LinovaA

It has been a while since I bought a new jrpg and played it all the way through in under six months...  To be blunt, most new jrpgs just aren't worth finishing these days.  I gave up on Atelier shortly after Mana Khemia, Square hasn't produced anything interesting in ten years (for a story-addict), and most of the best old series are dead or in semi-permanent hiatus stasis. 
Before this, I played Zestiria, and if you read my comments on it, I mostly liked it, though there were some aspects I wasn't particularly impressed with (the Armatization system, the translation of the skits, etc).  If I were to give Zestiria a 7 out of ten for making a good effort and keeping my interest to the end, I'd rate Tales of Berseria a 10/10... the rarest of things, a modern jrpg kamige. 
I almost never give 10 ratings, whether of VNs or of Jrpgs.  The reason is simple... even kamige rarely get everything right.  In the case of a JRPG, this is even harder than with a VN, since it not only has to have an impressive story and presentation... it has to reach a level with the gameplay, music, and visuals that is impressive as well, if not perfect.  Tales of Berseria is one of those rare games that manages all of that.  Since I'm not a technical critic, my impressions of the visual and sound aspects are emotional reactions more than anything else. 
For character designs, the only character design that set my teeth on edge besides the Normin characters (returning from Zestiria) was Magilou... I have a serious distaste for jester costumes, and Magilou's is just plain ugly to me.  This is an aesthetic comment, based on my personal sense, and I realize it won't be shared by everyone else.   On the other hand, Velvet is... perfect.  The visual change from the village girl, to the ragged prisoner, to the vengeance-seeking daemon in a ragged black coat, red bustier, and skirt was visually striking and very definitive of her in her roles in the early story.  Most female character visual changes during a JRPG tend to be... unpleasant (I love long hair, so that tendency for some of the females to all of the sudden cut their hair drives me insane).  Velvet was a rare exception in that.  For fans of Zestiria, seeing Eizen not as a giant man-eating lizard but as a bad-ass pirate in black was a nice intro to the guy who had so much influence on Edna from the previous game.  His fist-fighting style, his voice (Japanese), and his visual design are all as I would have imagined them, considering how Zaveid refers to him in Zestiria.  In addition, seeing a younger Zaveid, before his Zestiria way of living was established, was a nice treat... and getting the background behind his words in the first game is also nice.  Laphicet, who is essentially Velvet's biggest partner throughout the game's story, has a fairly mediocre design (someone has a shota-complex in that studio), but his magic is fairly awesome to see, and his voice is actually pretty good, for a child-styled voice (most are too high or too low, even in Japanese).  Eleanor has a personality that will grate on some people, and her visuals fit it quite well, since she has a very straight-laced personality (though she does loosen up as time goes by).  Rokurou is probably the third-best design of the group... his facial design, the movements of his eyes and expression during combat scenes, and his hybridized Japanese-style clothing all fit together nicely with his psychotic personality to create a solid character who partners up well with Eizen as one of Laphicet's male role models.
Story-wise, this game is essentially a long revenge story... it isn't about saving the world.  The enemy is 'saving' the world.  No, Velvet doesn't give a flying bit of monkey poo about the world.  She is far more interested in murdering her step-brother for his murder of her younger brother in the incident that stripped her of her humanity and destroyed her village.  She is cold, ruthless, and filled with hatred that, when combined with her daemonic hunger, makes her a pretty scary character.  She would make an excellent second-to-the-last-boss in most JRPGs, simply because of how intense she is, retaining a level of humanity that strikes to the heart while acting in a manner that is almost too focused on the results to be a fully functional human being.  Oh, she has her soft moments... but as the saying goes, even the worst of villains will sometimes be kind to a child or save a puppy. 
That is perhaps what is most exhilarating about this game.  Most of the player characters are unabashedly selfish in motive, acting solely for their own sake, regardless of the cost to those around them.  For a world being consumed by a blight that is actually worse than the one in Zestiria in some ways, this makes them true villains, even if their enemies are just as bad in their own way.  Velvet's fighting style is visceral, brutal, and it perfectly fits the action-oriented battle system of this series.  Feet, fists, and blade all in one ball of fury (literally) that sometimes strikes out with a demonic claw to devour her enemies.
That brings me to the battle system... except for two major elements, this can be considered to be functionally the same as most other Tales games since Abyss.   The first of these elements is the 'souls' system.  In this system, you can gain more action points (SP) for future combat actions by inflicting status ailments or killing enemies, thus strengthening you at their cost... but in exchange, if you let them inflict ailments on you, you lose souls, and this severely limits how you can act once it gets down to one or two.  The solution to this is the second element... the 'soul break', where you can, at three souls or above, sacrifice a single soul to use a special move that has various effects on how you fight.  Since I fought with Velvet throughout the entire game, I'll just speak about hers.  Her ability allows her to strike out with her 'claw' and 'therionize' (eat) a part of her enemies (incidentally also breaking their guard and leaving them open to further attack) and gain a boost of some sort based on the type of enemy she ate.  The primary advantage of this state is that she can continue attacking until the effect runs out, ignoring her remaining number of souls.  It also heals all status ailments and debuffs and some HP, as well as making you invulnerable to ailments and knock-backs.  Unfortunately, it also immediately begins to drain HP, and if you maintain this state for too long, it is entirely possible to run yourself down to a single hp, if you aren't careful about getting hit.  Since killing enemies can also restore hp, this isn't an entirely bad state to be in, and if you have enough souls stored up, you can maintain this state by 'eating' an enemy whenever it is about to run out.  On Normal mode, I felt like I was playing a Tales version of Dynasty Warriors at times (with a greater variety of attacks), lol.
Second in importance for gameplay, at least as far as I was concerned, is the equipment skills... basically, every equipment type has a single skill that the equipable characters can learn permanently by earning enough Grade while wearing it.  I had all of the ones available by the end, and I hate to imagine how much harder most of the game would have been without them.  Why?  Because stat increases due to experience gaining are insanely minimal in this game, leaving you reliant on equipment-enhancement and equipment skills to make up the gap... oh and player skills, but that goes without saying.  On harder difficulties, it only gets worse (believe me, I had some horrible experiences when I set it to the harder modes for the hell of it until I got used to the changed rhythms of battle). 
In any case, now down to the story... to be blunt, no other Tales game even gets close to this game in terms of story and presentation.  Vesperia was good, but it didn't have anywhere near as much of an impact as this one did on me.  I cried, raged, and laughed with the characters from beginning to end, despite having weeks-long gaps between my playing sessions.  That is how deep an impression this game left on me, that I could pick it up after a fairly long hiatus and get just as absorbed into the narrative as if I'd never left.  By the end, I was weeping for both sides of the conflict, while agreeing from the heart with Velvet and her crew, it was easy to empathize with Artorius, despite his inhumane actions and manner.   As revenge stories go, it was far deeper than you'd expect, while retaining the essence of how it began from start to finish... a feat that is greatly impressive to me.  Not to mention that Velvet and crew's journey was never, at any point, about saving the world... a huge advantage over other jrpgs in and of itself.
A few Linguistic comments
In the Japanese language terminology there were some really interesting (for me) differences in how the same elements were referred to between games.  Whereas the Japanese term for the Malak in Zestiria had nuances of divinity to it, the term used in this one referred to them as 'spirits', with a nuance of something that could and should be used as a tool.  As for the daemons, the difference in terms was even more telling between the games.  In Zestiria, they are 'hyouma' (Hellions), a term which can be translated as 'possession demons', divesting the individual in question of built-in responsibility for what he has become.  However, in Berseria, they are called 'gouma', a term which can be translated as 'sin demons'.  This simple alteration of phrasing marks a drastic difference in attitudes between the Shepherd-equivalents (the exorcists) of Berseria's age and Sorey in Zestiria.  This difference in attitude is reflected throughout the story, creating an atmosphere that is drastically different from the one in Zestiria.  'Subtle' isn't a quality you usually ascribe to JRPG makers, so I was all the more impressed with this game for the linguistic aspects.
EDIT: Ah, if you didn't figure it out from the text above, this game made me back into a fanboy for the first time in a while.  Sixty hours across one and a half months plus complete satisfaction in how it ended and the process of how it reached that ending... such a rare experience for me these days.

