Decay

I started up Canvas 2 yesterday. I was expecting it to be kinda bad, but it's not. Well, it's not really anything right now, and I don't know if I'd recommend it to anyone, but it's at least slightly better than I expected. So instead I'm expecting it to take a downturn in quality once I hit the heroine routes.

I've seen some people post in the skills registration thread but not end up in any project. I wonder how many project leads actually reference that thread. I mean, a lot of the people who post there are just posting as a proofreader or some other various minimally useful skillsets, but the latest post was from someone who actually has a college degree in Japanese, I wonder if anyone got in touch with her. It sometimes seems like the prospective translators aren't aware of the projects currently in demand of translators, and the project leads aren't fully aware of the talent available. I guess one more tool to get the two to meet together wouldn't be a bad thing.

Saying they're giving all profits to minori is a disingenuous way of putting it. They're putting all profits into the development of another VN which they'll likely get a much larger profit share from than typical. Of Japanese sales as well, I'd imagine. Basically, you can say the profits are going into the expansion of MG's business.

If you kinda liked Deardrops but thought it was perhaps too slow and didn't really go anywhere for most of the VN, perhaps try Kira Kira instead, another game about a band by the same developers. The common route has more of an adventurous feel to it and the heroine routes are better and more dramatic. Although still maybe not your cup of tea. I suggest you try out more story-heavy games like the recently translated Coμ, Sekien no Inganock, and Fate/stay night.

Eh, he's not in a committed relationship at any of the moments he sleeps around (actually I haven't read the Kagome route yet so maybe that changes). The flings he ends up in happen when he's mentally unstable or highly stressed. "I will save my chastity for my one true love and no one else" is a noble idea and all but it's hardly common in this day and age and I have no problems with a story based game portraying the more common side of human sexuality. This isn't a pure romance title, after all, so even if Akihito's behavior is less romantic, isn't necessarily to the detriment of the story. Just my two cents.

Serious question: What's so good about Euphoria? When I look at it, it seems like a trashy torture porn nukige with a faux-deep story attached. I find it hard to believe there's anything worthwhile to it but I see people flipping their shit over it so I'm pretty confused.

They're working on so many titles already, don't expect them to announce another Navel title for a very long time. They have their hands full with other stuff.

The biggest surprise is that MangaGamer seeks to fund the continuation of Supipara. This is the first time a Japanese VN will be developed with western money, it's a very unusual circumstance. It's a very ambitious plan. I have my doubts about it, but I hope it works out for them.

Steam is getting progressively more open and they still talk like they're going to bust the whole thing wide open and allow anyone to release almost anything through it within the next year or so. But I don't think they'll start allowing 18+ stuff. The image hit you take when you allow that kind of content is huge, too big even for Steam. They're also talking about having multiple different storefronts on the service ran by both official channels and by the community, so maybe they would allow a specific 18+ storefront but eh... I'm doubtful. They don't want to be seen as some seedy place. Just my two cents.

So is Sekai Project straight up lying when they say there are additional scenes?

The last physical copy of a PC game I've bought was... Oblivion, in 2006. I don't plan on doing it ever again.

Maybe you should have listed all of the VNs with adult protagonists that you have actually read. A noteworthy one that hasn't been mentioned yet is Zanmataisei Demonbane, an early nitro+ mecha VN with minor cthulhu themes starring a washed up private detective in his '20s. It's... decent. I won't go much further than that. It's got some good comedy, I thought. Apparently everyone says the ps2 version was a lot better, but we're never going to see that in english. edit: There's also Sekien no Inganock, that's actually a really good one.

Steam is not responsible for whatever people do off-steam to their steam games. There are plenty of pornographic mods for games that are on Steam and they don't do anything about it. It being available in official form would just be an extension of that, perhaps. However, I think it is more likely that there won't be a patch, but a separate uncut version available via a different download service, like MangaGamer. Whatever they do, SP already stated on twitter that Steam is okay with their proposed 18+ solution.

^^^ Sharin no Kuni is a very weird game to compare to Grisaia. They're so incredibly different. One is linear, the other has multiple heroine branches. One is heavily story focused, the other has no real overarching story and focuses on character drama. One is primarily drama and suspense with some moments of comedic relief, the other is primarily comedy until suddenly it isn't. I'm not even sure why you brought up Sharin no Kuni. The two are just not comparable. Grisaia's common route may be longer, but it doesn't branch. It's hard to say if Rewrite's has more content if you count all of the common route branches. But if you enjoy slife of life comedy it will be enjoyable to you. It's largely aimless until you get to the heroine routes, but it's still hilarious.

