Fred the Barber

Welcome! Everybody else already provided great suggestions, so in the interest of supporting one thing rather than a dozen: Comyu would make a good next choice.

I see my policy of non-engagement has paid off once again. Nah, the truth is I'm still mourning Funya back in the base.

They responded again after I basically asked "so, should I get on the plane or not?" with "yeaaaaaaah, if you could just rebook your tickets for next week, that'd be great." Guess I get another week of vacation. Aww, shucks. ...

So my new job starts Monday. Or does it? I've been emailing the coordinator this week about why I haven't heard much from them for a while, and earlier today got the response "Oh, we have your start date down as May 2nd." I responded within 5 minutes with basically: "Well, look, I don't really care, but you bought me plane tickets to go down to corporate HQ for orientation on April 25th, not May 2nd, so... what should I do?" 4.5 hours later, still no response. Still debating whether I should get on the plane on Sunday or not, assuming I don't hear anything else. Probably time to engage a more responsible contact there who isn't telling me bizarre things, but seriously, late Friday is not the time to drop that kind of shit on me and then go silent. Edit: More responsible contact is on the mail thread already and hasn't responded. RIP my job.

Definitely the right call there. I deleted my save data (the only way to get the option to choose voice language... even a new game isn't enough) and started over. Took me two hours to get back to where I was, but I'm much happier with the voices now. Alisha's surprisingly low voice is lovely. Regarding Graces, I guess it was a mixed bag. I really liked the whole female main cast, but only liked some of the male main cast. Cassandra Lee Morris (who I loved as Ritsu in K-On!) as Sophie, Laura Bailey (who's in practically everything) as Cherami, and Kate Higgins (who I'd literally never heard before) as wacky Pascal were all enjoyable for me.

Looks awesome. I loved Bastion, though I never played Transistor for some reason. I have high hopes for this, though it's still a long ways out.

What's the point of a bartending simulator? You don't even get a drink after-- Oh! To be honest, I had a ton of fun with HuniePop, but I've had a soft spot for crossover match-three games ever since I played Puzzle Quest. I'm not sure I'm ready for a Front Wing moeified clone of it, though, mostly because the gem art is making my eyes bleed. I'm going to be staring at those gems a lot. If they still look like that in the final release, it's not happening.

I've been itching to have that argument out ever since @Down said more or less the same thing in his blog post a while back. Isn't that at odds with empirical observation? If you go to VNDB and sort by rating, you get a pretty good list on that first page, for example. To be clear: Not absolutely everything on that first page is gold, I'm sure I'm equally sure there are things that deserve to be there but which are buried lower, perhaps much lower It implies a hard ranking, which is completely bogus But even with those caveats, I still find it a useful guideline for quality. I actually pull up VNDB's Bayesian score ranking pretty regularly to look for good VNs that I haven't read yet but really should, and the result hasn't disappointed me yet. Should probably move this to a new thread if it gets out of hand, though...

I've never run into an eroge I couldn't make work on Windows 10, and the only ones that had difficulties also had the same difficulties with 7/8/8.1. Windows 10 is more natural and easier to use than 8 or 8.1. And them adding a new browser, even if it sucks, isn't a negative - you can still use whatever other browser you want, including IE if you roll that way. However, Windows 10 is just plain lower quality than 8.1. The bugs aren't a dealbreaker, but if you run across one of the nastier ones, it can be really, really frustrating. My wireless on this computer hasn't worked properly in months (since the November update, I think); if the computer goes into hibernate, I have to disconnect/reconnect to the wifi network. It's habitual now, and it's still annoying as hell. But I do like the Aero Snap keyboard shortcuts.

That's an awesome video, thanks for sharing it. I knew he was crazy religious, and I'd heard about "the vault" before (some ten years ago I heard about how he had vastly more unreleased material than released material, and frankly his public output is already quite a bit higher than most musicians), but I'd never heard anything like that kind of intimate story.

I picked up Tales of Zestiria yesterday and have so far spent 4 hours with it, which means I'm probably just about finished with what you would call the tutorial section of the game. All in all, it's got its share of good things and bad things, and I'm certainly going to keep playing it (possibly after nuking my save and starting over...). Sundry thoughts: Combat is looking very Graces F-like, not Xillia-like or Vesperia-like, as I expected and hoped. Graces F combat was really good (requires attention, rewards skill, enjoyable on higher difficulties), whereas Xillia and Vesperia were not great (I never felt like they rewarded skill, so I didn't try bumping difficulty). I immediately bumped the difficulty one notch on starting, and just bumped it again because it was still too easy. This is one of the very rare times where I want more difficulty in a game, and I want it because the combat system looks actually interesting and worth learning. Hopefully I'm correct on this perception; even Graces took a while to build up to where the combat got interesting, because of the way skills worked, but it seems they got some of the complexity more up-front here (if you opt into it, which I did). I'm still suffering from the usual Tales initial mechanics dump overload. I was 3.5 hours in before the game even gave me the ability to buy stuff, which of course unlocked still more mechanics. It's always a hassle at first, but usually my mind likes treating these as an optimization mini-game once I get used to it, so I'm sure I'll be fine with it soon enough. I wish I'd set the voice acting to Japanese, but I foolishly chose English since Tales games had been doing fairly well recently on this front, in my book (I enjoyed the dub in all of Xillia, Graces, and Vesperia). Unfortunately, even among the main characters there are weak actors. Mikleo's is particularly bad, sometimes just outright giving the wrong inflection to lines despite clear intention in the phrasing. At this point basically my whole party consists of people I don't really want to listen to. I see good voice actors in the main character cast... but they're not in my party yet, and it only takes one bad apple to ruin the barrel. The voice-acted side characters are also just as bad as always, notably Gramps's, who at least has a prominent role early on. Bad move not doing a better job there. Sadly, I can't just switch to JP voices, since the game doesn't let you switch spoken languages partway through (who knows why). That's why, as mentioned above, I'm seriously considering nuking my game and starting over BGM is boring and uninspiring. Typical of a Tales game. The OP, on the other hand, is awesome, both for the movie and the music. Also typical of a Tales game. The story is pretty trite (everybody together now: 'typical of a Tales game,' right!), but I'm sure there'll be a twist or two to keep me guessing as it progresses. And they've actually got a few unique ideas that help spice things up. I'm a big fan of the idea of the Seraphim race and the way they're integrated into the world.

