Clephas

Yay, petty sarcasm! lol I went ahead and did Chisaki's path in between playtime on Butterfly Seeker (murder mysteries tire me for an entirely different set of reasons). Like Nicola's path in Dracu-riot (yet another 'echo'), it is a sub-heroine path and lacks the drama attempts of the previous ones. I liked Chisaki as a character, and in retrospect, I feel like she should have been afforded a full route, rather than the half-assed one she was given... However, I can see why they did it that way, since her function in the common route and other paths is mostly as an appendage of Nanami.

This VN is the second game in Whirlpool's short, low-price mimikko fetish game series... and I have to say my impression of it hasn't changed from the first one. This is a direct continuation of events from the end of the first game, and basically it increases the number of mimikko-ninja in Haruki's harem... and nothing else. Oh, it is moderately funny, the h-scenes titillate my mimikko fetish, and you get hints of a deeper setting once again... but its short length means that the game never really goes anywhere beyond what I mentioned above.

I'm looking forward to more High School DxD *smiles evilly) But seriously... this season looks to be a fairly boring one, overall. Last season wasn't great, either... Grancrest is continuing, but I really wish they'd just continued Death March instead, because it was just starting to go somewhere other than in circles.

That wouldn't surprise me, either... Yuzusoft's stuff generally reliably reaches a certain level of quality... Edit: To clarify, I've seen far worse VNs out there than Riddle Joker... but at the same time, it really isn't up to Yuzusoft's own standards. It has all the separate elements that make Yuzusoft VNs interesting, but it just isn't as good as most of the previous games by the company.

Charage in general are at saturation levels... the real problem is that they've been reduced to rehashing the same ideas with 'new twists'. That's never a good sign for any company.

Keep in mind that I haven't played Natsuzora or Bra-ban Dracu-riot Senren Banka Noble Works and Tenshin Ranman (they are about equal in quality in their own areas) Amairo Islenauts ExE and Sanoba Witch Riddle Joker

Cross Channel without the h-content isn't that good, in any case... Taichi tends to be the most 'himself' during the h-scenes and bloody ones, lol.

Mmm... it feels more to me like their writers and producers are running out of ideas. Ayase's route proves they can still do the serious stuff reasonably well, and so I would like to see them do another chuunige, since I enjoyed ExE at the time. I would also like to see shorter and smaller numbers of h-scenes, lol.

Just as a side-note, I went ahead and played Ayase's route (I would have ended up coming back later, in any case). Ayase's route is significantly better than the other two I played... but it still is not as high-quality as the main heroine routes from Dracu-riot or even Senren Banka. Sadly, it looks like this one is just something of a miss... and every company has those.

Read it last... or at least after Comyu and Tokyo Babel. You can't really avoid comparing everything with Dies Irae once you've played it, but Tokyo Babel, which has a similar 'direction' suffers the most in comparison.

I'm assuming by edgelord you mean dark hero/antihero protags... the obvious ones would be FSN, Tsukihime, Comyu, Tokyo Babel, and Dies Irae.

