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Hi guys. Just checked my Humble account and I apparently have some Steam keys I can spare. Proteus Shadowrun: Dragonfall Mountain Intrusion 2 English Country Tune (actually played this one, really nice and calming ambient puzzler, pretty tough to boot) Tiny & Big In Grandpa's Leftovers Little Inferno Capsized Oil Rush Just make a post saying you want a game. First come first serve, one game per person (unless nobody else claims the second game you want), and I'll PM you a key.

MangaGamer will release free uncensor patches for future Steam releases of eroge, following the lead of English indie developers. MangaGamer commits to free uncensor patches for Steam releases From MangaGamer's official blog:

Another tragically successful forums update. Not much to put here by way of changes just yet, but please let me know if you have weird bugs or problems crop up.

Rules: Vote for any visual novels you want to see in the contest in the form below. You can vote for as many or as few as you'd like You don't have to vote for any visual novels in any group of 8. Just vote for any you'd like. Keep in mind the amount of votes a VN will determine how it's seeded in the bracket.. as well if it will even make the bracket. So don't feel the need to skip voting for ones that are popular/guaranteed in. Please don't submit multiple entries. One per person, please. I'll be monitoring this. In the form, I have a section at the end that asks about how we should deal with separating / grouping certain VN series as well as whether we should continue to separate otomes and untranslated VNs into their own divisions like all previous contests Here are the questions to be prepared to answer in the form, feel free to discuss them in the comments: Should Otomes be self-contained in its own division like previous contests? If Otomes are separated, should Hatoful Boyfriend be grouped in with the all Otomes division? Should untranslated (UTL) visual novels have its own division(s)? Should the MajiKoi series (original, S and A) be together or separate entries? Should Fate/Stay Night and Fate/Hollow be together or separate entries? Should Cartagra and Kara no Shoujo be grouped together or not? Should Steins;Gate and Steins;Gate 0 be grouped together or be separate entries? Should the Zero Escape series (999 and Virtue's Last Reward) be grouped together or be separate entries? Should /r/visualnovels visual novel 1 and 2 be listed together? Should the Rance nominations be separate or together? You can vote for best visual novels you want to see in the bracket and vote for which of the above series you want to see grouped/separate by clicking here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSd7-HurM6-OM1nAyQo0yHSfahlHa8VZbBAEkJpngQJ8kGBoAA/viewform?usp=sf_link

That is pretty nice.

Yeah I know, Ornstein gets Smough's buttslam if you beat Smough first. That's one of the only moves he has that can hit you if you stand between his legs

Y'all really only need Soul Arrows lmao. Really fucking easy to cheese both with Soul Arrow + Great Soul Arrow + Great Heavy Soul Arrow. With a couple misses these last until Smough has a couple hits' worth of HP left and then you can just dash in and do a combo with a Dex weapon. Anyway, DS2: SOTFS is on Humble monthly. 12 bucks and you get a few other games on top of DSII as well as 10% off the Store for a month. https://www.humblebundle.com/monthly?hmb_campaign=Humble_Monthly_June_2017&hmb_source=banner&hmb_medium=banner

I've finished Muv Luv Alternative and The House in Fata Morgana. Muv Luv didn't disappoint me and I enjoyed The House in Fata Morgana much more than I thought I would. I'm not sure what to read next. I guess I have a few VNs I've downloaded in the past but never read. Let's see....uhh...it's Nekopara.

Hi everyone . Thank you again for giving me permission to share my blog posts here (after our discussion about my struggles with Unhack 2). I recently posted an article about my background development process in The Last Birdling: I hate promos, so I would like to make this thread about visual novels in general. These days, in professional works, beautiful background art is more or less assumed. That said, are there any VNs with backdrops that stand out to you? As mentioned in the post, I found the city nightscape in the Starcraft VN to be particularly memorable. I am always on the search for inspiration, so happy to hear about any games you have played that come to mind. Thank you !