Tokyo Babel is scheduled to be released pretty soon, so I decided to replay it.  As Propeller is one of my favorite companies and Tokyo Babel has a more or less permanent place in my top fifty (when the number of VNs you've played passes five hundred, fifty is a good place to be, lol), so this doesn't bother me.  Tokyo Babel is one of the few purely all-ages titles from Japan on the PC, and it is a chuunige of rare quality that was obviously written with one of a dozen or so pairs of eyes on Masada and the rest on an internal vision that more prudish Christians would probably call blasphemous.
Tokyo Babel is not only the name of the game, it is also the name of the setting, a remade version of Purgatory floating in mid-air, where angels, humans, and demons are working together desperately in hopes that they can convince God to stop squishing the universes.  This is not a VN for the excessively religious to play... to be honest, there were moments when even I felt uncomfortable and I've never seriously adhered to any organized religion, though I was raised Christian. 
Some of the major characters include Astaroth, Belial, Carmael, Uriel, and many other famous or infamous demons and angels.  The three heroines are Raziel, Kugutsu Sorami, and Lilith.  Raziel is the angel who recorded all of creation in her book, the Sefer Raziel (this is partially taken from various apocryphal mythology).  Kugutsu Sorami is the first character you meet in the VN, whose ignorant untainted perspective gives you your first clear insight into the world from a human perspective.  Lilith is the first wife of Adam, who left him and who lay down with demons and produced all the monsters of the world (book of Enoch). 
Understand, like a lot of stories using Christian mythology, it uses bits and pieces from Milton's Paradise Lost, medieval literature, Gnostic ideas, and many other elements and branching-off literature that went off in all directions since the genesis of that particular faith.  One thing to keep in mind if you are a Christian and were raised to believe that Lilith never existed is that the Bible is not and has never been what we would call 'complete', as each version had bits and pieces grafted on or removed based on what the powerful and influential of an era or region felt was convenient, necessary, correct, and/or all of the above.  The Book of Enoch is one of dozens of 'books' not included in the accepted versions of the Bible, that were considered paradoxical in the eyes of the church of the time.  So... just keep an open mind when reading up on this kind of thing, because Wikipedia isn't exactly reliable when looking up religion-related facts.
Now, setting philosophical, historical, and other issues aside... this is a pretty enjoyable VN on a lot of levels.  Propeller developed its own (fairly hilarious in my opinion) style of humor that is incorporated into the story, and its effect in Tokyo Babel is one of humanizing the characters.  I don't think a lot of people who read chuuni really understand how vital a few moments of humor can be in giving life to a character, even in this type of VN.  While Masada and his type choose another path, Propeller's writers generally choose to use humor as one of the elements of their characterization.  On another level, this VN is chuuni crack.  The protagonist is a self-hating guy with a dark past and a deathwish seven billion kilometers wide, but he also has an even stronger sense of responsibility toward those he comes to care about, which is seen in the heroine routes.  The situation is one fit to drive even the most optimistic mind to despair, and there are bad guys behind the curtains, waiting to push everyone in the abyss.
In other words, this is one of those VNs that has almost an infinite capacity for fun in a chuuni sense of the word.
The art style of this VN is... unique.  In some ways, it feels like an elaboration on Propeller's previously-preferred style, but it was actually done by a completely  different artist from their previous works and it does show in a lot of places.  In particular, the vivid designs you see on the more monstrous demons and monsters in the VN shows this off very well.  Leviathan (the giant serpent) and the Seven Beasts from Setsuna's sword are two of the more distinctive examples of this art-style, and ones that honestly impress me even today. 
Sound-wise... I'll be straight.  There is no such thing as a bad Propeller sound track... well, until Sougeki no Jaeger anyway.  Tokyo Babel's isn't as good as Evolimit's, but that's kind of like saying that Sasaki Kojirou wasn't as good a swordsman as Musashi (token weabooism, lol).  Generally speaking, the songs in this VN vary to a surprising degree, ranging from techno tunes, to rock, and even a few hymn-like ones.  The one thing that unifies them is that none are poorly used, lol.
Now... down to the story.  I've already described the basic concept above, but now I'll get into structure.  This VN is split into three major routes after a pretty short common route (the trial ends about the same time you are supposed to head into the heroine routes, from what I've heard).  Raziel's route is the one that keeps you furthest from the 'deepest truths' of the VN, and having played her route is pretty good preparation for Sorami's route, as Sorami's route reveals some things that might make it hard for some people to read Raziel's route and take it for what it is.  Raziel's route has a bad end that is seriously... bad.  However, it is also a highly-detailed and reasonably long diversion from the 'good' (this is debatable) ending.  Sorami's path has a good ending (bittersweet but technically a good ending), a normal ending (really sad...), and a bad ending (like Raziel's, it is fairly long).  Sorami's path has a different focus on the events in Tokyo Babel than Raziel's, and I've heard some people describe Raziel's, Sorami's, and Lilith's paths as the Angel, Human, and Demon paths in that order... However, that is a pretty generalized statement and one that doesn't really feel correct, lol.  Lilith's path... is the true path.  I'm going to be blunt.  If you are silly enough to try to do Lilith's path first, you'll deserve your inability to figure out a third of the references in the path, because it is constructed so that the information from the previous two paths feeds directly into the events in that one.  In other words, if you haven't played the other two paths, Lilith's path has a lot of potential for being confusing.  Lilith's path has three distinctive bad ends, one true end, and one 'Setsuna' end, which is a branch-off from the true one.  Lilith's path has some of the best battles in the VN, and there are no secrets left in shadow by the end, which makes it a great way to end things.
A few thoughts about Propeller as a company... Propeller doesn't really produce that many overwhelmingly attractive heroines.  I'm pretty sure that this is deliberate, as there is a definite tendency toward the story being more important than the heroines in these VNs.  For people accustomed to the extreme character focus that defines a lot of VNs, this has a potential to be problematic...  Take Ayakashibito, for instance... how many of you really, seriously were obsessed with the romantic aspects of the VN (if you read it)?  There are even heroines in Propeller games that are actually deliberately made to seem bland (the elf in Bullet Butlers, for instance) or somehow unattractive for situational/emotional reasons (Kaori in Ayakashibito).  This is a part of their style, which calls for heroines to not take up the whole of the limelight in the VN, and it is one of the reasons I honestly find their VNs so enjoyable, other than the sheer chuunige nougat that makes my mouth water.
Overall, while Tokyo Babel is no Dies Irae, it does have a high level of quality, as well as being one of the few chuunige to dare to avoid the 'perfect happy ending' that has become standard even in many VNs of the type in recent years (for some reason, bittersweet endings are less popular these days...).   It can definitely play on your emotions at times (especially the endings), and there is just enough humor to keep the VN as a whole from being unbearably heavy.  Of course, if you dislike gloomy protagonists who don't really understand other people very well, there might be some abrasive moments in this VN for you... but Setsuna comes by that particular set of flaws honestly, so I never held it against him, lol. 

I told a couple people I would post my thoughts about Sayonara wo Oshiete when I finished it, and just a few days ago I finished a bad end and Mutsuki's good end. So here are my impressions, thoughts, and analysis of that experience. Also, this post does not contain any significant spoilers to the VN. So its safe for all those that are curious. (Also from here on forward I will refer to Sayonara wo Oshiete as 'Sayooshi')
Before I start talking about Sayooshi, I want to briefly describe the circumstances in which I discovered it. During this past summer, after having studied Japanese (with a grammatical focus) for a while,  I wanted to get a few easy moege under my belt before attempting something I actually wanted to read. I was honestly having a miserable time, as I hate moege. I was reading them for no other reason than to practice and learn Japanese, as they were appropriate for my level. I wasn't having fun, and it honestly felt like work more than anything else. Just as I was about to give up on Untld Vns for the time being, I read a post by Vokoca talking about Sayooshi, and he linked to this video. The unsettling music and ominous imagery instantly piqued my curiosity and I set out to get this VN. For a while I was saving it, still thinking "My Japanese isn't good enough yet", but then at some point in the fall I decided "Fuck it, with the help of dictionaries and text hooking software, I can make this journey", and began reading it whenever I had time. And boy was this a journey worth taking, even if I did proceed through it a bit slowly. 
I love the first person narrative because getting inside the heads of interesting characters is truly experiencing the world through a different person's eyes. And VNs in my view are the best medium for first person narration, as they allow you to to see and hear what the MC experiences. Furthermore, back ground music enriches the story by immersing the reader in the moods of various settings and situations. Sayooshi takes all these strengths of VNs and the first person narrative, and uses it to put you inside the head of a madman. A man whose sense of reality is slipping further and further away by the day. The unreliable narrator is a literary trope that I really enjoy, but this is an area where I think VNs by default have higher potential than books. It is one thing to solely read the mind of a madman/untrustworthy narrator, it is another thing all together to see and hear that man's world, on top of reading his narrative.   
Too often I see wasted potential in the artistic side of VNs. Visual art is important for not only conveying ideas (i.e. a picture of a hallway should look like a hallway, a picture of a girl should look like a girl, etc.), but art can also convey moods. VNs of the same era usually have extremely similar character designs, and there is usually a lack of creativity in artistic style in VNs. While the character designs aren't anything revolutionary (it is admittedly nice that this VN came out before moe blobs became popular though), what is special about the art, is the eternal twilight. Hitomi's world is a world drenched in the orange and reddish hue of twilight, as the VN takes place exclusively during the evening. And coupled with all the things Hitomi experiences, the color of twilight really makes things even more ominous. It instills a feeling of loneliness, or at the very least detachment.

Supporting the artwork in creating an unsettling atmosphere, is the music. The main theme that plays when Hitomi is wandering the school alone (this theme), only reinforces the feelings of detachment that the visual art and writing create. Character themes as well are quite well suited for each of the characters and the moods they represent, further successfully reinforcing the tone of the writing.
Now onto the writing itself. Things are confusing, and they only get more confusing. Any sense of orientation is screwed around with, and this only gets worse as the story continues. You are left thinking "Did what I see actually happen?", until it gets to the point where you just altogether give up on distinguishing reality. In this way, you yourself submit to the insanity and fall further into Hitomi's world. Not knowing what to make of his situation. The only difference between you and him, is that you know he is crazy, but nonetheless identify with him because you experience the same sense of the world as he does. And perhaps weird to say, but the H-scenes in this VN serve to further sympathize with his madness.
When I was telling a (non-VN reading) friend of mine about Sayooshi. He admitted that it sounded interesting, and even could appreciate the use of the H-scenes from an intellectual perspective. But he then told me that what he thought was truly disturbing, was not the use of H-scenes, but that "inevitably there will be people out there that will find it arousing". For him, (and his understanding of what I told him about Sayooshi), the sex scenes, which are exclusively rape scenes, serve to reinforce Hitomi's insanity, and therefore their portrayal is justified. But finding the scenes arousing yourself, is horrific as it is identifying with a monster; like the monster that plagues Hitomi's dreams. But it is here, where I disagree. The VN does everything in its power to have you identify with Hitomi's insanity, and the sex scenes are no exception.
The sex scenes are arousing, despite knowing that they shouldn't be. It isn't just rape, but the Heroines are (supposedly) middle school girls for Christ's sake. Perhaps eroge players (particularly nukige fans) maybe a bit desensitized, but this is certainly fucked up. But just like when Hitomi experiences the dream that plagues him for the first half of the story, he knows he is the monster raping the angel, and there is pleasure still drawn from this. A pleasure that Hitomi knows is horrible and monstrous. But just as Hitomi submits to the role as the monster as he views his nightmare; we are in an identical role, viewing (and partly identifying) with his sexual misdemeanors as he commits them. It coerces you into submitting yourself to the madness of these H-scenes. By doing so an enjoyment is found in them, but for you and Hitomi alike there is a darkness implied in that pleasure. Furthermore, Hitomi seems to understand that he is defiling them. There is a guilt and sense of disgust felt, but also a feeling of extreme excitement, just as we as readers feel. This is shown through the multiple references he makes to 'contaminating the purity of the angel/Mutsuki', to paraphrase what he says. The H-scenes, and our feelings towards them, mirror Hitomi's perspective; furthering our identification with his insanity.
Yet, just like the reoccurring nightmare, the H-scenes almost always end abruptly, and are divorced from continuity. It is not uncommon for an H scene to abruptly happen, end all of a sudden, and the next thing you know you are placed into a completely different context. And not only do the H-scenes lack continuity immediately before and after, but the characters never make reference to it afterwards, and act just as they did before. Further questioning whether they ever really happened. And this confusion surrounding the reality of the h-scenes, makes it easier to identify with Hitomi during them, since the normal consequences and damage caused by rape, do not apply.  

