Toranth

Many years back, I played a game where all the females were voiced - except one. Only once you'd finished some route did that character's voice start to play. The reason for it is kinda vague, but I seem to remember that it was something like the unvoiced character was actually the same person as a supposedly different voiced character, so the game hid the voices from you until that plot point had been revealed. It didn't work very well then, and I've never seen it again.

Yes, you should see all the endings.

Just be sure to watch the 2006 version, not the crappy 2002 version. You miss out on a fair amount of slice-of-life stuff, but it does a good job of covering the story routes. Air is one of the best written VNs out there. Excellent characters, good story, amazing music. 15 years later, I still find dust in my eyes whenever I hear Aozora.

Final Score: 8 8.5/10

I strongly recommend you just play through the game. The scene happens off camera, and is there entirely for the emotional impact you seem to want to avoid. If you can't stand that sort of drama, you probably should avoid KimiNozo entirely, as the entire game is all about relationship drama. But if you absolutely must know, here - just be aware this will majorly spoil part of the story for you.

The answer is basically No. It's been a while, but from what I remember: Of course, only play the Haruka, Mitsuki, and Akane routes. Everything else is fetish-ish suckiness, and should be avoided.

The Royal Plural is still a first person pronoun - specifically, the first person plural pronoun. It was used because the monarch was frequently considered to speak for all of a nation, rather than just the individual self. It's still a first person pronoun, though. Did you pay no attention to the same skit you linked? Using a title for one's self was done in Latin, but as the skit it said - in English, it makes you seem mental. Stupid, crazy, and just not normal in general. However, there are exceptions. As a literary device, such as sarcasm, it can be useful for displaying detachment or for representing the views of another. When the usage involves titles or descriptions, it is used to remove a sense of individuality. However, "This [whatever]" would correspond to a "この［何か］", a different speech pattern than the plain third person self reference. If one were to use names rather than title/description, you'd lose the effect - and go back into weird usage territory. In non-English languages, a third person self reference is not always considered strange. But in English, it is. Certainly in modern English. If you are attempting to claim that Chocola should speak like a Chaucerian monarch or a Roman Caesar, I think you've got more problems in your translation than worrying about pronouns.

Disagree. I've seen enough anime and read enough VN's to understand the context of the trope. I actually expect it somewhat now. Actually, in Japanese it also implies a certain level of dumb. The idea is that the speaker is too young/naïve/stupid to understand the complications of first person pronouns. Japanese has a LOT of pronouns, by the way - Over 100, if you include the full range from popular modern to classical poetic. Third-person self reference in English is so rare because it is strongly associated with "too stupid to understand 'I'". Unless that is the point you want to make about the character (very stupid, can't speak their own language) you shouldn't be using it in English.

The most important piece of all is continuous practice. Practice reading every day. Even just a little bit is fine - but make sure you do it every day.

It is a pretty standard story. It's the exact story of what happens to 90% of small businesses in the US. Hire too many people, hire the wrong people, don't have processes or plans to keep the employees in line and on task, fail to focus on reasonable deliverable products of the appropriate scope, and finally, the owner's loss of enthusiasm as what was "fun" turns into "work".Nothing unusual in the least. It happens all the time, in all industries. The Japanese VN world also turns out a lot like this, on the low end. Sad to see it happen in this case. Maybe some of the staff will get together somewhere else, with better management.

No waiting. Read the Phorni route now!

None. Period. Nasu has, in fact, said so.Remember, Arc is less of an individual and more of a theological concept. Mere humans, even legendary heroes, can't compete (baring a few special cases, ie the Magicians). There's an entire forum community devoted to the Nasu-verse, btw, for those that don't know: The Beast's Lair.

Erect was fun. A well told version of the succubus story, although as much nuku-ing as you would expect from a game that describes a school with homework assignments like "Have lots of sex." Saimin Yuugi was surprisingly good, both because of the technical qualities (good art, acting) but also because for a hypnosis game, it actually required the main character to win the trust of the girls and work his way up to the rape. That part was well written, and involved a lot of character development. The final story is simple though - boy uses hypnosis to sex up girls. But the way it is told is good.

