Clephas

It does have a lot of fighting... but if you don't feel like screwing with that, just use a complete save at lvl 99 and do the lowest difficulty.

I figured I'd write out an apology to those who are interested in Hoshi Ori Yume Mirai... to be blunt, I couldn't engross myself in it. To be clear, this game is relatively high quality... but I can't get into it for the same reason I didn't enjoy many other seishun-romance... it relies too much on the old romantic tropes, I've yet to come upon a scene that I didn't predict in advance, and it plays to me like one long deja-vu moment. Understand, tropes themselves aren't a problem... I just don't enjoy seishun romance in the first place. It reminds me of the reasons why I didn't enjoy Konosora, despite the game itself being relatively high quality. The fact that Hoshi Ori is also a pretty long game makes it unbearable for me (if this were a shorter game, I'd just have played it through and moved on). So, I'll be dropping this game and shoving it into my backlog, along with a lot of similar games, lol. For those who wanted my thoughts on it, I'll say that the characters aren't the problem, nor are the visual aspects. I simply can't take the excessive focus on the romantic aspects. If this game were humorous or seriously emotionally moving (aside from romance) I would have continued... but it isn't.

tbh... I'm pretty much at my limit for Hoshi Ori right now... I can see that it is a fairly high quality seishun-romance, but it is '王道すぎる'. When you can predict the entire game down to the details before you actually enter the heroine routes, and then you find that things go exactly as you thought they would... it gets a bit depressing. It's been a while since I hit a VN that put me to sleep this fast, while not being a technical disaster.

Mmm... I've read a few. Problem is, when it comes to novels... I want to read real novels. When I started to read Japanese literature, I ended up reading classic works of the last century, rather than otaku-related stuff... I'm a bibliophile (with a preference for hard sci-fi and high fantasy, but who can and will read anything that is even remotely interesting given the opportunity), so I have a habit of finding the thickest book in the store and just picking it off the shelves... Edit: My evasion of LNs comes from my bad experience with the Crest of the Stars series books... the translations were so bad that I literally pulled my hair out halfway through. Turning a hard sci-fi series into what reads like a five-year old's attempt to imitate his inner city cousin's way of talking must have actually taken creative effort... I later read the Japanese version (which was a dozen times better), but the trauma still remains.

Mmm... a lot of it is that reading in general is second-nature to me. I go a little crazy if I'm not reading something at least two hours a day... it is why I made such an easy transition to VNs from anime. However, for the moege... I'll agree, way too much of it is banal. I'm not really enjoying the one I'm playing right now, even though I can see that it is technically a relatively high-quality VN, for a game that is basically seishun-romance. The problem is that the developments are way too obvious (I knew how one heroine's path was going to go before the common route was over, and so far it hasn't betrayed my expectations, unfortunately), and thus things are getting a bit too... well boring for my taste.

In another month and a half, we'll hit the one year anniversary of my VN of the Month thread. tbh, the activities related to that thread take up a ridiculous amount of my time, considering I used to just cherry pick one or two interesting games and shove the rest into my backlog. I have to make time to play them, consider what I think of them, and then write down what I think of them. That thread has eaten up well over a thousand hours of my time over the past year, and I'm curious as to whether people want me to continue. A big downside for me is that I've hit a lot of kusoge over the past year that I normally would have avoided on principle or because of obvious clashes with my pet peeves. However, when I considered how I could contribute to Fuwa without actually becoming staff, this was pretty much the only way I thought might work. People who lurk in the irc channel know I bitch and moan a lot about moege in general and the ones I'm playing at a given moment in particular. On the other hand, giving so many games I normally wouldn't have touched a chance has let me find some hidden gems (though relatively few of those) and get a better perspective on VNs in general. This has been a huge positive for me, letting me consider the games I'm playing more objectively than I would otherwise have been able to. I do find myself with less and less patience for certain things that are common to all moege (ichaicha and pointless scenes), and I've frequently found myself on the verge of exploding as a result. It is really, really hard not to just skip slice of life scenes in a VN I already know is a kusoge out of a sense of duty toward those few people who read my posts. I also split my assessments of chuuni and moege/charage because I knew I'd never be fully objective on any chuuni game, and I spent a great deal of time worrying about whether I should expand my comments from a mini-review meant to just give you an idea of what to expect and what not to expect to a full review, complete with a number of spoiler boxes you won't be able to resist opening. All in all, it's been an interesting experiment so far... but I'm honestly unsure if i want to continue it after the one-year mark, simply because I'm not getting much feedback at all, and I'm not nearly enough of a narcissist to believe everyone agrees with me or thinks I'm wonderful. To be blunt, do you want me to keep on soldiering up the endless mountain, or do you want me to abandon my (probably ultimately futile) efforts to climb toward the pinnacle of VN-fanboyism? I might or might not take any advice given in this thread, and there is a good chance I'll just outright ignore the results of the poll, depending on my mood. However, at the same time, I'd like to know just what people think of my little thread/column. When college starts up again in a few weeks, my workload is going to expand greatly, so this is going to go back to being a huge burden on me, time-wise. So... tell me what you think and vote in my poll.

