adamstan

It's also the first official translation for the game, which only had two fantls. It's great seeing the effort that Visual Arts/Key is making to have their whole catalogue in English. Now what's left is Summer Pockets Reflection Blue and Angel Beats - and, of course, their brand new projects.

It's not just that... School Days' biggest flaw is the degree to which the protagonist's personality changes route by route.  There is very little consistency in his character, which makes the whole experience that much less believable than the average game of the type.  While most JVN protagonists are pretty templated (making the exceptions really stand out), School Days' protagonist is a different template depending on the route... and most of those templates aren't really ones people who read this sort of VN want to experience.  The anime showed off the 'selfish adolescent man-whore' template, which was pretty much his worst version, but that only serves to show how the writers essentially wrote him as a different character depending on the route.

I liked it. I also really enjoyed its "sequel" - Ano Hi no Tabibito, Fureau Mirai, but it's still untranslated. Perhaps "Adventure of a Lifetime" didn't sell well enough on Steam? (Even though I remember the translation being not bad for a PULLTOP )

When I refused to call it anything else and managed to get a few discord servers to admit it's a great alias. Honestly surprised it hadn't happened yet. Especially since 
One of the few moege I've read where a lot of the H-scenes have true plot significance. I don't think it was much worse in your complaints than most moege are though to be honest, but I also got surprisingly emotional during its true route and didn't mind the romance - especially in the true route - playing second fiddle to the rockets.
 
Also it does sound like a nightmare to run that PC version, so I'd go with the console version too, if only to not have to resize everything often when running it.

Currently I'm inbetween reads, but about to start Rewrite later today. The decision wheel has decided that I shall read all Key products as soon as they get added to the wheel apparently...
 
But since last update I've read Heart of the Woods, Taranormal, Tenshi Souzou Re-boot, Sex Rockets (Byakko / Farther than the Blue Sky), and Little Busters! I'd recommend all of them. Heart of the Woods is a good yuri mystery-ish EVN, Taranormal is a weird offshoot almost fandisc of that, Tenshi Souzou is more Yuzusoft moege, although I don't think it is as good as most of their other releases it is still good. Sex Rockets was by far my surprise moege of the recent past, managing to tie in a scientific story, some drama, and cute moments without getting too boring or anything - although I will say if you are not interested in space or rockets / aerospace in general you may find it boring. Little Busters was good to very good, but suffered a bit from some uneven routes, but ultimately I think almost everyone should give it a read.
 
See you again in roughly a month with probably another 4-6 read.

HOLD ON A SEC AM I ALIVE WTF KARA NO SHOUJO 3 IS OUT?!



Insta-read, I'm just diving into it, don't remember all the deets from Cartagra -> KnS 1 & 2, but whoa I can't believe it actually came out, this is like Half Life 3 releasing levels of wtf

I'm currently reading Genso Manage on Switch and really enjoy it, I have always liked games with Fantasy, Magic and mystery as thema. So I have been looking forward to Genso Manage should come out, so I could buy it. 
I have buy Voice Love on Air as well and going to play it later, I remember played it on my laptop back in the day and really enjoy it but stopped playing it, now I can play it on Switch.

Another month down, some more VNs down as well...
 
Comyu, UsoNatsu, My Klutzy Cupid, everlasting flowers, Fatal Twelve, Parquet, and Family Project all completed, now I'm onto Ego's Spark before Tenshi Souzou releases this Friday...
 
Out of all those...I'd actually recommend pretty much all of them to someone. Comyu is a great chunige by the same makers as Hello Lady! and feels very similar but with a dragon. UsoNatsu was actually my favorite read of 2024 (ignoring rereads), a well written yuri slice of life drama / coming of age tale. Fatal Twelve was a pretty good mystery / death game with some light yuri. everlasting flowers was another coming of age / drama tale with extremely light yuri undertones (nothing outright). My Klutzy Cupid is your general moege with nothing outstanding about it but also very little that was bad either. Parquet is Yuzusoft's take on an all-ages story with just romantic undertones rather than an outright romance story, which was refreshing, although I wish the afters didn't effectively end on cliffhangers. Family Project is the one I'd only recommend if you like slapstick / silly comedy because otherwise it's a one-note slog through the dramatic which is how it was for me.
 
