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I understand your perspective, but at the same time, if your friends don't accept you and your tentacle rape fetish, are they really your friends in the first place?

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2018-04-30-stardew-valleys-multiplayer-update-is-now-available-in-public-beta-on-pc FINALLY! NOW I CAN DRAG OTHER PLAYERS INTO TIME HELL WITH ME!!!!

Am I allowed to be the second hijacker, or a co-hijacker, @Plk_Lesiak? Hope it's okay... I have: Fault milestone one x 2 Higurashi When They Cry Hou - Ch.1 Onikakushi Sunrider: Liberation Day - Captain's Edition Same applies, PM me or post.

This is actually really valuable feedback. It's the sort of "silent majority" opinion that could very easily fly under the radar yet be very important. Privacy concerns are a major pitfall of trying to sell eroge on Steam. Not everyone wants to broadcast their interest in this genre to the world. That's yet another reason to make this game available on at least one other platform, bringing the tally to at least 3 (no-fuss adult version that doesn't require a patch / isn't pretending to be something it isn't, could enable a release without mosaics, respect for privacy concerns).

See, I brought this up with my director and he checked with that other company whom we have contractual obligations with (I'm just gonna call is company V from now on), they didn't want to risk it so our hands are essentially tied. IF they cave and let us negotiate a deal with Jlist or something, trust me, I'd be happy to let you guys know. Hell, I want that to happen too. I realise the allure of mosaic free releases, I brought up that argument while I was still on a probation period before getting hired. So to prevent people pulling out, so to speak, we plan to make this information very clear.

About a year and a half ago, I completed the Suda51 title, Killer is Dead. I honestly am not sure what happened but I will do my best to sort it out. Despite me not knowing really what was happening, something aside from the mediocre gameplay kept me going. It was the ａｅｓｔｈｅｔｉｃｓ. I'm done with that bit now btw. Spoilers ahead. The whole point of this post isn't to discuss the story or the quality of the game Killer is Dead, but rather to examine the art style and how it made me want to complete the game. Killer is Dead is a hack and slash game from the mind of Suda51. Opinions on his ability to craft a good game aside, his art direction tends to be on the more creative side. The art of Killer is Dead is why I set aside my qualms I had for the gameplay and story and found myself continuing to play it to completion. Take David for example... He some sort of king or something living on the dark side of the moon. But what stands out to me isn't his story. It's his god damn gold clothes. When the first major boss of the game looks like this, I cannot help but be intrigued. I honestly remember nothing about David except that the little shit shows up and ruins breakfast at one point in the game while wearing a stupid shit eating grin as shown here. This is a man set on ruining your breakfast. I think he might have been your brother or something but he time traveled and killed your mom at breakfast [citation needed]. But lets take a look at some of the other screenshots from the game. I honestly don't remember what any of these are from in the game, but the actual visuals of the game are what stick with me after all this time. Not the gameplay, or the story, but just the visuals. That leads me to my rambling point that I haven't argued. Graphics can totally be the only thing a game has going for it and that is fine. Killer is Dead is a prime example of this. The gameplay is forgettable, while the story is only memorable because it is driven entirely by the unique art direction of the game. Killer is Dead was entirely worth the time and money I spent on the game for one reason: it was so damn interesting to look at. Now I want to look at a more mainstream example of a game with a strong, unique, direction of art. Persona 5. Now now, I am not shitting on the game right now. That is for an upcoming blog post. But, when we get down into the nitty gritty details of the gameplay of the sequel, it really isn't much of a step forward for the Persona series as a whole. Some interviews from the development team likened to jump from 4 to 5 like the jump from the P2 duology to Persona 3 [citation needed]. What we got, however, was just an expanded 4 with most mechanics renamed and a mild rehash of the story from 4. What makes the game seem as if it is a completely new leap forward for Persona, in my eyes, is the amazingly slick visuals and art direction. The art sets the game completely apart from Persona 3 and 4 with character cut ins and super stylized labels and text. Persona 5, unlike Killer is Dead, has much more solid gameplay that actually does hold up on its own without the eye popping art direction. I'm not so sure that if Killer is Dead featured a more bland style of art, that I would remember it, or even finished it. Lets take another Suda51 game as an example; Lollipop Chainsaw. I never could finish the game. The game's poor frame rates and some what repetitive gameplay killed it for me, but what had kept me going was the candy popping colors of the game. Then I got stuck on some part and stopped caring, but before that, the art direction, once again, had kept me going in that pretty mediocre game. What is the final point I want to make? Well, that I am a fucking idiot that lets pretty colors dictate what games I finish and what I set aside. Also look at this unicorn from Killer is Dead

