ChaosRaven

I actually had to look that up to remember it, but that was in a thread with a discussion about the translation quality of Tokyo Babel not in one of Clepahs' review threads. But that was actually an interesting thing in Dies Irae, I expected them to have lots of grammatical and spelling mistakes in the German sentences, but surprisingly it was pretty much all correct, at least the parts I checked (I didn't read all of them). I'm sure that they either had a translator with good German knowledge or an editor helping out. BTW, I started reading Ourai no Gahkthun from Liarsoft. I had some trouble at first to get it working in Windows 10 since it always stopped working after 5 - 10 minutes, but after setting it to Windows 7 compatibility mode, it worked like a charm. The only small annoyances left are the small font size and the starting intro playing with approximately ~800 decibel sound intensity without any possible option to lower it. Technical problems aside, I'm positively surprised so far. When I read Shikkoku no Sharnoth years ago, I liked the atmosphere and setting, but the writing was a bit too poetic for my taste with a rather chaotic story flow - and not to forget the silly mini game. But Gahkthun seems to have kept all the things I liked, like the fascinating world building and the great atmosphere, but managed to get rid of all flaws from Sharnoth in the writing and story flow - at least so far. The fictional Offshore Academia city in France the story takes place gives me feelings of nostalgia from my visit of Paris last year, and the wonderful classic soundtrack further supports the whole mature feeling of the setting - it just oozes atmoshere. Neon is also a very likable character who fortunately avoids to fall into the trap of being cliché cute. Since the story is told from her perspective at the beginning, the VN has strong otome vibes. I just met Tesla so I can't say too much about him yet, but he looks pretty cool so far - I think the both will make a great couple. So the first impression is pretty good - I can hardly believe that I was rather critical at the initial announcement years ago. Though it has yet to be seen if it can follow up to the good first impression.

I only played the routes of the main protagonist Takeshi in Ever 17, so it didn't really matter to me. But in my opinion, if there are multiple protagonists, then one for each route is the best way to go. It's a shame that Eushully's Sankai Ou no Yubiwa attempt to have a different protagonist for each route didn't really work out - it was an interesting idea. I think the last VN I played with multiple protagonists was Root Double, but I also think two separate routes for each one would have been better there, because it did really hurt the story flow to experience all events from two perspectives. It was still a good read though. Though to be entirely correct, the last multi-protag title I read would be probably Fata morgana no Yakata. When the Giselle & Michel chapters start the writer apparently had the glorious idea to try some 'experimental writing' to reach some kind of 'ambivalent reading experience' by swapping the protagonist every second sentence to make you feel like 'Gichelle'. And from all possible ways, this is certainly NOT the one to go. Was also part of the reason why I stalled the VN for a while. Hope they stop that nonesense soon or I certainly won't finish the VN.

Thanks for the link to your review. If it's really a mixture of chuuni, mystery and moe it should be right up my alley and confirm my overall impression of that company. I have yet to see how the multi-protag structure turns out, but otherwise I'm fairly optimistically looking towards the release of the title.

Can't judge the pacing because I haven't read it, but the VN is literally a 'Greatest Hits' collection of stuff I don't like: Multiple protagonists, incomprehensible meta plot, focus on victimizing girls emphasized by the use of disgusting sex fetishes, denpa (I like clashes of personalities and clear motives for actions and not people going crazy just because), (pseudo-)philosophical focus, tries to include too many social problems, a crapload of messed up VNDB tags. Overall, not something I'd consider enjoyable or interesting to me.

Wasn't this that infamous lolige? But it just supports Japanese and Chinese languages, so it doesn't seem relevant to the English market anyway.

This isn't really about being good or bad. Subahibi is most likely very good at what it does. It's more that I don't like the rather extreme nature and the themes of the VN. It's a bit like Euphoria which is considered a very good dark nukige and it most likely is. But if you're not into that kind of hardcore stuff it's just horrible. Subahibi goes into a similar direction and I keep my distance from that stuff.

Yeah, that's precisely what I'm worried about. VN's rated around 8.5 or higher are often full of pseudo-intellectual bogus and whining, with an extra bonus for snail-pacing and repetitive time loops. For example, stuff like Subahibi is definitely the last thing I'd want to read, despite the high rating. Usually I have a better hit rate with VN's in the higher sevens or lower eights.

Finally! I wanted to read a 3rd Eye VN for years. On the other hand, if I read that it has 6 (!!!) different perspectives, it already makes me want to drop it. It just screams for all kind of problems like no immersion, no character to identify with, slow pacing, short story collection instead of homogenous story and not to forget - how chuuni is this?! Please don't suck!!!

