Clephas

Visa and Mastercard just want to pull fees from anyone they can get them from. They get slapped down every ten years or so in the US for sneaking illegal fees in, so it is no surprise they would be inflating fees in Japan.

Otonari no Tenshi-sama- This is a pretty cute romance, on a short list of such anime that were actually worth watching in the last ten years. Isekai Hourou Meshi- Slow-life isekai following a protagonist who basically ends up becoming the cook for a giant wolf monster. Generally just makes you hungry to watch, though. Isekai Nonbiri Nouka- Slow-life isekai following a protagonist who just wanted a healthy body and a chance to live the quiet life... except the tool the god who reincarnated him gave him was an overpowered mythological weapon and he was soon making pets out of powerful monsters and attracting a harem of inhuman beauties. The books are basically one of those 'endless series' that never goes anywhere except expanding the village and his harem, but it is a good watch and read if you are happy with nothing special happening. Saikyou Onmyouji no Isekai Tenseiki- Basically a Heian-era onmyouji reincarnates himself (under his own power) in a world of magic and swords. He finds himself overpowered, but, knowing from his previous life and death how bad an idea it is to attract attention - he tries to stay under the radar (not really succeeding, though he thinks he has). Despite this, the series' primary attraction is the sheer brutality the protagonist displays when provoked or when he feels like someone he likes is being threatened. Toward the end, the series actually goes out of its way to make the 'villains' he kills somewhat sympathetic so you can get some perspective on how cruel he can be. However, that's part of the fun of watching the series. Hyouken no Majutsushi- Basically a magic fantasy in a world where it has started to develop to the level of a science and some sorcerers can alter the battlefield through their unique abilities. The protagonist, recovering from an incident that occurs before the story, goes to attend a magic academy, where is generally considered to be a lesser being, as a commoner who happens to have magic talent. Ankoku Heishi- A slow-life fantasy where the protagonist, after getting fired from the Demon King's army, wanders into human lands, saving a young village girl from a monster. As a result, he gets taken in and becomes an adventurer, giving him a second lease of life in the backwater town. Despite being mostly slice-of-life, there are some excellent action scenes mixed in. Eiyuuou- Basically a hero king, after a life of serving the people after saving the world by killing a dark god, earns a reincarnation in a place where he can pursue the art of the sword without responsibilities weighing him (now her) down. However, the world has changed immensely since he died, all trace of his country long-gone, the gods silent, and the world ruled from the skies by arrogant flying city dwellers. Revenger- Despite the slight yaoi aura about this anime, it has some great action/killing scenes and is basically a vigilante killer story. Not great story-wise, but it does have its moments.

In response to the question, Clephas' true form, a mass of moon-sized tentacles with innumerable orange eyes, becomes visible in the sky, causing the entirety of humanity to go mad and begin eating each other. Clephas's tentacles writhe in benevolence as he bestows his terrible blessing upon all Fuwans. A moment later, everything is restored to as it was before, and none remember the horrors of the past twelve hours.

Dark And Violent, depressing Maggot Baits Phantom of Inferno Nemurenu Hitsuji to Kodoku na Ookami Dead Days Muramasa Tokyo Necro Ryakudatsusha no In'en Houkago no Futekikakusha Sora no Baroque

Not really specific... there are plenty of VNs with murder in them, but you should specify precisely what you want. Do you want battles? Do you want mystery? Do you want horror?