See you next month with probably another 5-6 completed.

Few days ago I finished console version of Strawberry Nauts.
It was quite decent moege. Nothing less and nothing more All heroines are quite likeable, with my personal favorite being quiet Yao ❤️

I love the comments she makes on various occasions - short, but always amusing
The routes are unfortunately a bit uneven in quality. Definitely the most interesting and elaborate one was Houmi's story.
It featured some light supernatural/sci-fi parts, which was a bit unexpected, but they worked decently in the end. (And actually they aren't that rare in typical moege when you think about it). And this route had my favorite kind of ending when it comes to moege/romance VNs.
Unfortunately I started the game with the weakest route - childhood friend Itsuki. While she's great character, her route felt very underdeveloped, especially in all-ages version. (Not that H-scenes made it much better 😅). It almost made me drop this game, but I'm glad I didn't, since all other routes were much better.
There are also some side-endings for other characters - the weirdest one being definitely the route for the "Upperclassman Girl #C", where we never learn her actual name 😅. Those routes feel a bit rushed, since they are much shorter and come kind out of nowhere, with little connection to the common route - they really have the feel of "unlockable bonus content"  
There's also console-exclusive heroine - Marika. Her route was nice, but also a bit unpolished IMO.
The main highlight of this VN for (apart from quite likeable heroines) is humor - I found it quite funny, and laughed many times at character's comments or reactions.
All in all - 7.5/10, which is my "base" score for decent games. It might go higher when there's something special about it, or I will detract points for annoying  or badly made things. I consider anything 7 and upwards to be good. (I even enjoyed some of the 6.5 or 6 titles, but the shortcomings were too obvious to rate them higher )

Has been a "slow" month for me.
 
Since finishing the Leyline trilogy, I read Shinigami no Kiss, Summer Pockets, Seven Days, Kon's Lessons, reread Noble Works, and read Hatsuyuki Sakura.
 
Out of those I'd really only blindly recommend the Leyline Trilogy to pretty much anyone. Summer Pockets was the best read though, but nakige aren't everyone's thing. Seven Days was surprisingly good for what it is but was very uneven, which was frustrating. Noble Works is standard Yuzu, but not supernatural which is nice. Hatsuyuki Sakura was good, but I feel like it's overrated. It has some pacing issues as well as I felt some overuse of macguffins and in general plot threads / questions that go unanswered. Its music is pretty amazing though, so it still got a 7/10 (good).
 
Now I've moved onto Comyu.

People still post, it is just that it is more likely to be people asking about technical issues than anything else.  I don't like to sit on Discord, because it is too hard to keep track of conversations, and I prefer to just skim static posts rather than deal actual real time conversations.  For visits, we still get plenty, because people utilize all the old posts for technical help on VN issues all the time.  A lot of the other sites that had that information are long gone, so a lot of VN-readers treat us like some kind of archive for troubleshooting.
We do still get people asking for recs, but more and more it is stuff I can't get involved in, since I really only played untranslated VNs after the first six months or so.  
Incidentally, the amount of bots is probably about ten times what you think.  I prune at least ten for every one you report, because most just put their adlinks in their profiles rather than posting threads nowadays.
Edit: also the ghost bots that post meaningless and seemingly harmless posts that the bot goes back and edits a month or more later to add a link to.  The key for those is that they tend to use real people names for their handles... so newbies, please don't use your real name or something that might be a real name for your handle, because it is automatically suspicious here, lol.

Since my last post I have completed quite a few...
 
Hanahira, Sonohana 11-15, Sonohana New Gen, Sonohana Angels 1-3, Sonohana Yuricycle, Senren Banka, Biniku no Kaori, Marco & The Galaxy Dragon, and 9-nine- Episode 1 so far. I'd recommend Senren Banka to any moege fan and Marco to nearly anyone. The Sonohana's to any yuri fan, although some aren't worth reading without having read some of the previous ones since for the most part they (New Gen and Angels being exceptions) are continuations of the same story. Biniku no Kaori was an interesting mystery / nukige hybrid thing that if you're into mysteries you'd probably like, but I'd recommend going straight for the true route with a guide, as the bad ends spoil quite a bit.
 
