What are you playing?

[Decay]

28 minutes ago, ChaosRaven said:

Though, if 'aoi' can really mean green and blue in Japanese I wonder what a translator would be supposed to do if there aren't any images present to figure out what's really mean. Roll a dice? Guess it's probably left to the creative freedom of the translator.

Look at a picture of the character, of which there are many?

This isn't really as complex of an issue as you're making it out to be. It's just a silly mistake and the text should read "green."

Edited July 13, 2017 by Decay

[ChaosRaven]

11 minutes ago, Decay said:

Look at a picture of the character, of which there are many?

I meant if it would be a translation for a book. Naturally, if it's a VN you can just check out the images.

[Decay]

Sorry, I somehow thought we were still talking about CC here. I shouldn't post immediately after waking up...

[ChaosRaven]

6 minutes ago, Decay said:

Sorry, I somehow thought we were still talking about CC here. I shouldn't post immediately after waking up...

lol, I know that feeling. 

BTW, I think I remember some translators posting an image of their workplace, and I think they did use a word processor for translating the extracted scripts. So they probably don't see the actual images of a VN when translating, which would make it quite hard to find such a little bugger.

[Fred the Barber]

23 hours ago, littleshogun said:

Well, if I may defend Chrono Clock translation the old people in Japan called green as blue because of cultural reason. But otherwise it was a mistake indeed because the translation was too literal, and I'd already watched two Japanese LPs to knew that the text was indeed said 'aoi' in the original language (Not 'midori'). Either way, I didn't remember too much about the mistranslation in the first place.

That's what I was referring to when I said it was a completely understandable mistake at a language level.

Perception of color and language are actually fascinatingly intertwined topics. Refer to this lovely wikipedia article for a lot of background, but even more interestingly, this article asserts that the vast majority of humans didn't even perceive blue as a distinct color until modern times. I also remember reading an article a few years ago (though I couldn't dig it up now) where some guy who was fascinated by this carefully never taught his child that the sky was blue, and then, when the child was still pretty young, the guy asked his kid what color the sky was, which netted the answer "Gray, I guess?"

Bottom line: our brains are weird.

Edited July 14, 2017 by Fred the Barber

[kyrt]

I currently before summer had begun had started Utawarerumono 2, Dies irae, 3 routes left of Everlasting Summer, 2 routes left of Chrono Clock, 2 routes left Hatsukoi 1/1, 1 route left of noble works, 2 routes left of Koirizo, 2 routes left of Da Capo III, and pretty much none of Princess Evangile and Labyrinth of Grisaia. I was hoping to read a ton this summer unfortunately I have been getting distracted by the Fire Emblem series and as such I've made little work through any of them. 

[littleshogun]

I see, guess I learned something new in regard of color perception there.

Anyway, few days ago I'd decided to read some Tsujidou (Partially patched of course) and it was quite funny. It was sort of interesting seeing that the infamous delinquent was easily defeated by love, although it was quite common story though apparently (I didn't mean it was bad though). As for MC, well he's weak and not as smart as Yamato. His trait was the kind guy, so much that he able to speak with delinquents normally while usually people would be too scared to talk with delinquent. Looking forward to the final release here.

PS - As for the translation, I see no problem with that so I would say it was quite good and readable. Although perhaps you'll better find out about the translation quality by yourself though if I may suggest.

Edited July 26, 2017 by littleshogun

[akaritan]

Long time no see! 

Having finished all of Kasumi's route and some of Kei's route of Dies Irae, I think I might drop it. It's certainly not a bad VN all in all, I think. The characters, story, and music are all pretty good... but I also don't necessarily feel that they're any more than that, and that's certainly not enough to drag me through another 20-30 hours of this. The thing is, I wasn't really invested in anything by the end of Kasumi's route, and especially given the length, that isn't a good thing. I'm honestly sort of bored with the VN and looking back on everything, it's failed to elicit even the slightest emotional response from me... Again, it is a solidly produced VN, and I don't even necessarily feel like it's particularly poorly done story, but it feels very style over substance... I'm sorry this is such a rambling mess, it's very late where I am.  But if anyone thinks that I should keep going with it, I'd be happy to listen. And likewise, if anyone thinks that dropping it is the right choice, do say so, because I'm sort of on the fence right now.

I also might pick up Chrono Clock. The girls look cute and I've heard good things, so I might as well give it a shot. It's been a long time since I've played a moege because I dislike 90 percent of them, but there's always a chance that it's part of the 10 percent, right? 

[kilicool64]

Kasumi's route is pretty much universally agreed to be the worst part of Dies irae. I wouldn't drop the whole VN at this point unless its general tone doesn't appeal to you. I've only read Kasumi's and and Kei's routes so far, but the latter was already a significant improvement in that it had a much stronger finale (except for the ending).

