LostPomegranate

I'm kind of assuming you mean drama in the relationship itself not some "outside force caused the drama and the couple is still united against it" sort of thing? Hatsukoi 1/1 - although some of the drama is teens being dumb, but it's definitely there, but not in every route. Yosuga no Sora - at least in one route, although this may be a bit borderline if it's relationship drama or just pure drama. Those are the only two that came to mind off the top of my head, a lot of the others coming to mind are clearly drama surrounding the relationships but not necessarily in the relationship.

When I refused to call it anything else and managed to get a few discord servers to admit it's a great alias. Honestly surprised it hadn't happened yet. Especially since One of the few moege I've read where a lot of the H-scenes have true plot significance. I don't think it was much worse in your complaints than most moege are though to be honest, but I also got surprisingly emotional during its true route and didn't mind the romance - especially in the true route - playing second fiddle to the rockets. Also it does sound like a nightmare to run that PC version, so I'd go with the console version too, if only to not have to resize everything often when running it.

Currently I'm inbetween reads, but about to start Rewrite later today. The decision wheel has decided that I shall read all Key products as soon as they get added to the wheel apparently... But since last update I've read Heart of the Woods, Taranormal, Tenshi Souzou Re-boot, Sex Rockets (Byakko / Farther than the Blue Sky), and Little Busters! I'd recommend all of them. Heart of the Woods is a good yuri mystery-ish EVN, Taranormal is a weird offshoot almost fandisc of that, Tenshi Souzou is more Yuzusoft moege, although I don't think it is as good as most of their other releases it is still good. Sex Rockets was by far my surprise moege of the recent past, managing to tie in a scientific story, some drama, and cute moments without getting too boring or anything - although I will say if you are not interested in space or rockets / aerospace in general you may find it boring. Little Busters was good to very good, but suffered a bit from some uneven routes, but ultimately I think almost everyone should give it a read. See you again in roughly a month with probably another 4-6 read.

Little Busters is good. Pretty darn good in fact. Its highs are pretty high, it's funny, it's got some emotional moments, the music is great, but it's also somewhat let down by some uneven routes and a true route I personally found a bit frustrating. The comraderie shown between the characters is pretty great, and that's something you don't see in the majority of visual novels. It truly feels like a gang of friends here rather than just people thrown together randomly. The characters feel like they were written with depth rather than a certain one solely existing to be comedic relief or the silly one or whatnot. The emotional highs of the story are definitely there, and I think different routes or story beats will hit very differently depending on the person you are or where your interests lie. For instance, Sasami's route hit me by far the hardest emotionally, but I know I'm in the minority there. Some of the routes though feel like they aren't quite as well written - Komari's in particular was a letdown for me, and Mio's felt a bit odd as well. By and large though the routes are written well and are a consistent quality throughout. Refrain (True Route): Overall I think it was written well, explaining things well and giving some great meaning to the whole experience, however Minigames: All minigames can be turned off with no detriment to the story itself, but you will lock yourself out of some achievements. I'd honestly recommend turning them off for the majority of your routes unless you really like them, they take up quite a bit of time. There's really only two mini-games that require any skill to them - baseball practice (available in all routes) and the shooting minigame (Saya's route). Neither are too terribly difficult, but the shooting minigame does feature an easy mode. Baseball I wouldn't bother with until after Refrain, as character stats go up with how many heroine routes you've completed, and you will be very unlikely to win the baseball game until you've beefed the stats up quite a bit. The Battle Ranking minigame is automated, but is also significantly easier to do later with increased stats. Battle Ranking is extremely easy to save scum your way through though if you're patient, . Ultimately I'd recommend Little Busters! to any visual novel fan, especially any all-ages or Key fans out there. It's a solid read without too many glaring weaknesses, and honestly if it didn't hit upon a personal pet peeve of mine with a certain story type, it probably would've scored a bit higher.

You go here: https://www.dlsite.com/pro/work/=/product_id/VJ007882.html/?unique_op=af&utm_medium=affiliate&utm_source=vndb.org%2F and you buy it, it is the download edition. It's linked right off the VNDB page. For DLSite if you're outside of Japan you have to buy points for your account (1 pt = 1 yen), but I've had no issues buying points using their "purchase points with a credit card" option on the left in your account page. It's also available on Digiket or DMM, but I've never personally tried Digiket and DMM almost universally uses the worst DRM of the bunch, although in this case DLSite uses the same kind. When you're looking for any VN to purchase, always just the VNDB page, if there's a download edition (or any edition really) listed on there, chances are in the details there will be links to where to purchase it.

