ChaosRaven

I think I'll echo the opinions about Saya no Uta. It's so light-years away from the typical VN romcom's that it's almost hard to believe that it's really a Japanese VN. It's dark, but not in the typical 'sex-fetishistic' way many nukiges provide. It's dark in a very mature way - it gives you the insight that being the monster can be very much in the eye of the beholder. The PC Games magazine even wrote a nice article about it here.

Moenovel are surprisingly active at the moment. After their first title If my Heart had Wings, there was so long silence around them, that it looked almost like they had already left the market again. And now they're suddenly starting to flood the market with one title after another.

Actually, this looks vastly more interesting than those Sono Hanabira yuri shovelware titles. The art is really stylish and somehow reminds me a bit of Liar-soft's Steampunk titles. The story sounds interesting and with mystery and suspense 3.0 tags on VNDB it seems to be right up my alley. Somehow completely missed its release though - the title wasn't really on my radar for some reason. I might even pick that up as one of my next story titles. There aren't a lot of other story titles I'm interested in left anyway, and Aoshiro already proved to me that yuri stitles can be pretty decent story titles too. Such a shame that Flowers was so disappointing (at least the first part).

The question in the title and the one in the post are actually two different things. Regarding the question in the title about the best looking title, this is actually a highly subjective thing. For example, Fata Morgana is regarded by some as a very good looking title because of its unique art style, but its production values are actually quite low. The backgrounds are just blured photographs, its not even voiced and only the main characters have sprites with very little variations. So what title looks best to YOU is hard to answer because it's so subjective. The best advice I can give you is to check out some titles from some of the most popular VN artists: Popular artists with cute moe art: - Kobuichi & Muririn (Yuzusoft) - Moe art with highly dynamic sprites - Nishimata Aoi (Navel) - Very popular moe art - Hatozuki Tsumiki & Mitsuki & Yakuri (Eushully) - High quality fantasy manga art more on the moe-side - Koku (Purple Software) - Good combination of moe and erotic art Popular artists with more mature characters: - Komori Kei (Ricotta) - Very good erotic art with more mature characters - Iizuki Tasuku (Hibiki Works) - Famous for the Lovely & Cation titles. Very good erotic art with more mature characters - Amasaka Takashi & Kaneusu Tato & Kazuma (Clip Craft) - Very good erotic art with more mature characters - G Yuusuke (Light) - Specialized in very stylish chuuni art - Kagami (Lilith) - Infamous artist specialized in erotic fetish art with more mature characters Popular artists with a more realistic art style: - Suigina Miki (Innocent Grey) - Very good mixture of realistic art with manga art and more mature and realistic looking characters - Sei Shoujo (Empress) - Infamous artist specialized in erotic fetish art with more mature and realistic looking characters - M&M (Astronauts: Sirius) - Very good erotic art with more mature and realistic looking characters The question about the production values is somewhat easier to answer since it allows a more objective point of view. In general, titles with high production values usually have the following characteristics: - Lots of event CG's - Lots of character sprites - not only for main characters but also for side characters - Even background actors are drawn (Very rare nowadays, but older titles like Clannad, Shuffle or Ever17 put a lot of effort into those) - All characters voiced, including high profile voice actors - Backgrounds are drawn and not cheaply produced blured photographs - Usage of high profile artists - Usage of special effects like animation - High profile writers and composers Titles with huge art content are hard to realize with just a single artist. For that reason titles with high production values usually have multiple artists, or one artists who gets several years time for it, like Komori Kei with Walkure Romanze or Sei Shoujo with Starless. Background art in particular can also be bought by an external company without having to bother your main artist with it. Since older titles usually have rather old fashioned art styles by todays standards, I'll split the answer in older and newer titles. Amongst older titles, I'd say the highest production values probably had MuvLuv Alternative, followed by Fate/Stay Night and Ever17. If it comes to newer titles, the top contenders are probably Eushully titles, because they also have a fairly high quality J-RPG included. Minori is famous for expensive high quality art but they usually have few characters and I'm not sure if their newer titles stand out as much as their older titles. I personally liked the character designs of their older titles ef, Eden or Supipara more than their newer titles. The Koihime series from BaseSon is also infamous for their high production values because their titles are extremely long with millions of voiced characters. MangaGamer still couldn't afford to bring over any of their newer titles. Innocent Grey titles also have very high production values even if they seem to be a lot cheaper than BaseSon titles. Otherwise MangaGamer wouldn't have been able to afford them - cheaper voice costs I guess. If I should make a personal pick of a title I played with the best combination of high production values and good looking art the it would be probably Kamidori Alchemy Meister from Eushully. The content was just insane and I really like their art style. In my subjective view, there are two companies which have an even better character art style - Ricotta and Clipcraft - but neither of those can deal with the pure mass of content of an Eushully title.

