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Silly American english *tsk tsk*

Often when people talk about OELVNS, they fail to mention the otome games. I don't know if this is because the majority of VN readers are males who don't follow the OELVN otome scene, but either way, it's quite a shame. Many talk about how OELVNS follow Japanese tropes and try to be too Japanese. With otome games, I can sometimes see this due to the anime-inspired art, but there are really a lot of notable differences. For example, OELVN otome MCs tend to be more distinct. They certainly have distinct personalities and a lot of character- something I prefer since I don't self-insert. The MC of the recently released free otoge Cinderella Phenomenon for example, Lucette, is a cold-hearted, mean-spirited person. She is someone who is certainly very flawed but is also interesting as a person and a character. Throughout the story, it is evident that it is her story and a lot about her background is revealed. The characters do adhere to certain tropes but I didn't find that to be detrimental to the overall experience. Cinderella Phenomenon has a decent length and story, making it ideal for anyone who wants to try an indie otome game in English. It is also relatively high-quality compared to most indies. Another free indie otome is Lads in Distress. It has a finished NaNoRenO version with 170000+ words and three routes. It will have a more full-fleshed out version with longer routes and an additional 3 routes. The premise is centered on genderbent fairytale princesses with problems which the MC, Princess Charming, must work on. It has pretty decent art and story but it's really the characters who shine in this game. I loved how Princess Charming interacts with her love interests and her antics are amusing and fun to read. It is pretty lighthearted, although I suspect it won't be so when the full game comes out. Mystic Destinies: Serendipity of Aeons is a commercial otome game available on Steam. It follows the pay-per-route format one sees in mobile otome games. Normally, I wouldn't touch it until it's complete and everything is available at once, but I caved in the end. My decision did not disappoint me as the writing, art, CGs, and music are of a higher quality than those mobile otoges I used to purchase. It's even more astounding when those mobages are produced by well-established companies while MD:SOA is produced by an indie team. I would recommend this to those who play mobages and are just getting into PC otome. Mystic destinies has a decent-length for its price, a well-written story, a good cast of characters, and excellent art. The music is also great. The money also goes towards developing the game as the routes are released after it's developed. The writing itself is quite good in contrast to many indies. A cursory glance at the Lemmasoft forums will reveal a lot of otome games in development which is why I believe that it's a shame that it's so often overlooked. Two otome games in development I want to highlight are Changeling and The Pirate Mermaid. Changeling, developed by Steamberry studios is an otome game focused on the supernatural. It has a cast of characters based on folklore and mythology. From what I can see from the demo, the lore is also well-thought of. It has recently been funded through kickstarter and the dev regularly updates through tumblr. The artstyle is also very western and might turn off some people. I don't mind the art, however, as I am more drawn to the story. It follows Nora who due to some strange events in her childhood ends up being estranged with her twin brother. She moves back to a small town and meets the love interests who are all connected to the supernatural world in one way or another. The writing in this game, as with MD:SOA is rather well-done. What I'm really excited about however, is The Pirate Mermaid. I played the demo a long time ago and then forgot about it. However, I started checking out their blog again recently and they have a Steam Greenlight campaign going on. The MC is a pirate captain whose crew abandons her and turns into a mermaid in search of mermaid treasure. I love her character design personally, it's rare to see an otome MC who looks like me. I don't self-insert but to me (and I believe, some otoge fans out there), the representation means a lot. That aside, I'm impressed with the production values so far. It seems that it will feature a Ren'Py 3d camera and something incredibly rare: English and Japanese VAs. I will probably play the game with Japanese voice acting as I like it more based on what I've heard so far. The art is also done well and it has a story I'm interested in. In conclusion, a big part of the OELVN scene are otome games and I think they deserve to be more represented when it comes to EVN discussions. The indie otome scene has been continuously growing these past few years and I'm excited to see the direction they're going. It seems that as time goes on, the writing does get better as the developers gain experience. The art may be subjective but I enjoy seeing both western-style art and anime-style art. I don't think EVN devs should be criticized for drawing what they can and want to draw. In the end, as the community grows, more EVN developers will get serious and release quality VNs. I'm excited as I've been watching it for two years now and I can see more groups starting to be serious and working on commercial titles that shows serious effort.

