What are you playing?

[Seraphim]

25 minutes ago, Jun Inoue said:

Ddi you end up finishing Nanairo? Or taking a break for Maggot Baits?

I've finished Kotori's and Iyo's routes so far. I've kinda assigned Azusa's route (and later Yumi's) along with The Outer Worlds as therapy for my soul inbetween Maggot Baits sessions.

All in all, Nanairo Reincarnation was beyond my expectations both quality-wise and in terms of how heavy the story would be. Like I mentioned previously in this thread, I originally expected it to be just some regular comedy nukige, but it went well above that to the point where I'd say it's probably the game/VN that has surprised me the most (in a positive way) this year. I guess I should thank you for your earlier input, since that was what steered me towards checking it out!

Edited October 26, 2019 by Seraphim88

[Plk_Lesiak]

So, I've been reading a lot of short to very short VNs lately to get back into rhythm after all the RL crap prevented me from reading anything for a while. I decided it'd be fun to summarise my experience a bit, so:

Phenomeno was quite a cool experience and actually a lot more robust than some opinions led me into believing. It's disturbing exactly in that way horror VNs excel in, with vague, creepy visuals and graphic descriptions working in wonderful harmony with unsettling music and sound effects. It has a little bit of that "prologue to a bigger story" feel, but still left me plenty uneasy and plenty satisfied. 7.5/10

Soundless had a lot more artsy vibe to it and got straight-up bizarre by the end, but in general, it was just as good as people made me believe. It'll get a full review from me soon, but I was absolutely captivated with its doujin feel and how interestingly it tackled its main themes – and there's a ton of them, with the primary one being mental illness, but with bullying, scapegoating, religion following close by... Quite easily in the top 10 VNs I've read to date. 8.5/10

40 Days & 40 Nights of Rain is an old, rather highly-rated doujin VN about a soldier in an apocalyptic war who takes into his care a strange orphaned girl. There's a lot of meandering and religious symbolism in it and honestly... It felt quite pretentious to me. Maybe the translation has something to do with it, as it felt very clunky, just as the game's structure (NVL text display can be confusing when done poorly and here I often had to wonder who's saying what). There were some really good moments in it, but with me it definitely failed to achieve the emotional/thought-provoking effect it was aiming for. The visuals were cool I guess, I really like these crude artstyles. 6/10

A Midsummer Day's Resonance, on the other hand, was quite a lovely coming-of-age story with a touch of sci-fi and yuri. It communicated quite a lot with a short story and limited assets, ending on a somewhat sad, but ultimately hopeful note. Kind of a bite-sized nakige. 7/10

The Dandelion Girl is one of those rare literary adaptation VNs... And it's probably a really good way of experiencing this short story. It's something of a sci-fi classic, so I won't spoil anything, just say you should really read it if you haven't already in some form. It's short and sweet, and it's referenced in Clannad, so there are no excuses here. 7.5/10

April was a Fool was quite a surprise to me. It's one of those free EVNs I barely expected anything from, at least beyond being a cool distraction... But it proved to be a lot more. It's a humorous, RPG-themed VN about a barmaid that is randomly picked by a team of famous adventurers to stand in for their recently-deceased companion, as she resembles her physically and they don't want the news of her death to spread. The core story is mostly about how that loss destroyed the team's unity and it's up to the protagonist to learn their backstories and patch things up. The premise is used surprisingly well and the heroes prove quite memorable – it's not a particularly deep experience, but I had a lot more fun with it than I expected.7.5/10

I've also finished the prologue part of Maggot Baits and read a little bit beyond it. Quite a strong start, although the first h-scene made me chuckle a bit with how over-the-top it was, even if one particular description really grossed me out too. The first gore scene feels a little bit like the class rep electrocution at the beginning of euphoria: a signal of how far the game is willing to go and a warning to drop it if you're not ready to see that another 50+ times. I'm not yet engrossed in it quite like I was in the death game parts of euphoria, but on the other hand, I immediately liked the three "good" witches. I'll be reading it in short bursts in the next few weeks, we'll see how quick I can finish it and whether it can change my mixed feelings about clock-up stuff. :]

