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Guys can we at least avoid throwing personal insults at dovac? Criticizing his job decisions is one thing (although I disagree with circlejerking over it but alas), but name calling is something I'd like to avoid seeing. Dovac is a real human being, please keep that in mind before commenting.

Gotta say, I'm beyond disappointed with Muv Luv Alternative. I slogged through Extra and Unlimited with naiive anticipation of reading the 40+ hour epic rollercoaster that VNBD, and all of Alternative's fans, led me to believe. Shame that this is what I got. I have no idea how it got rated so high on VNBD or why it has such a devoted following. It's certainly not the worst VN I've ever read, but it still sucks. I feel as if it's important to say that I played most of it, and kinda read up on the ending because it got so unbearable. So maybe my thoughts are contradicted by things happening near the end. I don't know if I'm going to be kicking the hornet's nest posting this here, but after investing so much time into the game, I feel as if I have to rant, so this is happening regardless. Here's my grips: 1. The protagonist sucks. He starts off great. He's a marty stu and you root for him because we've become invested in a world that has little to no chance, but then one little thing goes wrong and he goes down a path of self-degradation. He's so self-important and arrogant that he believes that everything that does not go 110% is his fault. And he never shuts the hell up with his internal dialogue. 24/7 he's repeating obvious nonsense or raging inside his head about something. There is no good scenes in Muv Luv that have Takeru's presence, which is 99% of them, because he has to interrupt with his inane angsty prattling throughout even the most dramatic scenes. Think of Majikoi. Think of Grisaia. Remember the Main Characters inner dialogue? If you do, you barely do, because it was so seemlessly inserted into the narrative that it was almost undetectable. 2. The pacing. There's too many times where Takeru is talking back and forth about nothing pertinent with people (or, of course, himself). Most of Muv Luv is just full of nothing happening. This kinda leads onto the next point. 3. Infodumping. Self-explanatory. Even if you disagree with every other little thing I say, this is simply an undeniable fact. Exposition is supposed to be weaved into a dialogue, not fed to you like you're in a classroom, which you are half the bloody time in Muv Luv AND Alternative. Reading this stuff feels like work half the time. Yuuko, your life tutor, seems to love the sound of her own voice. I get that Quantum Physics is a thing in Muv Luv, and it's very hard to understand for even 'experts' or whatever, but do we really have to have lectures in 20 minute intervals that drone on forever about a subject nobody cares about. Steins Gate did it fine. 4. The plot is garbage. It doesn't go anywhere. There's really not much more to say. The only time there was any semblance of a plot was the Coup-Detat, but that's hardly ever mentioned again except for whenever someone wants to gush about how awesome 'the Shogun' is, even though it's clearly established she's nothing more than a walking figurehead. Other than that, what was actually going on in between all of these raids on Hives that wasn't Takeru just mindlessly talking to his companions about nothing in particular? 5. Shock value. The chomp scene was the only death scene that had any significance, since an entire almost-unendurable arc was based around it. Everyone else just died randomly and had little impact on the story on their way out. Hell, they didn't even serve as development for anyone else, with the exception of the one Captain lady, and that was so forced and spontaneous it was pathetic. Like, they all instantly become the characters they end up as in their routes because a dying woman that they knew for less than a couple of weeks told them to. Yeah. Humans don't really work like that. Speaking of shock value, let's talk about the Beta Rape scene. 'Spoilers' were included in the title, so no whining about that. It was utterly stupid, simply put. So, the Beta decided randomly after not even seeing us as worth worrying about, or as 'life forms', for so long that they're going to find out how to make a human female moan? Even if there was a reason, why the female and not the male? Objectively speaking, what's the difference? We're not talking about reproductive qualities, of which females are far superior, we're just talking about pleasure. Answer = Because that fate would shock the viewers more, of course, and conjure some stupid reason to put Sumika in a sympathetic light. Well, I couldn't care less about her because that was contrived and her character is weak. 6. Characters were horrible, yo. Their dialogue was inane and their growth non-existent, at least by any believable or substantial means. They served little more than as triggers for Shirogane to do stuff. It's very easy to forget the original cast exist in Alternative. They're overshadowed by other characters, and even they suck. Most of them exist just to die, and the ones that survive have NOTHING compelling about them at all. This entire game is like a submit of a clumsy first draft. 7. Romantic interests. This is more of a minor gripe, relatively. Why give us all these options and characters to explore with in the last games and then force us into a relationship with the most generic and insipid character ever created? A character that has NO depth, even in the original. A character that has no likes or interests that are not Takeru related? A character that whines, complains and is only useful due to a power that is not her own? A character two steps from becoming a Yandere, and yet even that somehow prevents her from becoming the least bit compelling because she doesn't do anything. She is the main heroine because, and only because, she inherits the bewilderingly popular role of 'Childhood Friend'. /puke. 8. The ending. What? It's bad. It erases literally everything Takeru did so he can be placed smack bang into square one. And he doesn't even remember! We might as well consider Alternative non-canon. 9. Angst. So. Much. Angst. Takeru is always screaming and nobody inside of his head, and even outside of his head in front of people, creating awkward atmospheres. The one point where I was like "Oh, this dude is awesome" was in the retelling of the scene where those two jealous soldiers sock the crap out of him. He embarassed himself in Unlimited, but took the situation like a champ in Alternative. Where did that Takeru go? The dude who was willing to get beaten the hell out of to get stuff done, and stay calm throughout the whole thing? He was awesome, and he didn't stick around long. He was replaced by a dude who screams in the middle of an entire classroom and hugs his teacher. People thought Shirou from Fate Stay/night was embarassing? Lmfao. So, that's my rant.

