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…Wow. After the disappointments of last month, it is so nice to encounter such a great VN on my first one of the month this one. Sakura no Mori Dreamers is a horror/mystery nakige based in a medium-sized Japanese town. It is primarily focused on the protagonist, Shinji, and his quest to discover the killer of his first love, Madoka. However, if you ask me if this is a story of revenge in the vein of Hello, Lady, that isn’t the case. Shinji is one of those rarest of things in a VN protagonist these days… a young man with a strong will and who is actually intelligent enough to figure out the best way to act in most situations. That isn’t to say he is some paragon of the avenger archetype… if anything, he is a normal guy… but he has encountered enough loss in his life that it is pretty easy to empathize with him and his reactions to tense situations lack the frustrating aspects you see in a lot of VN protagonists. Madoka, his deceased girlfriend, plays a vital role in the story, with the prologue thoroughly introducing her and the relationships between the protagonist and his adopted family (his parents are deceased). To be honest, the sense of loss at the end of the prologue is devastating, even though you know – since every single summary on the web reveals it to you – what is going to happen. In terms of structure, about thirty-percent of this VN is slice-of-life, with the rest being raw plot. Most of the story is told as part of the ‘common route’, which makes up about 80% of the VN. In fact, the main conflict is resolved in the common route, so afterward it moves from the protagonist’s own personal conflict to that of the heroines… with the exception of Kureha’s path, which becomes something of an extension of the common route near the end. This VN really touches on the darker side of human nature, with multiple psychopathic killers involved. There is a lot of semi-guro imagery in this VN (like pencils sticking out of the eye of a rotting corpse, a half-pancaked schoolgirl, etc). As such, I can’t recommend it for the faint of heart, especially since it is pretty frequent in the common route. The protagonist and friends dive into the dreams of killers in this VN and eliminate the evil spirits waiting there… but that part of the VN is actually relatively small in comparison to the ‘background’ that gets formed around each major incident and its human cause. The fantasy-horror element is vital to the story, but it tends to take a backseat in two of the four heroine routes (Mahoro and Hatsune’s routes), whereas it is more vital to the other two (Kureha and Mifuyu’s). In all honestly, it is quite possible to be perfectly satisfied with this VN after playing only Kureha’s route, which is why I think it should have been locked until you finished the others. There is a definite sensation of ‘true route flavor’ to her route, and I made the mistake of playing it first. That doesn’t mean that the other routes were neglected, but it is the only route where the common route’s main storyline is continued. Hatsune’s route is probably the mildest… it is basically your classic nakige route with a few minor twists born of the fantasy element. Mahoro’s route is quite similar in this respect. However, Mifuyu’s route is seriously dark at times… primarily because Mifuyu is carrying a bit more baggage than the other two heroines, lol. Overall, this VN is one of the better ones this year so far. For some reason, this seems to be the year for fantasy-horror VNs (with Tokyo Necro and Akeiro Kaikitan both standing out like burning flagpoles). There are some issues with the setting that prevent it from being a kamige – the evil spirits are a bit too… opaque as an existence, even at the end – but it is definitely worth playing and a solid candidate for May’s VN of the Month. I actually finished this VN and this post before I went to sleep, but since I lost internet access due to a freak lightning strike (curse you, oh Lady of Storms!), I haven’t been able to get online to take care of things. This VN took me roughly twenty-one hours over the course of five days, but a lot of that was because, until the internet got knocked out, I was working like crazy to meet some short-term deadlines. Moreover, the loss of internet access completely screwed up my work schedule (while also hurrying my play schedule), which I’d re-geared since my doctor pronounced me semi-recovered. Anyway, I’ve already started Soshite Hatsukoi ga Imouto ni Naru. For those who are wondering… the VN is absolutely nothing like what I expected so far, in a good way, lol. *smiles enigmatically*

RIP. Let's not forget that behind the legendary boxer was a great political figure that stood for black people's rights in the US and against imperialism.

Confession : I love/hate you all

http://xseedgames.tumblr.com/post/145377764065/xseed-localization-general-blog-1 Anybody else read it? On the one hand, "unpaid internship" is a veritable trigger for me, but otherwise it was a pretty enjoyable read, even if it was more about a personal journey than about localization itself. I threw them some support when this came across my Twitter feed in the hopes that they keep posting something from their team. I'm holding out the hope that these disjointed communities of professional localization for more mainstream non-eroge and the professional and fan eroge localization scene can benefit from each other, but while the latter are quite outspoken, we generally don't hear much from the former (that I know of...).

RIP Muhammad Ali. Great boxer, great wit, great wisdom.