And now I'm reading 9-nine- Episode 2. At the rate I'm going, I'll probably finish this series out within a week.

Since this comment, I have finished Sucker For Love and Girls in Glasses.
Sucker For Love was a fun VN to read through from start to finish. The gameplay could have been better, but it did not bother me since the VN has other things to appreciate. Some of these things include the designs of the girls and their voice actors. Another commendable thing is how each chapter was different. Chapter 1 was simple to let the player get an idea as to how this game works. Then, Chapter 2 makes things a little tougher. Chapter 3 is where things get REALLY crazy. Also, the game is not that scary. There were a couple of frightening sounds and visuals, but they never made me feel like the game was trying too hard to scare me. Overall, it is an entertaining VN that can be a little scary at times. Lastly, the protagonist may not have a name, but he does have some funny lines. 7/10.
The story of Girls in Glasses goes like this. You follow Hidekazu as he starts a new spring semester at a private academy. By using the map system (it has been a while since I have read a VN with this), you can determine which heroine the protagonist will end up with. The story and characters are simple. Aside from being a bit of a marine nut and the one thing we learn about him in Kana's route, Hidekazu is just your normal protagonist. As for the heroines, you have an airheaded childhood friend, a quiet and shy bookworm, and an overworked student council president. The biggest problem that I have with this VN is the length of the routes. There is so much that could have been done with them. I was not tracking my time with these routes, but I am pretty sure it would take you at most 2-3 hours to finish one of them. Also, this VN does the thing where the other characters disappear from the story once you start a route. Despite my issues, I still enjoyed it because of the themes that were explored in the routes. Even with their short length, the themes were included in the story well. I may give it a 7/10, but I would not recommend picking it up anytime soon. There are A LOT of VNs out there. Sadly, Girls in Glasses does not do much to stand out from the others. 

Welp. I got to do 5 endings and the download version from Jast's website blocked the rest of them. There's a bug in that version right now - best I can tell - that there's a duplicate choice presented instead of a different choice, so the trigger for allowing a later choice isn't ever hit, so you can't choose one of the pathways at all, which locks Narumi's, Kokoro's, and Minamo's good and true ends as well as Mio's best ending. Other than THAT bit of mess, it was a subpar moege with a pretty thin story. I wouldn't have trashed it too much myself, but it was aiming for somewhere in the 3-4/10 range. Broken though = 1/10 for me.
 
Since that post I've already read Planetarian and Planetarian Snow Globe. I cried. Then I felt a little better with Snow Globe.
 
Now I'm onto Uchi no Kanojo.

Aaand... finished
The story is nice, even though it seems a bit like "the best of" compilation album from different "summer & island" nakiges - I saw familiar tropes from things like Summer Pockets, Natsuzora Kanata or AIR, but nevertheless liked it. However I feel like the writing and pacing is a bit too messy, with constant flashbacks, visions and jumps - especially in later chapters, which somewhat weakens the emotional punch of some scenes/arcs. Still had decent amount of tearjerkers, so I won't complain too much But the script would definitely benefit from a few more clean-up iterations
Art is good, characters likeable, and the music is great.
All in all, I think it gets an 8 from me
 

White Album 2, currently at coda, has started playing the game since April but I am too scared to advance the story in Coda. Once I gather up my courage, I will continue reading...

Yesterday I finished You & I. It was much better than I expected.
Even though it was very generic school-slice-of-life charage, somehow it turned out to be quite enjoyable. Also, I guess back then in 1999 all those cliches weren't as clichey as today - 25 years later
The premise is simple - the protagonist missed few weeks of school because of traffic accident (he got hit by a car). He returns to school at the beginning of June, and there he meets (and possibly falls in love) with heroines - the game takes place over one month (and few days). There's no bigger overarching plot or story* - like elections in Princess Evangile or gliders in Konosora - just school slice of life. Sometimes MC complains that everything feels a bit unreal to him, like he was seeing a dream, but is there more to it?
You can definitely sense strong dating sim roots here - but it is IMO handled much better than, for example, first White Album which bored me to the point of dropping it. Here there are no "generic" repeatable scenes, and there's no map movement (yay!). However the common route is very long - basically the whole June is common route, and then there are relatively short endings. And there's insane amount of choices - well over 100 😮. I noticed is that many scenes in common route play out differently depending on your relatonship level with given heroine - there might be additional text, CG or different set of choices. Nice attention to detail.
*except in Sayaka's route.
Heroines are quite likeable, there's also usual funny MC's male friend - here he's named Fujita, and is class' president. Your usual Sunohara type - although he predates Sunohara . He reminded me of Makoto from Sakura no Kisetsu (which was also done by Tiare).
I started with Misaki's route.

