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Kuro no Danshou: The Literary Fragment is the only masterpiece of the month 1. Jinmon Yuugi 尋問遊戯 [950707] Red Zone Main hero who is an amateur detective is invited to drink in the bar with a beautiful woman while on a voyage. They move to her room and... the next thing he remembers is her dead body on the floor. Hero is the main suspect, but famous British detective agrees to allow him freedom of movement till the end of voyage as an opportunity to search for a different culprit. Time is limited and hero will have to use all his wits and interrogation skills to get to the truth. Game is called interrogation play not occasionally. After elaborate introduction content is primarily interrogation. Game has multiple endings including lots of bad ones. 2. Mugen Houyou 夢幻泡影 [950707] Alice Soft 1 After a prolonged absence due to mental problems, Kuon, a young heir to a dynasty of powerful oligarchs, returns to his mansion. He is greeted by his wife, his associates, his servants, and other people who live in the huge family estate. Kuon has to continue the political work of his predecessors, but he is more interested in exploring sexual desires - his own and those of other people. But each "experiment" reveals more of Kuon's troubled past, and he will have to fight his childhood traumas and determine himself the limits of what he can allow himself to do... Kind of depressing story of Alice Soft tackling on how to spend last days before death from incurable disease. Hmm... what to do in those last days? Oh, right... another setting as an excuse to portray extreme H scenes. Game barely passed censorship thanks to the fact that incest with the sister is not portrayed in the positive manner. Each scenario is no longer than one hour, but there are numerous endings and even more bad endings that reader is supposed to explore. Game might have some charm for someone due to the fact that "events" take place at Taishou era, but I totally could not sympathize with the setting. 3. Inma Seifuku Gari 淫魔制服狩り [950714] Ail 1 For years, the days on the Earth belonged to human beings, while demonic creatures roamed the planet during the night. But humans have invented artificial illumination. In huge modern cities, nights became as bright as the days. Demons were deprived of their time on the Earth. So they decided to strike back. A powerful demonic warrior decides it's time to show the human who the bosses are... by having sex with young pretty girls in uniforms, of course! There's no much meaning. Just choose one of three girls and play with her. 4. Jealousy ジェラシー [950714] Interheart 1 An ordinary Japanese young man named Fujibayashi Kotarou was playing a computer game at his friend's house. Upon returning home at night, he was approached by mobsters, who demanded money. With debts everywhere and without real means to earn money, Kotarou opts to work for a dubious night club manager as a host. He finds it hard to adjust to the new life style, which brings not only danger and violence, but also sexual experiences he hasn't even dreamed of before... A host experience ADV, but unlike modern bright host otome novels atmosphere here is very gloomy, fishy and yakuza upper hand seen everywhere. Operability of the game is quite bad and animated H events make the gist of it. 5. Kuro no Danshou: The Literary Fragment 黒の断章 THE LITERARY FRAGMENT [950714] Abogado Powers 1 The Literary Fragment is the first game in Abogado's mystery/horror/adult Detective Suzusaki series. The story focuses on Satoshi Suzusaki, a private investigator with a tragic past, which has left a permanent scar on his life and mental abilities. The case that opens the game's story is a horrifying death of an entire family in their house, at the dining table; circumstances lead to an assumption of either a ritual suicide or murder. Suzusaki, his lovely secretary Asuka, and his young friend, psychologist extraordinaire Kusanagi, have to do everything in their powers to solve the case, while the hero's mysterious past continuous to haunt him... Suspense detective story with ties to Cthulhu myth. Story shifts into occult theme quickly. Stunning visuals, ever-deepening plot and point and click system make this game a masterpiece. Point and click is not as refined and friendly as in Elf games though. This is definitely a masterpiece, but need some guts to embrace the dark atmosphere and gore scenes. And there's even a sequel in 1996. It should have been a trilogy, but - alas - third part is never going to see the light. There is a good hentai anime that follows game events quite truthfully. 6. Shinsetsu Kamiya Ukyou 2 真説 神谷右京2 [950714] Altacia The theme of the story is "arbitrary arrangement" introduced with the 1988 law. Sarah is the debtor that appeals to arbitrary arrangement. Fourth installment of detective series, but actually a remake of older game. Another case based on real life case and again debt as main theme. This work has a much more user friendly systems. As usual, lots of specialized vocabulary and professional slang is used. Ukyo who takes the case is old-fashioned with some bearded jokes to tell, so it's hard to appeal to younger auditory. Case itself lacks excitement so may look boring. But if it does not scare you, it's actually the masterpiece level detective game with many endings, serious approach and story that takes priority over usual tedious detective works gameplay. 