Here is a list of VNs officially released in english, I will likely not update this list anymore after August 2021 as I don't see much of a point in it anymore with improvements to the search function of vndb. Orange text means confirmed for an official english release while yellow text means that a part has been released but not the entire VN. I have also made a list with the ones with physical release, this list is sorted the same way as this but also has info on where the titles can be bought and if it is available List of physical english releases of VNs MangaGamer (Store) Sekai Project (Homepage)/Denpasoft (Store) JAST USA (Store) NekoNyan (Store) Frontwing (Homepage) Sol Press (Store) Shiravune (Loves DRM, especially Denuvo) Visual Arts Fruitbat Factory (Store) MoeNovel (Burn in hell) Cherry Kiss Games (Homepage) Winged Cloud Degica Aksys Games (Store) XSEED Games (Store) NIS America (Store NA, Store EU) PQube Others (Japanese) Others (not japanese) Himeya Soft (Bankrupt) Hirameki International (Quit the VN market) SakuraGame/Paradise Project (Machine translated, do not buy from them)

Yes, I did this game first. This is one of those games that is a bit hard to define. It is part moege, part nukige and part charage... and part surrealist story. It is about cats being reborn as humans being reborn as cats being reborn as humans (it gets ridiculously complex, to the point where there is no point in keeping track). There also isn't a whole lot to say about this game... it is mostly at-home SOL, h-scenes, and reminiscence of past lives. As a VN, it is a bit hard to read because it jumps around in time so much, and I'll probably forget this VN before long. However, I gave it an extra point for making me cry several times, lol.

I'm patiently waiting for some GOOD "person gets sent to another world and there's quality world building and indepth characters, even some political bullshittery" anime to be released, because at the moment we've got a bunch of "person gets sent to superficial alternate worlds populated by superficial characters ... and there's a gimmick. Watch the show people we have a gimmick, everybody loves gimmicks right?" We've had in another world with time loops, we've had smartphones, we've had advanced knowledge about mechs, I wonder how long it'll take before they run out of ideas. Twelve Kingdoms did the genre well at a time when there weren't many of these sorts of shows being made. Nowadays there's tons of Isekai and many of them suck. Re;Zero doesn't suck though, it's just not that good

I dunno, it certainly became popular, and as it is frequently the case when things get popular, there are some people who get very passionate about it, in both extremes. Then there are others who just do it for the memes, like myself

Yep!

I understand that completely but, if you have the time to wait untill your mind "forgets" what you wrote, that issue can be minimized (not to perfection, of course, but after two passes it is bound to be very close). My Demonbane translation from english to portuguese is going smoothly in the sense that I actually like the results of the first 2 chapters. One thing that works to erase the "auto-correct effect" (at least in my head) is to recompile the translated script in the game and proofread it there. Since I translate the script using Notepad++, reading it in the game is like looking at a totally different beast. The font is a different size, there are OSTs, there are CGs, so the feeling inside your head is different. It works.

Played the demo, and yeah, it's given me a good impression of the title. I'd be very interested in playing it.

Well, yeah, I guess I forgot how surprisingly civil Fuwa is about its political discussions. Even including all the posts hidden by the moderators, it's still way better than basically any other community I follow. In most of them even mentioning something political would just lead to a massive shitstorm which will result in one or two prominent members leaving forever. And, by the way, I completely forgot about it, but this is not the first thread about Trump on this forum.

Hey, it's been a while. The reason I haven't been keeping this updated the last few weeks is that I have had a lot of stuff on my plate IRL lately. As a result, I haven't really had much time to write these. (Believe it or not, writing a chapter takes quite some time, from planning, writing and editing.) I want to keep the event going, but it's going to be difficult right now, with exams and other stuff coming up. So, I have to leave this on hiatus for a bit longer, and will make an announcement when I get back to writing. Until then, everyone can enjoy their time trapped inside Clephas' stomach (/ω＼) If you want to know when the event will start up again, simply follow this thread, and I'll make sure to make a comment here when I get back on track!

