Shota_Victory

Someone felt the need to comment on a recent bit of drama, and decided to repurpose this thread for it rather than create a new one.

The only one I haven't seen mentioned yet is Unteralterbach, although if you're at all easily offended by loli you should probably stay as far away as you can.

I have no interest in Grisaia, so I'm probably not picking this up. That being said, releasing this before Eden in the West is probably a really bad idea. Episodic games in general seem to be what Japanese companies think we want, despite the fact their performance over here is never very good, with the exception of When they Cry. I just hope the whole "short $9.99" VN thing dies out soon; it's counter-intuitive to the history and the structure of the medium. The only way to sell visual novels to the majority of Steam users is by making glorified nukige, then bribing some popular streamers to play it. Anything else will just alienate both Steam users and the core audience that actually buys the games.

Grisaia: Spooky Trigger?

Honestly, I'm not as worried about this one because the company's directly releasing it. If say, Sekai Project was localizing it, then I'd be afraid.

Don't try telling the localization companies that.

I haven't played SubaHibi, but from what I can tell, it's not going to be put on Steam. KeroQ has put out a lot of dark eroge, but SubaHibi and Tsui no Sora are the only ones never to get an all ages release.

I think we all know the company that'll win that one.

(Spoilered for mild plot reasons, although a quick look at vndb would accomplish basically the same thing.)

Miki is by no means a loli. She's a typical kouhai character, but not underage looking by any stretch of the imagination. There is one lolicon scene that I've gotten to, although it is fairly short. It repeats at the beginning of every week, but you can skip it if loli bothers you that much. It's not particularly important to the plot.

Lucid9 was released without voice acting. As I understand it, it's going to be voice acted after the full release. While I can say for a fact that Lucid9 is one of the best EVNs I've ever played, only time will tell if the voice acting is good. (And to be honest, I don't have very high hopes for anything of quality.)

Screw it. 1999ChristmasEve Sakura no Uta Tsui no Sora H2O - Footprints in the Sand Moekan Nekonade Distortion Galzoo Island "Hello, world" Kusari Kusarihime Nijuuei Shizuku Jiatsu no Tame no 101 no Houhou At this point, I think it would be better just to learn Japanese.

G-Senjou was pretty good. I personally think Clannad is horribly overrated. A lot of the character backstories are ripped straight from Kanon and One, and the main heroine's literal only defining features is how much she loves the protaganist and Generally, it's a well written nakige, and I'd group some of the routes as some of my favorites overall, but it certainly doesn't match up to actual literature. It's not even the best tile by Key, dammit!

Well, it was bound to happen at some time, right? It's not that bad! In all seriousness, I can't see this meaning anything good for the industry. To put it quite simply, if you want to sell your game, then sell your game. It's not as hard as some people think it is. The triple A games industry is still abhorrent for doing this, I feel, but they at least have reasoning. It's a sixty dollar game, you add a bit of DLC on after release, everything's peachy. On the other hand, on-release DLC is just plain stupid for paid games. To be completely honest, I don't have any issue with free to play games having DLC, as long as it's not necessary and doesn't affect the game. DoTA 2, for example, has a lot of DLC, but it's all cosmetic. Holding back ero scenes in your eroge is like selling a horse cart and making you pay for the wheels.

With that being said, I'm surprised more people haven't tried cashing in on the Steam meme crowd. The only two series I've seen that have really succeeded on it are Sakura and Nekopara, and at this point I'm not sure most of the people buying these games have any sense of quality and/or sanity. Think of a fetish, put in a tsundere and a deredere, make the writing as weeby and memey as you possibly can, get "decent" art, then put on Steam for $10. That's literally their entire business strategy.

Does Chaos;Head have an onee-san heroine? I honestly can't remember.

Welcome to pre-2010 official translation! We hope you enjoy your stay! Honestly, I think Ever17 might need a retranslation almost as much as Konooza. I don't think anyone really cares about whatever else Hirameki was translating at the time, but Ever17 having those errors is more than a bit of an issue. At some point, I just started trying to ignore the errors in these really old games, but I can see why you don't like it. Talking of bad translation, I've been reading some of JAST's old eroge. The art's good, I enjoy the storyline, and the exploration elements are really good, but good lord! The translation is terrible!

Besides, recommending it is kinda useless because the OP seems to have read it already.

Cross Channel's a special case in that regard. From what I've heard from Japanese speakers, the prose is almost as important as the story in this game, and neither of the translations really transfer Tanaka's writing, simply because it's damn near impossible to replicate in English.

Isn't that a bit of a spoiler? I know his listing on VNDB mentions it briefly, but I've never really played Cross Channel, so I wouldn't know. Also, it's a bit of an issue because Taichi at least pretends to have emotions at the beginning of the game, even if he's mostly just screwing with people.

If you liked Seinarukana, you'd probably enjoy Eien no Aselia. The art's honestly kinda crap, but the story and gameplay are good.

There are a lot of really good chuunige that fall under what you're asking for, so without knowing exactly what you're looking for it might be a bit difficult. That being said, I've seen bits and pieces of Tsukihime, and it seems to be almost exactly what you're looking for. If you're willing to go out of the realm of eroge, Umineko has some good story and characters, although it does start to drop off at the end from what I've heard. Also need to second Eien no Aselia. One of the best VNs I've played to this day. (Though I still haven't finished it...)

There's also Cross Days, though that one hasn't been translated yet. Really, visual novels don't typically have the type of style you're looking for. If you're willing to go out of the realm of "anime style", there's titles like Dragon's Lair and Space Ace, but I don't think that's really what you're looking for. A quick look on VNDB pops up this tag, so that might be a good place to start.

SubaHibi comes highly recommended from the Japanese speaking community, so you might want to check it out when the translation is released. (Disclaimer: Most of us won't be alive when SubaHibi's translation is released.) I can't seem to find anywhere calling SubaHibi "atmospheric", but it's definitely going to be disturbing enough.

I'm not sure if it's quite what you're looking for, but Lucid9 is a great short VN. (Although it might bug the hell out of you since it ends on a cliffhanger.) The full version should be coming out eventually, but it'll obviously be a bit longer. Also, I need to second Narcissu. It's free, and there's really no reason not to play it.