Clephas

Tenshin Ranman has one heroine like that, as does Tayutama. Most kitsune heroines are of the 'gold' type, with the white ones tending to be deities or servant spirits of deities. Edit: A few more possibilities. https://vndb.org/v4868 https://vndb.org/v18888

High school was mostly boring and miserable... I spent most of the time reading, though I briefly (a few months) dated a blind girl that I was honestly and deeply fond of. However, the end result of that was that I realized I was utterly unsuited for relationships in general, lol. I find the demands of a romantic relationship burdensome, and we parted on reasonably good terms for two adolescents. American school life is nothing like Japanese, primarily because you rarely share more than one or two classes with the same people, meaning that opportunities to form strong relationships with high school compatriots are limited. I don't think I remember anyone from my days in high school, except that one girlfriend.

In terms of raw story quality and satisfaction, Maggot Baits is several levels better. The combat/killing in this one is better. The torture-sex issue is a pure negative for me, so on that point I have a preference for this one. Edit: My primary reason for disliking this game's endings lies with Azami... that girl's plight is just as bad in its own way as that of the main heroine from Maggot Baits.

Finished all three paths in about seven hours... and that was despite reading more carefully than I need to with moege/charage.

First, a short intro... this is the second Clock Up game where Kurashiki Tatsuya (one of Light's second team of writers) has been involved, and those who played the previous one, Maggot Baits, will recognize the atmosphere and 'flavor' of the story instantly. This is a game devoid of salvation in any real sense. The protagonist and the other characters are universally the scum of the Earth (Mirei being the only exception, though she is a bit screwy too), and their lifestyles and pasts range from the distasteful to the outright disgusting. While there are relatively few of the violent h-scenes that defined Maggot Baits, they do exist, so I do feel a need to warn you that a lot of the content in this game is graphic and not for those with a weak stomach. The protagonist (who never reveals his true name in the entire story) is a professional killer who needs to kill people in order to sleep (it is more interesting if you read it yourself, so I won't go into detail). One day, he gets the order to investigate/find the killer of a paparazzi killed at the love hotel at which he works most of the time. What he finds is... Azami, a serial killer, whom he gets into combat with immediately. The end result of the battle is them having sex... and her getting obsessed with/attached to him. He returns the obsession in part due to the fact that, after having sex with her, he can sleep. I'll be blunt, there is no point in this game where the characters can really be said to 'shine'. There are three endings, two of which are different based on how the protagonist pursues his relationship with Azami. The final path, the true path, brings their relationship to the final stage (visibly inevitable, if you get to know Azami), and you are presented by a predictably depressing ending. This game has excellent writing, which goes without saying really, since it is done by Kurashiki Tatsuya. However, the unending dark atmosphere that infuses the story is energy-draining in the extreme. This is made worse by this general sense that the game is just trying to say 'humans are worthless' throughout its entire length. While the battle scenes are excellent, there were too many points in the story where cruel turns of event occurred simply to push things forward or to titillate the reader. This was true of Maggot Baits as well, but this game lacks the 'sort of good ending' you saw in that one, which gave you a sense of satisfaction, even if it was only in comparison to the rest of the game.

@Plk_Lesiak Change the title to Winter 2018 Definitely Overlord 2... I've been waiting for that since the first season. I'm in love with Mahoutsukai no Yome (no pun intended). Death March looks interesting. Fate/Extra, of course. Kokkoku will either be great or suck donkey butt. More Saiki Kusuo is always a good thing. Killing Bites looks like a nice gory side-trip. Toji no Miko smells like shit, but I'll give it a chance. Hakata Tonkotsu Ramens looks like one of those that will either turn out to be a cult classic or be forgotten and dropped by most after the first episode. The Basilisk remake will be the first new ninja anime in quite some time, so I'm looking forward to it.

