ChaosRaven

I read a bit more, but while I see the potential in the overall idea of the story, the writing is just far too bad to live up to it. The biggest offender is still the protagonist. For what he's supposed to represent, he should be somewhat sinister, charismatic and mysterious. But instead he's the absolute epitome of bland and boring. There's simply no way I'd be able to continue the story with this scumbag as a protagonist anymore. -- Dropped

Hmm, started this at the weekend and so far it seems to be a pure nukige. Alice finds a diary where a scum protagonist pretty much bangs every female being that can't run away fast enough. But naturally, everyone of them is willingly spreading their legs as soon as he gets in range of 5 meters. I've rarely seen such an unlikable protagonist. If it continues like that I'll definitely drop it.

Is this really true or a bad joke?! Conjueror was still a young guy, how could he just pass away? It would be absolutely shocking if that's true.

Harumina actually had four writers. I'm no expert about writers, but the only one I heard who is a bit infamous for his story ends is Kinugasa Shougo - the story writer of Akatsuki no Goei. And that one isn't part of the writer team here.

I guess it depends a bit on what exactly you didn't like about the other otomes, and I didn't read that much myself, but if your main issue was the protagonist then I'm pretty confident that this should be an improvement. At least if you stick to the better routes like the one of Hanzou.

So, I finished another otome VN: Nightshade - a tale about Ninjas. First, I wanted to say that I'm still a bit irritated that I have to revert to an otome VN if I want to read an action-loaded story about cool Ninjas, because the only other thing I get are a bunch of rotten sex fests from Black Lilith. So, since I got that off my heart now, I can start with my review. Nightshade is a story about the Kouga shinobi clan after the Iga clan was eliminated in the Tenshou Iga War, and its survivors fused with the Kouga clan. In that regard, it's a similar alternative Japanese history VN like Hakuouki, even if it doesn't quite reach the high level of it. The protagonist girl Enju is the daughter of the leaders of the Kouga clan and the former Iga clan and represents a symbol of their unification. When the VN starts she's pretty much a ninja rookie and sent on a mission with her companions to capture a famous thief in the capital of Kyo. The ninja's here fulfill different roles, depending on clan and current master. The range goes from private body guards and secret police like the Tokugawa, special agents and spies like the Kouga to simple hired mercenaries and assassins like the Fuma. The common route is pretty much about getting to know all the characters and Enju's first mission to capture the thief of Kyo. The individual character routes start after that mission is over and things going horrible wrong afterwards with Enju on the run. This part was surprisingly good, even if it could have probably been a bit longer. Enju is certainly the best protagonist character from the otome VN's I've read so far. Though that doesn't say much I guess, since I didn't read that much otomes yet. Since Enju is a shinobi herself and not just a passive bystander, she's much more involved and proactive as usual. The VN also had a great feature to get more involved into Enju's thoughts and emotions. On the lower left side there was always her portrait showing her current expressions. Other VN's usually only show the currently talking character face there, but here you can always see how she reacts on what others say or what she herself says and thinks. I really liked that, especially since Enju was a rather pretty and charming character. The quality of the routes varied though. The first route I read was from Choujirou. He's the leader of the Kouga group sent to Kyo and Enju's personal instructor. The character itself was great, but unfortunately his route not so much. A long time you've no idea what's going on and Enju is thrown around like a sack of rice between the guys trying to save her instead of doing something useful herself and I also found the resolution of the story fairly weak. On the other hand, it had some 'Red Wedding' like twist I simply didn't expect from that VN. Fun fact: Choujirou was voiced by Toriumi Kousuke who also voiced Saitou Hajime from Hakouki, who is exactly one of the three characters I read the routes from in Hakouki. The second route I read was from Hanzou, a former Iga member and now the leader of the private shinobi guard from lord Tokugawa. He's a real badass and considered the strongest ninja around. This was clearly my favorite route. Hanzou had a cool teasing relationship with lord Tokugawa who was my most favorite side character by a long mile. Hanzou and Enju also develop a touching Leon & Mathilda relationship, with Hanzou being the absolute super killer, giving her advanced training when they are on the run and fending off the other shinobi clans together. Hanzou also brings the best out of Enju. He likes smart and diligent characters, so Enju is forced to act that way if a romance relationship should develop. I also liked the plot resolution much more like in the previous route, even though I found the resolution about her father a bit too comic-book-villainy. Fun fact: Hanzou was voiced by Toriumi Kousuke who also voiced Kazama Chikage, the arch-villain from Hakouki, who is another one of the three characters I read the routes from in Hakouki. Fun fact-2: I thought that lord Tokugawa was a (pretty) woman in disguise the whole time, because 'he' looked and sounded so feminine. I couldn't believe the VNDB entry and even checked the gender of the voice actor... and apparently 'he' is supposed to be male. It was still so hard to believe that I was almost thinking about requesting a gender check. The third route I played was from Goemon. He appears like a simple womanizer at first, but tuns out to be a man of many secrets. The plot also develops rather different than the other two before, and involves the five elders much more. I liked it although it doesn't beat the one of Hanzou. Mainly because Enju was forced into a rather passive observer role here for a good part of the route. The situation demanded it and was well-founded, but it's still more fun to have Enju doing stuff and making decisions herself. I wasn't so interested in the teenie connection of Gekkamaru and his brother Kuroyuki. Especially Gekkamaru was painfully bland. I was fine with the routes of the three adults and therefore skipped the routes of those two. The individual routes have strong similarities anyway. The VN also had some pretty good side characters, especially Tokugawa Ieyasu, but also Enju's two companions Kyara and Ennosuke. Production values were decent even if it can't compete with Hakouki. Art designs were still good, although the images could have been a bit sharper. Story and characters were interesting although the villains were a bit lacking and made some plot resolutions disappointing. Hakuouki had much better developed villains. If the other four elders would have been as well developed as lord Tokugawa this VN could have even beaten Hakouki. Though Enju was certainly a better protagonist than Chizuru. The common and hero routes could also have been a bit longer I think. Character ranking: (Tokugawa Ieyasu) > Hanzou > Choujirou > Goemon >> Kuroyuki > Gekkamaru (Still irritated that Tokugawa is supposed to be a dude, but I certainly like her him) Overall rating 7.5/10

