice also how the verb work is used in a future tense. Backers, including myself, had enough and shot back. One backer raised questions over the promised Vita/iOS tiers, to which the project creator responded with a passively aggressive dismissal. It sounded almost resentful, in a “just take your money and go” kind of way, as if us backers didn’t want the project to succeed. Sekai Project issued a quick response two days later. Even though backers had to pressure them to get as much, they did respond. To alleviate our concerns, they supposedly put a backup translator in place just to hit a self-instated four-month deadline. Our questions in the comments were answered. The plan sounded good, the company was communicating with us again. The clock started ticking. December’s production update wasn’t verbose. The company’s translation progress page – which doesn’t inspire a whole lot of confidence in its current iteration – supposedly listed episode 03 at 8.26%. Then 2016 came around. Even though Sekai Project stated backers would be updated monthly, they didn’t follow through their own update schedule and backers haven’t been briefed since December. Just yesterday though, the company posted on Redditthat translation for episode 03 is roughly 10% done. It’s been two and a half months since plans to translate the episode were laid out. The four-month window is rapidly closing and I honestly can’t see how the project team will be able to hit their goals in the time they have left. Delays in visual novel productions happen all the time (just ask Japan), but what makes World End Economica’s case particularly tragic is that Sekai Project built their entire future off the shoulders of its Kickstarter campaign. They got good press for it and they roped in the novel’s backers to their other Kickstarters, yet this particular Kickstarter that started it all is being neglected month after month. I think Sekai Project has several structural problems that only became apparent as delays increased. Many of us have expressed concerns that perhaps bootstrapping as many localizations as they did in such a short amount of time wasn’t good for the projects they already had on their way, but as Sekai Project commented that has nothing to do with production due to the parallelized way their projects are set up. Even though having teams that don’t interfere with each other sounds ideal and all, it took the new translator one whole month to read through both episodes because apparently he or she was finishing up previous commitments to other projects. This is clearly a human resources problem. When a company is offering near-minimum wage to its potential employees, it’s harder to find somebody competent to fill a spot on the fly. The other problem is cash flow related. Sekai Project’s recently launched Kickstarters have featured expensive, arguably overpriced pledge tiers compared to tiers of their past projects. Root Double is the perfect example. Even though the game is already being translated and doesn’t really need Kickstarter money, tiers still have ridiculous prices attached to them. While rumors circulate that this is because of high licensing fees, I have a hard time believing that to be the biggest reason. I think the more likely answer is that Sekai Project doesn’t want to lose money on every Kickstarter, as that has admittedly been the case. One of their staffers said they want to make sure to cover all their bases, thus avoid as much risk as possible. I can understand that. I mean, World End Economica was initially set at only $22,000, which is ridiculously low compared to Root Double’s $135,000. A crazy price hike, but in all honesty completely warranted for a game that doesn’t look like it would hit it off well with the Sakura Spirit crowd. In turn, a business model that relies on post-Kickstarter sales will inherently cause cash flow problems, meaning the company will rather spend their time and resources on new inventory which is more likely to increase cash flow than old inventory. While Sekai Project says every one of their game projects has its own production team, I have my doubts they are keeping funding separate to each of them. In other words, if Sekai Project were to close their doors tomorrow, I doubt the translator would still be working on episode 03 to hit that four-month deadline. While I appreciate the efforts made by Sekai Project so far – in fact I’ve been hanging out with some of their staffers online for almost ten years now and I hate it has come to this – this project and its backers have to be treated with respect. A translation progress of one percent per month is not good enough, and some of their projects, as bold as they were, were walking a very fine line between success and bankruptcy. I’d like them to avoid the latter because they have been a net positive on the industry, it’s just frustrating to see them peddling new games every month. Meanwhile, the title that put them on the map gets neglected at the expense of backers that initially believed in them. Thoughts? Personally this is why I don't fund anything on Kickstarter (that and it rejected my card the first time I tried to back a project), it's a dangerous thing to invest in and could easily end up making you lose money and lately it feels like companies such as Sekai Project mostly use it not have to invest internal funds into their releases, which, as we can see, can only get you so far in the industry before it starts causing trouble. I do not wish for Sekai Project to go bankrupt in the slightest, but it worries me how they seem to be taking a hit in their efficiency due to their ambitions.