I enjoyed Sex Rockets (Byakko / Farther than the Blue Sky) quite a bit. The main characters are all interesting in their own ways, some more than others though. Through its routes it manages to tell a scientific story where the science and progression is somewhat believable on the R&D front, although obviously truncated and simplified so that it would be palatable to a larger audience. It definitely does some things differently - namely the H-scenes and its true route - but I personally enjoyed the differences. I would recommend a route order for this game: Honoka > Kaho > Natsu > Arisa > True this is for some spoiler reasons which would lessen the drama a bit in the later routes if done in a different order. The characters and routes present here in Sex Rockets are pretty stereotypical for the genre, and while a few were great examples there were also a few that were somewhere in the middle. There's the violent tsundere (Arisa) who I feel is a love or hate character for the audience and while I personally loved her character, I feel like her route was somewhere in the middle and quite predictable. Arisa's route also deviates the most from the other heroine routes, with her being the project manager it focuses on the big picture rather than specific rocket bits. Then there's Honoka who is the extremely joking / flirty kouhai with a hat and a fang who exists largely to make the MC's life more interesting. She's wonderful as a support character, good as a heroine, and her route is interesting. Kaho is the cute, shy, quiet, and bookish type who is always standing up for what she thinks is right. For me her route was the best, it felt like it balanced the drama and rocket sections better than the others. Lastly there's Natsu, the extremely airheaded senpai. As a character Natsu is wonderful comedic relief, but I found it hard to consider her as a romantic interest, so her route for the romantic sections largely felt awkward. Her story and the rocket business however was fine. The true route I personally found to be entertaining and I felt it conveyed the overall tone and message of the visual novel very well, and was one of the dramatic highlights of the game. However, I can see it definitely being somewhat divisive, so your mileage may vary here. The balance of storytelling between more dramatic character driven sections and more science heavy rocket sections particularly impressed me. They even managed to make the H-scenes more important to the story. No, you cannot completely check out or skip the H-scenes in Sex Rockets without missing some decently important story bits. It was a nice change to say the least. On the negative end some of the common route can feel very information dense as they essentially give you a quick primer on the basics of rockets. At one point I had to take a break after reading for a few hours. I would recommend Sex Rockets (Byakko / Farther than the Blue Sky) to anyone who likes a pretty well written moege. Bit of a caveat though: this will be much more appealing to anyone interested in space related things, especially rockets or physics. If you have zero interest in these, then I'm unsure if this is the visual novel for you. If that all sounds good, I'd recommend picking this up even at its high price - but especially so if you wait for a sale.

Teasing heroines are fairly common, but to hit all of the asks is a bit harder, but here's a list that came off the top of my head in roughly descending order of how much I think they match. Reina from Kinkoi: Golden Loveriche comes to mind quickly. Misaki in Aokana Kyou in Hatsukoi 1/1 Hinata in Gin'iro, Haruka is probably borderline-ey to that but I think it'd fit well enough. Touko in Hoshi Ori Yume Mirai - all three tone work's games are more just towards the teasing / joking end but develop the romance more slowly. Sort of Noel in Walkure Romanze, but this is again more of the teasing thing Kaname in Sugar Style is probably borderline too, but definitely has the teasing part going on

Another month down, some more VNs down as well... Comyu, UsoNatsu, My Klutzy Cupid, everlasting flowers, Fatal Twelve, Parquet, and Family Project all completed, now I'm onto Ego's Spark before Tenshi Souzou releases this Friday... Out of all those...I'd actually recommend pretty much all of them to someone. Comyu is a great chunige by the same makers as Hello Lady! and feels very similar but with a dragon. UsoNatsu was actually my favorite read of 2024 (ignoring rereads), a well written yuri slice of life drama / coming of age tale. Fatal Twelve was a pretty good mystery / death game with some light yuri. everlasting flowers was another coming of age / drama tale with extremely light yuri undertones (nothing outright). My Klutzy Cupid is your general moege with nothing outstanding about it but also very little that was bad either. Parquet is Yuzusoft's take on an all-ages story with just romantic undertones rather than an outright romance story, which was refreshing, although I wish the afters didn't effectively end on cliffhangers. Family Project is the one I'd only recommend if you like slapstick / silly comedy because otherwise it's a one-note slog through the dramatic which is how it was for me. See you next month with probably another 5-6 completed.

