Fred the Barber

https://fuwanovel.net/reviews/2017/06/07/chronoclock/ Because we didn't already have enough threads about this VN.

I used to play VNs on a Surface Pro 2. Now I play them on a Surface Pro 4. Not cheap, I know, so presumably not what you're looking for, but as one of probably a small number of people mostly playing VNs on a tablet, I figured I should at least respond. Rarely, the tablet has some minor issues with games which aren't very well-optimized, especially more recent games. The following all come to mind as games that have made it run pretty hot: Nekopara, Chrono Clock, Corona Blossom. The fan starts running pretty quickly on all of those and the battery drains in a couple of hours (which is still not bad, really; I kept playing all of them on the tablet and didn't really mind much). That said, one E-mote game, Tenkiame, pushed the processor so hard that it kind of chugged when it ran (the animated motions were suuuuuuper slow), to the point that I eventually gave up playing it on the tablet and switched to a desktop. So, it's not a perfect experience, but on the good side, I've played dozens of VNs on one or the other of those tablets without any problems at all. It "just works" most of the time: no heat, no fan, no battery life issues, and all the convenience of a tablet.

Too coordinated, feels inaccurate.

Symphonic Rain vs. Kindred Spirits in round 1: why you gotta make me make hard decisions like that so early on?

I finally finished all of Chrono Clock. I'd finished all the actual story stuff quite a while back, but after that I still had five H scenes left (one Makoto, two for each of the last two routes), which I'd been putting off because, well, I just don't typically care for marathoning H scenes. But I got the last remaining three finished today and was actually somehow delighted to see that doing so unlocked the ability to select the title screen splash image for myself, even though I'm pretty unlikely to ever open the game again, simply because I thought the second splash screen that unlocked after finishing the first four routes was actually super lame boring compared to the original splash screen. Of course, since I was suddenly presented with even more choices than I expected, I promptly switched to the one with just Misaki on it, because she's best girl. After spending some time away from the actual game, I think this is probably the second-best moege I've read, behind KonoSora (ignoring the MoeNovel translation issues and just assessing the game on other elements...). Chrono Clock has hardly got any plot (which is what puts KonoSora firmly above it), but it's a masterpiece when it comes to characters, and as I realized when I started playing this game, that really can be good enough to make a VN a delight to play.

I spent quite a lot of time with the game already, and although I won't be playing any for the next couple days, I'm still hoping to finish it on/by Monday. The game is definitely looking to be about medium length, I guess? Not as long as a typical full-price Japanese VN, but also nowhere near as short as something like Eden*, for instance. At this point I've finished the Slavya, Lena, Alisa, and Semyon routes. Lena was pretty weird throughout, and didn't really work for me (mostly because of the character, in spite of my initial appreciation for the character). Semyon's route was pretty interesting, and Slavya and Alisa were both all right; no complaints there. Now, brace yourselves: a wall of text complaining about choices is coming. Honestly, the game is not great about making clear what choices will lead to what kind of outcome: sometimes you just have to go to the right random location to get a scene with a girl. Also, apparently showing curiosity for a girl's interests is often a bad idea: I was surprised to see in the guide that, for instance, trying to figure out what book Alisa is reading is a negative for her, whereas simply saying nothing about the book she's carrying will get you +1 affection (with no feedback after the fact to make this obvious). The game design side of this seems bad, to me, and I'd contrast it with games like, say, Little Busters!, where both the reasoning behind any choice and the outcome of your choices are a lot more obvious: In LB, before making any decision, you usually have a very good idea of who it will impact and how they will take it. In Everlasting Summer, it's pretty non-obvious a lot of the time how someone is going to react, or often even who will be impacted by certain choices. There was one memorable point in Slavya's route (the last choice) where I literally didn't understand the meaning of either choice, let alone the distinction between them, but apparently there was a right answer and a wrong answer. In LB, people generally react to your decisions quickly and in obviously positive or negative ways, so you can quickly reevaluate (save scum it if you must, but regardless, at least you'll know better next time). In Everlasting Summer, quite often you don't get such obvious reactions, and so when, at the end, you get a bad ending (or even end up on the wrong route, in my case...), you still likely don't quite know what to go back and fuss with to fix it. In LB, even when your decision is a simple "where should I go" decision with no immediate tie to a character in the choices, locations have well-established associations with characters in the game, making those decisions actually thinly-disguised choices of "what girl should I go see?", assuming you have been paying attention to the girl you're going after. It's simplistic, but I find that kind of choice strangely rewarding: they're just as obvious as the simple "pick a girl" choices that you see in lazier games, but somehow more meaningful, and it kind of gives this feel that the game is winking at you. In Everlasting Summer, it often makes you choose a location, but the meaning of it is pretty completely unknowable: go somewhere and run into a random person there for +affection, CG, etc., All in all, on the choices, I kind of feel like I'm perpetually in the dark with Everlasting Summer. Maybe that was the intention (life is, after all, also not so cut-and-dry on what will be the outcome of your choices), but when the end result is the game giving me a bad ending for a character because I chose to go to the boathouse instead of the bus stop on day 3, despite no clues that the bus stop was the magical correct choice for that character on that day, it's just frustrating. All that said, one thing I do really like is that a lot of the choices aren't simple +/- choices for one character. Instead, quite often your choice leads you to run away from a scene with one character, and then accidentally end up in a scene with another character. These are, in a way, charming and interesting, and I don't mind these very much even though the impact isn't obvious beforehand, since it is obvious immediately afterwards. They're good for rewarding replays when you'll "know better next time", which the game clearly wants to emphasize (I feel kind of bad for bucking that by using a guide, honestly).

