Vokoca

Congrats on your 500 posts! And congrats on being able to put up with my cynical bullshit, not sure which one is the bigger achievement here.

Finished my first playthrough of Chaos;Child. My fears of the bad-end spoiler were both realised at first and then stomped into the ground, as C;C is probably the VN with the most "No, I am the REAL culprit!!!" twists after one another that I've ever read. But you know what? It actually goes about those in a pretty smart way, and it does a good job at slapping you around with red herrings when it really wants to. The main twist tying everything together was well thought out and it is definitely up there with the C;H one, it's really hard to say which is better. What is better, though, is the OST - so good! My only real complaint so far is that there is one character in particular that seems absolutely pointless. She doesn't contribute to the story in any way whatsoever in the first playthrough/normal ending. Well, they will most likely fix that in the new parts of the story that got unlocked, apparently; I'm expecting Noah style heroine endings. She really is, and anyone who disagrees has shit taste.

Well I haven't tried this one, but the Ishin companion app not only let you play the farming/fishing portion of the game, but it also had most of the minigames and the entire dungeon system. What this means is that you not only got to play the downtime portions of the game (which are fully 3D rendered ports of the original game parts btw), but you got to play with the entire battle system too in the dungeon part of the game. So basically you had almost everything but the free-roam+story on the go, and that was a pretty damn good deal imo, especially considering the Vita 'app' was completely free, regardless of you owning the game. 0 doesn't have the dungeon system, so I'm not sure if they even kept the battle system in for this instalment, but even so it is a grreat way to kill time during commution and such and then carry over the profits into your main game. Western developers should take a cue imo, the only companion app I've tried was for GTAV, and that was complete horseshit.

Rika is an annoying little shit for sure, but I've hated Nemu much more througout the entire story. Fuck Nemu. At least Rika has the courtesy to get rekt. In chapter eight of Chaos;Child. I think I am nearing the climax, things were really escalating the last few chapters. Funny thin is that I've purposefully got a bad end about 4 chapters ago, and unless it was some masterful mindfuck red herring (which I doubt it is), I honestly feel like the bad end spoiled me. How do you even put spoilers in your own VN, this is absolutely ridiculous. Well, nothing is for sure yet, but this might be the VN where getting bad ends first is not a good idea...

Bleh to get any serious money in-game in Yakuza 0, you probably need to use the companion Vita app to be able to put time into it, and you need the money to level up your abilities... while there are plenty of alternatives for sure, this is kind of fucked, especially for an action game. In the last chapters and I'm barely through half of all the skill trees... I suppose it is an incentive to get into the side content more, but 6 skill trees is just a lot to fill. Ishin was much simpler in this regard. Still, now that the game is announced to get localised... get the game, guys. The money system can be a pain in the ass, but the rest is pretty fucking awesome.

Picked up the slack in Yakuza 0 again. Getting near the end of the game, but I've only now got a good grasp at Kiryuu's Money Island, so the money has finally started flying in - I have barely half of the skill tree complete because of how expensive shit gets later on, but I might have to stall my progress to save up money. Fighting the money mugger seems to be faster but it is way too much of a hassle. Haven't touched Majima's Money Island much yet, since the whole hostess club thing is way more complex and I'm not sure if I even want to get into that... and I'm doing my best not to fall into the minigame trap again, it got bad enough in Yakiza 3 already. Anyway, the story is really fun, so I'm not sure if I'll even stall at all... plus I have to get this done so I can move back on Sen no Kiseki, and then Sen no Kiseki 2 since it is on PS+ now. Then I also have Tokyo Xanadu on my Vita.... what is this Falcom overdose? Glad to hear you're enjoying Rising, loved that game myself, too! A platinum game being your first character action game, you've certainly picked well! As for MGS, you can run MGS1 on a PS1 emulator well enough (or there is a PC version I think, but I seem to remember that having worse music or something? Might be confusing stuff here.), and MGS2 has a PC port. MGS2 is my favourite one because it by far does the craziest things in the series, so if you like games doing interesting things with its medium, you'll probably like it as well - playing MGS1 first is required, though.

I'm kind of surprised how many people hate Rika. Sure, she's an annoying piece of shit, but I felt like she also had the most character development out of the entire cast (in various directions). I felt like she got kind of likeable during her route, but it was a long time since I've read it.

This should be worth it for people who want the Xtend Edition content on PC, too. Won't be chipping in myself since I'm grabbing the Vita version, but hopefully this goes well.