I suppose the best thing I had going for me with my entry into the world of VNs is that for the first few months I wasn't involved in any of the communities and knew very little about them. I seriously just sorted by most popular VNs on VNDB and read whatever looked decent, with a few modest recommendations from a handful of people along the way. Nothing was hyped for me, I somehow went into Grisaia without even knowing it was primarily comedy.

Most VNs use the ADV (adventure) text format, Kira Kira and F/SN use the NVL (novel) format. One of the benefits of the NVL format is to lay down long unbroken descriptive narratives, which can be beneficial for action VNs, F/SN famously goes into heavy detail for all of its action scenes and the NVL format supports that well. Grisaia actually uses NVL in various flashback sequences, because they're usually light on the dialog and heavy on the narration.

I know a lot of people here don't really care, but it is in the best interest of many of these companies to expand the potential market for visual novels as much as possible. Romance themed bishoujo VNs, or "dating sim" as everyone outside the established community calls them are looked down upon by the general western game-playing public, and if companies want to erase the stigma that comes attached to playing those games, they need to release ones that actually have deep or interesting stories. Say what you will about Key's games, but I think some of their titles like Clannad could change the way a lot of people view that genre. Once that perception changes, they could start expanding into more of a mix of moege, nakige, chuuni, and whatever else. I think it has to be a game like Clannad to begin breaking the negative perception bishoujo games have because the name is already known amongst anime circles as a story that isn't some paper-thin harem crap. There may be other, better VNs like it, but they probably won't be as effective if they're not as well known.

The key stuff is not that surprising, They already licensed Planetarian, after all. They probably have easy access to the rest of Key's stuff, assuming Planetarian works out. They will probably refrain from nukige but they've implied an intent to release an 18+ version of Grisaia and have asked questions about 18+ VNs on the survey. There are great all-ages VNs as well, such as some of the other Key games mentioned on the survey. Releasing games like Clannad could go a long way towards changing the way westerners think about romance-themed visual novels. It only rarely happens for games published by third-party localization studios. Atlus USA actually licensed some non-Atlus games prior to release, so it happens. That doesn't mean you should expect a day-and-date worldwide release. I don't expect Sekai Project to do this, though. The reason why it doesn't happen is simply because of the risk involved. It's a big commitment to make for a game whose success in Japan can't be judged yet. And while Clannad is well known in some anime circles, Key probably doesn't have a big enough name here to rely on that alone.

You should be able to stomach the removed scenes because they're awful. Seriously. The writers are just bad at h-scenes, and the removed evil route is just hilariously bad. Instead you get much better replacement scenes, so it's all good. Aselia the Eternal is not particularly great, but it's better than Yumina in most ways. For people wondering why this is relevant, this is because it's made by the exact same dev team. You can see some recurring themes as well as some minor gameplay concepts being reused (the color system, battles that kind of go automatically using non-random math, etc). It's more strategy than RPG, though. The closest non-h game analog I can think of is Ogre Battle, just without the freeform movement (it's set paths across nodes). The one thing I like more about Yumina is the comedy. It's not the funniest game, but it has its moments and Aselia can just be way too serious and dry at times. Yumina drops the comedy halfway through, unfortunately. But I enjoyed it when it was there and miss it in Aselia. Oh, and the art is much worse. You can tell it's the same artist, it's just much more amateurish.

Polygamy is largely one-way and misogynistic in nature. At least, in the ways that it is commonly practiced. How many countries that allow men to have multiple wives allow women to have multiple husbands, for instance? Polygamy as it was historically practiced represented a patriarchal society where women were practically commodities. I wouldn't mind a totally open society where anyone can marry anyone of age, regardless of gender or other relationships, but to get there I think most countries, including America, still has a ways to go with the way women are treated and represented before such a society can be feasible. I mean, even here women in VNs who have multiple partners are looked down upon while men with multiple partners are commended or idolized.

Well, besides possibly insem still working on it, there are other people as well who have shown interest in translating it. If you really know nothing about translating VNs, then it's best to just wait patiently for one of the multiple projects to pay off.

Well, it's not like they rewrite the story to make it so no one ever has sex. You lose very little by skipping the h-scenes if you feel like doing so, I think.

No more significant than any other VN. There is occasionally significance in the occurrence of the acts but nothing within the acts themselves. Except for maybe one scene in the Hisoka route.

The art is not great, to be honest. It's perfectly passable but that's as far as I'd praise it. It gets the job done. The game is very heavily story based, so passable art is all it really needs. Even the action isn't that major of a part of it. Well, it could use more/better CGs for the action scenes that are there, I'll definitely admit.