Conjueror

Nobody knows, really. Someone made a random tweet that she's a guy and now everyone believes it. Personally, I don't really care, but her text feels so feminine to me I can't help using female pronouns regardless of Sakurai's gender; she could be a sexless automaton for all I know. xD Sakurai severed her ties with Liar-Soft a few years ago afaik. She's the one who wrote Fate/Go in collaboration with Higashide. In any case, I'm not her biggest fan either, so I'm really glad Liar-Soft can now go back to their roots of surreal/disturbing games. Fairytale Requiem was amazing (the guy who did Forest was involved).

Um, what you are talking about is not Liar-Soft, but Sakurai Hikaru and I agree with your assessment, but she's not involved with Tokeidai no Jeanne in any shape or form.

Well, it's just four extra days. I'm personally curious to see how the losers would do among each other.

I would've voted of Chusingura myself, but Parfait is a damn good game, too.

I started Himawari as a fan-tl project in secret with GareJei, but I was planning to contact one of the localizers or the original developers with it from the start (figured having most of the game already tled would give us more bargaining power). We would've probably released it unofficially if we were turned down as the project was something I did mostly for practice and building up confidence before applying for a job at MG, or another localization company. It all kinda turned out even better than I had planned. xD

The bestseller list makes me want to stab myself in the neck. There is no justice in the world.

Getchu awards seem to be more of a popularity than quality contest; surprised to see 花咲ワークスプリング！ and 果つることなき未来ヨリ on the list even though they were getting pretty bad reviews, while the lack of Fairytale Requiem is a mortal sin against mankind as it was probably the second best game last year (after Sakura no Uta). Other entries seem to be fairly legit, although サノバウィッチ, ソーサリージョーカーズ, 見上げてごらん、夜空の星を seem oddly high compared to ランス03 リーザス陥落, シルヴァリオ ヴェンデッタ, and Maggot baits if you look at erogamescape. The only other games that I can think of as missing from those awards are ゾンビのあふれた世界で俺だけが襲われない, but they probably don't allow doujin games into the context to begin with, and Bansenjin (maybe they don't allow fan discs either?).

Um, Baldr Force is the precursor, which is why it's so weird to me people rather seem to want to start their series in the middle with Sky.

Even the nukige part is actually foreshadowing for some quite interesting concepts of mammal nature. It's perhaps the second most intelligent visual novel I've read, after Subarashiki Hibi... but it has a few problems with how the plot is structured -- almost half of the game is pure exposition (although it's fucking awesome exposition). If you're into anime, it's a lot like Shinsekai yori. You haven't lost much since the writer ends up writing himself into the corner with his whole mystery thing, and comes up with a very convoluted explanation for everything that doesn't even make much sense when you really think about it (not to mention 0 foreshadowing). Anyway, I hate that writer, I wish FAVORITE would just stick with the Hoshizora guy instead; he at least knows what he's doing. This, basically. It's really fascinating how English VN scene can be so different from JP sometimes. For example, Tsuyokiss would've won the yesterday's poll by a landslide if it was done in egs or 2chan. In any case, I picked all the most well-regarded titles in Japan that have no translation yet, and I'm very interested to see how the west interprets them.

Well, good luck on your endeavor. I don't agree with your treatment of Japanese speech quirks, but your heart seems to be in the right place at least. Hopefully, your game gets funded all right.

You're voicing the same sentiment as Rooke. Let's be clear: this is a Kickstarter initiative for Kickstarter backers. Kickstarter backers are clearly NOT the mainstream audience. The game may be sold on Steam afterwards, but first and foremost this is a translation for the small section of the community that funds games on Kickstarter. We should reexamine our assumptions that the audiences on Steam (and elsewhere) and Kickstarter are equivalent with equivalent expectations. You and Rooke are championing a translation for the mainstream. But what if that's not what the hardcore fans supporting this on Kickstarter want? Appealing to the widest audience possible is usually--but not always--the best strategy. But sometimes it's best to focus on appealing to a specific target demographic. Remember: MiKandi Japan's goal isn't "Make visual novels popular in the West". It's to get this particular game funded. While those goals may be mostly compatible, they won't always align--and they don't need to. Ah, I see how it can make sense from the business perspective now. It won't change my personal opinion about it (that one line) not looking like a professional translation, though (and I've seen that line mocked all over the net in the past few days, so I'm not even sure how many of the established audience like stuff like that, regardless of their ability to understand it). My opinion is that the best translation (and really the only one that should be acceptable in a perfect world) is one that you would never guess was a translation to begin with (like most Haruki Murakami novels for example), and transliterating "desu" kills that outright.

Ah, sorry, that came out much harsher than I intended. It's just that the strange translation philosophy set off an alarm bell in my mind, and I thought it wouldn't hurt Mikandi to check if the guys they hired really know what they're doing while it's still not too late. All I want is for visual novels to grow and be recognized by general public, and including weeaboo lexicon that is alien to everyone except the already established audience in official translations doesn't bode too well for that. I've already seen some mainstream people mocking Steins;Gate for including all those redundant japanisms, and therefore not sounding like a professional translation (and it didn't have anything even close to desu afaik). In any case, I have yet to see "desu" transliterated in any of the professionally translated novels and video games that I've gone through, and I don't see why visual novels should be an exception to the rule. Godspeed to Mikandi for trying to localize more of our niche medium, but translating it in the language that only the established fanbase would ever understand will only hold it back, regardless of how good the actual translation is.