Found an interesting article on PC Gamer about Nutakus' plans to turn Road Redemption into an adult game by adding H-scenes inbetween the missions. Not really sure what to think about this... So can we expect stuff like The Witcher 3 - Adult Edition in future projects? Would be certainly worth a look.

Chuuni is certainly not my favorite genre, just like I'm not a big fan of shonen animes. Though that doesn't mean I wouldn't like some VN's with chuuni elements like F/SN. Tokyo Babel also wasn't that bad after all - I even upvoted it in VNDB to a 7 some time ago. Though Dies was reeeal hardcore chuuni, choosing 100% style over substance. And that's almost the anti-thesis of what I like: facts over style. Conjueror's review was pretty good - he certainly didn't try to hide its weaknesses. At some parts, I was almost starting to doubt that he even likes the VN. I'm not exactly sure when I was talking about bars and meteor showers, but it's true that I'm German.

That's a relieve! I think I can deal with a somewhat arrogant protagonist - the ones from G-Senjou or Sharin were too - but a Takumi 2 would have been simply too much for me. So, I finished the third route of Dies Irae now, and considering I didn't really see a big difference to the first two routes - getting the same fights in a slightly different version for the third time - I think I leave it at that. I think there isn't too much to say about the VN so I keep it short. Overall, it's pretty much all about the battles. If you like that style you'll probably have a pretty good time with this VN, since you'll get LOTS of it. But if the battles don't click there's little else to keep you entertained. That was probably my biggest problem, the battles were not really my cup of tea and bored me for the most part, and besides that there isn't much. That's not to say I couldn't enjoy battles in VN's. I think Fate, Chusingura or MuvLuv Alternative had some pretty awesome battles, but the ones from Dies Irae felt more like a 'Battle Rap' where the participants try to trash talk each other to death. Unfortunately, for me it was more like action-less battles with endless and pointless babbling. I might still have liked it if the routes were more like the common route, which was still more of a mixture of mystery, combat and character interaction. But the routes itself were just one battle after another with predictable outcome. Plotwise there was barely anything of substance, just lots of trash talk and empty speeches, spiced up with some historic half-knowledge to make it sound more smart. I also didn't really get the point of the routes since the heroines barely mattered and the routes itself felt mostly like carbon copies of each other, with slight variations of the same battles all over again - just longer and more of it. Ironically, I kind of liked most of the (non-villain) main characters, but it didn't really matter since the VN spent most of its time with battles or endless speeches from the villains. Unfortunately, with the exception of Trifa and maybe Lisa, the villains were mostly mindless grunts with barely anything interesting to do or say. Reinhard and Mercurius could have been better, but for the most part they were just sitting on the sidelines having coffee talk like two grannies. Art was good though, especially considering its age, just not much diversity. Usually just different CG's with the same characters. Can't remember any side characters or NPC's being drawn. Music wasn't bad but could have been better overall. IMHO, the VN would be more suited as an anime, since that type of action works better there - provided it's done by the right people of course, which doesn't seem to be the case for the current one I hear. I've recently watched Hellsing Ultimate which has a lot of similarities with Dies Irae and I enjoyed that one quite a bit even if I like the old version still a bit more. Though the comparison isn't entirely fair, considering Hellsing Ultimate was probably the anime with the highest production values I've ever seen. Half of an episode was probably more expensive than the whole Dies Irae VN. But I digress... Heroine ratings (for what it's worth): Rea > Marie > Kasumi > Kei Overall rating 5.5/10

It's kind of interesting that rape hentai nukiges seem to have the most active fan translation scene nowadays. I think in the last 2 - 3 years most newer Lilith nukiges got translated, while the overall fan translation scene seems to be almost dead these days. The only remarkable fan translated title was Hatsukoi this year. It was almost the opposite years ago, when pretty much no nukiges were fan translated, just everything else. But I guess most fan translators from back then are doing it as a job now. Certainly not a bad thing at all, but it seems like anything that doesn't get picked up by Manga Gamer, Sekai Project & Co. is guaranteed to never see the light of the day in the west. Anyway, I'm not really into rape hentai and although Bishop seems to be rather popular, the art style isn't really my thing either. In that regard Lilith is much better, but their titles are even more extreme than this lol. It's almost ironic, despite being just a hardcore hentai producer, Lilith has actually quite interesting SciFi settings in their nukiges, while the so called 'creative elite' of VN's pretty much only manage to create the most boring school life VN's.

