ChaosRaven

I think the main story is the same but there's New Game+ content with new quests and characters. I think you need two play-throughs of the same heroine to get all her scenes. Regarding your other questions, I just played Serawi's route so I unfortunately don't know the details of Yuela's route.

Yeah, it isn't as easy as it once was. Supipara has even less owners despite its stellar art and Minori brand, but I guess most copies were sold through MG's page directly. Steam is also a pretty terrible platform for promoting those titles. So much rubbish gets released that it's easy to miss it altogether if you aren't actively searching for it. On the other hand, the Steam sales shouldn't be underestimated. Eden also didn't have the best start, but after each sale the fund raiser increased by another 10.000$. So they shouldn't just give up yet.

Even if they make a Kickstarter, I think Dies is one of the rare titles that could still get a lot of money from it. It's so hyped, it would certainly get a strong campaign start and many casuals would then just jump on the wagon.

I like that they are so honest with it. Actually, I don't really think they did something particular wrong here, the situation has simply changed. The same thing is happening on Kickstarter too. MangaGamer has already reported several times now that since the whole Steam hype started, they got a lot of new account creations, most likely from Steam customers. So the Steam customers who were really interested in VN's have already moved on and went to the retail sites of the big VN publishers like MangaGamer and Jast. It tells a lot that the several year old nukiges Eroge and ImoPara are almost permanently in the top five for ages now. And the Steam users who didn't really get warm with VN's are less likely to buy another one. So the 'Steam only' customer group got much smaller either way. And while newer VN customers are now happily digging through MG's and Jast's game libraries, the older VN veterans just don't get enough from a short and simple title like Corona Blossom, especially with so many quality titles released by MG and Sekai. In principle, it happened what most people wanted, quality and a known and popular brand matters now much more than before. Or in short words: Welcome to the world of competition!

The suggestion was only for older versions of course since it doesn't make sense to support 4:3 anymore today for a new title. But if old art assets have this ratio it can't be changed anymore. In that case they could just add a zoom factor so the 4:3 is zoomed in to cover the whole 16:9 area. Programming that is piece of cake, especially considering that Unity gets more and more popular amongst VN developers. And there are already VN's with full HD 1920x1080 images out there so the art assets for an older title will hardly be a problem because they've still lower resolutions.

Depends on what they cut off from the event CG's. Cutting off Gonzou's head was a sin, I'll give you that. But if it's just an unimportant part of the background in an event CG, why should I care more about it than a normal background CC with sprites? Playing the whole VN with a black bar left and right isn't that great either, simply because it looks cropped - and it looks cropped 100% of the time. Still, the perfect solution for everyone would be to just take the high res art assets with the same scale and an option setting for 16:9 or 4:3.

Just to clarify some things about the Steam version of G-Senjou. This is an image of the evil, cropped and upscaled Steam version: And this is an image of the 'uncropped' and 'unscaled' original: (Only compare the backgrounds!) Ooooops... Yeah, the truth is that the original version was a cropped crap version too. And I prefer the high-res crap version over the low-res crap version. And considering Dies, I'll preserve judgement until I've seen the high-res version.

Even if the music is usually one of the parts which isn't talked about that much it can easily make or break a VN. It's arguably the medial part with the strongest atmospheric impact. The audio part doesn't really seem to be a particular strength of recently released titles, since I wasn't exactly blown away by the music in Supipara either. I think at least half of Key's secret to their success is, that they usually have a very good soundtrack.

So does that mean it's pretty much the Chuuni version of a Sakurai game with the prose > everything else?!

Unlikely. MG's Kouryuu made a statement about that topic about a year ago on his ask.fm account. In short, they don't release Kira Kira on Steam because they consider the translation not good enough for it. But a re-translation or re-edit would probably not be worthwhile because the time would be better spent on a new release.

I'm pretty sure you've checked the wrong version because if i go to the German Steam page I get the following: and And those are usually Nazi crosses. And we can't get the English version because it does contain those symbols. Unfortunately, discussing that with German authorities is as useless as discussing mosaics with Japanese authorities. Actually, it's even more ridiculous because those symbols are allowed in movies (if the context is right) because movies count as some kind of 'art medium' and computer games not. Don't ask, I don't understand it either...

For the German Steam version of course. I don't think other countries will be affected except Austria or Swiss maybe. Edit: Censorship is pretty normal for German Steam versions. There are many "Low Violence" version from games like Fallout 3 and recently some games like Painkiller: Hell & Damnation were taken down completely. And if it involves Nazi symbols it's even more critical.

Yeah, if the German authorities see such stuff in the Steam version it's pretty much game over.

Since this is a fictional story involving the Third Reich and the aftermaths of WW2, does it show any Nazi crosses? If so, they probably have to be removed at least for the German Steam version or there won't be a release here. Don't think the appearance of Hitler is really a problem provided it's not in a peculiar context. I hope they keep that in mind, since this is something the German authorities aren't particular tolerant about.

Nothing at that time could be fun except sleeping. But well, I also consider being woken up before 10AM as intentional body injury...

