Decay

lol, no. Sorry, but that's not happening. What they say and the reality of things are two different matters. Even after the point MG said things would speed up, the translator is still going at a pace of about 1 chapter every six or more months. For an actually realistic and not exaggerated estimate, I'd say maybe the first eight chapters will finish by this time in 2018. And that's assuming that they speed up even more than they already have. Actually, just checking MangaGamer's latest update, last three weeks saw 5% of progress on Chapter 2. MangaGamer said that things would speed up a couple months ago. Things are not speeding up. Well, it's their loss. The longer they take between chapters, the more the non-scene impulse buyers on Steam will become disinterested. They need to keep a fast release schedule in order to keep interest high, but MG's lone translator on the project seems incapable of doing this. Edit: They also said that Da Capo 3 would speed up, and guess what didn't happen? MangaGamer is the new JAST.

Extra isn't actually long at all, it just feels like it when you're in the midst of yet another excruciatingly boring lacrosse practice session.

That looks so much better than the patches for the old version. I think those were supposed to have CGs but for whatever reason they didn't ever show up for me. I can't wait for MG to finish all eight chapters twenty years from now so I could replay it all like this.

If you bought a VN and then felt like you wasted your money because the translation is so awful, that's unacceptable. I guess I'll say that THOSE translations shouldn't exist, because they're actually harmful in how they're predative on people who don't fully research a product before buying. People will lose out on their money buying an awful product. If you downloaded a fan translation and it's barely understandable gibberish, that's also unacceptable. I will say that it probably shouldn't have been made, that the creators probably wasted their time, and that nobody should read it, but I won't claim it doesn't have the right to exist, and people do have the right to read it if that's what they want to do. But the community has the right to warn others about its quality and to expect better from translators. Like, I also think people have the right to be racist. I wish they wouldn't be, and society should work to change the minds of racist individuals and reform racist policies, but I'm not into thought policing and no one should be forced to hold any particular stance. People can also be gluttons and become grotesquely overweight. I personally think that's unacceptable and they should strive to better themselves, but if they don't want to, forcing them to would be wrong. I suppose on a conceptual level these are similar issues.

I didn't see that coming because now you're suddenly claiming I said a thing I didn't actually say.

DL Site's english descriptions are usually crap but they outdid themselves on that one.

Hmm, yeah, I suppose I wouldn't have had any major complaints if the Ayakashibito translation was was sold. It would probably have to be a little bit more polished but it's pretty solid overall and on par with or better than a lot of the current official stuff.

MangaGamer has a partnership with that VN's owner, so you know who to petition in order to get a translation done. You know what they say, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. https://vndb.org/v11433 Apparently this is a different protagonist with a different batch of 365 sisters. Is this some kind of prevalent problem in Japan that I'm unaware of? At least the art is better and the characters are more unique.

I almost forgot this one: https://vndb.org/v8037. Fans of little sisters should rejoice, because you're about to get a whoooole lot of them: When sameface goes horribly wrong (or alternatively, "Sorry, but I ran out of ideas 362 characters ago"):

Extra is nothing like Grisaia's common route, other than they both feature high school students, I guess.

How dare we forget? https://vndb.org/v12034 Seems a bit weird but fairly standard, until you see the protagonist. Hella NWS: https://s.vndb.org/sf/28/52528.jpg https://s.vndb.org/sf/30/52530.jpg

Can we just turn this into a "Best VNDB descriptions" thread? https://vndb.org/v11086 Flawless logic if I've ever seen it.