7. Doki Doki Pretty League Final DokiDokiぷりてぃリーグ Final [950720] Great Pink Angels who won the JPL league discover their trophy disappearance one day. Hero does not want publicity and wants to hire a private detective. But on his way there he attends a birthday party of one of team members and discovers the cup in one of the rooms... Mentioning anything else of the plot would be a spoiler. Enough to say that there is a happy end. This episode is "final" instead of a number meaning it's more of an extra episode after the whole baseball business. Episode is the longest and does not have a game included making it a nice final. 8. Dora Dora Emotion ~Seihaiden~ ＤＯＲＡＤＯＲＡエモーション ～聖牌伝～ [950721] Cocktail Soft 1 2 A young treasure hunter named Asuta travels together with his faithful companion, the cute angel-like creature Mink. One day, Mink tells her "master" about the floating continent Norland. Rumors say that a golden tablet of immense value is hidden somewhere on that continent. Asuta and Mink travel to Norland and try to enter the Queen's palace. However, it seems that the people of Norland only have respect to those who are proficient in the ancient game of mahjong. Mink quickly teaches Asuta how to play the game, and they challenge the famous people (read: young, pretty women) of the country to the bloodless battle! This time with a story. But it does not really help. The game is ordinary. 9. Lemon Angel レモンエンジェル [950721] Fairy Dust 1 2 The plot involves Tomo meeting her friends Erika and Miki, only to become trapped in a magical dimension with her friends gone. Tomo must travel to various worlds in order to find them; these worlds have varied themes and settings, including an alien attack on a spaceship, a country populated by giant sexually abusive mushrooms, a realm that changes Tomo's gender, etc. There is an English review. 10. Perfect Blue パーフェクトブルー [950725] Ucom Main character is a biker who has ample opportunities to have sex at home, at school and at his girlfriend's place. But as he rescues a girl from a group of men, his daily routine starts to change... Pretty horrible game as pretty much nothing happens, but H events follow one by one for eternity. Game is mostly remembered for an intercourse scene with imouto at the start. 11. Arbeit ~Futari no Omoi~ アルバイト ～二人の想い～ [950728] Ange A couple is preparing for a holiday together, and need money to do that. Both go for a part-time job. You get to see both the boyfriend's and girlfriend's points of view. There are six weekly jobs each with a different girl and possibility to confess on the friday. So it's quite close to our usual heroine routes. The multi-site system is still fresh and quite popular after C's Ware hit DESIRE. But the content is ordinary. 12. Branmarker 2 ブランマーカー２ [950728] D.O. 1 2 3 Branmarker 2 is a direct sequel to the first Branmarker. The heroine Shami has completed her quest, received the magical artifact known as "branmarker", and is returning home with her companion Viga. Alas, the evil sorceress Kara has other plans, so she steals the branmarker from Shami to use it for her own mysterious purposes. Shami and Viga have to find the thief and recover the artifact before hell is unleashed upon the world. There's a good English review out there. 13. De.FaNa デ・ファーナ [950728] Himeya Soft 1 A young boy with spiky purple hair lies on the ground, contemplating the clear sky. He enjoys the well-deserved rest. Life is good. The only problem is... he can't remember who he is. Finally, after some efforts, he recalls his name: Luck. Profession: adventurer. He was supposed to meet his partner, a sexy girl named Sue, but instead ended up in some sort of a magical land, with zombies and angry female warriors. Soon he will learn that the land is called De FaNa, is ruled by a queen, and contains plenty of dangerous quests for an adventurer... and pretty girls for a horny teenager! Himeya Soft accepts the Sogna challenge and issues another highly animated game. Tempo is a bit sluggish since you need to try all the variants before moving on. Characters and the story aren't too exciting, but overall a very nice work. 14. Kousoku ~Yorokobi no Juice~ 拘束 ～悦びの淫液～ [950728] Persian Soft 1 A young man named Keisuke falls asleep on a train and sees a dream: he is having sex with a beautiful woman whom he calls Miyuki, even though he doesn't know this woman in his real life. Afterwards, Keisuke misses the last train to the city and is stranded on a rainy day on a small, uninhabited station. Suddenly, he sees the woman from his dream, and finds out her name is really Miyuki. She tells him and her rich father has built for her and her sisters a European-style mansion nearby, and invites the young man to visit. Keisuke accepts and meets her family, which leads to unexpected and dark erotic adventures... Characters were mysterious enough to make me play to the end. But last quarter of the game has much disturbing content. It's still a good thing that Miyuki is not subject to the overall madness, well, maybe just a little. So it's mostly an ero-centered game, but with nice mystery and cute characters. 15. Kurumi-chan Ninja くるみちゃんにんじゃあ [950728] Studio Jikkenshitsu A legendary black ship arrives at Minato shore shipping suspicious black chests. A ninja girl is sent to investigate the contents of the chests. There aren't reviews and game process is just too dull. It's still nice to see as much as three attacking commands available to use at any time.