I must raise a question about the qualifications of your veteran translators, as after having worked for almost five years in the business of translation (one of them for MangaGamer) I have yet to see a professional circle where transliterating a completely foreign word was thought of as a good idea, with an exception when it might be a core aspect of the narrative (like sensei in Natsume Souseki's "Kokoro"). Transliterating Japanese speech quirks like desu is a practice seen exclusively in fan translations, which at best caters to a few people in the already established audience that understand weeaboo lexicon, and at worst causes confusion among average readers who just want to enjoy the work without learning another language. One thing it always tells of though is that the translation has been done by an amateur. If you're doing a proper translation, you translate the voice of the character, not the literal words, and once you get the hang of it, all the speech quirks you need will come naturally to you in proper English. The very fact that you're obsessing to keep a foreign and mostly redundant quirk in a sentence dislodged from context at the cost of clarity already gives me the impression that the translation wasn't done by someone experienced in the field. You should check The Fruit of Grisaia, and how masterfully all sorts of speech quirks are treated in that translation. In any case, I'd suggest running another background check on your veteran translators, as from the way they sound they seem anything but.

There are times when the translation can surpass the original, just check Vagrant Story or Final Fantasy XII out. I also prefer reading Haruki Murakami in English; Jay Rubin and Alfred Birnbaum are amazing. You can always add English-exclusive things to make up for what's lost from the Japanese to recreate the mood somewhat... if you are as good a writer as the one you're translating. Still, that's probably a bit too much to ask out of VN translators at this point of time, haha. Doesn't mean that you shouldn't have standards for writing, though. I truly hope Degica has gotten someone good to fix that text up, as it looks pretty bad from the few quotes I've seen on this thread.

Guess I can reveal myself as well.

Subarashiki Hibi because it's the best piece of fiction ever written by man.

I definitely liked Soul Hackers better than Kuzonoha, but the latter is fine, too. The only megaten game I quit without finishing was the original Devil Summoner on saturn. >< The old SMTs on snes are actually still quite enjoyable if you like Nocturne-like challenging dungeon crawling. Also +1 for Persona 3 being the best smt game (and best JRPG ever in general).

Black Cyc❤

I didn't know they had region block. It wasn't there seven years ago, when I was still living in Europe (though I guess that explains why so few ppl in the west use it these days).

Haruka and Towa were both written by minori's two main writers that worked together since ef (I usually prefer Kagami Yuu's prose, but Mikage outdid himself with Haruka's flowery dialogue in this game). Mayura was written by a new guy who did a decent job given his lack of experience, but he definitely doesn't compare to those two (yet). One of my main gripes with the game is that they brought a nukige writer to write ero scenes for them, and tone / character voices are all over the place once sex begins. They had really nice production values for them (like 6 CGs per scene or so) but the writing is as porny as you can get.

People in egs can at least read their VNs. It's not like I blindly believe popular opinion, but my experience with games rated below 70 in egs has been exclusively terrible so far. It's good to roughly separate utter shit from something promising, at least. Also: Subarashiki Hibi, Muramasa, YU-NO, Baldr Force, Sharin no Kuni, Ever17, Cross†Channel, Aiyoku no Eustia, Utawarerumono, Swan Song, Ayakashibito, OreTsuba, Haruka ni Aogi Uruwashi no, Damekoi, Himawari, and Saya no Uta are all at the top of egs, which pretty much coincides with my favorite VNs. The only ones I personally liked that egs wasn't particularly hot about were Umineko, Tokyo Babel, and Chaos;Head. So ,as far as I'm concerned, egs is fairly reliable (except for a couple of highly rated moege). I might check it out since I despise moe/charage and love utsuge. I've been interested in this title because it was written by one of my favorite writers (Takehaya), so I was really disappointed by its reception. Still, inconsistent settings/characters bother me greatly, so I wonder how it'll go. xD

Haruka was so awesome she ended kind of overshadowing Towa's grand route. Still, probably the best VN I've read this year so far.

What's up with 放課後の不適格者, anyway? I see ppl recommending it on these boards, but all I heard about it in Japan is that it's terrible, or so bad it's funny even (it's like at the very bottom of egs with 56 rating or so xD).

Well, thank god for that ctrl key, then. The more time I waste on pointless slice of life, the less time I have to read a good novel, so it's a really big pet peeve of mine (especially since that shit starts feeling all same'ish after your 50th vn). I do understand that some people like it, but the older I get the less tolerance I can muster toward bad pacing (the main reason I have a problem with Hino Wataru).

W-What? But like the first twenty hours of that game is literally filler. Not to mention it's paced like Dragonball Z. Bad pacing is pretty much the bane of all visual novels and there are very few that actually have the good sense to get straight to the point. You can usually recognize them from their short length. I can only recall a few that didn't drag at one point or another: Sumire (same writer as narcissu), Hatsuyuki Sakura, DameKoi, Carnival (same writer as Swan Song), Phantom of Inferno (same writer as Saya no Uta) in ascending level of difficulty. Subarashiki Hibi, Chaos;Head, Steins;Gate, Akatsuki no Goei, Utawarerumono and Aiyoku no Eustia are also reasonably well paced, though there are parts where they tend to move a little bit slow. I also found Umineko surprisingly well paced despite how fucking long it was. It felt as if every single line in that game was there for a purpose (the reason I love Ryukishi despite his not particularly impressive prose).