Fred the Barber

It is indeed a story about stories, at a pretty fundamental level; the game talks about stories a lot. That said, Alice's route (which is sprinkled throughout the game) happens in the "present", in terms of the game, though it's most accurate to view it as taking place in 2014, the year the game released, for reasons. In terms of who narrates, I think the game is about 30% narrated by Alice and 70% narrated by Takumi, which is mostly (but not entirely) diary entries, though once you get past the prologue you tend to forget you're in a diary entry while reading the routes with Takumi, because most of them are pretty long. If this matters to you, Takumi narrates most of the H-scenes (all the ones not involving Alice), though the ones narrated by Alice were actually the best, IMO.

You folks are talking about a mass move by Japanese VN developers toward mobage like it's a hypothetical, but from what I understand, it's pretty much a fait accompli. A large number of VN developers have already tried (and/or are currently trying) their hand at mobage. You just haven't heard much about it here since they've all have failed miserably thus far, aside from Type-Moon. So it's a bit late to be worried about that coming to suck away the attention paid to VNs—we're already in that boat. To bring this somewhat back on topic... VN loc companies are similarly looking all around for ways to stay/become profitable. There are only two real strategies I've seen almost all of them employing, at this point: China, and console releases. For China: if you have a license for a worldwide release, why not sell to a market that actually has consistently shown they're willing to pay for VNs, enough to fund a localization effort? It's certainly profitable. For console: Switch ports seem to be profitable, maybe? Though I don't have as clear a picture on that, and there aren't a lot of data points yet. But you can look at lackluster games like Root Letter getting huge sales numbers on consoles and realize, oh yeah, there's probably something there if you play your cards right. Now, neither of those is going to do the vast majority of people on this board much good, since we're mostly 1) not Chinese readers and 2) looking for 18+ content. As long as English 18+ release sales remain low (for whatever reasons, including but not limited to high rates of piracy), the only hope most of us have is that the VN loc companies both expand in some way that lets them make money (China, console, and/or some other means) and continue to subsidize English versions with 18+ content from those profits out of pure passion for it. That is effectively what they're doing today. Denpasoft, JAST USA, and Nekonyan are all on the China boat (Nekonyan through the Hikari Field partnership), leaving only MangaGamer in the lurch. Denpasoft and MangaGamer, at least, are both doing the non-PC thing, though MangaGamer is taking a galaxy-brain approach where they vomited up a buggy android app and then promptly forgot about it. I'd say if MangaGamer doesn't get in on the Chinese market in some way within the next year or so, I'll eat my hat, except they're so slow-moving that maybe they'll just keep trickling away dollars forever... Anyway, subsidizing 18+ English releases like this is honestly both risky (all kinds of legal exposure they could easily avoid by just, not doing it) and bad business (because it's throwing away money with no hope of return), but all these companies are doing it anyway. And yet somehow a lot of the vocal members of the VN community treat all of them as some evil enemy, most of the time. Sigh.

TBH, I've typically heard worse ratios than 5:1 for pirated:sales from other VN publishers with access to sales data. There are of course cases to be made that some of those pirates wouldn't buy the game anyway even if pirating were, e.g., higher-risk, harder to do, outright impossible, etc. But yeah, piracy does seem to be a substantial contributor to why VNs are doomed to niche status in the west. Publishers just generally can't afford to get the games they and others want to because the vast majority of the people playing the games don't pay for them.

Could not agree more with this assessment of Tsui Yuri, tbh. The bad endings are entertaining, at least.

The Witch's Love Diary is now available on Steam, Denpasoft (Standalone 18+ Release or free 18+ Patch for the Steam Release), and JAST USA. Get it at a 10% launch discount, at any of those stores, and then come tell us what you thought!

Which is one good reason to use the English title, given it's an English release and all... I'd take it as a personal favor, even if you love to snatch thread-starting opportunities, if you'd at least use the title we gave the game.

