Clephas

Lots of isekai gameworld fantasy there...

Going to assume you want translated, since it would take too much time for me to list all the untranslated ones. Ayakashibito Comyu Tokyo Babel Tsukihime Fate/Stay Night Sorcery Jokers

disadvantage is the much higher percentage of bot and troll voting.

Houkago no Futekikakusha Nanairo Reincarnation (the cop heroine is about four years older) Akagoei 3 has several heroines that are older than Kaito Akeiro Kaikitan Ayakashibito Suisei Ginka Sakura, Sakimashita (buchou is a LOT older than she looks, lol) Draculius (Belche)

I've made this observation before, but Otomege, for all that they profess to be directed at a female audience, are in fact simply directed at a different male audience. Almost all otomege protagonists are passive, helpless, or have some form of DIDS (Damsel In Distress Syndrome). There are (a very few) otomege that manage to escape this to one extent or another (my favorite being Sanzen Sekai Yuugi), but those are even more of an exception than the charage where the protagonist has a real personality. I don't like to be a bastard about this, but the reason I end up only finishing one path or not finishing most otomege is not because I don't like female protagonists... but because the female protagonists are all beta personalities who are just short of being airheads (and some of them are airheads too). Alpha personality (dominant) female protagonists are about 1 in 50, in my experience, in otomege, to the point where I'm starting to think the industry is trying to brainwash female otakus outright (except more female otakus play BL than otomege in Japan). Now, the tendency to find it difficult to forgive promiscuity in females is, in fact, the very reason why most charage have 'all virgin heroines' tags. This is partly a leftover of pre-modern society that seems to linger in most cultures across the world that profess equality of the genders, but it is also hard-wired into the male brain. Games where the heroine is a rape victim are easier to find than ones where the heroine is 'experienced', has an affair, or goes back and forth between the protagonist and other men (if you exclude nukige). In fact, the percentage of that type of game is vanishingly small, to the point that I can only think of about twenty-five games off the top of my head. Most of those were horror, had dark elements, or had some kind of brainwashing element involved, so you can see how strong the aversion to NTR in non-nukige is. To explain some of the cultural background... Japan, despite it's 'modernized' culture, is in fact still a culture only a century and a half away from an age where wealthy and/or powerful males were actually more or less expected to keep multiple partners (in the case of the Shoguns, multiple wives outright, most of them chosen for political reasons), all of whom were considered legitimate under the law as long as he had the means to support them and their children. Even now, most don't think much of it when a wealthy businessman has a mistress or two, as long as there is agreement or approval from the wife (it is the act of hiding another sexual partner that is considered to be dirty, as opposed to having one). Oh, if he flaunts the fact that he has multiple partners, it might become an issue (seen as a sign of a lack of proper modesty/humility), but most of the time it doesn't. However, if the female, on the other hand, was with another male, it was pretty much standard to see them beheaded, hanged, or otherwise killed out of hand, along with the man in question. Modern Japan's taboos are a product of the active encouragement of Western influences after the Meiji Restoration and after WWII, as well as the fact that a huge portion of the privileged castes vanished outright after the Restoration (thus vastly decreasing the number of males that were considered 'entitled' to multiple partners) and the newer castes were eliminated completely after WWII. The fact is that Japan is not as progressive in this matter as the urban West even now (the rural West still being generally chauvinistic for various reasons, with exceptions). Women's choices are questioned if they don't marry by age 25, and there is still a cultural assumption that females will retire early to have children. While aggressive female personalities are accepted there (outside of non-management work, where aggression is generally discouraged in both genders), aggressive female choices aren't.

To an extent... but they also weren't soldiers themselves. In this case, think of having a bunch of Yuujis in place of normal heroines...

To be blunt, the girls in that game generally don't have the psychological leeway to be involved in romance. Maybe Chris... but even she is unlikely. I figure if they ever make it with H content, it will be harem though.

As an extra comment, the reason I don't mention heroines in relation to the Grand Route is because it is a major spoiler... unfortunately, I couldn't figure out a way to talk about it without spoiling one of the major issues of the VN.