This one is a doujin VN by Initial, a doujin group that seems to have pretty varied tastes. To be honest... I wasn't expecting what I got with this VN. This is a kinetic novel, meaning that there is only one story that is progressed without any branches or choices. You progress through the story by picking your chapters, which go in in order from one to forty-six. The game itself is about eight hours in length, and it is a science-fiction/fantasy VN. The story begins in a city walled in from the outside world, where people called 'Canaria' who can use esper-like abilities called 'Scratch' live isolated from the rest of humanity. The story takes a lot of seriously whacked-out turns (so much so that you have to ask why they put on the Love Comedy part most of the time) throughout its length, and it is pretty heavy on the kind of esoteric science fantasy logic that those who loved Ever17 tend to like. Personally, if it wasn't so short, I probably wouldn't have been able to finish it... not because it isn't good, but because I don't really have much of a taste for that kind of thing. That said, the actual story is told in a very interesting manner, and the writing is pretty high quality. However, it also suffers from the downsides of being a doujin VN (meaning a limited to nonexistent budget). All of the music is basically public stuff and rearrangements of public material, and as a result it doesn't have the impact a commercial Vn tends to have. In addition, it uses a pretty ugly set of background wallpapers that will have art-lovers hackles rising. On the other hand, the character designs (all four of them either heroines or the protagonist) are actually pretty good-looking for doujin work, with enough variation in expression to satisfy me for the relatively short ride this VN was. I honestly felt this VN was worthy of praise, so I'm going to outright recommend it to non-art-bigot lovers of the type of stuff in I/O, Ever17, and Remember11. I do wish they'd put some effort/money into the backgrounds and the music, but considering how limited their budget had to be, I've decided to forgive their sins in this case.

Finished 凍京NECRO. It's probably not much of a surprise, given how this VN is presented, but 凍京NECRO is an example of what happens when you have way more flair than substance. Luckily for Nitro+, though - the flair is really fucking cool. This entire visual novel is just a ridiculous budget explosion. From throw-away one-time use sprites to the numerous 3D-animated fight scenes, 凍京NECRO does all it can to impress the reader with its presentation. And for what its worth, it works for the most part - the 3D is pretty iffy, and probably downright shit by western standards, but if you can look past that it is really enjoyable. The models, animations and particle effects might look decent at best, but they do make for some really cool scenes when they all come together. The story... is really good too, for the most part. It is fun and complex, full of crazy twist and turns in each of the four routes - but things start to fall apart a bit as soon as the plot tries to go outside the box. The story deals with life and death and what they mean - or so it'd like you to think, because it never really goes much deeper than the surface level. Just like the nonsensical sci-fi, it is there just to be entertaining rather than to send some profound message. It tries to, however, especially with the true route. Now don't get me wrong, the true route is presented in one of the coolest ways I've ever seen, and it's really exciting while it is all happening - but as soon as you stop to think about it it doesn't really make all that much sense. There is also this strange meta angle that doesn't quite stick the landing either - but it's not really given too much weight just like everything else, so it doesn't really detract from the overall enjoyment. All in all, I've enjoyed 凍京NECRO a lot - but no matter how hard Nitro+ might try, the next Muramasa it is not.

She's best girl for a reason

yeah, thanks. will try for sure. btw, that pic was the pic that made me wanna read majikoi years and years ago. she just looks so happy.

Thanks friend next time you try fighting him just keep an eye on that. He can also jump away out of nowhere and then kill you pretty fast so good luck! You can always just spam sorcery like funyarinpa suggested though

oh really? didnt know that since he kills me so fast. nice avatar btw.

Stand between his legs, my dude. Most of his attacks won't be able to hit you, except for the super lightning buttslam and like one other move

oh, lucky you. ive been trying to get his armor to complete my collection but just cant because the bastard is so hard for me.