MangaGamer and JAST at least attempt to communicate if/when issues occur. SP just goes dead silent, which clearly inspires all the faith in the world. They've needed better PR for a while now, and it looks like they just don't care. "I backed World End Economica, and I haven't even recieved episode one. I've emailed them, I've commented on their updates about it, I've messaged them on kickstarter. But it's a goddamn black hole over there. I just want my damn game. It's asinine that I got episode 2, but not the first episode" ^ That right there is something that should never happen.

In marriage counseling they say that it takes multiple favors to counterbalance a single slight. Humans are hardwired to recall grievances more strongly than favors done. All it takes is a few of these negative experiences to completely ruin Sekai Project's ability to Kickstart future projects, no matter how well they do with other projects. Trust is hard to win and easy to lose, and it looks like Sekai Project's stock is plummeting.

Haha, that's exactly my genre. The following recommendations have a (good) story and aren't (just) gruesome gorefests. I will not mention the most obvious ones (most Black Cyc games, Innocent Grey, some of elf's masterpieces like Kawarazaki-ke no Ichizoku 2 or all the games which are easily found on vndb with the death of heroine tag). I will also only mention games which have a value beside killing girls. These are good eroge which happen to include the killing of heroines as an important aspect of the story (which makes them obviously even better): Heaven -Death Game-: Main character wins a trip to a deserted island. But as soon as he gets there, a Battle Royale starts and he must kill the other participants to survive. And contrary to most other Battle Royale visual novels... he will kill. This VN is an RPG and you can even decide whether you want new members in your party, or just kill them, hehe. This game has probably the most beautiful death CGs I have ever seen (that's Mink for you) and the story is interesting at first. Sadly, the game is far to easy and you probably don't trigger the really sick events because you are just to good at killing the others. By the way, look at this delicious teaser: 3M -Marionettes manipulate the marionette-: Most people think that this is just a guro nukige, but that's not true. The horror writing is brilliant, characters and story are very engaging. Only downside is that it will probably never get its concluding chapter. Hotaruko: Very good mystery game about your girlfriend and her past you're trying to uncover. Best thing is this nice feature while killing innocent little girls that the animation of the scene is linked to you mouse movement. It's like an interactive killing mini game! Very satisfying. I wish more games had a feature like this. Some other games where your heroines die horribly, but your main character is not involved in the act of killing (or is he?): Love Letter: Kinda like Kara no Shoujo, the girls around you get killed and you don't know why and want to solve this mystery. Game starts as a nice horror flick, then evolves into some kind of detective story. Story is good and the conclusion satisfying. Omokage: Probably the most gory non-doujin eroge. You are trapped in a mansion and need to escape before you and your friends get killed. Pretty slasher horror-like. Don't look at the screens on its vndb page, they're endgame spoilers. 13-nin no Uruwashiki Kedamono: Story is about 13 trapped individuals and the death game they are forced to play. Main character and heroines are pretty bland, secondary characters and their relationships and background stories however are great. Death scenes and CGs are very beautiful (Mink again). Not really a very good game story-wise but the setting and the secondary characters are written very well. I didn't check before I started writing because there were far to many to bother. Please forgive me. OTL

Read the review here. Don't play this game.

Someone should make a VN, that only shows the bottom half of the character sprites. Legs are the best part of the female body after all. ...

Regarding XReaper's comment etc. As a natural proofreader. WEE disgusted me. I loved the series so much after I read episode 1. But proofreading spelling/grammar/flow issues killed much of episode 2 for me. There are a TON of (simple) errors. It's distracting. I called SP out on it. It's like the game never went on any sort of QC. http://puu.sh/mOG1N/1739fc5244.png (blue hyperlinks) shows just how much I found and I wasn't even halfway through episode 2; it doesn't even show the ones I found on episode 1. Even some free fan-translations surpass this game by a milestone. They were asking me to keep submitting errors. I stopped reading since I lost motivation and I just told them to completely overhaul the whole script. No point in me pointing (no pun intended lol) out errors one by one when there's going to be hundreds of them. Even to this day, it's a slow drag to continue reading episode 2. I don't care much for 3 anymore. What a shame.

