ChaosRaven

Oh wow, I'm really curious how your review will turn out. Hapymaher will be one of the next titles I'll read and I'm also interested in this one from Purple Software.

MangaGamer licensed other titles with adult content so I don't know why they should hesitate in the case of Minori titles. The second reason with Supipara is actually more likely. I remember them saying that they didn't ask Innocent Grey for Flowers yet because they wanted to release KnS2 first and so they lost the title to Jast. So it's indeed possible that Supipara was blocking it. Do you have a source for the info that MG already knew about that? Since this statement didn't sound at all like it and from the comments I've seen they were definitely surprised about the announcement. And just 'talking' about titles doesn't count since they also talked about their other titles and MG apparently wasn't interested in them for whatever reasons. I'd really like to know what makes Trinoline so different from their other titles that MG should suddenly be interested in it. And the only reason I could think of would be that it is an all ages title like Supipara. But I'm not sure if MG really relies on Steam so much anymore. The VN boom on Steam is more or less over and a release there is hardly a guarantee for good sales anymore, especially if it's a full price title. And according to MG, many Steam users created accounts on their site anyway.

Yeah, that's why I often use images from VNDB, since it's done in less than a minute and the site itself is pretty reliable. You could say that. I'm currently reading Seikishi Melty ☆ Lovers and they've drawn just 4 (!!!) characters in total. And they gave this title away as 'compensation' for Juukishi Cutie ☆ Bullet. What an irony, I guess they were thinking two half games equal one full game. Well, I'm almost finished with it, but it won't exactly get a glamour review.

This is slowly getting worrying...

Minori released four titles since Supipara and MangaGamer apparently has no interest in either of them. So why should they suddenly have interest in the fifth one without even knowing its reception. Minori made the announcement without informing MangaGamer before, and they surely had enough time to do that. The whole thing smells fishy. I'd say Minori made the announcement intentional without informing MangaGamer because they knew it'll be hard to refuse them now. Natsuzora no Perseus won the Getchu graphics and ero award in 2012. It should be a mouth watering title considering MG's customer base, but they still show no interest - I wonder?! I'd say MG's lack of interest comes from the whole censoring theater with Minori. Those two companies have a history.

Minori's Natsuzora no Perseus and Soreyori no Prologue are the two VN's from Minori I really wanted to read. I had slim hopes for MangaGamer to license at least one of those titles, but according to Nobukazu (nbkz) Sakai's interview at AX, MangaGamer has no interest in them. Further considering that Minori announced Trinoline more less against MangaGamer's will, it doesn't look like we'll see many Minori VN's from MangaGamer anymore. So it looks like I have to read those in Japanese too.

Well, I think it's definitely possible to have a focus on a character without making the other characters dumb. UB showed some different and interesting sides of some characters with Archer and Lancer in particular, so I still enjoyed the route both in the VN and the anime. But the flaws were a little too much to push Fate route from my top spot which IMHO had way smarter villains.

Just a little request or suggestion from my side. In many of your earlier VN reviews you used screenshots or a cover image from the VN you were reviewing. I found those very helpful to get a good impression of the overall style, characters and atmosphere of the title. You don't do that anymore or at least very rarely now I think - probably because it's too time consuming. Still, it would already be very helpful if you'd provide at least a VNDB link and/or the cover image from there. I remember searching a VN of one of your reviews once in VNDB, but since your title differed slightly from how it was written in VNDB, I couldn't find it there. But naturally, you can write your reviews like you want. This is just a little (egoistical) suggestion, so you don't have to follow it of course. Just wanted to note that I found your older reviews a bit easier to read because of that.

I didn't play Heaven's Feel route, but from the remaing two I still liked Fate more than Unlimited Bladeworks simply because it felt more believable.

Yeah, it's really ridiculous. You don't really lure any (sane) customers to your site with such a price policy. I'd even go so far to say that Sekai would be even better off, if they offered at least some of their H-patches for a very small price tag like 1 € or even for free. The only condition would be to create an account on their site. That way they could cultivate the soil for future titles. I honestly don't understand why Sekai isn't aware of the value of accounts. They do so many things right, but here... *sigh*. Larger retail sites use even much more aggressive ways to acquire new customers. Gog and Origin for example give away whole games for free in regular intervals to lure people away from Steam. Sekai could do a similar thing at least on a smaller scale like 'because 2nd year anniversary' or 'the sky is blue today' you get X for free or dirt cheap from our site if you have an account.

