LostPomegranate

ef is an objectively good visual novel that is written well that feels like it has a point even to its most plodding sections. It is a mostly serious story of imperfect people making imperfect decisions based on imperfect information. It has a few standout sections, but also has a few weak sections. The music in particular is outstanding. Reading it is an experience that feels unique, but I struggle to say it was very enjoyable or provided a lessen or food for thought. This will be completely spoiler free, so there will be some parts of the story or bits I outright don't mention, and that is on purpose, otherwise the few spoilers will be marked. The writing is solid throughout, and I'd like to call particular attention to the slow slice of life moments, since they did not feel like they were there just to be filler, but rather to give background and - at times - levity to what is largely written as a serious story. These moments ground the reader in a sense that these are real people living real lives rather than simple characters in a story. I especially appreciate that these people are not perfect, they make dumb mistakes. The younger characters in particular make decisions you often would see or may have made yourself when you were younger. Chapters 1 and 2 in particular (Miyako's and Kei's stories) are ones I particularly enjoyed. There are some stereotypes in these two chapters, particularly surrounding Kei being childishly violent with that being played for laughs, that will not click with everyone though. Chapters 3, 4, and final chapter felt like a tonal shift, so it was clear there was a different writer handling most of it. I'm sure some people would prefer those chapters more, but I found them to be somewhat melodramatic at times and at odds with how grounded the first two chapters were. These were no longer normal, imperfect people dealing with relatable situations, but stereotypical dramatic story beats that were foreshadowed a ridiculous amount of time in advance, to the detriment of the story itself. One part I find incredibly odd is The music in ef is absolutely amazing. Every BGM track adds to the scenes, and I can't overstate how important good BGM is to a visual novel. I had no issues running the game in a modern Windows 11 system. It has high production values, including a lot of backgrounds, sprite variations, lip sync, and sprites that are actually placed in the backgrounds at various depths so you can "see them moving" in the environment. There's even walking scenes where they move around as if they're actually walking next to the person. In particular I was incredibly impressed by the camera scenes where you can see the camera counter counting up in real time as you read. Overall, ef is an objectively good visual novel. But it isn't perfect, and it may not be enjoyable for everyone. If you're in the mood for a serious dramatic story, I'd say give it a try. At least read the first tale and know that the latter tale gets more serious and dramatic than that.

It's been a pretty good month so far for visual novel releases and reading. Currently I'm reading A Tithe in Blood https://vndb.org/v51138 and am planning on picking up Dear Mirror Flower when it releases tomorrow (PST) https://vndb.org/v55725 as well as finishing my NekoPara reread finishing with After. Since my last update I've read: Perennial Dusk - Kinsenka, Happiness (2): Sakura Celebration, Clover Reset, Pillagers of Raillore, KANADE, and Ushinawareta Mirai o Motomete. I also reread NekoPara Extra, Vol 0, Vol 1, and Vol 2. Out of those I'd actually recommend all of them. Kinsenka is probably the highlight though if you like dark-ish plotge. Happiness is a fairly standard moege which was a fine read, but nothing to write home about. Clover Reset was just a straightforward slice of life yuri story that was super all-ages (no kissing even), but was cute. Pillagers of Raillore is just a discount Sorcery Jokers, so it's decent to good, but has all of the same issues Sorcery Jokers had - massive power creep, anticlimactic ending cause it was built up too much, and kind of annoying protagonists (SJ only had one annoying protagonist though). KANADE was incredibly cute, but straightforward, but Kanade herself was incredibly cute and I wish it was twice as long so it had more time to develop characters. Ushinawareta Mirai o Motomete is a pretty good visual novel, but has the same issues a lot of games in that specific genre have with repeated events, etc., but the characters are pretty great, so it makes it still a good read. Reviews for all of them are up on VNDB if you're interested in reading in more detail. See you again in another month with another 5-10 done I'm sure.