The problem seems to be them trying to do so many games at once. It's not as simple as "let's move on to the next one". Despite them saying they have parallel teams that work independetly, it's clear that it's not working out the way they intended it to, otherwise whenever a game got funded, all the funding would go to one single team and the game would get released in time, but they probably mix the funds in some way and have been losing some of the money because of it, otherwise they wouldn't have to raise the bar so high with Root Double. Not to mention we know some of their staff work in multiple projects, as mentioned in the above post, so there's bound to be some issues, likely due to there not being enough staff, which ultimately results in them losing money because they can't keep up with demand. "Moving on to the next one" is exactly what they shouldn't do if they want to stay afloat.

I dont support Sekai Project kickstarters because there's not much communication with them post-launch (if the campaign actually gets funded) plus their tier rewards suck ass. They just don't reward you hard enough despite being a loyal pledger. You are already making me wait for 1 year or more.... so at least suck it up and give me some incentive to fund your shitty campaign, Sekai Project. Other than Muv Luv and Kyuuketsuki no Libra, I haven't done shit to assist kickstarting VNs. Because it's easy to predict when a project is gonna flop like a fat kid doing slip n' slide when the funding has been struggling on the first 2 weeks and last 2 weeks. I want to know what I'm investing in and always want constant communication with project starters in all the details even if it's just letting us know like where the money is going like marketing/PR campaigns, translation status, and stuff. Heck, I'll take a picture of the cute voice actresses signing autographs like what onomatope*/@MiKandi Japan have been doing with Libra over nothing. It really gives me a peace of mind when something is shown and effort is being put into something no matter how small.

Basically the exposed skin between the short skirt and socks/stockings. The higher the stocking, and the less of the skin showing, the higher grade it is. This is one of those crazy phenomenon where less skin showing = sexier. From Fiddle's pic, Akari and Hinata are the only ones following zettai ryouiki. Akari has grade B of it which is slightly above the knee but not a thigh high stocking while Hinata is grade D which is her socks are about three-quarters long from the bottom of her feet to the knee.

Show me boobs, show me sex, show me everything! Get rid of this censorship. Underneath these clothes, we are naked anyway.

- Chisato (Koi to Senkyo to Chocolate) - Chinami (Hoshizora no Memoria) - Isuzu (Hoshizora no Memoria) - The FBI friends with Usami on G-Senjou no Maou - Kaede (Shuffle!)

I swear @Tyrosyn and @XReaper are my favorite people when it comes to recommendations

Confession: I can't believe anyone still remembers the "piece of paper taped to a body pillow" dakimakura. I did eventually get a real one, you know.

3 days in and they are already funded, How the heck did this get approved by Kickstarter?! The current connotation of pornography is to intend their audience with sexual stimulation. That is all. No type of literary value is focused. Hentai is considered as 'erotica,' it's main purpose is to tell a story with sexual arousal as a second thought and that is what gives this title a chance to be on kickstarter. How did I know? I didn't until I contacted Kickstarter about it and explained it to them what kind of project we planned to do. Their response was 'As long as it is not distasteful and offensive then your project is fine.' What is distasteful and offensive you say? We don't know until we find out. For this title, I know for a fact this will not be distasteful since this book is plain casual 'Vanilla'. =D Other good examples of these types of projects are 'Smut Peddler,' Tezuka's Swallowing the Earth and our yaoi Kickstarter "Finder restock" was able to pass due to the positive message and artistic value they carry.

Ayaka > Ritsuko > Rise > Chiho Ayaka has the combination of a good route and a good waifu. I like you Ritsuko, but damn your route has a bullshit resolution. Rise's route is pretty good, mostly due to her mom. Rise's yandere traits should have been played up more, like a milder version of Yuno. The love triangle wore out its welcome around 7/8 chapters ago. Chiho was more of a tsuntsun than tsundere.

This thread is starting to feel like deaf people are waving arms randomly at each others.

Why can't it just be called a Visual Novel? "English Visual Novel" doesn't imply anything special other than the fact it's in English, but do you really need the English part? Like, would you prefer to call FPS games "English FPS games"? Sure Japanese visual novels have a pretty established style and Western VNs tend to break out of that style, but I don't think that by itself is enough to excuse adding any extra words to the category of the game. You could rebrand your approach to something like "I'm trying to change what it means to be a Visual Novel in the West", doesn't that sound a lot nicer?

If you want to get slightly weirder with it, Saya no Uta related images might come in hand.