Everyone has their own tastes. If you prefer OELVNs or just want anything with a good story, we won't bash you for it. A few suggestions of translated VNs (ask Rooke for OELVNs) with a good narrative. Fata Morgana Tokyo Babel Ayakashibito Now I'll leave you to it... enjoy your VN life.

... should there even be a question here? Even amongst the 'sort-of chuuni' games that have been translated, Rewrite is pretty far down the list in terms of quality... and if you put it up against FSN, there is no contest. It's like pitting a housecat against a dragon.

Conquest strategy games, as opposed to RTS, are games where conquest operates on a strategic (large-scale) rather than tactical level and is unconcerned with the activities of individual soldiers (soldiers are numbers, not capable of individual action). They involve the capture of strategic points in order to hold territory and the keeping of order and management of general resources (wealth and troops, as opposed to specific resources like wood, stone, and food). There are certain rules to this type of game when measuring difficulty level... there are obvious ones such as the amount of money you start with (ideally, on normal mode you should start with enough to secure the region immediately surrounding your starting point without resorting to extreme methods like heavy taxes and plundering). However, there are less obvious ones that are as much matters of real strategy as game rules. The biggest obstacle to efficient conquest, other than resources like troop numbers and wealth to pay for actions, is the number of points you have to defend and the limits on how much force you can bring on a single point. The worst possible position to be in, in a continental conquest type, is to be situated inland, with non-allies on all sides and all paths open to invasion or for you to invade through. In this situation, it is difficult to limit the points at which you have contact with the enemy, and this makes it immensely difficult to hold or expand territory, since you can't concentrate your 'iron fist' to smash one or two points (the ideal situation for normal difficulty at the beginning). The best possible position is to be in a 'corner' area with only two points to defends and another two points that can be used to expand your territory while limiting the vulnerability created by such territorial expansion. Generally speaking, the Sangoku/Sengoku Hime story paths tend to start with you having to unify your own province, with the first few parts after that concentrated on securing one or two other provinces at a time. This is further effectively handled by the fact that, in order to attack from a province, you must hold all the castles/domains within that province, and the same goes for your enemies. Thus, it is possible to preempt an enemy assault by snatching one or two castles in the neighboring provinces with your main forces or judge a province harmless or dangerous by whether multiple factions are active inside. However, this strategy falls apart if the enemy takes castle in the territory you are invading from in the same turn, and things can quickly become messy as a result (one situation I found myself in in Sengoku Hime 5 had me facing off against an enemy that could attack any one of five castles from the castle she'd taken, thus forcing me to concentrate a much larger force than I would have preferred to hold her off). Public order issues are common to many VNs with gameplay and games of this type. If you capture a province, it is often necessary to rebuild infrastructure and regain the trust of the people during the political phase, and the necessity of recruiting troops to replace those lost is often counter to his necessity (in the Sangoku games, this can increase the possibility of famines and bandit attacks, for instance). Worse, it can sometimes take five or more turns to regain order after a conscription, making you vulnerable to all sorts of messy 'disaster' events (referring to the Sangoku/Sengoku Hime series). The amount of territory you have in this kind of game directly effects how much of an army you can raise and maintain, as well as how often you can take political and military actions of various sorts. This means that falling behind the enemy in an 'open' scenario can often lead to you being in the worst possible type of position (for example, in Sengoku Hime 3, I once found myself facing a Miyoshi Clan that had taken over the entirety of Eastern and Northern Japan in the time it had taken me to secure Kyuushu and Shikoku, and I ended up facing forces of story generals in overwhelming numbers as a result... and I lost). Grabbing a larger territory early on can often allow you to expand faster later on, even if you haven't yet built up that territory sufficiently (maxed public order and public works, as an example). Conquest strategy VNs and games are amongst the most satisfying type of strategy games... and time-consuming ones.

