Darklord Rooke

The fox lady.

I keep wanting to enjoy each new Pokemon release, but the formula keeps getting more and more tired. The last version I really enjoyed was silver. This will be the first time I've avoided a new Pokemon game.

Imo, if a title emphasises the visual novel elements, then it is a VN. If it emphasises gameplay, then it is a game. Kamidori's focus is on the RPG mechanics, so it is an RPG with visual novel elements. Little Busters emphasis is the story, so it's a VN with gameplay. This way, Tiger Woods 2010 doesn't get categorised as an RPG despite featuring RPG mechanics (because it's emphasis is on the sport-sim elements.) VNDB is an okay guide, but their definition and database is flawed. Most people like it like that, but when it includes games like Phoenix Wright, Lightning Raidy and Kamidori, you know that accuracy isn't something they're too fussed about.

Sengoku Rance has absolutely nailed the 'one more turn' style of gameplay, tons of fun. I'm currently on my second playthrough (abandoned the first one after about 12 hours) and I'm just starting to get the hang of things.

I have KiraKira in the top 10 of my 'most overrated VNs of all time' list. I thought Deardrops was far superior, even with two weak routes.

I so don't believe you

I'll definitely keep an eye on this.

For those interested in the evolution of the terms 'you' and 'thou', the following will probably be a pretty entertaining read. For those not interested, the following will probably bring forth disembowel-inducing boredom, so best to just carry on With the increasing influence of French, the use of ye/you was used to designate not merely the plural form, but also social difference. Indeed, the social resonance of the second-person pronoun eventually came to be more significant than the singular/plural distinction. As early as the thirteenth century, you was used as a singular pronoun of address denoting respect, one analogous to the French “vous.” Wales and Millward note the particular influence on this development of French courtly literature, which consistently employed “vous” as a pronoun of polite address. Mustanoja suggests that this deferential custom has its origins in the plural of majesty, although, according to Blake, this influence has yet to be firmly established. Nonetheless, in his survey of the use of you and thou in ME literature, Blake suggests that authors such as Chaucer and Malory became increasingly sensitive to pronoun usage, as changes in the system “opened up the possibility of nice discriminations in language use” (539). Although many recent studies have complicated the issue, it has been widely viewed that the adoption of you as a polite form led to the pejoration of thou and thus occasioned a development of a “power semantic” (Brown 255) in which thou became “a mark of contempt or a social marker” (Blake 536), the term of address often given by a social superior to an inferior. Thee was also used among equals of the lower class; the nobility would typically use you among themselves (Brown 256-57; Leith 107; Barber 208-9). In this way, the use of pronouns came to serve as a means not only of distinguishing one social group from another, but also as a means of consolidating affiliation, even among family members. While thoroughly acknowledging the “solidarity dimension” of pronoun usage (110), Wales, like many, insists that the use of you and thou was hardly this straightforward, pointing out that “in English usage, right from the beginning, there was always considerable fluctuation between thou and you forms in the singular” (114). Both Hope and Wales show that thou could be used to mark a range of emotions other than contempt; it could also express familiarity and intimacy. Yet although, as Wales suggests, a “master’s thou need not only indicate “condescension,” but familiarity” (114), it is certainly important to consider who has the ability to exercise choice when it comes to pronoun usage. Sceptical about the argument Brown and Gilman make for a close correspondence between the power semantic and hierarchical social structure, Wales is among many who argue strongly for “the possibility that there was some semantic overlap between [you and thou] even as their values changed from the fourteenth to the seventeenth century” (115). This overlap in meaning and usage may have led to the eventual dominance of you: since you and thou may have been used interchangeably in informal speech, one form may no doubt have become redundant. Yet the eventual levelling of the singular and plural second-person pronoun can be attributed to a variety of factors. Increasing upward mobility may have also contributed to the eventual dominance of you, which, by the early eighteenth-century, generally took over all of the functions of thou/thee. In the Middle English and Early Modern periods, members of the expanding middle class sought to imitate polite forms of speech and to avoid those usages that would associate them with the lower classes. By the seventeenth century, polite society typically shunned thou, which had become the marked form. This was in large part the result of the use of thou and thee by religious groups such as the Quakers, who saw the older pronoun form as that which emphasized the equality of rather than the social distance between all individuals (Leith 108, Crystal 71). The continued use of thou and thee was, interestingly, the subject of much scrutiny and led to the development of a new verb, to thou, and a verbal noun, thou-ing. In a telling example from Elizabeth Gaskell’s Ruth (1853), the working-class heroine at one point “dropped the more formal ‘you,’ with which she had addressed Miss Benson [her new guardian], and thou’d her quietly and habitually” (137). http://homes.chass.utoronto.ca/~cpercy/courses/6361Malton.htm

@Nayleen: Have you considered insight meditation? Insight meditation (Vipassana) focuses on awareness of our thoughts and the world around us, and has been known to help those suffering from depression. The first excerpt is from 'Mindfulness in plain english' ( http://www.amazon.com/Mindfulness-Plain-English-Anniversary-Edition/dp/0861719069 ) The next two (longer) excerpts are from 'Happiness - A guide to developing life's most important skill', written by Matthie Ricard ( http://www.amazon.com/Happiness-Guide-Developing-Lifes-Important/dp/0316167258/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1380198430&sr=1-1&keywords=Happiness+Matthieu+ricard ) I strongly recommend both of these books. Both books are about inisght meditation and both books are written by Buddhist monks.

