Clephas

Mexican Coca-cola. Earlier it was junmai daiginjo sake. Replaying Sengoku Koihime and enjoying the harem.

This is just my opinion based on the original game, to give people a reference point. Fortissimo and its ubiquitous remakes and sequels are what I can't help but describe as 'generic' chuunige. That doesn't necessarily make them bad... there are some great moments in there, and there is plenty of tension and cool battles to enjoy. Where the game fails is on pacing. The game's pacing feels mechanical (not in a perfection sense but in a rigid pattern sense), character drama is frequently portrayed with little depth, and there is a sense that the main mechanic of the original game (destroying the physical manifestation of another's magic to win) is designed mostly as an excuse to prevent Loki/Reiji from being completely unstoppable and exile 'normies' from the story. What is worse, most of the true character development is ex post facto... after everything has fallen to pieces. Forcing most of the characters together as a group of friends was a bit unimaginative as a tactic in this case, and it had predictable results. Perhaps the best character in the game is Momiji (second is her best friend, the student council president), but outside her path, there is a definite sense that she is only there to provide cheap feels for the reader when predictable tragedy strikes. The fact that the game deliberately avoids detailing large swathes of Sayuki and Reiji's pasts in order to prevent you from getting an idea of what Kadenz Fermata's characters are like in advance makes things worse, as it causes both to fall oddly flat at times. This game would have been awesome if they hadn't written it with that poor quality sequel in mind.

Secret Game/Killer Queen series.

Played one route... it was hilarious, but I wouldn't call it the best game in a long time.

? Nothing even approaching that level from last month's releases.

Zero Infinity moves pretty fast.

I have to say I apologize to those who voted for Minikui Mojika no Ko... my original instinct not to play this game at all was correct. This game feels too much like a dark rape nukige to allow me to play it anymore, so I had to drop it. Not to mention that I hate all the characters and think they should all be tossed into the nearest garbage dump.

Baldr Sky, Baldr Sky Zero, Baldr Heart, and Baldr Force EXE are good. Baldr Bringer is 99.9% crappy gameplay and .1% story. Baldr Sky Zero is good, play it.

Akagoei pretty much has to be read as a series to be comprehensible... Subahibi is indeed meaninglessly pretentious. Vermilion Bind of Blood Electro Arms

From what I've seen on PC... 35/40= hetero, male-oriented 2/40= Yaoi 2/40= Otome 1/40= Yuri On consoles and portables 6/10= Otome 2/10= Hetero male-oriented 1/10= Shounen-ai 1/10= Shoujo-ai edit: This is just my impression of the proportions from looking over the releases each month for the last eight years... a significant number of the hetero male-oriented on console and portables are ports. Yaoi has been increasing in number over the last five years or so, but Otome and Yuri on PC have been decreasing or more or less plateauing. Console is dominated by Otomege, with Shounen/Shoujo Ai making infrequent appearances. Edit2: Note that those interested in LGBT content that isn't males magically becoming females in nukige oriented to male readers (which is more of a fetish than anything else) tend to go for doujinshi and ero-manga more than VNs. This is because doujin consumers and the manga industry are more permissive and open, at least at present. I don't think I see more than two or three yurige with H content come out in a given year...

Mostly fantasy stuff like Shin Koihime Musou and Kikan Bakumatsu Ibun Last Cavalier. Alternative history usually means 'fantasy' got injected. Other than that... Liar-soft's Steampunk series is essentially a set of alternate history stories.

Mmm... lets be clear. I'm a Texan who grew up in a family that watched violent crap every day. My first TV show was the Vietnam War drama Tour of Duty... and as a result, I have few hangups when it comes to violence. Rape on the other hand... I generally don't like rape scenes. At best they are distasteful, at worst they are outright disgusting. I'm well aware that a lot of dark stuff, like Maggots Baits, have great stories... and my own experience with Mugen Renkan backs this up. However, I can honestly say I don't like dark sexual themes. Violent themes? Yeah, I eat it up. Bloody? Go for it. But ryona or sexual slavery... no.