The fact that you are not even using a high school setting is already 70 points on a 100 point scale for me. Most of us here are tired of that cliched, over troped and overused nonsense and it's very refreshing to read VNs without using that boring setting. Good luck and looking forward to it and I hope you guys can be up there with Katawa Shoujo as one of the best OELVNs to ever be released.

Greetings from Novel Tea Games! We've been working hard on our Visual Novel and we're very close to finishing our demo. I assure you that you won't be disappointed! While we wish to be as transparent as possible and share as much as we can, we also believe in saving some of the content for a surprise when the demo launches so please forgive me if at any point I seem a little vague about certain story details. View our trailer! Now on Steam Greenlight! What's it about!? Runeous is a Fantasy Adventure with 'Steampunk' elements. The story follows a small group of heroes in a world ravished by the wars of its past. Runestones possessing magical qualities are what fuel the industry, their secrets long ago lost. Humans research them to unlock their hidden potential. Overpopulation in cities built for far fewer inhabitants. Homes built atop homes with giant walkways connecting the various levels together. While there is a whole ton of lore that's been written up for the world, we're waiting until the Demo before releasing it as we wish to make it as presentable as possible for you! (I may be willing to give a sneak peek to individuals who can offer genuine feedback and suggestions) What do we have thus far? Well, we're almost done with the demo! There are just a few elements left to add. - In the interests of transparency, we have had a lot of trouble with music. This is an issue that has been addressed with the addition of a new team member! - 90% of artwork is done and that includes the majority of the 'main' assets. All we have left to do is a few more CGs, NPCs and promotional art! As for the writing we're miles ahead! From lore and main plot points to full episodes written! Meet our team! While I would absolutely love to wait until our staff 'Chibi' images are ready, unfortunately we've just not had enough spare time to get them done with the development going on, therefore I'm just going to have to throw some unattractive links at you! Earl Grey - That's me! I'm the project manager, Community manager and Marketing. I wrote the initial story line and lore, however our writer has taken over writing the Episodes! Chamomile - She's our Lead Character Artist! She also works a lot on promotional items and tidbits! Chai - She's our Lead Background Artist. She also collaborates with Chamo on CGs! Jasneymon - Or 'Jas' for short. She's our 'Support' Artist. Working on things like Objects, items or Chibis for the website. Vanilla - She's our Web Designer! You probably can't tell right now, but a lot of work is going on behind the scenes which will improve the site a bunch Kagoshima - He's another amazing artist, however he's working on something 'Top Secret' right now so unfortunately we can't show you any of his content right now Peppermint - Our latest addition. Peppermint is working on Music! Unfortunately I don't have a link to share with you at the moment. So there we have it. That's our small, yet amazingly wonderful team! ^^ If you would like to find out more about our project, please check out our Website You can now also support us on Patreon! We post monthly Blogs! Thanks for reading! Please do let me know what your thoughts are on our projects! Also please consider taking part in our community forum where you can talk, interact and ask questions with the rest of our team! Mail us any time: [email protected] 02 Sept 2015 NPC Update No character is too small or insignificant to us, especially the small insignificant ones We've finished all but one of the 'NPCs' so everyone who speaks within the demo has a face! We've also made some progress on music. While we're not ready to share it with the public just yet, we do have a small 'sample' of the music quality you might expect: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bylf1W-RKQ-mZmxGcDRMUUp4TW8/view 05 Sept 2015 Update: Narrator Portraits Since even the NPCs are featured in our VN, it's only fair that our wonderful Narrators be see too. Today we introduce our Narrator Portraits! 18 October 2015 Update: Free Game! We have decided to release Runeous as a Free Game! Check out out blog to learn more and how you can help to support us!

That implies they ever had one. Now, companies look at profits/results, not reputation (at least, these random Japanese ones with no knowledge of English). A successful kickstarter theoretically means profits. If they stop having successful kickstarters (due to bad fame with the masses), that means companies will stop coming to them. That means they stop localising games. Their loss will amount to bad management and expenditure on the failed kickstarter campaigns. Sekai Project will not be doomed to hell if they lose their reputation. On the other hand, we, the people, will probably lose more. I've seen a funny analogy where Sekai's kickstarter campaigns were compared to holding games hostage, and I think it sort of works. If we refuse to fund their games, the kickstarter will fail. If it fails, it'll forever be remembered that it failed. Having this black spot on the record, and such a huge pool of Japanese games to choose from, it hypothetically guarantees that it'll never be officially localised, said game. So long as Sekai's business practices work, they will continue to make use of them. When they stop working, they won't incur too much in terms of damage, and at worst they'll just disband and do something else. Not drown in debt. And we, who want English games, are the parties who suffer the most damage. That is my point of view.