Ok, I'll take a stab at offering a legitimate answer, and allot myself one bonus point for not looking anything up before trying to answer: In general, it's very stripped-down - the numbers aren't really necessary if you're good at reading a clock, so remove them. Bam: 12 unnecessary things gone. The resulting interface is now much cleaner and less cluttered. They took a middle ground and put little dots around the edges - they're still much less intrusive than numbers, and as a bonus are just as easy to read for most people (and will certainly become natural for you to read if you actually wear the watch frequently). I actually kind of like the way that looks. Modern design is unapologetically flat: this is kind of in the same vein as the above, but in a very specific way. This more often applies to digital design than to physical design - remember when computer UIs used to have beveled 3D buttons with glossy finishes? No more. In modern design, flat is justice. But I see the same thing going on here, especially with the blue hands. That said, it's probably not very good modern design, because it does still have too many extraneous bits. Remove all the blue hands, for starters. With a watch like that, do you really care about the second hand, let alone whatever those other tiny hands are? Plus, then you can remove those extra depressed dials and flatten the whole thing further. Disclaimer: I know pretty much nothing about this stuff, and I haven't worked on any kind of UI in about a decade. But that doesn't stop me from reading about it from time to time!

User info possibly compromised. I suggest taking steps to stay ahead of the intruder, in the rare chance your info is in his pile of data~ (change passwords and emails associated with your Hongfire account, etc~ http://www.hongfire.com/forum/showthread.php/452735-hongfire-com-password-reset-and-server-roll-back

Let's find out then, because I have way too much time to waste to do something ACTUALLY useful, and thus we arrive at this point, with a brand-new mistake I can lament about when I eventually get ripped apart by a group of ravenous 12-year old, overly sexually active fuccboi-weebs who can't see a difference between the totally obviously right opinion and their own. Anyways, It already seems like the greatest thing ever seen by man I remember when I played Kusoge. I also remember the gallons of dead cells I vomited and the amounts of fecal matter I 'outsourced' after I finished that, well, shit. Now I'm experiencing that joy and masochistic heaven again. Goody. But still, The Best Eroge Ever, or TBEE, which I'm going to adress it in the future because writing words are hard, is created by our very own omnipotent shitlord, hipster and Twitter connoseur, Moogy. And oh boy, did he do good. Where as Kusoge was a satire with actual effort put into it for god know what reason, TBEE is just a pile of flaming poop used as ammo for the hate- and sick-burn-catapultsTM for all things in the VN medium. From Jun Maeda to Nasu to Japanese culture (sort of. Melon bread and shit. I have no idea). Yeah. The game's pretty ruthless and it's funnier that way. The game follows some guy named Muugi, who's name totally doesn't reek of nihilism, who attends at Sugoi Gakuen (TL Note: Sugoi Gakuen means 'Amazing' and 'School' respectively). Nothing else is really built upon the character, except that he enjoys the lifestyle of screwing every shoujo (TL Note: stuff means girl, oki?) in sight. Apparently, every morning going to school, he fucks about five to six nekomimis or whatever along the way, so he has to leave to school an hour early, probably a pan (TLN: bread, you dirty weeb) in his mouth, possibly of the meron type. His parents also were killed by evil vampire demon zombies, so that's a thing. He also has some amounts of imoutos (little sisters), osananajimis (childhood friends), iinchous (class represetatives) and lolis (NO), possibly amounting in thousands each, but the largest we see is the MC mentioning Loli #71, but apparently there's over 9000 heroines and the script is over 5000 MBs. We never see more than 5 minutes worth of text, possibly amounting to 2 kBs, but hey, it's there. No words left to give. I'm pretty tired. FeelsBadMan All in all, I'd say the story is pretty goddamn ridiculous and all over the place, but it's all just a flaming shitstorm-inferno so I guess it's all par to the course. There's some sensei-fucking (meaning a black screen and a text 'And then we fucked.'), some utter pwnaged and fucking every girl in sight, and that's about it for the game. Sorry Moogy, I won't be giving you a hundred bucks. If I were to say which one is better, Kusoge or The Best Shitstorm Ever, I'd had to say Kusoge. While this abomination has more references specifically to the VN-scene, Kusoge just has better everything. I'm also pretty sure that this was made while not being high on thousands of different shrooms, which can't be said about Kusoge. This was a nice, maybe 5-10 minutes of wasting my precious life away for the sake of making this shitpost on my blog. Was it worth it? Nah, thanks Narcosis. Was it fun as hell? Well, yes, obviously. Play it and possibly donate 100$ to Moogy-sama.

Here's an example of one of the vocal tracks:

Qualifying atmospheric tracks as forgettable is a blasphemy. And there are like, more than 20 songs in glorious Portuguese, that's quite a lot.

I keep recommending Nodame to people. Best musical anime in existence, imo. People keep promoting crap like K-ON for musical anime, but Nodame’s far superior.

