Plk_Lesiak

It's still an absurdly narrow way of looking at it. I agree that the existence of S will limit what devs will be to do on the high end and eventually there will be games that will genuinely struggle on it, just like many struggle on Switch and original Xbox One. But those two consoles' architecture was actually way more dated at the time of their premiere than S' is. It's CPU power and the SSD should make the vast, vast majority of stuff run smoothly, with visual fidelity downscaled to various degrees – but really, sometimes just by limiting stuff to Full HD. 4k is very demanding for the hardware whether you want to admit that or not. It's an absolutely reasonable compromise for a piece of hardware this cheap and versatile. And along with how game pass is being expanded by Microsoft... It's both a reasonable entry-level console and a great legacy gaming box. I have my PC for high-end stuff. But some games are more fun played on TV, or were never brought to PC... And S is the best value proposition when it goes to playing those. Edit: Oh hey, I think the Sony conference is starting now! I heard rumors that they will undercut Microsoft with a $450 base price for PS5... But that seems like crazy talk honestly. They would take a MASSIVE loss per unit sold...

But what use I have for it when I'm not going to have a 4k TV in foreseeable future, won't be downloading large games that are likely to fill the SSD quickly and especially won't be buying physical copies when I have Game Pass? I literally have no need for any of X's main features. Plus S' compact factor and likely much lower power consumption are very appealing to me, as it's exactly the qualities my gaming PC lacks. Saying S is crap is completely misunderstanding the niche it's meant to fill. It's basically the same as claiming Switch is terrible because it has low computing power.

It's going to be $500 for normal version and $400 digital only, right? I wonder how much of a financial hit Sony will take in practice to keep the prices competitive... Welp, I'm buying a Series S anyways. I basically have no interest in current gen consoles outside of the Game Pass and some Xbox classics I want to revisit (my 360 broke down years ago and I didn't get a console since).

Definitely. Just to be clear, my main complaint is not that the game is not like HotW, but that even within the silly/lighthearted formula things could've been done better, when it goes to the flow of the story and consistency of the writing. Those are not as important here as they would be in a VN that treats itself seriously... But they always matter, unless you skip all the text and just watch CGs.

The last time we talked about a “modern fairy tale” VN with a yuri spin to it, it was a very special one – Studio Elan’s Heart of the Woods, which I confidently gave my first and, so far, only 5/5 rating. The way it mixed relatable, modern characters with an emotional fantastical plot resulted in experience in many ways unmatched within the EVN scene. It also showed the huge potential of this formula, handling the clash between mundane and supernatural in a different way than typical fantasy or horror stories. Today we’ll be looking at a game that took similar themes and utilized them a more low-key, light-hearted way – ebi hime’s newest yuri VN, The Fairy’s Song. Released on Steam and Itch.io early August 2020, this project is a slight departure from ebi’s usual, angst-filled storytelling, focusing more on cute romance and comedy. Fairly similar in tone to 2016’s Strawberry Vinegar, which also combined modern-day slice of life story and supernatural elements, it plays on classic themes of knights, monsters, magic and sleeping beauties, but puts them in a configuration that gives the whole setup a very different meaning… Which doesn’t necessarily mean The Fairy’s Song manages to offer many surprises or that it feels particularly fresh in how it utilizes those tropes and story elements. But why is that exactly, and is it really a bad thing? But have they really…? There is certain sloppiness to The Fairy’s Song's lore and the overarching fantasy plot, but thankfully it can’t overshadow the charm of the characters and the yuri romance The Fairy’s Song's protagonist is Marnie, a goth teenager who tries to make up for her small stature and naturally cute looks with dark clothes and a (slightly) mean attitude. We meet her when she’s being dropped to her grandmother’s house in a small, remote village, quite unhappy with the time she’ll have to spend there while her parents travel abroad. Her grumpiness is only strengthened by the fact her grandmother, struggling after the death of her husband a year earlier, is a shadow of her former self – not just frail and weighted by her loss, but also disturbing her family with frequent talk of fairies and other magical phenomena supposedly present in the surrounding forests. However, what was meant to be a boring and depressing stay is turned on its head when Marnie ignores her grandmother’s warnings and walks deep into the forest. There, she is confronted with several inexplicable events, but most importantly, she discovers an unconscious girl dressed like a knight – Leofe, who apparently spent centuries sleeping in the enchanted grove and is now determined to repay Marnie for waking her up. Read the full article at evnchronicles.blogspot.com

Welcome back to (now much less alive) Fuwanovel! Hope you'll have fun. :3

Welcome to Fuwanovel!

Welcome to Fuwanovel! Hopefully your journey through VNs will only get better. :3

Welcome to Fuwanovel! I'm sure you'll find many people here sharing the pain of having no one IRL to talk about VNs with. Hopefully the forums will be able to fill that void.

All Best Wishes to @MaggieROBOT! May the year bless you with awesome android stories and everything else that's good in life.

Welcome to Fuwanovel!