Bones>Muscle>Skin Bones=Grammar Muscle=Vocab Skin=writing system This is just a prioritization system based on my personal experiences. Specific methods to learn each have already been outlined in numerous threads on this forum. More than anything else, you should focus on mastering grammar. If you have the grammar mastered, the rest is just filling in the gaps, and having a basis in grammar enables you to read from context more effectively. In terms of vocab, I'm going to be blunt by stating that there is no way you can just out and out memorize all Japanese words from a list. Japanese is a language with over two thousand years of history and four major eras of linguistics that make true mastery of vocabulary a task of Herculean proportions. Instead, after you've picked up most of the 'common use' terms that get used on a daily basis (verbs and their forms being the most vital), I suggest just diving into watching anime without subtitles (various genres, not just SOL, since SOL linguistics are generally limited to a much smaller sampling) or reading VNs with text hooker and parser (no outright MTL, only a parser like jparser that gives you furigana for kanji and/or kana). While learning both kana systems (katakana and hiragana) is a task that can be completed in under a week if you put your mind to it, kanji takes months or years, depending on your free time for working on it. As a result, learning kanji inevitably has the lowest priority on my personal recommendation for learning Japanese, as long as you are just interested in playing VNs. However, that is not to say you should neglect it entirely... there are a lot of insights that can be drawn from Japanese use of various kanji that deepen the experience in the more complex VNs and books, and kanji puns are a mainstay stupid joke in a lot of anime, manga and VNs, so having a grasp of HOW kanji are used, even if you don't necessarily know all the kanji in question, is a vital skill to pick up along the way. Nonetheless, it is a skill that you should look into picking up along the way. This style of learning has upsides and downsides... it is a system for the impatient. People who don't want to wait for translations of visual novels often pick a route similar to this one. However, if you are looking to live in Japan, it is better to take a more comprehensive route, learning kanji as a higher priority while at the same time you learn the rest of the language as a whole. In that sense, 'classroom learning' is your best option if you intend to make a go of living for a while over there, though my method makes comprehension of the spoken language easier. Edit: Classroom learning has the benefit of giving you a chance to do verbal exercises. My methodology is specialized for consumption of media and comprehension rather than usage. While I can speak Japanese, every Japanese I've ever met says my Japanese is 'katai'. This is because most of my learning was done from text and private practice without someone to talk back at me.

Speaking from experience, the two most common 'main', 'central', 'secret', and 'true' heroines are lolis, osananajimis, or both. The reason for lolis is that from the turn of the century to about 2012 Key's influence on the industry was still strong, both in the tastes of the users and in the tastes of the artists and writers. It's only in the last seven years that that trend has mostly gone away... but osananajimi heroines are still going strong *sighs with disgust*.

More like saving them for the spot I'm most likely to ignore entirely... osananajimi paths are mostly all the same (exceptions exist, but those are in plotge, not charage) and the relationships with them tend to be predictable and boring even by the standards of otaku media romance.