Hmm, that sounds extremely suspicious. No need to write in potential mood if you aren't involved... Edit: And why's he even awake and answering ask.fm questions at that time?!?

I’ve finished reading the first chapter of Supipara now, the story arc centered around Sakura. It’s somehow hard to judge a VN if there’s still 80% missing, on the other hand each chapter is supposed to be one complete heroine route and therefore should be rated as such. However, the ending was quite sudden and felt like something like a closing chapter would follow. Not so unlikely considering that there are 4 chapters for heroine routes but 5 in total. But so far it was kind of a so so experience. Naturally, the visual presentation was most impressive. Although, even if it sounds like heresy to criticize something in that area, some facial expressions of certain characters in various situations looked kinda goofy, especially the ones from the protagonist’s mom, but also Angeline had some weird expressions. Besides that, even if the lighting was pretty awesome in general, a bit too many scenes suffered from over-blending, making them so bright that it did almost hurt in the eyes after a while, especially in combination with the white font. Still, the visuals were certainly a highlight of the VN. Unfortunately, the sound department wasn’t as stellar as the visual one. Especially the slice of life music tracks were quite dull and reminded me of Princess Evangile which had similar problems in that area. I therefore exchanged the music with one of my ‘emergency albums’ for such situations after a while which made everything appear much more dramatic. But in general I don't like to do that, because my own music doesn’t adjust depending on the situation. Character-wise it was typical Minori - some were awesome while others stayed a bit bland. Alice stood out the most and there’s little doubt that she’s the main heroine. She’s very similar to Yuuko in ef or Erica in Eden and probably the most characteristic ‘Minori’ character. They are extremely good in writing that type and she’s so unique that they could almost claim a copyright for her. I’m not even sure hot to categorize her - I guess smart-dere nails it best. Overall, it was just a pleasure interacting with her although it could be criticized that she was stealing the other characters the show too much. Pretty much only Momiji could keep up with her, while Sakura and Angeline appeared rather bland in comparison, even if at least Angeline had some funny scenes (like the photograph scene ). The story was slice of life for the most part so far, which is still not exactly the biggest strength of Minori. And I think there was a lot of wasted potential with the witch scenario. It’s revealed so early that I don’t even have to use spoiler tags for it and none of the characters really seemed to care about it for whatever reasons. I know stories where just the ‘possibility’ that someone 'might' be a witch already makes for a highly interesting and tense story. But if even the involved characters don’t seem to care, why should the reader?! The romance also seemed a bit too rushed and the witch scenario wasn’t really used for an interesting story development yet. About half of the first chapter was more or less the common route introducing the characters, so there wasn’t much time for the Sakura specific arc anymore. That’s also a bit of a problem with the chapter structure for different routes instead of a continued story. You usually need a common route before the split to the heroine routes and I wonder how the other chapters will deal with that. Will it be repeated each time with slight variations like in Umineko, or will it be handled in a different way? Anyway, so far I’d rate the VN with a careful 7/10, mostly because Alice and the visuals compensate for a lot of shortcomings in the story department. Heroine ratings so far: Alice > Momiji > Angeline > Sakura

Muramasa probably, since he seems to rate that rather highly. Actually, that would hav been my next guess after Dies. Since Baldr was already announced, there aren't that much VN's anymore that did both well in his VN tournament and are also hyped in the west despite being untranslated.

Wouldn't be surprised if that's Conjueror's secret project, after all his diversion tactics with Eustia...

I'd also throw in Minori's Eden and Root Double certainly also has it's moments when you ignore route B. I also liked the atmosphere in Aoishiro even if the title is not without it's flaws like the somewhat repetitive routes.

So that's the mysterious fantasy title Conjueror was teasing about. But a 2015 title with 800 x 600 resolution? Are they living behind the moon?!

Okaaaaayyy, so Jast moved from announcing release dates years in advance to just a few hours now?! I know, you should learn from past mistakes, but aren't they overcompensating at bit now? Not that I would complain, it's a title I'll surely buy. So it's great that it's finally getting released.

Welcome to the forum and have a good time here. The selection of great VN's is now much bigger than years ago, and more are coming. So you should be staffed with good stuff for a while. I assume you already know the big Visual Novel publishers in the west: MangaGamer, Sekai Project, Jast USA and Frontwing. Und Grüße aus dem Schwabenländle meinerseits.

Shion joined the party and they *breaths deeply* bundled her route with 'grandma' Kikyou, while the walking freak-show Enya got her own character slot... *Sharpens battle axe and searches name of responsible writer*

Apparently it has more than 4 MB of text so it should be the longest VN they've ever translated, since Koihime and Evangile just had about 3 MB. (Not sure about Umineko though...) VNDB length infos are pretty unreliable since everything >= 2 MB seems to get the long description. Tokyo Babel has about 2 MB of text and is listed as long. But Shin Koihime Musou too with almost 6 MB (!!!) of text. So yeah, VNDB length infos suck pretty hard.