I'm going to be blunt (as usual), Riddle Jokers is probably a sign that Yuzu Soft is starting to stagnate as a company. I'm not trying to be mean or bashing Yuzu Soft for the sake of it... but, after finishing two paths of this game, I felt hugely exhausted, despite the fact that the paths are actually shorter than some of their other works. The reason is fairly simple... the cast of characters this time around just isn't that interesting. Part of that is that the protagonist himself is a bit too 'normal' for someone in his line of work. Another part of it is that the heroines all fall into standard Yuzu Soft archetypes (whether setting or the character personality), and as a result, I was able to figure out the specifics of the paths I played so far almost from the beginning. The most 'interesting' of the heroines, Ayase, I intended to leave to last, so I haven't played her (because she is the obvious main heroine candidate). The common route is, at best, 'all right'. Of course, there are moments that made me smile, and the SOL is standard Yuzu Soft quality/style. However, I felt that they hit on all the wrong notes when they were handling the Astral abilities. One issue is that the balance between the oddly realistic/gritty moments and the rest of the game is horrible (those moments tease at a much more interesting set of possibilities), but another is that I honestly just got bored with what was going on too early. Yuzu Soft makes long SOL games, and as a result, every time I play one of their games, I end feeling at least a little fatigued. Worse, the humor is too mild to keep the brain stimulated most of the time, and the h-scenes are just... excessively long. Ichaicha in the heroine routes is excessive (I've been complaining about this since Dracu-riot, so that's nothing new), and... each of the first two paths I played (Hazuki and Mayu) had just enough of it to put me over the edge of my ability to endure. Since this game was channeling Dracu-riot so obviously (isolated/enclosed environment, persecuted inhabitants, background efforts to destroy their refuge, etc), it was hard to escape the feeling that this was a pathetic attempt to relive what was best about that game. Unfortunately, because they traced the ideas so closely in some ways, the points where the game comes up short are just too obvious. One of those areas is action. Say what you like about Dracu-riot, but its few action scenes were generally excellent (for what they were, action scenes in a charage) and the buildup was skillfully orchestrated. The same can't really be said about this game. While there are a few action scenes, the effort to narrate them and build up to them is rather... underwhelming. Another is the secret agent angle... to be frank, the protagonist just isn't that capable. Oh, he is a decently-skilled fighter and his ability is cool in a way, but he falls apart whenever he hits an emotional block and he has a critical failure for an agent... he hates lying. Last of all is the Astral-user issue... I have to say that this wasn't handled nearly as well as the vampires in Dracu-riot. There are very few times in the VN's common route where prejudice or persecution even comes up, much less becomes an issue (aside from the conclusion of the route), and there is no attempt to bring the situation 'to life' in the reader's mind, which is a critical failure, in my opinion. Honestly, when it comes down to it, the reasons I couldn't bring myself to like this game are all involved with me inevitably comparing it to Dracu-riot. On its own, it isn't a bad VN, but I have had the unfortunate experience of having both played Dracu-riot twice all the way through and have helped as a translation-checker on the translation... so my impression of this game was further ruined by my excessive involvement with the game it was imitating in structure. I couldn't bring out an unbiased opinion here, so I'm not going to say you shouldn't play it... but if you do, play it before Dracu-riot, not after. Edit: Also, one thing that was missing was non-romantic friendly intimacy between the characters... despite the fact that they mostly live in the same dorm, there is relatively little interaction between the characters as a group, meaning I didn't really feel that they 'came to life' like the characters of Dracu-riot or even Senren Banka.

跪いてオタク奴隷ども！貴様達の主はここに在り！

*Clephas smiles with elitist glee*

The greater proportion of VNs out there take place in a three or four month period... and are usually linked to a seasonal theme. This is especially true of moege/charage variants, but it can also be said for more story-focused games, like Tasogare no Sinsemilla. I just thought I'd bring out my thoughts on the use of seasonal themes here, since it comes to mind fairly often. The two most common seasons used in VNs as a thematic background to the setting are summer and winter. Now, why might this be? At least one of the reasons is that these two seasons are the most extreme of the four, but the larger part of this is that most VNs are at least partly about school life or have high school student characters. Why is this important? Because of summer and winter vacation. While schools provide convenient places for a protagonist to meet and interact with a heroine, school can also get in the way of the deepening of the relationship between them. As a result, many VN writers find it convenient to use the summer or winter break to serve as a relationship-deepening period where the other characters are conveniently sidelined by the lack of daily contact. In addition, summer has the advantage of creating chances for swimsuit CGs and swimsuit sex (incidentally, this is the reason why summer is the most common of the four seasons in VNs) and winter allows for more elaborate fashion choices for the heroines (incidentally, this is probably why companies with really good artists tend to like this season so much). Personally, I despise summer. I do like swimming, but since I hate swimming with others (give me an isolated location to swim in and I'm happy), summer doesn't really hold much of an attraction for me. Moreover, the effort needed to keep myself from getting heatstroke in Austin means that I don't have any of the delusions of joyful summer that charage/moege seem to want to promote. I love winter... but I so rarely experience it, since Austin's winter lasts only a few weeks before becoming what amounts to spring (though the rest of the world is still winter). Now, for the 'lesser' seasons... Spring is more common than autumn, for reasons that should be obvious. However, I'll go ahead and state them. Spring is a season that tends to be universally be seen as a yearly period of new beginnings. In Japan, it is the time when new students enter school and old ones graduate, and it also marks the period of the year where the most brilliant flowers bloom. As a result, it is more romanticized than poor old autumn... Autumn... I have only seen three VNs that used autumn as a theme. I think part of that is because of the symbolism, but another is that the only real visual attraction of the season is the leaves... and it takes a real sensitivity and grace on the part of the writer to use that kind of symbolism well. Personally, I love this season. When I lived farther to the north, it was the ideal season to sit outside and read, and it was the perfect season to spend exploring the nearby wooded areas. In VNs, the season is generally a solemn one, and it tends to serve as a background for somewhat darker stories. The bottom line is that I hate summer. Yes, I just wrote all that to get back to the fact that I hate summer. I look forward eagerly to a new ice age, and I'll just look blankly at anyone that suggests that losing most of North America to the ice would be a bad thing. In other words... my air conditioner won't be repaired until Monday, so I'm currently cursing the guy who invented warm seasons.

