Decay

Well, it's not super special or anything. The writing is pretty funny, and the characters are amusing and likeable, I guess. It's a pretty good game, but it gets extra attention because of the translation drama.

The writers at Akabeisoft2 (and by extension Akatsuki Works and AS3) always tend to put very strong personalities into their protagonists. Sometimes they're a badass, sometimes they're not, but they're always interesting characters. It's one of their best qualities.

BaseSon is just... yeah, they put the the least amount of effort necessary into everything they do, it seems. If you felt so strongly about what goes on in the routes, I'd like to see your reaction to a real nakige or utsuge. Well, I'm mostly talking out of my ass because I quit this game pretty early in, but I can't imagine BaseSon delivering any particularly strong emotional moments.

In 95% of VNs, this is something you don't really have to worry about. The choices are usually obvious and you just have to be kind to or hang out with the girl of your choice at every opportunity. A few VNs though have a large amount of choices that can set a variety of flags which influence the endings, Fate/Stay Night being sort of like that. Honestly, I'd just read a walkthrough. I don't find that sort of "gameplay" where you have to discover the correct choices to get the best endings to be very compelling. It reminds me of Persona 4 where the s.link choices that got the most points were usually the ones that teased the other person the most.

A guy on nyaa... and his torrent was taken down anyways. I really wonder about that one.

Hey my recommendation made it on that list! And if sexual content is a big sticking point for you, maybe consider one of the two recent all-ages games Propeller put out, Tokyo Babel and Negai no Kakera to Hakugin no Agreement. (the latter being shoujo ai)

I don't know the exact line count, but I believe the first game in the Tiny Dungeon series should fit most or all of your criteria: http://vndb.org/v3767 This VN would have the benefits of being somewhat short, and not particularly well known. By all accounts it's quite funny and entertaining, so it might be a good title to cut your teeth on. Maybe give it a read and see if it's something you'd like your group to take a stab at.

As I said earlier, the best solution isn't to stop less skilled translators from translating games, but to encourage the skilled translators to translate the games they're most passionate about regardless of already existing translations. In an ideal world less skilled translators would be working on less visible games but that's an impossible dream. People will inherently want to work on what gives them the most enjoyment to work on, and more power to them for that.

There is one more component that makes me somewhat accepting of the laissez faire philosophy, as Chronopolis puts it. It's just a simple fact that there are more entertaining/worthwhile VNs out there than the number highly skilled translators can translate. Simply put, the supply greatly exceeds the capacity to translate. Taking a wide view, this can mean that even if some VNs get ruined by shit translators, there are still always more great VNs waiting to be translated by the great translators out there. And that flow of VNs being skillfully translated is not hindered by some VNs being ruined. This philosophy of course has a lot of downsides. If the number of shitty translates increase disproportionately there can be a problem, and if your own personal favorite VN is one that gets ruined, well, that really sucks. There are other considerations as well, you could hope that translators would be more selective of what they translate, and pick projects that are appropriate for their skill levels. But this is kind of a vain hope, nobody wants to work on a mediocre or bad game. But to say that people who aren't especially skilled should either translate those mediocre titles or not participate at all is really unfair. In my opinion, the best solution to this problem is to encourage the skilled translators to translate the games they are most passionate about regardless of existing translations or active projects, and not to shoot down everyone who tries but isn't quite up to snuff. This increases redundancy and reduces the total amount of translated VNs overall, but is it worth it if it means that games can't really get ruined so much? No, but I've heard of "Beggers can't be choosers." Honestly, I dislike the "Well do it yourself/better or don't criticize" attitude intensely. Criticism is an extremely important aspect of any creative medium and everyone has the right to criticize. You do not have to be a translator to criticize translations. You don't have to be a chef to criticize food, or a writer to criticize books. Many communities lately are becoming hostile towards criticism and it's always to their detriment. Criticism is important, please don't try to shut it out.

Wow, who expected this thread to erupt like this? Why don't we wait for an example of the translation quality before getting out the pitchforks? This strikes me as really hasty and mean spirited.

and Kara no Shoujo Kara no Shoujo's art always interested me. That goes for the rest of Innocent Grey's work as well. It's a very grounded art style. I'm sure some people would see it as bland, but they really try to make the character designs as realistic as they can get within the bounds of traditional anime stylings. I prefer more realistic character designs to totally outlandish designs so it's good for me.

Just to be pedantic, < means "less than", so in your status page you should be using > instead to indicate that it's out of over 59 pages. Anyways, good luck with the project.

Well with the way level scaling works, you don't want one or two characters out-leveling the rest by too much.

Well the thing with Yandere, is that their lead translator TakaJun is a native Japanese speaker, so his translations are generally really accurate but really dry. Super dry, sometimes. For editors, I imagine it's quite difficult when the text you're given is like that. There's only so much you can do if you're afraid of losing the original meaning.

I thought Grisaia's art, while technically very sound, lacked variety. Just not enough CGs, not enough backgrounds. You can kind of tell the game really stretched their budget. I'm fond of Liar-Soft's unusual art styles. They change things up game to game, but they're never quite what you're used to in the VN space and they always look quite good, I feel. Sekien no Inganock and Shikkoku no Sharnoth are in English and are quite good.

I never thought someone would recommend Little Busters as a game with good art. Key's art has always been fairly mediocre. Little Busters definitely has a few funny looking sprites (in a bad way). Rewrite is a bit better in the art department, though. This represents Pulltop's transition into the current popular moege art style and while I felt the art was somewhat good, it also just kind of felt half-hearted in a way. Cocoro@Function was a better realization of that art style, I thought. If you do get it, get the restoration patch for the love of god.

Well color me excited. I just got done playing the partial patch the other day and was left with a sour taste in my mouth with how incomplete it felt (I guess I was hoping for a more firm resolution from the Fione ending). I hope you guys can do this game justice, good luck.

Yeah, gods, devils, whatever. They're elves to me. I was being flippant but really, my point is that I don't fully understand where the game's popularity came from. It's not necessarily a terrible game, but 31st most popular game on VNDB? One of MG's best selling titles? I just don't get it.

It was dropped years ago by one group and picked up by another, since. Its entry on the fuwanovel main site has a link to the current active translation project.

F/SN's plot elements were contrived just so they could have sex scenes in the first place. And they felt super contrived and it was awful. That's pretty much the WORST way to handle h-scenes. Don't make up utterly absurd and painful plot elements to justify them.

Shuffle is a mediocre moege with elves, and it's popular because.... ??? I guess it has its strengths but I really wonder where its popularity comes from. I guess maybe because it was an early MG title before there was much translated moege available?

Fun fact: nearly 9000 of VNDB's 14000 games rate between 7 and 6. Only around 550 games are 7 or more. Around 500 of those are rated 8 to 7, and you can guarantee that around 80% of those are total crap. VNDB's ratings are really limited and kind of inconsistent. The only real benchmark is that if it's 8 or more, it probably doesn't outright suck, but there are exceptions (sengoku rance, monmusu quest, among others). I think SnK is overrated as well, but it does have its merits and I didn't regret reading it.

Well, are they planning on adapting Meikyuu and Rakuen as well? Because you know, the harem ending isn't the conclusion at all, but the middle point of the story.

Yeah that is definitely not what they're going to do. Again, there is a canon sixth ending that wasn't in the actual game that it will probably follow.

I honestly feel that Hoshizora and Sharin no Kuni are overrated. Despite that, Hoshizora does have its good points and might be the most entertaining entry on that list.