Well, those last few things along the system boot speed are already quite relevant. :3 Anyway, I mostly agree with you, I though you were talking about the difference between storage-oriented and high-performance SSDs... Which is really subject to diminishing returns, compared to HDD -> any SSD switch. There are some caveats with really super cheap/no-brand storage SSDs, that might have no cache or really shitty firmware and hurt your experience that way, but once more, if you buy from known brands and don't fish for too-good-to-be-true offers on Aliexpress, that's not something to worry about much. Plus, you can buy a 3TB HDD for the price of a 1TB SSD... But this makes the HDD a better value proposition only under very specific circumstances: either if you need massive storage, but don't care about data transfer speeds, or if you're going to be moving around massive amounts of data, risking to burn out the cheap SSD quick with constant rewrites. For me, while I still have HDD as primary storage for my current computer, I'm definitely going full SSD with any future rig I might get, as those small performance improvements it gives sum to up something really significant. A few years ago keeping my giant hoard of VNs on an SSD might've been an expensive waste, but with how the storage prices are starting to look now, it's keeping a dedicated HDD for those few low-intensity uses that starts to feel like a bother.

That's what people are saying all the time, but even a storage SSD from a reputable brand is likely to give you a massive performance boost over an HDD. You probably want a high quality one for your system partition and crucial applications/data, but you can very much go cost-efficient on your secondary drive and still get a way better experience than if you've bought a mechanical one.

Welcome to Fuwanovel! Sci-fi is kind of underutilised in VNs, it'll be interesting to check out your project.

Well, you can get a basic 1TB SSD for around $100. I just bought a 500GB Seagate One Touch for $55 (I think it would be even cheaper in US) – it's marketed as a storage drive but has decent random read/write speeds, so you can use it for many things... At least as long as you have a USB 3 port to plug it into. I remember times when my computer had a 160MB hard drive and I couldn't install more than 2-3 games at a time. I still can't help to get astonished from time to time with how massive and relatively cheap storage has become...

Welcome to Fuwa! Hope you'll have fun around here and all your questions receive a satisfying answer.

All best wishes to @Palas!

I install/download pretty much everything I buy (or plan to read, when it goes to freeware stuff)... Which led me to having 250+ VNs dowloaded on Steam, like a dozen installed from other sources and around 100 in a dedicated folder where I keep Itch.io/DRM free games and sort them by read/unread (and occasionally by the game jam they came from or a blog project I'm reading them for). One day, I might actually be able to completely clog my hard drive with just VNs and that's going to be something of an accomplishment.

Yeah, I think the artstyle hits this really delicate balance in a few areas... It's pretty simple, yet stylish and defined enough to never feel low-effort. And indeed, close enough to traditional anime style to not feel jarring in a VN. If only the storytelling was just as well-rounded and polished...

I was writing a review of a cyberpunk VN today and referenced Blade Runner 2049 in it. Than I realized that while I like that movie, it's basically a bad VN in movie form. Bloated, meandering between a dozen subplots and ending on a really weird note that resolves nothing and satisfies no one. All with over-the-top production values and deep conviction that it's super-profound (although it itself is not sure on what way). Prove me wrong.

Not only he can read, but he can also meme! What a talented child. With this much exposure to internet though, he's going to be a 9/11 truther and a nazi before he turns 8. Still, all the best wishes to you, little @Fiddle!

Have you seen Blade Runner 2049? The cyberpunk epic that charms the viewer with its climate and polished visuals, but is probably a bit too convoluted for its own good and offers relatively little payoff for its massive, multi-layered plot? Now, imagine watching that movie without the context of original Blade Runner and accompanying shorts, all offering crucial pieces of worldbuilding and linking the main entries in the franchise together. How much meaning the sequel would lose and how hard to follow some of its subplots would be? This “Blade Runner 2049 without context” metaphor is the best way to explain my feelings about Synergia, the long-anticipated cyberpunk EVN by Radi Art. First announced in mid-2017, the project gathered a lot of attention with its well-defined, gloomy aesthetic and an appealing story outline. After that, it went through a number of hiatuses, with the creator behind it often going silent for long months and many assuming the project was dead. In mid-2019, however, the full development of the game was resumed and after a successful Kickstarter campaign (and another series of delays), we finally received a finished product in August 2020 – one that, in my opinion, proved way less mystery-filled and more flawed than the promotional materials made us hope for. But why is that exactly and to is this game actually bad, or just not living up to the hype? The few characters central to the Synergia’s plot showed great promise, however, most of them remained relatively unexplored and their stories left without closure Synergia tells the story of Cila, a police operative and negotiator specialized in dealing with androids, living on a far-future, desert-covered colony planet. Serving as a private contractor to the oppressive imperial government, the dominant polity of the unnamed world, she’s depressed and demotivated, barely managing to fulfil her duties despite being highly-trained and skilful in dealing with both AI and augmented humans. Soon after the game's start, however, her apathetic routine is broken when her best friend Yoko, a shady android merchant and gang leader, gifts her a replacement to her recently-defunct companion android. The new robot, Mara, seems incredibly advanced and human-like – arguably more human than the repressed and corrupt population of the imperial capital – and astonished Cila with her unpredictable and independent behaviour. Soon her unclear origins and level of intelligence, suggesting the use of illegal forms of AI, become signs of trouble, which Cila is unsure how to deal with. However, even she does not expect the real depth of the conspiracy and the significance the android might have to the future of her country (and, possibly, the whole colony). Read the full article at evnchronicles.blogspot.com

Welcome to Fuwa! The place where VNs get appreciated to such an extend we kind of make up for their general obscurity in the West.

Welcome to Fuwanovel! Your project looks kind of half death game, half battle royale? Could be quite fun. Good luck with your work and don't mind Zakamutt, the rude remark is just a reflection of how sour he inside.

Bleated best wishes to @NowItsAngeTime! Hope you had a good time yesterday and may the love for eroge never leave you.