This review is going to read like a mess because of all the spoiler text, if you'd prefer to read this on VNDB you can here: https://vndb.org/w13482 All specific spoilers will be marked with how major or minor I feel they are. Outside of spoilers I'll use as much general language as possible to avoid them. I'd recommend Waremete to most readers who want a romantic comedy with some cute moments but a healthy dose of plot. The downside to the plot is that a lot of things are repeated or follow a formula in the various routes which leads to quite a bit of predictability, but I think that is to be expected in this genre of story. Characters are fairly well written and all of them have a surprising amount of depth to them with a few exceptions. Kenny is a joke character, but a decent one, but even he has a bit of depth with his shows of true friendship and understanding of the other characters. Kaori is probably the most flat main character in this visual novel, even lacking much character development in her own route. On the other side there's Airi, who is the most interesting, smartest, most violent, and deepest character in the story, even - moderate characterization spoiler for an ending - Nagisa is the barbed tongued ojou who I found adorable, scary, and wonderful. Yui is the airheaded kuudere that is very interesting and gets quite a bit of character development throughout the story. I enjoyed Nagisa's route the most out of all of them, but the only route that really landed flat for me was Kaori's. Extremely minor spoiler: The plot is interesting. The story does one thing that I personally loved and that's - major spoiler - Not everyone will like that, but I think it's the most effective way to get across the emotions that the characters themselves are likely feeling in that moment. Past that it's largely a fairly standard story for this genre, although - moderate spoiler - There are 16 H-scenes present here, they are decently long, are of about average quality, mostly pretty vanilla - H content spoiler - It's worth mentioning that the H-scenes do feature some decent characterization and some light plot elements in them, which is quite a bit different than your average VN where they could largely be skipped without missing anything. Music features three vocal tracks with Hashimoto Miyuki, all of which are pretty good. A lot of the BGM are just repeated versions of those tracks - mostly the OP - in various instrumentals with tempo changes, which I didn't mind since I liked the OP in particular, but it does lead itself to being a bit one-note. Systems work pretty well with no issues since it's KiriKiri. With it being an older KiriKiri game, I had to use the Win8WOH fix for my disc version. The English patch from Studio Frisay worked with no issues on said disc version. Localization done by them is pretty well done. With all that said, I'd recommend Waremete to most readers looking for a romcom with a decent helping of plot thrown in. It's a good read, and it's available for pretty cheap, especially if you buy secondhand - it was about 3000 yen for my copy including proxy and shipping fees - and has also gone on sale on DMM before for the same or cheaper.

Heroine selection in the order in which I'd recommend them: Kinkoi Kakenuke Seishun Sparking Fureraba Marshmallow All the way Home Hatsuyuki Sakura (FYI not sure I'd call this a romance game, but it does contain romance) Study Steady Magical Marriage Lunatics Featuring the heroine confessing: IxShe Tell - every single heroine does it. Gin'iro, Haruka - specifically Hinata's route Oshirabu (yuri) A bunch of the Sonohana games (yuri) Technically every NekoPara game I've read Angelic Chaos Reboot - specifically Amane's route IIRC, but with the way this one is set up I think Kaguya did too? Maybe Fumika did too? This VN gets real blurry on it in general since one of the main plot point's is the MC's erectile dysfunction. Hapymaher - Saki Chrono Clock - Michiru - seriously a ton of imouto routes do it. A lot of the single route VN's (I mentioned two yuri options above) feature the heroine confessing first. I'm sure I'm forgetting quite a few to be honest, but in a lot of the VN's - including some I mentioned above - it's played off more as a joke than a serious confession a lot of the time. imouto routes feature quite a few "caught masturbating then crazed confession then embarrassment and avoidance" storylines. The only 100% serious one above is Gin'iro, Haruka, and slightly less serious but still real are a bunch of the Sonohana ones, the rest get played off for laughs on some level.

The setting was presented well enough to understand everything without touching the encyclopedia section, I did not have any issues understanding the setting, all the characters, and the important bits of what their powers did based on context and what was shown on screen. I'm not saying this was a particularly great visual novel by any means, but you shouldn't claim a complete lack of something that was there. It's not without narration entirely, but there is less of it. You can see narration just a few minutes into the game in fact - to get this screengrab I just clicked on the second section of Chapter 1 Act 1. https://imgur.com/a/TQXHjD0

