ChaosRaven

I just finished Hanachirasu which ended up kinda disappointing after a pretty good start. Part of it were the technical problems - it was prone to crashing and the combat animations slowed down to a dia show in auto mode while the auto mode itself had a rather inconsistent text display speed. But the story was also pretty lackluster. The title has lots of info dumps about fighting styles and got frequently lost in background information about loosely related historical events. I wouldn’t say I’d be against those in principle, but more often than not they were just presented in huge dry text walls, even further emphasized by the NVL format. And it’s relation to the current situation were often so loose that you could almost get the idea that the writer just wanted a day off and therefore just copy-pasted a few pages from ‘Samurai for Dummies’ instead of continuing the story. The characters suffered the most of that and just stayed pale and uninteresting until the end. The main characters were more like side characters and the side characters more like background actors. And while you get that there’s a revenge story going on, you never feel the intensity of it. Although it does have some well written and drawn fighting scenes which are pretty much the highlight of the story and also the situations where the technical descriptions of fighting styles were a bit better placed. Biggest offender was Akane though, who was unfortunately the protagonist. While his opponent Yoshia was still kinda cool even if underdeveloped, Akane was just some overly girlified annoying little brat, who appeared more like a pouting child that had his lollipop taken away. And it didn’t exactly help that ‘he’ was even voiced by a girl. Would have expected this type of pussy character more in a yaoi nukige than in a serious revenge story. The cause for the whole revenge was also rather unconvincing and the ending more facepalmy than dramatic. Still, I kinda liked the somehow more realistic and dark setting even if the samurai were drawn a bit too traditional for the modern world setting and some of the soundtracks got very repetitive after a while. And the fighting scenes were good for the most part. Heroine rating: Didn’t really matter since they were just there to deliver some cheap H-scenes and therefore hardly got any development. Kinda liked Itsurin the smith though. Overall rating: 5,5/10 (Rated it a bit down because of the technical problems)

Mainly Aiyoku no Eustia and Yosuga no Sora for which I still had slim hopes that the fan translations get finished. I'm also thinking about giving Liar-Soft's Steampunk series a retry. In retrospect I might have given up a bit to soon on it. When I tried Shikkoku no Sharnoth I actually liked the music and the overall setting and atmosphere, just the episodic story-structure was kinda lackluster. Maybe I should try one of the higher rated titles of the series a try, considering that Shikkoku no Sharnoth is supposed to be the weakest one. Though Mary was a pretty nice girl as a protagonist. We'll see...

Well, I think I'm going for Infinite Stratos first. If it really gets too silly for me, I can still replace it with WA2.

I'd agree with the latter statement but not really with the former. Since technically, the whole difference between the nakige and the utsuge genre is that the first has a comeback after the drama while the second doesn't. However, if the motif of a VN is to show you inevitable loss then it can make sense to only give you one bad ending. But even those two statements are awfully generalized since there's more than just black and white and there's also the infamous Japanese bitter-sweet ending. In general, the important thing is that an ending is believable and fitting regardless if it's a good or bad one, although even that can be a very subjective matter. Though I don't necessarily expect every ending to be greatness incarnate. I'm not necessarily opposed to 'cheap' good endings for people who just love their happy end, considering that for example the five gazillion bad endings of the Kara no Shojo series aren't all master pieces either (though KnS1 bad endings > KnS2 bad endings IMO). More important is that it at least 'has' good written endings.

Finished the third and last season of Kuroko no Basket. I think that was the weakest season so far even if it had some interesting back blendings about how the Generation of Miracles got together. The tendency that every match of Serin has to end with the winning strike in the last 5 seconds regardless of opponent strength really started to get a bit annoying. If they get a last second win against an injured Kise who is 90% of the time at the sideline clearly means that they were overall the weaker team that didn't really deserve to go through to the finals. But the final match against Akashi was clearly on the brink of absurdity. KnB matches were always a bit over the top but they really went nuts here. The first half was still kind of okay, but the second one was just so insane I don't even know what they were playing there, but certainly not basketball anymore. I mean, parts of it were under water and other parts in outer space. And then the laser beams and lightning flashes everywhere. Kagami trying to dive into double and triple zones while Akashi went wide arc and multi zone even switching personality in the process. Overall, I think it was probably something between Quidditch, Gwent and Blood Bowl. Just totally crazy. Anyway, thinking about what to watch next. I've still White Album 2 and Infinite Stratos downloaded, so I guess I'll go for one of them next.