Class' vice-president, very friendly, gentle, caring and hard working girl. She seems to have crush on the MC right from the beginning. Her route is nice (if a bit naive) "first love" story. I also think that her H-scene was quite nicely and tactfuly written (for an old eroge).

Haruka is Misaki's best friend, and has very different personality. She's very energetic, with some tsundere vibes. Keeps "fighting" with Fujita. Her route was a bit weird..

Asaki - quiet, mysterious girl. Her story has some nice twists and plays a bit with the reader and setting (let's just say that to enter the route you need a specific item - a book titled "The Existence of Parallel Dimensions").
And I really loved her ending.
Here I also encountered first weirdness of this game's system. In addition to making right choices in the common route, you have to select right prologue when starting new game (there are two) and make right choices there as well. Otherwise the route ends prematurely right after the H-scene - that's really cruel 😕

Megumi - shy, introverted girl, member of library committee. Her route has the most drama.

Miyu senpai - an idol with pretty zealous fan-club of self-proclaimed bodyguards in school. I quite liked her scenes in common route, but her ending was rather disappointing 😕
And finally there's Sayaka - MC's little sister

I spent over 10 hours of constant replays trying to get this route! And let me tell you - it's almost impossible without walkthrough. There's even a review over on EGS where someone complains that they couldn't get that route. And there's no walkthrough available on any of the usual sites, like seiya-saiga or sagaoz. I finally found one on some archived page from 2001. And yeah - many choices were rather counterintuitive. Basically it seems like instead of focusing only on Sayaka, you have to keep balanced "relationship score" between all heroines, and cannot neglect anyone, at least in the first half of comon route.
However the route was interesting, and quite meta. (Heavy spoilers below)
I briefly mentioned that when talking about Misaki's route, but generally I liked H-scenes in this VN. There's only one relatively short scene for each heroine, and I think they are quite tactfuly written, especially for old eroge. Of course there are some usual cliches, but nevertheless it doesn't feel like characters got entirely replaced by their porn stunt doubles. They're having sex, not acting out an JAV scenario - which was my main complaint towards many H-scenes in VNs, and what steered me towards console/all-ages editions
Also, for each route we get very nice "pillow talk"/"morning after" scene ❤️ Just have a look at this Misaki's morning CG:
Now for the downsides. This VN is pretty bad when it comes to engine/QoL side. With this insane amount of choices, and one very difficult to get route, you get
no backlog only unconditional skip mode only 9(!) save slots, and loading a save always rewinds to the beginning of the scene no keyboard support at all There were also some typo's / editing errors (like repeated words or characters) here and there.
Also, the game is only partially voiced. Basically, common route is unvoiced, except for one scene (for each heroine) during sports festival. And only main heroines are voiced. The voices themselves aren't great, but that's quite old title, so I guess it can be forgiven. The music was nice.
Considering all of the above - on one hand, quite enjoyable content, but on the other - tedious gameplay, I rated this VN at 7/10
And now, can someone tell me WTH am I writing this wall of text about an obscure 25 years old moege nobody will ever play? 😅
Also, for posterity - Here's the walkthrough

I forgot to report, that I finished Daitoshokan no Hitsujikai (console version - including spinoff and FD) around a week ago

