Decay

Komari's voice is cancer, sorry.

We already had a thread about this (edit: thread merged!). This was mandated by Minori who are super paranoid about selling games overseas and MangaGamer would not have done this otherwise, and will not do it again unless one of their partners force them to do it again. It slows down the process of releasing physical copies considerably. MG has no interest in attempting to sell their eroge in the normal US retail channels (it's basically impossible) and the ESRB rating doesn't mean anything for any other purpose, so it really is completely pointless.

It is not a mistranslation. This is just how Kokoro's brain works. That's how far deep her superiority complex goes.

Koihime Musou is translated and sold by MangaGamer. Shin Koihime Musou is currently undergoing translation. But... I would say Darkshine is overselling it. The action is mostly boring and undescriptive, using crappy effects in place of decent writing. And the story is, well... it's there.

That should be in the options somewhere. It's probably even the default setting. Example, the skip button on this screenshot is greyed out because the text is unread, the fast forward stops when this happens:

It's the same dev team, after all. I liked Yumina's battles more than Aselia's but I liked the strategy gameplay of Aselia more than Yumina's dungeon crawling.

You REALLY ought to do all of the routes. You aint seen nothing, yet. The Rin routes and Refrain (the true route) are the best parts. And there is a skip option, it's the same as all other VNs. It's the fast forward icon on the bottom of the screen and is even labeled as "skip". I found replaying the common route to be largely painless. Also be sure to start a fresh new game each time. You get stat bonuses and new events in the common route when you do this.

I have not touched this series but I heard the first game has a poor ending, but the sequel makes up for it and doesn't end nearly as poorly.

The PS3 Umineko's art is actually pretty great, but it's not really showy. It has a subdued quality to it, which actually compliments the story and setting well for most of the duration. And well, when the story loses all restraint, the art adapts well. But I guess it's not something you can ooh and aah at. Maybe wait for the proper PS3 to PC port to finish, especially if you're interested in having the best looking experience: http://uminekofix.wikia.com/wiki/PS3_Port http://uminekofix.wikia.com/wiki/PS3_Port_news_(October_2014)

If you click on an entry on VNDB, you can usually find a link that takes you to the patch or where you can find more info on it. The last status update on the project page linked in VNDB was like ten months ago, and it was just a short "We're not dead, we swear!" update even though they hadn't made any actual progress since may of 2013. And there's no hint of any progress at all this year. So... yeah, it's completely dead. RIP.

I was wondering where this was. Is this going to be a much longer game to justify the long wait? For those interested, the fan translation of the first game is approaching completion and a release this year seems likely. They've already announced their intention to translate the entire series.

I thought Chris was fine. I didn't know she was a hated character.

but are they useful to the plot ? I don't think so and if that's the case then it isn't really significant and they're rare exceptions among hundreds of other VNs.

Are you some ultra conservative christian or something? Lol, if it's her route then it's just part of their story together. You actually see it somewhat frequently in eroge where sex happens before two people get serious. I didn't expect to see someone to object strongly to that.

There are only two of those in the first playthrough though, right? The Hisoka route also has an h-scene with another girl, then there's the Mayuki and Ayaya routes which, IIRC, do not, and the Kagome route has one.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=tLrwsqQ3F5AGEcKf5wzo1lA#gid=0

The bulk of the work is not hacking or creating patches, that's usually not all that hard. The real work is the actual act of translation. It is not easy no matter which method you use. So the reason people don't make translations using VNR subtitles is simply because it's an inferior method to making proper patches. Many of the groups that abandon translations do so because the translators simply don't have the time or motivation to continue. This will not be solved by using VNR subtitles.

Earlier you said that you haven't played Umineko yet. You really should get on that ASAP. It's so good! I promise!

Still reading Higurashi. I think I'm a bit over halfway done with episode 6. Overall, I have to say that I'm liking this less than Umineko. I kind of wish I had played this first, as I might have enjoyed it a bit more by not knowing what I was missing out on, but I think I enjoyed going into Umineko with no expectations. Probably the biggest thing I dislike about Higurashi is the lack of an overarching plot thread. The start of every chapter is a clean slate. All of the characters are reset and the story begins anew each time. Of course, this can still change in the next couple chapters, but the fact that it's gone this far without that is a pretty big minus in my book. This strongly correlates with my personal tastes, for TV shows I prefer serial stories to episodic ones. I don't like that there is no real lasting character development so far, and while the game presents the story in such a way that you slowly learn more about what's really happening as you progress through the episodes, it doesn't really do it in a satisfying way. Even if this does change (and there are hints that it might) it may be too little too late. I think Umineko took the basic structure created with Higurashi (witnessing a tragedy repeat several times with different victims and perpetrators) and added some much needed components to it like an actual connective plot with strong character development among the main characters across all of the episodes, right from the start. I'm kind of surprised Higurashi Kai has an 8.73 average VNDB rating, maybe I should expect an improvement coming up. edit: There's another thing, when I compare the two stories so far. Umineko's mystery is much more "pure". It's funny, playing Higurashi second kind of gives you a lot of "oh, so THAT'S what he meant!" moments when reflecting on all of the meta-commentary Umineko provided on the mystery genre. Seems like Ryukishi was pretty critical of Higurashi within Umineko. I'll also say that although I'm being critical of Higurashi here, I'm still enjoying it a decent amount.

They're non-ero ports, of course. The ero in Utawarerumono was pretty bad anyways so that's not a serious loss. Everyone agrees the console port was much better. Someone is translating the PSP version from scratch (they're dissatisfied with the mirror-moon translation of the PC version) but it's taking a long time.

Sumaga's translation supposedly finished a long time ago, she's also not listed on the tlwiki's page for it. Maybe she was called in to TLC but I was thinking it was going to be an unannounced game otherwise she would have said what it was. But the only unannounced JAST project I can think of is Eiyuu Senki (supposedly they licensed the PC version separately from Fruitbat Factory's license of the ps3 version) and you can't do 30% of that in a couple weeks. And it's more of an Aroduc project anyways. Hmmm, there are some secrets our mortal minds are not meant to know just yet.