Foreword: I did not want to review it. But then I watched the hentai OVA of its preuel - Mystery of the Necronomicon (黒の断章 Kuro no Danshō) and it's a total blast. I highly recommend to watch it to everyone. A very memorable and bloody occult detective story. There was no anime version of the sequel, so I rushed in. Title: Es no Houteishiki Developer: Abogado Powers Date: 1996-06-28 VNDB link: https://vndb.org/v8874 Synopsis: "Es no Houteishiki" is the second game in the Detective Suzusaki series. The events described in the previous game, "Kuro no Danshou ~The Literary Fragment~", led to a series of suicides, but the case was believed to be closed. But Kusanagi, the young brilliant psychologist and assistant of the famous detective Suzusaki, has now to face his own past. The traces lead to a remote village, which has seen nine mysterious, unsolved murders in eleven years. Soon, Kusanagi discovers a strange religious cult, that might shed some light on his past... Structure: One route without branching or dead ends. Length: 4 hours Game type: Point and click occult detective mystery. Difficulty: Easy. Just need to aim at the mouth of the needed character all the time. There were like only 10 times when needed to click something else. And one screen that took me the longest is where I had to click at tiny triangle of pantsu to advance the story... Character Design rating: 5/10 Protagonist rating: 6/10 Story rating: 8/10 Game quality: 5/10 Overall rating: 7/10 Rating comments: Story is not bad at all. The problem lies with the clustered systems, lots of unnecessary female characters and H-scenes and shallow characters. Protagonist: Young psychiatrist Kusanagi. Nothing extraordinary besides that. We never see his face as if he's telling the story of Suzusaki detective from afar. At least he's of some use in this game - he witnessed some disturbing events in psychological facility eight years ago and those events now backfire. Characters: There are too many useless female characters introduced for the main purpose of H-scene, I bet. Apart of that, it's the same cast, evercool Suzusaki, same two police detectives and cute secretary Asuka. Well... she's actually cute only the first time we see her as her sprite is more or less transferred from the first game. As for me, all the character designs and CG in this game are ugly, yet the drawing is very fresh. Maybe it suits the atmosphere of the game, but I can't sympathize with those weirdos. At least let me show you the cute Asuka the first time we meet her in this game. Story: That's the most difficult part! Story is much more shallow that that of the prequel. And to cover that shallowness we constantly have to be distracted by slice-of-life fragments with some girls or H-events with them and when that's not enough we get to see the flashbacks from the past, mostly from that psychological facility 8 years ago. So the story starts as Kusanagi with his girlfriend come to a quiet ordinary town... that in the night becomes prostitutes town. Why oh why was such stupid move about prostitutes needed? Suzusaki bought a full building to establish detective agency here and we deal with a strange series of suicides. The victims usually open up their abdomen with a knife. Here's where Kusanagi memories show up ... first depiction of his activities in psychological facility and its patients and then strange behavior of some staff members followed by same suicides. The new present time suicides are especially strange because they happened at the very same time with different persons who never knew about each other's existence. Suzusaki is already a well-known occult researcher so he digs some disturbing stuff about one of the three legendary items from Amaterasu god that is rumored to be in this town. And I don't think I'll spoil much if I say that one of the psychological facility members is involved (since there are a big number of both doctors and patients there). So it really felt like Silence of the lambs when he seriously appeals to the fault of the government, accumulated DNA diseases and overpopulation to justify provoking suicides. And Kusanagi gets to remember previous talks to him - lots of disturbingly serious stuff to chew. CG: The only full-screen CG are actually HCG with just maybe 2 ordinary CG for couple girls. The most important events are depicted on some 1/3rd of the screen just as usual backgrounds (character sprites go beyond the background so they are full-height) so resolution is poor and lacks immersion. Sound: I really prefer midi sound. But here we get the usual .ogg or something. So music often starts at the beginning of the sequence, plays for some 2 minutes and goes down. For the rest of the sequence we get to play in total silence. That's not good. The game is not voiced... oh wait, there is exactly one phrase voiced - it's in one of the later scenes when there is imminent danger rises, Asuka cries "Oniii-chan!" and that's all. Systems: I usually hate to speak about systems, but in this game it just has to be done. First of all, the game won't load correctly in win10. But we've got dxwnd to cover that, no biggie. Second issue is that at least in win10 font is so bad that every character is only some 30% filled - we see different dots of it and usually can guess its form, but it may be just win10 issue, no biggie. We still hook the text and it's drawn as usual this way. Game is point and click, but it narrows down to mouths hunting as characters sprite move. There were like only 10 occasions when I had to click on anything else rather than mouth. The cursor does not change shape while moving on different objects... in fact it does not change shape ever and you have to point the ugly white small cursor everywhere! For the first half of the game there are no interactive commands, but then Suzusaki tells us to move and explains us how to push at the border of the screen to invoke the menu for moving! Great - I thought - since I totally overlooked that mechanics! So in the second part of the game we can invoke that menu and push move... and guess what... we don't get to use it even once... and when I attempted to there was a usual commentary than I need to do something else rather than go away. And the last - but not the least - there is a map of psychiatric facility in the game with a lot of rooms and initially we get a chance to come to every of those room and talk to its inhabitants. But this map is later used just once when we hear a woman's scream and need to find the source among those rooms! And when we found the source, we never ever get back to that map... So there are lots of systems piled together and each of those system is crumbling and poorly designed. Overall comments: As I already told, story is good. But Japanese reviewers promised falling back from occult matters in the realm of psychoanalysis and physics and that's barely true. What I see is the same occult stuff, just spiced with mental illnesses. ES should have only ment that inner chaos that is protected by the wall of consciousness. But in reality ES kind of also started to mean ESpers at some point. It should have been a story from the reality and in fact it involves too many surreal stuff. I can't blame the game or Japanese reviewers for that game was not fulfilling my expectations. If we look at it just as a sequel of Mystery of Necromonicon, it's a sequel worthy of its prequel and it should only be examined as direct continuation of prequel, not some original story with original themes. I rated this game quite poorly because of unnecessary slice-of-life episodes, useless spontaneous H-scenes, crumbling systems and poor character design and CG. But if those factors are overlooked we get a good story and I like good stories.

Visual Novel Translation Status (04/01/2018) After one week absence (Again), finally we have VNTS for this week. So I decided to create another VNTS Review here. As for the title, since we have Cross Channel overseas by release I decided to just merge it with Gakkou Gurashi anime title into 'Gunjo Gurashi' - Gunjo was the name of the school at Cross Channel, and coincidentally both work (Cross Channel and Gakkou Gurashi) did have same events - only few characters live in a world devoid of human, even though the circumstances were very different (I knew that the image header was from Fureraba). As for this week, I think it's a good one because we have Easter, April Fools, and more importantly we have many official release form the localization company – especially Fureraba to me. Also since recently Mangagamer did have announcement back at Boston, they also have three new announcements with all three of those were notably different in regard of the genre. So let's see what I can write for this week as well. From Sekai, well right now they have the least interesting news, although before I'm going on that let me congratulate them for Fatal Twelve release. As for Fatal Twelve itself, I think the graphic was looking very good and the premise was apparently in the after world in which 12 death people must eliminate each other by gathering the info in order to do so. From what I saw in the synopsis, it looks like Dangan Ronpa with The World Ends With You element, only that instead of emo male MCs we gonna have good looking female as the MCs here along with all girls cast - basically this VN is pretty much another shoujo ai, albeit a darker one looking back from the developer resume (Sounds of Drop). Other than Fatal Twelve release, Sekai did announce the sequel of Nekonin in which we gonna have another two catgirls into the MC's harem. This should be a good news if you like catgirls in Nekonin because we'll get more sex scenes with those, although to be honest I prefer Sekai to announced Suzukaze no Melt instead of Nekonin 2 if we talk about Whirlpool VNs. Oh well, and that's all for Sekai. From fan translation, more or less it's just usual week although this time Tsurezure take a break before translating HatsuKoi append disk though. As for this week, we got Eustia was past a quarter (25.96%) edited, Pure Pure was at 68.56% translated with Chapter 4 was at 63.38% translated, Higurashi Tsukiotoshi was at three quarter translated, Loverable was at 76.67% TLC-ed and 35.78% edited, Musumaker was at 50.6% translated, and Shin Koihime Musou was at 24% edited. We also finally have the first progress from Harugi, in which we have the prologue was at 24% translated (427 lines) and overall was