(Perhaps this would be a considered spoiler if I could guarantee that it actually happened )
And for all these reasons, I feel that the thesis of this VN is the fragility of the human mind. Often we draw huge differences between the mentally deranged, and functional normal human beings; but what Sayooshi points out is that the difference is actually rather subtle. In seeing the world Hitomi experiences, and sympathizing with him, it gets us to realize that we ourselves are not that different. That given his circumstances and what he experiences (and seeing it through his eyes), his reactions are actually understandable. The atmosphere of his world, and reading the thoughts of his mind, gets us to question his sanity, and in doing so, eventually gets us to question our own sanity as well.     
Sayooshi in an incredibly strong atmospheric experience. And it is for this reason that I feel Sayooshi is a great representative of the strengths VNs offer as a medium. This VN took advantage of all the tools it had as a VN (music, sound effects, visuals, and narrative) to provide a full experience of what the wanders of a madman look like. I really felt like I understood to a degree what it was like to be insane reading this work, and I don't think I would have been able to identify as well if it were told in any other medium in any other way.  
 
 

Izuna Zanshinken is one of three pretty high-quality VNs made by Akatsuki Works Black during the period of a single year.  I say 'high-quality', but it was more for the pleasure levels rather than literary value.  Izuna Zanshinken and Yurikago yori Tenshi Made are both what I like to call 'perfect examples of chuunige crack' that are also readable by people who aren't translators or native Japanese.  Of course, there are hard moments, but in comparison to the normal ruck of chuunige, they are relatively easy on the brain.  The third VN is Hotel, a post-apocalyptic utsuge based in a post-war world where for some reason, all life is slowly dying out for no apparent overt reason.  It is a story about how a small community of survivors live their best amidst the growing realization there is no salvation coming.  It is a melancholic VN that had me crying repeatedly and hit me with a mild mindfuck revelation at the end, while at the same time ending on a highly emotional note.
Izuna Zanshinken is the story of Musumi Kotarou, a young boy trained from birth for the sole purpose of being a 'kept' vigilante assassin.  Kotarou's style integrates basically 'whatever works', though he prefers to use katana, claws, kunai, and his bare fists.  Since his style is specialized for killing with no element of 'sports' to it, it is pretty brutal at times, lol. 
Mmm... to be blunt, this VN is drenched in blood.  There is more raw violence and bloodshed in this VN than in any other I've ever played.  I don't mean the kind of magical violence that you see in a lot of fantasy VNs, where people are wiped out without a trace... I mean people being cut down, strangled, stabbed, cut open, dismembered, etc.  Both the CGs and the writing are kind of graphic at times, and for those not used to blood, this will probably put them off. 
However, because of the nature of the protagonist's work, there is always good reason why people have to be killed by him, at least... and his killing are generally pretty cathartic.
The musical style of this VN is almost exclusively variations on classical Japanese music with Japanese or Chinese instruments.  Everyday scenes will sometimes have more western additions, but even those will include at least some Japanese instrumentals.  Indeed, in many ways they were basically reinventing the 'jidaigeki' style in a VN based in a modern era. 
Visually... think lots of blood?  The style itself is pretty and there are a lot of CGs in this VN, not just H ones. 
Content-wise... other than blood, there is some rape (no heroine rape though).  There are also other objectionable concepts introduced such as human slavery, cannibalism, and lolis with bone fetishes.  Most of the VN is done in episodic fashion, with single incidents making up a single chapter.  The paths are distinctive, with the 'introduction' or 'common' route helping you to get used to the atmosphere before you go into the heroine routes.  In the heroine routes, romance generally isn't the focus, though it is an element.  One of the more enjoyable things about the routes is how they shape things so the protagonist plays a different role with each heroine.  With Suzuka, it is the protector, servant, and confidante, with Shinobu, it is the role of the mentor and partner, and with Hikaru it is the role of friend and eventually an ally.  'Choices' in this VN are actually mostly choices of what scenes you want to watch (except for a few bad-end/good-end choices at the end of each path).  For instance, in one scene you might get one focused in a slice of the protagonist's daily life interacting with the heroines or people at school (though school doesn't play much of a role, overall).  However, the other choice might be a Socratic-style lecture from a teacher, where the students debate recent events and issues, like the recent abolishing (fictional) of the death penalty and its effects on society (this issue is actually a central social theme of the VN as a whole), or a scene told from the viewpoint of a victim, an assailant, or an antagonist. 
Perhaps my biggest objection to this VN is that it was designed with a sequel in mind.  You can tell because of the way the secret ending (accessed by filling in the rest of the flow chart) is done, leading you to think that matters are nowhere near their conclusion. 
Overall, this VN is one of those that I think everyone who can stand the sight of blood should read, just so they can have the experience.  It isn't a kamige, but it is a highly cathartic, highly emotional trip down a bloodstained road inside the experiences of a vigilante assassin.
Here is one of my favorite CG progressions, for those who want to have a idea of what it is like (spoilers)

Yeah, I said I was going to wait until I'd played at least two more heroines before I posted again... but Rin's path has enough impact that I felt a distinct need to post on it ahead of time.
Misakura Rin is the protagonist's osananajimi... a childhood friend and one another's first love (this is said pretty much from the beginning, so it doesn't really count as a spoiler).  For reasons the protagonist deliberately only hints at (typical Sca-ji) he has been avoiding any sort of contact with her for years... since she transferred out of the area.  This is despite the fact that his memories with her are some of the ones he treasures the most from his childhood. 
To be honest, though Makoto's path is really good, the engagement with the protagonist and heroine is completely different in Rin's path.  Unlike in my past experience with Sca-ji, the progression as Rin's personal issues are revealed in detail is carried out in a manner that is neither irritating nor excessive, and even the building of their relationship feels more natural than you generally see in a VN.  Understand, if you have read a lot of Japanese literature, it is really easy to figure out where Sca-ji is going with Rin even without getting on her path.  He lays the hints on pretty thickly, and the reaction of a certain fushigi-ko character (not a heroine) to Rin is the final nail in the coffin.  If you honestly haven't figured out why the protagonist is so intent on avoiding building a relationship with Rin early on, you are probably pretty dense... though the details are - of course - only revealed in her path.
In addition to the purely physical issues, there is a significant amount of psychological weirdness involved, and I have to make the suggestion that you keep in mind that Sca-ji can't seem to avoid inserting mysticism into any and all his stories on some level, so it shouldn't surprise anyone that read Ikikoi the way he tries to keep certain issues ambiguous throughout this path.  I have to wonder if he himself has an ambiguous relationship with faith and fantasy, considering the way he writes about them.
I honestly cried during the climax scene of Rin's path, and I was surprised to find myself actually ranking the path pretty high up there as emotional VN paths go... right up there with the true path of Irosekai and a few others that had me in tears.  A lot of it is that the protagonist has that bad habit a lot of my favorite protagonists in emotional games have... he has an odd disregard for his own safety, health, and future when he puts them in balance with someone he cares about or even someone who simply needs his help.  While I love pragmatist protagonists and even ones who can be cruel, that is mostly for the same reason as I like this type of protagonist... people that exist at extremes of the range of human personality are inevitably fascinating... far moreso than some humdrum 'normal' schoolboy, lol.
 
Edit:
Linguistic issues
Now on linguistics... I don't think most people who read VNs really understand how a simple choice of words can alter how someone views a whole issue.  Above, in parenthesis, I said 'typical' Sca-ji in relation to what I referred to as a bad habit in a previous post.  Now, if I were a long-standing fan of Sca-ji, I probably would have said 'classic' Sca-ji.  What is the difference?  By using 'typical' there, I inserted a note of sarcasm/cynicism into an otherwise neutral statement.  If I were to have said 'classic', that would have altered it to sound somewhat fanboyish... I wonder how many of those who read this blog even realize how much reviewers manipulate you through simple word choices like these?  Not only that, ninety percent of a writer's skill is in figuring out how to insert emotion using subtle word choices like this. 
The reason Masada - the writer of Dies Irae - attracts writers and reading-addicts like flies is because his prose really is a work of art, designed to gain a very specific reaction without entirely making you aware that he is doing it.  The reason Sca-ji tends to irritate people like me is that he lacks subtlety from the perspective of people like me.  Now understand, he is perfectly subtle from the perspective of your average reader.  I doubt most people will pick up on more than ten percent of the hints he gives... but for people used to figuring out subtle hints as second nature, it feels like he is laying it on a bit thick, to the point of extreme repetition.  Sometimes this works (Rin's path is an example of this) and at others it doesn't (my experience of Subahibi).  This is an entirely subjective issue and not one that the mainstream will ever even recognize is there without some jaded jerk like me going out of his way to point it out.  However, I felt a need to say just why my bias is always going to be against Sca-ji, because I can't stop it from coloring how I write about him.
 
Edit2:
Rina and the Yuri path
Rina's path is in some ways darker than Rin's.  For all the depth of emotion involved in Rin's path, the entire thing was almost entirely between Rin and the protagonist, with only occasional intervention from third parties.  However, throughout Rina's path, Yuumi plays an intimate role together with them.  Indeed, a good portion of the path is devoted to a recounting of Rina's and her past from Yuumi's point of view, as well as the first meeting between Naoya and Rina.  Yuumi as a child is pretty... messed up inside, at least partially because she is an honest to god born lesbian.  In a moege, there would probably be a 3P path here... and while that kind of path is generally fun to read, it wouldn't have the depth this one did.  After the recounting of the past, it splits into Rina's heroine route and a Yuri path between her and Yuumi.  To be honest, I don't think I would have gotten as much from Rina's path if I hadn't chosen to do the yuri ending first, so I can honestly recommend it as something that adds some depth to Rina's ending, putting some things in perspective.  Rina's path... is equally intimate to Rin's, but it lacks the kind of high-emotion cathartic drama that Rin's had (at least for me), at least in part because a great portion of the path was devoted to recounting the somewhat messed up formative time of Rina's and Yuumi's relationship.  From a purely intellectual point of view, it was an excellent choice, but it had the effect of making the path deeper intellectually at the cost of emotional engagement, an occasional problem with that kind of flashback recounting.