Don't knock it til you tried it, or so I think that saying goes? Or was it don't judge a book by it's cover, haha. Tilca and Regret eh? Great choices. I'll drop a little tidbit for you, but even in the story these two are particularly close.

The protagonist is more mellow in the Law route--but he's still a crafty "ends justifies the means" type, as I recall. Also, when it comes to pretty girls trying to kill him... "to the victor go the spoils".

Well...There is the 'Law' route, everything there is nice, lovely, and even the 18+ stuff is all lovey dovey and stuff. I don't want to spoil, but I really love the scene he spends with his chosen heroine the night before the climax of that route. If you want to be an over the top violent evil bugger, there is always the 'Chaos route'. Unfortunately, some of the more...cruel or sadistic parts of his personality remain intact. Sure, we might tone it down a bit but the base is still there. Rape and tentacle stuff is not in there if you do not patch it, though. Also I will say that Loki is indeed one of the more popular(?) if not well known protagonists of the VB games on account of how despite being a bit of a cold, evil guys sometimes, he can have relatable motives and occasionally shows his softer side (especially in the law route). He is, indeed, a rather decent human(er, demon) being in this route, and you can choose not to taint the goddesses at all. Hell, even if you do, they still get a nice ending with him. The chaos route, well, it's named that for a reason. Considering the rape and stuff is gone, all you might have to 'suffer' through would probably be violence? I do find the whole 'revenge' narrative rather cathartic in this route though, a different kind of happiness than the one I get from the law route. Also I don't consider mentioning revenge to be a spoiler as it's in the OP movie(Sorry if you consider it one tho...)

I actually fought tooth and nail (ie spent a few days discussing) for the removal of mosaics, but it simply could not be done due to a problem in japanese law, where if we are based in Japan we are bound by japanese law and cannot decensor. You seem to understand this, and yes, those publishers can decensor it because they are based outside of japan. Unfortunate, in this case we'll just have to settle for slightly thinner mosaics than the original. Hopefully that will be enough, sort of? Probably not, but I can only hope. Also, I'm not allowed to divulge too much, but I will say that unfortunately, the hold up is not what you have mentioned. Erm, also you're wrong on the very next sentence regarding who owns 'All' the rights, and that's pretty much all I am allowed to say. we have certain contractual obligations with another company that, lets just say, holds a lot of sway within our company, and going against those contractual obligations would burn more bridges than it's worth. It would severely hamper our efforts in developing future titles and is a loss that is unacceptable on account of a single project that, as a company, we are not yet sure will succeed.

If I recall correctly, each heroine has a mandatory rape scene when you recruit them. I think there's a handful of consensual scenes if you don't go down each heroine's corruption route. And if you do go down the corruption route... eventually it becomes consensual. I added the new trial mirror to the article as well as plans for an 18+ patch. When I have time later, I'll address the other new developments. For the Prefundia, you should try and disclose what you can about this, and keep searching for a possible alternative. While a patch will satisfy many, there will be those who will be utterly baffled that this game could be sold without H-scenes--and more importantly, those who feel that downloading a separate patch is a nuisance, and those who feel that hiding the true nature of the game is unacceptable. Yes, there have been Kickstarters and Steam releases before that used a patch as a sole workaround, but none of these games were anywhere near as sexual in concept as Venus Blood Frontier. There's also other platforms you may not have considered, such as Nutaku. Nutaku is highly-focused on gameplay titles and nukige, so VBF would probably sell pretty well there. That is, provided they don't demand their own set of content restrictions...

If I'm not totally wrong the Japanese version of the game already has an option to disable all the H-scenes lol

STEAM: https://store.steampowered.com/app/811290/Project_Pastorate/ DEMO: https://psyrob.itch.io/project-pastorate FB: https://www.facebook.com/groups/ProjectPastorate/ TWITTER: https://twitter.com/Psy_Rob

Can players get married to each other in the online mode? I think we're this close to Stardew Valley becoming the next Second Life, just less crappy. ;p