You = singular youse = plural

'Thou' has never been a formal mode of address. Although there was a period it was used as an expression of contempt, or if you were addressing inferior people.

I found Aselia's characters to be incredibly dull. Mind-numbing, coma-inducing dull. I abandoned the game after half an hour, so I never got a chance to experience the plot. I know it gets better, but no thanks. Life's too short. Haven't played Yumina yet, and I won't get a chance till late in the year.

No. It's all about the H-scenes.

Some people would call this 'cheating' It's good to see Civilisation in someone's list. Awesome game!

It's surprising so many people are willing to pay for an emulator Also, anyone know how well the D-pad is replicated on a touchscreen?

I hope you're getting paid for all the plugs you're making, Aaeru

Bartender - This drink is a metaphor describing all your troubles, drinking it will lead you to an epiphany.

Whoa, those are some pretty short episodes Why are they splitting the game into 5 episodes if it's only 6-7 hours in length? Seems a bit weird to me.

There's a new, large-budget ($150,000), indie title that's just been released called 'Leviathan: The Last Day of the Decade.' Has anybody here played it? I've heard some really good things about it but I've got a large backlog of games and won't get to it any time soon. Thought I'd bring it to people's attentions though. http://vndb.org/v13124 http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=172019758 http://thelostwood.com/en.html

Didn't Destiny have better voice actors than Justice?

I'm sorry, could you trot that past me again? What were you saying about 'True Love'?

True Love was awesome. Persona 3 and Persona 4 have dating sim elements. 'Always remember me' from Winterwolves is said to be a dating sim, but I can't confirm because I never played it.

Legally free and doesn't require the fiddling translated novels require?

Well, let's read through the criteria for adding games to their database (their criteria is similar to their definition, but they've put more effort into it and it's tighter. ) To qualify for inclusion in the VNDB database: 1 - the game needs to use novel narrative 2 - the game's narrative needs to be presented in a specific way, i.e ADV and 3 - the storytelling in the game needs to be uninterrupted by gameplay for a significant length. And this is where the error is. (Of course, a game can bypass this criteria completely if it is adored by one of the moderators, but let's leave that, shall we.) I can understand what they tried to accomplish with point 3, but it has been poorly thought out and will lead to errors. Let me give you an example. Let's say we were trying to define an RPG, and we included in our criteria that 'the RPG elements of the game need to be uninterrupted by other gameplay for a significant length of time'. What would be the result? Let's take a post off the bioware boards as an example: Piss off mate! Not a chance *shakes fist*! See the problem? Games like Tiger Woods Golf and The-Crappy-NHL game mentioned above, have significant RPG mechanics (like stats, levelling and grinding) that can go uninterrupted for a 'significant' length of time ('significant' being subjective and will vary from person to person.) However, nobody in their right mind would consider them RPGs. How does this relate back to visual novels? Well, I'm guessing that some brainbox has managed to argue that Raidy's story goes 'uninterrupted by gameplay for a significant amount of time' (probably when she's having sex) and is therefore a visual novel. How else would a dungeon-crawling, h-RPG with (and I'm being mighty generous with the next part) one or two visual novel elements have been included into the database. There are a few debateable inclusions on VNDB (Blazblue, Kamidori, all those dating sims like True Love) but the inclusion of Raidy is absurd. Even J-List advertises it as a Yuri RPG/dungeon crawler. So what's the problem with the definition/criteria? Specifically, the storytelling could go uninterrupted by gameplay for a 'significant' length of time, but the gameplay aspect of the 'visual novel' could then go along uninterrupted for 10 times as long. Would this matter? Not according to VNDB's definition. Maybe if they had said ('significant relative to yada yada but I'm not happy with this either.) So, how do we keep people from saying Tiger Woods and NHL are RPG games? Easy. The focus of the game must be on the rpg elements and not the sporting gameplay. Same deal with visual novels. The focus must be on the visual novel elements (narrative) for a game to be a visual novel. What's the focus of Tiger Woods? Playing golf. Is it an RPG? Nooooooo! What's the focus of Raidy? Dungeon-crawling. Is it a visual-novel? Noooooooo! Have a game where the focus is split between two genres? Hellloooo hybrid! But that's just me being picky.

Unless it's porn. Wouldn't make it much easier then *ho ho ho*