Overally it was very enjoyable read. With 40 endings and 90k lines it took some time, but I almost never felt bored - this VN created nice environment, where it was just enjoyable to spend time with the characters.
Yeah, after finishing whole game I stand by that opinion
I also still find the amount of event CGs not enough - but that's a minor gripe.
As for "True routes", I think the naming might be a bit misleading. There is just one true route, and main heroine of that route is Nagi - but it also has optional branches for other girls. However, I'd treat that as an extra, since those endings aren't as fleshed out as the "normal" routes for the girls.
I'd also like to mention the console-exclusive route for new character - Kingyo. It was great, among the best routes in the whole game 💖 That's the second (or even third) time I encountered that phenomenon - the other one being Wakaba's route from Tenshin Ranman, (and perhaps also Chihiro from Kono Aozora ni Yakusoku o).
FanDisc provides very nice supplement for each heroine. And spinoff Houkago Shippo Days is just a nice short mini-VN in the same setting. Nothing great, but I liked it nevertheless.
**********************************************************
And currently I'm reading perhaps the most random VN so far - You & I. It's the last title by JAST/Tiare (best known for Sakura no Kisetsu, Meisou Toshi etc). It's also their first VN that ditched the command-based adventure game system, and went with Ikura GDL engine (Crescendo, Kazoku Keikaku, Yukizakura etc).

This title got released in June 1999, so it's as old as Kanon. But the writing is more in-line with Sakura no Kisetsu So far it seems to be very generic old-school charage, but for some weird reason I'm enjoying it

I forgot to report, that I finished Daitoshokan no Hitsujikai (console version - including spinoff and FD) around a week ago

Overally it was very enjoyable read. With 40 endings and 90k lines it took some time, but I almost never felt bored - this VN created nice environment, where it was just enjoyable to spend time with the characters.
Yeah, after finishing whole game I stand by that opinion
I also still find the amount of event CGs not enough - but that's a minor gripe.
As for "True routes", I think the naming might be a bit misleading. There is just one true route, and main heroine of that route is Nagi - but it also has optional branches for other girls. However, I'd treat that as an extra, since those endings aren't as fleshed out as the "normal" routes for the girls.
I'd also like to mention the console-exclusive route for new character - Kingyo. It was great, among the best routes in the whole game 💖 That's the second (or even third) time I encountered that phenomenon - the other one being Wakaba's route from Tenshin Ranman, (and perhaps also Chihiro from Kono Aozora ni Yakusoku o).
FanDisc provides very nice supplement for each heroine. And spinoff Houkago Shippo Days is just a nice short mini-VN in the same setting. Nothing great, but I liked it nevertheless.
**********************************************************
And currently I'm reading perhaps the most random VN so far - You & I. It's the last title by JAST/Tiare (best known for Sakura no Kisetsu, Meisou Toshi etc). It's also their first VN that ditched the command-based adventure game system, and went with Ikura GDL engine (Crescendo, Kazoku Keikaku, Yukizakura etc).

This title got released in June 1999, so it's as old as Kanon. But the writing is more in-line with Sakura no Kisetsu So far it seems to be very generic old-school charage, but for some weird reason I'm enjoying it

I started Mashiro-iro Symphony -Sana Edition- a little over a week ago. Currently, I am 11 hours into it.
Mashiro-iro Symphony is a great VN. Every character was used well in the story, all of the routes are good, and the visuals look nice.
I think some people would have an issue with the pacing for some of the routes. Personally, I was too invested in the plot for it to bother me.
Overall Rating: 8/10

Currently reading Heart de Roommate
 
Since last post, I finished SakuSaku's reread, read Secret Agent, Ninki Seiyuu, Majo Koi Nikki, Mashiro-iro Symphony, Mashiro-iro Symphony Sana Edition, Hello Lady Complete, and Koiiro Chu! Lips. I'd outright recommend all of them except Secret Agent (only to action or mystery fans, it's a bit short and the routes are a bit uneven), and Koiiro Chu! Lips (although if you're a moege fan I think it's worth a read). Reviews for all are up on VNDB.

From the Steam page:
 

I already read the fan-TL (while disabling the horrible h scenes) and have japanese Memorial Edition in a box, but I look forward to this Steam release.
Having it officially released in HD, with voices and multi language support is great.
(It seems that it's goint to be a port of 2023 Switch version)

https://noisypixel.net/classic-key-visual-novel-kanon-english-release/
 

To each their own. But for the record, h-scenes in Key novels are known to be horrible.