Confession: I'm intentionally overcooking my pasta for dinner tonight, because dammit, sometimes I like it a little on the soggy side.

Depends on what makes you burst into tears, I suppose, but Little Busters! was pretty effective at that, for me, and should be out pretty soon, I think? I suppose Symphonic Rain is also a good candidate, which is getting an official release very soon. More recently, Shadows of Pygmalion, which I really liked, though it seems most people don't care for it as much as I did.

Not that it needs confirmation, but can confirm non-stop Kansai-ben with the TH2 twins route. Also, they're pretty cute, and come on: twins.

Maria the Virgin Witch. I know, I know. The title is actually the worst thing about the show. Just trust me on this one. Also, +1 for Moribito, and I've heard very similar things to what Clephas said about Story of Saiunkoku before and have been meaning to watch it. It's unfortunately hard to get a hold of these days, since the last license holder went out of business quite some time back... That said, I don't think either Moribito or Maria is at the level of Yona, because frankly practically nothing is, and certainly nothing in its vein that I've ever watched.

It's internally consistent, so it must be correct. Has my editor's stamp of approval. Also, welcome to Fuwa, mushrabbit.

Pretty strongly disagree with that first line. Understanding grammar (particles and verb conjugations, especially, are deep wells) is essential to really grasping the meaning of most of what you'll read. Without those, yeah, you may know some of the actors and some of the actions and some of the descriptions, but you're often not going to be able to piece together what applies to what, and you're going to go off the rails often and not be able to appreciate a lot of what you're nominally reading. Like Toranth said, boning up on grammar is essential.

If by disc drive you mean a DVD drive, just get an external USB one; what's what I use for installing VNs to my tablet. Cost me $20 and works like a champ. The memory and whatnot, well... that's where stuff gets expensive, on these smaller devices, so yeah, probably no helping that.

Just started this earlier tonight. I have no idea how the mechanics work, but I just got through Day One, and there sure are a lot of choices right out of the gate! Here's to hoping Kenji doesn't pop up with a bottle of vodka to murder me on the roof for choosing poorly...

Nah, it's fine. I think they're planning to do one more patch with some touch-up, but it's in pretty good shape already. I just finished it and can confidently say it has fewer typos and whatnot than the last club selection, Deardrops. Edit: Can confirm, Chrono Clock is actually pretty rough on my tablet: it runs okay, but the fan starts going full blast after a few minutes of playing, and it drains the battery pretty fast. I've had a few games the tablet has handled worse (Tenkiame really chugged on it...), but not many.

