adamstan

As planned, yesterday I started reading Parquet. I'm now in the Chapter 3-2, and so far I find it very enjoyable. Both heroines and side characters are nice, and I quickly got along with them There's also right balance between main story and SoL stuff, at least for me. The premise itself is also interesting. But I think I can see how it might be difficult to find target audience for this title, and why it might disappoint many readers. First, it isn't exactly typical modern Yuzusoft game (which means moege with quite prominent ero content), so die-hard Yuzusoft fans might frown upon it. Hardcore Sci-Fi/Cyberpunk fans also won't be satisfied, since to some extent the premise is used just as an excuse to tell the story - so there definitely are some "unrealistic" / "unscientific" things going on in there. I think in that regard it's similar to ATRI. Nevertheless I find it quite engaging. I got Steam edition, but I'm playing it in Japanese - it's very nice that it is included Of course that means that my speed is much slower - currently I have 9 hours on the Steam clock - while apparently with normal reading speed I should have it completed by that time But OTOH I must admit, that while part of it is of course due to looking up unknown words and parsing the text, I recently also just enjoy the slower pace while reading. Especially when it comes to narration or protagonist's internal monologue - I sometimes will stop at a line for a moment even when I don't need to check it up - just to think a little about it or to soak in the atmosphere. And, while we're at atmosphere - I find both music and art very nice and enjoyable

And so I just finished my third reading of Princess Evangile - for the first time in Japanese (PSP version). It was still great fun, and very nostalgic experience - like coming to see old friends again. Ritsuko is still the best girl, and Ayaka has the best route - that hasn't changed One could perhaps say that I'm almost as naive as the girls from Vincennes, and that's why I love this game, but whatever - I loved it despite reading it for the third time. It's actually interesting experience, because when you know some twists, sometimes earlier scenes appear in different light, or you can see some subtle foreshadowing. I can to some extent agree with those that criticize the story for the fact that "villains" gain their "redemption" too easily - but this story is, for me at least, kind of fairy tale, so I can forgive that. And besides, the scene of still squeezed a few tears from my naive eyes Also, this is perhaps one of the best done "All Ages" (actually +15) versions I've ever played. I wrote more about that aspect in my previous post, after my second play through in December 2018 So, to sum it up, it's still 8.5/10 VN for me . And it definitely become my "Comfort VN" Now I'm probably going to try Parquet.

I noticed interesting thing while playing PSP version of Princess Evangile using emulator. It seems, that some of the CGs (just a few) are stored in their original resolution - and when emulator is set up to render in double resolution, they actually show up in that higher res. But it's just a few frames - often even then next frame of the same CG is downscaled to PSP's native resolution. Have a look on those two pictures below. The first one is the "upscaled" frame, while the second one is the next frame, in PSP resolution. PPSSPP is set up for double resolution: (they are the pictures from the middle part of Ayaka's route - one of the scenes with Kayoko) If memory serves, another such "upscaled" CG was first frame of the first meeting with Ruriko in common route.

Thanks for review Should I watch anime, or can those VNs be enjoyed standalone?

Ah, that might be true, yeah. Well, I still have some hopes for it, even if it won't be great. "Good" will be enough for this I read three VNs from Yuzusoft so far - Noble Works, Sanoba Witch and Natsuzora Kanata, and while I rated all three at 8 for various reasons, I think I liked the latter (Natsukana) the most - which, incidentally, is the oldest from the three, and most different from the "standard" Yuzusoft, since it's not high-school moege So I don't think I count exactly as "Yuzusoft fan" - I'm just the guy who happened to enjoy some of their games As for the price - at least PARQUET is much cheaper than "full-sized" titles - when I bought it on Steam, it cost around 40% of the price of "big" JVN releases there

Yeah, but there also seems to be quite big spread when it comes to ratings. It also seems that some people downvoted it on principle just because they got angry that this is an all-ages game I don't think it will be as good as ATRI (which for some reasons came to my mind when I saw PARQUET), but I'm still going to give it a chance.

Yeah, me too. I already bought it. Since it's short, maybe I'll try it after I finish my current re-read of PE.

Okay, it isn't "main" Yuzusoft, but still... PARQUET Steam description: The game is available on Steam in Japanese, English and Chinese. English translation is made by NekoNyan.

Yes, that wouldn't surprise me, because indeed lots of marketplace sellers don't ship overseas. But I also had the "We're unable to ship this item to your current address" error message on some items sold directly by amazon - and I couldn't find any connection between them.

Sakura no Kisetsu:

I bought some adult editions of VNs from amazon.jp as well - no problem there. It's just that for some reasons they refuse to ship some products - but that applies both to all-ages and adult versions, and seems pretty random. As for online shops and digital versions - I have bought them from DLSite and getchu, but had no luck with DMM.