It's quite the opposite to me. I have a lot of difficulty dealin with the eletric buttslams and big Ornstein can't hit shit

I can't believe I'm really reading this right now. It's been such a long wait. Absolutely fantastic prologue. The hype has already sunken in with me.

Really? So, what happened to Neptunia, Mugen Souls and Danganronpa. they intentionally gave them to IF and Spike? @topic The game just came out last month right? I'm sure other publishers will naturally notice this if the game makes a lot of noise (which sir Topic Starter is doing right now) I mean, even if we don't do anything.

Thanks shogun

Welcome

Hello everyone (first post), Recently i found a way to extract the .arc files from Ao no Kanata no Four Rythm. I managed to change script lines from JP to EN, but now i'm having trouble getting the scripts back to its original state. Is there any Tool that can help me? or maybe i'm using this tool incorrectly. I also don't know how to repack to an .arc file. So i would like someone that can answer these questions. used tools: BGIKit: https://github.com/Iriasu/BGIKit arc_unpacker: https://github.com/vn-tools/arc_unpacker Screenshot of the problem of BGIKit Encoder: https://plus.google.com/u/2/photos/photo/118265057851582390751/6426530936915918482?icm=false&authkey=CNaD87qkyfqO3QE Thank you for your answers,

oh, thank you so much for the suggestion, it works!

@ittaku: Mm, how about Kodomo no Omocha? An older anime, some drama but I enjoyed the comedy in it. Or Daily Lives of High School Boys? I'll give a few choices, hopefully there's one or two you haven't seen and enjoy it. Great Teacher Onizuka might be something too. Shimoneta (If you don't mind ecchi; because there's a lot of it). Beelzebub Mitsudomoe Katte ni Kaizou Yuru Yuri A-Channel Ghost Stories Dub (For this you have to watch dub, the sub and dubbed are completely different from one another). Apologies if I gave you anime you've already seen. Hopefully you'll find something you enjoy though

I spent quite a lot of time with the game already, and although I won't be playing any for the next couple days, I'm still hoping to finish it on/by Monday. The game is definitely looking to be about medium length, I guess? Not as long as a typical full-price Japanese VN, but also nowhere near as short as something like Eden*, for instance. At this point I've finished the Slavya, Lena, Alisa, and Semyon routes. Lena was pretty weird throughout, and didn't really work for me (mostly because of the character, in spite of my initial appreciation for the character). Semyon's route was pretty interesting, and Slavya and Alisa were both all right; no complaints there. Now, brace yourselves: a wall of text complaining about choices is coming. Honestly, the game is not great about making clear what choices will lead to what kind of outcome: sometimes you just have to go to the right random location to get a scene with a girl. Also, apparently showing curiosity for a girl's interests is often a bad idea: I was surprised to see in the guide that, for instance, trying to figure out what book Alisa is reading is a negative for her, whereas simply saying nothing about the book she's carrying will get you +1 affection (with no feedback after the fact to make this obvious). The game design side of this seems bad, to me, and I'd contrast it with games like, say, Little Busters!, where both the reasoning behind any choice and the outcome of your choices are a lot more obvious: In LB, before making any decision, you usually have a very good idea of who it will impact and how they will take it. In Everlasting Summer, it's pretty non-obvious a lot of the time how someone is going to react, or often even who will be impacted by certain choices. There was one memorable point in Slavya's route (the last choice) where I literally didn't understand the meaning of either choice, let alone the distinction between them, but apparently there was a right answer and a wrong answer. In LB, people generally react to your decisions quickly and in obviously positive or negative ways, so you can quickly reevaluate (save scum it if you must, but regardless, at least you'll know better next time). In Everlasting Summer, quite often you don't get such obvious reactions, and so when, at the end, you get a bad ending (or even end up on the wrong route, in my case...), you still likely don't quite know what to go back and fuss with to fix it. In LB, even when your decision is a simple "where should I go" decision with no immediate tie to a character in the choices, locations have well-established associations with characters in the game, making those decisions actually thinly-disguised choices of "what girl should I go see?", assuming you have been paying attention to the girl you're going after. It's simplistic, but I find that kind of choice strangely rewarding: they're just as obvious as the simple "pick a girl" choices that you see in lazier games, but somehow more meaningful, and it kind of gives this feel that the game is winking at you. In Everlasting Summer, it often makes you choose a location, but the meaning of it is pretty completely unknowable: go somewhere and run into a random person there for +affection, CG, etc., All in all, on the choices, I kind of feel like I'm perpetually in the dark with Everlasting Summer. Maybe that was the intention (life is, after all, also not so cut-and-dry on what will be the outcome of your choices), but when the end result is the game giving me a bad ending for a character because I chose to go to the boathouse instead of the bus stop on day 3, despite no clues that the bus stop was the magical correct choice for that character on that day, it's just frustrating. All that said, one thing I do really like is that a lot of the choices aren't simple +/- choices for one character. Instead, quite often your choice leads you to run away from a scene with one character, and then accidentally end up in a scene with another character. These are, in a way, charming and interesting, and I don't mind these very much even though the impact isn't obvious beforehand, since it is obvious immediately afterwards. They're good for rewarding replays when you'll "know better next time", which the game clearly wants to emphasize (I feel kind of bad for bucking that by using a guide, honestly).

