Fred the Barber

Between one hint and another, it's pretty much locked down to be "The Trigger of Grisaia". I can't deny being a little disappointed it isn't a new IP.

Confession: Every now and then, at work, I'll copy something to the clipboard with the intent to paste it somewhere and do something with it, but then I'll get distracted. If the distraction goes on long enough, the fact that I've copied something will fall out of my conscious mind, but it will stay in my subconscious, and I'll start getting this weird itching sensation, where my brain is shouting at me that I absolutely must paste whatever is on the clipboard, somewhere, even though I have no idea what it is. Whenever I start getting that feeling, I pull up a text editor, paste it, say, "Oh yeah, crap, I was working on that", and then go on to the next step in whatever I was working on, always by pasting that into wherever it actually belongs. I've never actually gotten that feeling unless there really was something vital on the clipboard that needed to be posted. Ahh, the life of a software engineer.

The major route where Gladys literally never appears is actually quite a bit more interesting than the major route with Gladys in it, IMO, mostly because of the plot. The game kind of has a "heroine of the week" feel to it most of the time, which would be more fun if said heroines were more interesting. Gladys sure was fun at first, though, and Shamsiel was always great. The route you didn't see spends a ton of time with Isis, which is a mixed blessing: she's the opposite of Gladys, in that she's a lot more fun after she falls head-over-heels for the protagonist.

http://fuwanovel.net/reviews/2016/10/25/funbag-fantasy/ A pleasantly substantial plot for a game mainly about pleasantly substantial "plot".

Karakara

The "free" requirement is super restrictive. Not a lot of people are crazy and motivated enough to put in the amount of work it takes to ship a whole VN and not get paid for it. Assuming you want it not to be utter garbage, of course. The "non-kinetic" requirement actually does restrict things a little further, since Narcissu 1st and 2nd are generally considered to be quite good, though I haven't played them (yet another entry on the long, long backlog...), and are free: http://store.steampowered.com/app/264380/

So, if I'm correctly understanding some examples of what you meant, I think part of the disagreement here is caused by people being too fixated on the original phrasing. I think it's perfectly valid to say "I just like it" about something, especially in reference to some specific, well-thought-through aspect or property. Similarly, it's equally valid in the same circumstances to say "I just don't like it", about the same thing. Bolverk's example of slice-of-life is a good starting point: plenty of people have experienced it, reflected on its pros and cons, and found it boring as hell; plenty of others have experienced it, reflected on its pros and cons, and can't get enough of it. Neither of those groups is holding an opinion that I can really criticize or fault them for, assuming they reached it after appropriate rational reflection (which I don't believe is an unsatisfiable assumption). Like you said, I don't think a mature person in either of those two groups would say "you just don't get it" to someone on the other side, but they might very well say "I just [don't] like it", and be perfectly justified. Assuming that's a valid reframing of the original question, at any rate, that's my two cents.

1) If you provide the two scripts and the switch and charge $3 more than you would have otherwise, I would certainly not complain, mostly because $3 is near enough to $0. I personally view the most commonly-perceived idea of "literal" as more frustrating to read, and $3 is a small price to pay for a better reading experience. 2) I buy games with various forms of DRM all the time. As long as it's not horribly invasive, and as long as there's not a substantial risk of it rendering my legally-bought copy of the game unusable (for reference, I don't consider "but Steam might fall of the face of the earth" to be a substantial risk; I buy Steam games), do what you gotta do. 3) Hong Kong-based company? Whatever, don't care. 4) I'm a weirdo with enough scratch to support official releases of games I like as a rule of thumb. Even if I've already imported the original and read the fan translation, I will definitely buy a subsequent official localized release of any game, as long as I actually enjoyed the game. 5) Not interested in going abroad for a convention, unless it's somehow the most ridiculous VN-centric convention of all time. Even then, at best I'd consider it. Would definitely be more likely to attend a thing in Hong Kong than Thailand, though... 6) Not much. I buy on Steam if possible because it's convenient, and I generally prefer to buy digital when possible for the same reason, but Steam specifically is not a big deal, and I wouldn't feel more than mildly inconvenienced by physical-only. 7) As long as it's officially-licensed, sure, though I don't buy physical goods very often. That's a pretty unusual idea, and sounds nice, but given that you said your goal would be "producing a labor of love without taking a bath of it", wouldn't that likely mean said partners would actually make less money? Unless you somehow hit the big-time, I guess. Also kinda sounds like a pain for everybody involved to deal with royalty payments everywhere. I expect the people you contracted out to (notably the translation team) would likely be happier in the end with a single lump sum than they would be with periodic, increasingly tiny royalty checks for the rest of their lives. Edit: I fought that fucking smiley so hard while writing this, suppressed it dozens of times, and then the moment I clicked "submit", I watched it convert it immediately before submitting. Tried to edit the post, it did the same damn thing when I clicked "save". Fuck it.

I finished Bakemonogatari, and it was mind-numbingly good. Immediately picked up Nisemonogatari, which I'm taking my time with. In the meantime, a week or two ago, on a day when my brain was absolutely fried and I was completely incapable of doing anything requiring thought but still needed to burn a few hours before going to sleep, a friend suggested I watch something cute and mindless, so I picked up Fate/kaleid liner Prisma Illya. I finished the first season last night. Not bad, though the loli fanservice felt pretty skeevy at times. I was again reminded that Taiga is the most underappreciated character in the Nasuverse (and Rin is fantastic, of course, but everybody knows that). My favorite part was the very first ~three minutes of the show, where it showed Illya leading a normal, happy life, which is pretty hard-hitting if your most recent recollection of her is the Heavens Feel F/SN true ending, and if you're a feels sucker like me. The rest of the show was fine, and definitely had its moments, especially when Rin took center stage. I'll probably pick up the later seasons and keep feeling skeevy about watching it.