I know what you're thinking - 'Rooke has news? He must be taking a leave from the site.' Well... HA! Not a chance, bub. No no no no no. I must annoy Tay, and I cannot do that while off in the never never.
I merely thought I might highlight the day's news. Keeping up with the world is important if you want to remain learned and engaged. PS: Please don't hurt me  
Technology:
'Driverless cars can now ‘see’ around corners,' is the first headline I see, an enviable trait lacking in inferior, organic organisms. This new ability is truly wondrous and will be of great benefit to everybody’s safety… until the sensor breaks. Not like you’ll notice, because the light on the dashboard that glows green when there’s a problem with the sensors will also be broken. But it's not like you’ll care, because the cars ability to tell its left from its right will also have taken a vacation, causing your lucky self to be driven straight off a mountain pass to your briefly thrilling but ultimately painful doom. Nobody at the manufacturer will know what caused this weird phenomena, and your death will be written off as a ‘software glitch, ain’t that just weird ahahaha.’
No thank you, I’ll walk.
More technology:
‘Volvo cars get advanced kangaroo avoidance tech in Australia’ – it’s called drivers with a working set of eyes, hands, and feet.
Politics:
‘Malcolm Turnbull’s (Australia’s current Prime Minister) visit to Indonesia could reset our relationship with our sometimes-beloved cousins to the North.’ What blessed voodoo is this? The ability to reset relationships at will? How can I get my roguish, rugged hands on whatever it is he's obtained?
Just last week he was busy flaunting his newfound powers when he ‘reset the Government’s relationship with science.’ It's just freakish. And convenient. And enviable. Mostly enviable. Because I’m sure most people have an ex-partner they’d wish to reset their relationship with... after they cocked up badly like so:
 
Social Issues:
'An all-female, Russian astronaut crew was asked (by journalists) how they’d cope without makeup and men.' One of the astronauts (or cosmonauts) replied 'we are doing work, when you’re doing work you don’t think about men and women’. At this point every man listening scoffed and choked. Why? Well, take a look at the dude opposite you, the one enjoying a burger and some fries. Is he thinking about how delicious all that fried oil is, and how he's going to die young and full of regret? Of course not, he's thinking about sex. The guy who’s on his cell, in the cinema, arguing with the tax office while having shoes thrown at him, well he’s thinking about sex too. A man could be in the middle of the Arctic, during the worst blizzard of the century, being threatened by a man wielding a machete and with 3 Timberwolves snarling at his feet and he would still be thinking about sex. This idea of thinking about 'work' when doing 'work' is alien, and foreign, and clearly too radical to take off.
Sometimes I weep for real journalism 
Health:
A recent study produced this headline: 'Why do 55% of women report a lack of interest in sex?' Because of their partner’s appearance. Too easy. Next.  
World news:
‘US releases plan for solar flares and space weather disaster’ - Aims to launch the first of many strongly worded letters into space early next year. That will show them the US is not to be trifled with.
Entertainment:
'Fifty Shades Darker’ release date delayed?' Are you heartbroken? I know I am…
Feel Good:
And we end on a happy note. ‘A 97 year old woman who was forced to leave high school 8 decades ago when her mother fell ill, broke down in tears this week as she was presented with an honorary diploma from her alma mater.’ A wonderful moment for someone who sacrificed selflessly for her whole life. 
Now, don't we all feel so much more informed?

Due to work and school, I haven't been able to progress as much as I would have liked with this VN, but I have gotten moderately far, so I'll give you a bit of an update on my experiences.
Gameplay Comments
First, the gameplay... this is a straight strategy rpg in format, but it does have a few twists.  First, the characters known as 'mech-people' and 'sword-people' can become what their name is... literally becoming a mech or a sword, through their pact with a particular character.  In the case of the mech-people, this not only creates a more powerful unit to stand on the field, it also extends their attack range, making them more effective on the battlefield, both offensively and defensively (though at the cost of skills the mech can use being lower level and fewer in number than the characters in question).  In opposition, the sword-people directly enhance the stats of their partner, giving them wider movement range, more powerful attacks, stronger defenses, etc.  When joined with someone, both sides gain a precise fraction of the experience they would have otherwise gained (in the case of the Kai/Alfaria/Beldadia combo It gets split three ways, for instance).  This has some advantages and more disadvantages.  The advantage is both characters can get experience from killing enemies... but this advantage is weakened significantly by the fact that characters that join in a group combo generally get more experience than the two joined characters, making it a trade-off for grinding. 
Speaking of grinding... this game's experience-gaining is a huge pain in the butt, not the least of which because the enemies do massive level jumps (think two to five levels per battle), which makes it a serious pain to keep up, since your levels don't gain fast enough to make leveling anything other than a grind (you can replay any battle at any time on the world map).  Another huge downside of this game... Alfaria is pathetically weak when not transformed, but Kai is actually more powerful on foot, at least midway through the game.  This makes using the mechform usually not worth it for these two, except for the enhanced hp, but it does make it necessary, because Alfaria dying is usually a game over.
Story and Characters
So far, I'm still on Kai's side of the story, so I think it is going to be a while before I switch over to Shizuma.
I'm going to be blunt... Alfaria feels a lot like a weaker, more naive version of Corona from Corona.  She's basically a little kid in an adult's body, with a little kid's thought patterns.  This is understandable in the context of the story, but it can be pretty annoying.  Kai is pretty much your typical rpg protagonist... right down to the naivete and impulsiveness.  To be honest, that irritated the hell out of me at first, though it has subsided somewhat as the story goes on (though he still has bursts of insanity where he does something unbelievably stupid).  I chose Beldadia as my first playthrough heroine, and she is fairly interesting, not to mention she is a returning character from Yumina and Corona, a heroine for the first time in this one.  I thought about spoiling her here, but lets just say that this VN puts her more in the spotlight this time around and let it go at that.
The story in this VN is actually pretty good, in typical VN fashion... why do I say typical?  Because in many ways, this story reminds me of why I generally go to VN hybrids more than actual srpgs and rpgs nowadays.  Why?  It is pretty simple... no taboo subjects.  The story is dark, it is violent, and the characters make mistakes that actually get people killed in large numbers.  Today's jrpgs tend to avoid things like death, except in the abstract, and as a result, their stories tend to... suck.  Yes, I said it.  Modern jrpgs suck donkey tits.  The rare exceptions just prove the rule, rather than proving it wrong. 
That said, I don't know if I approve of them putting multiple protagonists in this story, especially considering the number of times the two protagonists end up clashing (it kind of  feels like they are ruining the plot, to me).  I'll have to see what it is like when I get to Shizuma's part before I decide if I can forgive them for committing the cardinal sin of a serious VN. 
Well, that's it for now... cheers!

The Ikusa Megami series is easily one of the best rpg series out there, as far as plot goes, including the more than two hundred jrpgs I played during my younger years.  I'm saying this right off the bat, simply because it needs to be said.  Ikusa Megami Zero is an example of the best of what can be done when a visual novel is fused with a traditional turn-based jrpg, and Verita is a nice sequel to it.  I frankly consider Ikusa Megami Zero to be right up there with Star Ocean 2, Final Fantasy VI, Xenogears, and Suikoden 2 as a member of that rarefied group in terms of plot, and that is coming from someone jaded by more than twenty years playing such games.
Sadly, it is unlikely most people over here will even give it a chance if it does come over here... and the reason is fairly simple... sex.  Now, there are always people who defend or attack sexual content based on morality or the lack of it... but to be honest, I'm not interested in rehashing that idiotic argument once again here.  One of the ironic factors of this series is that sex is so vital to the story (whereas it is a hindrance in any number of VNs I can name).  The Tantric magic many of the non-human characters use to sustain their existence is vital to the story, and it is also vital to the understanding of the setting.  It can't be avoided and it can't be cut out without effectively neutering one of the ongoing conflicts of the overarching story of the series in general.  So, for those who dream of Sekai Project cutting out the sexual content and localizing this game... please don't do that to us, since it would be criminal... and this is from someone who generally skips H-scenes while doing something else.
Perhaps the most powerful element of the series - other than Serika's legendary life - is the setting.  From what I've read, it seems that Eushully originally intended the setting to only cover a single game... the first Ikusa Megami.  However, while Ikusa Megami itself was considered only average as a game, the world-building the setting was widely praised by those who played  it, and as a result, Ikusa Megami 2 got released, becoming even more popular.  However, it was the release of Zero that basically converted the Japanese-playing Western community to the cause of seeing these games come over here.  Going back into the distant (700 years or more distant) past of the world, it covers the formative years of Serika's lonely journey, as his life was destroyed, changed beyond all recognition to eventually result in the creation of the person he became.  All along the way, through various characters and events, the gaps in the setting were further filled in, bringing the series even more to life. 
The setting of the series is a world that was basically created when a high-technological world (pretty much Earth) discovered a fantasy world with elves, dwarves, and other non-human races... and decided to merge the two worlds together (the details are pretty much deliberately wiped out by the gods long before the story's beginning, so don't expect everything to be told).  This was quite naturally disastrous for both sides... but especially for the high technological civilization.  That high technological civilization (humans) found itself at war with magic-wielding races with a strong faith in their gods, which granted those gods the power they needed to defeat the technological advantage the humans had... while also defeating the humans' gods, who were already weakened by the poor faith of the humans who worshiped them and further weakened when the gods of the invaded world began to convert the humans to their faiths.  This eventually resulted in the death, sealing, or conversion of most of the gods of humanity, renamed 'the old gods' in the new world.  Humanity had its memory of the past civilization reduced to a few ruins and distant legends, and most of humanity settled into a worship of the gods of the new, merged world.  This in itself would have made for a pretty rich setting... but they take it to insane degrees of complexity when you throw demons, magic-technology, fights between darkness and light (followers and gods), neutral gods, and the rapid growth of humanity's sphere of influence into account. 
The constantly shifting moral perspectives, as well as the innumerable factions and nations that make up this setting, make for some really fascinating lore.  That in and of itself would make it worth playing these games, but the inclusion of side-stories (such as Meishoku no Reiki and Madou Koukaku) and direct links to the main series (the Genrin no Kishougun games) adds even more depth to the physical world and its history, as you come to know various historical figures and other parts of the world.
Now that I've waxed poetic (sort of) on the virtues of the story and setting... I should probably state that the series itself is pretty standard, gameplay wise.  It uses your basic turn-based combat, for the most part, and this is generally a benefit, as it makes actually learning the basics of battle rather simple, outside of a few details.  Since battles generally start and end quickly (outside of boss battles) if you know what you are doing, Zero, Verita, and Tenbin feel like less of a grind than they really should, based on the game type.  The biggest difference between Zero and the other two games is that Zero is primarily telling a story, whereas the other two also have Star Ocean style EX dungeons that can serve as a huge challenge in comparison to the rest of the game, even if you have your characters maxed. 
Generally, the benefits of the series can be summed up like this: gameplay accessibility, good plot, and a deep setting.  For those looking for a true hybrid of the best of jrpgs and visual novels, this series is an excellent choice.