I bought it - with the 30% price reduction it's actually pretty cheap. If they sell the final chapters for the same (reduced) price, it'll be just 25 € for the whole game. That's the same price like MangaGamer charges for their shorter nukiges like the Softhouse-Seal or Free Friends series. So the price is pretty fair. Don't really mind the missing H scenes here since the H-content seems to be rather low anyway. Hardly comparable to If my Heart had Wings which had more than half of its CG's cut out lol. Though I don't really get it, first they create two ridiculous overpriced Kickstarters which failed for obvious reasons and now they sell it for dirt cheap on Steam. Why the heck didn't they just ask for a more reasonable price on Kickstarter? I think with a price tag < 100.000 € the project might have had realisic chances to succeed considering the good reputation of the title. But well, I don't have to understand everything...

I think if Dovac really wanted to abandon adult titles he would have done it already. His main mistake is that he expects his adult section to grow as fast as his all ages section, which is simply not possible without a similar public distribution platform like Steam for adult titles. They already made the best out of it with adult patches, but the situation is certainly not perfect for both sides. Overall, I think they simply need more patience. Adult titles are an investement in the future, the demand is certainly there. Sekai Project are in a way better position now than MangaGamer was in their early years so I think if they really get serious with adult titles, which they didn't really do until now with Koikuma, they will succeed sooner or later.

No, it's simply a matter of common sense. Several of MangaGamer's best selling titles are adult only like Eroge or ImoPara while Dovac claims that adult titles don't sell. And it's probably true for his company Sekai Project, but obviously not for MangaGamer. Otherwise I'd be extremely curious to hear, how on earth a rather new site with barely any remarkabale content like Denpasoft should have even a remotely comparable number of registered accounts like a ten year old site of the most established VN publisher in the west with hundreds of titles.

I think Dovac's frustration goes way beyond of just loosing the money for an upgrade patch. It's not exactly new information that sales on their Denpasoft site aren't particularly great. Dovac complained about that fact often enough and frequently used it as an argument to defend their all ages policy. And naturally, many people get upset about that, arguing that adult titles sell pretty well for MangaGamer. However, what most people probably don't see is that Sekai Project isn't MangaGamer, and there is actually a vast difference between those two companies: If it comes to all ages titles sold on Steam, both companies are more or less equal, because for a typical Steam user it doesn't really matter who's the publisher of the title he wants to buy. However, things are different if it comes to adult titles. Since those either can't be sold on Steam at all, or just as a stripped-down version, the own home site where adult titles can be sold comes into play. And with that we are slowly getting closer to the true reasons why MangaGamer are huge adult-freaks while Sekai Project just need to hear the word 'adult' to get into a bad mood and go tsun-tsun. Overall, my personal estimate is that the MangaGamer site has about 10 - 20 times as much accounts as Sekai Project's adult site Denpasoft. Now, what does that mean? First, it means that if MangaGamer sells an adult only title on their home page it would sell approximately 10 - 20 times better as if Sekai Project would sell it on their Denpasoft site. Second, it also means that titles which are also available on Steam can be sold on their own site which saves them the hefty 30% Steam fee. I'm a pretty good example for that myself. I've an account both on Steam and MangaGamer. And yesterday I bought Supipara on the MangaGamer site which means they didn't have to pay the 30% Steam fee for my copy. But I bought all the titles from Sekai Project so far on Steam because I don't have an account on Denpasoft, which means they lost 30% of my money to Steam. So I think it should be clear that Sekai Project are in a significant disadvantage compared to MangaGamer if it comes to adult titles. But why has MangaGamer so much more accounts than Denpasoft? I think that's also quite easy to answer. MangaGamer is a much older company than Sekain Project with an already established retail site for adult titles. Most people don't like creating new accounts (I personally hate it), so it simply takes time to convince people to create an account and you have have to give them a good reason for it. But what has Sekai Project to offer on their adult site? Frankly, not much! Pretty much just a few adult patches for Steam titles where I can easily get the patch for free. And it's hard to make people feel guily just for downloading an adult patch if they actually bougth the title legally on Steam. And what has MangaGamer to offer? Lots of high quality adult only titles which were or still are very popular like ImoPara, Eroge, Koihime, Beat Blades Haruka and many more. So what can Sekai Project do to get more accounts on their site? This is ironically almost a vicious circle. To get more accounts they have to offer something everybody wants which isn't available on Steam. A popular nukige for example, but who wants to give them one as long as their adult site is an account graveyard with an almost guaranteed sales flop? I'm sure this ridiculous problem makes them want to tear their hair out at times. I personally think they have the best chances with Sayori's Boku to Koi Suru Ponkotsu Akuma since it's an absolute gorgeous nukige from a very popular artist with an already established fan base in the west. And while most people probably think that the Baldr Sky series is Sekai Project's most important license achievement this year, I tend to disagree. Baldr Sky won't solve the problem with their Denpasoft site but Boku to Koi Suru Ponkotsu Akuma might be able to. So I think for them this good for nothing nukige is even more important for their future than the hyper popular Baldr license. And if they really want to butcher this title for Steam (which might have been a condition from Smile to even get it), then I really hope that they are smart enough to delay the Steam release as long as possible. They absolutely HAVE to offer something exclusive on their Denpasoft site or people will continue to give a damn about it. While this text wall won't make Dovac's answers more diplomatic, I hope it at least gives some understanding why he sometimes tends to overreact a bit if it comes to this topic. It must be absolutely frustrating for him to get constantly criticized for his all ages focus even if he tries to get his Denpasoft site going for years now. Steam and Kickstarter made the fast growth of Sekai Project possible, but unfortunately there's no 'adult Steam' site they could use. So their adult section will take longer for the simple reason that they have to establish their own site for it, and that can take years. Actually, the best thing people can do who want more adult titles from Sekai Project, is creating an account on Denpasoft and buy every available title from there instead of Steam. Well, I'm admittedly a pretty bad example for that since I personally don't have an account there yet, but I plan to change that for the Koikuma release.

