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Donald Trump is so clever.

https://twitter.com/i/moments/862501282099191808 I'll just leave this here

TBH, the Taisho x Alice thing (and maybe even all the stuff on that Twitter thread from the last few years) doesn't look to me like a con so much as, like the person in that twitter thread suggested near the end, absolutely gross incompetence. I just can't help wondering how these guys got the job in the first place. I can understand that JP companies will have trouble finding competent people when they have to establish new contacts and whatnot, but it's not like there aren't well-known localizers of JP games. Even in the super specific niche of otome VN localizations, surely they would know about and try to work with Aksys, and failing that, at least some other known entity like MG or Sekai Project? I just can't imagine these clowns from E2Gaming coming off as trustworthy business partners. Guess there's no use speculating about it... Edit: As for the dub, I thought this would be obvious, but just in case some people don't realize: the voice acting for Japanese games is usually licensed out for a specific purpose (i.e., a release in Japan) by the voice acting agency, not by the license holders for the rest of the game. The agency will retain rights for, say, an international release. Moreover, JP voice acting licensing is expensive. In the case of most VNs, it would probably literally be cheaper, or at least break even, and would possibly even be less of a hassle in some cases, to record a completely new, fairly competent dub by voice actors from the the standard anime voice acting talent pool Sentai/Funi/Aniplex employs, rather than to license the JP voice acting for an international release. The reason we get subs only, rather than dubs only, for all VNs isn't a matter of cost efficiency: it's because the companies doing the work aren't required to provide dubs for their fans (because we're all weebs and prefer the original VA anyway), and because organizationally speaking, they're better at doing licensing negotiations with JP companies than they are at organizing an English dub recording. But keep in mind there are a lot of these JP games that have historically not been released with dual audio (look at the somewhat-niche Atelier series, which for a long time was dub-only), which a lot of us weebs complain about: that's a cost-savings measure, make no mistake, and it can be a pretty huge savings, depending on the relative size of your audience. Now, imagine you're not going to do a competent job with the dub: no professional studio, no professional actors, just you, grossly incompetent E2Gaming, on your home computer with a mic you bought off Amazon and Pro Tools. You're talking about saving many tens of thousands of dollars on voice acting at that point. They make money, Primula saves money, you cut one more licensing negotiation out of the picture. Everybody wins... except the people who have to listen to it. The thing that's hard to understand is how E2Gaming sold Primula on this being a good idea, since Primula's people are the very ones who shell out so much money for good voice acting. Obviously they understand how important it is to their own customers. Maybe E2Gaming somehow spun it as "Well, Americans will obviously want English voice acting." Dunno. We probably never will find out.