Denpa in general isn't all that good a genre... it is too all over the place, and the writers frequently use this as an excuse for shoddy scenario design and cutting corners. Like dating sims, it is mostly a dead genre. Occasionally new ones come out, but they are relatively rare in PC VNs... The fad's biggest jump was between 1998-2005 (in both anime and VNs), and it died with surprising rapidity after.

I disliked Subahibi... for so many reasons it isn't even funny. However, all those reasons are personal-taste reasons, so I won't enumerate them here.

It's possible... Mangagamer has the localization rights for Navel's games.

Okami, we get it, you believe in monogamy and are against adultery... you made your point (such as it is). Accept the fact that some others think differently and move on. As a person, Akihito is not a 'good guy', and I don't think anyone here has actually said he was... you are basically arguing over whether him being sexually amoral ruined the story, and no one is making objective points on the matter, so you aren't going to change any minds. People that hate him will hate him and those that don't, won't. Move on to actually discussing the story aside from that issue, please. Moral aesthetics on sexual matters set aside for a little while, please.

Eden*... look forward to it guys. It is the only Minori kamige.

It isn't thrown out the window... the protagonist never does completely get over his reaction to girls outside his circle of friends. However, he does get better, though to differing degrees, in each path.

That's why I suggest anyone who starts VNs start with Tsukihime... if you haven't played something more modern, the art and music problems don't bother you, generally.

Just finished Love Revenge (http://vndb.org/v14763), my second VN from July's releases. Now, this game is by the new developer De@r, which apparently doesn't have any obvious connections with the other companies in the business... so naturally, I didn't have any expectations one way or the other when I went in. I wasn't blown away by the results... but I was pleasantly surprised. Love Revenge is a surprisingly high-quality charage, which uses a storytelling structure where four of the five heroines are paired up in a single path (Honoka/Rin and Senri/Renka). This makes a good deal of sense within the context of the story, so I can honestly say the idea paid off. The great weakness of this is that the actual split for those individual heroines (with the exception of Leal, who has her own, individual path) is very very late in the game and there is almost no time between the romantic link and the ending events of the game. However, this can also be taken as a positive, as I didn't have time to get bored or exhausted, and the endgame drama was interesting enough that I managed to enjoy myself right up until the end. The downside is that that this game is, when it comes down to it, really just a charage. Don't expect an overwhelmingly awesome story. Expect simple difficulties with happy results (except Senri's ending, which is technically a normal ending, rather than a good one) that are resolved in record time, with people coming to a conclusion rather more quickly than rl people would. Another thing about this game is its large cast... there are five heroines, with another twelve characters in addition to them. Considering the cast of most VNs is about eight or nine characters in total, this is actually very high, and they managed to develop a pretty good character dynamic between the characters. This is a great game to play if you want something light and easy between heavier VNs, or if you just have no taste for something with a darker atmosphere. I don't recommend this for someone who wants a ton of ichaicha or dating (the speed with which the story concludes after romantic linkage sort of precludes that), but for someone who wants a charage where you don't have to endure an interminable 'dating' period... it is an excellent choice. PS: In answer to the question above, I temporarily delayed playing Hoshi Ori because it allows you to name the protagonist, which was the cause of my starting that thread on nameable protagonists. It is one of my pet peeves, and I needed time to calm down, lol. There was no way I could have done a proper review of it if I had continued to play right then and there. edit: A few extra comments... A big issue with this is that the way they structured the story is just so different. In most charage, you have 'common route>individual heroines>fall in love/date (this going on for some time)>drama>epilogue' as the basic storytelling structure. This one has 'common route>paired heroines>mild drama>fall in love>individual split>mild drama>epilogue' as its basic structure. Because of this, it is a significantly different ride in some ways than what your average moe-gamer is going to be used to. Not only that, but it definitely makes the endgame feel somewhat truncated, because you are accustomed to a long dating period between the fall in love and end drama.

The problem with long common routes in moege is that in a moege... there is usually no story to support the common route. Thus, it ends up being a stream of daily life scenes, which can get interminably boring after a while. On the other hand, since many moege heroine routes spend way too much on dating and ichaicha, long heroine routes in those games can be just as bad. In a story-focused game, you either have a central story with a long common route or an early split with wildly different stories for each heroine. Dies Irae is an example of the latter (though the common route is pretty long too) and Clannad is an example of the former.

What natural disaster scares you the most? I've always thought earthquakes or volcanic eruptions would be the scariest. Having experienced a tornado and knowing how easy it is to survive one (if you have a cellar or storm shelter) I don't find them nearly as frightening, though.

