Ragtime

Yeah, after using it for a while I'm getting constant crashes. Hopefully the creator fixes the issues as this has a lot of potential to be pretty useful. There is another piece of software which works with dlsite RJ codes which was put together by Lux on the ULMF forums. It isn't open source but I've been using it for over a year now without any issues. It is far more polished than the VN manager but it only works for games with RJ codes, Demon Master Chris is one such game. So if you have a bunch of dlsite games (mostly RPGmaker with some VN's) this program will work well for you.

Someone on Reddit put together a brilliant piece of software called visual novel manager. It allows you to organize and sort your VN collection much more easily than just using windows explorer. It works very well as it is, but it is missing a few features which would make it perfect (which will hopefully be implemented in future versions.) all credit goes to Reddit user: binary_flame. The link, for those interested. It is open source, so those of you who know how to program can look through the source code and make sure it is clean.

Arunaru's translation of VI is apparently on hold now for an indeterminate amount of time

Watch a video of the Gameplay, it is actually (in my opinion) leagues ahead of any other VN/RPG which has an English translation. If you are comparing the gameplay to a triple A, big budget, non-VN title, obviously you are going to find that it falls short. Considering however, that this is a VN with a gigantic novels worth of text (I would estimate between 400k and 600k words which twice as large as most epic fantasy books (ex: Robert Jordans wheel of time books are about 300k words each on average)) to backup the gameplay, I'd say that it is pretty spectacular. Everyone is entitled to their opinion and beauty truly is in the eye of the beholder. Some people probably prefer the turn based strategy of the Alicesoft/Eushully variety, but I've always loved a little action thrown into my RPG's (ex: tales of destiny series) because it makes me feel like I'm an active participant rather than just an observer who is along for the ride.

Other than Duel Savior (which is amazing). Their VN's seem like perfect games to be translated because they have: 1) Great art 2) Fairly simple japanese (from what I've been told) 3) Decent gameplay elements Yet nobody seems to want to touch any of their games with a 10 foot pole. I can imagine that since most of their games are so massive, each project will probably take months of absolute dedication from a group of people (or years of so-so dedication), but it isn't like nothing like that has been done before. Is it just that the Baldr games have been unlucky in the selection process ? or is there some other more fundamental reason for which none of them have even been attempted ? I've had my eye on the Baldr series for almost a decade, I'm actually at a point now where I'm starting to learn Japanese just so I can play them.

One that nobody else has mentioned: Kikokugai the Cyber Slayer has a whole bunch of action as well as a great story (by VN standards), and as it only has one route and no choices it won't take up a lot of your time, definitely worth checking out.

I just finished bunny black, it was actually pretty great. A good mix of all the elements and the combat/leveling system actually feels amazingly rewarding, my only qualm was the difficulty curve was a little imbalanced; it started out extremely difficult but ended up being a cakewalk, there was no real need to switch to second or third tier units (my first tier units just steamrolled everything including the last boss without any difficulty.) I played on normal, I would recommend anyone who picks it up play it on the hardest difficulty as the curve is a little wonky. It also has a new game + option (but it isn't necessary to get all the scenes, and doesn't really offer much in the way of new content.) Although Bunny Black was grindy for sure, the grinding felt somewhat rewarding as you are awarded scene variations and new dialog. As far as ero RPG games go, it was one of my favorites by far. To the OP, another great dungeon crawler which may be lost to the annals of time is Words Worth, it is old but I feel like it is definitely worth playing if you can get your hands on an english copy and then get it working. The story-line is actually somewhat gripping, and even though there isn't as much ero content as Bunny Black, the cg that are included are very well drawn (I really loved the art style but the censorship can be somewhat off putting.), the story makes up for most of its shortcomings and actually feels like a somewhat epic tale of progression and growth. The gameplay is unique in that it plays out like a first person shooter/slasher (no turn based combat here.). Be forewarned, it is quite grindy and the difficulty curve is extremely unforgiving (i.e: you will destroy one fight, then a few steps further you will encounter an enemy which will dispatch you in a few hits.)

Oh wow, I didn't know it was open source, that is awesome, thanks! Yeah, VN's take up a lot more HDD space, I prefer to keep most of mine on a separate external HDD which is dedicated to just VN's and the list is fairly large, it makes finding the one I want to play next somewhat challenging as all I have to go by is a name (often in japanese), I was just hoping that there was something similar to the dlsite game manager for VN's, but I guess running an offline version of VNDB to quickly look up any title would be a fairly good approximation of what I was looking for.

Anyone know if any software exists which can organize VN's/Aggregate data about them into some sort of easily browsable offline database? I know the VNDB has an API which would allow scraping so collecting the data wouldn't be hard at all. As an example of what I'm talking about; over on the ULMF forums Lux created such a piece of software for RPG maker games, it scrapes DLsite JP/EN and forms an amazing database using just the RJ codes. This means that instead of looking through hundreds or in some cases thousands of folders to find the game you want, then looking it up on DLsite, you can do a quick search on this database and find all the info about a game that you have (i.e: rating, preview images, genres, time played, date installed etc. etc.), and then launch the program directly from the database list alongside AGTH/Translation aggregator (it launches all 3 together). It makes sorting through these games, deciding which one to play, and hooking text an infinitely more simple task. I know something like this probably doesn't appeal to everyone, but I'm really OCD and like my data/files to be organized as well as possible. I wish I had the programming knowledge to bring something like this into existence, but alas, I have none ( (so hopefully it exists already!)