Foreword: I just had to try Elf adventure title. Now I joined the army of Hiruda scenario fans. Title: ELLE Original Title: エル Developer: Elf Release Date: 1991-06-23 Summary: Post-nuclear world last survivors dome city. "Black Widow" organization is trying to obstruct plans for human survival while anti-terror organization along with lady sniper Elle oppose them. VNDB Link: https://vndb.org/v2293 Video playthrough: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLENAECnNmAq_KMeaBzd3g0HXL2znhn-eQ Game Type: Point and click adventure visual novel Story Length: 7 hours. Complete Story Clearing Difficulty: Easy! Comments of Difficulty: One-way road. The worst thing that can happen is that you can miss optional H-scene or couple CG. Character Design Rating: 9/10. Story Rating: 10/10. Protagonist Rating: 10/10 Game Quality: 10/10 Overall Rating: 10/10 Rating Comments: I did not really expect this work to surpass De-Ja. But it actually did! Could not stop till finished it in one sitting. I can not give excellent mark to Characters since it's an adventure story and there's little time to crack complex characters. But apart of that I loved every second of it. Point and Click is much more fun than Interactive Adventure choices. There is much less effort needed to capture flags to progress the story compared to De-Ja, mostly because you don't need to think/look/investigate etc - story progresses just by talking and checking different locations for new stuff. Structure: Game is one piece so it was difficult to say how much progress was left. Almost at the very end I was still of large amount of story to come since there were still two locations closed - but - BAM - unexpected stuff showed up and story shortly ended. Story: First things first. I've NO idea what girl is depicted on game poster. The only blonde girl in the game was secretary side-character. That's not fun making a poster out of non-existing character. And there is zero trace of game's alias title - L-Elle. Story felt a bit shorter than De-Ja. I can't avoid spoilers although promise not to spoiler heavily about the ending. So you join a unit of snipers to investigate recent abductions of humans by Black Widow organization and their leader Gimmick. "Sniper" is just a cool title, all you have is a hand stun-gun with volume ranging from light stun to lethal shot. So five of them are of low ranks and their officer is of S rank. You actually are of SS rank but you can't reveal that so it's blank rank and you're subordinate of a different intelligence body. One of lower rank snipers is girl named Elle who takes you on a tour around Media center and the city and then leaves alone. First you encounter a girl sexually assaulted by two Black Widow members, then as story progresses there are two more sexual assaults that you prevent right in the media center, the base of sniper organization. The attackers have bombs explode on arrest. Then one by one fellow sniper team members start to die just after they approach the mystery of Gimmick identity. Their bodies are gravely destructed, partly dismembered with all entrails out. Eventually Elle joins you as an investigation partner and together you eventually manage to reveal the secret of Gimmick. Then Ex-Machina happens (in a good meaning, nothing extraterrestrial or stupid) and everything ends in the spirit of Matrix. Characters summary: Characters are all depicted very lively. It's a brutal man world story so males advance the story while girls here are just service staff : waitress, receptionist, nurse, pop-idol, tv drama star. They have quite episodic roles and involve a single H-scene each (Chris actually has one and a half since you save her from street gangsters in quite an intriguing state). So Elle is the only heroine here. Elle: El Mines is a sniper division member. Right from the start she marks you as a pervert and you by chance come to the same place together following the same lead and find the body of first fellow sniper. After that She feels responsible and volunteers to join you to find Gimmick. She's quite a typical Elf main heroine very similar to Gachako from De-Ja. Loud voice, constant use of "ne, ne" , emotional behavior. Just like Lipstick ADV and De-Ja written by Hiruda before, the most fun stuff happens when she follows you to well-known locations and comments on everything and quarrels with every female around. Protagonist: Joe Takanaka is the default name, but actually you get to insert your own name just as game starts. Again, very similar to De-Ja, protagonist is one hell of a pervert. Whenever he sees something with a skirt, he can't stand but to try to grab it, to lick it, to kiss it and to devour it with his eyes, of course. Sexual Content: Low. But freaking funny! There are five sexual assaults made throughout the game by gangsters and in four of them you actually join the assaulters! One superfun scene is of Section chief who we found guilty in murder. So he takes his secretary hostage stripping her while threatening with a knife. We don't have a good angle to shoot him so we just join him to harass her together. The fun part is that he cries : stop right now, it's my secretary, what are you doing to my subordinate. Since it's point and click adventure, you can't skip scenes but must gradually kiss/touch/lick etc, but the good stuff is that H-scenes give you a new lead by the end of it, so it's not just a senseless act, but a plot move. Affection for the Characters: High. Every male characters has strong individuality and you won't be able to forget them. Every female character is very cute and fun in her own way. CG Score: 10/10. There aren't too many CG here, but I just love Elf CG, even H-CG and guro ones. Special note should be given to animations. There are hundreds of 3D animations in the game. Most of objects grow legs and other limbs and do weird things on clicking. Very fun stuff. Really. Every second object on a screen. Another great feature is short videos in most important plot moments. They are of great quality and they make you forget that you're playing a visual novel game. It's totally like anime in those scenes. Sound Score: There are some 20 compositions and most of them were so-so, just to break the silence. I have not remembered any brilliant ones, but it probably due to the fact that all the multiple animated scenes have their own sound, not the usual compositions. But I never once got tired of any track and never ever felt like one track was looping for too long. So 8/10 it is. Addictiveness: I'm hopelessly addicted to early Elf works now. And ELLE is awesome mostly because of point-and-click style. Now it's really interactive experience and you really feel like playing, not clicking every possible variant in each location over and over. Just talk and walk. Humor: Yes! I'm distinguishing a special column for humor here. Game treats everything unseriously. Just look at this picture. Nurse whipping patient to make him drink medicine properly. One guy hanging on a rope. Another one in speed wheel chair. 3rd one smells a pile of poo. Next pair are having sex. Next to them is a nurse who's masturbating with a sofa. To the right is the guy who holds his own eye. Just below is the guy with his head in his hands. This nice grandpa in lower right corner has a dick showing up from his head and cumming on clicking. Every object is clickable and everything produces fantastic commentaries and/or animations. This no restraint humor is the best! Technical Difficulties: Game is based on old fullscreen Direct-media and DirectX so it basically freezes on Alt-Tab, but as soon as I tried to run it in window-mode with DXWind, it was perfect. Conclusion: Game that I'll never be able to forget. Every piece that I like came together and produced pervert protagonist comedy adventure story in sci-fi setting with a single intriguing story-line and great shock in the end. It's the first VN game I played that I liked without any but's.

Has anyone heard of what happened with Taisho Alice's localization? It was a mess- English dub by this one guy, the translation's all over the place and the Hiragana/Katakana Alice/Arisu thing. Otome fans were really disrespected by this company. It was shady from the start but I didn't expect it to be this much of a train wreck. Please check out this thread detailing how bad it was. I believe several translators also commented on the issue.

No, not at all. Time travel plays a very small role in it. It's not a serious story about time travel, it's a moege where the protagonist can time travel very short durations (five minutes at a time, once every hour), and does so almost purely for convenience and nothing more.

Cute + Butt earlier -------> Cute + Oppai now, later on? who knows

So cute and a damn nice butt as well

Goddamit, Sun Jing

Agreed. Game will only be good if I can make it so the story is about them learning how to play War Pigs on the piano.

Holy cow fellas, Konosora is becoming reality right before my eyes! brb, searching the nearby hills for a crying wheelchair waifu.

But what if I think that Chrono Clock is the best game there is

I cant believe i am saying this, but thank you bank account for not being able to afford this game. I probably would have bought it if i had the funds lol. It looked really promising as well. This reminds me of the sao hollow fragment trash translation for the vita lol. EDIT: That voice acting though.. are they trying to create another arc rise fantasia?

Yeah I find the constant inability of the human race to communicate with each other and the resultant suffering that causes pretty funny as well.

*walks away very slowly* lol seriously though, i seriously hope companies like mangagamer etc dont move away from these medium length vn's with romantic routes (what are they called moege's these days?) They are essentially the only VN's i like playing. The rest like steins gate/fate stay night etc just dont interest me at all.

You know a game is good when they literally won't sell the damn thing in Japan