The announcements are of higher quality than expected. An interesting return to Softhouse-Seal with Amatarasu Riddle Star. The sub-brand Seal-Quali only made this one title and then were immediately closed down again. Not exactly a sign of overwhelming success, even if Amatarasu Riddle Star doesn't look so bad for what it is. Doesn't seem to be a pure nukige and probably more an H-heavy moege, otherwise there wouldn't be an all ages version. The description of the story in Steam Prison sounds interesting, though the question remains if it can deliver. Ozmafia also left a lot to be desired even if it had a certain charme. Not sure what to think about the Kindred Spirits DLC...

Looks like the best way to read it would be using a text hooker, so you get the text in a readable format.

That's actually a pretty cool hint. Didn't know about the language filter. However, the big problem I have now, is that every semi decent VN is buried in 20 - 30 garbage OELVN's. Mother of god, I wasn't aware what rubbish gets released on a daily base. And people are complaining about Sakura games. On second thought, I think I should remove the filter or even change it to Japanese only. My eyes did start to bleed - I fear for my health. Edit: Oh, I missed the second part with original language Japanese. Much better now!!!

Yeah, it gets harder and harder to keep track of what's getting released. I actually would like some kind of filter on VNDB that only lists VN's with English translations, regardless if fan translated or official.

Hmm, judging by the script sizes on TLWiki, Dies Irae is just a bit more than 3 MB of text. That's a not too unusual size for location companies. Both MangaGamer and Sekai tackled both more with Da Capo 3 and Grisaia respectively. I also had the impression that the killer is usually the voice costs. MangaGamer had no problem with Da Capo 3's 4 MB of text, but when asked about Majikoi which just has about 3 MB, they said they have to pass because they can't afford the voices. I heard that despite Jast's sparse releases, they seem to able to sell quite a lot of their titles, otherwise I wouldn't know how they could take on Majikoi. But well, I wouldn't be surprised if Light does a Kickstarter for one of their newer titles again. They did one for the Dies VN and the anime, so they seem to be pretty okay with Kickstarter financing.

Very interesting list. I'm not the biggest chuuni fan, but Propeller titles seem to click with me more than others since they have a decent amount of mystery mixed in. They also have good music - I'm still hearing tracks from Tokyo Babel and Pygmalion. I liked Comyu for its characters (mainly Mayuki & Kagome) so I'd definitely give Hello, Lady a try. Draculius looks rather dated and a bit too cutsy for a VN about vampires & werewolves but I'd probably still give it a try since I just have a thing for vampires. Gekkou no Carnevale looks totally badass and has a real hot chick with Rebecca, so I'd definitely give it a try. Regarding Shinigami no Testament however... I have to admit that my interest took a serious hit after the (for me) disappointing Sorcery Jokers. On the other hand, it doesn't have the two-protagonist problem Sorcery Jokers did suffer from. Still, despite the good art I don't trust the writer - his characters are somewhat one-dimensional. I don't really understand why you consider VN's from Light as flop-candidates though. It's highly popular on VNDB and (in contrast to SubaHibi) sold great on Steam. With over 70.000 owners it even wipes the floor with most moeges. And while I personally didn't really like it, I was more the exception - most people seem to have liked it. The overall reception was certainly a lot better than the titles from Propeller or 3rdEye. I'd even go so far to say that the chuuniges from Light are probably the ones with the biggest chance for success. I mean, I remember times when Kohime Musou was MG's best seller with about 2.000 sold copies. And sales from Dies were in another league, especially considering that it wasn't just sold for a mere 5 - 10 dollars.

But... we already have vanilla, chocolate and banana flavors. Do we really need a fourth translation flavor? I wouldn't be opposed to raspberry though...

Well, I dare to make one prediction and say that one announcement will be an ImoPara 2 hardcopy. I'm pretty sure it'll get one sooner or later, and small cons are usually a good opportunity for MG to announce hardcopies.

It's a small con, so it'll be just small indies and nukiges, with the slight potential of one bigger title. Unfortunately we didn't get a year preview with some hints this time, so it's pretty much just random guessing.

I'm aware of that, but most stuff I read and kinda liked somehow ends up in a very narrow region between 7 and 8, which makes it hard to really differentiate between them.