Bloody Rondo is 3rdEye's first and arguably their worst game. By chuunige standards it is very much 'yesteryear' even by the standards of the year it came out, being a 'half-gakuen' type where the protagonist splits his life between school during the day and other stuff at night. What it comes down to in the end is that this game was, from the very beginning, apologetically derivative and something of a failure primarily due to an attempt to draw on the relative success of Draculius several years before. First, I'll explain why I say the game attempts to draw on Draculius. Draculius is probably the best vampire fantasy chuunige/slice-of-life hybrid in existence. I say this because it doesn't in any way nerf vampiric nature or power, and it also has a rather unique atmosphere that draws on the fantasy familial aspects of the non-undead type of vampire (a vampire that is a lifeform, as opposed to being a dead being forcibly kept alive by magic or evil forces, lol). The combination of intimacy and hedonistic behavior that you see in that game, as well as the veiled potential for violence and moral ambiguity are subtly presented to the reader interspersed between humorous slice of life and often brutal action scenes. Bloody Rondo (and Libra) attempt something similar... but fail dramatically in that sense. Luna, the canon heroine of the game, is a clumsy true vampire (as in trips over her own feet clumsy) with a nonexistent work ethic but a deep capacity for love combined with an incredibly dependent personality. This in itself wouldn't be a negative and it indeed bears some similarities to Draculius's approach to the cast of characters, but the biggest issue is the utter failure to shift from the humorous elements to the more serious ones properly. Luna generally only maintains something like dignity for a few minutes at a time before stumbling, and her attempts to maintain it are... spectacularly bad, often lightening the atmosphere at the worst time for the story. The path that actually succeeds in reminding the reader of what is best about Draculius is Lynette's path, where the somewhat twisted relationship between her, Luna, and Shinkurou is the focus of things. Lynette is modeled on Zeno from Draculius in a blatantly obvious fashion (werewolf turned into a hybrid vampire with incredible physical abilities and absolute devotion), and she also serves as an excellent catalyst to turn the three into something resembling a family in her own path. The unfortunate aspect of this is that it waves the flaws in the 'canon' path in front of the reader so blatantly that you have to wonder why a short path that completely ignores the background story and Shinkurou's own issues works out so much better. I will not say this is a bad game... but it stumbles because it never quite manages anything like individuality, despite a good cast of characters and a decent setting. Anyone who plays this after Sorcery Jokers will instantly get how the writer used his failures with Bloody Rondo to grow and build up the setting he eventually used. In that sense, this game provides an excellent study in 'before and after' for someone interested in the history of VN writers. Shinkurou is actually a great protagonist, but he is damned by a weakness of motivation and a general lack of emotional filling in of the blanks by the writer. He is skilled, he is intelligent, and he is pragmatic... but the writer fails to capitalize on his personality the way he did with Senri's personality in Sorcery Jokers. Going back to play this, it is blatantly obvious that Egami Shinkurou is the prototype for Senri... a rough bare-bones character archetype to Senri's full-fleshed individuality. Needless to say, this is one of those rare times where I went back and actually felt the game failed in comparison to my distant, years-ago impressions. Most of the chuunige I go back and play years later have new discoveries waiting for me... but this game is an exception, unfortunately. Lynette's path is still great, but the weakness of Luna and her failure as a canon/true heroine is painful to read.