At least we got one interesting announcement with Sakura no Mori Dreamers now. I still take it with a grain of salt since its VNDB rating isn't particularly high for a story VN. We'll see how it turns out. However, I guess the biggest surprise is that they are actually gonna release one of their many Rance titles which was lost in translation. I was seriouly starting to think their only purpose was to grab the titles to make sure they'll never get released in the west.

I'm kinda interested in that one, since it seems to have strong mystery parts and isn't just a slice of life moege. VNDB rating is also pretty decent.

I think the "dodgy" look comes with selling porn. A website redesign won't really change that. Anyway, I'm also slowly getting a bit worried. Seems to have been a bigger incident again, if it takes so long to fix their payment processor issues.

Hmm, sounds more like a cheap excuse to avoid censoring trouble with Japanese authorities. I actually happen to have an art book from PeasSoft with all the game art including H-scenes and pretty much all of it is without mosaics. The sinful places are instead covered by little black bars which are so tiny, that they cover almost nothing and should be easily restored. But I guess they also 'lost' the sources for that as well and all phyiscal copies too. I could lend them mine if they want though...

That indeed lets little doubt about his intentions. That sounds like a pretty careless law. Guess it was just a matter of time that something devastating happened. If house construction companies are allowed to build smaller houses like time bombs to save money, they will definitely do so.

I wonder if the arsonist is really the only thing to blame here. The whole severity and rate of spread of the arson doesn't exactly make you believe that this building had a real fire protection system. The simple fact that the culprint was caught by his own fire, suggests that things weren't exactly going as intended. I wouldn't even be surprised if his initial idea was just to cause some property damage to bring his point across and then call it a day. In that case I'd really like to know if the severity of the arson was actually caused by a violation of fire safety regulations.

Read it as well - pretty shocking! Who the hell targets an anime studio?! They made a bunch of really popular animes: K-On, The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, some Key classics, etc. I hope they can recover from that, but having over 30 victims in a studio with just about 130 employers isn't something where life can go on like before.

Well, the 'poorly done' anime is the main reason why the Fate franchise is so popular nowadays. And while it took some liberties, it followed mostly the Saber route. It also had way less inconsistencies than Unlimited Blade Works which made a dumb clown out of Kotomine Kirei (I'll never forgive that), and that 'triple suicide' to grant Rin her 50 cm titan steel plot armor was probably the worst scene in the whole VN. Anyway, I still liked it despite its flaws. Can't say the same for Fate/Zero though which I never finished. I take a few plot inconsistencies over a bunch of soulless characters and a pacing from hell anyday.