I also tend to rate like this, even though I consider Dreamysyu's rating system superior. His system makes better use of the full range and 5 is the average like it is supposed to be. But in your and my system the average is closer to 7. Unfortunately, I got used to it and I don't want to re-rate all my VN's on VNDB again, so I'll just stick to it. The highest grade I've ever given is a 9 though. Usually there are two cases when this can happen: 1.) Some people rate individual routes and then calculate the final rating with Excel (Seriously!) 2.) People tend to compare titles with other titles they've played and if it's better than a title that got a 6, but worse than a title that got a 7, it's just natural to give it a ranking inbetween. Personally, I only use half-integers though.

First choice would be Rin for me. Kyou would be second if I'd stick to the list. Grisaia's Michiru should be removed since she's not a tsundere at all.

Propably Sengoku Rance. It was so horrible, it didn't take long until I uninstalled it and cured me forever from the Rance hype.

So, I finally finished it. Though calling it finished is probably not entirely correct, I read about about half of it and then skip-read most of the second half until the end. Short story: I didn't like it! Long story: Not everything was bad - I could have liked it, if it wouldn't be for some rather unfortunate design decisions the creators made. And first and foremost, most of its problems are rooted in the choice of two main protagonists. The VN did pretty much confirm all my prejudices against multi-protagonist stories, even if there are exceptions where it can still work like in Root Double. But in Root Double the story was vastly better written around those two characters. The first huge problem with the two protagonists was that Senri totally outshines Haruto. I do get the initial idea though - both characters were indended to be polar opposites from the start. Senri as the cool mature guy and Haruto as the naive school boy. The problem is that the writer did stick to that concept to an almost fanatical degree. Haruto was just so unbearable bland, that pretty much all scenes involving him bored me to death. On the other hand Senri also turned out a bit too cool and composed, especially considering some of his actions were borderline suicidal. I mean if you get scenes like "Sure, loosing my arm and using it with the other hand as a club to beat my opponent to death, was totally my plan from the start!", you're starting to wonder. The example is a bit exaggerated of course, but there were definitely scenes where they just went a bit overboard. Still, Senri was certainly one of the better things of the VN and his route parts were mostly okay. And I actually liked the fact that he usually had a battle plan and it wasn't just all random actions and Deus Ex Machina. The route parts of Haruto were the major problem. Not just because it dragged the overall pacing down by a huge degree, but also because of the lack of quality in his route parts. His dialogs were just plain and boring and although I kind of liked Atorin and Asahi it also dragged them down. The writer thought it would be a good idea to assign the heroines to the protagonist they are most similar too, but that was a huge mistake. Both Atorin and Asahi had their best scenes when they did interact with Senri. It was one of the rare scenes when Senri got actually a bit irritated because Asahi supposedly acted irrational, and Asahi herself started to tease him because he didn't believe her. Both Senri and Asahi really opened up there. And Senri had similar problems because Fiona was just too similar to him, so after they allied there was barely an interesting conversation between them anymore. I also could never manage to like her, even if she was one of the more interesting characters. Probably because she was a treacherous bitch, even if I occasionally like such characters lol. And Noah had just the mind of a 3 - 4 year old baby girl and was more or less dead weight for all intents and purposes. Conversations with her were comparable to watching an episode of Teletubbies. The bad coupling of the characters caused several of them to stay pale and bland through the whole VN. And it got worse. Since I couldn't identify with Haruto and was routing mostly for Senri, his route parts started to look more and more like an NTR route. Imagine a VN where the 'idiot friend' gets all the nice chicks you like and you are stuck with the leftovers. Funny, isn't it? Sorcery Jokers makes it happen. The romance and slice of life parts also left a lot to be desired. Especially since they tryed to squish 4 heroine routes for two protagonists into a kinetic VN with no choices - it's just madness! I also regret having read the adult version, since the heroines pretty much started with blow jobs out of nowhere. Most of the H-scenes are in the after stories, but the ones in the main story were as badly and nonesensical placed at it gets. The VN might have some merits in the battle scenes, but romance and slice of life certainly aren't part of it. Another issue was the visual presentation. While the VN has technically pretty good art, it has a severe lack of event CG's. Most of the art seemed to have been made with a simple moege in mind and then the characters just got 2 - 3 fighting poses which are repeated through all fights. You almost never see a background CG with characters, damages or any environmental changes drawn on it. I barely remember even seeing an injured characters despite the many battles. It's always a sterile empty background with a fixed sprite put on it. There was just no dedication to 'show' the story events like in Innocent Grey VN's, Root Double or Ourai no Gahkthun. To compensate this they often just added a simple color effect instead, which looked rather amateurish. And the half screen effect with black bars at top and bottom is shown almost every two minutes. I've no idea why, but the creators were absolutely obsessed with that effect. That was also the final nail in the coffin that made me drop the VN. If you skip forward and the only thing you see are battles against the same characters with the same CG's reused again and again, and there's just nothing new coming up, there's just no motivation to continue. I remember that I could judge my story progress in Ourai no Gahkthun by looking into the CG gallery. If you were half through you've just seen half of the CG's and you're looking forward to the new stuff. Anyway, heroine ranking: Atorin > Asahi > Fiona (Noah is excluded - I refuse to include a girl with the mind of a 3 - 4 year old baby girl into a heroine rating) Overall rating: 5/10 (Could have been easily higher, if it wouldn't be for the brain fart of making Haruto a second protagonist )

