Plk_Lesiak

Oh Holy Pantsu!

Damn, now I have to actually go and buy New Gen after all. I need to look for some additional sources of money. :s Sry for OT...

I'm afraid that Steam might never become a friendly space for lolicons. ------------------------------------------------------------ BTW, Dergonu-sama, where do those screens in your signature come from?

To be fair, from what I've read the game has some seriously questionable elements and western companies in general are super-sensitive when it goes to anything that can resemble child porn. The statement about paedophiles being the "core audience" might be stupid as f***, but I'm not surprised about what happened - this is one thing that will most likely not change in foreseeable future, at least when it goes to major store-fronts like Steam. Devs might find another channel to publish their game anyways and Valve's overreaction definitely created some free publicity for them. I wouldn't be that worried about it.

I don't like conspiracy theories, but it's either just a fairly poorly constructed clarification (language barrier?) or there's something seriously fishy about it. I mean, she doesn't have a contract because she "trusts her boss so much"? After years of working for the same company non-stop? Also, it's the only company in the world that needs talented artists and she wouldn't have money to buy food without it? Like Narcossis said, it really doesn't prove anything. No example of her supposed commission work for other companies, no specifics on her relationship with Winged Cloud. Just "I'm happy, nothing to see here, don't look any further". It doesn't mean that the allegations are true, but they're strong enough to be worried about (and to blacklist Winged Cloud, I've considered buying Sakura Dungeon out of curiousity but definitely won't do it now).

My Fucking God, not that I've expected anything good from that company, but this is seriously messed up. Even if we remove everything that's not raw facts from trustworthy sources, ignoring all the speculation, it makes that CEO look like a first-rate scam artist and psychopath... Why the VN market has to be such a magnet for scumbags? :/

Hello hello! An aspiring VN writer? That's always a great thing to see, I hope we'll hear a bit about your projects soon.

I've finished Locked Heart, quite a sweet little experience. Soon after I was done reading I've realized that it's by the same developer who made Cinderella Phenomenon. So, it seems like this is going to be an Otome reading month for me. I might not start with CP immediately, but my experience with Locked Heart definitely makes me optimistic about it. :3

Thank you for the comment. ^^ And yeah, I've played it, but for now I'm trying to prioritize stuff that was never reviewed/never properly discussed on Fuwa. The main idea is to give those VNs visibility, because most people around here don't look for them and have no way to stumble on them on the forums or on similar JP VN-centric sites. Everlasting Summer is so well known that I don't think it needs much additional exposure - I will most likely get to it at some point, it's just much lower on my list of priorities.

Oh, and BTW, you're gonna have some competition soon. I'm officially proclaiming January 2018 an Otome Month on my blog. This way I'll have an extra motivation to read through all those western Otome waiting in my Steam library - there's surprising number of free-to-play, but pretty highly rated ones on the platform. And going with themed periods should be a bit more interesting than just putting up random reviews. :>

Aye, althought Inquisition also made Sera, the worst Bioware character in history, as pretty much the main F/F romance options, so it's not without sins. The romance arcs I did (Josephine and Cullen) felt very thoughtful and compelling though, maybe more than I've expected. If only they weren't dilluted by the 60-70 hours of filler content - it's even hard to recommend that game with clear concience. With all its awesome storytelling and attention to details, the 160 hours I've burned on it was one of the major reasons I've banned myself from playing RPGs. I'm not even sure I'll break that rule for the next Dragon Age, Bioware was so disappointing lately they even made me quit Star Wars: The Old Republic, the only game that ever immersed me enough to make me want to RP and that nearly made me write fan fiction. Also the yuri romance on my main char there got irreversibly bugged, and considering it's an MMO with maybe hundreds of hours invested in that char, it was a hard pill to swallow.

Stuck in a coffeehouse, having to wait for two hours for my gf, I've started reading Locked Heart on my tablet. Considering my experience so far, I'm starting to think I might be into Otome...

Well, maybe it's a strech in this case, but I reffered to the fact that the reveal rapidly resolves the story in a way that was pretty much impossible to predict from the reader's point of view. I don't think it's that much of a difference whether its an actor, an event or a piece of information falling from the sky to break the logic of the plot and pass judgment on the characters. But it might be just me being an uneducated peasant. With the protagonist, it might be subjective, but I saw him as more or less neutral at first and grew to hate him during the story, just because how he treated people who actually cared about him. My reaction might be a bit against the point of the story, but some things cannot be easily justified even by any serious issues he had with himself. With ambiguity of meaning, I think it was to some extent intentional, especially considering the structure of the story. The protagonist's fairy tales all gain clear meaning after the reveal, I think that some of the Ziva's monologues or interactions with Claire would also gain a lot more sense when re-reading tge story. And some things are simply left for interpretation, I don't think it's a bad thing by itself, unless you go overboard and end up with pretencious, pseudo-intellectual gibberish. I think OTL kept the right balance, at least for the most part.