I don't get the point of this thread. Digging up a month old livestream so the community can shit on him some more doesn't seem very productive. He does indeed have some health issues and I hope he gets better soon.

oh, okay thanks

Awesome muvluvish booost ahah lol.

Because the approach to story and characters is the same in manga, anime and VN, it's just the medium and the production that changes.

I feel like there can be linear otome games, though? Just not the What a Beautiful series, cause they're (sometimes very obviously) aimed at men. I feel like my definition's wishy-washy, but to me it's kinda like: if it inspires the same feelings in me as shoujo manga, it's an otome game. If it inspires the same feelings as a BL manga, it's a BL visual novel (obviously other conditions msut be met to be a BL visual novel, this is just an example).

The list gets confused when stuff like 'The Hunger Games', which has plenty of action, is revealed to have a very large female audience. And shows life 'Frozen', which is just about relationship between women, has very little focus on romance. It goes into character driven stories, which is another area female readers like, but not all character driven stories are for women. So really, how confusing do you want the definition to be? Having genres in the hands of 'writers' has never been a good practice, because genres are there to help the customer and really writers tend to want to stick their books in weird places.

BL are not otome. It's extremely simple. 1) There's a female MC 2) There are routes 3) Said routes are somewhat tied to a specific male character. If above conditions are met, the VN is an otomege.

They turned it into way worse than an Otome. It can still be aimed at women but not be an Otome, I guess. But if it's an Otome, pretty much it's designed for a female audience.

The gist of it is Otome = aimed at women, not starred by women.

I feel today's a terribly appropriate day to post this.

You can instantly jump to the next SSS or RAM prompt or unread line in Root Double by pressing R. Should make getting content you missed a lot easier. If you want to know what you need to do to avoid the three normal endings in Root D, It's a shame if you didn't get all the character scenes in Root A and B though. They have plenty of additional characterization. Also, not getting them will make Root D's epilogue a lot shorter. As long as you use Answer Mode to directly select the branches you want and jump past read lines with R, getting them is very easy.

I know that too. No, Takeru was killed pretty much instantly. As for Male Brains not being able to be extracted, that's just a baseless theory. The reason is shock value. I'm sorry, but it is what it is.

What? I know that. What do you mean I didn't understand the plot? That doesn't make any sense. I never even mentioned anything about the original Takeru or the alternate realities, so using that as proof that I 'don't understand the plot' is odd. Yes, but why did they do all that to Sumika and not Takeru? Answer: Shock Value.