Can I participate as a representative of your average VN reader? My Japanese is basic at best, so I can't adequately judge accuracy. I would rate stuff based on how well they read in english, to a native english reader. edit: I'll take sanahtlig liking this post as acceptance of my unlearned self participating in this discussion. I've been outspoken about bad translations before, much to the chagrin of some other posters. I like to call it as I see it, so I may be a little harsh, these are just my own unfiltered opinions. I mean nothing personal by any of it, it's a purely objective look at their quality. Unacceptable (the translation is so bad it is difficult to understand at times and makes you want to stop reading entirely): Konosora - Really bad translation in all respects. Seems to be wildly inaccurate, on top of reading like complete crap. Koitate - Large portions of this translation are written incredibly poorly, making it difficult to read and understand at times. To Heart 2 - Well, about a third or more of the current partial patch can be considered unacceptable, while the rest could be considered passable or even satisfactory. It's clear the translator has been working on it for years and has gotten better at both Japanese and English over that period of time. The routes he translated first, however, are very rough. Yosuga no Sora - The Sora and Common routes are okay, the rest is borderline incomprehensible. Flyable Hearts - Or any other obvious machine translation. Unreadably bad, even if you try to edit it into something better. Passable (They will deliver the story, but the writing itself may not be particularly entertaining): Cross Channel - Apparently misses a lot of the subtext, but you know what they say, ignorance is bliss. At times I found myself rereading a few lines in order to figure out what was going on, but apparently it's also difficult to understand in Japanese, too, so it's hard to say whose fault that is (if anyone's). Sekien no Inganock - Ixrec's attempt at translating the prose was mostly a failure and it feels pretty amateurish as a result. Fate/Stay Night - Well, I could just list everything translated by TakaJun here. He's a Japanese native and obviously understand that language, but his command of the english language is not adequate for writing compelling fiction. Stiff and unnatural sentences are prevalent throughout all of his translations. SakuSaku - Akerou runs into the same problem TakaJun did when writing sentences, and the same kind of stiff and awkward writing is present here. And he most probably isn't as good as him at Japanese. Higurashi - Littered with typos and grammatical errors, it's borderline between unacceptable and passable, but ultimately the story can be understood well enough. Satisfactory (Easily understandable and strong, natural-sounding writing): Phoenix Wright - Yes, it obviously deviated from the Japanese script by quite a bit due to its westernization, but the translated script was written very well and it delivered the intended comedic tone of the game perfectly in a way all americans and europeans could understand. Cartagra - It went through years of TLC and editing hell but it came out a solid product, with a pretty good english script. Ayakashibito - The funny scenes are funny for all the right reasons, the intense action scenes are described in a detailed yet easy to understand manner. Excellent (Not perfect, but you would barely even know it's a translation if you weren't looking VERY closely) DanganRonpa (fan translation) - Black Dragon Hunt is a skilled translator and Ritobito is probably the best editor currently working in the scene. A good, eclectic script that was a joy to read. Grisaia no Kajitsu - Koestl is a very funny person, he has a strong understanding of Japanese, and his writing is excellent. Every character had their distinct flavor come across perfectly and the english script was absolutely hilarious. Saya no Uta - Makoto is easily the most talented translator in the scene, and that can't be more evident here. Extremely creepy, emotionally impactful, and disturbing in all of the spots it is meant to be. ------------------- I want to make some observations from these evaluations. Depending on the VN, it is possible to translate humor well despite not being a very good english writer. Majikoi may be an example of this. TakaJun's Majikoi script still felt pretty stiff, but it was still funny because Majikoi relies heavily on situational comedy. You're still able to understand the humorous situations the characters get themselves into, or the absurdity of a character's actions, and that's still funny. On the other hand, Grisaia relies heavily on the actual writing. I shudder to think what a Grisaia no Kajitsu translation by TakaJun would look like, but it most probably wouldn't be very funny. You need a strong talent for writing in order to translate that kind of humor well. I didn't list Rewrite because I wouldn't know where to put it. Maybe Satisfactory, even though it's probably not all that better than the other Ixrec translations listed at passable. Again, this goes back to the style of the original writing. Rewrite relies much less on the strength of its writing than Cross Channel and Sekien no Inganock, instead relying on the characters and the overall storyline. This means that you don't necessarily need to be as strong of a writer in order to translate the work. On the other hand, if you're working on something that does rely heavily on the quality of its writing, then "it allows you to understand the story" simply isn't good enough. This is the main problem I run into when I see people advocating machine translations. There's much more to a written work than the story. I also want to strongly disagree that there are "too many highly critical people around". I think in general Fuwanovel is a very soft community, terrified of making criticisms and biting the hands that feed them. This is actually a detriment to the community, Fuwanovel is too soft. I'm sure a lot of people will disagree, but I think people can afford to speak their minds a bit more, and translators should be more receptive to cricism. I'm not saying we should become 4chan, because that place has the complete opposite problem where literally everything is shit and everyone should kill themselves for trying. If you really are translating purely for personal reasons, then you're free to keep your translation to yourself. But if you release it for public consumption and plan to continue translating, then you're going to have to deal with the public, and the public have the right to express their opinions. I'm also not saying that we should be catered to, but I would at least like to be able to express my opinion without being lambasted for doing so. I could probably rant about this particular subject for days, but I'll refrain.