Kage no Jitsuryokusha ni Naritakute- This is an anime in the isekai reincarnation fantasy genre that is also a prime example of the 'kanchigai' sub-genre that has recently become extremely popular in fantasy anime in general. The protagonist, Cid, was a teen obsessed with becoming a power in the shadows, the kind of character who appears out of nowhere and wipes out the villains before disappearing mysteriously without an explanation in some anime. When he reincarnates as Cid in a fantasy world, he promptly trains himself to the max from birth and sets out to fulfill his dream. One day, he rescues one of the 'demon-possessed' from bandits (incidentally while he is still a child) and concludes her state (which is a massive blob of rotting flesh that somehow doesn't die) is the result of her mana going berserk. He then proceeds to use her as an experiment in controlling the phenomenon from the outside, restoring her to a healthy elf girl. When she asks him who he is, he calls himself Shadow and - inspired by a liquor bottle sitting in the loot behind her - grandly claims that the source of her problems was the Cult of Diabolos, a secret cabal devoted to resurrecting the Demon. This results in her immediately - being way too intelligent for her own good - and enthusiastically beginning a secret society to counter the Cult called Shadow Garden. The key attraction of this anime is the way Cid makes grand claims or statements based on random settings he thought up on the spot which turn out to be true (without him realizing it) and generally solves everything through brute force while his subordinates act on their own to investigate his claims, somehow always coming to a conclusion that is convenient for him. The anime has top class presentation, easily slipping from comedic to deadly serious mode in an instant, even if you realize that Cid is just acting a part to his mind. The occasional statements Cid makes that are absolutely true - his complete disregard for anything other than his goal, for instance - are often used to make these moment seem more serious for him than they actually are (since he is so overpowered that there have literally been no threats to him so far in the series and thus is always in a state of playing around). The action scenes in this anime are especially good, matching some of the best action anime out there easily. Edit: Yes, Cid is a sociopath, there is no getting around it. Even before he reincarnates, he shows the same tendencies he displays after, and his emotional attachments are both rare and secondary to his goal in life. Tensei shitara Ken Deshita- The protagonist of this story is a guy reincarnated as a sentient sword, who eventually gets picked up by a catgirl loli slave named Fran. The primary attraction of this story is vicariously cheering Fran on through the protagonist as she grows as a person and goes after her goal of reaching evolution. Noumin- Trash litrpg fantasy anime. The LNs are slightly better, but they are still trash.

If you mean androids: Komorebi no Nostalgica- Far-future setting, post AI vs Humanity war, history has mostly been erased and people are living in a world of high technology where most cultural and historical information was erased by the war. My favorite heroine from this one is the Metosera AI android, Fluorite. Like all of her kind, she is the result of android AIs constructing a basic evolving personality program and giving it a body to learn emotion emulation along the way. She often serves as a compare/contrast with Cinema, the central (non-heroine) character of the game. Reminiscence- Far future setting, based in a version of a post-Akatsuki no Goei world where the conflict between social strata expanded into nuclear war, causing people to seek shelter in underground arcologies. Accela, the protagonist and his sister's maid, is the robot/android heroine for this one. Kimi to Mezameru Ikutsuka no Houhou- Dystopian futuristic story with a protagonist who lives with two AI androids who basically serve as his mistresses as well as his helpers.

A lot of the same people who enjoy otomege also enjoy Yaoi-ge, and for obvious reasons. A disproportionate number of the heroes in yaoi-ge are the forceful type that is plentiful in darker otomege that have 'love-hate' paths and yandere paths. Tbh, this sub-genre is something I'm only familiar with because my cousin kept trying to get me hooked on it, and I refrained from reviewing them or rating them on vndb in order to avoid excessive bias (for similar reasons, I only rated a few of the otomege I played). To be blunt, at least in the ones I played, it seemed like there was a large percentage of paths that either went from bromance to romance or were were the result of some kind of insane obsession on the part of the hero. Given my own predilections, it was just disturbing to me, and I thus refrained from rating them, because I DEFINITELY am not the audience these games are meant for. There were a few times where the protagonist was the forceful one, but most of the time the protagonist was just a cipher or a doormat.

AstralAir then. Favorite is pretty consistent. A Sky Full of Stars, for better or worse, is pretty meh in my eyes, from what little I remember.

Irotoridori is more focused on catharsis than character development compared to Hoshimemo. Hoshimemo kept most of the catharsis to the latter parts of the game, whereas later Favorite games tended to have multiple catharsis points along the way, with the largest appearing at the end. Sakura, Moyu is the culmination of this style, perfecting it, whereas Irotoridori was their first time to try it. Hoshimemo is much closer to older nakige in style, mirroring Key to a large degree. This is opposed to the later games, which have their own style that is entirely distinct from Key's.

I rate Sakura, Moyu as easily one of the top three nakige of the fifty or so I played during my years as a reviewer. Favorite in general has a bit of a lolicon issue, but their games are of the highest quality.