Edited October 28, 2019 by Plk_Lesiak

[littleshogun]

Finished Kemomusu, and what I can say is that I like although too bad it's quite short. I really want to see the more on casts life, but I guess what we have here is enough. All that's left from there is collect the sex scenes, which surprisingly need a precise choice to unlock. I didn't pay attention to the choice here, because I thought that since this is a kinetic VN choice wouldn't really matter much only to have it wrong.

For the next VN, still don't know yet.

Edited November 2, 2019 by littleshogun

[Seraphim]

Okay, I'm done with Maggot Baits. So was it worth it? It's hard to say, honestly.
I actually thought the underlying story was pretty good once it kicked off, but all that gore and rape is quite offputting and there's so much of it. After having seen it all, I can safely say that there's really no need for it to be as extensive and graphic as it is. At least for me personally, it didn't add any value to the VN whatsoever. It felt like it was there purely for shock factor or for those people who are actually into stuff like that. A lot of the scenes were really long too, and it felt like a pain in the ass reading it all just because I didn't want to risk missing out on any story-related dialogue (which were in some of the scenes).

If you're considering reading Maggot Baits and know you're easily disturbed, you should probably stay away. There's an option to decrease the level of the explicit content, but I don't know how much of a difference it actually makes. I'm pretty sure the dialogue won't be changed much (if at all) and that's plenty disturbing in and of itself.

[Ruberick]

So I finished Hoshizora no Memoria and it was pretty great, all the characters had their unique, mostly interesting plotlines and everyone of them took part in getting the whole picture of this story. It was a bit slow-paced, but that actually felt appropriate for this story. It really felt well thought out and the only complaint I might have would be that there was nothing truly exceptional either story or character wise. 8/10

Since Hoshimemo was slowpaced I thought I could read some short VNs with, hopefully, a quickly advancing storyline that would also quickly come to a close.

So I read How to Raise a Wolf Girl and was actually surprised that I enjoyed it as much as I did. Granted, I didn't have high expectations, but the characters where more nuanced than expected and the story went in a satisfying direction at a satisfying pace. No masterwork but worth a read. 7/10

Then I read Neko Nin Ex Heart 3, mainly because my OCD doesn't allow me to leave any story I started behind... It was okay, completely middle of the road, easy going, lighthearted. A quickly resolved plotline, some more members to the harem, never change a running system. 5/10

Next I started Maggot Baits. I can see it being very polarising. I actually liked it a lot. Unapologetic, violent, obscene, with some deeper messages/plotlines, really rare to read something like this. I think it's the kind of VN someone can appreciate more after reading/watching a ton of different media and just wanting something radically different. That's the kind of stuff you would otherwise only find in the doujinshi market and even there it's very niche. With some budget, glorious artwork and a kicking OST it's elevated to a different level. The writing outside of the sex scenes is pretty concise, it allways feels like the story advances at a good pace. Not for everyone, but I'm a horrible person and I liked it. 8/10

Spoiler

The Monkey House ending overstayed it's welcome a little. I don't mind those scenes, but a long chain of similar scenes was a bit tiresome. I know beastiality and total mindbreak/livestock stuff is a staple of guro, but I could do without, they get a chuckle here or there but mostly go on for longer than I'd like. The gore was manageable, expected worse. Liked the other two endings, they were satisfying in their own ways, they felt like grand events came to their respective end, the true end was more uplifting than I expected, a welcome respite to this VN.

