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Yesterday I finished You & I. It was much better than I expected. Even though it was very generic school-slice-of-life charage, somehow it turned out to be quite enjoyable. Also, I guess back then in 1999 all those cliches weren't as clichey as today - 25 years later The premise is simple - the protagonist missed few weeks of school because of traffic accident (he got hit by a car). He returns to school at the beginning of June, and there he meets (and possibly falls in love) with heroines - the game takes place over one month (and few days). There's no bigger overarching plot or story* - like elections in Princess Evangile or gliders in Konosora - just school slice of life. Sometimes MC complains that everything feels a bit unreal to him, like he was seeing a dream, but is there more to it? You can definitely sense strong dating sim roots here - but it is IMO handled much better than, for example, first White Album which bored me to the point of dropping it. Here there are no "generic" repeatable scenes, and there's no map movement (yay!). However the common route is very long - basically the whole June is common route, and then there are relatively short endings. And there's insane amount of choices - well over 100 . I noticed is that many scenes in common route play out differently depending on your relatonship level with given heroine - there might be additional text, CG or different set of choices. Nice attention to detail. *except in Sayaka's route. Heroines are quite likeable, there's also usual funny MC's male friend - here he's named Fujita, and is class' president. Your usual Sunohara type - although he predates Sunohara . He reminded me of Makoto from Sakura no Kisetsu (which was also done by Tiare). I started with Misaki's route. Class' vice-president, very friendly, gentle, caring and hard working girl. She seems to have crush on the MC right from the beginning. Her route is nice (if a bit naive) "first love" story. I also think that her H-scene was quite nicely and tactfuly written (for an old eroge). Haruka is Misaki's best friend, and has very different personality. She's very energetic, with some tsundere vibes. Keeps "fighting" with Fujita. Her route was a bit weird.. Asaki - quiet, mysterious girl. Her story has some nice twists and plays a bit with the reader and setting (let's just say that to enter the route you need a specific item - a book titled "The Existence of Parallel Dimensions"). And I really loved her ending. Here I also encountered first weirdness of this game's system. In addition to making right choices in the common route, you have to select right prologue when starting new game (there are two) and make right choices there as well. Otherwise the route ends prematurely right after the H-scene - that's really cruel Megumi - shy, introverted girl, member of library committee. Her route has the most drama. Miyu senpai - an idol with pretty zealous fan-club of self-proclaimed bodyguards in school. I quite liked her scenes in common route, but her ending was rather disappointing And finally there's Sayaka - MC's little sister I spent over 10 hours of constant replays trying to get this route! And let me tell you - it's almost impossible without walkthrough. There's even a review over on EGS where someone complains that they couldn't get that route. And there's no walkthrough available on any of the usual sites, like seiya-saiga or sagaoz. I finally found one on some archived page from 2001. And yeah - many choices were rather counterintuitive. Basically it seems like instead of focusing only on Sayaka, you have to keep balanced "relationship score" between all heroines, and cannot neglect anyone, at least in the first half of comon route. However the route was interesting, and quite meta. (Heavy spoilers below) I briefly mentioned that when talking about Misaki's route, but generally I liked H-scenes in this VN. There's only one relatively short scene for each heroine, and I think they are quite tactfuly written, especially for old eroge. Of course there are some usual cliches, but nevertheless it doesn't feel like characters got entirely replaced by their porn stunt doubles. They're having sex, not acting out an JAV scenario - which was my main complaint towards many H-scenes in VNs, and what steered me towards console/all-ages editions Also, for each route we get very nice "pillow talk"/"morning after" scene Just have a look at this Misaki's morning CG: Now for the downsides. This VN is pretty bad when it comes to engine/QoL side. With this insane amount of choices, and one very difficult to get route, you get no backlog only unconditional skip mode only 9(!) save slots, and loading a save always rewinds to the beginning of the scene no keyboard support at all There were also some typo's / editing errors (like repeated words or characters) here and there. Also, the game is only partially voiced. Basically, common route is unvoiced, except for one scene (for each heroine) during sports festival. And only main heroines are voiced. The voices themselves aren't great, but that's quite old title, so I guess it can be forgiven. The music was nice. Considering all of the above - on one hand, quite enjoyable content, but on the other - tedious gameplay, I rated this VN at 7/10 And now, can someone tell me WTH am I writing this wall of text about an obscure 25 years old moege nobody will ever play? Also, for posterity - Here's the walkthrough