Could you elaborate a bit what's wrong with the protagonist? The one big problem with Chaos;Head for me was Takumi and judging by the tags the protagonist of Chaos;Child seemed to be almost the opposite, so I thought they learned from their mistakes created a much better protagonist this time. But I've now seen several comments that the new protagonist seems to be kinda... odd as well, and I'm getting a bit of a deja vu feeling of 'not again'. So is this another case of an absolutely unbearable protagonist who only people can stand with almost divine tolerance levels?

While I can't exactly say that I'd shed a tear for loosing a trap route, the message Nutaku is sending with that action is questionable at best. You could get the idea that Nutaku's 'moral codex' doesn't go along as well with gay relationships as expected from an open-minded and liberal company. They could get some very bad publicity because of that. If they dislike the content of the VN so much that they are cutting large junks of it, then I wonder why they decided to translate that VN in the first place. I mean, the number of untranslated VN's is still huge, so it shouldn't have been particularly hard to find one to their liking.

The story is nothing to write home about, but it has two very well written characters with Kagome and Mayuki. Especially the character interactions between the trio of Kagome, Mayuki and Benio with the protagonist were just priceless.

Hmm, you might want to give Kira Kira a try. The whole band goes on tour theme felt somewhat more mature and realistic than the vast majority of moe blob VN's. If drama is a plus for you, you can also try ef - a fairy tale of the two or Eden*. Both are very emotional and deal with some heavy themes. Da Capo 2 and Clannad are also two nakige classics that have a good mixture of romance and drama and aren't already on the heavy utsuge side like the two previously mentioned Minori titles.

Eiyuutan is a collection of three short fandiscs, each dedicated to one faction. And that's precisely the reason why they should have sticked to the main heroines and not add even more girls to the ridiculous amount SKM already had. Adding a few threesome scenes for the main heroines is another thing. I'm not really opposed to that, but they should have made them at least optional. I really dislike H-scenes involving loli's and here I can't really avoid that. And that doesn't mean I would dislike loli characters. Rinrin for example was always one of my favorite characters because she's such a lively and cheerful character. And although she had a route in the original Koihime, the main route clearly represented her more as a loyal friend and comrade and not as a lover. And it's a similar thing with Tanpopo who has hilarious interactions with Sui, but that doesn't mean I want an H-scene with her. Although the Koihime series was always quite H-heavy, they are not mindless nukiges. And not all their characters define themselves through H-scenes. And I'd prefer it if the writers would have considered that a bit more. Even if it's just a simple fan disc collection where such things might be more common, that doesn't mean I have to like it.

Wasn't there an option in Little Busters to deactivate all games if you didn't like them?

There are routes where every H-scene is with a different girl and half of them ones I don't even like. The individual faction discs don't even restrict themselves to their faction. The original Koihime at least gave you a choice with whom you want to get involved with, and it was still focused on a few selected main heroines. It made you feel like a lord with a harem, but here you're treated more like a male faction whore every member or guest can get if she wants to.