I gave up on FFXII somewhere around halfway through. The whole thing just felt kind of off, to me. I didn't really enjoy the combat, or the setting, or the characters (the last of which is especially surprising, since I honestly can't remember any other mainline FF game where I didn't like the characters). I found it ironic when I later learned that, due to the flexibility of the ability upgrades and the unique animations they'd put on certain characters, the girl who is clearly intended to be an archer was actually the least effective bow user in the game, and the analogous statement was true of the guy who was clearly intended to use guns. It seemed somehow emblematic of the problems I had with the game.

I rather liked Dragon Age 2, and honestly found the gameplay in Dragon Age too boring to get more than a few hours into, whereas Dragon Age 2's gameplay was fun and interesting for me. I mostly experienced Dragon Age by watching my roommate play it, whereas I played through Dragon Age 2 several times. But it's well-established that I have shit taste, so of course, take that with a grain of salt. Final Fantasy 10 is a great game, if you can avoid the English dub (really just Tidus).

Oh god this. It's a problem of expectations, though. VNDB descriptions are usually trying to set the hook for a game, not tell you what the reading experience is going to be like. I've read the Majo Koi Nikki description on VNDB many times by now, and I cringed most of those times. Then I wrote my own replacement for it (I should really get that put up there one of these days...), and now I read my own description and cringe instead. Neither the original nor mine tells you anything about what the actual game experience is like, because to do that in a game description format, you'd basically have to spoil the whole thing. On further fronts, Fred finally finished Funbag Fantasy. Time to pick up something new, preferably with fewer titjobs. I really wanted it to be Demonbane 2 (un-TLed, hoorah!), but for the life of me I can't get it to run, so maybe I really will finally read Yurirei.

The short form of Ushinawareta Mirai o Motomete is WareMete, btw

Why can I only give one like at a time.

Kindred Spirits is very highly-regarded, though I haven't played it so I can't personally vouch for it (and believe me, I really want to fix that... it might be the next thing I pick up), and Flowers is pretty decent. Both are very much more story- and character-oriented rather than sex-oriented, so they're probably more what you're looking for. If I were you, I'd go for Kindred Spirits.

Yes? That's a textbook double standard: criticizing someone you don't like for an action you didn't criticize in someone you do like. I guess you're trying to say it's okay to apply double standards when one party deserves it? Uhh. No. That's a textbook example of being an asshat. At any rate, somehow I'm not surprised to see an objection to this coming from someone who, when attempting to present an argument for a position, opts for a red herring.

Hookers: the answer for both.

If you want to call someone distributing pirated copies of Sekai Project's intellectual property a "fan patcher", I think it's more than a little disingenuous, and while Dovac made a mess of the communication, there's no doubt who was in the right in that little tiff, in my mind. FWIW, I find it pretty funny that Sekai Project came in with an announcement that they'd be delaying Root Double by a month and got absolutely roasted for it, while Mikandi came in with a 4-month delay announcement and is being praised for their great communication. Double standard much, guys? To be clear, I don't fault Mikandi for the four-month delay announcement (looking at the screenshots on their website, I'm delighted to hear that it is yet to be edited and that they still have plenty of time for that...), and I'm looking forward to the game; I'm just a little annoyed at the community's clear biases. Can confirm, having a stable full-time job to support weeb hobbies is nice

I'm 20 minutes in and still listening. Dat funky bass line. It's a shame the loop cut is so rough.

An oldie, but still a goodie:

Just to attempt some constructive criticism: there is a path forward in this direction, which is to found a localization company. Said company would have to negotiate with license-holders in Japan and find a publisher (think Nutaku or Steam, or a partnership with MG or something), and also consider publicity, marketing, and project management, in addition to the translation side of things. That's going to require a ton of money and a ton of work (full-time jobs for several people), and the largest problem for both your idea and this suggestion is that they imagine Fuwanovel as sort of a monolithic source of people and labor. Fuwanovel is kind of just a message board, with a handful of hard-working people with real lives (and real jobs) who barely have time to keep it propped up in its current state, let alone do anything as grand as what you've proposed, which is to say nothing of something as ridiculous as the amount of work required to run a localization company. I don't think things are likely to get any better than the localization companies we currently have. Someone could try to stand up another one, and it might even work out, but it'd take a few completely dedicated people with good connections and a decent chunk of cash (ballpark, a couple hundred thousand dollars, probably? presumably a loan, because who doesn't love debt?) to get it off the ground, and even with all of that, you likely wouldn't start seeing results for at least a year or so, and even then slowly.

Of course not. You address people with the gendered pronoun "you", as is good and right and holy.

Yeah, I obviously meant internet-based file sharing services, and like I said, if bandwidth is actually a limitation and you actually are talking about large amounts of media, then I suppose you're screwed. Though at that point, I really am confused about what is all that stuff you're sharing...

Don't use USB flash drives, mmkay? Seriously, there's loads of better technology out there for sharing stuff, and USB flash drives are super vulnerable to stuff like this. Though if you live in a place where bandwidth is restricted/expensive and what you need to share is quite large, well, I guess it may be a harder problem... but somehow I doubt that was the case here.

General consensus is that Persona 4 has the edge on Persona 3 in terms of characters, but that Persona 3 has the edge on Persona 4 in terms of plot. They're both great. Never played the others aside from a few hours with the original Persona long ago, which I really couldn't get into , but I understand the tone and style really changed starting with Persona 3. I recommend the Portable version of P3 since you can get it on the Vita, since the battles are way more enjoyable since the system is nearly identical to P4's, and since what you sacrifice in graphics and bonus scenario isn't all that great anyway. Basically, once you're done and raving about how good P4 was, you should play P3. Also, P3 has Aigis. You're gonna love Aigis.