One thing that bothers me is that, precisely because they are written by men, the majority of otomege that catch my interest end up with DIDS (Damsel in Distress Syndrome) patient protagonists (which I hate like the plague). A few I have played or tried to play managed to escape this poisonous plague (Sanzen Sekai), but it is as ubiquitous to the otomege genre as the 'average guy/idiot who somehow forms a harem' is in charage.

Go for download versions... if you use a VPN, you can order from Getchu's dl portion and you can use dlsite without one. Physical versions... require a lot of roundabout efforts and are risky if you live in the wrong country.

I didn't go into this VN expecting much. Judging by the cover (considering I am a bibliophile, you would think I would know better, lol) and the Getchu page, I thought it was going to be a half-nukige along the same lines as the Ren'ai Jijou series (since Otaku was written by the same guy). However, I was surprised at what I got... the first addition to my 'Chicken Soup for the Soul' list since Natsuiro Recipe in mid-2015. As a reference point, I almost never add VNs to the Chicken Soup for the Soul list. The requirements for it are just too strict (low stress, soothing, mildly cathartic, and overall something that leaves you feeling better about the world afterward). So, I generally expect years to go by between each addition to that list. I specifically select these VNs for their restful properties, so the ones on the list are the kind of VN you should consider going to when you feel the need to just take a total rest from the stress of your life. Now, this VN is a kinetic novel, which means there is only one ending and one story. In fact, there are no choices in this game. This isn't a bad thing, from the perspective of a game I'm adding to the list above. To be blunt, choices are a type of stress-factor at times, so it is nice to just be able to read the VN without thinking about choices or looking at a walkthrough. The story focuses on a young scientist named Kyouji (he's in his mid-twenties), who, at the beginning of the story, has just finished his second and third prototype androids. The important thing about these androids is that they have emotions and the ability to learn and think for themselves (in other words, human emulation and autonomous AI decision making). This story is about how the three androids and Kyouji grow together, and it is mostly a gentle story about the family they form together. The oldest android, Nect, is an 'older-sister' type who serves as Kyouji's accountant, assistant, go-between, and secretary. She is good at keeping him from breaking the household finances and keeping him on track to finish whatever work he has taken on at any given time, but she is also very caring and protective about Kyouji and her 'little sisters'. Lux is the second android, designed to be a reliable partner and possess a desire to help others. This quickly turns her into what Kyouji refers to as a ダメ人間製造機 (a woman who reduces men to helplessness through her eager 'help'). She loves nothing more than to do things for others, including her sisters and Kyouji, and she feels the most fulfilled when she is doing her level best to spoil someone rotten. Sphere is the third android, designed specifically to be like a younger family member. She hates being lonely and wants the affection of her family members, and she also has the most effective learning ability, eagerly absorbing information about human relations from movies, anime, manga, and books. Overall, most of the VN is gentle, heartwarming slice of life, with frequent bits mild comedy (mostly running jokes like Roppu's desire to be modified by Kyouji) and occasional h-scenes (yes, they are occasional). I honestly haven't felt this relaxed coming out of a VN in a while, and I liked the ending fairly well. I give this VN high ratings for essentially erasing my stress from the work of the last few days, lol.