Wow, that's like... a lot. Makes sense tho, since there's only a few otomege in English and some of them are price as hell, so being able to read a fluffy and cute love story for free is really tempting, but then again, mobile otomege have SO MANY issues I could talk about it all day. Plain characters, boring storylines, crappy art, crappy translations, crappy music and characters calling me "dog" and other things, I really don't know how many people can like mobile otome games + The fuckin coupon/ticket/points systems. It's a shame that to play some really good otome games you have to have a PSVita and know Japanese ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ and between paying for a PSVita + a good game and playing one crap for free, mostly people would play the crap one. Hopefully this changes in the future~

Chihayafuru and Nodame Cantabile are the stealthiest top-tier shows I've seen; most series that are as good as those two are are widely-known and celebrated, but those two somehow fly under most peoples' radar (including mine, for the longest time). So now that I know how awesome they are, I find myself recommending them quite often.

Otomes are great, screw consoles vs. pc / mainstream vs. niche; everything should go multi-plat so we can all play on whatever we have and then have mucho fun discussiono's on the forums. I use my Tabby for the portable VN reading, because yes, not being chained to PC while reading a story is smex.

The second season of Chihayafuru does not disappoint. The continued hype this show has constantly managed to provide is straight up sugoi. So sugoi in fact that I managed to get two of my friends hooked on it as well, one of them even finished both seasons before me while I was on the first season. Feels good.

Confession: I made a discord bot yesterday... it went about as well as you'd expect. In case anyone is at all curious about the code (no idea why you would be though) http://pastebin.com/9WJ3x06L

Iwaihime has been out for quite some time https://vndb.org/v17863 Don't know anything except the art style about Trianthology, doesnt have a release date yet https://vndb.org/v17136 Edit: here's the Trianthology website http://trt.07th-expansion.net/

Thanks. Morrowind best ES though.

One of the early sentences of skyrim.

fired* FTFY

I actually have the first season on disc but haven't gotten around to it yet. My incoming rate of anime to watch is much higher than my consumption rate, so as dictated by a fundamental theorem of queueing theory, the queue keeps growing and I never actually watch half the stuff in it But I'm more interested now - I didn't know that writer by name, but I loved both NagiAsu and AnoHana, which speaks pretty well for her. But, don't worry; I know not to expect either of those from AKB0048. This one has been sitting in my backlog for at least six months now, probably a lot longer... I really need to get to it, but I never hear anybody around here talk about it so it always gets put off. No more!

Confession: had my first exam in finals today and these finals supposedly decide which college you go to It was leaked along its answers and I only knew after the exam Everyone is pissed off because some people are gonna get high grades The first exam which is important wasn't cancelled ,however the second exam which isn't important was cancelled before it began and we went home and now our exams won't end on 28th but will end on 29th Sasuga Egypt

Hope P5 comes on vita Anyway, waiting for ZTD and god eater 2

The fuwachat community will one day, rule over fuwanovel!! muhahahahahahaa!

The free-to-play mobile games really turned me off with the ticket thing. I found I couldn't even finish a single route and I think it's a waste of time. The paid mobile games held my interest for a while. It was what got me into visual novels, after all. But then, after I've read a few, they started to get really boring. The MC is designed for self-inserts and is really, really bland. I don't do self-inserts so it's really annoying for me. I thought the art was good at first until I discovered Amnesia and some evn otome games. The guys in mobages seem pretty much the same in every game, personality-wise. I stopped buying mobile games the moment I realized I spent more on one route than I spent on a discounted copy of Amnesia on Steam. The price in mobages add up when you buy a lot so I regret that, especially when PC otomes seem to get cheaper in comparison. It was fun for a while until I realized there's more to VNs and otome games than fluff.

Soon. Btw, now that replaying 999 ruined it for you... ~~ Cold Steel is great. It's a very slice of lifey JRPG, slow paced, so its not for people who want to jump straight off the train and into the action FFVII-style. You get 'free' days in between field studies to bond with classmates and converse/quest with townsfolk, and holy crap EVERYBODY in the main town has their own ongoing little story going on, they're not your typical one-time-one-line NPCs, so while it can feel chorey at times to have to walk all over and talk to everyone to see what's new as the main story goes on, it can also feel quite fulfilling.

Dunno. But I like this answer better: http://chigai-allguide.com/分かると解ると判る/

I know, seriously. It's just so sad that the producers had to go through with that prank and blow any practical chance for this series to get another season. Well, I suppose there's always the LN. The anime was a breath of fresh air with the way it told its story and developed the characters.

I used to play Voltage otome games and other free-to-play games on my phone before I got bored. They're mostly light and fluffy, okay 2-4 hour reads. They also have a pretty large fandom on tumblr, probably because unlike say, Ozmafia, they have lower prices and the ability to choose the guy from the get-go (although there is Amnesia:Memories which goes on sale for as low as 90% off). Personally, I'm moving on to otome games and other visual novels I find on Steam since it gives more content for the money.