My pleasure to serve.

Just in case you came back here, happy 22nd birthday and hope you had good year ahead there @Lambda.

No. VNs suck

If we're going for a winter themed VN, why not Hatsuyuki Sakura? It's untranslated though (a true pity, I'd read it). https://vndb.org/v7302

It's not a bug, it's a feature. Some party member have the passive ability to widen the map range, but that ability is only in effect as long as they are alive. If they're dead so is your vision.

I even spent my custom Steam Awards nomination slot on it!

Yes, Gahkthun of the Golden Lightning You should buy and read it. Right now Go

Thanks for the warm welcome, guys. We're glad you like what we're doing. Because of the port aspect? Or because it's Noah? Like with regular fan translations you'd still have to have your own copy of the game, we won't distribute that. Similar engine reimplementations (like OpenTTD, ScummVM, or in the realm of visual novels, RLVM) usually don't run into trouble. Chaos;Head Noah is pretty old by now; the developers have plenty of opportunities to bring this game to the PC/the West. It's also already readable (and pirate-able) on PC by way of the PSP version. So yeah, we don't think we're stepping on anyone's toes with this. Patches for console versions may follow, but we don't want to plan too far ahead. The Vita version in particular is unlikely though; IIRC it's based off the Muv-Luv engine (which is supposedly a massive pain to deal with). Sorry about that. Yeah, we realise how that looks. I also tend to roll my eyes at translation projects without a translator (or in some cases without anyone). But we're not ideas guys here - we're doing the port regardless of whether or not the translation succeeds (and we know we can pull that off). So we can definitely provide something of value here. Some of our members have worked or are currently working on translation projects, so rest assured we appreciate the effort that goes into translation and we're aware of what we're asking here. But in return, we can promise a pretty good chance that those efforts won't be in vain. Might sound weird to have a TLC when the translator position is still open, but the reason for that is that SnowedEarth feels he currently doesn't have the combination of time and efficiency to translate this in a reasonable amount of time. And that's what we're looking for, really. Someone who's good at it and can work often enough that we make steady progress and don't sink into quicksand, and long enough at a time that we don't take years to finish this either. The specific numbers for "how long" and "how often" heavily depend on the person, of course. Maybe "one hour per day every day" is a bit much, but we figured it's a good enough general guide. I'll bring it up with the others, we might reword that.

That's it. I've won the Internet.

You could always read KoiChoco - it is not what you are looking for in your description, but it does have some drama and love triangles, or something close to it. From what I can recall from Kimi ga Nozomu Eien, at least from the anime adaptation, there were a very strong triangle.

After roughly 50 hours I've finished SMT3: Nocturne. I've enjoyed it quite a bit overall - the OST and setting in particular was very nice, and the battle system still fun even after I've gotten spoiled by Persona 5. Everything else didn't hold up that well though - random skill inheritance, random skill changes on level up, random stat gains/curses on level up, random treasure out of chests.... I'm glad the newer releases in the series made away with these mechanics. Still a very enjoyable game overall though. I thought I would take a break from the series, but since I've started it a week ago or so, I might just as well move onto SMTIV right away.

I meant the JRPG combat side of things. I don't actually mind repetitive and grindy, if it at least feels tactical, but Neptunia didn't really meet that bar for me. If I'm playing a game which is largely a JRPG, the gameplay in the Atelier series is the minimum bar for complexity and engagement (and of course Atelier has all the added bonus complexity of the alchemy, which takes the games from okay to really good, in spite of a fairly mediocre combat system), and I'd generally rather be playing something faster and more twitchy, like a Tales game or Lightning Returns, or something with a deeper tactical angle, like a Disgaea game. Neptunia combat was just kind of bland. As far as the cute girls doing cute things, I guess that was okay, but I guess it's not enough when that's the only part I'm enjoying, and there are other parts I'm not enjoying. Games like Recettear, for example, are nice because I enjoy all the pieces of it, from the cute girls being cute to the dungeon crawling to the item shop sales optimization problem.