For the first time since 2015 I'm making an addition to this list: AI Love: Koisuru Otome wa Kikai-jikake (https://vndb.org/v22284)

If it is also on Dlsite or Getchu's download portion, use those. DMM's issues can be seriously annoying at times.

I usually use my laptop. Though, with my back in the state it is, I can't really lie down in bed and do stuff anymore.

There aren't many VN trilogies relative to the number of individual one-off VNs out there... but if I had to name the one that comes to mind (since Tiny Dungeon is technically five games) I'd say Akagoei.

Honestly? If there is such a thing as a game being too 'standard chuunige', then Fortissimo is it. Even I had trouble getting into it, and Nachsten caused me to drop it about a third of the way through, because I hated how it was going.

Grisaia no Kajitsu had a complete translation in existence before the official release, so costs were lower. Da Capo 3 had a strong existing audience due to the release of the first two games (relatively speaking). Not to mention linguistic difficulty (try reading the original Japanese version of Dies Irae vs Grisaia and you'll see what I mean immediately).

Yurikago is one of my favorite VNs. That isn't because it so 'awesome' or a kamige. Story-wise, it is actually a bit below the average for Akatsuki Works. No, the reason I like this game so much is the characters and their interactions. Kiritooshi Hiro, the protagonist (his surname means 'to cut all the way through' lol) is a young high school student who lives every day trapped in a web of his own apathy. Tormented by his 'Knight Frame' (a magitech-type device that replaces his entire skeletal system) and a sense of his own guilt for having murdered his father in order to gain it (this is not a spoiler, it mentions this within the first fifty lines, lol), he feels isolated from the world around him, and he can only really consider those who are - like him - outside the norm to be people (this is a psychological disease created by the implantation of the Knight Frame into a psychologically immature subject). He regularly attends a the Kurohagi Dojo, where he fights with Kangasa Ume, who has inherited an 'unbreakable body' (literally unbreakable... if she falls from the stratosphere, she is unharmed, but she is not invulnerable to disease or techniques that overwrite her original state). He generally spends a great deal of time trying to defend himself (unsuccessfully) from the females of the story, who seem to vary from seeing him as a favorite chew toy to being eternally exasperated by him. He has a bad habit of saying what he is thinking at any given moment in his rare interpersonal reactions, then wanting to bash his head into the nearest wall in embarrassment after reflecting on what he said. When his few truly 'sensitive' spots are touched, he can instantly become a psychopathic, remorseless killer, but those points are relatively few and far between. Kangasa Ume is the last survivor of the Kangasa Family, who all possessed an unbreakable body. Her body imposes on her a unique and distasteful way of viewing the world, where her reactions to everything around her are determined on whether they are fragile or difficult to break. She also despises that part of herself intensely, even to th point of being nearly suicidal at times. With those few she allows herself to become close to, beating on them becomes a form of interpersonal communication (she regularly breaks Hiro's bones when embarrassed or irritated). She is a student of the Kurohagi style, which focuses on the forceful creation of 'tenketsu' (breaking points) or the use of existing ones to destroy the bodies of their opponents. She is fairly advanced in this, and as a kindergartner she once launched herself into the stratosphere when she tried to kill the planet that way. Tae is the main heroine of the story and an angel. Angels in this story are summoned into the body of a corpse from a higher realm and are bound to the one who loved the original owner of that body. By instinct, they love their summoner/controller, and will do anything for his sake, up to and including self-harm or mass murder. Since her kind were originally created as a slave race, she has an M streak a mile wide when it comes to Hiro, and she wants nothing more than for him to treat her like garbage and beat the shit out of her... and is unsatisfied that he doesn't do so. Aria is the last of the three heroines, a young angel who possesses wings made up of iron stakes and whose special ability allows her to overwrite the reality of anything she touches to have already been punctured by one of her stakes. She is very honest and straightforward, a total innocent when it comes to everyday reactions and concepts, and (in her route) she is constantly asking questions, because she is also too intellectually lazy to think things out on her own. She is also a drug addict, due to an existing command from her master that she use a certain drug to eliminate her emotions when they go beyond a certain peak