Hey guys, the English staff/translator from Ninetail here. I'm glad to see discussion on this project as well as the...Well, enthusiasm! There's a MEGA link posted on the official twitter page by the way for those who can't access or download the trial version from the official site. Well, what can I say, tentacles corruption rape mindbreak etc, everyone has their own cup of tea. You might be surprised to hear this but even I, the dang translator of this title, don't even particularly love tentacles rape mindbreak etc. But that's the thing isn't it? The gameplay, the storytelling...That was enough to get me on board. In regards to some of what you guys have discussed here, well... 1) Regarding GoD: I did actually bring this up with the boss, saying that Gears of Dragoon would be a good series to translate considering it's actually easier to cut the H out of this than something like VenusBlood where the 18+ stuff is kinda integral, but he said the VB series was more...popular. So here we are. 2) To batman: Hard Pass, eh? I personally like giving things chances rather than straight up denying it, but if, under any circumstance, it just doesn't looks like something that appeals to you? Feel free to pass on it, but I feel calling it horrible is kind of...uncalled for. I'd love to clear up any other questions you might have, but I'd like to ask that you guys please wait for the Kickstarter and other pages to go up and direct your questions there. Thank you for your interest in this project and I(along with the others here at Ninetail) certainly hope we can count on your support!

Because I'm evil (and because people who are interested in the answer might be interested).... All the four main heroines from Tiny Dungeon (especially Ururu-sama) Rin from Reminiscence Amatsu Kanata from Devils Devel Concept Ichinotani Shouko from Ayakashibito (translated) Rena and Chiharu from Otome ga Tsumugu, Koi no Canvas Natsuhi Hikaru from Tenshi no Hane o Fumanaide Akibe Eru, Kamio Ami and Takahashi Sunao from Semiramis no Tenbin Fujina Kanori from Minamijuujisei Renka Teidou Setsuka and Himeno Satsuki from Campus's 'Uso' series All the heroines except Akane in Kin'iro Loveriche (for different reasons) Yamagami Miori from Haruru Minamo ni Shinomori Rinon from Gensou no Idea Faura Linans and Sofia Usty from World Election Asaba Konami and Jinpou Ann from SakuSaku (translated) All the heroines in the Primal X Hearts series Sawatari Michiru from Chrono Clock (translated) Azuma Yoru, Kozakai Aya from Hatsuyuki Sakura All the heroines from Hello, Lady Mifuyu and Mashiro from Tayutama (this has a decent chance of getting localized, considering that the sequel, which makes no sense without it, it is getting a localization) Hazakura Renka from Love Revenge Ichimine Touka from Ojou-sama wa Gokigen Naname Aika, Flora, and Scana from Valkyrie Runabout (recommend this, if you like isekai and school life SOL at the same time) Celia from Walkure Romanze Shion and Takako from Otoboku

Satsuki Shinonome, from Koi to Senkyo to Chocolate, would be a great choice for you. She's incredibly popular and beloved throughout her school. I'd also say maybe Yuiko Kurugaya from Little Busters. I seem to remember her being popular and beloved as well. She's definitely seen as unattainable at first

Can't wait to spend another 300 hours on this game instead of taking care of my real life responsibilities.

I'll remember you said this.

No? You speak as if somehow a game is less than the sum of its parts: that a game's gameplay detracts from other elements, and vice versa. I specifically look for titles that have gameplay AND the other qualities I'm looking for. By the way, sexual training is actually NOT one of the elements I value. I just don't believe in gutting major themes for the sake of mere convenience. The game is supposed to have those scenes, and if you don't want to see them you can 1) not trigger them or 2) disable those H-scenes in the configuration menu. How does removing story arcs that revolve around H-scenes not affect the story? And in regards to writing, have you heard of the rule "show, not tell"? That rule applies here.

I seriously considered not replying at all. Mentioning Trump has become something like walking into a bar and announce "I'm looking for a fight". It doesn't really matter what you say because there will always be somebody on the other side, which will view you as a reincarnation of the devil and fight you. However the question justifies a proper answer. I assume a lot of people honestly don't know because of media bias. I have seen the Daily Show being presented as "a new documentary to tell who is voting for Trump". Just mentioning that it's a "documentary" made by Comedy Central and you should take a hint that it's actually something staged, which is intended to make people laugh. If something like that can make it into the news, then it's no wonder that people don't get why anybody sane could support Trump. I have to say things didn't turn out as bad as I expected. I feared 10 people would say a lot of not so nice things because of my attempt to stay neutral and tell objectively (that has happened elsewhere). In fact nobody resorted to name calling or calling forum users stupid and only one objected to what I wrote, but did so in a civilized manner. I have to say I'm really positively surprised. You guys acted more mature than most online communities.

I really enjoyed your post about Sweet Volley High. Please keep up the good work!