Mmm... well what I can come up with without context is 'Definition through use of trigonometric equations.' Sorry, with what you gave me, that is literally all I can come up with, as the first word isn't kanji, thus only giving me one meaning that makes sense.

It's a good choice. Grasesta is literally the only stand-out game by Eushully in a decade (sadly, including their most recent game, Hyakujou). As far as I know Grasesta doesn't have an ongoing translation project. There is very little I don't like about Grasesta, which is a harder feat to achieve for a gameplay VN than you might think. I love the crazy personalities some of the heroines (you probably know which ones) have, and I love the protagonist. I love the prologue, and I even like the antagonists. This game is somewhat lore-heavy, but relative to the rest of the games in this setting, it isn't so heavy on lore that you couldn't grasp it on your own coming in as your first Eushully game. Since it is based in a different region from most of the rest of the games, I doubt anyone will get on your case if you make a few mistakes about region names and the like. Before you get too far in, I would suggest deciding whether you will use and translate the append content, as it is mostly extra details about events prior to the game, as well as cameos and easter eggs. While I'm sure most people will be urging you to translate it, it isn't really necessary if you don't have the energy to do so once you finish the rest of the game. I I answered 2 on the second question, but my definition of MTL doesn't include using parsers or using it to figure out the meaning of individual words to save time, just to let you know. As such, I won't be annoyed if you use MTL in those senses.

SRPG hybrids can be a mixed bag. Classic style (The Shining Force/FFT/Fire Emblem type) that use stages are ideal for matching progression with participation. However, in my experience, the more the balance goes toward strategy, the more likely the story starts to fall by the wayside. Venus Blood also strikes a decent balance between the two sides, using more standard strategy (based on building army units that can counter enemy advantages and build on one's own, while picking how one expands one's field of influence and other aspects). It is perhaps the most gameplay-leaning series that doesn't fall into the trap of over-focusing on the gameplay to the detriment of storytelling (which is the entire point of a VN). Where things start to tip in the other direction is games like the Sengoku Hime series and Madou Koukaku. The former is a series where you fight to conquer Japan using feminized Sengoku Jidai units, and it is very heavily tilted toward gameplay throughout most of the series, except in V, where progression and storytelling was more tightly scripted (The Oda plotline and Ashikaga one in particular were really well-designed to bring the characters and their trials to life). Madou Koukaku goes a little too far in the direction of gameplay at times, in particular if you don't choose the 'true history' or 'magic' routes. Those two routes have a somewhat scripted storyline that you can follow, but if you just go around conquering, the game quickly becomes a slog devoid of story other than the collapse of your enemies and your protagonist's corruption due to power lust (which isn't necessarily boring, but it is significantly less interesting than the more scripted stories of the two primary routes). Overall, all gameplay hybrids need to strike a balance between the gameplay and storytelling, and in my experience, it is those that keep the focus on the story that turn out the best.

All the roguelikes and rpg-type games by Eushully had random encounters. However, you could usually turn off random encounters on the second playthrough or - like in IM Zero - there was a cap per visit to the dungeon on how many random encounters you hit. Apparently, this game doesn't allow the elimination of random encounters on a second playthrough. In addition, the battle system is closer to that used in the Final Fantasy pixel era games combined with a formation system that grants status boosts and a free passive skill to add a semblance of strategy (though in reality the only useable option is the one that reduces SP-use for techniques and magic). Considering that the original IM games battle system (used up through Tenbin) was a mostly-standard jrpg battle system with the addition of being able to place your characters freely on a board on your side of the battlefield (which made it easier to protect the pure mage types) Hyakujou's battle system is definitely a regression rather than a progression. Hyakujou's encounter rate is ridiculously high (sometimes every five seconds and a few times every three steps), considering that most of the characters don't have the SP to support repeated battles (I survived by loading Sophia down with SP-regeneration items so she could heal without worrying about SP). That makes the game unnecessarily painful to play, despite the existence of an effective auto-battle system (the auto-battle system is actually pretty good, even by modern jrpg standards). Without Sharon in the party, the drop rates for most resources are ridiculously low (sometimes nothing dropping for like three battles), and even with Sharon and her drop-enhancing spell, you sometimes get no drops after battle, which can be painful when you FINALLY ran into the enemy that drops what you need.

