Decay

Probably my favorite part of KiraKira is watching people's reactions to it when they have no idea what's in store. The other routes are good, too, but they aren't anything like Kira's, so don't worry. Chie's especially is pretty fun.

I dispute even this.

Read the VN first. If you plan on experiencing both anyways, I say you might as well start with the original.

Whoa whoa whoa! Are we calling PS2 games retro, now? My heart can't take this. I think Dark Cloud 2 aged decently, but 1 did not. 2 has the characteristic Level-5 cel shading art that looks rather nice, and it doesn't play all that badly, either. A lot of the side stuff was really fun. I liked building villages and everything related. That golf minigame, though... About your hate of Teddy in P4, is that with the Japanese dub or English dub? I'm not sure I like his Japanese voice as much as the English one. Actually, Atlus did a pretty great job of the dub overall, although Rise can be a bit sketchy sometimes. I'm very fond of P3 and P4 games, though. They're probably my favorite JRPGs of the 3D era, actually. Enough to beat P4 twice and watch Giant Bomb's endurance run twice (if you haven't seen that, it's basically an LP made by professional journalists, but are funny as hell and often dumb as a brick). I think they can continue to hold up over time. I also think Atlus will continue to remake and milk the hell out of them. Can't wait for P5, I'll have to finally get a PS3 for it. Edit: Also, figures you'd like P3 so much more. It has a much bigger chuuni vibe to it. I loved the hell out of Grandia 2 when I first played it on the Dreamcast. The battle system enraptured me. It was very tactical and engaging, while being fast paced with a standard JRPG interface. The only problem was that it was too easy. They built this fantastic battle system but had very few interesting encounters. Grandia 3 upped the difficulty at least a little bit, enough to make the battles much more fun on average, in my opinion. But holy balls, did the story and dialog take a nosedive. I think G2 can hold up. Since you're counting the Wii, can we add in Xenoblade? It almost feels like cheating though, it's just a few years old in the US. Still, I enjoyed it the most out of any of the Xeno games. I never got into the stupid pseudo-philosophical and religious masturbatory nonsense they served the player, and I felt like Xenoblade actually touched on some of those subjects in a more level-headed manner. One of the few JRPGs with a battle between two age-old rival races that actually handled the subject matter in at least a somewhat interesting way. Skies of Arcadia - Phenomenal, I loved it to death. Exploration was a joy, and I loved kitting out my kicking rad airship with new gear and a custom crew. And I always like base building systems when present. That said, I actually didn't like the ship battles too much. They just kind of felt like mediocre puzzle games, and they weren't dynamic at all. Once you found a solution for a fight, you just stuck to it and it would never fail. Going back a generation, Front Mission 3: I haven't actually played any of the other FM games. I'd like to some day, but FM1 and 2 are suuuper dated, I just can't go back to it, and people tell me they're necessary for understanding 4 and 5. FM3 is a really great SRPG, though. I liked the focus on ranged battles, the customizable mechs, the different health values for different parts, etc. Very interesting strategic experience that felt like it had more depth than most SRPGs. Suikoden 2 - it's a (hidden?) classic. Tells an interesting war story with a main villain you love to hate. Star Ocean 2 - The PS1 JRPG I sunk the most time into. I'm typically not a huge action RPG fan but this one really pulled me in. I'm not even sure why, looking back on it, it's not terribly special. But I really liked exploring the world, leveling up all the oddball skills, replaying it to recruit alternate characters, and breaking the game in the secret dungeon. And back even another generation, Super Mario RPG - I didn't have a SNES when growing up, only a Genesis, and played no JRPGs until FF7 on the PS1. So it took a while for me until I got into emulation before discovering it. But when I did, I loved it. Very fun battle system, an interesting way to incorporate Mario elements in an isometric JRPG, and a plot that was surprisingly decent. May be my favorite SNES RPG. RIP JRPGs, the genre was good while it lasted. Sucks that it's practically dead, now.

This is an honest, truthful opinion of mine: I think the common route is the best part of Rewrite. I thought it was funny, and I didn't like most of the heroine routes, and I didn't love Terra, either, although I thought it was decent. Lucia and Akane routes were pretty good, too, and Kotori route was almost good. But the best part of rewrite was probably that common route. I found it really entertaining.

MangaGamer has already proven that this is possible. Cho Dengeki Stryker's all ages version is on steam, you know. And last I heard, Sekai Project was acting as if Grisaia being on Steam was possible. With NekoPara, I honestly don't know how much will be left after you take away the porn... I'm don't know if it will be straight out nukige but I can't imagine it having an actual storyline worth caring about. It will be another Sakura Spirit, all-ages ecchi stuff with no meat to it.