If there's a quick way to describe Raillore to people I think it'd be, "Sorcery Jokers but a bit worse". So if you've read or tried Sorcery Jokers before, then that's the easiest way to tell you if you should give Pillagers of Raillore a try or not. It has two protagonists, both of which are at least a half-step down from their Sorcery Jokers counterparts. Reno is basically a robot man who gets a bit frustrating to read since he's always asking for orders - although it isn't as common as "fair ja nai" in SJ - and Gray is a scoundrel who is more annoying in his implementation with it rather than comedic or interesting. On the opposite side of the characters, all the heroines are at least good to great. They range from the girl who always sees the positive in things (Fi), to the joking / teasing / a bit crazy girl (Milialis), to the food loving kind of airhead (Tilt), all the way to a kuudere who only cares about a few things (Easla). The character arcs - of the heroines - was gradual and well appreciated, and well explained through the story. It genuinely made you feel for them. Even the character arcs of the protagonists was not bad, although both were pretty backloaded. Story here is pretty interesting and there are some twists that I didn't see coming. Although it still follows a bit of a formula and I think it somehow simultaneously gets dragged out a bit more than it should have as well as ended too quickly. First it was dragged out in that there were constantly new antagonists at every turn, some of which were not very fleshed out. All the new antagonists led to a bit of a feeling of. "When is this going to end?" and some of the later ones were very much in a, "Here's a short infodump about why they're evil and have to be defeated" instead of a proper buildup. The action scenes in this have a high production value and at the start to the middle are pretty interesting. However, it suffers a bit from the same issue Sorcery Jokers had in that things have a pretty intense power creep. With that power creep by the end it feels like a saga of Dragon Ball Z or Naruto where there are power ups and ridiculous things going on to the point where the ending had to be anticlimactic because it was built up far too much. Arguably the climax of the power creep even happened around the 60-70% mark and from then on it just became tedious. Music is all done by mamomo again, with the ED having some help from a new person "kakin" that I haven't personally seen anywhere. This leads to some pretty banger BGM tracks, two great OPs, and a good ED - which was fully in English, which is rare. Systems are pretty standard, and although some other people have reported some lag issues in fight scenes, I saw none of that, but I am running a high-end gaming rig, so YMMV there. Overall, to most readers I'd recommend Pillagers of Raillore. If you read Sorcery Jokers and were not a fan of that, then skip this. If you haven't read anything by 3rdEye yet, I'd recommend Sorcery Jokers over this though.

Physical edition was actually a LOT cheaper for me to buy even after proxy fees and shipping - I paid about 3000 yen for the physical edition while on DMM it was about 5000 yen last time I looked. I bought secondhand off Suruga-ya. I only had one issue getting it to work on Win11 and that was fixed with the Win8WOH thing. I will say though I only tested up until the first few sentences though. Re: not having a DVD drive, you can buy a USB disc drive for $20-30 off Amazon. If you're in this market and planning to buy / read some older visual novels you'll want one anyway since a lot of those games came as physical only. If you're looking to save money a lot of the time buying secondhand physical editions turns out to cost less than buying download editions of stuff.

This is going to end up being a rather general review of Kinsenka because there's an awful lot in this visual novel and not much of the story can be spoken about without going into some spoilers. Positives: - Emotional scenes and stories within stories. This visual novel got me emotional multiple times throughout starting from relatively early on. - Just enough tone changes so that the story does not become one-note. Some sections had some comedy or some light slice of life sections in order to change it up. - The music is atmospheric and adds to the experience. I also think the theme song is very well done. - Localization was done well. If you want to nitpick I'm sure you can find some things - but overall it's well done. Neutral: - It's a heavy story. There are some things in here that are hard to stomach and are not for everyone. Including - general spoilers - so it may not be for everyone. I didn't find any of it to be too heavy, but this is definitely a place where YMMV. - I feel like the ending was a bit of a letdown compared to how well everything had been built up. To be clear I do not actually think the ending is bad, but I feel it didn't live up to the rest of the visual novel's quality quite as much. Negatives: - The story is a bit uneven. Two of the chapters dragged a bit, including the last one. Pacing was quite a bit better through the first half of the visual novel. - A few unanswered story threads still remain, namely: Overall, I'd recommend this to most readers looking for a good nakige. It's not perfect, but if you liked this writer's other works then you'll probably enjoy this. I don't think any of its flaws are enough to stand in the way of this getting a high score from a lot of readers. It took me 20 hours to finish it - and I usually land somewhere between 50-75% of average VNDB time - so I think it's worth the $30 cost at full price, but if it ever goes on sale it's definitely worth picking up.