Most in depth: AkabeiSoft's two classics G-Senjou no Maou and Sharin no Kuni, Himawari no Shoujo. Most epic: MuvLuv Alternative Emotional hammer: Minori's Eden and ef - a fairy tale of the two. My personal pick for best would be G-Senjou, because it has a fairly good mixture of story, drama and epicness.

Overdrive has fairly entertaining slice of life comedy VN's. Edelweiss, my favorite is probably the most crazy one with rather over the top comedy. On the other hand, it can get surprisingly bitter-sweet in some routes so I'm not sure if it would be the right suggestion for what you are searching. Kira Kira or Deardrops would probably better suited here. Alcot's My Girlfriend is the President is also some of the most funny VN's I've read so far and certainly light. And there's still the Shuffle! series, but it's probably a love or hate thing. I've also started reading Dracu-Riot! a few days ago and so far it was a real blast. The prologue was almost like an action movie peppered with YuzuSoft's unique comedy style. The sprite dynamics are even better than in NobleWorks, especially the facial expressions and the eyes. The characters feel so dynamic and alive, it's no suprise that their titles are so popular - it's just extremely well done. In contrast to NobleWorks, they also seem to have gotten the story right this time, although I'm not far enough to really judge it accurately yet. But there's certainly a reason why it's so highly rated and popular. But it's also tagged as long on VNDB, though the same applies for NobleWorks which didn't feel that long too me. So yeah, I think my personal recommendation would be Dracu Riot! despite its length, since it's such a high qualiy moege that everyone should at least give it a try.

Hmm, didn't play that much VN's with animated H-scenes but I liked Ciel's Fault!! with art from Tony Taka even if it wasn't a nukige. I also kinda liked G.J.'s Hime to Boin and Sex Life. Didn't like any of their newer works though. I'm also eagerly awaiting the English translation of ωstar's Bishoujo Mangekyou -Norowareshi Densetsu no Shoujo- which is also animated I think. Their whole Bishoujo Mangekyou series is very stylish and rather popular so it's certainly worth a look. The only English ones I know are MangaGamer's ImoPara which was kinda okay and they also have some titles from Softhouse-Seal which are rather big in animations, especially their top brand GRANDEE. I only played some of MangaGamer's titles years ago and most of them were pretty silly though.

I think before I start caring about the potential ending of the VN, I first want to know if the stuff BEFORE the ending is actually worth reading. Otherwise I couldn't care less. Judging by his previous works, Niijima Yuu seems to be a rather decent writer - you could do worse than having written Hatsusaku I think - so I don't really see it that negative. Some writers also possess the incredible brain power to recognize that visual novels allow for different endings, including good and bad ones. Who knows, maybe he can make everybody happy... or nobody.

So I finished Iori's route in Mirai Nostalgia now. It took a while since I was also reading UQ A3 in JP besides the Root Double and Yoakena I was also reading in English. It was very... slice of lifey to say the least even if turned to nakige towards the end. But together with Yoakena I was almost on my last legs, it was just too much slife of life, I had to put in a few breaks. The VN doesn't really make a big secret out of the fact that it's main focus is on Anna and Iori. The Kudou twins were so forgetable bland that I can still hardly believe that they are actual main heroines with routes. Uta was kinda cute but she's a bit too young for me to play her route. I would probably play Kanata's route if she would have any, but surprisingly she doesn't. I guess something went wrong during the selection of the main heroines. Anyway, although some of the characters have some kind of psychic powers (besides a talking cat) it didn't really have a lot of impact until the end since most of the story was just simple school slice of life. Iori starts out kind of interesting, but her air gun fetish got really annyoing after a while. She's a real tsuntsun, getting constantly upset and waving around with her air gun. It was probably just intended as a running joke, but all so often it reminded me of those newspaper articles about careless fun fanatics accidentally killing a family member, and I just wanted the protagonist to take away her gun. Her hot temper later escalates to a rather dramatic story arc that shed some light onto her connection to Anna. I think I'll go straight to Anna's route from here. She was really nice and had the best chemistry with the protagonist, and the story is essentially about her, Iori and the protagonist. Hope the protagonist will be a bit more proactive in her route. He was a bit too passive for my taste so far.