Kuro no Shoukanshi- I read the book first, so I'm somewhat biased, but I honestly think this is the hidden (really hidden, since very few people over here watched it as far as I can tell) gem of this season's isekai. While it is par for the course as transport/adult reincarnation isekai go, it does have a few differences. For one thing, the protagonist doesn't retain memories of his previous life, instead choosing to sacrifice them for more potential power. For another thing, the anime is less fanservice-ey than the books, resulting in a serious anime with a battle maniac protagonist. If I have a complaint, it was at the poor decision to try to utilize 2.5D graphics for some combat scenes, even though only a few companies even approach utilizing the technology in an aesthetically pleasing manner. Isekai Ojisan- Basically a comedy that mocks all the fantasy/isekai conventions, with a psychotic paranoid gamer (cartridge console era) protagonist who reflects on his isekai journey and abuses his connection to the spirits in various ways. It is something to watch for laughs, more than anything else. Isekai Yakkyoku- A medical researcher gets reincarnated in a fantasy isekai and sets out to make the world a better place by establishing semi-modern medical standards, starting with his own pharmacy. A good series that could use a second season. Tensei Kenja- Good action, cute companions, standard-issue protagonist for an isekai transport. The action is good but the story is meh, for the most part.

Hyakusen no Jou ni Katawareshi Toki (from here on known as Hyakujou) is Eushully's latest game, based a generation or two before the events of Kamidori in the same region. It is technically a prequel, and the setting of Kamidori - the city of Yuidora - plays a pretty important - though not central - role in the story. For those who want to know what the 'canon' is, it is Route A of the Law Route. The game is designed to be significantly easier if you play the Chaos Route first, supposedly. However, I decided to focus on the 'true history' route for this review. First of all, Hyakujou's storytelling is done in a semi-free scenario, where - similar to the SaGa Frontier and Romancing SaGa games, you pick your destination and progress the story based on where you go. In this case, though, the flaws of that approach are fairly apparent. To be blunt, you are given far too much freedom and too little direction. Since you can never tell whether an event is central to the plot or just a character-related event (technically they are differentiated, but several character events are required to progress the story for each city, so differentiating them is often meaningless). This is the second most painful part of the gameplay and the reason why I decided to give this game a low score, because it makes the story disjointed to a ridiculous degree. I mentioned that there are painful parts of the gameplay... and I need to come out and say this: They seriously balanced this game horribly. First, this game absolutely requires an insane amount of grinding. Just staying at the same level as the enemies required me to spend over twenty hours just grinding for materials and levels. The enemies from the very beginning are on the higher end of the difficulty scale for Eushully games, which makes things even more annoying from the player's perspective. Sudden bumps in difficulty level are standard for the course, and I found myself cursing aloud at Eushully a lot of the time. It's not because of the difficulty that I was bothered, though. I was bothered by the fact that just gaining a few levels took hours of effort. To be blunt, this isn't an MMO. There is absolutely no need to make experience-gaining a painful process to this degree. One thing you have to understand about the story is that the protagonist and his friends are fairly ignorant about events behind the scenes, and they only get involved with them fairly late in the story. This is another negative issue, because Mark and friends' goals are overly vague and result in a lot of disordered events, going from city and city only to experience the same issues (corrupt nobles, oppression, etc) with only a minority of events actually feeling linked to the story that supposedly began with the events of the prologue. The beginning and end of this game's story are very well-ordered, and the end run was really interesting. However, it came at the cost of me lacking a sense of investment in what was going on. The actual writing/scenario team is identical to that of the last five Eushully games, which makes sense since only Fuukan no Grasesta amongst those came close to matching the better Eushully games. The artwork is typical Eushully, retaining the same nostalgic style. However, there are far fewer CGs in this game compared to previous games, and the entire story and game felt like they were working from a lower budget - though not a lot lower. Considering that I would be perfectly happy with them reusing the old IM battle system, it annoyed me that they felt the need to redesign things (wasting budget) in a way that doesn't really work (the formation and placement system is actually cruder than what was seen in much older Eushully games, making me wonder why they bothered making a new one). Overall, this game is a representation of Eushully's gradual decay. While the concept was interesting, and the effort to engage the Kamidori fans with a prequel is worthy of praise, the poor gameplay decisions pretty much eliminate any benefits they might have gained by piggy-backing on a classic's glory. The decision to utilize a semi-free scenario storytelling system was a huge screwup, as it resulted in a disjointed story that felt like it only had an end and a beginning, without a clear line between. I also found the decision to put the H-scenes in a separate patch and only include them in the extras to be a bit silly, since Eushully fans want their ero, and Eushully without ero just feels weird.