I feel like the answers they give you for those are actually going to be pretty satisfying. However, the game absolutely suffers from the "win the fight, lose the subsequent cutscene, survive anyway" formula, and I don't blame you for holding that (or something in that ballpark) against it, which it sounds like you do. So that's a totally fair complaint. I think what I loved most about Xenoblade 2 was its epic sweep, which pervaded the other elements of the game more than they did the core plot. The music, the art, and the setting were all phenomenally evocative. They make me feel like I'm there, on this fantastical world with its cloud sea, its titans, its blades, and rising up above them all, the world tree. I also love it for the localization, a mindblowingly beautiful rendition of the world. I'm in love with the names, and with the accents (god, Morag's accent...). The plot, well... it'll consistently get better from where you are, for sure, but it's never going to knock your socks off. The characters will do a better job of carrying you through the game than the plot will, and even they're merely good, not great. I'm a big fan of Nia, though, and of some others who I won't mention because spoilers, and I suspect you'll end up a Nia fan too. It's hard not to. Basically, Xenoblade 2 has its share of flaws and weak points, but the high points are so damn high for me that I can't speak of it without reverence. Now, on to what I'm playing... I've finally managed to get back into playing a JRPG, for the first time in... god I don't even know how long, ten months? And I've resumed Octopath Traveler. This game is so goddamn good. I stalled out on the game a long time ago right after finishing each character's first chapter, but since I've gotten back to it, I've finished about half the second chapters, and I've grabbed all the first round of secondary jobs. I'm thinking I might attempt Tressa's chapter three as well, right now, since it's one of the lower-level ones and since I'm already in the right place to do it. To my surprise, my favorite character so far is Ophilia. She kinda looks like a goody two-shoes, and in fact she is, but she somehow pulls it off in a way that's not boring. She's also cool, thoughtful, and above all, capable. I'm magnetically attracted to capable people. Ophilia's chapter two felt like a perfect testament to her—no evil people ruining everybody's lives (see: Tressa's chapter two, or Cyrus's whole storyline) or people acting with unfathomable motives (see: Olbert's storyline, or Therion's), just a couple kids going through a rough patch in life and needing a little help, which Ophilia provides with the utmost grace and humility. I hope they carry out doing this style of story for her through the rest of the game, honestly. Having this kind of variety in the tales they tell really keeps the game fresh, and I found that I just really like that kind of story, and it's not one you see terribly often in a JRPG. Work has me kinda busy right now, but I'm gonna keep carving out the time to play Octopath Traveler, on the weekends if nothing else. Really enjoying this one.

Yeah, MangaGamer's site screams back alley sex shop, as a venerable member of this board once put it, but it certainly doesn't have to. Denpasoft's shop looks fine. I think MG is still working on redoing the site and has been for years now, though I haven't heard any of their people talk about it in a while. Also, I don't think it's true that the people who work on their website are contractors, by the way; they're just also busy with other things.

I think the entire Dragalia Lost OST is by the same artist, DAOKO, and it all rules. Would recommend.

There can be more than one... Sekai Project is also an all-ages company, the same way Sol Press is.

I don't really get what you're trying to argue here. If it's "every eroge localizer needs to have their own store", it would seem to be a silly thing to argue, given there are numerous other examples you can go after (at least one of which you yourself work for!). Sol Press making a store is independent of Panty Press making a store, for reasons which I think I laid out pretty clearly. Each of those actions comes with a separate cost-benefit analysis; the costs are separate (and quite substantial in both cases), and the benefits are separate (and much larger on one of those than on the other). What fact or consideration are you taking issue with here? There are lots of eroge loc companies performing this same cost-benefit analysis and ending up on one side of it (Denpasoft, Mangagamer, JAST USA), and lots of eroge loc companies performing the same analysis and ending up on the other side (Kagura Games, Cherry Kiss Games, Panty Press). I don't understand why it's something to get worked up about.

The key difference you're missing is that Sol Press is an all=ages company which sells more than just all ages visual novels. They also sell other products (especially LNs and manga) from license holders which will not accept being associated with adult content (unlike most VN license holders, since even those releasing all ages content are typically comfortable with 18+ associations, by the nature of the VN industry). There could conceivably be both an all ages site for Sol Press and an 18+ site for the separate company which deals with 18+ releases of the associated adult content of some of the VNs for which Sol Press releases all-ages versions. However, said site does not currently exist. Maybe it will in the future; I do not know any more than you. The all-ages shop is a sound business decision, because they will benefit from selling their LNs and manga, and yes their all-ages VNs, themselves. Whether it makes sense for that separate company to make an 18+ site to sell their wares, and to then go through all the associated likely payment processor woes mentioned here, is a separate concern. I'll also add that, from my understanding, payment processors handling adult content typically charge a great deal more overhead due to the higher-risk nature of the product, especially when dealing with small companies. Long story short, it's a lot more complicated than you're claiming.

The kai script is approximately twice as long as the vanilla 02 script (which, as I understand, is identical to the original Rance 2 script). Edit: Also, it's a pretty substantial rewrite, from everything I can see; definitely more of a rewrite than an addition.