Visual Novel Translation Status (02/25/2017) The title should be very obvious, especially if you're fan of Madoka. The gist of my title would be very obviously parodying very famous anime Madoka (Duh), only in the title I changed 'Madoka' to 'Mina' in the title because the girl in the image header was not Madoka of course, but rather our MC from recently released Shadows of Pygmalion Hajiro Mina. As for the Pygmalion, I played the demo already and saw some info on the internet, at Mangagamer blog post in which they said that Pygmalion here was quite comparable with Madoka there. In the end, it's just my opinion though that Pygmalion was quite parallel with Madoka, although perhaps the real reason I made the comparison between that was one segment from the demo and a scene from Madoka quite similar imo - also more interesting with one certain seiyuu (It was near the end of the demo, and the seiyuu in question was Kitamura Eri which also voiced Sayaka back in Madoka. Do the math). That's all for my writing about the title here, and welcome to this week VNTS Review in which I'll try to comment the progress for some updates here again. Okay, as for this week it's the most interesting weeks if we looking at the announcements from some company and planned release (At least for this year, which admittedly was only going at 2 months for now). This week we had some usual updates from both of Sekai and fan translation, a release of Mangagamer in which I already attempt talked about, and the biggest one here would be the announcements from Frontwing. As for what order I should write here, perhaps I'll start to talk about Sekai Project first here. Sekai Project They apparently had planned an interesting release for next week, but there's no info from my attempted search there. But first before I writing my opinion about that, let me do some roundup for their usual progress here with the exception the planned release. Okay, the roundup goes like Maitetsu was at 95.92% translated, Tokeijikake 2 was 60% translated (I'll just called this update Daybreak for next week here), 1st sekrit project was fully translated, Bokukotsu was at 33.54% translated, and Kanonana was at 32% translated. As for Tokeijikake kickstarter, it's already success from the last week and it's already gather more than 90,000 so no comment here. Almost forget that right now Rakuen was fully translated and starting the editing process (They still on track to release it on March - at least the Steam version iirc). That's all for the updates here. As for the planned release for next week, it should be very obvious enough. But just in case someone didn't get that, it's Chrono Clock in which apparently will be released at 28th. While the news here was of course very good if I may admit here, the info in regard of the release was still quite vague at that (Whether it's real or not, and I wouldn't count ANN as reliable source for release date). What I want to said is that one again there's still no indication when Chrono Clock is released as of now (Both of Steam and Nutaku page still said that the release date was 'Soon'). Therefore it's possible that Chrono Clock will be not released at 28th, but maybe at March it could be possible if I said here (Especially with this game was currently at 97.28% translated right now, which is slightly less ideal if one want 28th release). Despite what all I'd saying here earlier, of course I still interested with this VN and I would be happy if the release date was indeed right at 28th. For now in regard of Chrono Clock, I'll just wait and see here like usual. Other This week we had some interesting surprise from Frontwing. But first let me state that Phantom Trigger was already prepared their prefundia and the goal was at 80,000. Not the VN that I had interest with in the first place, so I'll pass. Though if some of you here want more Grisaia, go ahead and feel free to look at their Kickstarter later though (I'll report weekly fund gathering if possible here later). As for interesting surprise, there's two this week but first let me state the first interesting news. The first one was in regard of Island translation, which announced back at AX 2016 and right now it was in translation progress. For more info it was at halfway translated, and they planned to release it this year. Let's just see it later here. As for the second surprise here, it was Subahibi in which definitely had some history with VN Translation scene. This VN was quite (in)famous for apparently quite hard to translate prose, had some controversial sex scene even to me (I'm quite with with yuri in the first place and I could handle bestiality here slightly, but maybe I'll need to tolerate yaoi here), and apparently had some philosophical thing. As for more info, the translation was already there since back at 2012 around time when Kajitsu translation was announced (Both of those projects were at TL Wiki by the way). Of course, looking at current situation here Kajitsu was already finished as fan patch and officially released (Including became popular and discussed to the death), while there's still no complete Subahibi translation here. With this announced by Frontwing, hopefully we got this VN with complete translation here and many more people became aware of this great (Perhaps) - with side effects including there will be more Subahibi fanatic out there later lol. Oh, and Frontwing was also planned to release Subahibi this year as well. Other than Frontwing interesting surprise, there's Whirlpool with their new VN was apparently about