The Witcher 3 is probably the best open world RPG ever made. It's so, so good. I'm still in the midst of the Bloody Baron questline and holy cow, how did they turn what should be a generic stepping stone quest into something so compelling, with such good writing, and so many alternate paths to take? Every part of this game is so supremely well crafted. I can't get over how good the faces look. Look at this friggen guy: Not only is the modelling and texture work excellent, but the facial animations are phenomenal. Every character emotes so well. The Witcher 3 proves that perhaps the most important aspect of natural-looking animations is subtlety. The subtle grins, smirks, frowns, glances to the side, etc, it's all done so well. LA Noire had an enormous amount of money spent on its facial animation tech and it's probably outclassed by this game. I guess the lip syncing isn't as good but it gets the job done and the actual emoting is way less exaggerated and more natural looking. (The crazy part is how that's just a guy you'll spend only a few minutes talking to. They don't spare any expense even for minor characters like him.)

Exposition can come from anywhere, I won't rate a route highly just because it had an interesting bit of information or two contained within. The actual meat and potatoes of the route are pretty far below par.

https://vndb.org/v/all?q=;fil=tagspoil-0.lang-en.olang-ja;o=d;s=pop Sort on VNDB by Popularity. There are only a handful of untranslated VNs on VNDB that get a decent popularity rating, and most of those get filtered out if you also make sure to filter VNs with english releases. You'll still see a few VNs with only partial patches above 5 popularity but it's not many.

That's bizarre. Anyways, most people seem to think that the unlockable final route is the best, it's also the one that makes sense out of a lot of the backstory that goes unexplained in other routes. You could probably skip Chihaya's route if you really want to but if you actually care about the story in Rewrite you should read all of the others and if you don't care about it, then just stop reading right now because that's what the game is about past the common route. You've already read the most romance-heavy and character-oriented route. There is a 0 percent chance you will ever see a lengthy (2 or more cour) story-heavy anime adaptation of an eroge that keeps the hentai. Pornographic anime doesn't bring in enough money to justify lengthy and expensive productions. That's why those kinds of stories are kept to VNs where it's dirt cheap to do, and if an anime adaptation of one gets produced, they cut the adult parts out. There are a lot of adaptations of eroge that remove that stuff. Da Capo, ef, Shuffle, Majikoi, Kanon, etc...

You have to read ALL of the routes if you want to see the true ending and you probably want to do that.

You have to get the new alpha 6 patch, http://ittaku-subs.net/20150522patch.7z

I would heartily recommend people play Konomi's route first. I have a feeling that's the way it's meant to be since most of her scenes are imbedded into the common route without the choice to avoid them. I did hers' last and it was a huge mistake. I had already lost most of my affection by the time I got around to doing her route, and it was also super short because she had so much time in the limelight in the common route, so it made for a really underwhelming experience. Also, just so people are aware, the translator became active again today, posted a new patch on Reddit, and announced that he'll be spending a lot more time on this and would like to finish it within six months.

Kotarou definitely has some perverted tendencies, but he never follows up on them like Taichi does. There are also plenty of other different character traits between the two. However, I'd say that their senses of humor are almost identical. Perhaps Taichi is a bit more nonsensical.

I'm not sure why you're taking this attitude. It sounded like you wanted more games like this so I named some, thinking you may like them. Why so combative?

Swan Song, Sekien no Inganock, Shikkoku no Sharnoth,