I should note that I've been following this series since I played the third game two years ago, and I'm going to rehash some of my feelings about it as a whole. The first three games of the Sangoku Hime series had a number of good and bad points, even if I don't compare them to the Sengoku Hime series, which has been refined a great deal more due to it already being on its seventh installment. Pros 1- Male sprites are... badass cool, in general. Insanely detailed, actually impressive, though they contrast greatly with the more moe-type female sprites. 2-Ginga, the protagonist of the first three games, is a pure warrior general, with his abilities almost as extremely designed as Lu Bu's (Ryofu Housen), with high tactical and military skills (insanely high) and relatively low intelligence and politics skills. This actually makes him amongst the five most powerful frontline generals in the game. In addition, Ginga's psychology and life, as it was described in III, is just... cool. 3- First-class prologues and endings. For the first three games, moe-bait was avoided assiduously outside of the romantic side-episodes. The prologues of these games were great intros and the endings were powerful, emotional, and sometimes even inspiring. 4- in 3, at least, you could alter the fates of certain doomed individuals (in particular, the Sun family), though this often cost you others. 5- Numerous unit types, all with their own unique abilities and uses. 6- Absolutely perfect portrayal of Cao Cao's feminized character, both in personality and in art (She makes Karen from the Koihime Musou series seem pathetic). Cons 1- Way too much sex, way too many 'romantic' side episodes with random female generals. This was also the case with the early Sengoku Hime games, but the amount of text and time spent on h-scenes actually outweighs the main story of each path. 2- Almost nothing in the way of the story after you 'settle in' (conquer the first two or three provinces, reach the story's first turning point after the prologue). 3- Romantic elements mostly feel forced. 4- Illogical handling of public order system and conscription (this is common to 4 and 5 as well). 5- Game difficulty skyrockets about one third into the game, and resource management is made insanely difficult by random bandit attacks stripping your treasury. Hard to Judge (for both) 1- 'Architect' skill system, which allows for you to improve your characters by using points gained from battles, training, and political actions, allows you to customize story generals to some extent. In 1-3, this meant you could turn any character into an all-powerful demon lord, but this has been greatly nerfed in 4 and 5. 2- Elemental affinities are just an unnecessary complication... and generally too much trouble to bother with, since you have only a limited number of actions per turn to move troops around. For 4 and 5 Pros 1- H-content and romantic side-episodes have been greatly reduced in number, thus reducing fatigue. 2- More 'directed' story campaigns, which don't leave you trying to fight enemies on all sides without being able to secure a buffer of resources and generals. 3- Toutaku (Dong Zhuo), after being feminized, goes from a nihilistic dickhead to a Reinhard Heydrich-Class possessive yandere (If you betray her by stopping being hers, she tortures you horribly so that your last thoughts are of her, so making you belong to her even in deaht). 4- Akito, unlike Ginga, is a more flexible character, though less exhilarating as a protagonist. As a generalist, he is actually an excellent general, though his starting troop class is the somewhat mediocre light cavalry. 5- Improved story to gameplay balance (massively improved, in some of the paths. 6- Lu Bu now has a measurable brain, so she is actually useful outside of battle... though she isn't as cool. Cons 1- Cao Cao's makeover. To be blunt, the new Cao Cao, is so... stereotypical. 2- Nerfed Architect system. To be blunt, the architect system is one of the few advantages you have over everyone else, in a game where strategic options are limited in the first place. The degree to which it has been nerfed in these two games is ridiculous, considering the turn limit. 3- Weakened story generals. While this isn't true of all of them, most story generals are weaker than their counterparts in 1-3. This is especially marked with Cao Cao, the Sun Family, and Guan Yu. Since they are the only generals you don't have to bribe to like you, this can be irritating. 4- Male sprites are now moe-bait. 5- Endings and prologues, while still decent, no longer have the impact of 1-3. 6- The mouth movement gimmick in these games sucks donkey ass. 7- Sun family personalities are now moe. (blech) 8- Troop class advantages, other than that of the sorcerer (which curses enemies so that all damage they receive is doubled) are nerfed. 9- Stories now start later in the history (meaning that you miss a lot of the best parts). 10- 5-specific bug where Akito's Architect grid resets after the final turning point in each story path, thus eliminating a ton of hard work. Moreover, where other characters inherit their Architect grids across multiple playthroughs, he doesn't... which is weird, since he is the protagonist. On 5 specifically I've already expounded on the gameplay above, now I'll go over the story. I've played two of the six paths in this game (the sixth being Ryofu Housen's path, which branches off from Toutaku's). The two I played were Toutaku and Cao Cao... Toutaku's path is a masochist's wet-dream, since the protagonist is essentially in a controlling relationship with a possessive yandere who generally loves and is possessive of everyone who serves her or lives under her rule. Considering Toutaku not only raised but educated the protagonist (in multiple ways, including sexual and more mundane meanings), her being dominant wasn't a surprise. However, the sheer one-sidedness of her possessiveness was awe-inspiring at times, especially toward the end. There are also times in this path where the faint of heart will probably drop it outright. Akito's role in Toutaku's court is as an assassin, spy, general, tactician, seducer... and torturer. In comparison to the kind-hearted, easygoing guy he is in the other paths and in 4, it was a bit shocking, even for me. I mean, he casually mentions that he seduced a man's wife, had her poison the husband, then killed her afterward... and feels no guilt for it whatsoever, because Toutaku told him to. lol Cao Cao's path is much more mundane, in comparison. It starts right before Cao Cao initiates the campaigns against Yuan Shao (Enshou), thus leaving all the events around the Yellow Turbans and Dong Zhuo in the dust (along with the fun involved). I'll be straight, while the character interactions in this path are frequently amusing and I honestly liked things most of the time, the inclusion of moe-aspects into Cao Cao's personality is a non-starter. Cao Cao's crueler side never comes to the surface in this path, and Akito's hero worship turns to love in the most cliched way possible. In other words... this path was entirely unlike Cao Cao, and thus, I deem it a failure, despite its good points. I also played Choukaku's path up until the turning point... and I dropped it like a hot potato. To be blunt, I found the mewling idealism that suddenly surfaces in that path about halfway to be repulsive (in another game, I probably wouldn't have minded as much... but Zhang Jiao/Choukaku basically closed her eyes to rapine and plunder on a massive scale for years before Akito turns things around, so I thought it was all a bit too convenient). Overall, I give high points to Toutaku's path and intend to go back and play the Ryofu path that branches off from it at a later time... but Cao Cao's path has made me tired. Choukaku's path made a shot at the 'redemption from darkness' thing, but it fell flat to me so badly that I couldn't bring myself to go any farther. It didn't help that they killed off two of your most valuable generals in a path where you only have five story generals (as opposed to the 8-13 seen in the other paths) right before opening you up to invasion from five provinces at once.