I'd say the two Fate/Stay Night animes for the Saber and Rin routes. Not that the VN would be bad, but the animes have incredible high production values while the VN didn't even have voice acting, the art does show its age and it uses the rather old fashioned NVL system. I'd be the first one to buy a VN remake with full voice acting and modern art though. I also agree with the Key VN's, especially Kanon.

Finally finished Grisaia no Meikyuu - The Labyrinth of Grisaia. It's quite a while since I read the first one, but since Meikyuu mainly was about Yuuji's back story, it wasn't really a big issue that I couldn't remember anything anymore. I did start directly with Yuuji's back story and not with the after stories of the heroines. I'm not exactly a big Grisaia fanboy and the Angelic Howl side story part was the only thing I really liked about it. Yuuji didn't play a role in Angelic Howl and in the common route he was mostly presented as some kind of idiot agent for the lulz. So I was a bit hesitant of what to expect. Fortunately, I didn't get disappointed. The writer took Yuuji's back story for the most part equally serious as Angelic Howl. The first part in particular was outright gloomy. Domestic violence, abuse, rape, suicide - it was quite dark, but also very well written. Although most people seem to appreciate Fujisaki Ryuuta mainly for his slice of life comedy, I think he's a much better story writer. I think I was able to symphatize with Yuuji for the first time here - he showed so much more emotions than the soulless shell in Kajitsu. It was also nice to see some real action for a change. While Yuuji's back story was overall still pretty good, there was unfortunately one thing that was just bad. The writer might be decent in comedy and good with story but he's outright awful if it comes to romance and H-scenes. I wish I would have played the all ages version to get spared of that crap. I also played three of the after stories: Amane's, Yumiko's and Sachi's. Though I dropped Amane's after story pretty soon when Amane reflected on how she gets horny when Yuuji treats her like shit - thanks I'll pass on that one. Fortunately, Yumiko's was much better. I think she's the only heroine that really has a good chemistry with Yuuji. Their relationship feels so honest and I just love her super cute facial expressions. Sachi's was somewhere in the middle. She's certainly one of a kind with her maid antics, but she also feels a bit too much like an artificial comedy character. Overall rating: 7/10 (Could have gotten a 7.5/10 if they would have spared me the H quota in Yuuji's back story)