Never read it but the art in this one is super legit at least. https://vndb.org/v16802 All SeaCoxx (hosted on the amazing website spermation.net) does is take a winner of a user-written adult story contest at Nocturne Novel and slaps some budget on it to make it into a VN. Nice art or not, you're still just reading an user-submitted adult short story - adult being the key word here. You're basically reading fanfiction level fap material, and honestly you're probably much better off just grabbing a regular nukige.

Continuing my adventure through the meme murder simulator, Chaos;Child. Done with three chapters so far - they're about the same length as the Chaos;Head chapters, so they're on the longer side. So far, my impressions are kind of mixed. While I think Chaos;Head had a much stronger start when it comes to the suspense and intrigue, most of that comes from the main characteer being a total piece of shit. I loved that about Chaos;Head, and I loved even more how the VN wasn't afraid to straight out make the MC fuck up multiple times like the loser that he was. Now, Chaos;Child doesn't really do this - while the MC still is on the introverted side, there is the main cast that he keeps interacting with, ranging from his friends to family. This creates an entirely different dynamic to the story, focusing more on the interpersonal drama and the fear of getting others involved rather than fear of danger. This leads to a relatively slower pace than Chaos;Head, but at the same time I feel like the VN shows you much more (without really making anything clear) - the author likes to jump between characters quite a lot, even if it is someone completely random, there just to show a (seemingly) unrelated scene. That said I wouldn't say it is worse than C;H, just quite different. The greatly improved prose helps a lot, and some of that creativity also seems to carry over to the murder cases themselves, and the characters in general feeling more complex and fleshed out in this stage of the VN already. I'm enjoying it a lot so far, can't wait to read more.

I've finished Natsukumo Yururu a few days ago. If you are familiar with HaruKuru in any sort of way, you should know what to expect - hilarious sex-centered comedy with relatively disturbing dark themes and ridiculously creative hard sci-fi plot slowly seeping in as you get further in. I was kind of afraid that Watanabe couldn't possibly top what he did in HaruKuru, but to be quite honest I think he came up with something even crazier this time, and I loved every little bit of it. His comedy has gotten even more ridiculous and out there as well, and I wouldn't be afraid to say the same about the pacing. That said, I still feel like the HaruKuru cast was a bit more likeable than the one of Natsukumo, and for that I've enjoyed HaruKuru just a little bit more. Overall I gave Natsukumo an 8.8/10 on my nonsensical enjoyment scale, and gave up completely on trying to find any logic in the arbitrary rating system. Screw the numbers, I'll just give things whatever from now on. I'm playing Chaos;Child now. First impressions are great - budget is over the top, the writing is on a completely different level than C;H (much, much better) and the murders/suicides make the prequel ones look like nothing at all. Still just in the first chapter though, so I will save more coherent observations for later.

Nah, Kazuki is just such a damn genius that she had it all planned out in ways you can't even comprehend, obviously. Yuuji being a much bigger mess than most of the heroines is what makes him so charming to me as well. Still, the inconsistent structure of the trilogy hurts it a lot, and I'd agree that Grisaia is above average at best. Wouldn't go as far as calling it just downright mediocre, as if anything you can't deny the great prose at the very least, and some nice ideas here and there. Leave the mediocre to moege.

The reasons you list don't really sound like a bad translation to me either. Using English expressions/idioms should only be a plus - the work is rewritten in English and as such it should feel natural and comprehensible in that language. If they were to, on the other hand, translate the Japanese sayings word by word, that would feel much more like a mistake to me. The change of names usually follows the same pattern, it should be natural in the translated language, not in the original. As such, using first names instead of surnames makes sense. This is quite an iffy subject since you have to miss with the original script, and I'm honestly not a fan of it either, but it's one of the language differences you just have to deal with. Even if leaving honorifics and original names in makes things feel better, it definitely doesn't do better for the language. Reducing 'ou' to 'o' is a weird localisation transcription habit and I wouldn't call it correct myself either, though. I haven't read either the original or the translation myself, so I can't really judge, but it doesn't really sound that bad from what you say. If you don't like the (arguably unavoidable) westernising, there's not much else for you to do but to read the Japanese version.