I'm guessing some of those that follow my blog are wondering why I haven't started up any random VNs this month... there are a number of reasons.
1) I'm busy.  I have my work, with an addition of university, which takes up about 80% of my time, save for a few days like today when I have time to rest and relax.
2) I simply don't have an appreciation for anything in my backlog right now.  I cleared out most of the most interesting stuff over the last two years, and I'm keeping what little is left for a truly rainy day, when I'm not busy and I don't have anything better to do.
3)  This has been a very dry quarter.  July, August, and September were mostly dry of interesting releases, and I'm saving up energy for Kenseiki Alpha Ride, which I promised certain people I would play early on, rather than waiting until a later date as I commonly do with most gameplay-VNs.
4) This has been a particularly bad month irl.  I've been helping my brother get ready to move his family into our place for a few months while their old place is on the market and they are closing on their new place, I've been applying for a graduate program, and I got several major commissions that have kept me locked down a lot more than I would have liked.
5) I promised myself I wouldn't play any more moege/charage until I've played Kenseiki or the new Fortissimo. 
Now for my thoughts...  Today's post is going to be focused on what makes a good chuunige.
I should probably define the origins of chuuni as opposed to what a chuunige is.  First of all, if any of you have seen Chuunibyou demo Koi ga Shitai, you have at least a vague idea of what chuunibyou is like.  Basically, take your average D&D nut or cosplayer and add some delusions of glory to him, and you have a chuunibyou patient.  That's simplifying matters somewhat, but it is also fairly accurate for a good portion of them, though.
Chuuni, on the other hand, is literature, games, anime, etc. that feels like it comes out of the mind of a chuunibyou patient.  Drama on a large scale, often in somewhat familiar settings, is probably the easiest and most obvious way to tell if something is chuuni.  In addition, in a good chuuni-anything, the protagonist is never a self-insert carbon copy of your average harem-building protagonist.  I say this because it is the easiest way to tell when something isn't a chuunige, as chuuni protagonists are supposed to experience and/or be something that is beyond what you can experience in your life, whether it is psychologically or physically. 
Most chuunige have action of some sort, but not all of them do.  A famous chuunige that isn't mostly action - that a lot of you will have played - is G-senjou no Maou.  In a way, Sharin no Kuni can also be considered a chuunige, for a similar reason. 
The more 'standard' type of chuunige is the 'gakuen battle' type.  The most obvious translated examples of this are Tsukihime, FSN, and Comyu.  In this type, a schoolkid somehow gets mixed up in a horrible situation that should kill him right off the bat, but he somehow survives to become central to 'the conflict'. 
A rarer type is the 'mature protagonist taking on the world' type.  This is easily my favorite type, as protagonists in these VNs tend to have more solid philosophies and are less... idiotic.  I think most people will agree that Shirou from FSN is a bit immature, though he had mature aspects.  However, protagonists in these are adults, whether they are grown up fully or not.  An example of this type that is translated would be Sharin no Kuni's protagonist.  For untranslated, Hello, Lady and Vermillion Bind of Blood (Toshiro from Vermillion reminds me of Auron from FF X, hahaha)  come to mind.  Generally speaking, the themes of these VNs will be a lot larger in scale than you usually see in the gakuen battle types.  This is because the themes are generally written to keep pace with the protagonists, lol. 
The last type is the 'poetic' type, where a writer is obviously masturbating with his keyboard.  Masada's works are the most obvious examples of this (Dies Irae, Paradise Lost, Kajiri Kamui Kagura), though Light's 'other' chuuni-crew also writes similar VNs, and Devils Devel Concept and Bradyon Veda by Akatsuki Works both fall into this category.  In this type of chuunige, the action, the story, and the visuals all exist as an excuse for the writer to try to blow you away.  Currently, the only one of this type in translation is Tokyo Babel, whose release is sometime off... though I'm tempted to include Sekien no Inganock in this crew.  For someone who loves complex, deep prose, these VNs are pure crack... but in exchange, they are also incredibly difficult to read for someone not native to the language.
Overall, reading chuunige is all about having fun.  It isn't about being moe-ed to death or being awed by the pretty pastel colors... it is about enjoying the part of you that never quite gave up that desire to be or see something more...

I’m on a much-needed vacation deep in the woods. There’s running water, crappy mobile service, something that could generously be described as “heat,” and not much else.   Also, I’m fairly sure an owlbear rummaged through our garbage last night.   This means you have a whole week free from my inane ramblings. It also means that on a scale from “wearing underwear today” to “not wearing underwear today,” I’m not wearing underwear today. It's vacation and I don't wannuh.     Deal with it. Then discuss.

*** astro has shared contact details with Joe. ***
Joe: Hi astro, I'm wondering can u pls translate Aiyoku no Eustia?
 
Me: sorry I really don't have time to take on more projects right now
 
Joe: But it's a rly good game
 
Me: I'm sure it is. look, I hope that you're not asking me to do it for free at the very least - I don't even know who the heck you are
 
Joe: Well how long will it take u to do it? I can pay u $2000 at most depending on how long it takes
 
Me: ...Do you have any idea how long the game is?
 
Joe: No idk japanese so I've never played it before
 

 
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Well, this isn't really Tay's fault, but my rule of thumb is to always blame Tay. taypls

This rant stemmed from a conversation on Twitter. I'm posting this here purely because posting this line by line on Twitter seemed retarded, and I'd disable the forum notifications for this post if I could. You can dig through my recent Twitter replies if you want to see the context. Have fun.
***
The problem is a bit more complicated than "some people don't like what I have to say". Sure, there's that, but the majority of detractors don't like how I raise my voice to be heard through the din. The majority of eroge fans are content to stay within their walled communities and gossip amongst each other. A few bloggers have appeared, but again they keep to themselves and expect their audience to come to them.
I've challenged this status quo. I've decided to be the black sheep that actually promotes his content: after all, why would anyone devote any amount of effort to writing for the smallest audience possible? I write to make a difference. I write to be recognized as a community leader. I'm not content with just being heard by a single insular community of hardcore fans. I can't accomplish anything like that.
I consider myself an industry activist. I do what the industry refuses to do: market and promote itself. In a community where freeloading is the norm, active promotion is very much frowned upon. Yet spurring people to buy stuff is incredibly important if eroge fans want to have a say in English localization. I want to be the facilitator that bridges the gap between eroge companies and the VN community. I want to be the voice for eroge fans when companies cross the line, thinking that sales are more important than the wishes of the fanbase. I can't do all of this by just whining in threads on Fuwanovel about the success of the Sakura series while games like Seinarukana remain in obscurity.
Mainstream activists make a living off what they do. I do what I do almost entirely for free, with the simple request that people click my affiliate links when they buy a game because of the content I provide. I would say that criticism of me is hypocritical, yet I realize that only a year ago I'd probably have said that what I do is distasteful. If things would get done without me, I'd be willing to pass the baton and go back to an online life of obscurity. If good content promoted itself, I wouldn't need to try to so hard to get the word out. But well, life isn't fair, honest effort isn't necessarily rewarded, and mediocrity is the formula for success. If I don't promote my content, no one else will. That's just how it is.
Long rant. I'm not going to post this on Twitter line by line.
Note: This is meant to be a conversation between me and my followers. If you say something unconstructive or just piss me off, I'll start deleting comments without warning. You have been warned.

Since I get asked questions constantly on this subject, I'll go ahead and list a few pieces of advice I felt apply to most beginners.
 
1) Use translation aggregator and a text hooker, even if you feel like you should be getting out your kanji dictionary, out of a sense of self-reliance. I'll be blunt, it is hard to enjoy something if you have to refer to a kanji dictionary for every other non-particle word. I am sometimes stunned at people bragging about spending 100 hours on an 8 hour moege because they chose not to use a text hooker. That is not an efficient way of using your time, even if you want to learn kanji. It is actually more efficient time-wise to do kanji exercises separately and read your VNs with a text hooker (you'll still be done with both in half the time it would have taken for you to read it using a kanji dictionary).
 
2) There are two methods you can choose to start your untranslated career... you can start off easy and work your way up, or you can smash your head into the walls of text of the harder VNs out there. I chose the latter, and most people choose the former. The walls of text method has the advantage of jump-starting your learning... but in exchange, you'll probably end up sleeping more to let you process all the new information you've gathered and you'll get frustrated more often. If you want to use the former method, I made a list here sometime ago ( http://forums.fuwanovel.net/topic/3493-for-love-of-vns-for-beginners/ ).
 
3) jparser in Translation aggregator isn't perfect, nor is Mecab. They are tools to give you a chance to parse the kanji faster, rather than a translation tool. However, there is a good side-benefit to the frequently weird choices of furigana they make... and that is that you'll naturally learn the path to understanding kanji puns without having to look them up later, and it will become ever more easy to dissect more difficult words even without the tools later on.
 
4) In the end, mastering reading untranslated VNs is an uphill battle for most people. Don't expect yourself or everything you use to be perfect from the beginning, as the very idea is absurd. You'll run into stumbling blocks constantly, and you'll worry endlessly about whether you really understood that last line for most of your first hundred VNs or so.
 
5) If you read slowly in your native language, you will also read slowly in Japanese. Reading is reading, and it is a skill honed by a simple process of practice, practice, practice that never ends. Yes, learning to read fast in your own language will help you learn to read fast in Japanese once you've gotten to a certain level. If you are barely competent in your own language, I'll be frank in saying that this isn't for you, not to be mean but because it is the same skill, regardless of the details.
 
6) Last of all, I'd suggest hitting a wide variety of genres early on, not just your favorite ones. Why? Because that sense of wonder and love for VNs is only going to last through your first twenty-five to forty VNs, and once you've gotten past that point, it is going to be harder and harder to grow beyond your limits on your own.

A good editor is a good reader.

By that, I don’t mean that he or she is well-read (although that helps). And I don’t mean that he or she reads exceptionally fast (although I’m sure that helps, too).

An editor’s most important job is to serve, quite literally, as the reader’s proxy. If you want to edit anything — a magazine article, a TV script, a visual novel — it’s your job to approach the text not as yourself, but as someone you’ve never met, someone who doesn’t share your likes, your dislikes, your accumulated knowledge. And that doesn’t mean approaching the text as some imaginary “ideal reader” either. They, like unicorns and affordable housing in San Fran, simply don’t exist. Seriously, when you ask a content creator to describe their “ideal reader,” they invariably end up describing themselves. Instead, it’s your job to edit for the “average reader.”

