ChaosRaven

Finished my second play-through of Kara no Shoujo 2. I took the opportunity and made it a real play-through and not just skipping to the new stuff. This time I was better prepared for the somewhat slower pacing and enjoyed the Hitogata village scenes much more. Considering the new scenes, I've no clue why IG forced it into a second play-through, since the new content was just minimal. The new H-scenes were mostly unnecessary and arguably worse for the story, though it didn't really matter much since it was also possible to refuse them via choice. Other scenes were more detailed and kind of spoilerish, which was probably the reason they were left out the first time. From the final three endings, the normal ending was almost the same like some of the older ones, just more happy-endish and the obsession ending was more a joke than anything else. The true ending was the only one that offered some new stuff, though still not enough to justify another play-through. No comparison to Cartagra where probably 60% of the story was hidden in the true route. Still, it was an enjoyable re-read and I'd probably raise my initial 7.5 rating to a full 8/10.

True words. Although I wouldn't call myself a particular fan of slice if life VN's, I do consider slice of life 'scenes' as very important for almost every VN. They are the calm breaks inbetween the action or more serious story parts of a VN, and essential to develop characters and relationships. Ideally, they happen in 'sine waves', iterating between story and slice of life parts. Though there's certainly still a lot to say about how to write actual good slice of life scenes...

Not really my cup of tea. For real life actors I somehow prefer a real movie or television show. A VN is kind of... art for me - I just enjoy the feeling of diving into a 'fictional' fantasy world. I'm fine with Japanese or western art, but it has to be drawn art for me.

I don't understand, besides my original Kickstarter pledge I didn't pay anything. From where are you getting that 10 $ I apparently paid?

Just curious, are you gonna test Clochette's upcoming Harumina? While I heard good things about their titles and they are certainly very popular in Japan, I could never warm up to those strange face designs. However, they somehow fixed that in Harumina and the faces look really beautiful now. I'm therefore really thinking about picking it up and reading it in Japanese this time.

Hmm, a murder mystery placed in a past Japan scenario?! Color me interested - that seems right up my alley. Considering I'm currently replaying Kara no Shoujo 2, I can definitely say that it's pretty tame in comparison to its predecessor, almost slice-of-lifey at times. However, considering that Clephas rated the apparently very violent Tokyo Necro and Sakura no Mori pretty highly, I assume it's more than just the gore and he just isn't a big fan of the whole style and flare of the KnS series. Fair enough though, I'm not a fan of every title that's celebrated as the holy grail of visual noveling by the community either.

Well, I just got the unrated version from DenpaSoft since I backed it on Kickstarter. It was kind of amusing since I was billed 9.999 $ for it, but got a coupon code which gave me a discount of 9.999 $. I'm not sure if that's the 'normal' way how such things are done, but the first moment I saw that price tag I really thought "Are you fu**ing kidding me?!". Anyway, currently my only problem is that I'm stll busy with my replay of Kara no Shoujo 2 and I already have 11 Eyes, Da Capo 3 and Pygmalion in my alarmingly growing backlog...

I got the title but didn't start reading yet. Since the VN was just released it might take a bit of time until some more detailed opinions and reviews are out. Until then, if you haven't seen them yet, you might check out two older reviews in the VNDB comment section, Clepha's shorter and more critical one and Craxuan's longer and more fanboyish review. And I also found another review here and even a German one here. Hope that helps a bit.

It has probably more to do than just with western or Japanese art preference, since there's also the quality of the art to consider. The Japanese VN scene usually has a very high standard of art quality, which is something that can't be said at all for the OELVN scene. Furthermore, a realistic art style that's also good and pleasing to the eyes isn't easy and requires a lot of artistic skill. The most prominent Japanese example for that would be probably the titles from Innocent Grey like Kara no Shojo. From the OELVN scene I've only seen one title so far which I consider having an outstanding realisitic art style, and that would be One Day in London. So better stick to a more simple art style and try to make that good instead of going for a semi-decent realistic art style.

Definitely B, the comic book art! Disney art is certainly amongst the most plain and boring art styles there is. It lacks grace and character and is clearly directed to (little) children. It might serve that purpose well, but I consider them personally responsible that the west considers comic art as 'just for kids'.

It's nice to actually hear *anything* from this title again. Since the official translation was announced it pretty much disappeared from the face of the earth without any news. I was almost beginning to worry. I'll most likely back it since I'm quite interested in the trilogy for some time now.

MuvLuv Alternative and Stein's Gate had both three scenario writers according to VNDB. So it at least doesn't seem to be impossible.