Fatal Twelve is a life or death drama visual novel that focuses on a death game and has a light yuri substory to go with it - specifics about the yuri-ness - I really enjoyed this visual novel and feel like it has some really strong highlights but also some faults that prevent it from being rated truly highly. This will be very general as going into almost any details would be full of spoilers for a visual novel focused on a death game like this. The story does an effective job of introducing all the characters to you in rather swift fashion when they get their time. It manages to build up enough of who they are that I felt myself caring about them - some more than others - as the story went on. This is helped by some shifting character perspectives that show different angles to the story as it persists. A significant portion of the characters also show some significant character development through the story which is appreciated. I think the middle section of the story was also incredibly interesting and found myself binging through it in just one sitting without any trouble at all. The negatives to this visual novel are a bit frustrating. While the middle of the story was quite good, - spoiler for type / number of endings only - There were also a few technical issues but none were too major: the achievements are a bit buggy and I had to re-choose some options a few times to trigger the "choose all options" achievement, and one other achievement only popped upon replaying a route. There was also a weird issue with it on full screen that it would randomly flash a few times like it was resizing to my screen again, but this didn't cause issues, it was just distracting for the second it'd do it and it would occur every few hours without being able to find a cause or solution for it. Music is relatively good, the BGM lends some extra feeling to some scenes, but at the same time I feel like it plays a bit too early in some scene transitions, i.e. playing the "bad stuff happening" music before it's actually shown anything bad happening yet, which just telegraphs what is about to happen. Systems are standard as this uses Ren'py. Overall I'd recommend Fatal Twelve to anyone looking to read a life or death drama visual novel. It's pretty good and for the most part my complaints are pretty minor. While there is a secondary yuri story to it, this is largely not a yuri visual novel, so don't let that deter you.

I really enjoyed this visual novel. It's actually been quite a long time since I binged a visual novel as quickly as this, reading the entire 9:16 it took me to read this in a single day. I'd personally recommend going into this VN as blind as possible but it has a few touchy subjects that will make it hard to read for some or just plain make people want to avoid it With that out of the way...There's a lot I can talk about here, but I'll keep it relatively short so I don't go into too many potential spoilers or anything. This story is a well-told slow burn romance slice of life drama coming of age story. It's written extremely realistically. I could see everything in the story actually happening, so there is no struggle with any level of disbelief due to how characters act or any situations that come up. The art is gorgeous in my opinion and features moving sprites including lip sync. While it's not always perfect, it works the majority of the time. The music is understated but used extremely effectively, and I adore both versions of "sun shade" (the OP and ED). Systems are fairly straightforward and don't feature anything unexpected in a visual novel like this, I do appreciate a chapter menu though to more easily traverse if you were to forget to save or wanted to backtrack more easily. On the negative side, the pacing is a bit inconsistent - especially post-climax where it drags a bit. The story also takes a bit longer to wind up than I would have liked, but it was still done very well and I'm honestly unsure if the story would've been better if it ramped up faster. While the ending wrapped most things up pretty cleanly, I wish the epilogue had jumped a bit further into the future to see how things were going, but that's a pretty minor gripe. Overall I'd recommend this visual novel to any yuri fan who is interested in a grounded slow burn slice of life drama story. I'd even recommend this to non-yuri fans as something they should pick up to maybe give the genre a chance.

Didn't happen to me with Aiyoku, but a few other VNs for some reason in Windows 11 repeatedly set the volume mixer to zero for the program every time they launch. Just a dumb other thing to check, and it took me forever to find it when I initially had that problem.

Has been a "slow" month for me. Since finishing the Leyline trilogy, I read Shinigami no Kiss, Summer Pockets, Seven Days, Kon's Lessons, reread Noble Works, and read Hatsuyuki Sakura. Out of those I'd really only blindly recommend the Leyline Trilogy to pretty much anyone. Summer Pockets was the best read though, but nakige aren't everyone's thing. Seven Days was surprisingly good for what it is but was very uneven, which was frustrating. Noble Works is standard Yuzu, but not supernatural which is nice. Hatsuyuki Sakura was good, but I feel like it's overrated. It has some pacing issues as well as I felt some overuse of macguffins and in general plot threads / questions that go unanswered. Its music is pretty amazing though, so it still got a 7/10 (good). Now I've moved onto Comyu.