How on earth would taking corruption scenes out of a game about sexual corruption be in any way satisfactory to the primary audience? That's literally the main selling point. It's a core gameplay mechanic and has entire story arcs devoted to it (optional, but incentivized by gameplay mechanics). The gameplay is great but you can't just excise a major theme and claim it "wasn't important".

I can understand from a community management standpoint why you'd want to implement this policy, but also relevant: tech support from official VN publishers tends to suck. Many of them don't even have message boards for users to help each other with issues. I've heard horror stories of people waiting weeks or even months for replies from JAST. On the other hand, you can get useful responses from other users typically within a day, and these responses get indexed by search engines and go on to help many others. Also, in my experience, many new users join communities like this to get technical support, then stick around and join in other discussions. Forbid technical support, and you might turn away these users.

@Zander, I hope you don't mind me hijacking the thread, as you're done with your part? I actually also still have keys for Karakara, Fault milestone one, Highway Blossoms and Huniepop. If anyone wants any of those please write here or PM me. Thank you for your attention.

It's not, but many things we do in life aren't. Yup, definitely. At least as long as the limitations system presupposes work properly. Democracy is a fragile thing, only working as long as most actors are playing by the rules. I know it painfully well from my own coutry where the current goverment pretty much disregards the constutitional order whenever it becomes inconvienient for them. The president and many of the ruling party's top officials should be in prison for it, but who will do something about if they control the parliament and consistently tighten their grip on the judiciary? US system might be more mature and stable than Polish, but we can't be sure how much abuse it can take. Plus having someone you know is able and willing to do some horrible shit at the most powerful position in the government and hoping that institutional constraints will prevent him/her from going that way is still a pretty horrible situation (pretty much panic-worthy IMHO). After all, Trump doesn't have to go Pol Pot to do some lasting damage to the US and the World. Just look how much we're dealing with shit initiated by Goerge W. Bush (or even some poor desitions of Obama years like the intervention in Libya and supporting Syrian rebels) and he wasn't even a bad actor, just an easily-manipulated moron.

Wotakoi is a good choice

My opinion of Trump hasn't changed a single bit since before he became president... anyone who looks at his past can see that he is someone who is fundamentally incapable of telling the truth when it is inconvenient for him, has an ego the size of a blue giant, and cares for nothing but himself and those in his immediate circle. He wants adulation but he isn't willing to actually work for it, so he drags others down to make himself look better in comparison. Worse, he deliberately poisons the world around him, uncaring that what he is destroying is more important than any one man's ego. He isn't a conservative, he isn't a nationalist, and he certainly isn't a leader. I don't even like so-called 'conservative values' as they are currently defined, but it is fairly obvious he doesn't have a value system other than narcissism. This is a man who didn't even pay his own debts. This is the man that bankrupted contractors, ruined lives for no better reason than because he could, and found his only real success in business as a reality TV show host. If it weren't for the talents of people within his organization and the massive amounts of capital his parents and his own children have managed to build, he would have been in the poor house decades ago. Since he has become president, cronyism and nepotism have become the norm, and this is proven by the sheer number of his appointees who have indulged in various types of personal corruption (and got caught at it) since he became President. Worse, this was all preventable if he had just taken the time to actually properly vet his appointees for such character flaws in the first place, rather than handing out important positions like candy to his personal supporters. This is a man who desperately wants to protect his own ego but is sabotaging himself constantly because he is a terrible judge of who can be trusted. ... also, I had thought we learned with President Grant that appointing cronies and family to positions in government is always a bad idea... And his bad habit of putting the fox in the henhouse got old months ago.

