Decay

The prefundia is live: http://prefundia.com/projects/view/sharin-no-kuni-a-japanese-visual-novel-localization-project/9059/ $140,000 for the base goal, $240,000 for the Houzuki Chapter (from the fandisc) They have a strange definition of "used for reference," since in this case it seems like they will use it as the basis of their entire translation. However, while it's not a great TL by any means and the original team seems dissatisfied with it, if they give it the same treatment the Muv Luv team is giving to those games, there's still room to get a good quality product.

The overall response to the demo seems to have been somewhat tepid, at least among the handful of japanese VN readers I follow on twitter. I hope the full game delivers. FW is probably going to bring this to the west regardless.

Their auto rating tool isn't what they use to actually determine ratings, but to give you an idea of what your game might be rated. Penises and vaginas being an automatic AO in the tool doesn't mean that the actual ratings board gives that stuff an automatic AO. There was some old politician's dong in TLAD, right? I forget which other GTA game had it. It's surprising that Rockstar went there, but it's also super non-sexual so I'm not surprised the ESRB gave it a pass. That said, any VN that has that will have it in a sex scene, so... yeah, that's an AO practically guaranteed.

This Alex St. John guy is a real piece of work and everyone on twitter has been dogpiling him the last few days, with good reason. He's like a villainous 19th century coal mine baron displaced into the modern world. It's impossible for me to read anything he says and not get seething mad. Here's some more material to get mad about: http://www.alexstjohn.com/WP/download/Recruiting%20Giants.pdf Rami Ismail is a cool dude and really level headed, his response to that article was great.

Hmm, I wonder about this. With games like Kara no Shoujo 2, Gahkthun, and Tokyo Babel (especially Tokyo Babel) heavily underperforming, MangaGamer might start doing a lot more moege. Sekai Project already heavily favors moege. The only company that barely ever touches moe is JAST. But they've announced like one major new title in the last 18 months, so they haven't responded to the market trends by virtue of doing nothing at all. Looking at SP's upcoming catalogue, they have KARAKARA, Wagamama High Spec, Hoshizora no Memoria (although the story elements are a bit more prominent in that one), Tenshin Ranman, Paca Plus (ugh, and is that even still happening?), Japanese School Life, and Maitetsu. Then they have some titles somewhere in-between like Chrono Clock and and Ley Line. Almost all of their non-doujin releases are moege or close to it, and a lot of their doujin releases are, too. It seems like the really serious story-heavy stuff, and especially the action stuff, might actually start getting abandoned by the major publishers soon if the current sales trends keep up. So if you want to make a fan translation that will never get picked up, choose some obscure Light title or something.

No. It's just insanely long. This is a rough-ish estimate, my steam play timer is at 39 hours, but I feel like I've spent a combined total of 5 hours with the game minimized. Give or take a couple.

Soon. Probably.

Been playing Root Double. I'm about 34 hours in. Only halfway done.

This entire argument is based on the assumption that this was their plan all along, but who's to say it was? Kohaku has released a free fan patch before. I'm sure when they started Ley Line, they fully intended to release that for free, too. Who knows when they struck a deal with Sekai Project, it probably wasn't until a good time has passed after they began working on it. And once you sign a deal like that, things become a LOT more complicated with regards to what you can and can't say, and when.

According to the Steam user in question: So he just goofed up. No backers has received their keys yet. SP wouldn't just secretly launch the game like that. I suspect that we will indeed see an April release, although ultimately that is just a guess. I don't really see any reason why it has to be held back any further. Who knows, though, maybe there's some weird business related stuff with Regista/Yeti holding things back? As I said in our latest VNTS update, the FuwaReviews team received a key, which ended up in my hands. We should be able to post a review on the day of release.

They talk goofily because they are just goofy as hell, even Lilith and Raziel. They're absurd characters no matter which way you slice it, so I don't see it as a bad thing that the translation makes that apparent. As for anachronisms, the only time I really ever noticed them is when the characters are being sort of ironic in some way, which is something people actually do. It never bothered me.

Tokyo Babel is pretty much on par with a YA novel, as Conjueror says in that ask.fm. It's not exactly Finnegans Wake.

"Americanization," really? The characters spoke in a very casual manner, but none of it felt distinctly American to me. Most of it was what you'd expect to hear in any English speaking country. So it wasn't so much "Americanization," but "Englishization." Which is a pretty good thing to do in my book when translating something to English.

They were dissatisfied with the ESRB process when they had eden* rated. With that one's Steam release, it was an unnecessary procedure that only served to delay things and it also cost them money to do so. Simply because minori demanded it. This is a very different situation, and they seem to be now open to using the ESRB to their advantage with these kinds of edge cases.

You say it's straightforward, but it seems that Valve was reluctant to allow Gahkthun on Steam until the ESRB gave it an M rating. So there's definitely a human element involved in the decision making process.

This almost never happens, really. There's supposed to be some in-built defense against spambots, but that defense seems to have broken down at some point over the last week.

TB certainly wouldn't have been better with the padding cut. Maybe with it moved around a little? The fast pacing of the second half of each route actually got pretty exhausting. It was fight after fight after fight with barely any time to breathe in between. Besides, those "goofy interludes" were genuinely hilarious, I'd be sad to see them go.

I'm excited because a good steam performance may be the only way we see more Steampunk games get translated.

The game wasn't heavily explicit to begin with, and was roughly on par with Kindred Spirits.

Walkure Romanze has received a fandisc and a semi-sequel/second fandisc, on top of its own anime. Everything out of Ricotta seems to be about Walkure Romanze. Princess Lover never received any additional content besides the anime tie-ins. Anyways, the Walkure Romanze translation project has been completely dead for a long time, and apparently a lot of the work they did do was of pretty low quality, anyways.

"Only"? Erm, I want to make sure, did you read The First Tale first, containing the Miyako and Kei stories? If not, you really should do so first.

The developer has only made two full VNs and Princess Lover was the less popular of the two, overshadowed by Walkure Romanze. Which also never received a translation. Translation is extremely time consuming work and the scene is badly lacking in capable translators. Don't expect every half-decent VN to get translated. I wouldn't be surprised if Princess Lover never sees an English release ever.

From what I recall about the developer's most popular game, Walkure Romanze, it's got a crap ton of h-scenes, and it pretty much does turn into a nukige by the end of every route. But they also still try to do typical charage-style storytelling at the same time.