Getchu published the results of their yearly Bishojo Game Awards where the 20 most popular titles of the past year are awarded. For comparison: Sales ranking 2016. Almost business as usual: YuzuSoft at the top, August third and Purple Software fourth. Eushully nowhere to be seen was more of less expected, and Navel's approach to even further milk their Otome series to death was also punished with a place at the lower end of the list. 1.) Senren ＊ Banka from YuzuSoft (Best Movie Award) 2.) Maitetsu from Lose 3.) Sen no Hatou, Tsukisome no Kouki from August (Best Graphics award) 4.) Amatsutsumi from Purple Software (Best Music award) 5.) Re: LieF ~Shin'ainaru Anata e~ from RASK (Best Scenario Award) 6.) Gin'iro, Haruka from Tone Work's 7.) Baldr Heart from Giga (Best System Award) 8.) Nora to Oujo to Noraneko Heart from Harukaze 9.) Otome ＊ Domain from Palette Qualia (Best Character Award with Asuka Minato) 10.) Sengoku † Koihime ~Otome Kenran ☆ Sengoku Emaki~ from BaseSon 11.) Akeiro Kaikitan from Silky's Plus Wasabi 12.) Tokyo Necro from Nitroplus 13.) Honoo no Haramase Oppai ★ Ero Appli Gakuen from SQUEEZ NSFW 14.) Floral Flowlove from Saga Planets 15.) Maji de Watashi ni Koishinasai! A Plus Disk from Minato Soft 16.) Tsumamigui 3 from Alice Soft (Best Ero Award) NSFW 17.) Kanojo ＊ Step from Smee 18.) Wagamama High Spec from Madosoft 19.) Otome Riron to Sono go no Shuuhen -Belle Époque- from Navel 20.) Karenai Sekai to Owaru Hana from Sweet & Tea

Hmm, with that description Comyu, Root Double and Tokyo Babel come to mind.

That's less of a problem of the tsundere arche type and more of a problem that she's just plain rude and impolite and lacks even the most basic manners. She's tsuntsun at most. I tend to like tsunderes, but not even I can stand her. And to be perfectly honest, it's quite a while since I saw the last time a good written tsundere. I think too many writers mistake tsundere with a plain bitch for some reason. Good written tsunderes are far too pride to lower themselves to such crude behavior. Instead, they make you think that you are the blunt barbarian. Unfortunately, the other characters aren't much better. Tadashi is the dai baka of idiot friends and Yuka's submissive clingyness drives me up the wall. So far only only Misuzu and Kukuri are bearable and I can also live with the protagonist if he isn't just in emo mode. But I'm also hoping that the cringeworthy slice of life scenes stop and the story gets some more meat. The red night sequences were quite interesting - that's the way to go.

This question is very unfortunately worded. Since high resolution art is good for both windowed and full screen mode the only thing that makes sense for them to figure out is if people prefer a 4:3 over a 16:9 wide screen resolution. But since a significant part of the people that voted for windowed only seem to play that way because of scaling artifacts in case of low res titles, that more or less absurdifies the poll since those people WOULD play in full screen if the game resolution would be high enough for it. I personally always play full screen, except for Japanese titles where I need a text hooker window next to it.

It's most likely just efficient calculation. The people that really wanted to play the game have most likely already bought it long ago. Therefore the Steam version is more for the remaining rest who either didn't know about the Jast version, or only want to buy from Steam or were just waiting for a cheap price. If Jast just tolerates the patch, it might calm down the censorship haters a bit and avoid that the title gets a bad Steam rating. But a higher Steam rating usually leads to increased sales and more satisfied customers, so it's pretty much a win-win situation. Products having different prices at different retailers is a pretty normal thing, and people could also get the original Jast version cheaper if they were buying it at a sale. I think the most important thing is that people ARE buying the game and not where and for what price. Jast having delayed the Steam version for so long was already a smart move that served precisely the purpose of getting most sales at full price.

Who the fuck wants to play a VN on a PS Vita if he has a TV available?! Why should I exchange my huge TV screen with HD resolution and dolby surround sound system with a tiny little potato screen, which isn't even able to support todays high res VN resolutions and some second rated stereo speakers? And not to mention that I have my hands free for drinking coffee and... other important tasks and don't have to hold up this little cookie box the whole time. Vita might be nice as a mobile device so you can play your VN's if you're on the way, but at home?!? LOL!!!

The reason why I think Kakumei is more possible than Sengoku Koihime is that they can translate and sell it in three separate parts. If all three parts of Kakumei have twice the size of SKM together, that would mean about 10 MB of text, and 3 - 4 MB of text for each individual title. That's in the region of the first Kohime Musou title and probably even less than Da Capo 3. Sengoku Koihime however, is according to Clephas already about 50% longer than SKM. That means about 8 MB of text for one single title, which also implies twice as high VA costs. That would be way more expensive than each individual Kakumei title provided VA's are of comparable quality which is very likely.