And just who is that? And how do you edit for them? That’s going to vary from title to title. If you’re editing some hardcore and super-niche VN, your assumed reader will be very different than that of some light and frothy moege. (And if you’re editing a Sakura title, I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry. Let me buy you a shot.) That said, I do have some basic ground rules I try to follow.

1. Anticipate that this could be the reader’s first VN.
I've decided to edit visual novels because I believe in them as an art form. I want to see their English releases improve in quality and become more widely accepted outside of certain closed cultural circles. That means I choose to invite new VN readers into a text and make them feel, if not at home, then at least like a welcomed guest.

Stop. Put down the pitchforks. I’m not talking about dumbing down VNs. This is simply Writing 101. Among the authors I know, a common credo is, “A good novel teaches the reader how to read it.” (Unless it’s trying very, very hard to be unreadable. *cough*) A text in translation needs to work doubly hard to achieve this. First, it needs to bridge the gaps in cultural knowledge between the original audience (Japanese VN fans) and the secondary audience (Western VN fans). Otherwise, the work becomes much harder to read and enjoy than the author ever intended.

As you edit, read with beginner’s mind. Where might someone new to the VN genre get hung up? Which cultural nuances might prove confusing? Ask yourself if there’s a way you can bring clarity to those aspects without diluting the original text. If you do your job right, they’ll seem organic enough part of the VN that the experienced reader will barely know they’re there.



2. Choose to operate on the same timeline as the reader
As an editor, you have a luxury the reader does not: access to the full text. You probably go into the project already having read a large chunk of the VN several times over. Maybe you were even involved in the translation of it. Whatever the case, you run the risk of your brain filling in gaps that might leave the average reader confused.

Think of yourself as Bill Murray midway through Groundhog Day. Trapped in those endless 24 hours, he bull-rushes through his routine, responding not to what people are actually saying, but what he remembers them saying in past loops. He falls prey to over-familiarity and, as a result, alienates everyone he meets. It’s only when he learns to interact with people in their timeframe again, living and responding in the moment, that he finally gets what he wants. (The girl. It’s always the girl.)

Be late-movie Bill Murray. Edit mindfully.

When working on KoiRizo, I forced myself to do three separate editing passes. First, I tackled each script completely blind, going in with no more knowledge than any other reader. No cheating, no reading ahead. As I encountered lines that left me, the reader, feeling like I just missed something, I edited them as best I could but flagged them for later. Maybe the author intended that line to be cryptic. Maybe it was foreshadowing. Or maybe something got lost in translation. No way of knowing, so best to keep moving.

After reaching the end of a script, I’d start back at the beginning and do another full edit, this time focusing on the lines I’d flagged previously. VNs tend to be episodic, so if I hadn’t found the answer I needed inside that self-contained script, I elevated the flag and left a comment for the translator asking for clarification.

Finally, when I’d finished an entire route, I’d go back do a third, quick edit through the whole thing, top to bottom. I had all the facts from the scripts and all the notes from the translator, so if something still wasn’t working, it was likely all my fault. And that meant it was time to really hunker down and do some major surgery.

Technically, I also did a fourth edit pass once I’d finished the entire VN, since some of the routes had little in-jokes and references to other routes, but I consider that more of an enhanced read-through than anything, since I was only making tiny tweaks. Which brings me to my last point ...

3. Read, read, and read again
You might be done editing, but you’re not done reading. Find that beginner’s mind and read through everything again. And again. And again. Forget that you’re the one who rewrote the words on the page and just try to approach them anew. Be the reader. Each time, you’ll probably find something new — typos, grammatical errors, slight nuances you might have missed earlier that change the whole meaning of a line.

I read through KoiRizo a bunch of times and I know I still missed all sorts of things. Sorry! I've been kicking myself whenever I see the occasional typo report float through. (Editors are not proofreaders, by the way. Or vice versa. Fodder for a future blog post.) But at a certain point, a work just wants to get out in the world, warts and all.

And that’s another part of editing: learning to let go.

Hi hi Fuwa. My name is rains.
 
I'd like to start this blog for my personal casual anime and VN reviews. Of course I have preferences and specific biases for certain aspects of anime and VN. I'd like to explain myself so that you guys know from what perspective my reviews are coming from.
 
I have played I'd say quite a decent amount of Visual novels, mostly translated and some untranslated here and there.
My list is: https://vndb.org/u46648/list
Having been in the scene for at least 7 years now, barely anything is new to me anymore. Cliches and archetypes are easily visible to me and it takes a game or anime a great bit to entertain me nowadays.
 
I have great biases for Romance, Drama, and Mystery. Anything chuuni is a hit-or-miss for me. Some of my top ones are Muv-luv, Clannad, Ever17, Kanata Yori, and Shinsekai Yori. But at the same time I can enjoy moeges/kyara-ge like Flyable hearts, Yosuga no Sora, or Edelweiss. I'm tolerant for the most part when it comes to anything bizarre (like Saya no Uta).
 
My reviews will be very basic and I won't really delve too much into analysis or breakdowns. It will be mostly based on how entertained I was playing or watching.
 
Enjoy my future reviews~
 
Thanks for reading.

Shiro

Kon


Most of you already know that one of my fetishes is mimikko... and kitsune in particular. So, it shouldn't surprise anyone to hear that I liked this VN. That said, this VN is so straightforward (in a 'in a straight line' sense) that you probably shouldn't expect anything in the way of twists.

The two heroines are Shiro and Kon (see the pics above). Shiro is the little sister, a white-haired loli-kitsune who is totally innocent and carefree. She is straightforward both about what she likes and what she dislikes, and she has no problems going after it. Kon is more mature (definitely the older sister type), with a tendency to tease the protagonist in order to get a reaction out of him.

Overall, this VN has a single purpose... to ease you straight into a romance with one of the two heroines, resulting eventually in love and marriage. There is no room for spoilers because it really is just that straightforward. What drama there is is so mild as to be nonexistent... but considering how warm and cuddly the story feels, it probably won't matter to my fellow mimikko-worshipers.

The motion-animation system that is used for the sprites in this VN is a bit more complex than that used in most boobatron-type and blink-machine ones you see in the average VN, and that does add some life to the characters that otherwise wouldn't be there... especially with the ear movements. Anyway, this VN is definitely a moe-fest... a moe-fest that fits my fetishes, lol.

First, I’ll say a few words about the Tiny Dungeon series. This series is made up of five games (if you include Endless Dungeon, which is a sequel/canon ending that brings a conclusion to the post-Brave and Slave events). The first three VNs are each focused on one of the three main heroines… Veil Sein, Ururu Kajuta, and Note Ruum. The fourth VN – Brave or Slave – brings an end to the story began in Black and White, and the fifth – Endless Dungeon – is a final conclusion and after-story for the entire group. The first VN, Black and White, contains the common route and the Veil Sein (the demon girl) route.

Veil is probably the most obvious deredere heroine in existence… since she doesn’t have a drop of tsun in her body. She loves Hime, lives for him, and without hesitation will erase the existence of anyone who bothers him. The fact that she has the power to do so (the most powerful individual in the demon realm) kind of makes her scary to the various people who don’t like Hime (obviously). Needless to say, I love her, lol.

Anyway, this VN, like all the VNs in the Tiny Dungeon series, balances hilarity, serious drama, and emotional moments in a way that you generally won’t see in a VN that is so relatively easy to read. That’s not to say it is a really easy read (it tends to range between 4.5-7)… but it is much easier to read than most VNs with action scenes.

The music in all these VNs is pretty good, primarily utilizing piano and techno pieces to enhance and create moods as is appropriate, and they are generally tastefully presented. The voices can be a bit exaggerated, and there is one scene early on when you’ll notice a bit of fuzziness in the background (as a friend explained to me, it is the engine the game runs on, rather than the actual voice-acting or recording itself). However, they are nonetheless generally suited to their characters… and there are a lot of characters.

In this VN, there are three main heroines (as stated above) and four total sub-heroines in the series who make up Hime’s hare- I mean, his group of friends. They consist of Amia (Note’s little sister), Opera (Ururu’s psychotic maid), Fon (the dragon/demon hybrid), and Kou (the protagonist’s human roommate). There are also another dozen or so major and minor characters who appear on screen and have a significant effect on the story as a whole, though not all of them appear in the first game.

Generally speaking, there is no point in any of the main-series VNs where there is no point to what is going on. The story is always moving forward or creating the basis for moving forward, and the comedy that is used to frost the cake is ever-present, save for in the most tense scenes.

Hime, the protagonist, is a natural leader and hard worker who has an incredibly strong will and a reasonable level of intelligence (he’s not a genius, but neither is he average). More importantly, he understands people and has a big, accepting heart. Generally speaking, he is one of the few unvoiced protagonists outside of a chuunige where I truly and absolutely enjoyed every second behind his eyes…

One thing you have to keep in mind about this VN is that it is one part in four… and the events in this game are inevitably going to break your heart at times. I know I cried several times in the course of this VN, even though I’ve already played it before.

Overall, this VN still gets a strong recommendation from me, both for relatively advanced beginners and veterans alike.

I'll start out saying this. The primary reason I hadn't played this up until now was because the concept just sounded so silly on paper, no matter how many times I read it. I mean, making sex toys as a gameplay element? Seriously? However, I don't regret playing this game in any sense of the word, and it escapes being a nukige despite the concept.

First, the gameplay... There are two major aspects to the gameplay, a phase where you research and make sex toys as well as other daily activities (such as expanding facilities or conducting general research with a heroine) and a battle phase that pops up at irregular times. The battle phase is a card-based system (with random draws) based off of rock-paper-scissors where you deal damage to an enemy based on your character's stats plus the number on the cards. You can combine the three types of cards in a combo that both increases hits and damage, and the first card in the combo decides whether it is rock, paper, or scissors. To an extent, the battles are based on luck, so you shouldn't expect to be able to win at all times. The 'daily life' gameplay focuses on the creation of sex toys and the handing over of lost technology to your company's partner/parent company in order to increase their share of the market. The basic objective is to put together 500,000,000 yen in earnings (put together from bonuses for handing over tech and the sales of sex toys you researched and put into production) and gain a total of a 70% share of the market so you can do a hostile takeover of the SHE corporation.