I just finished Nightshade and I'll have to say this is one of the best otomes available on Steam. The art, the music, and the voice acting is great. The story is decent and it really depends on the person whether or not they'll like it. The heroine, Enju (default name is voiced) makes for a great heroine. She can be a really badass shinobi in certain routes. The guys are also pretty great and I liked the cast overall. All in all, I really recommend it if you like otome. Otherwise, it serves as a great introduction to otome games.

VNDB has a highly rated friendship tag and no romance tags, so it seems like this is a VN without any romance.

Hey there! I was the translator for Fashioning Little Miss Lonesome, so I can confirm it doesn't have any of the stuff you listed. :> The devs, Kalmia8, recently released another game as well, Kami-sama Nante Yondenai! which, while I've only played the demo, seems to be in the same vein of light-hearted romance stuff. Alternatively, would you be into something like Cute Demon Crashers? Not sure if it's the right art style you're looking for, but it's fairly vanilla, sex-positive stuff. There is one route (Orias) where there's light bondage, but the game is all focused around consent, so you can control how much of that aspect you prefer, IIRC. Hope that helps!

This will actually be far too brief to make a blog post around, but alas... What is "overrated"? Many things, apparently, but so far as I can tell the word itself is used to describe something that too many people like, or that is well liked for little reason. This is an inherently subjective word. Infuriatingly so. At its most basic, it means "too many people have a different opinion than mine", which if phrased that way means nothing. Yet so many people employ the word. There is no such thing as "other people like X too much". It is precisely because people have different opinions that some thing's are successes and others are not, and if something is a success, then it is, for that very reason, not overrated -- if people like something, that something must've done something to deserve it, whether you understand what that is or not, because thousands of people don't like something "just because". And I suppose that's just where the issue lies. Once again, people have different opinions. It's that simple. Such a shame it doesn't stop me from hating the word. It has no purpose. It's obvious and always implied whenever anyone has an opinion, and it only serves to bring a bad connotation and disagree with other peoples' opinions. "Underrated" at least has a purpose (in this context. Other contexts, more similar to "underestimate" are a different, unrelated, story); not to say people don't "like something enough" or people "dislike something too much", which is also another way to spell "too many people have a different opinion from mine", but to say that not enough people know of a particular thing. "Not enough people know about X", or "Not enough people gave X a chance". You can use "overrated" properly. "The importance of X is overrated" can be used to describe situations where misinformation is popularly spread. But therein lies the key. Using it in "subjective" matters, in matters of opinion, means little. It's a way of complaining that other people have different opinions. And I dislike that, so I complain about it on forums online. This post was sponsored by that thread asking if CLANNAD deserves its popularity or if it's overrated. I'd say when something makes you ask if it is "overrated", that's because it is popular to a point where it must have done some things the proletariat likes, and therefore can't be overrated. Of course, that doesn't remove the merit of discussing what is "well done" or "badly done" according to other people.

I really love Ati :3. she's great.

"Some translated VN where one Heroine is constantly hitting on you" No, sorry, she is hitting on the protag, not on you, unless you're a 2D person, that will never happen. Because everything is a lie!!!

Nekos :3

Weirdly enough, considering America’s love of all things ‘R’, I thought they would have preferred the more ‘R’ish ‘arse’ over ‘ass’ xD Whoever wrote this can bullshit with the best of them

This VNDB search should be what you're looking for. Hope you like Japanese, because only one of those has a full English patch. Do note that specifying 'otome' yields like one result; you'll have to settle for 'female protagonist'. Some of the tags aren't commonly-used on VNDB, and thus not all valid tag combinations will actually give you what you're looking for.

Nah I doubt that was the cause for this case. It turns out the windows update caused the program was running fine on my other PC(which doesn't install the latest update yet) and behave the same way when I installed the latest update on the PC More Detail: Looks like Chiitrans have a problem with .net frameworks v4.7. So, if you're using Chiitrans and facing the same issue, I recommend to go back to v4.6 to avoid this issue

Something like this?