Right now, in order to 'clean my palate' before playing Mojika, I'm replaying Bloody Rondo, 3rdEye's first (and arguably worst) VN. A thought came to my mind that has been bothering me since I finished Oratorio Phantasm. Are Shinkurou and Luna still alive at the time this VN occurs within the setting? The reason I ask is because Now that we are finished establishing my hypothesis about why things in Oratorio Phantasm played out as they did, I thought I'd consider Shinigami no Testament. Shinigami no Testament, Bloody Rondo, and Oratorio Phantasm share the same world (Sorcery Jokers didn't show a recognizable connection to the other games, so I'm viewing it as a completely independent setting). The events in Bloody Rondo apparently occur at least a few years before Shinigami no Testament, and at least a century and a half have passed since the events in Bloody Rondo when Oratorio Phantasm has occurred. Shinigami no Testament has the weakest connection of the three, simply because if the inherently self-contained nature of its main storyline. To tell you why, [spoilers for those who haven't played it] The difference between Shinigami no Testament and Oratorio Phantasm is that Oratorio Phantasm actually has a direct link, whereas Shinigami no Testament just has a few pieces of info that tie it to Bloody Rondo. Moving on... it is always interesting to see whether and how a writer or company will link its games together. Kinagusa Shougo's Akagoei and Reminiscence series are directly linked together in an obvious way: However, it has never clearly been stated whether there is a canon for the two series (whether Kinagusa actually intended for the result that created Reminscence's setting to be absolute). Personally, I would prefer that it wasn't, because: Other games that possess a link are Ayakashibito and Bullet Butlers, through the Chrono Belt FD. In the Chrono Belt FD, Kuki-sensei is sent to the Bullet Butlers world along with a particularly nasty villain from Ayakashibito, and Alfred Arrowsmith is sent to the Ayakashibito world, where he, for the first time, confronts his own demons due to the essential peacefulness of the world he finds himself in (keep in mind that this is post-Ayakashibito's events). This link is a more peculiar one, in that I normally wouldn't have liked it... but Higashide Yuuichirou somehow made it work (seriously, I sometimes think Chrono Belt has more impact than the original games...). Now, I just gave you a bunch of examples of games where the 'setting link' actually works out pretty well... but as anyone who has stumbled onto a 'bad sequel' knows, the 'setting link' is a sword that cuts both ways. A more negative link would be the direct sequel to Hachimyoujin by Light... Bansenjin. Now, one of the problems with even thinking of making a sequel to Hachimyoujin is that the main characters had been stretched about as much as they could possibly be in the original. They had pretty much used up what made them interesting (which wasn't much in some cases), and Masada had pretty much played up their flaws and virtues as far as they could be... in other words, Bansenjin essentially revived a cast that had nothing new to add. There literally weren't any new angles within the existing cast that could be played on, and that resulted in a game that felt stale, perhaps precisely because Hachimyoujin was so self-contained. The new characters weren't that good in the first place, and Masada was really heavy-handed about how he screwed with the setting. As such, Bansenjin most definitely suffered from the 'sequel disease'. It makes me wonder... why do some writers, regardless of their skill, seem to always want to make a bad sequel to an excellent game? Oh, Dies Irae far surpassed Paradise Lost, its predecessor in the trilogy of Shinza main-series games. However, that was more of a result of Masada peaking with Dies Irae than anything else. Shimantogawa Seiryuu, 3rdEye's main writer, has obviously (seriously) grown since he wrote Bloody Rondo. Shinigami no Testament was immensely greater than Bloody Rondo, Oratorio Phantasm benefited from his realization that he wrote one-path stories better than multi-path ones, and Sorcery Jokers pretty much showed the peak of what he was capable of. Masada definitely grew after writing Paradise Lost and through the versions of Dies Irae (the first few of which sucked compared to the two final versions, Fabula and Amantes). However, he also peaked at that point, and the expectations created by the final versions of Dies Irae were impossible to fulfill... Higashide got out while the getting was good, recognizing that Tokyo Babel's financial failure meant bad things in the future (so quite naturally, he signed on with Type Moon). Shumon Yuu only ever seems to write when he has a masterpiece in mind... This post was all over the place... but then, it was never intended to be coherent, since I was writing things as I thought of them. It is hard to make a VN sequel or reuse a VN setting... the adjustments necessary to keep expectations from ruining things for the reader are delicate, and few writers or companies can manage to do it well. 3rdEye did it by mostly keeping the setting links light, Masada failed with Bansenjin because he misjudged the quality of his own characters and setting, and Higashide managed to pull a masterpiece out of what should have been a massive failure...

I'll never understand the Japanese obsession with summer as a setting... well, except swimsuits on the beach. Outdoors swimsuit h-scenes are always good. Fall and winter are my favorite seasons... Spring always seems to be meaninglessly optimistic in VNs, and games that use it as a theme are always so sugary that I think I'll get diabetes just playing them.

Dark Souls doesn't have a story, and you can't call that 'patch' a translation... it is a fantasy made up by idiots who made a failed attempt to clean up a google translate result. The Trails of series is on Steam.

Hot, sweaty, injuries that took weeks to heal and never feel quite right afterward... I hate summer.