So I've finally finished Harumina, my first VN from Clochette. I had already started this last year, but then came Hapymaher along and then Shin Koihime Musou Kakumei, and the latter burned me so out from reading Japanese due to its length that I needed a bt of a break from it for a while. But I picked Harumina up again a while ago and finally finished it last week. Overall, this was a very well written moege with pretty high production values. The sprite dynamics are easily on a level with Yuzusoft, so it's not surprising that it's so popular in Japan. I chose this title over the other Clochette titles because it was drawn by Shintaro instead of their usual artist Oshiki Hitoshi. While their character designs are very similar, the ones from Oshiki Hitoshi have too large eyes for my taste. Shintaro's feel more balanced. What makes Harumina stand out amongst other moeges is that they shake up the traditional school life formula with a pretty entertaining setting about Japanese Shinto deities. The protagonist Tatsuki itself is a priest of a local Shinto shrine in Tamatsue and his sister Miori its mountain deity. There's currently no sea deity although the village needs one and so they get a new rookie deity Kanau. Unfortuantely she's pretty inexperienced and so Tatsuki and his sister give her a hand and take over her education. But that's just the beginning of course. They are soon joined by all kinds of other deities, some benevolent others malevolent: Mei the spirited thunder deity, lesser tanuki deities of fortune and misfortune, wrathful storm gods and more. The story isn't too deep but entertaining and the characters are very charming. It felt a bit like a modern and improved version of Shuffle with a bigger focus on Japanese Shinto lore. I've read the routes of all heroines except Miori who was a bit too loli for me. That's not to say she would have been a bad heroine. She was actually a pretty strong character. As experienced mountain deity she was quite the Yoda type. Kanau and Mei were also deities, while Kasumi could be called a 'sleeper'. Only Ema was just your 'normal' child hood friend. It's a shame that Tangiku the tomboyish mermaid didn't get a route, she was one of my favorite characters. And Sachiko and Yoriko there would have been lots of fan disc potential. Too bad that Clochette doesn't make fan discs, I would have really liked one for this VN. The common route had the strongest story parts, while the heroine routes focused more on slice of life and romance. Fortunately, the H-scenes were also rather well integrated into the plot which certainly isn't a given nowadays. Though the protagonist could have been a bit more involved in the action, he was a bit too passive for my taste. Heroine ranking: Mei = (Tangiku) > Kanau = Kasumi > Ema = (Sachiho) > Miori = (Yoriko) Overall rating: 7.5 / 10 (Could have even gotten an 8 with a more proactive protagonist) I guess this will probably be my moege of the year if nothing unexpected happens. Besides Harumina I've also played some more Atelier Kaguya titles, mostly their two premium teams Bare & Bunny and Honky-Tonk Pumpkin. Honky-Tonk's Yoppy feels a bit stagnant with his art even if the animation is still top-notch. I think Onee-san Sensei had less animated scenes like Kajuu 100% which fells like a step back. Bare & Bunny's choco chip has certainly improved his art quality, even if I think he had his peak with Shigokare. Nee-chan no Susume was better than Love×Holic but the tendency to endlessly stretch out the time until you finally get your girl is still very annoying. I think I still like Namaiki most from Bare & Bunny, even if it's not one of their top rated VN's. I also tried Guildmaster from Astronauts Sirius which was probably the most buggy mess I've ever seen, even considering Jast standards. I guess their transition to Unity didn't go as well as expected. But I also found gameplay and art quality below their usual standard. It's certainly by far the worst title they've ever released. The 6.5 rating on VNDB is almost flattering, on EGS it's even sitting on a 40%. I dropped it pretty soon - what a disappointment after the well received Hyakki Ryouran no Yakata! Next on my list is Niizuma Lovely x Cation and hopefully finally Reminiscence which is sitting on my harddisc for almost an eternity now.

lol They really did it and licensed even more Rance titles to never release. So just the third one is missing now. But I guess there are still other cons like Otakon where they need more Rance titles to announce. Another Funbag Fantasy title was to be expected since they had the artist as guest, but at least the first series is pretty meh - so I'll definitely pass on that one. Overall, the announcements from MG were about as bad as expected. Absolutely nothing that interest me. I'm more interested in the announcements of the other publishers. Amatsutsumi sounds good, although I'd definitely won't support a Kickstarter anymore, considering I'm still waiting for my ChronoClock hardcopy. And the Koikuma fandisc is also cute since I'll finally get my Reika route.

Bad End is a she by the way... Anyway, MG will probably announce Rance 1 - 3 as a bundle, so they can further increase their impressive collection of unreleased Rance titles.

I think the Steampunk VN's from Liar-Soft have some pretty unique creature designs, since they are heavily inspired by Lovecraftian horror.

Just wanted to give this a try but the line breaks don't seem to work anymore with the english patch - words just end in the middle and continue in the next line. Any way to fix that? Edit: Never mind, I got it working with a clean reinstall.

Not really, although I guess it makes sense to go for the more prominent members of the Shinsengumi first like Hijikata Toshizou. After that it's kind of interesting to experience the story from a somewhat different perspective and go for Kazama Chikage. Sakamoto Ryouma was also a character I only met in certain circumstances. Nevertheless, the first part Kyoto Winds can be considered the common route, which doesn't really has a lot of character specific route parts. The second part Edo Blossoms has pretty much all the individual story parts. But considering there are 12 character routes, which aren't so different to each other, I'd pick a few favorites and go for them.

I wouldn't say that. Yuuri only did that because Hanako got really desperate and also very clearly showed it to her. Considering Yuuri and Hanako had a history with the burn mark and it was clear that Yuuri had a bad conscience because of it, it wasn't all too surprising to me. It was also more of a 'let's break up for now until Hanako has recovered' and less of a forever. They got together again not much later anyway. IMHO the bigger weakness of Yuuri was that she seemed kinda cold in their realtionship, while Hanako was all emotional. I had the impression that the writer didn't really know how to continue with Yuuri after he brought them together besides showing some H-scenes. Not exactly a unique problem though, I think I've seen that quite often so far and mostly in pure romance VN's without another sub-plot that could carry the VN. Probably one of the major reasons why in anime the couples very rarely come together before the absolute end. But this was technically a love triangle, and those are always kinda ridiculous. XD