entering Steam but it's not my interest there so I'll just pass on that (It's still quite unconfirmed by the way). Oh, and there's also two more Sakura games release at this month (Valentine Days and Magical Girl) which is awesome that Winged Cloud managed to released two VNs in one month (Although the story and production value from them was another question though). Fan Translation First of all, there's usual Majokoi update for this week (73.3% translated and 67% edited). While the updates was usual for this week, there's some worryingly news namely that apparently the lead translation for Majokoi was already missing for some times and therefore the project will see some obstacle before finally they got the lead translator again. Hope the best for Majokoi team there. Oh, and speaking about Majokoi there's bigger news in regard of the team behind it - namely that apparently Luna Translation was dissolved and becoming inactive there. Quite sad to hear that, but nothing I could do here to be honest (Although if one interested to the projects, I think they'll just go independent again. Shin Koihime Musou already said that, while perhaps for Tsui Yuri there will be confirmation later). By the way, the Luna Translation drama wasn't affected Majokoi translation effort there (Just coincidence iirc). And speaking about Luna Translation, there's two updates from their projects at this week in which they had Ushieta was at 35% translated and Tsui Yuri was at 67% QC-ed. That's all for Luna Translation final update here (Probably). As for other updates from fan translation, there's only some usual updates there (Although there's one nukige release which I forgotten from last week). The updates were from both of Loverable and Konosora restoration. For more detail, Loverable was at 54.46% translated, 21.27% TLCed, 16.81% edited, and 78 out of 142 mail was image edited (Overall image editing was at 76.98%); while for Konosora right now Amane's route was at 55% retranslated and apparently there's release plan in April later. For the last update from fan translation here (I knew there's some, but both of the other updates was BL and more nukige in which I'm not quite interested with that), it was came from Fortune Arterial project and right now the translation for 3rd script for Erika's route still continuing at 38% translated. Mangagamer Once again this week we had Pygmalion, although other than Pygmalion Mangagamer also bring some other updates here which while not as juicy as expected it's still interesting (At least to me, although admittedly I only interested in both of Hapymaher and Sorcery Joker for now). I'll list all of the updates here first of all. Hapymaher was 67% translated and 52% edited Sorcery Joker was 76% translated and 65% edited Naked Butler was reaching 40% mark re-translated Fata Morgana fandisc was at 46% translated and 11% edited Kuroinu 1 will be released at March 31st (Not the one that I interested, but apparently it got some interesting story there) Kuroinu 2 was 43% translated and 11% edited Boukaku was both at 69% (Interesting number I think) for both of translation and editing progress Maggot Bait was 16% translated Imouto Paradise 2 was 56% edited 1st secret project was at 72% for both of translation and editing progress 2nd secret project was at 41% translated and 11% edited 3rd secret project was at 21% translated and 20% edited 4th secret project was at 63% translated and 37% edited 5th secret project was at 56% edited Other than my earlier nitpicking, overall Mangagamer bring some nice updates for their secret project there That's all I could said in regard of the updates from Mangagamer here. As for Mangagamer release at this week, it was once again Pygmalion in which I'd already describe enough parallel with Madoka. As for my story about Pygmalion, I remember that when I'm in vacation I checked Otakon 2015 announcement and of course there's announcement for both of Tokyo Babel and Pygmalion. Back there, I was interested with both because I think those two was had the most nice looking graphic compared to all announcements from Mangagamer (Except Supipara, but that's chapter based and unfinished to boot so it wouldn't count), and I also thinking that Jessica looking nice in that gothic outfit. Enough nostalgia there, and while I knew the review was quite mixed in Pygmalion I still interested with that here. And to close this section I would said better not expecting something like Tokyo Babel though ie many action - I mean don't expect too much from Pygmalion here otherwise there'll be many disappointment like our Clephas there (It's still good once again - at least from the demo imo). That's all for this week VNTS Review, and see you next week. PS - There's more updates, and today HatsuKoi partial patch for Midori's route was released (Which of course made Midori's route obviously fully translated (Duh), although it's already is from few days ago though). Also HatsuKoi translation team was already planned their next route to be translated, which is Runa's route so I'll report each update for Runa's route if they had updates there from next weeks. For closing additional update here, right now overall translation for HatsuKoi was reaching 30% mark translated or to be exact at 30.93% translated. That's all for HatsuKoi update. PPS - Almost forget there's also an update from Denwalts new secret project, in which right now it was at 10.44% translated. No line count indication there, so I don't knew if the VN was long or not for now.