Clephas

Raising sims are actually a lot more common than dating sims. At least part of that is the 'Hikari Genji' factor (for human-raising), or because it attracts people who like seeing things grow guided by their efforts (people who start out loving dungeon crawlers tend to fall into raising sims really easily, whereas people who prefer story-heavy jrpgs tend to head for the VN market, eventually, lol). Also, it fulfills needs people are deliberately not satisfying in the modern age (having kids or pets) for various reasons. Well, that goes for video games in general, really. Video games basically fulfill needs you can't fulfill in regular life or that you don't want to fulfill in daily life. Shooters relieve stress related to violent impulses such as anger, hatred, and fear, for instance. Eroge relieve sexual stress, for those who aren't in a relationship, aren't interested in prostitutes, and yet want to get their body's urges out of the way anyway. The main reason gaming has become so common is because it can be adapted to relieve almost any type of stress. Dating sims are dying because moege fulfill the needs dating sims once did far more effectively.

Clephas eats multiverse

No, it isn't. Generally, Youtube isn't a reliable source for information at all. It's worse than Wikipedia. Also, after taking a look at his page... *sighs* I myself like attention, but at least I don't pretend to be an authority on matters I don't really have a good solid background in. One last thing. You have to understand that VN is a term that is mostly used by game corporations as a name for the medium, rather than being a term used by the community in general like it is here. It is an all-encompassing term for anything using the NVL or ADV storytelling modes over there. Generally speaking, dating sims are directed toward kids in their early teens, rather than to late-teens or adults. That is why they are almost exclusively on portables... because there are very, very few PC gamers relative to the gaming population over there. A lot of that is because the Japanese gaming companies aren't really the type to try to push the envelope beyond its limits when it comes to memory, processing, or graphics. So, the importance of a modular gaming medium like the PC is relatively low there in comparison to here, where they frequently release games that are actually beyond the capacity of existing consoles to play to their fullest. 'Hunting games' like Monster Hunter are also big over there, because they can be effectively enjoyed with a portable's adhoc multiplayer or solo. Think about it... you hardly ever see a game in Japan that pushes completely past a console's limits like Skyrim did over here with the PS3 and 360 (anyone who played it long enough experienced those horrible slowdowns and freezes). They basically look for ways to make things look good within the limits of the hardware, and it is much rarer to find games other than erotic ones made solely or first for the PC. They just have a different attitude toward game making in general.

No, you are stuck in 2001. Actual dating sims have been almost extinct except as a minor sub-genre of portable games (there are almost no PC dating sims made at all anymore) in Japan since around that time. Illusion's games don't count, because they don't qualify as dating sims.

Most dating sims don't tell a story, for one thing. For another, most VNs don't bother with love-related stats. The Social-links and personality stats in Persona 3 are a fairly good example of dating sim elements, for those that want one. Though, like I said, dating sims are almost a dead medium, precisely because they are so obviously 'mechanical', which puts a lot of people off of them, even if they want a love-simulation. Most of the people who want that kind of thing go for moege if they get into VNs, if only because they moved in to fill the niche dating sims failed to. Edit: 'galge' is a near-dead Japanese term for non-ero romantic Visual Novels oriented towards a male audience.

Perhaps the biggest difference between a dating sim and a VN is mechanics. In a dating sim, you usually have some kind of stats, where you literally build up a visible gauge for the heroines by buying them gifts, taking them on dates, saying random crap to them, etc. There is a pretty good reason why these are almost extinct... In a VN, the game is essentially telling a story, no matter how trite or disgusting it might be (nukige tending toward the latter and moege the former). The player's intervention is minimal and generally restricted to limited choices that pop up at various points of the story. It is also told in either the NVL manner (the one where the text is across the whole screen) or the ADV manner (where it is in a box at the bottom of the screen). An eroge is, quite simply, any video game where actual erotic content exists. I know, it is frequently used as a byword for VNs, but that isn't really accurate. Basically, if it has actual sex in it, it can be considered an eroge.

Honestly? I got over caring about other people's (irl) opinions years ago. Though, I'm not stupid enough to reveal I'm playing games with erotic content to my family, since half are parochial Christians and the other half are... earthy people who wonder why I'm not married with seven kids.

It's basically the same thing as when people couldn't tell the difference between anime and manga and western cartoons and comics.

I cherry-picked VNs at first... but then I started just playing anything that looked even vaguely interesting. After a while, it gets hard to remember most of them. Moege especially tend to run into one another, since so many are carbon copies of earlier games with minor twists. To be blunt, I've read most of the best and tons of medium-quality (I got really good at screening VNs, really fast) VNs... but out of the four hundred or so I've played, maybe forty to fifty are truly worth being hyped, whereas the rest are usually... not so. I sometimes go back to old games I played before at random (like I did with Inpyuri) and replay them to confirm whether they were as good as I remember. Fortunately, in most cases, I had good taste even in the beginning, lol.

lol... that explains why their multiplayer market tends to be adhoc playing on portables for the most part.

