Fred the Barber

How does one practice a Hawaiian king? False. Next person enjoys simulation games aside from dating sims.

That's exactly why I asked.

Anything?

It resolves the harem, and even pairs up protag with best girl, but it does it in such an unforgivably unrealistically melodramatic way that I wanted to find the guy who made it and punch him in the face in part just to see if he actually is a robot rather than a human. So, yes, at least the harem gets resolved, but the baggage that comes along for the ride made it really not worth it, for me.

Despite the backhanded compliment, I actually am happy to see him around. I refer to his editing blog posts constantly to figure out how to do a halfway decent job with my work on To Heart 2, and I point other people at them frequently when I'm afraid they might be as clueless as I am. What I'm saying is, you can blame him for any and all problems you may find in To Heart 2, just like KoiRizo.

Confession: I'm pretty excited to see Darbury back; now there are twice as many people older than I making appearances in this thread.

Mother 3 / EarthBound 2 EarthBound is an amazing game that taught me about absurdity at a very young age. It's fun, funny, and only feels grindy when you decide you absolutely must get a Sword of Kings. That experience also teaches you about the gambler's fallacy. 1/127 drop rates suck. Anyway, relatedly, I'm also looking forward to this beautiful-looking fan project that's still in the works: http://www.mother4game.com/

Why stop at anime girls? I like all girls to have weird-colored hair. Next person knows why mirrors flip things horizontally but not vertically.

Congratulations on two years! I have a few burning questions for you: Do you have a relative named SolidSok? Who is best girl? What is your favorite thing?

Yes. But you get better at coping with it.

False. I don't even know what that is. Next person likes to wear a hat.

hilarious and random? Look no further than Arakawa Under the Bridge. And I'll chuck in another vote for two of Arcade's: I Can't Understand What My Husband Is Saying, and Sakamoto Desu Ga?

False, unless I'm suikashoujo's Komari Kamikita dakimakura. Next person listens to the radio.

As long as you resurrect the "awkward moments with VNs" thread when that happens, it's fine.

Confession: I switched from a messenger bag to a backpack today because carrying my laptop back and forth to work everyday in the messenger bag was killing my back. I'm getting old.

Welcome! I encourage you to make a VNDB page and link it to your profile, so we can see what all you've played and offer suggestions based on that. Or at least so we can say "hmmm..." and "oh my!" when we see what you've played and what you thought of it For something lighthearted, maybe give KonoSora a try (I really like it, despite its English translation being rather lackluster), though Princess Evangile might also be a good choice (although it wasn't to my taste, it is quite popular around here). Clannad is fine, though it drags often; I actually prefer the anime over the VN, mostly because it's so much shorter, and even the anime drags. When you're up for another good cry, I highly recommend Symphonic Rain - given your listed favorites, I bet it's right up your alley. And when you want to try something a little different, maybe look at Gahkthun of the Golden Lightning or Sekien no Inganock.

This is a really convincing post, and I can totally see where you're coming from and appreciate that view. But for me, I actually like all that destiny crap. I enjoy seeing extraordinary people doing extraordinary things. Character growth is certainly something I value as well, but you can still get that even with a destiny backdrop.