Looks like I lied. I skipped April... Currently I'm reading Mahoyo https://vndb.org/v777 which so far is fine...Nasu being Nasu basically, so it's verbose or dragged out in some places, but it's still entertaining. Next week NekoPara After, Pillagers of Raillore, Clover Reset, Happiness (2): Sakura Celebration, and Perennial Dusk: Kinsenka all release within two days and I plan to read all of them, so deciding a bit on the order of that, probably NekoPara > Happiness > Kinsenka > Clover Reset > Raillore for both spoiler risk and then who is on Steam for the minor help of fueling their algorithm early. But since that post above I have finished Omoneko and read (I'm going to omit very short titles unless they were good): Futatabu Fuyu ga Kuru Toki (https://vndb.org/v51099), ImaImo (https://vndb.org/v7766), Karehana (https://vndb.org/v19658), LOOPERS (https://vndb.org/v29445), Saya no Uta (https://vndb.org/v97), Onee-chan no Yuuwaku (https://vndb.org/v22483), reread Love, Elections & Chocolate (https://vndb.org/v4028), Mojika (https://vndb.org/v21667), Tayutama (https://vndb.org/v828), reread Nukitashi (https://vndb.org/v22899), Nukitashi 2 (https://vndb.org/v23741), Hentai Prison (https://vndb.org/v31055), Kouguchi Rinko (https://vndb.org/v25713), reread Kinkoi (https://vndb.org/v21852), reread Kinkoi FD (https://vndb.org/v24717), SugarKiss! (https://vndb.org/v26603), and Mrs. Hinako (https://vndb.org/v30294). Incoming wall of text with super mini-thoughts on all of the above. Woo...soo...from that big list starting at the top, Futatabu Fuyu ga Kuru Toki was a quick read (under an hour) but still managed to be decently emotional, but I wish there was more of it. ImaImo was incredibly good for an AA moege, managing to tackle some more serious issues than most of the 18+ ones do and is now tied for my highest rated Sprite game (fandiscs not included). Karehana was was fine nakige, but its comedy didn't land for me so it felt very one note. Loopers I was not a big fan of, since it largely felt like a commercial for Geocaching rather than a VN until near the end. Saya's Song I liked, but ultimately I feel is overrated (I gave it a 7.3/10) a bit, but is still well worth a read for most people. Onee-chan no Yuuwaku is probably my favorite nukige ever right now, both because it hit on some things I really like, and because it was just incredibly sweet. Love, Elections & Chocolate's official release is far better than the fan translation that came out before it, and on a reread I enjoyed it more than my initial read through, it's a solid game, but I'm unsure I'd call it a moege since it handles some serious stuff at times. Mojika is a trip, it's more of a game about the presentation than the story itself, story is pretty dark, but it's the presentation that will carry this, I'd recommend checking it out on some level, maybe watching a short clip of it, and if the presentation vibes with you then dive in. Tayutama was good (if you only read one route) and decent (if you read everything), it largely just retreads a lot of the same events between routes with poor read detection so you either have to manually skip and possibly miss some line changes, or you have to speed read through it, other than that it also has some surprisingly serious or dark moments in a "moege". Nukitashi's be nukitashi-ing. They're good, but all over the place. If you like perverted humor with a surprisingly serious story, then go for them, they're rated well for a good reason. Hentai Prison is my favorite Qruppo game, and features a lot of references to other media (mostly movies), and was funny at times and managed some serious stories pretty well. Kouguchi Rinko is a comedy-nukige from Laplacian, it had me laughing extremely hard, but that may not hold true for everyone. Kinkoi is still arguably my favorite moege (the only two I'd rate above it from tone work's I'm not sure I'd call moege), and its fandisc, while a step below it, is still very entertaining. SugarKiss! was very cute, sweet, and a grounded adult romance, but largely centers around smoking, so if you're against that, skip it, but otherwise pick it up when it goes on sale, cause it's recently done that at 95% off. Lastly, Mrs. Hinako is a netori (so you play as the person doing the stealing) game that actually tells something of a story, and it lives up to its English title with Mrs. Hinako being in a terrible relationship (husband cheats on her, never works, gambles their money away, doesn't raise their daughter at all), with the MC coming to "save her". Although I prefer its Japanese title for it which doesn't try to "sell" netori as being a positive thing, which lets you make up your own mind about whether it was good or not. Either way it was an entertaining story with some decent H as well. *deep breath* Okay, see you in June...maybe