1) Japan invented the Visual Novel as it is understood now, but it is a medium that you should feel free to take in a direction that fits your story. Don't conform to Eastern expectations merely because the medium came from over there. 2) The biggest mistake many developers make when making a VN is thinking 'lots of choices are a good idea'. The fact is, relevant choices are good, irrelevant/random ones are bad, unless you are making a comedy. Minigames are a waste of time, break the flow of thought, and turn away those who just want to read the story. Adding in minigames for the sake of having minigames is a BAD IDEA. 3) It depends. Gimmicks like particle effects sometimes enhance the experience, sometimes they don't. I primarily play Japanese VNs (almost exclusively), but I can tell you right off the bat that for every visual novel where I've seen a new mechanic, visual effect, or sound effect used effectively, I've seen five that manage to ruin the experience using the same tools. If I have a piece of advice for you, it would be to focus more on the use of BGMs than obsessing over voice-acting. A solid soundtrack that is used to effectively create atmosphere and mood in tandem with backgrounds and character sprites can turn a trite story into a work of genius. Voice-acting, to be quite frank, is a budget-buster item that is just as likely to blow up in your face as create a good effect. Good voice actors are expensive and directing voice actors is a specialized skill that takes a peculiar type of genius to get just right... so unless you have a skilled set of volunteers willing to take payment upon success, I don't recommend getting overly attached to voice acting. My somewhat acidic viewpoint on voice-acting comes from having watched voice-actors go from random staff members and regular joes dragged off the street to professionals that make careers off of their vocal cords and dramatic skills with their voice. Edit: I'm sorry if I sound harsh, but I've had a friend go bankrupt because he overreached after some initial success in game-making... but voice-acting, sometimes seen as a necessity by the uneducated, is in fact just a luxury if you don't have the budget for professional work.

