Clephas

I already had some of the first game translated... I have it in Dropbox, but I haven't had that much free time (relatively speaking) over the past few months, so I hadn't gotten around to doing much work on it. Get on Fuwanovel's irc channel on Rizon and pm me if you want to talk further.

Finished SinClient. Some thoughts on the game... Lots of twists and it is easily the most plot-centric game (other than maybe Namima no Kuni no Faust) I've played in the last few months. The protagonist is intelligent and capable, though he is somewhat hot-headed about the people he likes, with a strong sense of justice. He is not overly sentimental when it matters though, as he doesn't seem to have any problems pulling the trigger when it is needed. The story begins like the Bourne Identity and turns into a combination of a spy story and conspiracy theory story at about the midpoint. If I have a complaint it is that the after-story is mostly focused around the world events and doesn't give you any picture of the actual characters (though there are little captions in the ED song about them). I started Zero Infinity a few hours ago and it is tickling all my story fetishes, so I don't have any complaints. I definitely recommend what I've played so far to chuuni fans, as the protagonist seems to be one of those weird but intelligent guys with his own philosophy that people like me love.

Moved on to SinClient. The initial events of the story rather strongly resemble those of the Bourne Identity... As a strong positive, the protagonist isn't showing any signs of idiocy so far, and he is definitely capable. Well, we'll just have to see if it lives up to its promise.

I was bored, so I decided to bring up one of the most cliched forum topics for anime fans everywhere... what is your top ten list of anime? 1. Kara no Kyoukai 2. Code Geass (whole series) 3. Legend of the Galactic Heroes 4. Legend of the Legendary Heroes 5. Claymore 6. Shakugan no Shana (all three seasons) 7. Fate/Zero 8. Noir 9. Juuni Kokki 10. Ai Yori Aoshi

I'm considering what I want to play next, now that that Ocelot game that came out last month turned out to be less than interesting... I could play the new version of Dies Irae, but I finished my second playthrough of Act est Fabula only seven months ago... It's a great game but I prefer to leave at least an eighteen month gap between replays of games, even when new versions come out. I may just wait until Friday, when Light's new chuuni game comes out... or I could pick a random moege out of my backlog and see if it doesn't bore me out of my skull.

Side-paths that make no sense in the context of the greater story split off along the way to the only real ending for the game. G-Senjou and games like it would be better served if they eliminated the other girls as heroines entirely and made them into complete side-characters. While a good number of VNs have 'true endings' and/or 'true heroines', games like G-Senjou produce a central story then split off extremely weak side-heroine paths that distract from the main story and rarely make sense in the context. If they wanted to provide an excuse for h-scenes with the various girls, they should have just put them in the extras section after you completed the story, making it into a kinetic novel.

I've never been able to bring myself to give anything more than lukewarm praise to G-Senjou... I hate that particular story structure with a passion so intense that wherever I've encountered it (Eustia being another example) I've tended to come to hate the game with a passion later. Right now I'm replaying Bloody Rondo, having finished Lovekami for the second time (it was as good as I recalled). Bloody Rondo's greatest weakness as a game is that all the other paths are so much weaker than the Luna path (though Lynette's path has some of the best 'more or less wholesome by Japanese standards' h-scenes I've run into in an action-vn) and that all the heroines except for one are airheads to one extent or another (Sayaka being the exception, though she can be stupid as well). Still, it did some things right, like the antagonists (Francesca is a superb psychotic antagonist such as is rarely seen in modern action-vns) and the protagonist (who is reasonably capable and not an idiot). The game is more of a stepping stone for 3rd Eye's second game, Shinigami no Testament, which was actually one of the better action-vns I've ever played than an excellent game in and of itself. Bloody Call had all the problems endemic to the Otome game and the generic action-vn game genre. Somewhat foolish, virtually helpless protagonist who relies on the heroes for everything through much of the game (and who only becomes reasonably capable near the end). The protagonist also has the action-vn bad habit of suddenly becoming fairly powerful despite a lack of any training on their part. While this is almost reasonable in the case of a world-structure where magic is virtually all-powerful, the Bloody Call universe lacks that kind of 'Mwahaha, I crush you with the absolute difference between our powers' kind of situation that makes that kind of personal growth feasible from a storytelling point of view. Edit: Incidentally, even when I like a game, I'll still point out the parts I thought were done poorly. I like Bloody Rondo a lot, for instance. However, I recognize that it is an only slightly above average product for the genre that uses a lot of the usual cliches and doesn't try anything particularly ambitious (though it does have some truly beautiful CGs).

I more or less agree that many VNs include h-scenes more as an obligation than anything else. Moege and nukige being exceptions, of course (as no one in their right mind would play most moege without h-scenes and the point of a nukige is the h-scenes). Nakige and a good portion of the action/story-focused VNs do not need h-scenes at all. Of course, action games are more likely to include the h-scenes in a timely manner, but when they do include them badly, they are completely out of place.

And so Clephas re-registers... Mwahaha...

How about registering as a fantranslator by proving you can translate a random set of complex lines taken from various vns/eroge infamous for their wordiness? You could then authorize them for various game types based on how well they managed it. Well, that would require a lot of personal management... so it might - probably - not be workable. Still, I had to throw it out there as an idea. Just letting any random guy register a random translation will result in some truly... unfortunate line choices.

The game I liked most that I finished recently was Tokyo Babel... however while it maintains Propeller's usual humorous combined with action formula, it is also probably the heaviest of the games so far in some ways. The story is based on Christian mythology (utilizing the apocrypha in a relatively accurate manner for a Japanese-made game), and the three heroines include Raziel (the angel that supposedly recorded all the knowledge of heaven and earth in a book called the Sefer Raziel and gave the book to Adam after his exile from Eden), Eve's predecessor Lilith (who supposedly laid down with demons to create the monsters of the world and became a demon herself), and a girl without memories called Sorami. The story is based in the 'renovated' ruins of Purgatory, which have been remade into a place of pilgrimage to reach heaven and convince God to stop destroying the world. There is a lot more to it but it is an extremely... messed up story. Other than that... I'm currently replaying Lovekami and I recently finally got around to playing Konata yori Kanata made. I also plowed through a few junk nakige and moege, but they aren't even worth mentioning for the most part. I've got a huge backlog downloaded that I need to get around to... I think I'm going to play Bloody Call next, as I had yet to get around to it. I mostly hadn't gotten to it because of a distinct lack of detailed info on the story in what I could look up... or rather, a lack of a decent description of the protagonist. The bad habit of so many otome games is for the protagonist to be a wilting flower or helpless or some crap like that... its downright depressing to play as a helpless protagonist.

When I first started playing, I most definitely had no interest in the h-scenes. However, it's been interesting - if disturbing - to explore where my sexual tastes lie in the years since. As for whether they are necessary... sex sells. Who would play a moege without h-scenes? Seriously. Well, some I would but I certainly wouldn't bother with most. As for sex in other types of eroge (excluding those where the ero is the point of the game), the h-scenes are often simply part of the story (with the exception of ones put in there just to be titillating, like school, bdsm, and public place h-scenes). As an example, the h-scenes in Kei's path in Dies Irae are very much a part of the story and serve as a point of hilarity and odd tenderness in the otherwise grim story. Similarly, the h-scenes in Jingai Makyou usually serve a specific point other than being still-frame hentai. I won't go into details, though... However, in many games, the h-scenes do seem unnatural in how they are placed, and there is an excessive amount of emphasis put on the sexual aspect of the game. Moege are most frequently of this type, pandering to a certain crowd that likes to see girls of certain types in various positions...