Fred the Barber

No, I've been playing it un-patched exactly as it came from Steam, and the "eyes" jokes (the ones where the voice over is clearly saying boobs) are all there.

True. The next person doesn't even know what a quail looks like.

Why am I still playing Destiny. Dragon Age: Inquisition has been sitting on my Xbone's hard drive for at least 2 months, unplayed, but still the only game I ever play on the home console is Destiny. What is wrong with me. At least I'm playing Persona Q during my work commute, which isn't terrible, but I'm starting to get a little bored of it; need to finish that so I can try out Tales of Hearts R, or maybe finally get through Disgaea 4 now that it's on the Vita.

Oh, and continuing on the topic of Kokoro Connect, here's an Inaba drawing I did... probably six months ago, based on a still frame of her in episode 8 or 9 (don't remember exactly which one). I was still pretty bad at drawing when I did this one (for that matter I'm still not not good, though a lot better than I was then), but it magically came out really well in spite of that, and since I just got a scanner a few days ago I feel like showing it off!

Glad you're liking Kokoro Connect so far! To avoid spoiling anything, I'll just say that from where you are, it's already good but it only gets better

Making great strides in Katawa Shoujo, now:

Just got back to the start of the day of the festival again in Katawa Shoujo, having made fewer bad decisions and what looks like a pretty good budding relationship with Emi. I am still nonetheless terrified that

Up-votes for AnoHana and Tamako Market. Though I didn't really care for Tamako Market that much as a show, but the ED really grabbed me, both musically and visually - I think that pulled me through watching the show as much as anything... A kinda random one that also really grabbed me was the Kimi Ni Todoke season 2 OP: I think it's the combination of the adorable visuals and the distorted guitar at the chorus (0:33) that get me.

You know, I didn't think this was possible, but I may be bad at playing Visual Novels. I just did my first playthrough of Katawa Shoujo all in one fairly short evening, because I managed to make all the wrong choices and get Kenji's "ending". I was just a couple hours in, and then the credits were rolling...

I've only played 3 and 4 (and a tiny bit of 1 until I found it boring, many years before I discovered the amazingness of the later games in the series), but I agree with: 4 had a fantastic cast, but the story was definitely weak in comparison to 3. Hoping for both good character and good story this time around (gameplay... apparently doesn't matter much to me, since the dungeon crawling for both Persona 3 and 4 were pretty much a total grind)

Terrifying. Does that count as a rating?

Notably absent from the list of "VNs featured" in this thread, but nonetheless present in the bracket: Rewrite Notably awesome but unbelievably not winning the bracket, probably because she doesn't have as cute an elided name as MayuShi: Lucia from Rewrite (honorable mention to somewhat-awesome-but-not-as-awesome-as-Lucia, Akane)

Kokoro Connect is approximately the best thing ever. It's easily on my (literal) top shelf, along with AnoHana and a handful of other shows. The dub is amazing, if you're on the fence about dub vs. sub (I've not watched the sub) - every voice actor in the main five characters, and even everybody I can recall from the supporting cast, are all great in their own right. I love that there's no filler - it gives you good arc after good arc after good arc, until the show is done and you just want mooooooore. Each arc gives a good, solid conclusion, too, so regardless of if you end after Season 1 or if you end after the OVA episodes, it feels conclusive (but you should totally watch the OVA episodes, since they're quite possibly the best). The feels are definitely not as intense as, say, AnoHana or Clannad: After Story, but each arc is marvelously both concise and complete, while still advancing all the character relationships. This is probably one of my top shows for "I wish there were more episodes" (so I really hope that at least the light novels get translated at some point).

I don't know specifics of the game, and this isn't an ideal solution, but you could try running windowed while changing your monitor's resolution. I have a large, high-res monitor that I just run at half its native resolution whenever I play a game that doesn't do fullscreen well. So, rather than letting Katawa Shoujo make everybody distorted on the widescreen display, I decrease resolution on my monitor and run it windowed, so it ends up taking up most of the display; it looks much better this way. Switching between resolutions while playing a VN isn't that big a hassle once you get used to it.

Just started Katawa Shoujo tonight, despite promising myself I would start Muv-Luv next. I think the icon for Katawa Shoujo was what made the difference; it was too perfect to ignore. I'm two hours in and loving the common route so far. Kenji is best insane sidekick.

Everybody above already gave great recommendations, so I'll just say welcome!

People have mentioned it above, but I'll throw in another vote for Kono Oozora ni, Tsubasa wo Hirogete / If My Heart Had Wings. As others have also said, the translation definitely has issues at times, especially during two character routes I've played so far; the third character route is, surprisingly, pretty good so far, as was the common route. Those issues are worth getting through, even for a grammar/spelling nitpicker like me. The translation issue is the only thing that prevents it from being a really top-notch VN, and this is especially notable since it's a very light-hearted romance-oriented VN, which fits your request perfectly. There's always a little bit of conflict in the story, of course (because a story with no conflict is kinda boring) but it's always (at least of the parts of the game I've played so far) external conflict related to the larger plot; relationship-oriented conflict is basically non-existent.

Confessions: - I'm not named Fred - I'm also not a barber

AnoHana might be my favorite show ever, but I'm partial to the shows that make me cry. So. Many. Tears. I'm currently watching Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet, but I'm up to the last episode now, so I have to decide what's next... maybe Non Non Biyori, for a break from too much srs bzns.

Can I +1 the entire thread? Especially "Bonds of Sea & Fire" and "Sunleth Waterscape". The last song from the Persona 3 OST is a great song, and absolutely kills me every time I read the translated lyrics: Along with reading the summary of The Answer (only read the summary since I played P3P, and never played FES), I realized Aigis is far and away the best character in the Personaverse Also, although I never even finished the game, I love the Chrono Cross OST:

Clannad definitely changed my life, in small ways (though I actually saw the anime, and in fact still haven't played the VN). LinovaA already said it really well above: But I'll just add one other specific thing: Clannad embedded deeply in me the belief that raising a child is something magical. That is, of course, something people say all the time, but Clannad made me feel it in my heart.

Also, for the OP: which routes have you done in If My Heart Had Wings? I did the Kotori and Ageha routes first, and they had a bit of drama (relatively little compared to any other VN I've played, but still; some drama). However, I'm now in the middle of the Amane route, and so far there is effectively zero drama. I don't know if it's going to continue this way, but at least so far, this seems to be a pure comedy route. So, if you haven't tried that route yet, maybe go back and try that one out; Amane is best girl, anyway.

Among anime, Bebop is really more "classic" than "cult classic". They recently did a blu-ray re-release, and review sites were gushing about it, to the effect of: "Wow, this is actually as good as I remember it being." Pretty high praise for a TV show made in the last millennium.

So, given the Shuffle! talk, I have to ask... is the Shuffle! VN a hell of a lot better than the anime? Because the anime sounded like it would be good from the description, and then I loathed pretty much every moment of it. I briefly decided that Asa was at least a likeable character, and then they finally went into her arc, and she suddenly became unlikeable as well, culminating in the worst attention-grab fake-drama moment I've ever seen in anime. The only character who ended up being even momentarily interesting was Sia, and I think I was biased towards her since she was voice acted by Brittney Karbowski...