Well, I guess I'll chime in to support the unpopular opinion - SP is my favorite at the moment. MG is close behind, and JAST USA is a distant third. In terms of # of games released (a few months ago I crawled through the data for the three companies, so this should be roughly correct): SP is releasing more games per year than MG and JAST USA put together (not that the last one is helping much...). Both SP and MG are accelerating their number of releases recently, especially SP, while JAST is flat and much lower than the other two. Now, of those, the rebuttal will go, most of SP's are random doujinshi nobody has ever heard of, but replace "doujinshi nobody has ever heard of" with "nukige" and the same argument applies to both MG and JAST USA. If you remove both of those from the list and look at the remaining, I expect SP is still in the lead, though I didn't look at this data point. Now, granted, if you're a nukige fan, more power to you, and you probably don't care about the last thing I said. But this is about who I like, and frankly I'm more likely to enjoy a random doujinshi I've never heard of, but which SP decided to localize, than I am to enjoy a random nukige. The claim that only MG releases stuff in a timely manner is, I'm pretty sure, bunk - I honestly don't know where it comes from. JAST USA is the only real laggard in the industry (I find this post hilarious, since it shows the translation was done three years ago, and we only saw the release last month...). The other two are getting things done in a reasonably timely manner, for the most part. There are outliers like WEE for SP, but there are far more things like the complete retranslation of Clannad that got done on schedule in a year, or the rather punctual release of Root Double, which people nonetheless cried bloody murder about because it was a month late. If you're going to kick and scream about them releasing something at the end of April after predicting a March release, you're setting the bar way, way too high; that's just not how the world works when you're talking about a half-year (or longer) project involving tens of people. If you think differently, I'll eat my hat if you've ever actually been involved in such a project (but if you actually have, then the joke's still on you, because I'm not wearing a hat). And a point in favor of all three: they've all caused big changes. SP's happens to have been the most recent, but JAST USA has been around and kicking forever, and proved that there was a market here at all. MG found a way to substantially broaden that market and upped the volume substantially. And now SP is changing and broadening the market yet again. We benefit from all three of them. Even if we make jokes at the expense of one or all of them from time to time, they're none of them causing us any problems. Be happy for what you have, and if you think you can do it better, in all seriousness, go do it. This is the place to find people who are passionate about VNs; maybe you can build a crew to found the next big VN localization company that changes the market yet again. It's already happened three times. That it will happen a fourth time is practically a given.

Confession: I watched in horror yesterday as a guy loaded up a video of an ASMR recording on youtube (apparently ASMR video is a thing, even though that kind of doesn't make sense to me) in front of about a dozen people, many of us basically strangers (including myself), and the rest of them his coworkers. I don't think he has massive stones so much as he simply thought, "Oh, nobody will think this is all that weird." Needless to say, nobody else had heard of the concept, and they did think it was that weird. At one point, perhaps realizing just how awkward everybody was finding it, he announced "there's nothing sexual about it, ... though I do have to admit that girl is pretty damn hot," which led to probably the loudest guffaw I have ever guffawed.

Wait, this show has an idolizing imouto character? Reprioritizing...

Congratulations on your milestone and, more importantly, on returning to literally the best avatar ever.

Not exactly a high bar, but true. Milla was the protagonist of my Xillia playthrough, though, which I'm pretty sure was a much better choice.

Frankly the mechanics displayed by the writing in the Kickstarter are worrying. The text suffers from overuse of passive voice and "be" verbs, inconsistency in tense, bad rhythm (most of the sentences are very short, giving it a very choppy feel when reading), and some rather unnatural language. Examples of the last: If I assume the VN is going to have these same kinds of problems, it's probably going to be a pretty painful experience to read. The art might be fine, but as others have pointed out, it's kind of hard to say - the character images are very low-resolution to begin with, and the logo isn't making them any easier to see. The setting is potentially interesting, but details are light. I like Rooke's suggestion of examples - nothing speaks louder for a clear vision than an actual snippet of the intended finished product, even if it's a mock-up.

I combed through my MAL for female protagonist shows that I've thoroughly enjoyed, some of which might be of interest to you (judge for yourself based on the keywords, perhaps). In rough order of how much I like them: Maria-sama ga Miteru (drama set at an all-girls school) Yona of the Dawn (adventure, action, romance) Chihayafuru (sports, I guess, if you want to label it? But it's a weird sport) Madoka (I'm sure you've already seen it, but I list it for completeness) Nodame Cantabile (romance + music) K-On! (moe girls in a band) Nozaki-kun (hysterical comedy) Haibane Renmei (I really don't know how to describe this one - perhaps "thoughtful" is the best brief description?) Ouran High School Host Club (comedy, reverse harem) Oshiete Galko-chan (comedy shorts, refreshingly different, very quick show to watch all of) Seirei no Moribito (watched this a long time ago, but I recall it being a pretty good adventure story) Say "I Love You" (romance, drama, and much more "real" than pretty much anything else I've watched that I'd label with those two words) Girls und Panzer (moe girls in tanks) A Certain Scientific Railgun (moe girls with esper powers) Edit: Also, Ghost in the Shell. Holy shit does that show hold up well.

I literally do not know what that is supposed to mean. So... tralse? Next person enjoys puppets.