This is likely one of the hardest posts I will ever write here. I will try to write why some people love Trump without saying anything about what I think. I already mentioned in the other thread that all media is biased and because of that I try to get news from media biased in both directions. From what ended up on wikileaks, a number of news media worked together with Hillary's campaign like they were part of the campaign. The list is: CNN, NY Times, Washington Post, Hufftington Post, Boston Globe, though I'm not sure if I can remember the entire list. CNN is Hillary's 8th biggest donor, NY Times is owned by the richest man in Mexico and when asked about it, he turned out to be the only man in Mexico without a clue to who Trump is. Washington Post is owned by the same people who own Amazon. Trump has said he thinks Amazon is too big and has talked about anti-trust, which will force Amazon to be split up to avoid a monopoly. If you get your news from those or from somebody who relays news from those, then Trump is an idiot. A lot of non-English media use those as source for what goes on in America. Fake news is actually a thing. Melania Trump sued a newspaper because they wrote she used to work as a prostitute. The newspaper then openly admitted they had no source to the story and settled out of court. NY Times quoted Trump "we pay the highest taxes in the world" and then wrote it was false because some other country has higher personal income tax. Trump said "We pay the highest taxes in the world for companies". If you want to read news not strongly against Trump, then try Washington Times. One more thing to add about the media is that Obama repelled an old law, which states the media is supposed to inform the population. Now they are allowed to tell the population what they are supposed to think (aka propaganda), something which was banned prior to Obama. With all this in mind, if you sit outside of America and use the media as the only source of information, you get a very different picture of what goes on compared to what a lot of Americans experience. The average Trump supporter lives in red counties (I will not say states. Trump won a lot of counties in blue states and something like 80% of all counties). What they care about is their own economy, job safety, crime level, children's education etc. List of what Trump has done for them: Cut company taxes. Companies have reacted by not firing people, hiring more people and given bonuses. A lot of people got $500 or $1000 when the tax cut was announced, though some got up to $3000. This has taken care of private economy and jobs. It can get better, but it's not like under Obama where production moved out of the country and people feared getting fired all the time. Education. Trump is removing the laws at federal level and putting the individual states in charge of education laws. This is classic republican ideology: move decisions from Washington to the states or better yet to the individual cities. Democrats wants power to move the other way. Trump has now taken first step to end "Common Core", which is an apparently very disliked system. Some people go as far as to call it democrat indoctrination of children. I don't know if that is right, but the math stuff I have seen is horrible. From what I can tell, I could get all the right results, yet score 0 points because it's all about some weird way to calculate rather than calculating like people have done for centuries and the right answer gives 0 points if it doesn't use the method Common Core has invented themselves. Crime and security. Republicans wants to have guns to defend themselves and they point to the constitution where it's written that the population should be armed. (Founding fathers stated that this is needed to protect against tyranny, including from their own government). Democrats wants to ban guns in order to take guns from criminals. Republicans see that as disarming the lawful while keeping the criminals armed as they don't care if they break 4 or 5 laws. The government is losing control of parts of Mexico because some brutal gangs are taking over. They operate in multiple countries and one of them being the US. They bring lots of drugs, steal and murder the locals. Trump wants to build a wall to stop that and the wall is in fact under construction. Trump stated that the wall should have doors in it so that people can enter, but only lawful people. Democrats seem to think that illegal aliens are victims and needs to be protected from the federal government. As a result, some places (particularly California) will not arrest them or release them from jail without letting them serve their time and they try to ignore court orders to kick them out of the country. As a result if you are an American citizen and murder somebody, you will spend ages in jail while foreigners can be out and murder somebody else next year and it has happened. Some high school girl in California was raped and murdered. Other students at the school made some sort of memorial with something like "we miss you" or something. The school went bananas and removed it because the murderer was an illegal alien and it was apparently hate towards him. He had been expelled 3 times prior to this. It should be noted that while the illegal aliens come from Mexico, quite a number of them aren't Mexican. Mexico has become a transit country and people from places like Afghanistan will also get into the country by that route and some have done so. I think that's the main points in why a lot of Americans love Trump. It's partly what he does and partly hatred towards what the democrats wants to do.

Emotionally unstable, egomaniac, con-artist, talented in nothing but marketing. Has no agenda and no values other than fueling his overblown ego and his pockets. People that support him are either cynical (not caring what his values are as long as he delivers on some core promises, such as cracking down on illegal immigration) or delusional (thinking that he cares about anything but himself and possibly his closest family and that his MAGA "ideology" is anything more than an empty slogan). He can make positive desitions when he thinks they will serve those interest, but egomaniacs are easily manipulated through flattery etc. And with more and more war hawks populating his cabinet I wonder whether even his positive role in Korea will last longer than a few weeks. If someone can ruin that peace process it's definitely Mark Pompeo as the Secretary of State. Also his economic policies are disastrous and their effects will haunt USA possibly for many decades, even if the next administration tries to clean it all up. Edit: Yup, this is all a horrible idea but I couldn't resist.

