Plk_Lesiak

Yeah... Although as Maggie pointed out, in a porn game it would be at least undestandable. Ai even gets a period somewhere around the halfpoint of the game, so every piece of the puzzle is there, just not the h-scenes and dozens of android babies.

Unknown. She ordered a few boxes of mysterious stuff and put it together with robot arms. Under a blanket. In what I presume is contemporary setting. Nothing is ever explained. The machinery she used is "thrown away" by her soon after she wakes up in her human form, relieving the writer from the burden of coming up with an actual account of how she did it. Why he didn't make her a human-looking robot is beyond me. There's an idea that Ai wanted to be a human and becuase of that created an exact replica when she could've made something much more efficient and durable, but it's not explored in a way that would compensate for the absurdity and lazy writing in that first chapter.

Well, there's this one nude CG I've included in the review. Also she didn't buy it. She made it. Under a desk, using two wobbly robot arms. #suspensionofdisbelief Aye, I was seriously angry when I finished reading it, didn't think it can be done so badly after a seriously promising start - I mean, that little prequel game wasn't anything special, but showed that the author knows how to write some amusing dialogue and had at least one good idea. And the end product wasn't even awful in any amusing way, just made me wonder how could someone look at that script and think it's in any way acceptable for a semi-serious project like this.

Someone can make me a mod, I'm sitting here 24/7 like some no life and have no compassion or mercy.

I suck at writing fiction so I'm usually cautious about criticizing others, but yeah, this whole game just screamed "bad fanfiction" - this situation when someone doesn't know how this whole "writing" business works but desperately wants to be original and stand out in some way. And the whole "true ending" thing was beyond my comprehension - I somewhat understand including it, but why make it the "official" conclusion, rather than leaving it up for the players, so they can choose which they find more compelling? My only guess is what I wrote in the review, that this was meant as a starting point for a sequel - definitely something on my "Top 10 games in the universe that I least want to play" list. ;p And well, I'm at least happy I was able to save someone from buying this. ^^

Warning: Heavy spoilers ahead! If you want to play this VN yourself, stop reading now. I don’t really recommend playing it though… As much as I’m a fan of independent VNs and appreciate the possibilities that crowdfunding opened for the western visual novel market, it’s not completely rare for these projects to end with spectacular disappointment, for various reasons. Carpe Diem: Reboot is an especially interesting example of a visual novel that ultimately failed to live up to the expectations, but not because of lack of effort or poor production values, but through the sheer “virtue” of horrible writing. As I’ll be treating this as a case study of how to screw up a good concept and waste a lot of work, unlike my normal reviews, I’ll be revealing many major plot-points, including some details of the games’ endings. As Reboot mostly relies on its plot twists and mystery elements to keep the player interested, if you want to play it yourself, ignore this review or read it after you’ve completed the game. While the title we’re talking about was released on Steam in September 2017, after a successful Kickstarter campaign, its history starts a bit earlier, with a free VN from late 2015 simply titled Carpe Diem. This very short, but nicely written visual novel served both as a prologue of sorts and an advertisement for the crowdfunding effort which later spawned Reboot. In it, a simple story about two friends (lovers?), Jung and Ai, deciding how to use a rare opportunity to spend a full afternoon together, ended with a twist – the girl was actually a computer program, an object of delusional love of a shut-in trying to escape from his real life. The Steam achievement for reaching the end of the game, “What are you doing with your life?”, served as a somewhat ironic punchline, making clear the main themes the author tried to tackle. Good dialogues and decent execution of Carpe Diem, while in no way breath-taking, definitely showed promise and made many people (including me, although I've discovered it after the Kickstarter campaign was already over) somewhat enthusiastic about its continuation. So, what went wrong? Read the full article at evnchronicles.blogspot.com

Isn't it like that with most books though, and most kind of narrative fiction in general? I rarely feel the need to re-read/re-watch books or movies and the more they rely on mysteries and try to surprise you with plot twists, the less appealing they usually become by the second approach (unless you focus on re-reading certain plot points with new knowledge and look for the various details foreshadowing the twists - I think my experience with Grisaia no Kajitsu, which I started reading after watching the anime, was just as interesting if I was going in blind, because I've noticed a lot of details that I would normally ignore but were made meaningful thanks to the fact I knew the rough outline of character routes and endings). It's pretty much unavoidable. Also, I have so many VNs to read so the lack of replayability is not a thing I would really be sad about. It's actually a positive for me - when I'm done with a VN I can move it to appropriate folder in my Steam library, write a review and can move, highly replayable games ate like 1/3 of my life.

Oh. Ok. Anyway, welcome back to Fuwa! :3 The mods should probaby be able to help you with your old account, but considering that they're all slightly "ded" and it's hard to predict when they will respond to you, I guess using the new one is not a bad choice. I hope you'll have fun around here in your new incarnation.

I've never noticed that *mind blown* Anyone can tell where this image is from BTW? It looks super-cute. :3

So meta

Can you say anything about the protagonist and the amount of NSFW scenes when compared to the story content? The shop thing suggests to me that the game is meant to be porn-heavy, but I'm still not sure what to expect after reading this.

I think you're going to like the petting feature in Vol. 0, 2 & 3.