Taking a few liberties from what you've said only three VN's came up on VNDB https://vndb.org/v?q=&ch=&f=052gen3gja4owin0280N-80X2f75_0brrQ&s=26w and from those the only one that makes sense is https://vndb.org/v739 . Haven't played it but all the tags are there to fit what you are looking for. Hopefully that helps.

Some more than others, but off the top of my head all of these deal with life and death, and I think they all have that tag on VNDB. Hello Lady! G-Senjou no Maou Fate / Stay Night Muv-Luv Alternative Comyu Hello, good-bye

Since my last post I finished out the 9-nine series, read Yosuga no Sora and Haruka na Sora, Future Radio, Maid for Loving You, I Wanna Fuck My Mom's Best Friend, Kakenuke Seishun Sparkinig, GINKA, Chrono Clock, Destiny Star Girlfriend 1-3, LAMUNATION! and Marshmallow All the Way Home. Honestly I'd recommend every title here to the right audience. Chrono Clock is probably the weakest title for its intended audience though. Currently reading the Clockwork Leyline trilogy.

Tsukihime a piece of blue glass moon and Witch on the Holy Night come to mind, both made by TYPE-MOON (they made Fate / Stay Night). The other Science Adventure games I'd recommend (personally never played them though) if you liked Steins;Gate. They'd be Chaos Head, Chaos Child, Anonymous Code, and Robotics Notes IIRC. I'm sure there's some fandiscs and stuff there. I also always want to recommend Marco and the Galaxy Dragon, but it's mainly a comedy with only a lightish plot, but it doesn't even have a romance subplot. I can't think of any others off the top of my head where the romance is the subplot. A decent number come to mind where it's probably the main plot and is all-ages in English - GINKA, Island, almost anything by Key, etc.

I wish I could be more helpful but off the top of my head Daybreak Translations and TsurezureScans have dealt with this in Siglus, so I'd recommend reaching out to either of them via their discords to see if they can shed some light on it cause Siglus is definitely not the easiest engine to play around with.

Kakenuke★Forward to Our Sparking Youth! is a moege visual novel that is relatively low drama, has a decent amount of comedy, and a good deal of cute moments. I would recommend this to any moege fan. It has some high points in my opinion, and unfortunately one route felt like it dragged out a bit, but overall it is a very solid read and was an enjoyable experience. The common route does a good job of introducing all the characters and the setting while injecting some comedy. It makes it relatively easy to choose which character(s) you want to pursue first without giving any of them the short end of the stick. One big positive regarding the common route is at the end of it route selection is as simple as choosing which heroine you wish to pursue rather than choices present throughout the story. I personally really enjoy this as it feels a bit more focused on the individual routes and feels a bit less harem-ey than with choices throughout the common leading to different routes. Systems are pretty standard for the visual novel genre. There's a large number of CGs and backgrounds in this title, which I appreciated. There's 24 about average for the genre H-scenes for your enjoyment. I will call out the OST in this which I found to be particularly great - the main ED being a particularly great song. To avoid spoilers regarding the routes I'm going to go into just some general thoughts. The routes are fairly well written with very little drama present outside of the true route. I did feel like Hibiki's route got the most attention and had the best backstory of them, which makes sense as she is arguably presented as the "main" heroine of the game. Nagiko's route I enjoyed quite a bit as it provided her some needed character development and showed the MC as more of a support character which was a nice change of pace. Riri's route was full of so many cute moments it was almost overwhelming. Shiori's route felt like it dragged at points and from my timing was the longest route as well, which was unfortunate. Ritsu's route was also cute and surprisingly beefy for a sub-heroine route. Kikka's (true) route was surprisingly well-written in regards to how it built off the information you had from completing the other routes before it (it's locked behind the main 4 heroine's routes), and got me emotional at multiple moments. There are some plot holes you'll have to overlook a bit, but they don't detract too much from the story, but they may bother you like they did me and it did make me downgrade my rating a bit. Overall, I really enjoyed my time with Kakenuke★Forward to Our Sparking Youth! and if you're a fan of moege, I think you will too. There's nothing too far outside the norm here compared to a Yuzusoft visual novel for instance, but that doesn't reflect poorly on this title. Even if it makes it a bit vanilla, vanilla is still a pretty good flavor and one I enjoy quite a bit. So give this a shot if you're interested in moege. Time played:

Yes, it has a true ending, and I'd say the true ending is happy, and there's a few endings that I'd argue are neutral. If you pick it up I'd recommend using a guide for sure though, cause you won't get all the endings otherwise, and I don't think I would've hit the true ending without a guide, at least not for a long time.