level. Kurohagi Zenjirou is Ume's adoptive father/grandfather and the master of the Kurohagi Dojo. At one point, he was involved in the religious wars that resulted in the creation of the mystic technology behind the Kishi Kokkaku and angels like Tae, but he is now very much retired. Despite his easygoing attitude, he regularly breaks his best students' bones and will even maim them if he thinks that is what is needed to train them. He loves Ume deeply, but he believes in standing back and letting the younger generation find its own way. He isn't really human anymore (psychologically or physically), and after two hundred years of life, even he admits he doesn't really understand people viscerally anymore. Tsugumu is an ancient angel (the most powerful one) who performed the surgery to transfer Hiro's father's Knight Frame to him after Hiro killed him. She loves anything interesting, and she sees her abandonment by her master as a very long-term sexual play. She, like all the other women around Hiro, regularly beats the shit out of him for minor infractions (either through teasing or literal blows), but she seems to always be looking on the people around her from the outside. She is very lazy and generally careless (she forgot to 'zip Hiro up' when she implanted the Knight Frame, which was a small part of the cause of his mental disorders, lol). Redear is the heroine of Tomoe's side-scenario, a psychopathic loli angel who skins people alive and removes their limbs and organs for fun. She makes little sense when she talks, frequently referring to various fairy tales and old children's books, such as Allice in Wonderland. It is impossible to tell what will make her happy at any given moment, but it is generally guaranteed to include killing someone or doing something similar. Tomoe is a young man who acts entirely on impulse, living as he desires at any given moment. When he sees bullying, he beats the shit out of the bullies, then he beats the shit out of the bullied one. When someone mistakes him for a woman, he breaks their ribs and jaw, then leaves them for dead.... and when he meets Hiro, he always tries to cause a confrontation with him. Now, needless to say, the characters of this game are... unusual. I loved their antics, and the game is pretty violent (think pulverized flesh, followed by repeated regeneration, followed by more pulverization). The Grand Route is an excellent follow-up to the other routes, and I always leave this game feeling satisfied. Edit: For those who are interested in playing the game, there is a suggested (by me) playing order. Generally speaking, you want to do Tae's route right before the Grand Route (because Tae's route is way too revealing). This is immovable. If you just want to see the true ending, do Tae's route and the Grand Route only, though you'll miss out on some awesome moments. My suggested order is: Aria>Ume or Ritia/Tomoe>Tae>Grand Route. Really, it would probably be best to do Ritia/Tomoe right before Tae's route, but if you want a bit of freedom of choice, that is a good place to put it. I suggest Aria's route because it is the only route where most of the other characters are almost irrelevant and Aria is actually something other than a speechless killing machine. It is also fairly revealing about how extreme the nature of the angels is, lol. My favorite heroine in this game is Ume. For all that she is the true heroine, Tae (or at least, the Tae in Tae's route) is mostly a do-M pervert who will do anything to get Hiro to smash her face in or treat her like dirt. While she is pretty adorable in her route, Ume's internal conflict is a lot more interesting. The main reason that I say play Tae's route, even if you play none of the other heroine routes, is because Tae's route reveals several key elements about Hiro that are absolutely necessary for you to know in order to enjoy the Grand Route (really, it would be better if you knew stuff about Aria too, but meh). The characters in this game, whether villain or protagonist side (note: everyone in this game is crazy on one level or another... hell, the most sane person there is Tae, and that is just... sad) are generally great... but moege lovers will probably run away from most of them screaming (Redear/Ritia is every lolicon's nightmare). Ume is an extreme self-hating sadist, Tae is about as M as anyone can get (so much so that she can get off just on being ignored), and Aria is a drug addict... lol Story-wise, the game is actually pretty good, but you should know that the writer chose to make Hiro an unreliable narrator and goes out of his way never to just come out and say things directly. I love the setting in this game, and it was obviously designed to contain more than one story. Unfortunately, Akatsuki Works Black produced three great games in a very short time and then got absorbed by Akabeisoft3, so we'll probably never see any more games in this particular universe... or in the Izuna Zanshinken universe (which, considering that the secret ending is open-ended, is sad).