ChaosRaven

Well, most complaints I heard about it was the level recycling, but I doubt that anything could be worse than Skyrim in that regard with its thousands of almost identical draugr crypts, bandit caves and dwemer ruins copy & pasted all over the place. What's bugging me a bit is that it was 'popular' to bash Dragon Age 2 - many people somehow 'wanted' to hate it. But according to some more unbiased opinions, story and characters apparently were not that bad, even if they were weaker than in DA:O. Problem is, other party based RPG's with well developed characters almost don't exist. The Witcher doesn't have a party based system, Elder Scrolls games neither that, nor story or any remarkable characters (great lore and atmosphere though) and Divinity Original Sin is too silly and dull for me. However, I'm also thinking about trying Final Fantasy 10 or give Ikusa Megami Verita or a decent Steam JRPG a try. I heard good things about the Shadowrun RPG's, but the art is pretty meh and I'm not sure if the characters have any depth. Or I just skip DA2 and jump to DA:I.

I'm currently thinking about dropping Pillar's of Eternity since I pretty much hate all changes they made to the combat system: - Buff spells can't be used uot of combat anymore which makes them useless because there's more important stuff to do in combat - The AI pathing is the weirdest thing ever with characters running in circles, doing nothing at all, mages sometimes attacking in melee, etc. - Endurance used as pseudo-health is extremely unintuitive - Lack of real healing spells results in constant marathons in and out of dungeons since you can't even rest in dungeons. - Hard to keep mages out of combat - Too many useless spells - Ai pathing + Friendly fire = HATE - NPC characters are soulless in comparision: They almost never talk or interrupt you, and it's not possible to see if you've already used a dialogue option Maybe I should try Dragon Age 2 instead. As much as Bioware are bashed those days, their games still click with me more than the others.

In the special relationship of those two, Minori are the tsundere and MangaGamer like a hetare 3.0 protagonist: They just suck everything up and are still begging for more.

Compared to Tokyo Babel where they placed a high school pretty much straight in limbo full with angels and demons, this is nothing!

Of course they are aware now, but they weren't on AX. They made a complete blog post about their AX releases without any mention of Trioline, then Minori dropped the bomb and MG hastily added another blog post about that. They also didn't reserve an annoucement placeholder for it on their convention site, which is very unsual. It was... a 'typical' Minori action - completely unpredictable and weird.

Eden is a special case because it's from Minori, and they are so paranoid that they seem to insist on an ESRB rating which according to MangaGamer was a real pain in the ass to make for their previous title ef - The fairy tale of the two. Otherwise, MangaGamer basing their hardcopies on sales of their online copies is so old and basic knowlegde that you must be fairly new to the VN scene not to know it. They mentioned it several times over the years. The real 'counter example' you are searching for is actually ef - The fairy tale of the two itself. They mentioned several times it sold horribly and still they made a hard copy for it with an ESRB rating. It's the only clear exception from the rule I know of (besides Eden) and I still don't know the reason why they made the exception for it. But MangaGamer's relationship with Minori was always - 'special'. I mean, they were able to force MG to use mosaics in ef, and at AX they even announced a title being translated by MangaGamer without MangaGamer even knowing from it. And don't get me started on this whole fund raiser idea for Supipara. So yeah, if Minori comes into play, normal MG rules don't apply anymore. You could even say it's a normal MG rule that everything Minori isn't normal, as crazy as that sounds.

So, I've started to play Yoake Mae yori Ruri Iro na now, my first August game. It's fairly old and probably just moege, but I like the moon theme. Which propably makes this my personal star gazer season of the year, with the Mirai Nostalgia I'm currently also reading in Japanese. Well, to be precise, I had to make a little break from all the moe in Koiken Otome for a short time and watched two seasons of Dexter first. And now, several serial killers and dozens of victims later, I feel 'rejuvenated' again for more moe.

General lesser sales on Steam of VN's is simply FACT that was mentioned and proved (via Steam Spy) countless times now. Each Sakura game selling less than the last one, same with other 'fan service' titles like Corona Blossom, MangaGamer complaining about bad sales of story titles released on Steam, etc. Fact two is that MangaGamer got a strong increase of accounts from Steam which was CONFIRMED by MangaGamer. And tell me, why exactly should Steam users interested in VN's 'intentionally' keep their distance from MG's site?! Sure, certainly not 'every' Steam user went to MG or related publisher sites, but the ones who are really 'interested' and therefore willing to pay more than just 5 $ certainly had a good chance. Just have a look at the Steam forums with countless complaints why the Steam version has no H-scenes and countless answers sending them to the MG site to get their H. And what I said was that it was a 'combination' of several factors, the MAIN one being the boom being over, and the REMAINING ones even more lowered by people moving to MangaGamer AND higher competition. I've no idea from where you got this absolute 'reduced only by Steam user moving to MG' conclusion from your second sentence.