Eushully has been, for the past quarter century, one of the constants of the VN cosmos. Why? Because, with their first game Ikusa Megami, they struck gold in terms of setting design. Eroge VN/RPG's have created some seriously odd results and synergies over the past quarter century. The company that most embodies that is Eushully and the setting that embodies it is Dir'Lifyna, the world of the Ikusa Megami series and Kamidori Alchemy Meister. There are lots of arguments as to why the setting was so attractive. Ikusa Megami was not a very impressive game, even at the time. It's visual aspects were pretty standard for turn-of-the-century VNs, (actually a bit less so, considering what the gold standard of the time was). The gameplay was unimpressive too. However, the story and the hints about the deep, surprisingly well thought out setting that were dropped resulted in a cult following that caused sales to erupt, resulting in the second game, which was far more refined in every way, whether it was in visuals, sound, gameplay, or even story-telling. However, it was the telling of Celica's origin story in Ikusa Megami Zero that truly put this setting on the map and had numerous people going back to play the older games in hopes of recapturing the magic of the experience and the fascinating setting that accompanied it. Celica's progress from an idealistic paladin of a god of adventurers to the infamous God-Slayer of the original games was harrowing, emotional, and very, very revealing about the shades of gray that compose the setting as a whole. To really understand Dir'Lifyna and the way its stories are presented, one has to see past the limitations of the two major sides and their mutual enemy (Dark, Light, and the Old Gods). It is very, very easy to paint the Dark as 'evil' and its denizens as corrupt and destructive. However, in the context of Dir'Lifyna's setting, Darkness just represents one side of an eternal war for dominance over both the mortal and divine realms. Very few of Eushully's games have a Dark-aligned god or their worshipers as the ultimate antagonist of the story, and most people aligned with the Dark seem to simply have a looser idea of what good and evil are than the more structured view of those devoted to the Light. Throughout the Ikusa Megami series and the other side-games, Light-aligned gods and their temples are often the cause of the worst horrors one sees going on, whether it is betrayals, massacres, or endless wars. This doesn't mean the Light side is evil, either. Rather, both sides have a different vision of how the world should be, and many of the Dark gods are gods who departed from the Light because their viewpoint simply was incompatible with those who led. The god Celica originally worships, Barouhart, is a god of adventurers, a war god, and a god of storms. He is utterly amoral in his view of the world, being pragmatic to a fault. This is why he sacrificed the entire clergy of the region Celica was living in to corruption in order to make an attempt on the life of a single Old God who was in no way evil or attempting to disrupt the order of the world. In his eyes, sacrificing a few thousand of his most devoted followers to seal or slay an Old God was more than a worthy exchange. This goes to the heart of the third side of the eternal conflict of the Dir'Lifyna world, the Old Gods. To be straight about it, the Old Gods are Earth's deities, who fought for the losing side of the War of the Corridor, during the merging of Earth and the winners' worlds into one. Their human worshippers were stolen by the Living Gods and most of the Old Gods were killed, sealed away, or put into servitude in various ways. The people of Dir'Lifyna generally treat the Old Gods the same way an earthling would treat one of the Cthulhu Mythos gods, with horror and fear or with a lust for power. The gods of Dir'Lifyna treat them as potential balance-breakers in their game, seeking to eliminate their influence and relics as best they can. Now, why are the wars of the gods reflected on the surface of the planet? That is one of the more interesting questions. It also feeds into the way magic works on Dir'Lifyna. Almost all magic - except for species magic like that possessed by the Spirits and Demons - is fueled by mana. However, most beings don't inherently produce usable mana on their own (though some sorcerers manage to do so eventually through training and study). Most intelligent beings devote themselves to a god, their faith and raw (unusable to them) mana going to their god, who refines it for their own use before returning a portion to the worshiper. Most of a god's power and ability to recover that power after fighting come from this act of worship. As a result, the more worshipers offering their mana in the form of faith and prayer to them, the more power they have and the faster they can recover it. In addition, what their followers believe about them effects the shape of their abilities, allowing them power over various aspects. This also feeds back into what spells are easiest for their worshippers to use (Vastar's worshippers being best at using destructive Darkness Magic, Ice Magic, and Alchemy, for instance). A worshipper of Marsterria (the antagonist deity of the Ikusa Megami series) for instance tend to be able to use Light-based support and attack spells, but because his aspect is primarily of war, they aren't that good at healing magic (though most high-ranking priests manage to use it anyway). On the other hand, Iryun, the goddess of healing of the Light side, has followers who are fundamentally incapable of using attack magic but are excellent at healing and support. The moral ambiguity of all sides and the sheer complexity of the setting mean that this is a world that has endless possibilities for play, making it easily one of the most fun universes to experience in JRPGs in general, even setting aside the fact that they are eroge.