still at less than 1% translated - the line count for Harugi was not at ~116,000 like TLWiki state, but rather was only at 68,206 lines in which it's still a lot (Duh). I'm pretty much look forward to it, although I'm okay as well if Harugi managed to get officially localized with 18+ scenes available even though it's impossible with Pulltop current policy for overseas release lol. Mangagamer We got three Boston announcement from them, and this time their clues were pretty obvious enough so much that two of their announcement matches some clues that they gave. One of those clues is otome, in which Mangagamer did announced another otome VN from their new partner with the name Steam Prison. What I can say that at least it's looking good enough with the setting itself was in a crapsack world, so I'm sure that any otome fan would find this announcement interesting - not me though, but at least the MC herself looking good. Another clue was yuri and voice, in which it'll point to the second announcement. And that announcement was Yurirei Full Chorus, in which I'd already interested with that ever since it was released for Japanese version. It's obviously just Yurirei with all of the scenes voiced - just like Liar-soft did in the past with both of Inganock and Sharnoth, and with some additional new CGs so it should be interesting enough if you want to replay Yurirei. I believe that both of the release should be available for Steam as well, so both of the announcements fulfill Steam clue. For the third announcement, we got Amatarasu Riddle Star in which it's from Mangagamer old partner Softhouse Seal, or rather it was from the sub brand of Soufthouse seal-Qualia. As for the Riddle Star itself, from the first look it was indeed looks like just an ordinary moege with the premise a meteor came to MC town and crashed near the town. From there, apparently MC will find a mysterious girl and befriended with her. Even though from the premise it's just like any moege with star watching setting, it still have Softhouse Seal trademark as the nukige producer though in which it'll have 31 sex scenes - quite a lot for medium length VN. Not quite interested with this for now because we already have many promising similar VNs release planned (ie Damekoi, Sanoba, and even just released Fureraba), but at least the girls looks good compared to their past works. Speaking about moege with many sex scenes, Mangagamer announced that Marriage will be released at 26th later, so if you want to see six girls from the different dimension compete to be the MC's wife feel free to pre-order it. Before closing Mangagamer section here, let me congratulate them for releasing Sideboob back at March 29th and have fun playing that for anyone else who already have that. That's all for Mangagamer. Other In regard of Robotic Note announcement from Siliconera back at last week, turned out that it was the mistake from Siliconera. So unfortunately we won't get Robotic Note English release, at least for now. No update from Sakusakura as of now although we have Newton VN update back at March 27th, in which Emmy's route was at 18% translated along with Haru's route was at 42% edited. As for Cross Channel, at the very least I must praise Pulltop because they still have common sense to port console version to PC rather than cut the sex content from original PC version lol, and also the console version apparently did have some new CG. But still it didn't help though that the release was indeed pretty redundant because we already have it translated in the past, with the sex scenes intact mind you. Granted that Ixrec's translation of Cross Channel might filled up with some wrongly translated lines, but in the end the majority didn't have the problem with Ixrec's translation though, so there's that. Other than that, apparently Pulltop's translation was filled with mistakes so combined with lack of sex scenes what I can say is that the release was once again pretty redundant even with supposed new CGs, in which ironically this is their best localization from Pulltop because of that lol. The big release for me this week was Fureraba, in which I'd already keep hoping that it will be translated since I'd binged Youtube and heard the full opening for that (Quantum Jump). As for the premise, we have our MC who is pretty much determined to find a girlfriend in his youth and therefore chase it aggressively. As for the girlfriend candidates, we have four here so it mean that we'll gonna have four routes at Fureraba. If I may be blunt here, the VN itself was pretty much just slice of life VN with some comedy that came from exaggerated MC's action. Other than that, it have some sort of pseudo gameplay in which we'll have a small talk with the heroines to increased the heroines interest. I admit that it might be not too convincing that the heroines managed to develop from friend to lover through the small talks, but if we compared the romance with Persona gameplay I think it's more believable imo. To each of their own I guess, and with this release I hope NekoNyan will managed to release the rest of their announcements later. I think that's all for this week, and see you next week. Happy Easter to all of Fuwanovel user who celebrate it.