Clephas

@Kurisu Have to exclude Rewrite, since it isn't a nakige.

Obvious names... Clannad, Air, Kanon, Little Busters... I'll leave the less obvious options for other people.

Edited: Because you don't need to know.

Mmm... I do wish they'd make more durable keyboards. I break my keyboards on an average of two a year from overuse due to my work...

Right after the first episodes of Naruto first came out, I spent hours making hand symbols.

Most of Liar-soft's early games have pathetic visual value and mediocre writing... as I just confirmed with Youtou Jiken.

Sakura had bits of the old grail inside her, even after Kotomine's (somewhat half-hearted) attempt to remove it and Gilgamesh was tainted by the overflow from the Grail in the previous war, which served to solidify his existence in the mortal realm as long as he absorbed mana regularly from an outside source. All other Servants require an anchor, in the form of the Grail, or a purpose given by the world (when they have completed that purpose they are forcibly returned). What the master provides is mana, which isn't sufficient alone to materialize a Servant in the world physically. Edit: In the case of being called by the Earth itself, a Servant is anchored by the Earth, whereas a Servant called for the Holy Grail War manifests using the existence of the Grail as a catalyst. Edit2: Also, in Fate/Zero, Fate, and UBW, the larger main grail itself wasn't destroyed, like it was in Heavens Feel.

Yeah, I was meaning more of an assassination... also, one of the reasons I said Ryougi Shiki would probably win is because she could probably cut the connection to the Holy Grail... no reason she wouldn't be able to, after all. No connection, no manifest Servant, fight is irrelevant.

Nasu has never been known for consistency...

Probably it would be possible for Tohno to kill a Servant... given the advantage of surprise and close proximity (no chance to use Phantasm). However, Ryougi, with her ability to cut through others' powers and capabilities, would probably win relatively easily with most.

For obvious reasons, I stopped reading into the Nasuverse after a while... Those obvious reasons (for the dense or inexperienced)? Simple... Nasu is slow and keeps going off an tangents rather than finishing what he started (a proper Tsukihime remake, the next Mahoyo episode, etc.). Fate/Extra is the most boring Nasu-influenced game I've ever played... took all the worst aspects of P3-P4 and stuck them onto a half-assed story.

Shiki is capable of killing Arcueid by cutting off her connection to the Earth, even at night. Also, though Arcueid is technically more powerful than the Servants, she is using most of her power to restrain her bloodlust, so... Edit: Ryougi Shiki would probably have even fewer problems with Arcueid, considering how much more powerful her eyes are.

I'm curious as to why Liar-soft felt compelled to tack meaningless gameplay onto their VNs sometimes...

Yeah, that's pretty much the way it is. I'd still be pissed off if they nerfed it (because KE's only advantage is being able to survive being a meat shield while cutting enemies apart with the spirit blade)... Oh and it also has the only multi-healing skill (KE's focus skill heals the party). I forgot... they got rid of healing magic, other than Spirit's resurrection skill, the KE's focus skill, and self-heals on Reaver. To be honest, fighting without healing magic and no KE against a high dragon is... painful. Edit: I tested a few strategies before I just started alternating two mages casting barrier spells on two warriors with shield/sword skillset for guard protection. Way too much micromanaging there though. (Solas, Inquisitor-mage before respec, Blackwall, and Cassandra).

tbh, I'm not terribly fond of the battle system either... basically hold down the attack button and click the hot buttons for your attack/defense/active skills as necessary... and Blackwall suspiciously resembles the perfect MMO tank (has access to tons of taunts and can add an extra health bar in battle, as well as the possessing Champion specialty, which lets him prevent enemies from passing him by). Nonetheless, overall the game is pretty fun (just don't choose Knight Enchanter as a mage... because it'll put you on easy/god mode), fighting a high dragon really feels as hard as it should (think having to constantly order your squishier party members out of the line of fire when it jumps and/or flies around), and there are tons of characters and personalities involved... On the other hand, the environments aren't recyclable and one-path like they were in DAII, there are numerous ways to get yourself killed wandering off the beaten path, and the main antagonist is as ugly and mean as you could want him to be... I've been playing as a mage (I recently respecced using a certain item you can purchase because I got the Knight Enchanter specialization) and I can tell you that spamming ice-freeze spell and fire explosions can shave most enemies to nothing in no time, on easy mode anyway (I'm not interested in an excessive and inevitably tedious challenge, since the worst of the enemies are still hard even on easy mode). The mage makes up for this overpowered set of skills by having weak attack damage and using up most of the mana bar with his better skills (though blizzard is awesome for dealing with enemies assaulting from all sides, since it keeps going as long as you have mana... meaning taking lyrium potions can keep it going for as long as you need it). The warrior has the advantage of being difficult to kill and doing decent damage, but they lack the extreme damage a rogue or a mage can do. A rogue... has good evasion skills, great damage skills, and is almost as fragile to getting hit as a mage (moreso if you choose to use a dagger setup and have to fight a dragon). The Knight Enchanter specialization, quite frankly, makes the game immensely boring. Why? Because you can just hold down the spirit blade spell button and win any given fight just by pointing your mage in the direction of the nearest enemy. As long as he is hitting something, a barrier protects his health bar, and if you feel you are cornered you can just use the 3 second invincibility/pass through enemies spell to get yourself away. Combine that with freeze and immolation spells for long range and you basically have an unstoppable tank and an op dps in one single package. Edit: Yes, at first it was really exhilarating being on god mode with KE... but that lasted only until I realized that I wasn't even trying to be strategic anymore, outside of the keeping squishy people out of danger thing.