Oooooh, ok, I guess I had even less faith in the publishers than they deserved. I would really love to see Libra fixed, really want to play it and Dergonu's warnings drove me away from buying it.

"The lowest-quality professional translation I saw this year" - Fred the Barber, 3th of January 2018 I will take this as a warning to not buy the game. Even though I'm not convinced I would not like the story and SP seemed to notice this quality just won't do, I don't think I've ever heard about a VN translation being seriously fixed after this kind of shitty launch. Even if they correct the untranslated lines and some most obviously messed up ones, it will still be crappy forever...

Well, it was super-informative and made me want to play a game in the genre that is pretty much at the very bottom of my preferred romance scenarios, just above futa and trap, so I would call it a success. :3 I guess all fan projects have the tendency to die like that, I know much more about the modding scene than TLs, but in both cases I'm impressed that anyone even attempts doing something which involves such obscene amounts of work. :s Well, one more reason to take certain common advice around here to heart. I think I will have to slow down on writing stuff to actually get back on track with my Japanese lessons though. "Remember, you have posts prepared for the next month and a half, you don't need to make a new one every week. No need to get fixated on that. You can do it all slowly and steadily. Be cool." *hyperventilating into a bag*

Great review. I've seen on VNDB that someone is possibly working on fan translation of this? Although I might just leave this one for that time three-four years from now, when I know Japanese somewhat decently and have already played through every worthwhile yuri VN there is, and I can finally delve into BL with no regrets.

Pretty much Steam and Itch.io. I didn't buy a physical copy of any game in years, pretty much for as long as Steam grew into the main PC storefront and my internet connection became bearable when donwloading full games. At some point in the future I'll be buying the translated SonoHana titles, which don't have all-ages versions and thus are not on Steam, so I'll have to add Mangagamer store to the list. I generally focus on translated, all-ages titles and OELVNs though so my perspective is super-skewed when compared to more experienced/hardcore VN fans.

Sure, there's some of that, but I've seen many quality VNs, such as Cupid and One Thousand Lies that never go anywhere close to those numbers you've mentioned, as they're niche, demanding products, even though they're just as free. In reality it's much more complicated and at least just as much about accessibility as it is about price. Nekopara won big exactly because of its obvious appeal and optional porn scenes, buying Clannad is pretty much equivalent of being ready to read a very long, sad novel and I don't imagine that many gamers or even anime fans being super-excited about 100 hours of reading a single story. Tricolour Lovestory is also a galgame with obvious appeal, apart from being super-cheap. It's something like a Transformers movie - might be shit, but that doesn't really matter as long as it has cool special effects (or in this case - pretty CGs and big anime boobs) and doesn't force you to think much. Also notice that DDLC is both a solid VN (even if gimmicky) and a profitable one thanks to its success. There's 700 reviews of the "fan pack" DLC, which means that many people appreciated this free game enough to actually buy it. That DLC is just that - donation to the author. So I don't see a reason they wouldn't be willing to pay for other VNs. Everlasting Summer is a good VN btw and I don't mind it getting a lot of attention, also it's on Steam for a pretty long time. Free stuff will always get more attention, but it doesn't have to be a bad thing. Demanding, mature audience will always be in minority, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist and can't be expanded in some ways - DDLC, for anyone smart enough to see past the obnoxious meme culture, is a great ad for VNs as a medium.

Sure, but consider that most of those people would never read/see a playthrough of a VN in their life if it wasn't for DDLC. And the last time I remember something similar happening was over Sakura Spirit and it's hard to argue that Doki Doki isn't a huge improvement over that abomination. Well, maybe Hatoful Boyfriend had its 5 minutes too, but it was so absurd that I don't think it could genuinely draw people towards VNs or dating sims. As warped by internet culture as it might be, the whole DDLC phenomenon is a good thing for VNs and especially for the OELVN market. I don't think visual novels will ever go mainstream in the West, but they've just got tons of visibility and in a form that isn't all about cheap popcultural references and oversized anime boobs. I call it a win.

It probably has more platonic routes than the whole rest of the VN market combined. I've seen slight bits of erotic subtext in Valerie's route and that's pretty much it. In general though, I admire how you combined obvious trolling with genuinely good recommendations, I wouldn't mind to see more. :3

Oh, Crystalline! I haven't bought it yet, I think I will wait for the final release, but what you wrote sounds exactly like what I was hoping for from that title. For now, I have tons of things to read with "higher priority", but anything by PixelFade will be always on my radar. ^^ Ace Academy would also be a good addition to this kind of list, it's quite endearing. Anyways, thank you very much for making this list, all-ages stuff doesn't get quite as much love as it deserves in the VN world. :3

Steins;Gate and Danganronpa are both on Kaguya's original list, I think this one was meant to supplement it, not replace it.

A guess you have many IRL friends on your main Steam? I couldn't care less about mine being "stained" with weebness TBH, no one there knows me and, even if there was someone, the really embarrassing VNs aren't even available on Steam, for the most part.

I think they're overreacting a bit. SDungeon maybe shouldn't be on the list after all, but it would make a good honourable mention. We shouldn't judge the game on anything else then its own merits, being part of a shitty franchise doesn't mean it can't be decent at least.