It's kind of amusing that the OP gets immediately adviced to drop moege's to avoid disappointment, if the only VN he didn't drop and even considered very good was a 100% pure moege with little to no story or drama parts. Do people even read posts before answering anymore those days?

Nice that Haruru Minamo ni is ranking so high in your charage category. I'm currently reading it and I'm linking it quite a bit so far. Though the Japanese is harder to read than I thought. I found both Caucasus and Hyakki, which I read before, easier to understand.

Getchu sales ranking list is out for some time now. Not sure if there's a combined list of yearly sales for more shops. Top ten of Getchu: 1. Haruru Minamo ni! 2. Ouchi ni Kaeru made ga Mashimaro Desu 3. Amayui Castle Meister 4. Niizuma Lovely x Cation 5. Wagamama High Spec OC 6. 9 -Nine- Kokonotsu Kokonoka Kokonoiro 7. Aoi Tori 8. Making＊Lovers 9. Nora to Oujo to Noraneko Heart 2 10. Haruoto Alice ＊ Gram I cry if the links are messed up again - seriously!

Thx. Fixed them all, even if I'm a bit irritated that so much were wrong. I'm pretty sure I copied the links - maybe a mistake at inserting them which I didn't notice.

Yes, the first thing that came to mind when I saw the winner was indeed your fanboy post. Thanks! Fixed.

So the Getchu Bishoujo Game Awards 2017 for the most popular VN's of last year are finally out and the winner is... Kin'iro Loveriche from Saga Planets. The full list of the best 20 titles hereinafter: 1.) Kin'iro Loveriche by Saga Planets (Also first place in categories Scenario, Music and Characters with Souma Ria) 2.) Nora to Oujo to Noraneko Heart 2 by Harukaze 3.) Making＊Lovers by Smee 4.) Hikari no Umi no Apeiria by Silky's Plus Dolce 5.) Aoi Tori by Purple Software (Also first place in category MOVIE) 6.) Bakumatsu Jinchuu Houkoku Resshiden Miburo by Inre 7.) ChronoBox by No Brand 8.) Suisou Ginka no Istoria by Uguisu Kagura 9.) Ouchi ni Kaeru made ga Mashimaro Desu by Marmalade (Also first place in category ERO) 10.) Amayui Castle Meister by Eushully (Also first place in category System) 11.) Shigokare ~Ecchi na Joshi Daisei to Doki x2 Love Lesson!!~ by Atelier Kaguya Bare & Bunny (NSFW) 12.) Trinoline by Minori (Also first place in category Graphics) 13.) Haruru Minamo ni! by Clochette 14.) Ouka Sabaki by Irodori 15.) Choukou Shinki Ixseal by Alice Soft 16.) Niizuma Lovely x Cation by Hibiki Works 17.) Silverio Trinity by Light 18.) Kizuna Kirameku Koi Iroha by CRYSTALIA 19.) Koinosu ☆ Ichacolize by eRONDO 20.) Kotonoha Amrilato by SukeraSparo Personal comments: There was already a bit of a hype about Kin'iro Loveriche, so it doesn't really come as a surprise that it won the Getchu awards, even if I would have made my bet on Clochette's Harumina. Nice to see Minori back on the graphics throne. I think it goes back to ef and Eden when they last got it. Though I think I liked their old style a bit more. Having Ouchi ni Kaeru made ga Mashimaro Desu win the ero awards is... slightly surprising, considering it looks more like an all ages game. Looks like Eushully are back, even if they are not at the top yet. Seems like Dergonu was right - ChronoBox seems a lot more popular in Japan than in the west. Is Nora to Oujo to Noraneko Heart really getting an English translation or was it just a fake announcement about 2 years ago? Miburo seems to be a bit lower ranked than its predecessor ChuSingura overall, though maybe that's just because its not 'new' anymore. I think at least the graphics are better. I'm somewhat interested in Ouka Sabaki - the theme of murder mystery in past Japan looks very interesting.