Yuusha, Yamemasu- Have to disagree with Kvan completely on this. This is nothing like Genjitsu Shuugi Yuusha (dunno where he got that). This is a fantasy novel about a world where the hero, after being exiled by humanity, joins the demon army and goes around helping them rebuild, generally providing advice and helping out wherever he can. However, the real attraction of this series is finding out the hero's past and the emotional rollercoaster of the last four episodes, lol. Gaikotsu Kishi- A guy gets transported to another world in the body of his skeleton paladin avatar and goes around saving people at random until he joins up with a pretty elf to free the slaves. While this series is not really exceptional, it has a lot of fun moments and a few really good emotional scenes that make it worth watching. Otome Game Sekai- A guy gets reborn in the world of an otome-ge where extreme female domination is the norm. It is a world of floating islands and airships, and the protagonist uses his knowledge of the game to gain an advantage in the form of a ship and AI from ancient times. The anime isn't nearly as good as the books, unfortunately, at least partly because it ends with the first arc. Shijou Saikyou no Maou- A demon King (called that more for who he fought against than anything else, apparently) chooses to abandon his throne and reincarnate as what he perceives as a 'normal' person, but in the far future, his view of the average is pretty close to the top of the food chain in terms of power. The results are fairly predictable, but the anime has a number of quality fights and good moments worth watching. It isn't at the top of my fantasy rankings, but it definitely shouldn't be one-sidedly condemned.