So, I finally finished Caucasus. This was the one VN from Innocent Grey I still wanted to read, even if it's in Japanese. Since it had a considerably lower rating than the Kara no Shojo series I did expect some weaknesses, although I wasn't really sure what they might be. Well, I was about to find out soon enough when I started reading. Caucasus has a lot in common with the last Japanese VN I read, Hyakki Ryouran no Yakata. So much in fact, that I'd say the latter was at least inspired by the former. In both VN's the protagonist is a university student in folklore that stumbles into a mysterious mansion by accident where strange things are happening. Though here you're accompanied by a girl instead of being alone. But there's also a wedding ceremony going on, in this case between the youngest daughter of the Nanatsuki family - Shion - and her fiance Rokuyou. An interesting thing about Caucasus was that some tags indicated that it might have some supernatural elements. Though, having read it now, this assumption was wrong. That's not saying that the tags were wrong, I just interpreted them in a different way. Without spoiling too much, the story is inspired a bit by a certain historic person with the name Elisabeth Báthory. Caucasus is a typical case of making one step forward but two steps backwards. While IG's previous VN Kara no Shoujo had some detective gameplay elements, it was still mostly a VN with some investigation scenes at certain points. In Caucasus they decided to go full out with the detective gameplay and combine it with the map location choices. That means there are now frequent map movement sections where you can freely decide where to go, and every location can investigated and every person questioned. For each of this sections this can be done multiple times until a timer runs out. While this system might be great for detective enthusiasts, there are unfortunately so many possible things to do and consider now that it made the VN literally incomprehensible without using a guide. Actually, it made me think countless time about the recent thread about VN's with too many choices, since this was certainly a prime example for such a case. They also had the glorious idea to give almost every girl a happy ending. While the idea sounds great in theory, the execution was 'questionable' to say the least. The usual strategy to win a girl in a VN is to try to spend as much as possible with her. Technically that's also the case here, just not really the way you'd think how. So in order to win a girl in Caucasus you have to... question her. No kidding, during the investigation sequences you not only have to investigate locations, you also have to pay your chosen one a visit, usually about ~2 times and just do nothing or question her about the murder case. Usually there's at least a slice of life sequence to get to know the girl even in other VN's from Innocent Grey, but not here. That was really, really lazy from IG. Furthermore, although you can get most girls there are technically still just two endings, not counting the bad ones. The normal one and the true one. The normal one can be gotten for Akane, Narumi, Ai, Venio and Shion while the true one can be Venio, Shion and another one I don't want to spoil here. Though Shion is not really winnable, at least in the true ending. So if you want to really get all the endings for each girl you have to replay an insane amount of investigation sequences since you can't just skip them. Overall, the best is to decide for one girl for each ending and just get a 100% save to get the rest of the CG's. That's not to say it would be all bad. The plot is interesting, and the characters look and act authentic and the story sections are well told even if they are far too often interrupted by investigation sequences. There's also a large story block told towards the end through a book which should have better been revealed bit by bit during the story instead. The story also isn't as grim as Kara no Shoujo and you can save pretty much every girl which was nice. On the other hand, the infamous perpetrator scenes were missing and just replaced by a few H-scenes which dragged the thrill and suspense a bit down. The art also has IG's great trademark art style. Overall, I think it's still a good story VN even if it's clearly weaker than Kara no Shoujo. I'd say it's roughly on par with Cartagra even if both have different strengths and weaknesses. In case of Caucasus the main weakness is without question the detective gameplay. They should have skipped or at least reduced it a bit and flesh out the story further instead. Heroine rankings: Narumi > Souko = Shion > Venio = Ai > Akane Overall rating: 7.5/10 I also tried two more nukige from Atelier Kaguya. The first one being Konomama dato Otouto from Honkytonk Pumpkin which was far too fetishy and overall the weakest title from this particular team so far (5.5/10). And the second one was Baku Ane 2 from Bare & Bunny which was kind of okayish even if I expected more (6.5/10). I hope the new Shigokare will be better. On the story front the next two VN's I will try are Reminiscence from Tigre Soft and Haruru Minamo ni! from Clochette. I hope the former will be better than its predecessor Akatsuki no Goei while the second one will be my first VN from Clochette, so I'm eager to see how it turns out. And yeah, I'm still trying to finish Shin Koihime † Eiyuutan anytime soon. I really hate that you're supposed to be in a relationship with literally everyone. It's almost as bad as in Moeshuden. Maybe not just as bad, since some routes actually focus on a certain girl, but others are just a huge clusterfuck.

On the one hand it sounds really interesting, on the other hand I'm shuddering from the thought of what a VN a company like Black Lillith would make out of this story. But the books seem rather popular - I could get them even in my own language.

No, time zone is not what I meant, even if it's in the same settings category. You have to change the data and time format that influences how date and time is shown in the task bar for example. There's also a languages panel where you can add additional languages. Windows 10 doesn't install all language packs by default.

A lot of VN's also require you to set the time format to Japanese. Not sure if that's the solution for your problem since usually the result is a crash and not just a simple font problem. It's also possible that you have to install Japanese language support, so you get all required fonts.

I see the whole thing pretty relaxed. When Konosora was released is was a brand new high quality VN amongst lots of old and average stuff. At that time it stood out and therefore it did really hurt that it was censored that way. But nowadays there are so many new and good releases from all kinds of publishers that it got almost impossible to keep up with all the new stuff anyway. So I'm almost grateful to get a reason to skip this one - there are lots of replacements to fill the gap. Moenovel doesn't care even the slightest bit about the English fan base, they only care about their sales. They therefore never had to reconsider their policy since Konosora sold great. So if anyone really wants Moenovel to get a change of mind, the best thing is to just not buy the title in this state. If sales are poor they might reconsider, but if sales are still good, why should they change anything?

I think the closest thing to Grisaia is probably the Akatsuki no Goei trilogy which is unfortunately untranslated. The closest translated VN I could think of is probably Comyu.