Finished two VN's, Hakuoki - Edo Blossoms and SakuSaku. Edo Blossoms was the second part of Hakuoki after Kyoto Winds which I like quite a bit. This focused on the events after the Shinsengumi left Kyoto and moved to Edo, the former Tokyo. This time marked the decline of the Shinsengumi and as such quite a lot of them didn't make it depending on the route. This felt somewhat fan-discy though - in contrast to Kyoto Winds this wasn't a single branching story, but a collection of 12 after-stories instead, for each hero you could already romance in Kyoto Winds. In a way this was exactly what Kyoto Winds was missing since this one focused more on the romance part of the chosen hero which was barely present in the first part. On the flip side, if you have 12 different routes with no shared parts, the quality is inevitably going to suffer. The routes were kinda short as a consequence and from a narrative point of view this simply wasn't on par with Kyoto Winds. Major events were often just mentioned in a side note and not played out. I did the routes of Hijikata, Kazama and Saito which were the ones I also played in Kyoto Winds. The routes of Hijikata and Saito felt a bit sameish while the route of Kazama was a bit different. Considering he was pretty much the arch-enemy of the Shinsengumi, it was kinda interesting to see the events from the side of the actual victors of the conflict. I find this VN a bit hard to judge. On the one hand it simply wasn't as good story wise as its predecessor, on the other hand it had the romance parts the predecessor was missing. While I personally wasn't so interesed in those, I still enjoyed it for what it was. And for the people who were a bit disappointed by the lack of romance in Kyoto Winds, this is certainly a good addition. Overall rating: 7/10 Though depending on what you're interested in, the grade might be higher or lower. I think I started SakuSaku almost 1,5 years ago, which obviously isn't the best sign if I need that long to finish it. An I didn't even read all routes, just the ones of Ann, Yuuri and Konami. So let's don't talk around the bush and directly address the elephant in the room: This VN was just painfully boring far too often over the full length of the title. On the other hand, the heroines were still kinda charming and the character interactions were actually not that bad. The VN just completely failed to gain any value out of its Shinigami sub-plot - there was just not effort put into it and if you make everything light and fluffy it just doesn't grab you anymore. The story had some similarities with Hosihmem, but that one did a better job in that regard. Though the comparison helped me to track down the real top offender of the VN after finishing the first route with Ann. The music is just dreadful bad - it's basically concentrated boredom in the shape of sound waves. It's a major difference to Hosihmem which had some pretty good dramatic soundtracks. I had a long break after the first route, but when I picked it up again this year and played the routes of Yuuri and Konami, I listened to soundtracks of Stellaris and Passengers instead. While it may sound odd that someone listens to scifi soundtracks when playing a school slice of life VN, the somewhat more melancholic and tense music helped a lot to make the events at least 'appear' more dramatic. It reminded me again how important a good soundtrack is for a VN - it can easily make of break a VN. And to be fair, some of the parts were actually decently written. I think the real star in Yuuri's route was probably her sister Hanako. The relationship between those was just adorable and seeing Hanako desperate in tears of unrequited love and fear of losing her sister was just too touching and made her my favorite heroine. Another entry in my list of favorite heroines that didn't get a route. Konami's route also surprised me a bit that they approached the incest sibling drama in a surprisingly mature way. Aoi felt for the first time like a responsible mother to me and she gained more sympathy points from me for that in this route as in the rest of the VN together. Not that Aoi would have looked anywhere near her supposed age though... Ann's route was probably the best route regarding the Shinigami sub-plot, though it still left a lot to be desired. Didn't play Tina's route which probably also deals more with that topic. Heroine ranking: Hanako > Ann = Elle > Nao > Yuuri > Konami > Tina > Mio = Aoi Overall rating. 6.5/10 The VN could have been much better if the writer would have tried to focus more on the Shinigami plot and make it more dramatic instead of keeping everything fluffy and comedic. Hyberion was just an awful written character. Making him a scary badass instead of an idiot clown would have already helped a lot.

IMHO, the character designs of ImoPara 3 are a lot worse than the ones from the two previous titles - probably because they changed the artist. But I didn't really care anymore about ImoPara 2 and I'll therefore care even less about this one.