The story is so intimately connected to the gameplay that I couldn't help but be impressed at how they supplemented one another. I had to rofl at the sex toy H-scenes (they range from the bizarre to the psychotic), and there was just enough slice-of-life to give you a strong impression of all the characters (and heroines) without becoming tedious. The story itself was fairly awesome, with the nature and future of artificial intelligence and scientific ethics as major themes. I honestly enjoyed both the main story and the ideas behind it, and I didn't manage to get bored at any time during the course of the game (I pulled an all-nighter to finish it and I just woke up after two hours of sleep). To be honest, I don't have anything significant to complain about, storywise, with this game, though I could have wished for a non-bad Kuon ending (I got all the Teria and Fam endings - non-human heroines banzai!!!).

This is a good VN for someone who wants a good balance between the comedic and the serious in a gameplay-based VN that is relatively easy to master. There are a few too many H-scenes, but considering the concept, there were actually a lot fewer than I expected.

First, the simple basis for understanding the way Japanese think about the supernatural. Simply put, Shinto, which was the country's official religion and is the religion that originated there, is an animistic faith, with a strong tendency toward the personification of nature and objects. Second, Buddhism was the dominant faith in Japan for centuries, when the various shogunates tried to weaken the Emperor's power by strengthening the influence of Buddhism as a rival faith.

Why is this relevant? Shintoism personifies the dead and believes in the concept of living gods. The Buddhist tributaries in Japan generally believe in reincarnation. Both faiths create a belief that there are things in the world that exist alongside us that cannot be seen by 'normal' people. Both have a belief in life after death, and both have a concept of 'lingering' and 'ascension'.

Generally speaking, Japanese spiritualists hold to a belief (or so they say) that if you can see a spirit, you can effect it and it can effect you. It is vital to understand this before anything else when dealing with Japanese spiritualism in general. While the idea of ghosts harming or possessing those who can't see them isn't denied by Japanese spiritualists, those who can 'see' them are thought to be more vulnerable, if left untrained ('training' generally resembling Buddhist asceticism and meditation).

Now, the word 'oni' is perhaps the most overused name for spirits in Japan. This is because it can be taken to be any spirit that can and does cause harm, refer to humans whose souls have fallen into evil, and/or the legendary giant ogre-type creatures like Shuten-doji that litter Japanese legend. Because of this, it isn't uncommon for ghosts, youkai, and even some 'kami' (the animistic idea of gods in the Shinto faith) to be considered 'oni'. This should give you an idea of how useless any attempt to define what an oni is can be, and why it is so conveniently used in VNs, anime, and manga.

A lot of this lack of discrimination comes from the fact that Shinto attributes souls to all things, whether they are humans, animals, natural disasters, or even inanimate objects.

Now, the two attitudes 'traditional' people in Japan take toward ghosts tend to be: 'seal them up' or 'banish them'. While Shinto can be said to be nature-worshiping, it is at its heart a pragmatist's faith. 'Cleanse people's souls so they don't do bad things'. 'Cleanse a place to prevent possible disaster'. 'Worship a god so it doesn't squish you'. Simple, isn't it? Of course, there are a lot of deeper details, but that is what you should keep in mind as a core reality of the faith and its view on spiritualism.

In otaku-media, it is extremely rare for fantasy anime that deal with ghosts, spirits, or demons to take a single-faith approach to it. You'll almost always see a multi-faith approach, with one or more being dominant (including Christian ones at times). Shinto is dominant the most often, though Buddhism tends to dominate when you get into stuff based a few centuries in the past. Onmyoudou, one of the original types of 'spiritualism' in Japan is very much a fusion of Buddhist and Shinto ideas, if you want an example, since it is extensively used in various anime.

What does this all come down to? Basically, traditional Japanese viewpoints on ghosts and spirits tend to be ones of rejection, and this is something to keep in mind when reading a VN or watching an anime that deals with ghosts, youkai, or other supernatural beings.

A few bits of vocab:

kami- While it is a term that is also used for the Christian god, it is a universal term for all supernatural beings that have worshipers or need to be be/have been worshiped. By Japanese standards, angels and demons would be considered to be kami under the right circumstances, as the Japanese consider 'enshrining' a harmful existence to be a way to keep it from harming them.

akuma- Simply, demon. This is a relatively modern term made of the kanji for evil and the kanji for 'that which is outside/heretical'.

oni- both a name for a specific type of ogre-type youkai and a generalized umbrella term for evil spirits, humans who have fallen into evil ways to an extreme degree, and aspects of certain kami.

youkai- spirits of Japanese legend. The most common are nature spirits, animal spirits, dragons, and 'object spirits' (Tsukumogami). It isn't uncommon for beneficial or powerful ones to be raised up as 'kami' and enshrined to gain the benefit of their blessing and prevent them from doing harm. Whether they are seen as having physical form varies based upon the individual viewpoint.

Reibaishi- An almost identical concept to the Western 'medium'... basically someone who can see spirits and/or communicate with them and makes a living off of it.

Jorei- Exorcism, though it is usually of spirits rather than demons.



PS: This isn't complete... I'll be adding to it later, lol.

First, I should probably address those who questioned why I never played this VN before... the answer is that I did try this VN 'way back when' and couldn't get past the prologue. To be frank, the prologue of this VN is pretty... unimpressive. However, once you get past that prologue, you are put into what probably amounts to the best nakige I've ever played.

This VN is a kinetic novel, with only a single ending. It combines elements of mythology, mystery, fantasy, and psychological horror (relatively mild) into a single whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. For those who love Araragi (to be honest, I think all of those who read this VN love Araragi) more than Hiyo... my condolences. There is only one path and it is Hiyo's.

The child-version of Hiyo in the pic above is part of one of my favorite early scenes in the VN and the scene that pretty much locked in my love of the characters as a whole. I'm a sucker for appeals to emotions like the ones in this VN, and there is very little in this VN that doesn't appeal to your emotions on some level. The warmth and kindness of the three girls closest to the protagonist and the dynamic between the four of them is central to most of the story. While Hiyo-love indeed has a big impact on the story, romance in this VN is ultimately merely one of many themes, ranging from the obvious 'love of art' and 'autumn', to 'the nature of kindness'.

For those who have seen the opening song on youtube... you should probably be aware that the entire OST for this VN is on that level or better. Like many of the best VNs out there, the musical direction and the choice of music in general is superb... a work of art. There are many Chinese-classical and hybrid Japanese-classical themes mixed in with various other types, and this adds to the atmosphere created by the 'old Japan' design of the school and dorms where all the events of the story take place. These aspects, combined with the plentiful expressions and poses given to the characters' tachie, are used effectively to create the 'personality' of the VN as a whole.

The most important way to evaluate VNs that fall into the 'nakige' category is how much they made you love the characters, thus giving you a reason to cry for them. In that sense, I can honestly say that it leaves almost every nakige I've played in the dust (including all of Key's). The lack of massive casts of heroines and multiple paths serves to make every occurrence in this VN feel 'real', adding more impact to the sorrow, joy, hope, and pride that continually break your heart. I can honestly say that I feel Propeller used the 'kinetic novel' format to its fullest, succeeding in creating a story with an impact far in excess of what it would have possessed if it had been a multi-path story.

Now... I feel it is about time I stopped praising this VN and spoke about the one issue that bothered me, even after I finished it...

... it truly amazed me how bad the VN is during the initial stages. It feels awkward and forced, and that sense of 'eh, what were they trying to do here?!' is so strong at first that it was enough to make me drop this five years ago without a second thought. Of course, back then I hadn't been as thoroughly 'trained' by years of playing moege that are far worse than this... but it is still a flaw in an otherwise awesome VN. That said, once it gets started, this VN is really, really hard to put down.

Overall, the only people I can't recommend this to are the extreme moe and dark fantasy fans. For all that the designs are most definitely moe, the degree to which the characters suffer in this VN will be a bit much for the soft-moe addicts. For the dark fantasy fans... you'll probably be a bit put off by a lack of action and murder. This VN has precisely one action scene that would interest that type... and it isn't that long (though it is important to the story in general). Everyone else? If you can make it past the prologue, I can guarantee you'll fall in love with the characters, even if other aspects bother you.

Well, the answer to the above question is simple... I saw the monster girl anime for this season's first episode and got curious about what kind of content these games had... to be honest, I was planning to drop it inside the first few hours, using it as a break from more serious content before starting Baldr Force.. but I was surprised to find just how good the writing in these games is.

That said, the early games (the Lamia and Alraune games) are nukige, as presented... and the H scenes are kind of guro in a lot of cases (to be honest, I can't get into the H in this series at all, lol). However, I was kind of stunned at how good the writing is in the ones I've played and how they created a sense of connection and continuity between all the VNs in the series. First, you have to understand that all the VNs prior to Monmusu Gakuen are written in the same general period of the setting's history and Gakuen is written in a period fifteen to twenty-five years after those (the kids from three of the VNs are heroines in Gakuen).

The most solid of the VNs as a whole is the Arachne/Harpy/Cyclops VN, which focuses on Hibiki, a guy who basically gets summoned from Earth by Ariane the Arachne on a whim... The speed with which he adjusts to his new lifestyle is a bit unreal, but the interactions between him and the heroines are endlessly amusing... and the actual story of each path is touching enough emotionally that I cried, despite the fact that I had to skip past the H to keep from being ill in some cases (you can tell that the writer is basically acting out his fetishes with enthusiasm...).

The Scylla/slime VN is the second most solid, with a somewhat... free-spirited pirate as a protagonist. The slime is a total moron who believes anything the scylla maid says... which wouldn't be so bad if the scylla's hobby wasn't making her look like an idiot. I spent most of this one just laughing... endlessly laughing. I laughed until my jaw hurt with this one. The general absurdity of the VN's premise doesn't in any way take away from the comedic character dynamic or the emotionality of the heroine paths (there is pretty much nothing emotional until you actually get on those two paths).

Monmusu Gakuen is the weakest of the three I completed (three VNs in two days) and it retains a lot of the atmosphere of the other two... but in exchange, the H is even more guro and the number of heroines kind of dilutes the emotionality of the paths in several cases. Nonetheless, it is easy to get attached to them, simply because of the protagonist's point of view as their teacher.

I came out of curiosity and stayed for the writing.

I'm just curious... why is it that some of the best VN writers are the weirdest kind of pervert?

Edit: I almost didn't write anything on these... but I felt I owed it to the people who might actually be interested in this kind of interracial romance story to at least say something about my experience. I just also felt the need to warn you that... if you have imaginings about the H, it is actually probably a bit worse than you imagined.