Finished Rine's route in Natsukumo. Welp, my oppai-loli dreams are over, I guess I have to move onto the next route and more of the regular lolis, ew! Aside from Rine being my favourite character (not just for the breasts ), this was definitely the coolest route so far, too. I was afraid that Watanabe spent all his crazy imagination on HaruKuru, but he clearly had more than enough left for Natsukumo too. The idea behind HaruKuru is still a little bit cooler, but honestly comparing anything to that just feels really unfair. I guess I have one more (or two?) routes left in Natsukumo, and then it's finally time for Chaos;Child. It's getting quite hard to resist starting it right now, but there's nothing worse than starting too many VNs and then finishing none.

Hey, it could always be worse. You could like the Tsukihime remake art, like me... hahaha.... haha...

This has to be picked up for localisation sooner or later, the companies would be dumb not to do so. We even got stuff like Akiba's Trip, Net High should just be a matter of time.

I suppose they just don't want to touch the writer's work and mess with it too much. To be fair, if someone was to edit Ryuukishi's writing style to make it correct, it'd have to be rewritten to the point where none of Ryuukishi's characteristics would be left. When it comes to PC VNs, any longer one will have at least a single text correction patch released later. Console releases are probably more strict with this at least, but I wouldn't be surprised if the only thing they checked was just the spelling alone. I really wonder if the position of an editor is even a thing when it comes to VNs.

Continuing my infinite journey through Higurashi Sui, I've finished Tsumihoroboshi and it's new bad ends, along with the Yoigoshi arc one of the bad ends leads into. Not really much to say about Tsumihoroboshi, maybe just that Ryuukishi's amazing inability to pay attention to his own script when it comes to keeping to specific point of view narratives reaches new magical heights in this arc. Suddenly switching between first and third person narrative mid-scenes is one thing, but going out of your way to highlight a certain perspective with a different text colour and then forgetting to change the colour when switching the perspectives is another... not to mention he even managed to jump between characters this time, sometimes even for just a single sentence. The writing clumsiness is kind of funny and almost endearing at times, but damn does it feel ridiculous in a text that was re-released like 5 times. As for the Yoigoshi arc... this late in the story, it is pretty much spoiler galore, even if 95% of its characters are completely new, so the only thing I can really say about it is that it takes place in ~2007. Yeah, this is still Higurashi... somehow! That said the VN is still a lot of fun, just much easier to pick on after spending nearly 200 hours with it already. Other than that, I'm continuing Natsukumo. Finished the first two routes, and about halfway through the third one... I don't know how Watanabe does it, but he has come up with some ridiculously cool ideas once again. If Akikuru ends up being this awesome as well, Watanabe might just as well end up being my favourite VN writer. Oh hey, sounds just like NISA!

Ended up pulling an all-nighter because of the incredibly long Net High demo. I still haven't finished it, but this is probably the most hilarious shit I've ever played. Humour so self-aware that even the glossary is pretty much there just to poke fun at itself, real internet services parodies everywhere, and internet trolling turned into a battle of life and death... truly a game of the generation! In a society split into weaboo losers and people with a life, do you have enough memes to battle your way to the top and become the king of Twiitter?! Drown in followers or remain the worthless trash you are!

I don't know, turning into Ryuukishi is something you should keep hidden, for your own safety. Posting it might not be the best idea.

Everyone loves Sara <3

Welcome back! Congrats on the Japanese, just a bit more and you'll be one of us elitist assholes.

Hahaha, I thought it was going to be shit given the fact the VN was just a random story from an internet writing contest with budget slapped on top. Kind of surprised about the amount of H, but I guess I should've guessed it was that kind of contest, haha. Now you should go and check out their other BDSM masterpiece. This is like fanfics in VN form, truly that company has hit on solid gold.

For me, it was kind of a natural progression as I got into anime. Over a year or so, I finally made the move from the 'infinite shounen' to shorter and actually complete anime, and Higurashi quickly became one of my favourite ones. I then randomly came across Umineko, and in my plebness I thought it was just some wannabe Higurashi on an island (still hurts remembering this D: ), but maybe because of that I looked into it enough to actually realise it was a visual novel first and foremost. So I read the first episode unpatched, and then got involved with the UmiTweak team - and with that, I put Umineko on hold until it was patched and jumped head-first into the world of VNs. I don't quite remember which one was first exactly, but it was either Clannad, or Chaos;Head.

Decided to leave KnS2 for later and continued reading Natsukumo. I can definitely see why people say Watanabe has improved since HaruKuru - somehow the jokes are even more dirty than before, and all the more hilarious, but more importantly, when Watanabe decides it is time to get serious... well, I was incredibly impressed in HaruKuru, but Natsukumo just completely destroyed me. This was possibly the most hype way to set the tone I've ever seen, and I can't wait to read more.