The Chrono Clock cast is the big draw of the game; they're stellar. Even DD grew on me eventually. And, yes, Makoto is awesome in a lot of ways. Once thing I really like about the game is how it's structured so that it keeps exposing you to different sides of the heroines, even outside of their individual routes.

Finished KonoSuba 2 earlier, which was as excellent as the first one. I don't watch enough isekai shows to be completely burned out on them yet (I can still watch/read DanMachi, for instance), but it's still lovely seeing such an artfully-executed parody/exaggeration of the genre. I like how they're constantly toeing the line between utterly serious and well-executed but stock isekai material (whether it's a big battle scene or a full minute spent marveling at lush, exotic scenery) and the utterly ridiculous situations that the utterly ridiculous characters end up in. That done, I decided to pick up Interviews with Monster Girls. After one episode, I'm enjoying it and looking forward to more; it looks very sweet and innocent, which should be a nice followup to the sarcastic and self-aware KonoSuba.

Looked through your VNDB quickly, and I don't see any steampunk games, so maybe give Gahkthun of the Golden Lightning (the Steam and MangaGamer releases are identical) or Sekien no Inganock (fan TL) a try.

Whoa, Eternal Summer was winning by a lot last time I checked, but Chrono Clock really is making it a close race right now.

I'm curious about your mentioning Bandai Namco there, actually. The only thing I've played recently of theirs was Tales of Zestiria, which I played subtitled, and that TL is amazing. But they do tons of stuff and you said "sub/text only localizations", so maybe that's not the kind of release you have in mind? Agreed about Koei Tecmo, for sure. I played the latest Atelier game very recently, and the TL is so overly literal that it absolutely murdered any characterization present in the original. All the characters sound like identical, stilted foreigners instead of having the lively, distinct voices that, if nothing else, the JP voice actors infused them with.

Is it going to be weird to play Chaos;Child first? I get that it's a prequel to Chaos;Head, not a sequel, so maybe it's fine, but it still seems like releasing them in the release order would make more sense? Never played either of them before, though, so I'm pretty excited about the opportunity to play more SciAdv games.

Now, in spite of what I said above, I completely disagree with this. Every person I've seen complaining about the P5 translation (including notably Connor and Verde) has done so for the excellent reason that, if an official localization is weak (especially a high-profile one like P5), you should call out how and why it is, out of a very legitimate fear that we're going to regress back to what JP video game translations were like in years gone past, if the fan base isn't vigilant and vocal about problems. They also did an excellent job of clearly explaining the problems and their scope, and the claim that it was an attempt at "promotion of their ideas of an 'ideal' translation" is, IMO, a huge overstatement: the P5 translation stinks at times, and it isn't asking for too much to ask for a P5 translation that doesn't stink at times. Getting far afield from the topic, though, at this point... I seriously wonder when Libra will release something other than physicals, even though I guess I'm unlikely to play it at this point... It sure is a weird English release for a VN, though, where the physical release is the first thing available.

Have to agree. From what I can tell from the screenshots plastered all over the internet, since I still haven't played it, Persona 5 is occasionally excellent (I've seen some clearly outstanding work in screenshots posted by defenders of the TL), usually acceptable, often uninspiring and somewhat missing the intended tone (this seems to be the most common problem), and rarely outright bad ("Me near, okay?" and shit like that). On the other hand, Libra is looking to be pretty uniformly terrible, even in the screenshots posted by the company itself. I have no hesitation about playing Persona 5, and once I get around to it, I'm sure I'll enjoy it, while occasionally rolling my eyes at the TL and wishing it were better. In contrast, Libra's TL is looking like a total deal-breaker.

Can relate. Way too many nice, cute CGs in VNs get ruined by an apparent inclination to gratuitous fanservice.

It's sad to see a game that was this hotly-anticipated by the community get a lousy TL. Hopefully they listen to the feedback and do something about it, even if it's just trusting to the localization companies out there that do know what they're doing (MG, SP, Frontwing, etc.; it's not like there's a shortage of potential partners) with future games.