Not to sound too discouraging, but I don't think non-native English speakers should be editors. Non-native English speakers who become known as writers of English are such a rarity that everyone will give you the exact same two examples when the topic comes up (Nabokov and Conrad). It's very, very hard to make up for all those formative years missing out on constant immersion in a language. Now, all that warning delivered, regarding how to learn... - Every line editor I know has said that what they do, they do based pretty much purely on instinct. However, instincts can obviously be honed. Most of what I've learned about line editing in the last couple years, I've learned from people critiquing my work (mostly QAs on projects; I've been fortunate to be blessed with a lot of good QAs over the years). Giving and receiving feedback is always a sensitive thing, though, so people offering critique have to be careful about how they approach it, and people receiving it have to do their damnedest to try to take it constructively. Sometimes there are failures on one or both sides of that equation, but don't let that turn you off the process; it's the most important thing to constantly improving. - Beyond that, still on line editing, I think I've just read a few random internet articles over the past few years which helped give me things to think about and to process (e.g., "conciseness", "precision", etc.). I have a blog on this site (here) where I've tried to write up some things in that vein myself, but take my opinions with a grain of salt (in the first place, they're old and from when I was still fairly inexperienced; and in the second place, I'm still not all that experienced or that high up on the totem pole anyway). - Copy editing, on the other hand, is a much more technical process with a lot more black-and-white issues, more rules to remember, and so forth. Lately I've been reading Dreyer's English, which is an approachable and entertaining general survey sort of book on the topic which I would recommend. Depending on how serious you are, you could also look into getting a big fat style book. - And above all else, read constantly: read authors writing in their native tongue (not translations), and especially read good writers. Read across various genres. Read poetry. Let me say that again and italicize it, because it's important: read poetry. If you find some you like, memorize it; memorizing a few pages of poetry is not nearly so hard as it sounds, and it's extremely good for your writing brain. To the last question: in my experience, editing work for VNs involves clicking through rows in a spreadsheet or a tool, fussing with wording constantly, occasionally rewriting things wholesale, and rarely checking the original line to see why the thing written in the translation box doesn't make sense to me (not an option if you are working on an OELVN, I suppose, but I assure you, it will still happen...). It's like very, very slowly playing a VN where the writing has a tendency to make you groan.

Oh, come to think of it, 3/4 heroines from Under One Wing are pretty damn stacked (all but poor little Mimari). The art in this one is stellar, too; love the coloring in the CGs.

Another vote for Wagahigh, just because the previous endorsement wasn't all that strong. I think it's a very underrated game, and the girls are indeed all pretty top-heavy, though not as top-heavy as the Funbag Fantasy girls... but that's rare unless you're okay with less-good nukige. If you are in fact okay with that kind of thing, you'd probably get a lot more options, fwiw.

Why? MG fucked up the Hapymaher translation worse than Sekai fucked up the Chrono Clock translation, and at least Sekai knows that Chrono Clock had issues, whereas nobody but me seems to be bitching at MG for their absolute butchery of Hapymaher. I know the people slated to do Amatsutsumi and I have every confidence it's going to come out great; meanwhile, it would've been the same team from Hapymaher butchering Amatsutsumi on the MG side. SP getting it is great news.

Season 2 never, I'm sure, but the LN series is being officially localized, and the translator is a friend and is doing good work with it, so there's always that option: https://www.amazon.com/Kokoro-Connect-1-Hito-Random-ebook/dp/B07FNMCNGR/

Good to see you around here again, shit taste and all. Inaba for life.

Can only speak from my personal experience, which is about a dozen things with about eight different translators, but at least from what I've seen in the industry, the translator usually checks over the editor's output and does so-called "counter-edits" (75% of the games I've worked on). Also, who gets the "final cut" between the TL and the editor is kind of up in the air, though usually the TL and editor simply discuss anything where they disagree, so it's not really an issue. And just briefly, regarding Fureraba: the translator has spoken very highly of the work the editor did on Fureraba on several occasions, to me and to others, so you can at least assume they were agreed that it was good work overall. I haven't read it myself, but the screenshots I've seen posted here and there have always looked fine to me. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Thanks, everybody! I really appreciate the warm wishes.

The Karakara games are short and kinetic, and they have wonderful translations. Volume 1 is a pretty simple, pleasant read. Volume 2 ends on a cliffhanger, though... hopefully volume 3 will be out before too long. The World End Economica series. Each volume is medium-short length and kinetic, as well as self-contained. Mercifully, this one is now entirely released. The translation is... sometimes not as great, for this series, but pretty much anybody who isn't picky like me should be fine with it. It's from the Spice and Wolf guy, so expect a whole lot of economics talk, though. Kind of a niche game, I suppose, but I enjoyed the ride. The Grisaia: Phantom Trigger series (no, you absolutely do not need to have read any of the original Grisaia trilogy first); each volume is short and kinetic, and also self-contained. Also have very solid translations. It's nearly done now, probably? At least as far as I've read (through 5.5), you never feel like you're ending a volume on a cliffhanger, so you don't need to feel obligated to read them in a row or anything.

+1 for textractor - despite a whole lot of fussing, I wasn't able to get any of the other text-hooking programs working on my up-to-date Win10 machine, but Textractor worked right out of the box.

That's exactly what tiag said, Mr. Nobody.

Confession: I used to have a good ratio because of that... now everybody knows the truth.