Not dead! Just got lots of stuff going on IRL at the moment. I can't make an ETA for the blog post for now, but it will hopefully be done soon! What I can say is, it will be epic! I'm doing something new this time, and it's going to have more members than normal to make up for the missed chapter, so look forward to that!

Yes, you were waiting for it, all you tentacle-loving freaks... this is the newest game in the Venus Blood series, as full of tentacles and sex-training as any of the others... I come to you having finished the Law route and after being forced to go back a chapter in order to get to the Chaos route on my second playthrough (apparently you absolutely have to start the 'goddess insanity' chapter, by failing to complete one of the monster-hunting side-quests). The gameplay will be familiar to anyone who played Hypno, though there are differences introduced in the unit-creation screen, just as in all the others in the series (every game puts its own twist on this aspect). It is the sequel to Frontier, occurring some three hundred years later, and it is based off of a partial 'fallen goddess but still on Law Route' path. The biggest difference in the gameplay from previous entries is the introduction of a 'research' system where you basically have to open each step in a tree to get access to other units. You expend medallions to get particular units on each 'block' that you've opened up, and what medallions are available to you determine what units you can access and how much of each tree you can complete (it is impossible to get access to all medallion types and units in the first or even the second playthrough due to difficulty and route issues). While this might not sound that different in fact, it was a great difference visually, making access to the various monster types more obvious than in previous entries. The system of 'leveling up resources' is back from Hypno, allowing you to use research to level up your auto-healing, auto-experience gaining, and automatic resource allowance (at the end of each turn) independent from what places you've captured. I advise anyone planning to do multiple playthroughs to get everything as high as possible (focus on healing over experience and all the other resources before gold, since gold is the most plentiful resource). Story-wise... it is standard Venus Blood. You come, you conquer, and you decide whether to make the goddesses love you normally or just drive them crazy through sex training. The actual basic plot is inferior to both Frontier and Hypno, though it it is more 'stable' in that it doesn't trip up in the last chapters like in the previous games. Unfortunately, this game suffers somewhat from being a direct and obvious sequel, as the shadows and persons of characters from the previous game pop up everywhere, distracting you from the protagonist's story. I need to say something about the Venus Blood games here... it really is a shame that this company doesn't go 'legit' and start making non-ero games. The complexity of the skill system and the way you can make levels almost irrelevant through simply combining the right units in the same squad is incredibly rewarding. This is actually only the second game in the series where I actually explored this aspect of the game in-depth, but I was seriously impressed with the degree to which you can customize your army, creating the ultimate force. In fact, it wouldn't be far from the truth to say the outcome of all battles is entirely determined by the way you design your squads. Sanah is something of a hard-ass when it comes for this game, always beginning on Hard mode... but I honestly don't recommend that for newcomers to the series. For one thing, the basic endgame difficulty level is pretty high even on normal difficulty, and playing hard mode on the first playthrough has certain annoyances like running short of resources at key points. Anyway, for gameplay, this, like most of the Venus Blood games, is fairly enjoyable. As a story? Lots of potential here, some really interesting points, but in retrospect the story pales somewhat in comparison to previous entries in the series as a whole, despite exceeding most previous games when it comes to the endgame story.

I think a lot of this "fake news" business started when the Fairness Doctrine was abolished by the FCC and attempts to renew it were vetoed by Ronald Reagan. Unfortunately, everything that supporters of the doctrine claimed would happen have in fact come to pass, and now Americans are effectively divided because of what's being put out on the news. That's where I have a beef with our education system. The impression that I got while I was attending k-12 was that American schools are outdated in how they teach students. Until I started participating in discussions online, my critical thinking skills were never very sharp, and they still aren't as good as I'd like them to be. For my research paper, I used an article from The Atlantic to explain how schools are still only there to meet the needs of an industrialized America. As it stands right now, America does not need a workforce that is capable of handling simple tasks effectively -- it needs a more creative embrace to teaching students how to think outside the box -- but that's how schools are still operating. Not only is this system making it difficult for average citizens to get by with a healthy career, but it's also affecting peoples' judgment in making rational decisions regarding how their government operates. Another disadvantage is that certain news channels are regularly misleading and deceptive because of their freedom to tell just one side of the story, which essentially forces people to do research they don't want to or are unable to conduct. It's a royal mess when you think about it. In a way, I think American stupidity is justified. There are far too many flaws in how our government operates, and I think most issues can be traced back to dark money.