It's more like an "OSLVN" though? I think there are even some traslation-related jokes in there. That's why I avoid the "OELVN" term by the way, not all I want to write about fits that category presicely.

You mentioned Mass Effect and Dragon Age, you've played any M/M arcs in Inquisition or Andromeda? TBH Dorian's and Iron Bull's gay romances looked so good that I would've probably played through them at some point if the game wasn't so damn long. In Andromeda on the other hand, F/F Peebee romance was so laughably bad that I didn't even feel compelled to check out the other ones on YouTube. They've also made Jaal retroactively bisexual with a patch, I don't imagine that producing a compelling storyarc.

It is one of them indeed, although I'm not sure how much my opinion on it will be worth. This will be the first time I'm playing an Otome without any f/f routes. ^^

Thank you. :3 And well, there's quite a few quality free VNs if you know where to look for them. I actually have two free-to-play Otome high on my to-read list, it's quite possible I will get to at least one of them during the winter break and put up a review somewhere next month. Obviously, I should be writing my PhD during the whole break, but I have a feeling I will achieve much more when it goes to reading VNs and writing blog posts... Thank you. ^^ Considering how the western VN market works, rather short and cheap/free titles will dominate this blog in the foreseeable future. :>

I bet it's thinking something along the lines of "Shit, I can't compete with that. No more petting for me I guess..."

How are my favourite guys (and gals)? Today I have for you a certain free-to-play treat that way too few people know about and even fewer appreciate to the extent it deserves. maybe my little review will encourage you to give it a chance. For the coming weeks I have reviews of a certain lovely yuri VN and of a mobile-exclusive VN ready and scheduled. For the last week of december I'm planning to dissect mercilessly certain freshly-released western title that was spawned by a successful kickstarter campaign and turned out, more or less, as a stinking pile of.... Bad stuff. It will be one of a few texts I have planned, showing how you can turn an interesting premise and a lot of genuine effort into something borderline-unreadable.

As we all know from experience, the formula of visual novel offers various possibilities when it goes to storytelling techniques, making especially the high-budget, Japanese games in the genre much more than just interactive, illustrated books. Still, for most VNs text is unquestionably the core method of delivering the story. This is true especially for the western-developed ones, which rarely can afford high-quality voice acting or animated segments which could occasionally replace written dialogues and descriptions. Even CGs, in a project with a very limited budget and manpower, often end up being few and far between. All this makes the literary quality absolutely crucial for the success of such projects. But, great writing is not something you would expect to find in a free game on Steam, is it? While Doki Doki Literature Club proved that a free-to-play, western-made VNs can from time to time surpass everyone’s expectations, in many ways it wasn’t the first project of its kind. One Thousand Lies, developed by Keinart Lobre and released for free in March 2016, both on Steam and mobile platforms, is another example of an interesting and well-developed non-JP visual novel that doesn't charge even a cent for the possibility of reading it. In my opinion, it’s also one of the more intriguing and creatively written western VNs to date, that can offer a lot of depth and artistic qualities to any reader patient enough to uncover them. Still, it never gathered attention and recognition similar to that of DDLC. Read the full article at evnchronicles.blogspot.com

Isn't that just a perfect description of nukige-verse in general? :3

A moderate fan - I was just distancing myself from the zealots. And, unlike said fanatics, I'm an Emilia hater for reasons mostly unrelated to being a fan of Rem.

Please stay on our forums and never leave us. :]

I guess I'm in the tiny minority that didn't really enjoy how this concept was used there, even though I clearly saw what they were trying to do. For me Subaru felt both too pathetic and too brilliant, there was no balance in how he was written IMO and his sudden "love" for Emilia was the grossest thing ever (not because I'm some Rem fanatic, just because how obviously delusional it was). I don't think I'll even watch the second season, I was so fed up with it when the first one ended.

This is so true... TBH, I hate Subaru as a protagonist so much that is really prevented me from enjoying the whole series. Really, fuck that guy. Can't we just kill him off for good and get literally anyone else in his place, while keeping the awesome setting and support cast?