If it's just a few lines then it's unlikely that it was intentionally. It's not enough to save much time - it wouldn't make sense. It was probably just carelessness then.

Actually, the way you are describing this almost sounds like the translator intentionally tried to cut some corners to save some work. Nobody expects anything in terms of story from a simple nukige, so the translation would be less likely to be checked if scenes make no sense. Or it's an edited machine translation. But entire sentences missing sounds like more than just a simple translation mistake.

Sorry, but you aren't really up to date anymore, the VN boom on Steam is over. A Steam release simply isn't a guaranteed avalanche of dollares anymore. You might check out Front Wing's whining thread about Corona Blossom's horrible sales. Or Conjueror's comments about Tokyo Babel's not exactly breath-taking sales, that might make future engagement's in further chuuni titles difficult. Similar thing for Fata Morgana and judging by Supipara's fund-raiser, even getting to chapter 2 might get an almost impossible challenge. And I'm not sure if the usually long tails of VN titles on Steam are still as long as they were used to be. Steam users interested in VN's aren't blind, they already moved on directly to the sales sites of MangaGamer, Jast & Co. And competition is also higher.

I think Oretsuba is considered as rather difficult to translate because it has a lot of slang and other colorful language, so it should better be done by a more experienced translator. But I'm not so sure if Navel would care about that and just assign some random translator of technical manuals for washing machines instead...

I somehow fail to see the point of this Steam release. They make an entire retranslation for a title which most people who were interested in it already played long ago, and I find it hard to believe that many people who already bought MangaGamer's adult version are willing to buy the title again, just to get two additional but butchered routes. Essence+ could have been interesting, but it's not even that. I hope Navel keep their sales expectations low, since it'll most likely hard to even finance the retranslation. The only positive thing is that Navel seem to have an interest in the Western market again. Although they seem to prefer to go independent now, which is fine by me, but helloooooo we have 2016 and not 2004 anymore, could we maybe raise our mindset beyond Shuffle for a change?! Is it too much to ask for an Oretsuba or Tsuriotsu?! I mean, even Oretsuba is already about 10 years old, so maybe just maybe it would be about time for that instead of Shuffle release 1245, which isn't even the final and definite edition?

I wish the community would be a bit more tolerant about translation quality of fan translations, or at least offer criticism in a more constructive manner instead of just bashing it. While I never worked on a fan translation, I worked with a few team members on a mod for a computer game for years. So I do know what it's like to work on a huge project in your spare time. And there are times when just hate it and want to pack it all in. And when you then just get some bashing comments instead of encouragement, you really want to scream out...

Yeah, Chiyoda was quite the quirky one. It's a petty that she didn't get more screen time. I was actually thinking about the fan disc since Chiharu has a route there, but my VN schedule for the rest of this year is pretty much already fixed. Might be something for next year though, since technically Koiken Otome is a knight girl VN, and I have a bit of a weakness for those. And Koiken was certainly a lot better than Seikishi Melty ☆ Lovers.

I finally finished Koiken Otome. Overall, it was a pretty solid school-life moege. Not exactly groundbreaking, but still a nice heart-warming cuddle VN. The VN had a bit of a Harry Potter feeling. All the characters are in a special school for 'douryoku' (aka magic) users, and fight each other and other schools in small teams in a Japanese highschool version of a gladiator-arena . Sounds actually more exiting as it actually was, since the story could get rather tedious from time to time. IMHO, the VN didn’t do itself a favor by limiting the protagonist to a semi-passive supporter with his ‘special talents’. On the other hand, most of the characters were rather likable, not just the main heroines but also some of the side characters. It also had several (drawn) male characters who didn’t even all belong to the idiot friend trope. And that’s actually a lot more remarkable than it should . Four of the main heroines had their own route with some light drama and several rather decent H-scenes. It was a bit surprising that Chiharu didn’t have a route though, considering that she was one of the most funny characters. Comedy wasn’t the best I’ve read, but it did certainly have its moments. The VN had also pretty polished visuals although the soundtrack could have been certainly better. And although the story was nothing to write home about, it also didn’t do anything particularly wrong, considering what it wanted to be. And that’s actually not something I can say about many of the VN’s I did play this year. Heroine ratings: Nao > Touko > Chiharu > Austin > Akane > Rei > Suzu > rest Overall rating: 7 / 10 Overall, a pretty save read for someone who wants just a simple feel-good moege with decent art and ero and without any serious drama. Not something I’d advice for someone who wants an interesting story though.