Yesterday a top contender for greatest living rock star and greatest living guitarist, today no longer with us. Rest in peace, Kid.

I've been wanting to pick up an otome for a while just to try it out, and have been on the hunt for a good one. I'm torn between this and Hakuoki, now.

It definitely helped my appreciation of Kokoro Connect that I was a huge Inaba fan from the moment her personality became apparent. Incidentally, its English dub is probably the best I've ever heard. Luci Christian kills as Inaba, especially, but all of the main five do fantastic work. David Matranga's delivery of Mr. Go feels a little off, all the time, though... But Britney Karbowski makes an excellent little sister to balance that out. So basically, if you've ever thought "maybe I should give dubs a chance", this is the one to go for. Man, I wish they'd bring over the light novels (yes, I know there's a fan translation out there - I want a real one).

Kokoro Connect is actually one of my all-time favorites. It's got acceptable-but-unremarkable setting and characters, but it stands out from the pack based on having excellent plot and pacing, and actual character growth, both of which are rare in anime. I dunno, seems like a stretch to say Kiriyama won anything

Yeah, I would happily set aside all the fake punctuation-induced salt for K-On!!!. Regarding adding some pizzazz to the site name, I propose either Fuwa? Novel! or Fuwa;Novel.

I just wish they'd come out with K-On!!! already.

I read this as "fun and disgusting" at first, and my initial reaction was to think, "well, that sounds about right."

As someone who likes to type titles precisely, I get annoyed every time I find myself typing Little Busters! into a sentence. That, of course, doesn't compare to the horrors of Sound! Euphonium, or the subtleties of distinguishing K-On! vs. K-On!!, but the worst has certainly got to be the punctuation nightmare that is Really? Really!; I mean, really?

I almost posted that suggestion here as well. I agree that Ageha is a bit of a tomboy, in certain aspects of her personality.

On the occasion that you do hit problems, typically someone has already worked through them. Problems do happen sometimes, but more often they're errors with old games and new operating systems, rather than problems with the patch itself. The "Voluntary Technical Support" forum is full of a lot of history of certain issues, so usually you can find whatever problem you're hitting there, or if you can't find a solution, post there, someone will in all likelihood remember it, and they can point you in the right direction.

Trying to finish things off, so I wrapped up both Love Live season 2 (finally, after a month or two) and Charlotte. First, Charlotte: I guess I end up agreeing with many of the naysayers: tons of potential in the ideas, near-complete failure on the execution of those ideas. And then, Love Live season 2 thoughts, no need for spoilers. I really wasn't sold for the first 2/3 of the season. It was mostly kind of boring, though it had its moments, mostly comedic (I mentioned one of them earlier in this thread). But I thought the last 1/3 of the season was excellent, totally nailing all the pieces that made me love the first season. A solid, satisfying conclusion for the show. Edit: Just noticed there's an album by "ZHIEND", with all music composed and arranged by Hikarisyuyo and Marina on vocals. More importantly, it's a 2-disc album with all songs in both English and Japanese. So you can buy it and then throw away the English one, I guess? Still, that's an insta-buy.

Confession: I spent about an hour reading public domain erotica and looking up euphemisms for genitalia. Confession 2: Editing is kinda fun, but editing H scenes is pretty exhausting. What I signed up for only had one, thankfully, but it was pretty intense

I'm with both Sanahtlig and Rooke - I'd be very surprised if they don't align with the existing precedent for an English AS2 release, G-Senjou: $40 for the full Steam game with all bells and whistles (but with no H because they're trying to avoid that battle) and $20 for the edition without voices. The CG gallery being similar is interesting... I'm quite certain that they have to pay substantial royalties per copy for the voices, and that's why it's been split off on the low-cost edition of G-Senjou. I find it hard to imagine that's the case for the CG gallery, given that you're going to see the CGs either way when you play the game, but perhaps they have some similar clause in that contract as well that's forcing this. But regardless, I'm about 90% certain they're not going to charge more than the G-Senjou price points for the two separate editions, which should put them at a fairly normal price point for the English market (whether that price is reasonable or effective at moving product in the English-speaking market is a separate question). I think people here have the motives backwards, honestly - I'm pretty sure their goal is to cut the price further to get more sales, not to inflate it and reap more per sale, and the content split is targeted at that goal. But obviously we won't know for sure until they announce actual prices, which likely won't be for a while... Though we could ask.

Wow. Granted that most moeblob art looks pretty similar these days, but is it just me or does that face look like it was ripped straight out of a KyoAni anime? And to be clear, I have no problem with that. The opposite, if anything. Anyway, still looking forward to this whenever Front Wing brings it here, which I feel pretty confident they will.