Not sure how Fantasy this will actually be - One of the pieces of artwork is showing a smartphone and a tablet in it already. So, magi-tech, probably, rather than true fantasy. Also, the focus seems to be on 'School', so... yeah, I dunno.

A dirty little secret about console ports: Many times, the "additional content" added for the console version is not the work of the original writers. Some companies shepherd their games through the porting process, while others dump them off on console companies which just mess with stuff. This can result in some really weird additions or revisions - not always a good thing. So be careful before claiming that the console port is definitive or complete.

It is odd, especially Ayaya (WHY?!). RuiTomo had obvious multiple-writer syndrome that ruined some routes, but to me Comyu never suffered from that, so I find it odd that some many people dislike the earlier routes so much compared to Kagome. Of course, Kagome is just pure awesome, so obviously everyone will like her route (totally unbiased evaluation, I assure you), but what is it that people feel is so different between what came earlier and Kagome?

'Yuichi' is incorrect. If you go to the Wikipedia section on him specifically, you'll see it correctly written (祐一 - Yūichi). The rest of the article was not written that way, probably because writing Yūichi is inconvenient on most western keyboards. The biggest reason 'Yuichi' is wrong is because the correct pronunciation of 祐一 has four syllables - Yu-u-i-chi. In English, there is no inherent way to make 'Yuichi' take on the correct four syllables. 'Yuichi' is a name - it's just a different name than 'Yuuichi'.

Oh, I agree. I was just using it as an example of a game with terrible "gameplay". Baseson does better when they don't do any gameplay attempt at all. I was referring to the gameplay part, not the overall quality of the games. On gameplay, I'd put Nine-tail (Dual-tail, etc) and Softhouse Chara in first tier, with Escu:de being all over the place (some games good some not) but primarily a high second-tier studio. Astronauts' Demonion games are also second tier, like Unicorn's Sengoku Himes, or Catwalk's RPGs.Third tier gameplay I'd say is stuff like Koihime Musou or Princess Hunting on the low end or Tentacle Lord or Shojo to Maou to Tactics (aka, Baby's First TRPG) at the upper end. But if you add in story and characters and art, I agree - Debo no Su produces the most amazingly bland stuff. Even back when they were Studio e.go, they were incapable of producing anything above mildly interesting. It's kind of impressive, actually, how this group of folks can release 40 or something games, and have almost all of them get a 70 on EGS. However, if you add in factors other than gameplay, the various studio vary a lot more. Eushully gameplay is always good, but would you call Kamidori a good game in terms of story? Softhouse Chara makes wonderfully complex systems, with rarely more than a premise. Shojo to Maou to Tactics has a nearly brainless system, but the characters are amusing and the story isn't bad. I'm enjoying that part of the game more than I did any gameplay in it.

Hey, now, Debo no Su is distinctly second rate gameplay with uninteresting plots. First rate is Alicesoft or Eushully. Third rate is Koihime Musou.

Agreed. Kagome is best waifu. There are very few heroines that can compare to the sheer awesome that is Kagome.She's also a big part of why I consider Comyu the best game from the past 5 years.

With thousands of votes, an EGS score of 85, and a VNDB of 8.5 with about 20% of all votes being 10s, I'm pretty sure you can't call MajiKoi "underrated".

A Bethesda press release announced 20 million, but when questioned refused to state whether this was sold or shipped, and what exactly it included.3rd party sites put the total at about 17 million shipped worldwide (I missed the 5.5 million PS3 in my first check). Same third party sites list FF-XIII at about 12 million shipped worldwide. So, yes, the wildly popular Skyrim, a game doing so well that the original creators admitted to be surprised in their interviews, is selling roughly 50% better than a game that is considered a failure, caused senior staff to resign, and is in no small part responsible for the ill financial health of the company.