Realive is Purple Soft's latest game. For those unfamiliar with Purple Soft, they are the makers of Hapymaher and Chrono clock, and their specialty lies in nakige with fantasy and/or sci-fi elements. As an example, Chrono Clock has the time-manipulation watch, Amatsutsumi has 'kotodama' (the ability to control people and some phenomena with words), and Aoi Tori has divine and demonic powers. In this case, the characters are drawn into playing an AR game called Alive, which grants them strange abilities based on how far they have progressed in the game. Since these abilities actually bring about real life results, I call it a 'mystical app', lol. Anyway, this game was written by Nakahiro of Hoshimemo and AstralAir fame. In combination with the sheer eroero nature of Purple Soft's artists' character designs (since his previous works that weren't nukige were mostly 'cute' games) it definitely presents a different picture from what you would expect from Nakahiro at first... but as you progress through the game, you will inevitably - if you have played his previous games - come to recognize similarities in how he handles the emotional and comedic elements to his previous works. The common route of this game is mostly light-hearted, though it shows at times the deep worries the various heroines and protagonist have (on the surface level). For those familiar with Hapymaher (which is translated), it becomes evident that Nakahiro is a fanboy of that particular work pretty early on, as he deliberately inserted many small easter eggs into the character personalities and settings that are drawn from the characters of Hapymaher. Sadly, he doesn't seem to have been fond of Saki (how could anyone play that and not love Saki?!!) but the heroines seem to have carried on a lot of elements from Hapymaher characters for some reason... though I won't spoil it for you. Have fun figuring out which characters inherited which Hapymaher elements, lol. Anyway, there are four heroine routes in this game and one Grand Route (just a different name for a true route, save that it usually has a bigger focus on resolving central elements of the main game's story as opposed to the heroines' individual ones). I'll introduce the heroines as I go. Kaya Kaya is, on the surface, your classic arrogant/selfish ojousama. She has distinct manipulative tendencies and a strong need to be on top, no matter what the situation. However, that surface hides a crybaby who lived a sheltered but strictly-regulated existence that tried to squeeze all traces of personality out of her. This is not that uncommon in ojousama heroines, but the way Kaya is presented is cute, generally speaking. Her class is Alchemist, which oversees destruction and creation of objects. Like all the four initial heroine routes, this one focuses on resolving Kaya's issues as she tries to complete the game, which is often difficult, since the conditions of the missions given by the game are often vague and designed to help the characters grow and face their inner demons... and Kaya's demons are a doozy (those this can be said about all the heroines to one extent or another). While some of her issues might seem minor to someone looking from the outside in, it is nonetheless made easy for the reader to empathize with her suffering. This path was my first experience with how the endings were going to be handled for this game... and the ending was something of an exercise in frustration for me, primarily because there is so much hinting at the background setting without giving me answers to match up with my suppositions. In addition, since we have no way to see how things progressed between the events at the climax of the path to the epilogue (this is deliberately not spoken of), I found myself wishing that they'd left epilogues to after the game was done completely. Minato Minato is a loner by choice, living a hard life working part-time jobs to keep her in food and shelter while attending high school. She actively hates the idea of trusting others, and she resents deeply the hypocrisy of those who try to help her out of pity. Normally, she presents the picture of a 'koakuma' heroine (and that's what she is), but she is also a rather obvious tsundere, albeit one who only shows her true tsun when someone manages to embarrass her. Her class is Trickster. Minato's path is... much more viscerally emotional and at the same time amusing than Kaya's path. I chose her second because she was the other 'outlier' heroine amongst the four initially available (I almost always pick heroines who aren't already close to or in love with the protagonist first, since osananajimi and deredere classmates are usually boring). She resists both the idea and reality of her romantic feelings for Chihaya (the protagonist) for a long time, and her reactions to those feelings were just hilarious... up until the point she finally gets down to being deredere, then she is even more clingy than Kaya, and that takes work. Minato's theme is 'overcoming dependence and making peace with the past', and it was much more effectively executed than Kaya's path... that said, i do still have complaints with how the epilogue was handled. However, that's the case with all of the four initial endings, so I'm just going to grin and bear it. Nemuru I'll go ahead and get this out in the open. Nemuru and Satsuki are the heroines I had no interest in from the beginning. Satsuki is an osananajimi in the classic 'cooks and cleans for him' style (albeit not tsundere for the most part) and Nemuru is your typical shy girl who has trouble speaking with men. Nemuru's class is, ironically (at least on the surface) Idol, and her skills are all centered around gathering or controlling the attention of others. My major problem with Nemuru's path came down to the fact that Nemuru was the heroine, in the end. As a path, it is actually fairly good, even if it lacked a lot of the non-standard twists and turns seen in the previous two paths (incidentally why I picked those two heroines first). However, Nemuru's character was irritating to me (shy heroines who remain shy for most of the game drive me crazy), and while she grows a great deal as she overcomes her trauma (much like the previous two), I was left unmoved due to my lack of interest in her. Again, her path is technically good, and a less-jaded player would undoubtedly be able to empathize more with her (the me of two or three years ago probably could have), but I've grown used to not bothering to tolerate heroines I don't like of late, so my reaction was probably inevitable. Satsuki Satsuki is the osananajimi neighbor, living with her younger sister Yayoi. She constantly wants to take care of people, especially the protagonist, and she intentionally matches her time leaving the house to his... do I have to enumerate anymore reasons why I left this path to last? lol Anyway, Satsuki has a strongly self-sacrificing personality with an intense desire to help and protect others. This is reflected in her class, which is Knight. Her path is perhaps the second most emotional (for me) so far, right behind Minato's. That said, her existence as an osananajimi and an essentially 'normal' person pretty much eliminated any possibility of me preferring her as a heroine, hahaha. Her path is all about overcoming the loss of something precious, and as such, it is inevitably a tear-jerker. Grand Route Early in the Grand Route, the reason for the links to Hapymaher become clear, and about a third way through, it becomes clear why all the events in the other path occurred. I'll be blunt... you'll probably spend most of the first third of this path in tears, if you have a heart. It is also an extremely familiar set of themes and setting ideas for someone who has read Hapymaher, so I can clearly state that this game is a Hapymaher derivative rather than just supposing it might be. This path forces the protagonist and the heroines to face their largest trauma, the one not mentioned even slightly in the other paths. This trauma... is bad enough that I'd honestly be tempted to rename this an utsuge. However, typical to Purple Soft's nakige brand, the ending is a happy one, if somewhat bittersweet. I know I cried. I will say that the protagonist's solution to the problem was... novel and typically convenient of a Japanese nakige, lol.

I pick by the 'unusual'. The unusual can be personality, their stance in regards to the protagonist, if they are non-human, or their social position. I usually pick osananajimi heroines last.