Since I started Maggot Baits I wanted something really lighthearted to read along with it, so I started Amatarasu Riddle Star. This VN was definitely not made for me. The insertion of an Alice in Wonderland kind of world into our world sounds fun in theory, but the execution made it a very unenjoyable endurance test. Most of the time I was just advancing text boxes thinking, "get to the point of this". Funnily enough it ended up being more exhaustive for me than Maggot Baits. 3/10

Spoiler

I can understand that the world is reduced to a chaotic mess where illogical stuff happens, for me it really becomes a problem though if every character that should be from the real world instantly takes a "if you can't beat them, join them" approach and everything is swept under the rug. This creates a plot convenience playhouse, where unrelated events are brought into a random order to create an illusion of progress in the story. What makes this worse is that the problems and events created this way are resolved by approaches that are completely inconsistent. This may be personal opinion, but I just can't stand a story where I can't make out any rules. Even Alice in Wonderland would have the rule of constantly trying to defy expectations, but here characters may or may not act logical to different extents at a whim.

 

Edited October 31, 2019 by Ruberick

[Seraphim]

1 hour ago, Ruberick said:

So I finished Hoshizora no Memoria and it was pretty great

Have they fixed the translation yet? There were a ton of errors when I read it last year.

I actually didn't think Hoshimemo was all that special at that time, but I've found myself appreciating it more and more since then. There's something about it that has made it stick to the back of my mind in a way that not many other VNs have managed, but I can't quite pinpoint the reason for it. In any case, I'll probably reread the entire VN once the fandisc is released.

[Ruberick]

I played the version that was translated by Staircase Subs and it was a bit of a pain to get it running correctly with patches to install in the correct order, a font to install in windows and set in the game. Once all of that was done it was allright, there were a few cases where the text boxes had more text than they could display and you needed to read the last parts from the backlog. Don't know what you have in mind, bad translations? Bad text to text box ratio? Definitely had huge issues with the display from text boxes until I had it set up correctly.

[Seraphim]

Ah, I read the Steam version. It had so many issues (an enormous amount of typos, grammatical errors and even untranslated text), the publisher actually started a retranslation project. Checking VNDb, it seems that new translation was finished just a few months ago. I have no idea how good it is, but I guess I'll find out when I reread the VN.

[adamstan]

27 minutes ago, Seraphim88 said:

Checking VNDb, it seems that new translation was finished just a few months ago.

Unfortunately it wasn't. It's still in progress. This description is copied from previous Steam release (r44996), and it means just that it is different than StaircaseSubs fan-TL (r9721, which reportedly was pretty bad too. At least @Fred the Barber wrote in his review here on Fuwa, that even current official TL, with all its problems, is better - but still bad ). Newest Steam release (r65207) just adds Chinese TL.

Edited October 31, 2019 by adamstan

[Seraphim]

Oh, that's unfortunate. Hopefully, it'll at least be finished by the time Eternal Heart rolls out. (And let's keep our fingers crossed the end result is a good one.)

[Ruberick]

Well, I'm not a native speaker, so I'm not the best person to judge, but not every free flowing conversation has total grammatical accuracy and the translation felt appropriate for me, especially concerning the character interaction. Haven't read a VN without typos yet, didn't reach a critical mass were it would harm my reading experience.

Edited October 31, 2019 by Ruberick

[Seraphim]

15 minutes ago, Ruberick said:

Haven't read a VN without typos yet, didn't reach a critical mass were it would harm my reading experience

The Steam version of Hoshimemo was in a league of its own in that regard. I wouldn't be surprised if the total number of typos exceeded the amount in all other VNs I've read put together. It was plain ridiculous, and also served as solid proof that the localization team really didn't put much effort into their work.

[Jun Inoue]

Starting Under One Wing and Aokana. Go big for the sky or go home, I guess? 

[Dreamysyu]

4 hours ago, Seraphim88 said:

Oh, that's unfortunate. Hopefully, it'll at least be finished by the time Eternal Heart rolls out. (And let's keep our fingers crossed the end result is a good one.)

Well, according to the last Kickstarter update, they encountered some technical difficulties with the patch, so it's still going to take a while before it's finished, sadly.