It's your thread and therefore it's your call, so I've corrected my relevant posts and put them into spoiler tags. But if you criticize others I'd appreciate it, if you'd follow your own words and use spoiler tags in posts like this too, where you're openly talking about details in Maggot baits. That would be quite the special case. But you aren't exactly an angel either if it comes to spoiler tags. Like here where your spoiling details about Sharin no Kuni. The two links I've given are actually not meant as petty nitpicking. I just want to make clear that we somewhere have to set a 'reasonable' limit for the usage of spoiler tags, or otherwise we can put pretty much every post in spoiler tags or this forum will degenerate into a real mobbing circus where everyone blames each other for not putting spoiler tags on some ridiculous bogus details. The last five pages of the "What are you playing" thread would be already enough to send about two dozen warnings out at least. There are even posts where entire walkthrough details were posted. So do we behave like adults and reserve spoiler tags for important information or do we all start to troll each other for every minor detail? In the latter case the complete "What are you playing" thread should be deleted because it's a complete hotbed of sin. And I surely wouldn't envy the admins for the approximately 50 posts they'd have to censor each day. Anyway, sorry this went completely off-topic, but I think it was necessary to say to make people aware that they might be sitting in a glass house when starting throwing stones. Sorry again, last post from me in this thread, so no more off-topic from me.

Again, the uniforms are clearly visible on the COVER IMAGE of Alternative!!! Do you always play VN's without even looking at the cover because you consider it a spoiler?!

You can see the uniforms pretty much on every screenshot and it's even on the cover of Alternative, so a spoiler for it doesn't make sense. Spoilers should be used for story relevant details and not for trivialities like clothing. Otherwise we can pretty much delete 90% of all posts in the forum where a VN is discussed.

While I'm all for spicing up slice-of-life scenes with an interesting plot, I'm definitely against comedy being the general solution for it. Good romance requires a certain amount of tension to work, but if you add too much comedy to those scenes they get just dull and meaningless. Even worse, if the VN has a supposedly meaningful plot it can destroy even that. Comedy has to be treated with care, it has to fit to the overall style of the VN, to the characters and to the situation. There's also what I call 'soft comedy' without any potentially negative effects like when characters are intentionally joking with each other if the mood is right like in real life, and 'hard comedy' with potentially harmful effects to the plot where the characters are pretty much ridiculed. It can also get overused pretty fast and not all writers can produce good comedy like in Majikoi or Comyu. Overall, I'd say this blog article could be written in almost the same way just for comedy. Though there's certainly also a good amount of personal taste involved. I noticed that you tend to be very tolerant to comedy while disliking romance in general. I'm almost the opposite here, I like romance and can tolerate a lot more ichaicha before getting bored, but I get tired of romance very fast. However, unlike comedy romance is much less likely to hurt a serious plot since it's also often essential part of many serious VN's like nakige or utsuge. For that reason I have a particular dislike of excessive comedy in story VN's. I would have liked Tokyo Babel a lot more if it would have toned down the comedy a bit or just go full comedy. It still made it somehow on my okayish side because the individual parts at least had a decent quality. But there will probably no come-back for the ChuSingura I'm currently reading. The plot and characters get so ridiculed that I'm literally seeing red and could strangle half of the cast. It doesn't fit at all to the source material of a rather grim revenge story.

Wow, that's so very nice from them to adjust to the inferior English market by producing some kusoge just for us instead of translating one of their better titles.

Lol, actually Tali was the character I liked the least and the only one that wasn't loyal to me. I was somehow furious that she wanted to hide the actions of her father and come up with some poor lies instead. Well, I made sure that every single being in the whole galaxy got to know it and I didn't care that she hated me for it.

Finished Mass Effect 2 just now. Pretty epic ending although I think the story wasn't as good as in the first part. I mean, technically 80% of the game was gathering your team together. Each member then got a loyalty quest and then hardly interacted with you anymore. It was impressivly done, very cinematic and almost like an interactive movie, but it doesn't change the fact the story structure was extremely simplistic. It makes me wonder why ME2 is considered the strongest part of the series. Were people really that annoyed by the mako?! The resource gathering in ME2 wasn't that great either.