Nothing has explicitly failed though, unless I am missing something. WEE 3 is regrettable and unfortunate, and SP has had some pretty bad issues on hand, but again, nothing has failed as of yet.

The more games they take on, the less time and resources they have to focus on their earlier games/kickstarters that aren't fully released, like WEE. But yeah, this is the problem with Kickstarter. Since creators are under no obligation to release the finished product by a certain date, they can take their sweet time on things that really shouldn't be taking long. It happens in other kickstarters too, like the feminist frequency video campaign thing, where they're only halfway through producing the videos even though the estimated release for it was 3.5 years ago.

I've only ever been close to backing them with Grisaia because I love it and wanted it to succeed, but I saw it was doing fine for itself. This was before I saw their blatant abuse of Kickstarters for every single VN they license. Eventually, they're gonna stop making their backing and lose money because of bad PR and various other problems. I see them going bankrupt in the near future if they keep up this mindset. Hell, it took them 3 weeks just to get the tiers right for Root Double. They should've been that way from the beginning. Maybe then they wouldn't be struggling with it right now. I don't hate Sekai Project as it might sound like, but they need to fix these problems if they want to gain the respect of the community and stay alive in general.

Little things matter such as publicity and customer loyalty. We live in a social world now, so it's hard to ignore and run away from it.... If SP is being an ass to customers and stay in the dark and making them worried all the time, if a company who does a better job at things comes by, everyone will come flocking AWAY from SP. They got all these ways to contact and keep in touch through multiple social medias with their customers and still fail hard.

Early successes? More like, knowing "WHAT NOT TO DO when you are starting a kickstarter campaign" and actually doing stuff that SP thought wasn't worth doing. While Muv Luv Team and onomatope* may have gotten support from SP through social media and publicity, they were in touch and willing to answer questions and concerns and in a timely manner unlike SP.

rip

Indeed, when it comes to vn's subjectivity is important when you make lists because it's not about which is the objective best but which you enjoyed the most..it doesn't matter if 90% of the people hate it..if you love it then put it on your list and be happy with it, that's what i do

Anatomically accurate 10/10

Amane in Grisaia no kajitsu, Miyako in majikoi, Yuuna/Nanami in SonoHana and many more. I used to be completely disgusted by it myself but ... Suddenly one day I started enjoying it. I have been corrupted But yes, by some / many it is considered arousing. Also, for sadistic people it would be cute I guess, as the person is showing a side of themselves that is very private and embarrassing.

Looks quite amazing, i'll be sure to vote on GL...Love the backgrounds and artstyle, keep up the good work and best of luck

Yo! I got this!

Thank you all. Your support is really appreciated! Ahhh! You're our Patreon! ^^ I hope you enjoy the updates that are coming on there. We've not focused much attention toward it, though with all the content we've been saving up, we'll have lots to share with you there before anywhere else

Responding to salt with salt... just stop. Anyways, Maxel, you shouldn't worry about Ikusa Megami Zero not winning since the top two most voted for VN in these stages pass.

Let me see if I can help you here: 1. Steam, regardless of your pounding away at the keyboard, is the best-known online outlet for downloading video games along with extras specific to the site. Meaning online play with others, the weird rewards system, etc. It has the potential to deliver a bigger impact or chance of success than a typical indie developer can get on their own. Comparing Amazon to Steam is silly - you're comparing a convertible to an oak tree. Your list of other websites is nice, and there's nothing wrong with putting your game on them, either. Just don't expect to hear most people to know or care about that site as compared to knowing Steam. Know why there are people with the annoying habit of calling all mp3 players iPod or all soft drinks Coke? Brand name recognition. Heck, ever say "I need a Band-Aid" at all? Band-Aid is a brand name for what's really an adhesive medical strip. Power of brand name. Steam has the potential for your game to get out there better because it has that sort of brand power. 2. Steam is part of a capitalistic society at large. Meaning being on Steam is no guarantee for success for anyone. It's a potential tool or resource, but nothing in capitalism is guaranteed. Will developers fail even using Steam? Of course. They can also fail having it listed on Amazon or their own home page. But it does have potential for greater success than just hosting it on a makeshift website. 3. What you're basically trying to say is, because some developers did not do well on Steam, it must suck and everyone who likes Steam must be a brainwashed zombie. Problem is that there are so many other factors as to why a game fails anywhere - economics 101, really. Supply and demand, product quality, marketing, etc. Blaming Steam for a developers game not taking off is like blaming the President for high gas prices.