Try a slavic language. The world is saturated with people who have learned German and French.

I know it was in AstralAir, but I don't remember for their earlier stuff.

'All characters depicted are over 18.' That appears in the startup screen of every charage/moege I've ever encountered.

Maho Roba is the latest release from Akabei Soft 3, the subsidiary made by conglomerating staff and resources from a number of Akabei Soft 2's other subsidiaries. Now, this game is in a different vein from the games previously released... in the sense that this company has done pretty much everything but a fantasy charage since it was formed. ... I'll be straight with you. My first thought upon finishing this game was that it is exactly like another half-dozen 'average quality' fantasy charage I've played in the past. The protagonist, despite being an adult member of society with an interesting job, somehow ends up working as a volunteer at a girls' magic school. He is a natural magician... who can only use one spell effectively. Moreover, for some reason the role archetype chosen for him in relation to the girls at the dorm is 'lucky sukebe who is the target of constant abuse from the heroines'. I don't think you can get any more cliche than that. Considering how the way the story is set up makes his job and previous experience and maturity irrelevant and constantly reduces him to just another 'sort of perverted protagonist making excuses', I found a lot of reason for irritation throughout this game. The heroines aren't much better... Shizuru is a standard straight-laced tsundere with an inferiority complex toward her more capable older sister (seen this over seventy times), Konatsu is the 'deredere heroine reunited with the protagonist' archetype, Kuon is the childish but brilliant loli who is afraid of strangers (yet another 'classic' archetype), and Teru is your standard 'Love? Can you eat that?' innocent genki heroine... The two heroines unlocked by completing one of those four are a bit more interesting (the ancient principal and the lonely genius magician), but their paths don't really show anything more interesting than those of the previous four heroines. By the time I finished this game, I was so immensely bored with the dull cast of characters and pathetic attempts at humor that I was falling asleep in the middle of my day. About the only thing that was consistently funny was the borderline yandere moments Konatsu showed sometimes (always momentary)... and I felt the protagonist only grew less interesting with time, as he regresses to a hormone-driven teenager during the paths. In short, while this might be a decent choice for someone looking for a really average fantasy charage, it contains every flaw the charage genre tends to inflict on itself in spades, except excessive ichaicha (that was actually decently balanced in most of the paths) and a lack of decent epilogues (though why they went through the trouble to give a solid epilogue to each of these heroines, I have no idea).