[Jun Inoue]

Not gonna lie, slightly troubled about how obsessed Under One Wing is with the trope "all men are potential rapists." Particularly when I'm seeing the MC feeling bothered by not being seen as a potential rapist by one of the characters. Like, wut 

[Seraphim]

Nothing a couple of nights in Kajou City couldn't fix. 

[ArgentstR]

On 2019-11-01 at 1:02 AM, Jun Inoue said:

Not gonna lie, slightly troubled about how obsessed Under One Wing is with the trope "all men are potential rapists." Particularly when I'm seeing the MC feeling bothered by not being seen as a potential rapist by one of the characters. Like, wut 

Not being used to so much fuss about gender separation it was kinda weird at first, but by now I've heard those kinda spiels so many times in VNs that it's hard to be bothered by it particularly.
Although "I might accidentally rape you if we are in the same room" is such a ridicilously explosive statment yet no one ever being suprised by it will never cease to be funny.

Edited November 3, 2019 by ArgentstR

[Jun Inoue]

2 hours ago, ArgentstR said:

Not being used to so much fuss about gender separation it was kinda weird at first but, by now I've heard those kinda spiels so many times in VNs that it's hard to be bothered by it particularly.
Although "I might accidentally rape you if we are in the same room" is such a ridicilously explosive statment yet no one ever being suprised by it will never cease to be funny.

Yeah, that's the thing. It is a very typical 'joke', as Japan really likes the sexually transgressive comedy, like how they tend to make female characters harass and feel up each other. What sort of surprised me from the VN is that it used this trope, but then refused to move on. They characters have a full conversation on this and, ending it with the classic "well, nothing should really happen, MC looks like a decent human being", the MC then wonders if they do not perceive him as a potential rapist due to not "seeing him as a man", and that he might grow a complex out of this. I felt a bit confused, seeing how much the MC seems to want to be regarded as a potential rapist, and how he equates man = sexual aggressor. I've seen MCs be ok, indifferent, angry, etc. about this, but it might be the first time I see one feeling inadequate for it.

Edited November 1, 2019 by Jun Inoue

[littleshogun]

Decided to continue with Hibiki's route of Maitetsu here, and let's see what's her route about.

[ChaosRaven]

Finished Nanairo Reincarnation about a week ago or so. Overall, it was a bit of a so so experience with both, strong highs and lows.

Let's start with the strengths of the title, since it certainly has them. The slice of life and comedy parts are for the most part rather well written, and to a lesser degree the nakige parts too, even though there weren't too many of them. Iyo the nerdy zashiki-warashi house spirit in particular was just brilliant. On the one hand she could be absolutely hilarious and shap-tongued, on the other hand she could also switch to a much more serious tone in the blink of an eye. You could even say she was the true master of the house - nobody knows more than she does.

They also got the overall family-feeling of togetherness rather well through with Iyo, Kotori, Aoi and Fuyou being the solid heart of the cast. The nakige parts were also well done, even though there weren't too many of them and most of them related to Kotori, who was without any doubt the main heroine.

Now to the not so good parts of the VN - and unfortunately there weren't just a few of them. First, the handling of the H-scenes was just awful - for the sake of the story I can just suggest to play without the adult patch. Pretty much all the H-scenes related to the demon characters were enforced and unrelated to any routes. The reasoning for those was also pretty silly and more what you'd expect from a nukige. But even story-wise, there would have been plausible reasons to give you a choice, but for reasons unknown you didn't get that. Especially annoying were the scenes for Iris, a sub-loli character that was so obviously just included as pedo-bait. My personal 'highlight' was the scene that could be labeled as 'dangerous pedophile forces 8 - 10 year old girl into sex against her will' - there wasn't even a 'reason' for that scene.