Thank you very much!

The most proven MySQL editor is probably phpMyAdmin. Super easy to install and set up and fantastic to use. Has editing available for all tables with index (they should all have indexes) and can do just about anything you need. https://www.phpmyadmin.net/ If you want, I'm willing to test features you need on my own MySQL server with my own phpMyAdmin install before you commit or anything like that. As the name suggests it runs on PHP on your server, only thing I can't seem to find is that WYSIWYG > HTML conversion .

I mean it can be literally anything biological related, including any field: medicine or naturalist. I'm positive there are moe girls riding whales or yanderes holding syringes. I'm at campus right now, so using an image aggregate isn't the greatest idea, but I had more hope that we could come up with some excellent things.

I come back to Fuwa for the first time in months and this is the filth I'm greeted with. Unbelievable. #KomariKamikitaDefenseSquad

I shall now give you the same treatment I gave followers and those I follow on Twitter: TOTALLY LEWD, BANNED-IN-THE-USA HEADPAT!!!

Not really. It's kinda simple actually. Let's say you have 15 skill points on Darx. Type 15 on the value box and click on "First Scan". Now spend the skill point. Let's say you spent 1 skill point, that's 14 now. Type 14 on the value this time and click "Next Scan". It should narrow down the address results to only 2 or 3 vs 100+ from the first scan. Click each address and change them to test and see. If it does nothing to the in-game values, make sure to revert it to the original value.

Thanks all for the continued feedback. We're certainly listening and adapting as best we can with what we have for this campaign. We've been pushing hard the last week or so and are on a solid track to getting this one funded. If anyone has any additional feedback, please keep it coming. We certainly love to hear from all of you...be it positive, constructive criticism, or even the not so constructive criticism (because sometimes you just need to vent, and that's totally cool with me). EDIT: Oh, and on a side note (not necessarily directly related to visual novels per se), we're getting ready to launch Rabi-Ribi tomorrow. If you dig metroidvania-style 2D platforming games and Touhou-style bullet-hell (bunny-hell in this case ) boss battles, this one might be right up your alley.

Alright I added it. Thanks! Nice to meet you all too! Dergonu it helps me to live on the edge. xD

This is in the right ballpark. I was making fun of suikashoujo's dakimakura. Read from here: And then it grew on me over time, so I kept it. Maybe it's symbolic of my role in life. Or something.

I'll postpone my vote until I have read every single visual novel in existence. Watch this space.

Honestly Yume Miru Kusuri is one of the former gateway vns...it has a good amount of plot, sex, decent art, decent music and is short enough to keep most people's attention it has a few different characters and chances are you will be able to appreciate at least one of them. Now whether the vn is good or bad really depends on what you've read prior. To someone just starting out this is a great visual novel and it was for a lot of us who read it back when it first came out before there were a whole lot of good visual novels available for reading. Before fan translating ever really took off visual novels were primarily only able to be bought via JAST USA, (Mangagamer had not yet come into existence) and fan-translations were in infant stages with even Fate/Stay Night only being in trial stages and the only real fan-translated visual novel available for reading being Tsukihime. Kana Little Sister had issues when it was released, Ever 17 while brilliant had translation errors, censorship, and a few other small problems thanks to Hirameki, and really there were very few story emphasized visual novels at this time. YMK is the visual novel that changed that as far as company translated visual novels went. Yes it may have had a ton of ero scenes but they were done in a way that helped emphasize the overall plot. JAST really went out on trying to push the title and even tried to emphasize that this was a classic from Japan and a much more plot driven title. The game released in April of 2007 in english so the visual novel is quite old compared to what a lot of people have read and has not aged overly well in the advent of the rise of fan translations and better titles released since then but when you look at it in the context of what else was released prior to it you realize that YMK was a pretty good title for the time of its release.