Who are your top five VN characters (other than the protagonist)? I went ahead and posted this thread because using my evil thread necromancy to resurrect the original zombie thread seems in bad taste, lol. 1. Kamio Ami- Semiramis no Tenbin's main heroine. Calculating, manipulative, and you can never tell when she is wearing a mask and when she is being honest. Her sheer intelligence and gut-level understanding of human nature combined with her somewhat hedonistic personality make her a fun heroine to pursue. While she represents the 'devil' (Eru being the 'angel') of the three main heroines (Touko being the 'human' of the three), ironically her path leaves most of the side-characters much better off than Eru's path, where a lot of horrific things happen to several of the protagonist's friends. 2. Welsheranto D Anoyance- Otherwise known as 'Belche', a three hundred year old vassal vampire turned by the protagonist's father. She was formerly a barmaid in Dublin, though she remembers very little about the time when she was human. She is Jun's guide, his surrogate mother, and the overseer of his vampire heroine. Her love for him is as pure as it gets, despite the fact that she is anything but pure in nature. She is terrifyingly powerful, even by old vampire standards, able to slaughter hundreds of humans in seconds if she wills it. When it comes to strangers, she is cold and distant, often ruthless if she thinks she can use them to better the circumstances of her vampire family. When it comes to her family, she often shows the face of a put-upon mother, despite spending most of her time in her smaller form. 3. Kuki Youkou- A brilliant martial artist and first-rate teacher who fell to his own hatred after his son was raped and killed by a serial killer with powers. He is both teacher and antagonist to the protagonist of Ayakashibito, while being the tortured protagonist of Chrono Belt. While we mostly see his bad side in Ayakashibito, Chrono Belt gives us a chance to see the man behind the vengeful demon so familiar from the original game. He is perhaps one of the most complex and deep characters written by Higashide during his time with Propeller, and it is worth playing Chrono Belt to see him come to life, even if only temporarily. 4. Christopher Valzeride - The hero and Fuhrer of Adler and the prime antagonist and cause of most of the conflict in Silverio Vendetta. Despite his supreme power and absolute heroism, he is not very talented. However, he is a supreme hard worker, turning a mediocre level of talent into a monstrous level of power by being utterly ruthless with his own body and enduring things that would drive almost anyone else insane. However, his seeming perfection of personality comes from a simple inability to understand the idea of giving up and doing evil, even if he can comprehend it logically. He is devoid of weakness, which is in itself his greatest weakness. As he once put it 'I am not an ally of justice, I am a slayer of evil.' He is self-aware enough not to hold others to his standard and he is in a constant state of rage toward himself and self-hatred due to his absolute hatred of evil. Unlike many would-be 'heroes' in stories, he doesn't think of himself as good but rather as the worst kind of trash due to his inability to find a perfect way to his goals that don't require the sacrifice of others. If he had it his way, the only sacrifice would be himself. "I will live and die for others. Know that my heart beats for only that purpose." 5. Marie- Dies Irae's main (if not true) heroine. A young woman born at the foot of the guillotine during the French Revolution, whose life passed without ever once knowing the touch of another human being due to the guillotine's curse. At the end of her life, she spoke something other than the song of the executioner's grounds for the first time, only to state 'I will always be here', becoming eternal at the moment of her death, inspiring the events that led to the 'war'. If there is a heroine one could say is 'pure of heart' with a straight face, it is her. A tragic figure who, in the end, turns her tragedy and innocence into compassion and an all-encompassing love for humanity. "I am watching. I'm at your side. I will never abandon you. I will embrace you. ... No, please allow me to embrace you. Oh precious everything, I wish to watch over you forever. Amantes Amentes, Omnia Vincit Amor. Everyone, please someday find happiness."

The new Eushully game is not a sequel, it is simply based in the same general region of Dir Lifyna (Eushully's fantasy universe). So far, my impression of it is that Eushully should have made it more linear. Due to the sheer freedom of how to proceed, it is hard to get a sense of the story in general, and there is no unity between the characters other than during their individual scenes or Mark and Luilie's bromance. In addition, they made the odd choice of making you go to the title screen to access h-scenes, rather than including them in the story, as is customary.

Shigure Sora from Devils Devel Concept or Shiranui Yoshikazu from Evolimit. The former is a lawful evil protagonist with a strong animalistic side combined with a transactional view of the world, while the latter is a 'hero' type in the purest sense of the word. All my favorite protagonists are psychological messes to one degree or another, though. lol

The last five years or so has been mostly devoid of superior VNs, so I honestly don't have much to suggest. Since you haven't played it yet: Komorebi no Nostalgica Komorebi no Nostalgica easily makes it to the top of my sci-fi list, though it has very little action. The story and presentation is awesome. It might be a little too SOL for your tastes at times, but to my mind it makes up for it for presenting an interesting 'after' picture of a post Human-AI war.

Bisque Doll- A pretty cute SOL romance with a gyaru heroine and a serious, straight-laced protagonist who is trying to become a doll-maker. Shikkakumon- OP sage reincarnates himself after realizing he can't get any stronger and finds out that civilization collapsed after his death. Combat is no better than decent, unfortunately. There are some high points, but as fantasy goes it is pure vanilla. Leadale no Daichi nite- Girl dies while online and gets reincarnated into the game well-after it shuts down. The world has progressed and she finds herself reuniting with npcs, saving little girls, and generally making a place for herself in another world. It probably helps that she is a high elf and everyone expects high elves to be practically immortal. Kenja no Deshi wo Nanoru Kenja- A guy does an in-game sex-change on a whim to use up an old item in a VRMMO, and he falls asleep in the body of his ideal woman (loli, lol) only to wake up in a world where the game has become real, stuck in that same body. Story is ok, but it doesn't really have any direction.

Since you haven't played it yet, Fuukan no Grasesta by Eushully. It is easily the most memorable Eushully game made in the last ten years, with the best story.