This is the latest game released by Akabeisoft3, the bastard company made by Akabeisoft2 to take in all the subsidiaries of its parent company other than itself, Applique, and Akatsuki Works. The game was written by Nakajima Taiga, who first made his name as the writer of Dekinai Watashi ga, Kurikaesu and gained yet more fame with the utsuge Inochi no Spare. This game is a nakige, though it is one that leaves a lot more bitter in with the sweet than is normal. It is based in a Japanese inn called Yuki, where ghosts can interact with the physical world in order to complete the desire that keeps them in the world. In order to hide the fact that they are ghosts from the normal customers, the employees wear cosplay to make the unusual or out of season clothing the ghosts are often wearing not stand out. The protagonist, Haruto is the bantou, the male in charge of greeting customers arriving and taking reservations. He has been there for ten years and is seen as a reliable employee by the younger staff. He is very much a workaholic, performing his duties with absolute devotion and no real hesitation... it is just that those duties involve arranging the things that 'non-reservation customers' (the ghosts) need to fulfill their last desires. These desires are often simple things like wanting to say something or leave a message for a loved one, but can also be somewhat crazy things like wanting to get into a swordfight to the death. Haruto takes on all these requests without hesitation or any real emotional disturbance. Nonetheless, he does care. The partings in this game are probably the most vivid aspect... naturally, you come to know the ghosts' stories, and when the time for parting comes, it is always sad, even if you know they are going away happy and satisfied. I cried repeatedly during these scenes. There are four heroines in this game: Neko, the ghost of a girl who wanted to live freely but was unable to when alive; San, a cheery girl who gets along with everyone and enjoys her work; Kohane, a nervous otaku girl whose dream is to become a professional cook; and Sakine, a somewhat gloomy woman in her mid to late twenties who decided to work at the inn on impulse. Neko Neko was the first heroine I pursued, mostly because I have a thing for girls who say ~nyaa. Neko is a seemingly whimsical girl who loves to hang around the protagonist and constantly makes false attempts to play hooky from her work... but never really does so. Her path starts out as a soft romance between two souls with a lot in common... ... but the fact is that Neko is a ghost, and there was no way it was going to have a purely happy ending. Neko's path is full of small happiness and frequent sorrow, and the desire that binds her to the world is heartbreaking in and of itself. I honestly found myself crying for the entirety of the last hour of the path, to the point where I developed a sinus headache. Kohane Kohane is the assistant to Makoto, the fake homosexual cook (the story behind how that happened is hilarious in retrospect but it is part of a sad scene). She is shy and is very negative about herself, but there is enough iron in her core that she has managed to stay for one year under Makoto's extremely harsh tutelage. Kohane is a living heroine (as opposed to Neko, who was a ghost), and her path differs accordingly. Kohane's personal issues were actually fairly interesting... enough so that I was honestly able to empathize with the last scene and cry my eyes out (again). The last scenes in this path are all highly emotional, but there is a lot less bitter in with the sweet than Neko's ending, which feels more bitter. One issue that is common to both this one and Neko's path is that the protagonist's own issues aren't addressed, sadly for him, though it doesn't seem to bother him much (which is understandable once you know about him). It isn't a negative issue, since it makes sense within the context of the story. Sakina Sakina is the only full adult heroine in this VN (by the story, I'm guessing 27 or 28). Having quit her job previous to coming to stay at the inn, she decides to work there soon after the game begins. She is quiet, shy, and a bit gloomy at times. However, she is also kind and thoughtful. Unlike the other heroines, you will only rarely see her smile, but those few smiles are the ones that get you. Sakina's path is... tied up with the protagonist's past. The way this route turns out is different from the previous two (though I can't tell you why without spoiling), but it was interesting in and of itself. I didn't end up crying my way through the whole later part of the game, but the ending was uplifting and bright. San San is the game's central heroine. Her personality is bright and sunny, generous and giving by nature with a strong spirit. San is a student as well as one of the inn's hostesses (a job shared by Neko and Sakina), and her favored cosplay are a dog-girl, a maid, and a new wafuu (Japanese style) idol. Her path, like many central heroine paths, is the only one where all the major character issues are resolved (though only speculatively based on the epilogue in a few cases), and it is also the only one where the protagonist's own major issue is resolved. Like Neko's path, this one is very bittersweet, and like many cases in this VN, the partings here had me in tears for long periods of time, leading to sinus headaches (this game took me longer than it would have otherwise because I kept having to stop playing after I cried myself into a headache). I will say that I consider the ending to be a happy one, but, thinking of how San had to feel in the time between the ending and the epilogue breaks my heart even now... Overall Overall, this is an excellent nakige by a writer who seems to be able to write across all the genres and involving characters of all types and ages. For those who want a lot of catharsis, this is a great choice, but be prepared for a bit more 'bitter' in with the 'sweet' than is normal with a nakige (though it is still a nakige, rather than an utsuge). Despite my remarks on how bittersweet this game is as a whole, it should be noted that the atmosphere at Yuki, the ryokan (Japanese-style inn) that serves the setting, is very warm, welcoming, and downright familial to the point that I found myself wanting to jump into the game and stay a night there. I liked all the characters, including the side-ones, like Sentarou (the night security guard and exorcist that bears a passing resemblance to Archer from FSN), Toki (the century and a half hold ghost owner of the inn), and Makoto (the macho fake homosexual head cook). This isn't a kamige, though I'm tempted to call it one based on my general level of satisfaction, but it comes pretty damned close.

Mmm... it was just frustrating. I got the first two as a bundle and I was more or less satisfied, but since three and four I've been getting more frustrated with each new entry.