To be honest... I'm really, really interested in people making completely western-style VNs, with no Japanese influence whatsoever. There are certain types of stories that we Westerners write better (violence, war stories, non-surreal survival, etc.). This is more of a cultural issue than anything else... The key is to cut the VN medium away from its association with otaku culture. As long as you are dragging around that ball and chain, people won't take you seriously without an extremely high level of quality. That means you'd be best staying away from romance-focused stories (to be blunt, the 'boy meets girl' construction is something they do better than we do, outside of Lifetime-style drama). Pure fantasy is also going to be a no-go, as we don't do that as well as they do, either. However, when it comes to hard sci-fi and mysteries, we have the advantage. Just remember if you do choose to go the 'weaboo' way, the expectations are actually going to be heavier than if you completely abandoned Japanese influence.

Pre-voice-acting, being able to name protagonists was fine. Most jrpgs allowed you to do so, and most people did so (the localized names were usually annoying as hell). However, once voice-acting got into the picture...

It lets you choose to enter a name (both first and last, which means you don't get called by the last name either... god).

The introduction of voice-acting in games is the primary reason why this function was transformed from a good way to 'get behind the protagonist's eyes' to a technical disaster in story-telling terms.

Kanon was, but I don't remember whether Clannad had the feature.

This is one of my big pet peeves. I hate VNs where you can rename the protagonist, because it makes it difficult to empathize with the characters (like when they say 'you' instead of the protag's name, or only use the last name, even if they are lovers). VNs where you can name the protagonist generally are low quality in the first place, and the dehumanizing effect of you naming the protagonist just makes it worse. There is a good reason why this is a dying feature in VNs. Ten years ago, about thirty percent of non-nukige VNs had this feature. Now, less than one in fifty has it. The simple reason is that it is much easier to get into a VN if the heroines actually say the character's name in the voice-acting. There is nothing I hate more than features that knock me out of 'the zone', which is one of the names I've given to the state of engrossment I experience when reading something interesting. Why am I raving about this? I started up a VN from last month and this feature popped up about ten minutes into the game. My first thought was 'What the hell?!' and my second was 'Someone didn't learn anything from the history of the medium'. I find it depressing that new non-dating sim VNs are still popping up with this horrid feature...

If you don't like the characters or the character dynamic, a long common route is pure hell.

Yuunagi Ichika To be honest, Ichika is the type of heroine I like least... she's a genkikko, a little stupid, and a lot cheerful. She's a completely normal girl, in other words *Clephas looks like he is going to puke*. As a sub character, I'd probably have been fine with her, but as a heroine, she put me to sleep. Nonetheless, despite the fact that she bored me, objectively the quality of her route is almost at the same level as Kotori's, though it doesn't match that of Ochiba's. Hotaru Rinne Rinne serves a role similar to that of Hazuki and Ochiba in terms of relation to Riku, the protagonist. She supports him, she's his partner, and she is quite obviously head over heels in love with him from the beginning. Her route is a bit more serious from beginning to end than Ichika's, with less ichaicha and more plot. The issues she has to deal with are also a lot more serious than Ichika's, though in the end their intensity comes from her frequent misunderstanding of the situation (a common theme for all the heroines). Corona Mmm... Corona fits the 'affectionate and innocent loli* trope perfectly, and her route goes pretty much straight to the ichaicha from the first... which bored me intensely. However, it makes a recovery with the events immediately before and during the epilogue. I'd say that, other than Ochiba and Yuuki, her route was of the highest quality. Yuuki To be honest... Yuuki is moe lolicon-bait. If you were to poll lolicons who play her route, you'd find ninety percent of them are in love with her. Her route is pretty much one long 'true route loli' line of nakige tropes. That said, there is a reason that tactic works so well at grasping nakige fan's hearts. That Yuuki is obviously a good-hearted girl from the very beginning, even if you just go by her occasional appearances in the common and other heroine routes, only makes it easier to get into the mood for her route. To be honest, I loved Ochiba more, even after seeing her end and realizing the story isn't complete without seeing Yuuki's ending. However, Yuuki's route is of high quality, utilizing the cliches it relies on quite efficiently, thus proving that Favorite is still Favorite (as if anyone doubted it). Overall Thoughts This is another high-quality game from Favorite, with yet another loli true heroine. For fans of Favorite's other works, this is pure comfort food... but it also suffers somewhat from a surplus of heroines (Ichika and Kotori feeling superfluous) and a tendency toward repeating similar patterns within each path. They were also a bit too blatant about pressing the 'want to save the adorable Ilya lookalike' appeals than I would have liked (they were being way too obvious with that hat and the albino-like appearance). Nonetheless, my criticism doesn't take away from the overall quality of the game. While I wasn't left feeling entirely satisfied, I did get enough catharsis and love for the characters that I didn't feel dissatisfied either. Though I'm sure the lolicons and Favorite fanboys will call this a kamige, it does fall a bit short of that line, in my opinion. That it doesn't fall far short of it is a mark of how high Favorite's low water mark is.

I'm at the last scene... it is a long VN. The common route is about one third of the game, with the heroine routes collectively making up the other two thirds.