Normally, I don't finish the VN of the Month games so early (I'd expected to be forced to take more time out for Neyuki, and so I've been left at loose ends). So, I normally just pull a few random VNs out of my massive backlog (mostly stuff I got at really low prices through my friend in Japan), play them, then mini-review them. However, I've chosen to be a bit more ambitious this time around, since I have the time. I'm actually going to make a schedule!

1. Kikouyoku Senki Gin no Toki no Corona (currently playing this)
2. Baldr Force EXE
3. Baldr Bullet
4. You choose, something that isn't on my vndb list. If I don't already have it, I can probably find it. I'm going to be straight about this, the only rules are: no nukige, no rapegames, nothing that is obviously moe-bait (moe aspects is fine, but I am not interested in playing something like Feng's games or To Heart, lol), no translated

Feel free to make suggestions to me in the comments, based on VNs you either played yourself or ones you want to play but can't because of your own lack of Japanese knowledge. Make sure you check my vndb list before you make a suggestion, as I don't plan to replay anything at the moment. Be aware that there is very little of interest that I haven't played between 2011-2015's releases, so I ask that requests be limited to VNs to 2011 or before.

Even if I only manage to finish through Baldr Bullet by the end of the month, the requests made here will be taken into account in my decisions as to what to play next month and the month after.

A Universal Issue

Tentacle sex and rape are the two big downers to this series. For a series with such good writing, it is amazing how quickly it becomes repetitive once h-scenes get into the picture. On the bright side, corrupting the heroines in Empire, Frontier, and Hypno almost always has immensely hilarious results after the mindbreak. It is kind of irritating that you pretty much have to mindbreak them to get the really good strategic skills, though.

Abyss

To be honest, this is the game in the series I liked the least. First, it is the first one that introduces the tentacle impregnation=new troops system that was the recruitment system for this and Gaia. Second, it has the weakest set of heroines and protagonist in the entire series. Third - and last - it uses a dungeon-defense gameplay model, which I despise. To be honest, the Law route of this game is incredibly boring, story-wise, with a huge amount of cliched jrpg knock-off plot twists. While this isn't unexpected, the main heroine's personality is the worst part of it... her idealism wears on you after a while, and both the protagonist and the antagonist are both weak enough not to be able to make up for it. The Chaos route suffers from 'we just stuck an evil route on it for mad science self-indulgence' syndrome, and the ending is, if anything, even more pathetic than the Law ending (think a bad ending in a chuunige with the positions reversed). While the story is actually mildly enjoyable while it is going on, the aftermath is singularly disappointing and dissatisfying.

Frontier

I'll just come out and say it... this would have been the perfect story if the main antagonist wasn't such a straight-out 'Me Dark Lord, Destroy world because me bored!' Kefka knock-off. Oh, the details are mildly interesting, but the last chapter is almost unforgivable. If it wasn't for the overwhelmingly good cast on the protagonist's side of things, as well as the game's excellent story as a whole (if you cut out the ending sections) this would probably be an eminently forgettable game. The protagonist's motivations, his background, and his abilities as a general and a warrior make him a really attractive main character, and the fact that he isn't just a mass of endless ambition and sadism (unlike many VNs along the same lines) is a huge attraction for this game. The actual gameplay is somewhat improved from Empire (the previous strategy-conquest game in the series) but the game balance is kind of broken at points (think sharp spikes in difficulty, especially at the beginning and end).

Gaia

... you almost have to be impressed about how completely they integrated the monster-birth recruitment system into this game. It isn't nearly as annoying as it was in Abyss, where it made the actual process of recruitment a matter of extreme annoyance (especially if you wanted to constantly alter the makeup of your forces). However, you do spend an inordinate amount of time staring at the little calendar part of the UI and checking to see how it will effect the power of the units you intend to birth. Again, like all the previous games in this series, it suffers from a lack of a good antagonist. There is nothing really sympathetic about the final antagonist (too faceless). The actual base story is much, much more interesting than Abyss... and the main heroine of the Law route is undeniably adorable, as well. lol (out of character for this company is that there are no h-scenes for this heroine, hahaha)

They also added a dungeon-raid event battle system where you send your troops through an enemy's dungeon, in addition to the dungeon-defense and construction that makes up ninety percent of the game. This is a definite improvement, and the actual dungeon-construction and defense is a lot more refined (though I still thought it was inferior to Demonion's).

Hypno

This is undeniably the best game in the entire series, from all angles but one - heroine development. Individual heroine development - usually done through a combination of sex events and conversational events - is a lot less deep than it was in the previous games (yes, it is somewhat weird to say that there is character development when it comes to mindbreak and tentacle-H, but it happens to be true). It also departs from the previous games' style in that you pick your path early on and have to stick to it (basically, you either decide to break Sylvia or become her friend by either continuing with the sex-training or picking her regular conversational events after the required initial scene).

This is perhaps the only game in the series where I actually found the chaos route worth playing, though the ending was perhaps less interesting than the actual antagonist and the process of going through the route. The Law route feels very much like a route to redemption from the hell his life has been for Leon and the world in general.

However, as anyone who plays this game from the beginning will notice, the true flower of this game's story is the relationship between Leon and Anora. The mutual interdependence, absolute trust, and unstinting love they give one another from the very beginning is touching, even though Anora is pretty much a neutral evil character and Leon a true neutral one, lol.

The Law route antagonist, as per the course in all the other games by this company, is a bit of a yawner, though the actual fight against him is pretty good.

In terms of the gameplay... it is undeniably improved far and above all the previous games in the series. Being able to invest resources in increasing your income of the four resources (food, ether, magical energy, and coin) as well as war (experience gained every turn automatically by all recruits) and medical (automatic healing on every turn) allows you to do something other than conquer to build up your base of power. The conquest itself is done in stage format rather than in continental conquest format, which has its downsides in terms of gameplay flexibility but has the advantage of not kidding you about how much freedom you have (both Empire and Frontier basically did the same thing but gave you the illusion you were freely conquering the world). The actual recruitment system, which has been evolving since Empire, reaches its peak in this one, where character customization is the most advanced so far, without the unnecessary complications of heroine impregnation in Gaia.

Overall

Overall, as a series... it makes you hate tentacles after a while, if you didn't already. It also makes some great protagonists (Empire, Frontier, and Hypno in particular). It also has very flat antagonists and gameplay that tends to be somewhat disappointing. Nonetheless, if you can slog through the H scenes (or just ignore them) Hypno - at the very least - is worth trying. Unfortunately, this series will destroy anyone who hates rape or tentacle sex, so I can't recommend it for the uninitiated... or for those who prefer soft H. To be honest, I started turning off my emotions after the first tentacles appeared and if it weren't for the fact that the moment the heroines' broke in Hypno was so deliciously evil, I probably wouldn't have bothered to read any of them. I'll never replay any of the games in this series, but I'll probably at least try the new ones in the series, if only out of curiosity to see whether they've improved the storytelling to fit my standards completely.

I Did It






So anybody who interacts with me on a regular basis probably has heard me be really hyped about the fact that I have finished my first route. Another indicator of my happiness over this would be the fact that... you know:




So I am writing this up, because I want to mark this as a milestone in my learning process. While sure, it may not seem like a big deal... but for me it is pretty huge for me. For the longest time before I got the chance to start learning Japanese, I always saw it as an uncrackable code. Something I could never even hope to read. This was mostly due to the fact that the only other language I had ever learnt was French, which uses my native character set. Also, whenever my friends and I talked about languages, we had decided that the seemingly hardest languages to learn were Arabic, Chinese, and Japanese.

So there was this sort of barrier for me, that basically always told me that I would never be able to understand Japanese. I still have those barriers in place for Arabic and Chinese, although that is loosening as I learn kanji in the case of Chinese.

So needless to say. I am pretty happy right now.
After finishing Tae's route and wiping the tears away, I was filled with this strange sense of euphoria.
'Cause after like... 3 weeks of improvement.
I had finally done it.
I had cracked this so called uncrackable code. So to speak.

Sure I had to rely a lot on ITH and JParser, but you know what... I learnt quite a bit in this one route. My understanding of sentence structure, and the size of my Japanese lexicon have both improved significantly. And that was only over the course of one route! I still have four more to go in AkaGoei!

It was really hard at first. I could not wrap my head around what I was reading, and there were times in the beginning where I was just clicking to see if I could figure out the next line. I don't do that now, but that is how it was when I first opened up the VN.

The key to improving, when you want to be able to read VNs, is to just stop making excuses as to why you can't. Maybe I am still too much of a noob to be saying such things, but I really think that this is the case. I mean yes, if you haven't studied JP at all yet, you probably shouldn't jump in, but if you have been studying for a while and aren't sure if you are ready, stop thinking you aren't ready. I made excuses for half a year when my knowledge of grammar was sitting at an agreeable level for reading VNs that are not written by Masada~

Sure you will hit snags. You will find grammar you are unfamiliar with and lots of words and phrases that will make no sense when you translate them into English no matter what you do. That is all part of the learning process. I decided that my best bet was to take my failings in Japanese in stride and just charge straight in.

So yeah, finishing this route is a huge moment for me. The next one will be when I finish the entire VN. After that, we'll see.
I'll remember the date for sure: March 14th 2015




Thanks for listening to me ramble on this one guys. As I said, it isn't really THAT big of a deal... but it means a lot to me. So I needed to put my ramblings somewhere!~

Once upon a time, in the magical land of Fuwa, there lived a troll named Whore. Whore was the ugliest troll in Fuwa. He was so ugly that no person alive would ever come near him. Now, this would of course make Whore very hungry, for he could never catch a meal. He always felt jealousy towards Nosebleed, the handsomest Prince of the land, son of Queen Aeru and King Tay. Whore, devoured by envy and hunger, set out on a journey to find Nosebleed and make him his first meal in a century.

Whore, had at last found where Nosebleed lived. In a strong desire to get revenge on Nosebleed for being born beautiful, he sent letters to the nobles of Fuwa. These letters reported that Nosebleed assaulted one of the lolis of Loli Mountian. This was against the law of Fuwa, as the loli's were highly valued and respected by all who lived in Fuwa, as the moé ones. However, he forgot about Sir Steve, the protector of loli's who never missed a single assaulter. Sir Steve would know if Nosebleed truly did this, as he was blessed with the power to send out a million eyes to watch over the loli's and alert him of any trouble.

When this plan failed, Nosebleed approached Whore, and banished him to 4-chan where he would have to live among those even uglier than himself. They say, Whore will make a return 1,000 years later to have another shot at revenge.