Konata yori Kanata made Houkago no Futekikakusha Inochi no Spare

In practice, it has proven to be better to release VN adaptations as full TV or OVA series rather than as movies, simply because most of the content is lost when you release as a movie. There just isn't enough time. Fate/Zero and FSN Unlimited Bladeworks had awesome adaptations, but most people will jokingly say 'there is no Tsukihime anime', and many other adaptations, whether movie or full series, tended to hit a sour spot with fans. It takes a truly awesome studio to produce a decent adaptation, and as far as I know, only ufotable does it right on a regular basis.

Untranslated: Tiny Dungeon series Akagoei series Reminiscence series

Read the post on Light's official site.

*Clephas feeds on the flesh and souls of those who tried to fool him* Edit: *Clephas grins a bloody steel-trap grin, as the wailing of the devoured echoes from the depths of his infinite stomachs*

It appears that March is going to be my first death march of this year (as compared to me doing it every month for the five years previous). The simple reason is that, for some insane reason, a bunch of companies released a bunch of interesting games all at once this month (it is technically still March). First, we have Alpha Nighthawk, a game by Liar Soft that just looked too interesting for me to ignore (which I normally would have). My initial impression from the first scene is... that this is definitely a Liar Soft game. The first scene has the spoken dialogue being completely different from the lines on the screen, so you have to pay attention to both simultaneously to pick up on all the nuances of what is going on, apparently, lol. Second, we have Purple Soft's newest game, Realive. Now, as a game about a mystical virtual app, I had to sight and go 'now Purple Soft is jumping on that wagon', since it is, on the surface, a departure from what Purple Soft usually does, which is nakige fantasy plotge. Third is Love Commu by Marshmallow Soft, a subsidiary of Candy Soft (like Minato Soft is). Now, ninety percent of those familiar with me will go 'What?! you are going to play a charage?!' However, it needs to be said that I've always played charage that looked interesting... and this is the first one in a while where the protagonist is a teacher and it isn't a nukige, lol. Fourth is Sakura Iro, Mau Koro ni. This one is Pulltop's latest release... and to be honest, if it isn't a nakige or plotge, I'll drop it like a hot potato. The only things Pulltop does right are nakige and plotge, and when they try to stray into regular moege/charage they always end up giving me a headache. Fifth is pieces / Wataridori no Somnium, another questionable title despite being released by Whirlpool, which has been on a streak of fetish games that seemed to have been made specifically with me in mind (World Election and Nekonin both being full of nonhuman heroines and World Election being just an overall great game). I say it is questionable because Whirlpool's bad games are REALLY bad. For some reason, Whirlpool sometimes strays from what works for them and tries to do something completely brainless (well, Nekonin was brainless, but catgirls and sex are always positives, lol), and I always end up wanting to go to sleep after the prologue.

The outrage from the fans caused Light to call it non-canon until they decided to make Pantheon. I do agree that it would be easy to screw it up... but to be frank, even if they made it a straight out war story based in the same region or one farther out, it would still be great. The first two games did a near-perfect job of building up the concepts around it, after all.

Yeah, I'm hoping for a 'same universe, different characters' thing... the Silverio universe has pretty much limitless (think Star Wars or Fate series) potential because of the way the world is set up.

Pantheon caused them to go bankrupt... lol. It looks like Akabeisoft 2 is taking over Campus's and Light's projects (bringing the members over). It is actually the parent company, Greenwood, that has gone down... So there is every possibility that Light and Campus could continue under Akabeisoft2's control. At the very least, they are saying the third Silverio game and the newest Campus 'magic school' game will continue development, though you have to take their statements with a grain of salt at this point.

It's fine as long as you aren't pasting bad links and actual advertisement banners... A Discord falls into the realm of the harmless here.

I have a long-standing dislike (outright hatred at times) for the protagonists of Subahibi and Aiyoku no Eustia, lol. You get used to being on the side of evil after a few years of it, hahaha. For that matter, I hate Takeru from MLA. There is nothing wrong (in the West, anyway) with hating characters that everyone likes... you'll just get trolled a bit whenever you bash them.

Yurika and the protagonist of Sora no Tsukurikata have a relationship like that... though it is mostly sex and crying on one another's shoulders when they reach their limit. In an extremely violent manner, Kanata and Sora's relationship in Kanata's first path (she has two, the latter of which has a psychopathic NTR moment) of Devils Devel Concept is like that. Sheryl and Toshirou in Vermilion Bind of Blood are like that... though again, it is mostly sex and companionship, with the romance part mostly being Sheryl.