Kamio Ami- the main heroine of Semiramis no Tenbin. She is hedonistic, brilliant, manipulative, and incapable of trusting others. She is also a surprisingly good person when the situation allows for it, but since most of her life has not been one where the qualities of a 'good person' were beneficial, she rarely shows it. The main reason I like her is because her personality is so out of sync with what we consider the norm... a typical state with me, since I tend to base my interest in a character on idiosyncratic personalities and behavior rather than on impressions. However, even when it comes to impressions... Ami is deliciously scary (and erotic) on a purely human level. Shigure Sora- Devils Devel Concept's protagonist. 99999 out of 100,000 people would run screaming if they met him... anywhere. I've described him in detail elsewhere repeatedly, so I won't go into it, but his personality is a combination of high intelligence, feral desires, and obsession. Driven by whim, instinct, and desire, he should be an easy character grasp, purely based on this... and probably the protagonist most misunderstood by his game's heroines in all of VNs. Elceranto de Anoyance- A female main character from Draculius. If there is a character who, to this day, is the definition of my ultimate immortal heroine, it is her. 'Belche' as she is called, is a five-hundred year old vampire born in Ireland who served as the head maid for the protagonist's father until his unfortunate demise. She arrives at Jun's door shortly before he awakens as a vampire and becomes his mentor, maid, second mother, and overall the person closest to him throughout the VN. Once known as the 'Witch of Kyoukan' (a word for the harshest level of the underworld in Japanese mythology, which has an equivalent in Dante's map of Hell, which is probably what it refers to), she is considered to be one of the most powerful/deadly vampires in existence by the Hunters, becoming more deadly the more enemies she has to face (She would make an excellent Servant, lol). Her base vampiric ability is called 'Dead Copy', which allows her to imperfectly replicate any physical object whose structure she has entered into her memory (greatly expanded since becoming a vampire), up to and including body parts and machines. Tokiwa Itsuka- The protagonist of Houkago no Futekikakusha. I can't spoil this VN by giving a description of what is going on (not knowing what is going is key to a full appreciation of the prologue), but Itsuka isn't really striking in personality, looks, or ability. No, what makes him stand out is his ability to endure. I don't think I've ever seen a character endure as much crap as gets poured on him while remaining sane in a VN... or at least not in the detail in which the writer portrays his inner suffering. For Tokiwa Itsuka, suicide is a betrayal of those who depend on him, and the path lying before him is a horrifically bleak tragedy that is already in its final stages when the story begins.

This doesn't surprise me... base prices for VN staff in the West (localization or making) have always been ridiculously low. Moreover, the tendency in relatively new business markets is for the abusive managers/producers to rise faster, because they cut costs and inflate prices. It just surprises me it took this long for an incident like this to come into the open.

https://forums.fuwanovel.net/blogs/entry/690-sorcery-jokers-it-surprised-clephas-will-it-surprise-you/

It is less humorous, has more H, and is more emotional than Otomimi.

MG seems to decide on a hard copy release only after it is apparent that they'll get a return on their investment, and JAST tends to take a 'sit back and wait' attitude toward profit on their releases. Jast's release cycle is so long that waiting three or four years to make back the money from a hard copy release is no big deal, to be blunt about it.

The Kickstarter hard copies are incentive... the cost of the limited production run is paid off by the crowd-funding, so they don't have to worry about the bottom line. I've been told that, in order to recover the costs from a full production run (generally a minimum of ten thousand copies), at least five thousand copies have to sell. This is because producing a single copy on its own isn't cost effective in the West, where video game base prices are set in stone.

This game is the one I've been waiting for... a mimikko nakige that doesn't ignore the setting or human nature. At the beginning of the story, the protagonist, Kazuki takes in a puppy he finds abandoned in the park, feeds her, and then falls asleep with the half-feral cat he feeds occasionally watching. When he wakes up, they've both transformed into mimikko, a catgirl and a doggirl... Soon after, it becomes apparent that shortly after this event, pets around the world began turning into humanoids, resulting in the kind of mixed reactions you'd expect in the real world if that happened. The reactions, as described, vary between fanatical religious obsession and fetishism to xenophobic psychopathy and upsurges in racism... and everything in between. Now, this game has a really odd balance... there is almost enough H content in this game to call it a nukige, but the emotional narration, the characters' actions, and the way it is written is pure nakige fare. Kuro and Hana (the cat and dog) are really obvious deredere characters, and Hana is the obvious main heroine. However, Kuro and the three other heroines are not neglected in any way, shape, or form... they all have their unique story/paths. This game is big on the feels. Kazuki is a young man with an intimate knowledge of loneliness and isolation and a sense of compassion that is close to saintly. In addition, he is wise enough to do what will prepare the two girls in his care for the world they've come into, rather than simply protect them from the knowledge of what is is like (which would be typical for the average VN protag)... For the example in the prologue, he takes them along when he goes to the local animal shelter to help pick out the animals that will be taken to the place he works (a charitable organization that takes in abandoned pets and trains them for adoption, similar to organizations in 'no-kill cities' in the US, such as my own Austin), where they will be trained so as to make them more adoptable... and makes it clear to them the inevitable results for those who aren't chosen (note: I only chose to spoil this part because it is vital to understanding the difference between this and your standard moe-fuwa mimikko game). This is one of three games I've encountered of the type, each approaching things from a different perspective (for one thing, this one is fantasy). Those other two are Sakura Iro Quartet and Otomimi Infinity. Nekopara ignores human nature a bit too often to make it into that particular rarified company, lol. Anyway, for those interested in a mimikko nakige with really good feels, this is a good choice. This is a great emotional story. However, don't expect extreme levels of depth or dark motives from the main characters, since they are all essentially good-hearted people.