They said on twitter it's not grisaia related.

Someone actually pledged at the $7000 level. Now that's dedication. edit: They did it! Fully funded in 14 hours.

Oh yeah, if you don't have voices on, I guess that could be a problem. I always play with voices. Gotta love 07th Expansion's games, where the PC versions don't have voices and not even the back log will tell you who said what. So you just have to go by personality. Usually they change the sprite of the person when a new spoken line appears, but not always. But their personalities are distinctive enough that I never found it much of a problem.

I actually like Yuuji in the VN and think he's a really funny character that is a key part of a lot of the game's great humor, but I would not like to know him in real life.

Only after the retranslation is finished.

Suginami from DC2 was actually pretty entertaining. He was really boring in DC1. People like Yuuji because he's the stereotypical "badass". He's like reddit cool guy incarnate. He'd wear a fedora if he was tuned into american internet culture and post a lot about ladder theory.

At least WAS launched first. If Clannad hit first, it might not have even made it to the initial goal. But yeah, at this point, full voices for WAS is just a pipe dream.

October is actually sooner than I expected.

For your second request, see these threads: https://forums.fuwanovel.net/index.php?/topic/7186-vns-with-rpg-mechanics/ and https://forums.fuwanovel.net/index.php?/topic/7126-looking-for-vn-wgameplay-with-plot-as-priority/. I will say that there are no good translated VNs with card battle mechanics. For your first request, most VNs feature romance as a strong driving factor behind the story, but most of the popular translated VNs actually tend not to be pure romance stories. If you liked Little Busters, other Key games like Rewrite might be good for you, although there's more of a plot focus in that. Other decent translated romance VNs include ef and Symphonic Rain. Maybe consider Majikoi for a fun, totally absurd romantic comedy type experience. There's a partial patch out now and there's a decent chance that a complete patch will be out before the end of the year. (no promises, though!) (edit: The forum bug present when pasting in multiple links in a single line is really frustrating.)

Apparently the Japanese companies are the ones who decided on the timing for Sekai Project's recent kickstarters, which seems a little weird to me. But the end result is that Clannad is overlapping with WAS, and Grisaia will overlap with Clannad. There's only so much weab money to go around.

Yuuji is the protagonist, though, and this isn't about male protagonists but male side characters. Shuugen is definitely one of the coolest male side characters I've seen in a VN, maybe the best one. He's pretty awesome.

The TLWiki page itself says that the file size is inflated: http://tlwiki.org/index.php?title=Grisaia_no_Kajitsu This list on Giant Bomb claims that Clannad is 1.3 million words and Grisaia is around 1 million, but I don't know their source: http://www.giantbomb.com/profile/jagged85/lists/top-25-longest-game-scripts/89583/

Oh hey, there's a hearthstone thread here. I've put waaaay too much time into this game. I'm pretty excited for the expansion. Fair warning to all: Once the expansion hits, all Arena pack rewards will be for the expansion cards, you will be unable to receive packs of the current cards through any means other than pack purchases. So if you're relying on Arena to build up your collection, better start grinding up now. Luckily, I already have like 90% of the collection. Empty board, both heroes at 3 health, let the Bomber decide all.

No, Clannad's actual game script is definitely larger than Grisaia's. The Grisaia script's file size is inflated due to how the engine works.

Kamidori's gameplay was more fun for me (although I didn't exactly have a blast with it), but Yumina's is less grindy. Aselia is more repetitive than either. Regarding Yumina, if you like real dungeon crawling games like Wizardry, Might and Magic, Legend of Grimrock, etc, you will still probably not like Yumina's brand of dungeon crawling because it's actually really shallow and boring. The combat can be interesting at times but most of the time it's brainless. The exceptions are boss battles. edit: I haven't actually played any other dungeon crawling VNs, only other "real" dungeon crawlers, so I can't attest to how Yumina compares to others within the genre.

Both games, as well as most other gameplay VNs, commit the grievous sin of making you do the same damn thing over and over again long after you've gotten sick of it. Aselia and Yumina do it in different ways. In Aselia, a single playthrough does not offer much grind, but subsequent playthroughs by and large offer identical battles and there are many routes, making the whole thing really tedious and boring. With Yumina, you can do the main three heroine routes by skipping most of the gameplay (they made the bulk of it, the VR world, optional) if you keep the NG+ difficulty low, but if you want to get all of the side/bonus endings, expect a shitload of uninspired dungeon crawling. Actually I heard the "true" ending is unlocked only after you get all 5 other endings but I'm not sure if that's a full route with lots of story or what.