Next problem were the routes. Technically there were four - for Kotori, Iyo, Yumi and Azusa -, but only the one of Kotori really deserved to be called a route (admittedly, I didn't play Iyo's). But the ones of Yumi and Azusa did only bombard you with H-scenes out of the blue, then break up, continue with Kotori's route and reunite with a final H-scene at the end. I've actually no clue why Yumi and Azusa even got a route - they barely qualified as side characters. The characters that should have had routes are Aoi and Fuyou. My only reasonable explanation for this whole route and H-scene mess is that they ran out of time and budget and tried to shoehorn at least the H-scenes in. It's also a bit odd if a heroine gets a better ending in the route of another heroine than in her own.

And that's unfortunately not all - the plot itself also had some glaring issues. Although the VN had a clear focus on slice of life and comedy with some nakige elements, they got the glorious idea to include some grim-dark murder case in the second half, you'd usually expect from Innocent Grey. I'd be totally fine with that if they'd actually commit to that. However, they somehow tried to mix it up with some of their comedy, making the plot sections in the best case ridiculous and in the worst case tasteless. It already says a lot that they didn't even take the effort to draw a sprite for their main antagonist. But naturally, the resources were there for pervert-san - a minor character that was only included for the lulz. The police was also presented as completely retarded and their little spook-shows to scare the antagonist just embarassing. Pretty much only Kotori managed to give that plot-arc some dignity. 'That' scene did hit home - I give them that.

They should have sticked to what they are good at - slice of life, comedy and light drama - and not dabble in Innocent Grey territory. Imho, the 9-nine series got the slice of life and comedy with plot better done.

Heroine ranking: Iyo > Kotori > Fuyou = Kikyou = Aoi > Yumi = Asuza >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Iris

Overall rating: 6.5/10

If they'd focused more on their strengths, they could have easily gotten a 7+ rating from me. But this was just to uneven for that.

Edited November 3, 2019 by ChaosRaven

[Stormwolf]

Sounds like a pretty shit vn tbh :/

[ChaosRaven]

53 minutes ago, Stormwolf said:

Sounds like a pretty shit vn tbh :/

I wouldn't go that far, since it did have some rather well written parts, but it's certainly not a must-read imo.

[littleshogun]

Did try Black Office nukige, and let's just say that the font really need a lot of arrangement because it looks very messy and hard to read.

[adamstan]

On 22.10.2019 at 7:49 AM, adamstan said:

Yesterday I discovered interesting thing. Still cannot be fully sure, 'cause I checked only one part, but it looks like MoeNovel stealthily updated Steam edition of If My Heart Had Wings to match Cruise Sign's main part.

(...)

Also, it seems that they revised the translation a bit. It still isn't great, but for example, there are no longer "eyes" instead of "boobs" in the bath scene

I take that all back

I'm on Ageha's route now, and did some checking - the translation is as bad, as it was, and there are so many mistranslations that it's not even funny... Many lines are translated in a way that completely reverts their meaning, turning the route into incomprehensible gibberish I remember it was before I dropped it

Also, I've been mistaken - the thingy with "eyes" wasn't during bath scene in common route, but at the beginning of Ageha's route, and it's still there.

Spoiler

It happens when Ageha gets all fired up about resurrection of Soaring Club, and Aoi suddenly stares at her chest, while translation says "I found myself suddenly lost in her... eyes"

However, it looks to me like translator didn't do it because of their urge to censor (since word "boobs" appears earlier already), but as a lame attempt at humor.

Edited November 10, 2019 by adamstan

[Ranzo]

Still playing Aokana and now I'm stuck playing through Mashiro's route and damn is this route a fucking choir to play through. Every other girl I've ended up really liking so far but for her I just can't do it.

 

And it is finally over

Overall, it was a truly great vn that had some pretty compelling stories and fucking amazing production values. I mean, the backgrounds, they were sooo detailed!

The routes in order of my enjoyment Misaki>Asuka>Rika> Dead dead last Mashiro

 

Aoi is still the best character out of all of them.

This song really encapsulates the whole vn

 

Edited November 12, 2019 by Ranzo