Let's first lay out my basic view... I loathe microtransactions. I'm not an anti-industry activist, and I don't have a serious bone to pick with any individual company about them. I've had a few bad experiences with them, but the reason for my loathing is something more fundamental, that I came to realize only after I'd put a year or so between my worst experience with them. First of all, my experience was with an MMORPG on PC, rather than a blockbuster title or a smartphone game. As such, in some ways my experience is probably the most 'traditional' one for the original form microtransactions took... the 'pay-to-win' model of massively multiplayer games. Basically, in that game, you could not only buy clothing and armor with real money, you could also massively accelerate your experience gaining and basically not even do several annoying but important quests that gained you new skills and and access to higher classes if you were willing to fork over enough money. Now, this was the game that essentially put an end to me playing MMO's, even out of curiosity. Before then, I'd only played subscription-model games, and as a result, I'd never experienced a game designed to essentially squeeze more and more money out of people in that manner. My frustration kept growing, because up until then, I'd basically played games when they first came out until I reached the level cap, then dropped them, cancelling my subscriptions and deleting my account. However, in that game, I kept on running into roadblocks to my curiosity about the world I'd entered, and when that frustration reached its peak... I made the mistake of indulging in microtransactions to speed things along. I probably wouldn't have realized what it was doing to me or my bank account, if it weren't for the fact that I got caught up in a minor scandal where a GM was raiding players' accounts using his administrative rights and selling off their non-bound equipment and items on the marketplace. While it wasn't a direct result of my microtransactions, it nonetheless served to cool my head... and make me realize I'd basically thrown away money on virtual items, some of them with frigging time limits for their use. I got my money back for the stolen items, but only after I flatly stated I wanted nothing to do with the game after that and threatened to lawyer up if they refused. So, I managed to escape before I reached the degree of financial loss Japanese 'kakinhei' have been casually enduring for years before the concept wormed its way over here (incidentally, it is much, much worse in Japan, China, and Korea than it is here...). Microtransactions are essentially an outgrowth of the dlc concept, save without even attempting to give you value for value. Once you've purchased dlc, it is yours, you can leave it installed without worrying the 'time limit' will run out, and you don't need to feel driven to show off how much money you wasted to people who were just as stupid as you were. However, the most critical difference is that dlc isn't an 'infinite product'. It isn't constructed to draw ever greater amounts of money out of the user and indulging in purchasing dlc or a season pass for a regular game you like isn't nearly as damaging to your wallet or your mental health as microtransactions are. Edit: To be clear, I see microtransactions as being one of the most fundamentally dishonest types of scam directed at consumers to have cropped up this century. The techniques are well-established, predatory, and poisonous, especially to those too young and inexperienced to realize that money doesn't spray in infinite clouds of green from the cards in their parents' wallet.

My advice is not to try to match my output... to be blunt, I'm seriously pushing the edges of my own limits just to keep going. Cherry pick your favorite genres and ignore everything else.