I already made my comments in the other thread... and I'm too sick to think right now, so...

lol... yes, actually it is. I just have a tendency to list annoyances rather than good points. I'm a mage, which means I don't get to see blood spurting as often as I would like, but in exchange I'm enjoying causing blizzards and setting enemies on fire...

One thing that kind of makes me feel iffy is that there really isn't much in the way of an experience reward for killing enemies... when you are fighting through a small army (thirty or so) it is kind of depressing to get a total of three hundred to four hundred experience... The only real problem I've had so far, though... is when you go off the beaten path and run into a rift that is significantly higher level than the area as a whole. That killed me two or three times... also, you can't choose what stats of yours increase... which is a huge minus for someone used to the old way of doing things. Other than that... don't be a Qunari. Looking at my Inquisitor's butt-ugly face for hour after hour gets old fast. Do a human or an elf... One thing that pissed me off was that Qunari can't wear helmets... instead they have butt-ugly face paint that has virtually no effect on your stats.

@Lambda I think you'd probably like one of the side-characters in Bullet Butlers... he is basically a film noir style police detective who also happens to be a lizardman... and he does have an ending (though it is with one of the other side-character women). He's downright awesome in his adopted daughter's path. I really like what Kajiri Kamui Kagura did with the reborn Wilhelm... he is basically central to the entire premise of what they are doing, and he is just generally awesome in the endgame... Shirou from Dies Irae has an impressive half-antagonistic bromance thing going on with Ren, the protagonist... Dmitri is probably the best male character in Evolimit other than the protag... he is... heartbreakingly awesome in Shizuku's path. Houkago no Futekikakusha's protagonist is probably the best 'despairing protagonist' I've ever encountered... I mean... even at the beginning of the story I have trouble seeing how he's even in the same general neighborhood as sanity.

Majo Koi Nikki is... blech. Tsukiakari Lunch is better. Abyss Homicide Club Futagoza no Paradox Owaru Sekai to Birthday Harumade Kururu Natsukumo Yururu Sinclient Soukou Akki Muramasa (despair aplenty) Vermilion Bind of Blood Houkago no Futekikakusha (it is in a school, but it is so nightmarishly horrifying to the characters I doubt if you'll even notice) Gekkou no Carnevale Hotel. (soft post-apocalyptic utsuge) Izuna Zanshinken (has a school part, but it is contrasted with the protagonist being a vengeance-for-hire assassin)

There are plenty of bugs in the console version so far... especially quest bugs. There is this one where an optional quest item can't be properly requisitioned on the coast area and another major one where the actual spot where the quest is supposed to be is in a slightly different place than it is marked on the map (like fifty seconds walk from it and completely outside the area where it is marked). Biggest problem I've come across so far was the door into an important area that wasn't registering as a door at all... and the regular crash bugs, of course. Edit: Also, it kind of gets to me that the Qunari hair tends to clip through the horns at times...

While I marked faithfulness as an important aspect, the reality is that faithfulness is more of an ideal than a possibility in a lot of cases. Unique cultural concepts don't always translate (unless you are willing to have words running outside of the text box), translators don't always have the capability to understand those concepts (ie: what Shinto is focused on, the nature of Japanese Buddhist influences, cultural obsessions that actually have words that mean them), and sometimes people just feel the need to give up and paste a random interpretation decided by a roll of the dice in place of the original concept. For that matter, grammatical differences mean that a straight-meaning translation is a pain in the ass with compound and complex sentences. What happens when someone uses an old pronoun that means 'respectable individual who is higher than me in social rank' and the only thing someone can do is put down 'you'? That said, when the VA is saying 'good morning' in polite form and the text says 'Whassup dude!' I want to scream (actual example from jrpg localization). Edit: Incidentally, some of the best localizations I've ever read/played were done by Working Designs, a company infamous for altering scripts radically for lulz all over the place and Sekien no Inganock is much better in its English version than it is in the Japanese one, so while faithfulness is a preference of mine, I can ignore it when the actual job of localization is a work of art in and of itself. Edit2: That said, given a choice I'll take accuracy over artistry any day when it comes to a fantranslation. Chuuni, hard sci-fi, and hard fantasy are easily ruined by attempts to blur the lines between a translation and a localization, for instance. The reason? The plot stops making sense, for one thing, lol You'd be surprised how much effort is put into the minutiae of language in those games/VNs...

Kefka.

lol... yeah. I think it is more that he doesn't like Lelouch as an archetype and Narita Shinri is equally arrogant and melodramatic (though he is a lot funnier, if only because of his personality quirks). Some people just can't stand that type...

Actually, I could understand rating Hello, Lady between a 6-7 out of ten, looking at it from a certain perspective... Grisaia... sorry, they just don't make many VNs at that level. I rated Hello, Lady around a 9 just because it was immensely enjoyable and protagonists on the level of Narita Shinri are rare... to say the least. It has its flaws (heroine paths tend to be a bit abrupt, for instance... and they won't have a Hishiya path until next month, lol.