I think that's one of Koihime Musou's biggest strengths and also part of why it developed into an entire franchise. They got a good balance between focusing on a selected cast of main characters and still introducing new characters. That way it kept the story fresh without overwhelming you too much with new characters. Unfortunately they dropped the ball a bit in Shin Kohime Musou, and SKM Moeshouden was just chaos. I think they went back to the roots a bit with Eiyuutan, but I've honestly my doubts about Sengoku Koihime. Having many side characters is one thing, but a VN just doesn't work without a selected cast of main characters the story is focusing on. And Sengoku is just single route for all characters which makes it even more difficult than it was in SKM's three route structure. I wonder if it even has main heroines in the true sense, or just side characters that have slightly more screen time than others. But I disgress...

Yes, just her introduction route that unlocks the other heroines, I didn't know that there's also an after route so to say. Hm, yeah I still liked Feena so why not. I probably give it a short break for now to get motivated again and pick it up sometime later. Thanks for the info.

Finished Feena's route in Yoake Mae yori Ruri Iro na now and as much as it hurts to say, but it was horribly generic. Considering that Feena is supposed be a moon princess you might at least expect a visit in a moon city, but there was nothing like that. Just ultra simplistic school life moege. Presentation wise it's still quite decent despite it's age and it also has some surprisingly good soundtracks, but besides that it has very little to offer. It's neither particularly funny nor dramatic, the romance wasn't particularly engaging with little to no chemistry between Feena and the rather bland protagonist and there's no interesting story either. And by removing the H scenes you can't even play it for fan service anymore. Overall, I'm thinking about dropping this completely and just ignore all the other routes. I always wanted to play Feena's route since she kind of stood out with her moon princess charme, but the rest of the cast simply lacks that appeal. So I think I move on to Dracu Riot now besides the Hanachirasu I'm also currently playing. It's supposed to be pretty good, and considering Noble Works was already a quite decent moege it at least shouldn't disappoint.

So it's finally official and confirmed that Conjueror, Reading Steiner and Gundam Ace are the translators. I didn't expect Gundam Ace to be part of the translation team and Gare to be just an editor though. Great that they support both 16:9 and uncropped 4:3 - that's the way to go!

That's kinda easy for me: I'll pick Shuffle and the heroine would be Asa. She was actually my least favorite heroine in Shuffle, but she was my absolute favorite in Really? Really! when she turned into long-hair Asa. So, no regrets here. She just has to grow her hair long and I'll get one of my favorite heroines.

A... season pass... for a VN?!?

It once took me more than 25 reloads to get the right combination. Just knowing that your choice was wrong doesn't give you automatically the right combination. The possible number of combinations raises exponential with the number of slider choices.

It's important that I play the routes of my favorite heroines first. I don't really have a problem playing routes of other heroines as long as I keep that order. However, I can get quite attached to some heroines, using wallpapers and avatars from them for years.

Well, Root Double's Senses Sympathy System is definitely one of a kind. Simply the best way to don't miss any bad end.

They have a reputation for little quality assurance, causing all kinds of problems from being buggy to lacking translation. But apparently their releases have improved, at least I didn't hear much complaints about Seinarukana or Flowers. Yeah sorry, I almost missed it and saw it just recently. Thing with Root Double is, that I wanted to get finally finished with it since it's such a long title that I was reading almost half a year on it. I'm not really a completionist that has to read everything, and just reading left over puzzle pieces with lots of redundant text isn't that fun. It would be different if it was a complete route. But the way it is, I think I'm fine with what I got so far.

Playing Hanachirasu now, which I picked up during the black friday sale. Start is pretty cool with a ferocious ninja attack on a mansion in a dark and gritty setting. Unfortunately the game already crashed on me, which made me painfully aware that I'm playing a Jast game. *sigh* Well, I hope it doesn't happen too often...

Not sure if MangaGamer & Co would really care about that, since most of their translators are contract workers who also do tranlations directly for Japanese VN studio's. So essentially, the 'independent' translators and the translators working for MG, Sekai and Jast are pretty much the same people. And as long as they get paid fairly for their translation work, they'll hardly care if there's a MG, Sekai or whatever label on the final package.

Well, it does have an English Steam release...

Just curious, if an eroge is defined by having H-scenes, then what makes that a title that has an adult and an all ages release? So the adult release would be an eroge, while the all ages release would be just a visual novel. And are the Sakura games that don't have an adult patch eroges because they are just about fan service, or visual novels because it's not explicit and the girls are just showing more nude skin than usual. Actually, I wouldn't know where to draw the line exactly.

lol, a review consisting of 90% ranting, but still a top rating at the end - just priceless!