Chihayafuru is probably the only show that can get you excited about staring at paper rectangles on the floor.

>eroge >mainstream Surely you jest

I also second the Saya no Uta suggestion. It's brilliantly written and makes it very hard to decide what's morally good or bad. And good old G-Senjou has some greyish areas too of course. A lesser known title with some more philosophical depth would be Suika AS. It looks just moe on the outside, but there's more than meets the eye. Tokyo Babel also has some deeper philosophical backgrounds even if I still find its execution deeply flawed.

Hello, always good seeing new people here. See ya around.

None of Kajitsu/Fruit's ends are cliffhangers since the sequels follow a non-existent harem route. Basically, it's a very complete experience. However, I would say that although the protagonist is a bit of a pragmatist, Grisaia doesn't really qualify here. It never questions Yuuji's righteousness.

Welcome to Fuwanovel, and hope you had fun here. As for woman gamer, looks like we had many female member entering Fuwanovel recently. For recommendation, maybe if you in mood I/O and YU-NO there. Also Steins Gate and Root Double maybe good too. As for otome, not much I could recommended here. And nice to meet you by the way.

Welcome! Always nice to get some female representation in our melting pot of opinions. Hope you like it here! Me neither, I tried to read Phenomeno and I literally chickened out halfway though

Hello and welcome it's nice to meet you aswell and as others have recommended G-senjou no Maou is a great one for mystery. If you can handle (blood and all) they're great mystery and crime vns : Cartagra ~Tsuki kurui no Yamai~ Kara no Shoujo Kara no Shoujo Episode 2 They're in my mind some of the best. Hope you have a great time here on the forums and don't hesitate to ask around for help if you need it.

Hi hi, welcome to Fuwa If you're into gory stuff, play Corpse Party, it's good, I swear See ya around

Hey, welcome to the forum, nice to meet you I recommend G-senjou no Maou. It's a pretty good mystery / battle of wits type story.

Welcome to the forums! Hope you enjoy your stay! Have you read Umineko no Naku Koro ni? It's a mystery (well, murder mystery, there's some blood in it I'm afraid) Have a moe:

Welcome! Nice to see a fellow otomege fan here (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧ I love Hakuoki! For now it's my favorite otomege! Who is your favorite character? And, if you are starting to learn japanese and want to play some easy to understand otomege I recommend Alice=Alice and the Dot Kareshi series, since the Japanese in this ones is really simple and easy to understand what's going on. Amnesia is a good choice too, since almost all the dialogue is voiced, but there's an English version on Steam already~ There's some good otomege in English on steam too, like Dandelion and Nameless~ I don't know much about yaoi tho, but I know a lot of people who played No, Thank You! and they liked it. Hope to see you around (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧

Welcome to Fuwa Rin and it's Nice to meet you to For Yaoi I recommend Dramatical Murer and Togainu No Chi. For other genre I recommend Remember 11 and Da Capo 1-2

Porn doesn't have to be art. Porn can just be porn. That still doesn't discredit its existence in any way, shape or form. Again I'm repeating myself but this comes down entirely to people's taste in the genre. You clearly hate sex scenes, and that's fine, but don't bash other people and call them delusional for merely having a different preference. You are literally trying to justify a personal preference of yours as some universal fact, and I'm sorry to tell you but that won't go anywhere. And let's assume everything you said is true. That h-scenes give a bad name to vns, that h-scenes are pointless, that they literally only harm the medium. EVEN THEN, that is still no reason for people not to like them. I think you should just accept the fact there are different audiences in the medium and in this case you're just not part of it.

Dicussing this is fine, as long as you don't turn it into what happened in the last thead (which was broken beyond recovery.) Please, don't stop to shitpost. I don't know whether or not this person is baiting, but it really doesn't matter. Given how the last one ended up, this thread will be moderated much more strictly than what we usually do around here. Hope you understand. Now, happy discussing! ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Well, I do like H scenes. VNs allow you to know the characters better and hold feelings for them, which has a pretty nice effect on the H itself. I read them for both H and the story (oftentimes separately, though.) By the way, I don't see much of a contradiction with saying that "I dislike H-scenes, but they're there for the sales" The point of the argument is that, in general, people are more likely to buy titles with H scenes than they are to buy titles without it. People saying that are making a statement about the majority of the VN-buying public, not about themselves. Whether or not the statement is correct is an entirely different matter. I know little data about it, so all that I can offer are my observations and speculation - Some VNs certainly can thrive without H-scenes. A (probably valid) argument against that is that only big-name publishers have the luxury of making said non-H VNs, though. Either way, the fact nukige tend to sell pretty well indicates that there's a pretty good interest in H scenes, at the very least.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/toneyemedia/anomie-a-dystopian-visual-novel There we go. Months of hard work. I hope you guys check it out.