Are you asking for psychologically dark? Like themes of sexual assault, suicide, depression, etc. or are you talking where the MC is a murderer or just where murder happens in general, are you looking for super-power type stuff or more grounded? "Dark" is way too broad a term to recommend much easily. If you're just looking for murder / violence there's an absolute ton of VNs out there that include that, so I'd recommend at least narrowing down to whether you want supernatural / power elements to it. But out of my recent-ish reads what comes to mind quickly are: Biniku no Kaori https://vndb.org/v470 - mystery / nukige hybrid with some dark / creepy tones to it, all the bad ends get pretty dark, darker as you go through it. Tenshi no Inai 12-gatsu https://vndb.org/v21 - The MC is an edgelord to the max, includes dark topics such as

Qualia although she's not super robot-ey https://vndb.org/v28093 There's another one that's like a management game with a robot...but I can't remember its name and as far as I can tell it isn't on VNDB. You could also search VNDB with "Robot Heroine" as a tag turned on

AstralAir then. Sky Full of Stars is good, but is really hit or miss with people, and I doubt you want to be a "miss" on a milestone you care about. Kimi to Kanojo to Kanojo is also hit/miss to a lesser extent.

Since my last post I have completed quite a few... Hanahira, Sonohana 11-15, Sonohana New Gen, Sonohana Angels 1-3, Sonohana Yuricycle, Senren Banka, Biniku no Kaori, Marco & The Galaxy Dragon, and 9-nine- Episode 1 so far. I'd recommend Senren Banka to any moege fan and Marco to nearly anyone. The Sonohana's to any yuri fan, although some aren't worth reading without having read some of the previous ones since for the most part they (New Gen and Angels being exceptions) are continuations of the same story. Biniku no Kaori was an interesting mystery / nukige hybrid thing that if you're into mysteries you'd probably like, but I'd recommend going straight for the true route with a guide, as the bad ends spoil quite a bit. And now I'm reading 9-nine- Episode 2. At the rate I'm going, I'll probably finish this series out within a week.

A lot of people use Manictime from the VNDB time reportings, but my personal experience with that one is that it undermeasures by quite a bit of time compared to my manual timing (up to about -5-10% for me) with PC timers, and I could never figure out exactly why. Best guess was if you play on Auto it thinks you're not paying attention to the game, but someone else who never uses the auto function has had it be off by as much as 10 hours (30 vs 20) vs Steam's playtime without much idle time in a playthrough. Lots of people report good usage with it though...I wish I had a great recommendation personally, but every one I've tried has been off by enough time to bug me and I obsessively record my times with visual novels.

Oof...so since my last post I have finished quite a few VN's - I did a "shortge rush" in August and I wrote a blog post here about it...but here's the playing update. I have read...Uchi no Kanojo, Uchi no Imouto, Uchi no Koibito, Neko Para Extra, Vol 0-4, DraPri 1-3, FD, Invisible Cock, Stay. - Fragments of Memories - , Imolicious, My Ex Sister in Law, Invisible Man's Stealth NTR, Yandere Sister Loves me too much!, Breeding village, Yozora Rhapsode, Yandere Goddess, Games&Girls, Daitoshokan no Hitsujikai Houkago Shippo Days, LipTrip, Suteki na Kanojo no Tsukurikata, OshiRabu: Waifus over Husbandos & FD, Megasuki trilogy, Dreamlike Love with Seira, Kemonomichi 1, 2, FD, Amayakase, Do you believe in Santa? and Sonohana 1, 6, 2, 4, 3, 5, 7, 9, 8, 10 and Konomi no Naku Koro Ni. In that order. Since that...I started Hanahira. I've committed myself to finishing all the Sonohana series (only 11 more to go!) before I start anything else major.