Nice I like that kind of cheese

What makes Amatsu Misora ni different from the others? (I got curious since it sits in my backlog/wishlist together with Suzunone Seven)

Thanks, works like a charm And thanks for the RegEx explanation/example

I have one more question. What is exact syntax for replace function? For example, I'd like to filter out ruby text/furigana. In case of this game, it means removing "<R*/" (with * here acting as a wildcard) and ">". What arguments should I provide to replace function?

Now it works correctly, and doesn't cut off at those points Thanks

It seems that they fixed it in all-ages version. There, if you enter Rikako's true route without completing others (especially Ema's true, and Rikako's normal, that is kind of a glimpse or foreshadowing of true ending) you get bad ending: Apparently they wasted too much time and budget on h-scenes In the all-ages version the story got expanded a bit here and there, and with the porn interludes removed it felt perhaps more coherent, but still there could be more. I guess that's my main gripe with h-scenes in this title. Like I mentioned in my pseudo-review - when reading all-ages edition I thought, that perhaps a little bit of H wouldn't hurt. But sadly the scenes are IMO very badly placed and they feel exactly like porn interludes starring the MC and chosen heroine - they follow common porn/hentai cliches and tropes too much. To put it in other words - those aren't MC and his girl making love to each other, but MC and his girl performing a porn scene. The distinction might be weird, but that's how I felt about it. There were some VNs I've read where I didn't feel this disconnection, or it wasn't as pronounced - but there aren't many of them... +1000, I hate that system too. At least in non-remake versions, you get the flowchart, where each event is marked and after you complete the route, it also lists all conditions connected with it - such as "this event is neccessary to get X route, and to unlock it you have to first see event Z" etc. However my dislike for map movement taken to the extreme like in this game (and other GIGA's titles written by Maruto, such as Parfait's prequel Curio or Kono Aozora ni Yakusoku o) is based on the fact that it makes common route extremely fragmented, and kind of DIY thing The obscurity of conditions itself doesn't bother me that much, because, taught by past experience, I always play VN's with a walkthrough on hand

That's why sex right after confession is bad trope Yep, I had the same feelings. Game repeatedly suggested that MC and Rikako share some (troubled) past, but as a heroine she didn't seem that interesting, especially compared to Rea But the actual route was amazing.

Still going through Princess Evangile for the third time. Konomi's lines are pure gold 「手を繋ぐ……これはきっと、子作りの第一歩なのでしょうか……」 "Holding hands - that surely is the first step towards making babies..."

I just spotted kind of easter egg in Princess Evangile - I noticed it only now, when playing Japanese version. There are two places - in English version it's "Papattore Moon Rock" restaurant and "Tsukiishi Shrine". In Japanese "Moon Rock" part of restaurant name is 月の石 (Tsuki no Ishi) while "Tsukiishi" is of course just 月石 - and both could also be translated as... yes, you guessed it - Moonstone

@0xDC00 I have one feature request (or perhaps a bugfix?) for ExecutionWatch script. It's related to the problem I encoutered when playing Princess Evangile. This game uses UTF16 encoding with 0000 word used as terminator. And here's the problem - it seems that when searching for that pattern, it stops when it finds two consecutive 00 bytes regardless of their position, which leads to the situation from picture below: Since this game has also latin letters and various formatting codes incorporated into the script, it is possible to encounter characters with codes that start or end with 00. And sometimes it leads to the premature clipping of the text, like in this example - there was 3E00 004E sequence - and those two middle bytes got misinterpreted as terminator pattern. I think the solution would be to modify the script so it would consider specified encoding and pattern length when looking for the terminator. So in this example, since it's utf16 and 2-bytes long terminator pattern, I think it should always read the data as 16bit words, not as a series of single bytes. That way we should be able to avoid this problem. (BTW If I'm not mistaken, 004E code is 一 character, since I got the same problem with the word 一名, which is also always preceded by formatting code or special character ending in 00.)

Since the aforementone loosening I have no problems accesing the forum on android.

VNDB lists unofficial translations as well - if there's even a slight hint of a translation in the works, you can bet that somebody will add it to vndb. What I meant is that it's very unlikely that any translation - official or unofficial - would not get noticed by vndb.

Nah, if there was anything more I'm pretty sure it would be indexed on vndb rather quickly.

Another bunch of console editions of VNs. In this batch, there are: Damekoi (PSP) Princess Evangile (PSP) StarTRain (PS2) Akaneiro ni somaru saka (PS2) Also, a little before that I got PS3 Limited Edition of '&' - Sora no Mukou de Sakimasu you ni -, with drama CD and some mysterious trinket included in the box: