Lucius

So, I'm still in the midst of reading Chapter VI of Umineko - taking my sweet time, as I always do - and there are two things I feel I should bring up, less I forget about them during my final review of the novel. There seems to be a lot of repeated expositions in the narration. A trivial detail that someone said 10 seconds ago is repeated again for several more passages, as if we're autistic 8 year olds with comprehension problems. This is one of the reasons why the VN is as lengthy as it is - repeated expositions. There's an incredibly disturbing line of dialogue between Beatrice and Battler, where I mean, don't get me wrong, there are many good things about Umineko, particularly the soundtrack, but it's stuff like this that prevents it from making my top VN ranking.

Arnold proves once again that there can only be one Terminator.

I'm gay, I would beat off a guy.

And by 100%, in the language of Hello Games, that means 0%. Glad I only tried the demo and forgot about the game altogether.

True. It's my favorite anime as a kid. Next person's favorite anime is Cory in the House.

True....... Next person has no chin. #NoChin #Chinless

I guess I should have emphasized in my last post that I wasn't talking about h-content at all, period. I even said it was perfectly justified for h-content to be cut because it's pretty obvious why publishers want to censor that kind of shady shit. I was referring to the more controversial non-h-content, VNs that deal with rape (non-hentai and non-eroge versions where rape is used for drama), terrorism, misogyny (as I mentioned); that kind of stuff. It isn't really unthinkable for the business-minded to can a product because these topics don't really make a product appealing to certain demographics. I should point out that the Steam version of Tomoyo After was based off the Memorial Edition of the VN, and that if content was cut, it was already cut in the Japanese ME version. That being said, whether if Steam is involved in cutting content wasn't my point. I'm not interested in just Steam itself. Rather, I was referring to all official parties that aren't fans/independent translators, and how fan translations would be less likely to censor anything because they have no obligation to profit from specific demographics. Well, yes. Like I said, all of my sources stemmed from secondary accounts, and I apologize, but like I said, I just needed to voice out my concerns and, in the process, clarify them. First of all, thanks for clarifying that the Japanese devs were involved in the censorship process as well, I appreciate it. But as I mentioned in my previous point above, that's not my concern. My concern lies with all official parties involved in the translation process - Japanese or otherwise - and how fan-translations, as I said, would not be obligated to censor anything. And again, just to reemphasize, I'm not talking about T&A, or h-content.

False, but damn, that looks like a hilarious game. I should play it when I have the time. Next person has thrown up in public before.

False. My futon is perfectly hard... not rock-hard, but just hard enough. Next person has played No Man's Lie- I mean No Man's Sky and regretted it.

False. Coke ftw. Smoke Coke everyday. Next person has a hug-pillow (not necessarily the sexual/anime kind).

False... that's weird. Next person can go three days without food.

False. I don't have friends. Next person prefers using a fork over chopsticks when eating noodles.

True. How did you know that? Imma have to change my address now, you stalker. Next person has less than 100 followers on Twitter.

I used it a lot in G-senjou no Maou whenever I feel like it's going to move to a new chapter/route. I like to keep each route as a separate reading. I could do that by manually going to the menu and saving, but doing so for every single scene is just impractical. It's the same reason why there are so many save slots available in visual novels, because there are OCDed people like myself with these little habits of keeping our VNs organized in certain ways.

I'm guessing it's the same reason as why they exist in any other game - convenience. While saving in visual novels is far easier than in video games, some people just don't like spending those extra few seconds loading the menu screen so that they could save or load. They just want to quickly load back to a specific point of the story for... whatever reasons.

That underlined point is quite significant in terms of what I was trying to say, and not just purely with h-scenes either. What if the content was non-sexual, but controversial anyway? Contents with racism? Sexism? Misogyny? How far would the censorship go to earn more money? It simply bugs me a little when it comes to the 'official translators' that the publishers are the ones who decide the type of content you're going to get, not the original creators themselves. A fair example would be the recent Grisaia no Meikyuu, which I've heard received quite a bit of content-cut compared to the R18 Japanese version. Now, I know that it's not a significant cut that would affect the main story, but the fact of the matter is, even if we disregard the h-scene removal (again, perfectly justifiable), with the kind of other non-hentai mature content in Grisaia VNs, just what other stuff did they remove from the VN itself? Let's not forget that one of the characters is an adolescent potty-mouth. It's stuff like that that makes me think that Steam (or Steam publishers, whatever) cut out more than just the h-scenes, and I just couldn't really trust their decision-making. Here's another example: Tomoyo After: It's A Wonderful Life. I apologize that all of my examples are secondary accounts of what other people said, but I would just like to confirm if these concerns of mine ring true. I heard that one of the bad ends of Tomoyo After was either changed or removed, and that it was replaced with a happier (probably more generic) ending. Now, whether if that is true or not, it's just an example of what might happen when corporations take over the decision-making on a creative project (not just VN-translation), to manufacture it into something they can sell, and in that sense, manufacture into something not incredibly offensive or outright controversial. While I know that this isn't always the case, I believe there's a fair amount of official productions that go through the same factory-produced packaging process. Just something I would look out for among official translations.

And yet, money is still a huge factor in determining the quality of the production. Though the 'professionals' might be able to get the translation much more accurately, it doesn't mean much when they censor adult content to cater to a wider range of audiences. Some VNs being censored don't present much of a problem, but censoring the more mature stories is contradictory of the kind of stories those VNs were trying to tell in the first place, distorting the spirit of the stories. In other words, the accuracy of a fan translation can still be better than a corporate-produced VN with executive-meddling, despite the lack of professional skills. In terms of faithfulness to the original VN anyway. If you want a family-friendly VN with the adult humor butchered, look to nowhere else but Steam, kids.

Censortube is going great.

I hate fighting games, because I always suck at it. Like seriously, I thought it was a problem with me using KBM, but then I played Dead or Alive 5 demo on my Vita and I still couldn't counter/react fast enough. FML. OTL Anyway, I'm sure the story isn't anything important if it's not canon. Probably something along the links of P4D.

Because I haven't really experienced the Trails games before, I have no emotional attachment to it to really care about the story. My mind is just rigid like that. i.e.: I wouldn't even consider playing the older SMT/Persona games if I never played Persona 4 before. There's a 'give-and-take' relationship, in which only after I feel like I could enjoy exploring the world this franchise has to give me then I would spare my own precious and limited time to the other installments. And yes, it's very limited, with the amount of unfinished VNs I have in my library. For me, whether if I'm going to enjoy the experience or not > how good the story is going to be. And for those older Trails games, with their dated 8-bit graphics and isometric gameplay, I don't think I'm gonna enjoy it at all, even if the story might be good. And that's a big "might be", because fantasy settings are a big turn-off for me. I prefer urban settings, or at least, sci-fi settings. If I'm gonna play a game that I might not enjoy for the story, the equivalence of that experience would be watching the entire story on YouTube. There wouldn't be any difference for me, because I wouldn't be enjoying the gameplay either way. So yes, I would happily, ignorantly play Cold Steel before all the other games. And that's only after I've confirmed that the third Cold Steel isn't a PS4 exclusive, even, so my relationship with the Trails games is pretty much at a large distance.

Well, the thing is, it's a logical conclusion that with fan-translation, people who did it for free, for the passion of it, would naturally put in more effort than someone who's just making a quick buck.

True, but I would assume the same for many people. Next person prefers white chocolates.