It's the nickname of the game from the Japanese audience and may have come from the development team, I can't remember. But it's sourced pretty obviously from Boku ga Tenshi ni Natta Wake. MangaGamer likely left it on so when people searched for it by its most popular nickname - Bokuten - the English version would still show up, while it wouldn't show up under just "Why I Became an Angel". This one DOES actually share its nickname with another VN though - Boku wa Tenshi Janai yo - but that is not a popular VN, so I doubt anyone is talking about that bokuten when it gets mentioned. A lot of the development teams even announce an "official" shortened name for the fanbase to use when talking about a visual novel. Tons of VN's have shortened names like this that you don't often see in their English titles though. Like Love, Elections, & Chocolate's shortened name is Koichoco from "Koi to Senkyo to Chocolate", Nukitashi is shortened from "Nukige Mitai na Shima ni Sunderu Watashi wa Dou Surya Ii Desu ka?" cause no one in their right mind would constantly refer to it that way, and they used that for the English title. Uso kara Hajimaru Koi no Natsu got shortened to its nickname "UsoNatsu" for the English title as well, and with ones that aren't in English they still get shortened, Ushinawareta Mirai o Motomete got shortened to "Waremete", all the Sono Hanabira ni Kuchizuke o titles got shortened to Sonohana but kept their full translated titles in English of "A Kiss for the Petals". The short names are useful to talk about stuff quickly, but it can definitely be confusing if people use different nicknames to talk about the same visual novel, or if nicknames get too close to one another.

https://vndb.org/v?q=&ch=&f=0272_0bSiAa2Nv&s=24w There's been quite a few highly rated games released in the last ten years. Qruppo's games (Nukitashi 1 & 2, Hentai Prison), tone work's had two releases and a fandisc (Ginharu and Tsukikana / Tsukikana SSR), the 9-nine- series, at least the last episode of Clockwork Leyline, Summer Pockets, Cyanotype Daydream, and Jeweha & Jewena all released. Largely just depends on what you're looking for. A lot of the "old school" developers have been driven out due to various reasons though - COVID probably killed the most companies and we're still dealing with the effects of that due to the slowed development cycle.

I won't lie to you it depends on your motivation and how much time you can dedicate to learning the writing in general, as well as how quickly you pick things up. At the very least you should know hiragana and katakana before you start, and ideally be aware of the basics of Japanese written grammar. With some of the software now the kanji readings can be done "for you" (but you may have to select the "right one" based on context between the various readings that could be possible) and you'll just pick them up as you see them more often while reading visual novels. Safe estimate, to read visual novels in Japanese without any problems, meaning at the speed you read your native language: 5-10 years is a safe estimation. This time will largely be impacted by how much time you can dedicate to it. For example: for most people to be considered "fluent" in written Japanese you need to know somewhere between 1000-2000 kanji. To read a newspaper you need to know about 1200, and your average Japanese adult probably knows around 2000 with those who have university educations know somewhere around 3000. If your goal is just to read at a decent speed, so 50-75% your native language speed, you can probably hit that in 1-2 years with some dedication and work. It's definitely a lot easier to learn nowadays than it was 15+ years ago though, so my estimates may be a bit long.

Harem Kingdom immediately came to mind. NekoPara. LAMUNATION! has a harem end. This is probably the goofiest / silliest VN I've ever read. It's all memes and references everywhere. The soundtrack is amazing. DraPri series Those are the non-nukige (although some people would say DraPri and NekoPara are on the border) VNs that quickly came to mind. I haven't played them, but Funbag Fantasy I'd imagine would also fit, although that is a nukige - but people say it still has a good story, it's just on my backlog.

Welcome! Feel free to ask for recommendations in that channel or hop on the discord and ask in the VN channel there. If you're not yet, I'd recommend going on over to vndb.org and looking around, cause their search features are incredibly powerful if you already have a decent idea of what you like.

I personally wouldn't recommend F95 to anyone with how its community is. I will say the RPG genre in general - ESPECIALLY RPG Maker games - are full of non-consent stuff. It comes with the territory when fantasy stuff gets added. Since you played Yumina you should play their other title: Eien no Aselia There's also all of the Eushully games Utawarerumono Koihime Musou Tears to Tiara Bunnyblack Melty's Quest (can be full of non-consent if you want it to be / suck at it) And that's all that came to my mind quickly that are available in English - also just assuming you mean English only since you didn't mention anything that's not available in English. You can use the tags on VNDB to find what you want too: just look up what kind of gameplay elements you want specifically. There's an overarching "other gameplay elements" one which has a ton of child tags. https://vndb.org/g21 that's the big tag, and then if you want you can combine it with other tags like so https://vndb.org/g21?m=0&l=&f=022gen81XHX&s=20w which should eliminate games that have been tagged with "Sex with tentacles".