Umm... it really isn't worth it to make a post for this, but I went ahead and played Phantom Trigger vol 5 in Japanese. My impression of this one was that it was very much like the 'flashback episodes' that pop up in so many urban fantasy anime of the nineties and two thousands... It is all about Haruto and Murasaki's past (how they got acquainted, Saki's sister, etc), and, while that is in itself interesting, I felt cheated at the end. I'm going to be blunt. They should be putting a lot more content into these releases, considering how long the gap between each one is and the cost. I would much rather pay forty or fifty dollars for a half-length VN than dish out fifteen dollars every six months for what amounts to a tenth of an average VN's length of content. While I do like what is put out, I am always left feeling like there should have been more to it. I pay less for books on Kindle and get a lot more out of them. *sighs* Anyway, like all the entries in this serial VN, this 'episode' is interesting... but I'm starting to get 'repetition fatigue' due to the way the series is constructed. Each episode is, of course, self-contained but contiguous with the previous one and the one after. However, the way each one starts is exactly the same (structurally), and you hear almost identical speeches out of Haruto (internal or external) throughout their lengths, the only difference being the subject. If this were bundled as three episodes per installment, I probably wouldn't be feeling so irritated. However, the amount of content given by a single entry in this series is very, very low. Yeah, now I know all the main characters' backgrounds intimately except Haruto himself... but I also feel cheated because I'm finishing each installment in under an hour and a half... and fifteen bucks is a bit much to pay for an hour and a half of entertainment, in my mind. ... in the end, I couldn't stop complaining. The real problem here is that I love what is there, but there just isn't enough of it to satisfy me with any individual installment.

The extra ending is actually about an hour and a half of text with significant story developments, so you needn't feel totally gypped... it just isn't an extended campaign of warfare like the main story is, lol.

First, I should mention that this post is mostly going to focus on how this VN improves on the original content from Shin Koihime Musou. The reason is fairly simple... if you like the series, you'll eventually play this, and if you played the original Shin Koihime Musou, then that is probably what you want to know. I know I would. Next, I will go ahead and come out with it... I loved what they did with this path. The degree of added detail in this VN is actually higher than in Souten no Haou (Gi/Wei), and at least part of this is that it adds in a huge portion of time in the prologue, added story in the later areas of the game, and significantly revamped scenes involving the much larger cast of characters available to the somewhat sparsely-populated (comparative to Shoku/Shu and Gi/Wei) of the original. The prelude (the period of the game starting with Kazuto's arrival through the Yellow Turbans and Dong Zhuo eras) is so completely redone as to be unrecognizable. Son Bundai (Sun Jian) being both alive and present in this part of the game alters how it begins dramatically. Ienren (her manna) is like Sheren/Hakufu magnified with a foul mouth and a fighting power roughly equivalent to Ryoufu/Lu Bu. She is harsh with her enemies, domineering but thoughtful with her subordinates, and rules her people with an iron fist in a velvet glove. Under her tutelage, Kazuto actually ends up pushed into the bloody/dirty parts of war, and as a result, he ends up a bit fiercer/harsher than he is in the other paths at times. This path does indeed follow the basic bones of history (if you know what happens with Sun Jian and Sun Ce in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, you know what I'm talking about), which matches the original events of the path in the original Shin Koihime Musou. However, because of the experiences in the prelude with Ienren, the emotional moments were all the more poignant, and I felt myself able to empathize more with the characters as a whole than I did in the original path, where things seemed to move far too fast through that part of the game. The generalized 'fattening up' of the story is present at all levels, and the story is much more complex in the particulars as a result. While this has the effect of making playing all the way through this path somewhat exhausting, I felt it was worth it in the end. The extra heroines are something of a mixed bag. I really liked Taishiji and Raika, but I despised Pao and was disinterested in Teifu (yet another drunkard older woman in a game that already has way too many). I do want to say that I really seriously don't understand why they kept the system where you can't read all the heroine events each chapter. Sengoku Koihime allows you to read all of them, and it didn't seem to hurt the story... and it was immensely annoying to end up seeing some of the scenes that were slightly out of line with the current progression of the story. Only the 'ruler' heroines' scenes perfectly matched what was going on in the story as a whole, and that disrupted my enjoyment of them immensely. Last of all, as rumored, there is indeed an 'alternate' ending to Go's path, unlike Gi's. This ending branches off at the most dramatic/sad turning point of the original path and gives you a 'what if' for if This alters the events that proceed from there and the ending as a whole greatly. I honestly cried happy tears at this ending, and for those who are displeased with that particular turning point of the original path, it is a treat. Anyway, that is my commentary on this game, for those who are interested.