What I don't get is why all those crappy Korean MMO's make it over here and interesting Japanese ones like that don't get localized here... The more action-packed type definitely suits the American preference, so it kind of amazes me that we don't see more of this type making the move over here. Edit: Sorry, every MMO I've played has been basically a WoW clone... even if it seemed otherwise on the surface. I don't want variations on that extremely tedious theme... I want something where I actually have fun, rather than just waste time, lol

Utwarerumono's battle system is not a good one. It is a basic srpg system, without the benefit of being able to grind between battles to get underleveled characters to where you want them. Considering the heavy focus on story in a VN/srpg, they would have been much better off just giving everyone the same amount of exp every battle, rather than focusing it on those who did the damage and killed the enemies. That would have allowed you to keep a full party of characters without adding in the need to grind. TtT's battle system is basically a partial and half-assed rip-off of the Growlanser series, without the benefit of letting you alter the course of the game through how you act/win your battles. As such, I mostly saw the game's faults when I played it. Leaf's penchant for stealing battle systems imperfectly is easily its worst habit, and I honestly think its games are overrated, not underrated.

Uruwashi no... having to chose anyone other than Donoko or Miyabi.

With a lot of the Japanese second-hand shops, the gamers who sell them are people who bought multiple copies for the shop tokuten and then sold them unopened to the second-hand shop. The more fanatical otaku gamers will buy five or six copies of the same game, keep one, display one, and sell the rest after getting the shop tokuten.

That's why you pre-order. If you pre-order and pick it up in a timely manner, you get your sealed game. In any case, every used game retailer I've been to does it differently. One marked it down by five percent for it being open and another basically took photos of the cover and stuck them in empty cases.

Mmm... one of the first couple of choices in Devils Devel Concept is sort of like that. Since the protag gets confessed to by Kanata in like the third scene, you have to choose to turn her down if you want one of the other heroines or her path with her dominant (rather than Sora), and the way he does it is... so like him.

I'd rather shoot

I'm Chaotic Evil, of course (with the exception that I don't like rapegames).

I haven't been able to find a live download of the full version, so I decided not to bother, since I wasn't all that interested in the first place.

Mmm... I finished the common route and all four heroine routes in just under nine hours.

VN-players are chaotic neutral or true neutral for the most part, lol.

Just finished replaying http://vndb.org/v11686 by Rosenbleu, and here are a few thoughts. 1. Like all Rosenbleu games, this game is hilarious. I've literally never encountered a Rosenbleu game that didn't make me burst out laughing at least once. 2. Great heroines: Mikoto and Miyabi especially are extremely good as heroines (not to diss Asuka or Shizune... but those two were my favorites). Mikoto's 'kogitsune' mode when she's in love with the protag is... ridiculously cute. So much so that I broke one of my rules and actually fell in love with a loli for a second time. Miyabi... is just rofl. If it weren't for the sub-character Shiroko's antics, you'd think she was yandere, but she's just really, really fixated on the protagonist. 3. Here's the downside... this game is way too short. This is Rosenbleu's one bad habit. Their games are even shorter than some straight moege (though they compress more into that time than most of those). In addition, the epilogues don't really do any of the heroines justice (god, they are like fifty lines...). Worse, Mikoto's and Asuka's routes are rather anticlimactic in comparison to Miyabi's and Shizune's, because of a difference in focus (the latter two are focused more on the protag's problems and the story that springs from that, but that story isn't properly addressed in either Mikoto or Asuka's routes). Overall? It's a really amusing game with a letdown ending and individual paths. It's more lighthearted, overall, than even the Tiny Dungeon games.

If you are looking for something portable and have a PSP or Vita, I suggest Growlanser IV (the port/remake of the ps1 game). It is very high quality, from a series by Atlus (makers of Persona and the rest of the SMT series).

I guess the biggest problem with Michiru is that they never manage to succeed in making her anything other than comic relief. Even in the second and third game, she is more of a 'comforter' even in her more serious role than a real character. The rather hilarious way she becomes central in the epilogue of the third only makes it clearer that she is basically 'the one character that never really changes'. She provides a sense of continuity that helps keep the character dynamics from the first game alive in the second and third one. This is important when you are making a series with a continuous story... but it has the downside of sending any possibility of her being anything other than an idiot down the toilet.

Believe me, it really is that bad. There is no such thing as a good machine translator. The best they can manage is non-abstract individual words. When it comes to grammar or abstract concepts... *Clephas grimaces* From experience, I know that most efforts at translating Japanese are closer to 'approximation' than most would like to admit. At least part of this is because the Japanese quite simply don't think like Westerners. There are tons of subtle cultural and regional differences - not to mention the experiences and conditions that formed them in the first place - that have made their language into something that is fundamentally out of sync with English. Yes, some things translate nicely... but even more things don't. Edit: I've said this in other threads, but this can't really be emphasized enough... I'm a subtly different person when I'm thinking in Japanese. Languages are one of the largest building blocks of a culture, and when you learn a language, it broadens your horizons... and at the same time makes you realize how different what you've just learned is from what you were born into. It was gradual enough for me that it wasn't much of a shock to my system, but people that don't understand Japanese without the filter of 'mental translation' really aren't equipped to comprehend just how different the thought processes behind the languages are.