Kei's h-scenes are worth it for the laughs (her h-scenes are funny in a weird way, especially the last one), but the others don't really add anything to the game. I do recommend you follow the route order. When he made the Acta est Fabula version that is the base for Amantes, Masada designed it so that Kasumi's route serves as an intro, Kei introduces you to the main antagonist, Marie's route serves as the 'golden road' route, and Rea's route finishes things up by revealing every last aspect of the main story. I suggest doing the Beatrice/Kai side-story after you finish Kei's route.

Have you ever wondered what a character's hair style tells you about their identity? I did a little stats analysis using vndb to find out: https://bunnyadvocate.tumblr.com/post/161292880097/hair-tropes-in-japanese-media There's nothing too surprising in here, but I thought it was fun to examine~

Haha, that flowchart just makes it needlessly complicated, YU-NO isn't that difficult at all. Once you get onto a route it is mostly linear, and the game does let you know when you can cross onto a different world-line, so you at least know when to look out for what you pick. As for me, I've took the plunge and re-read Cross Channel in Japanese some time back. I've always wanted to do this, considering its reputation and the... embarrassing TL it has in English. hoping I'd find much more enjoyment in the VN this time around. And I did - the writing was playful and funny, a lot of the laughs I had while reading came from the writing alone. The nuances themselves were also fun for sure - but my overall issues I had with the VN my first time throuh remained. That is, the entire true route is just incredibly boring, and it explicitly hand-waves a lot of the plot details away, since they (usually) don't even matter that much to the VN's plot. Now, I'm not saying every story should explain everything in minute detail - I am a big fan of works that leave certain things to interpretation - but there is a big difference between details that were purposefully omitted, and details that didn't even exist in the first place. I feel like Cross Channel falls into the second category, as in one point the author almost directly tells you that he doesn't have to explain shit because nothing of it even matters anyway - and while I can agree with him to a certain point, it did kind of leave bad taste in my mouth. It's also baffling how incredibly bad the voice acting is even after all these re-releases, and how none of the pacing issues are fixed either (I was reading the Final Complete version, that essentially ended up being the exact same as the original, just with a bunch of worthless stuff on top no one asked for), but I suppose I can't blame the writer for that too much. Overall a very enjoyable read with some great comedy and intriguing characters, but I feel like there was room to improve. But hey... maybe I just don't get it.

So if I see a character with hair that is pink, very long, styled in an "intake" fashion, parted to one side, and without bangs, I will assume he is a murderer. I appreciate this information.

I finished Sachi's route in Grisaia yesterday.

Right after the first episodes of Naruto first came out, I spent hours making hand symbols.