The most prominent translated titles with some battle of wits besides the two AkabeiSoft2 classics are probably the Innocent Grey titles Kara no Shoujo and Cartagra. Not for the faint-hearted though. Comyu might also fit the bill to a lesser extent if you count the conflict between Akihito and Itsuki. Saya no Uta also has kind of a battle of wits between Fuminori and Saya against... the rest of the world?! Good but also not for the faint-hearted. Hanachirasu might also fit because it's about a blood feud between two sword masters, but it's more about sword fighting. It's also quite flawed IMHO.

Yeah, Sengoku Koihime is pretty unlikely because of its tremedous length and expensive VAs, but the upcoming Shin Koihime Kakumei trilogy might have a chance since each individual title is probably a lot shorter. Since I prefer Koihime Musou's character designs over Sengoku Koihime's by a long mile, I'd be perfectly fine to get Kakumei instead of it. I also think Shin Koihime Eiyuutan isn't so unlikely considering that it's a lot shorter than the other titles.

So, after several months of reading (with interruptions), I finally managed to finish Mirai Nostalgia. Honestly, I'm not really sure how long it really was, but even if I just played the two main routes from Anna and Iori, it felt like an eternity. I have somewhat mixed feelings about it. Partly because I had different expectations about it. Synopsis and tags in VNDB about the story actually looked a lot more interesting than it tuned out to be. When I started to read it I therefore thought it would be more of a mystery VN, but it turned out to be an almost 100% pure slice of life VN with little to nothing happening and just some slight nakige elements at the end instead. Slice of life is usually intended more for relaxed reading and chilling out, but since reading Japanese is still a quite exhausting process for me, I need at least a bit more action to feel rewarded for my efforts. Especially since I'm not the biggest fan of slice of life VN's anyway. And this was pretty much like reading Princess Evangile in Japanese. And what made it even worse is that I was also reading Yoakena in English at the same time which was even more slice of life. As a consequence I had to tone down my reading to smaller doses to avoid going crazy. Anyway, just taken as it is, it's probably a decent slice of life VN with some likable heroines and good visuals. However, there are some noticable flaws that keep it from being more than that. And that's first and foremeost the protagonist. He's so passive and submissive that he's easily hetare 3.0. Granted, that's not exactly an uncommon problem for Japanese VN's, but it was worse than usual here. Especially, since certain heroines being madly in love with the protagonist was a central element of the story. And having a protagonist about as useful as a doorpost doesn't make that particular convincing. It also completely ruined the romance scenes since there was almost no chemistry between the protagonist and the heroines. The VN was also painfully boring at times, although that's probably a common problem of slice of life VN's. The nakige elements towards the end were also just very light. That's not to say I would have wanted lots of heavy drama, but here it just turned to whiny slice of life for a short time and then back to plain comedy slice of life for hours. Overall, I would have just liked to see a normal and serious conversation between mature persons for a change, instead of almost non-stop trivial cutesy and comedy chit chat. On the other hand, some of the moe and comedy wasn't so bad, it was just a too heavy dose for me. Heroine ratings: Anna > Haru > Iori > Uta > Kanata > Shizuku >> Nono > Hinano (The latter two felt strangely out of place. I think the VN would have been better without them.) Overall rating: 6.0 / 10 (I would have probably rated it a bit higher if I would have read it in English though, so I'm partly to blame.) Also played Mama-Haha inbetween since it reminded me of Tsumamigui 3 and JD Onsen to get my head free a bit. The former was better than expected while the latter was kinda plain even if the animated scenes were a nice change of pace. Still busy with Unionism Quartet A3 which is kind of okay for fan service when taken in smaller doses just one route after another with small breaks inbetween. Anyway, currently I really feel burned out from slice of life so I'll keep a distance from such VN's for a while. Which also means I'll delay Da Capo 3 a bit since I don't want to ruin my experience by not being in the mood for it. I think I'm therefore going to read Ikusa Megami Verita next in Japanese. That should be more what I need now.

That might be true, but if the translation is finished in two months, I'm also not willing to believe that it's Sengoku Koihime either...

There's also a more positive review about the title on VNDB in the comments section. It's a bit of a contrast to Clephas' more critical one. Overall, I think it's worth reading both for people who are still unsure, to get to know both sides of the medal. It's also worth noting that Pygmalion was just slighly lower rated than Tokyo Babel both on VNDB and EGS. So it's probably not a kamige but still a decent title for people who like the theme and the story premise.

MangaGamer usually teases new titles either shortly before they announce them or at the year previews at the start of a new year. They haven't done it for this year yet, but I guess they'll do it when they announce the results of the survey which should be soon. So I don't really want to start guessing new titles until then. Though it might be worth tracking the translating speed of a particular secret project to estimate length and the likeliness if it's a story title or just a short nukige. Even knowing the translator could be helpfull, since those can be picky and MG usually at least tries to give them the titles they want to translate. Newer and less experienced translators are also more likely to translate simple nukiges or smaller less important titles in general.