It's not drawn by their main artist Wanaca, so my interest is pretty much zero.

I'm pretty sure I read in one of MangaGamers blogs (probably one of Doddlers) that eroge artists were used to draw their original art assets in a resolution twice as high as the title will be released. However, considering that titles like G-Senjou no Maou, Clannad or Akagoei Trinity got high-res versions years later, it's certainly possible to release them with a bigger size. Provided that the Japanese know the existence of compressed image formats like PNG or JPEG, size also shouldn't really matter. But since most VN studios use standard engines, I wouldn't be surprised if the size restriction was an engine constraint.

Yeah, me as well. I actually thought Circus' popularity went down over the years, but that looks pretty decent. Certainly enough to ensure them a warm meal per day for a while. Btw, am I the only one who didn't know that the eighth placed Nora to Oujo to Noraneko Heart is getting an English release directly by Harukaze? I mean, a full cast of Onee-sama type heroines with gorgeous art and a rating of > 8 with a hundred votes on VNDB. That's definitely my cup of tea, so why the heck didn't I know about that release?! Was I just blind and missed the announcement, or wasn't there any?

lol The infamous Chinami chapter - it slowly reaches legendary status. See it as a test of endurace, if you survive the Chinami chaper you have nothing to fear from imoutos in VN's anymore.

Cool, where did you get the concrete number of sales for each title? I usually check Getchu if I want to know what titles did sell well, but they don't give concrete numbers and it's just Getchu and no other retailers. Anyway, no surprise Navel gives a damn about the west anymore with those sales numbers. And those titles sold for a little bit more than just 5 € apiece. Still surprised about the high sales of Eushully's Sankai Ou no Yubiwa. Considering how bad it was received I'd expected it lower.

I'd suggest reading Hoshizora no Memoria -Wish upon a Shooting Star-. The interactions between the protagonist and Mare are just too adorable.

Palette had a very popular title with Mashiro Iro Symphony years ago which also had a quite decent anime (for a moege). After that they produced several mediocre titles unitil they could land a hit again with their latest title Koi ga Saku Koro Sakura Doki which was rather well received. Sekai Project will bring that one over so I guess the heightened chances for it getting licensed by Sekai Project increases the exitement about their releases. Palette might not be on the same hype level like Giga with its Bald series, but they can be considered a top tier moege/nakige developer on a comparable level like Favorite or Circus.

Join forces with her when she asks you. I can asure you, Illya will be very, very happy and it'll be a one of a kind experience. Just don't forget to save, Illya's affection can be fairly definitive...

So I guess this means it's adviced to wait a bit longer for a better patch?! Hmm, I wonder if this dude can be trusted considering he didn't touch the project for two years. But it would be good to have at least the latest patch from the SVN repository. Anyway, the semi-official release at least seems to have got things rolling again, since some people seem to be willing to give this version some finishing touches now.

Wow, that really came out of the blue. Didn't really have that on my radar. I still remember seeing pictures of the moon princess ages ago in manga art galleries, thinking she was really cute. I think there's even an anime about it, but I've no clue if I've seen it or not. Didn't really had hopes to see that one translated anymore since it's one of the oldest August games. I've waited a long time to play an August title so this one gets priority upon the next English VN's I'll read. Almost hard to believe that the August curse is finally lifted. Maybe more of their titles will follow now?! *Holding thumps for Eustia*

I do know the time problem - a typical consequence of a full time job. Though, to take a more positive view, sometimes it's a good thing do something else for a while and get some distance. Because when you get back when you've time again, you'll enjoy it all the more. So, like the Japanese say: 頑張って!