[akaritan]

I played Dies Irae and reached the climax of Kei's route today. I feel the need to reiterate that it's by no means a bad VN, but it's not great enough for me to want to put another 30-40 hours into it. So I'm probably going to go and play Chrono Clock next. It's a shame that I was in the middle of like three VNs when the reading club for it started, ahaha. As a palette cleanser, I read Love at First Sight. It's certainly nothing particularly special, but it's really cute and it doesn't overstay its welcome. The art style is also really striking. Contrary to what you'd expect for this sort of story, the art is sort of dark and almost bleary, but it works really well. The main heroine is especially adorable and the side characters played their role well enough. My only complaint is that I really hate the "bully character who has no personality apart from being a bully" trope, but that wasn't really enough to break the VN for me. I wouldn't necessarily strongly recommend it, but I don't regret playing it at all.

Spoiler

Seriously though, just look at her. <3

 

Edited July 16, 2017 by akaritan

[Canicheslayer]

Still reading Air. Finished Summer route. (Spoiler alert)

Spoiler

I Almost fell in love with Uraha. What a fantastic character ! She's cute, smart, funny, mischievous... (and her seiyuu, Inoue Kikuko, is a great plus) After Minagi and Misuzu, it's the third Air Character in my Top 50 "Best VN Girl"

Another great moment. Even with the perfectible route of Minagi, my current rating of Air would be 8 or 8,5 

Edit 18/07 : Finished Air

Spoiler

Air Route is a beautiful continuation of Misuzu's. The first part is a bit repetitive (when you relive the previous events from Sora's point of view). Nevertheless It is always very interesting. My only regret : in my opinion, Hisakawa Aya's (Haruko's seiyuu) performance is...over the top.

As I anticipated, my definitive rating is 8,5 (the conclusion left me puzzled, mystified...but I'm a bit masochist...I like this feeling ) : the casting is absolutely fantastic (lovely heroines, memorable protagonist, marvellous side characters) and they took all the positive points of Kanon plus many improvements (except some parts of Minagi's route, the story and the writing are excellent). Now I'm ready for Little Busters PE ! Gao ! Gao !

Edited July 18, 2017 by Canicheslayer
FINISHED !!!

[Turnip Sensei]

Spent the last weekend playing Utawarerumono: Mask of Deception and what fun that was. 

It's a story roughly split in two halves, beginning being introduction to the setting and the characters and the latter half where "shit gets real", so to say. Both are very good in what they are set out to do, and it's one the big reasons why I found the game so engaging. The first half is pretty much slice-of-life and comedy with few missions in between. But man how good the slice-of-life is. Even though there's lots (and lots) of it the individual scenes themselves are really well paced and pretty much never drag too long. It feels like the writers had quite specific plans on how long a scene should take and what it should contain, and it shows. The scenes are snappy, fun and a joy to read. Time just flies reading different stuff about avoiding work, boozing, food (the amount of effort put in to the imaginary food culture is astounding), more boozing, silly comedy and the like. You get to know the cast really well and by the time the story starts to really get going I was totally rooting for everyone. This in turn made the dramatic events that more satisfying and eventual climax more meaningful. Somewhat to my surprise Utaware2 turned out to be one the most solidly written VNs I've read in a while. It's not like it's the "best VN ever", just really good and it manages to accomplish exactly what it wants to, something I can really appreciate.

And while pretty much all of the cast is great, the "main characters", Haku and Kuon deserve some extra attention. The game literally starts with Haku, the hero, being saved by the "heroine" Kuon and being wholly helpless without her. This kind of little unusual relationships continues farther in the game with Kuon being very active and also pursuing her own goals, while Haku is more easy-going and mostly trying to find his own peace and place in the world. Not to mention Haku's mysterious charm of a good-for-nothing man. 

A very big part of the enjoyment also comes from the quality of the translation. There's only so much good script can do with mediocre translation, but luckily Utaware's translation is top notch. In fact, my favorite of all the things I've read in while. Sorry Dies Distinct character voices full of personality! Colorful vocabulary! Consistency! It's awesome! It's great!

I guess it should be mentioned that Utaware2 is very much a prequel quite like Trails in the Sky FC, so the enjoyment may vary depending how tolerant you are to that kind of open endings. I personally didn't mind since Mask of Deception is very satisfying on it's own right while setting up for something even bigger. And if nothing else, going by what this game has to offer the sequel, Mask of Truth, has potential for being "BEST SHIT EVER(TM)"-tier of experience. (September couldn't come any faster...)  

The combat system is pretty cool too, the game looks fantastic, music is great, the setting is super interesting and fleshed out (the in-game glossary is tons of fun) and so on... There's so much good stuff in this game. If this is what happens when good developer makes "mainstream" VNs with good budget, then I want more. 

Edited July 18, 2017 by Turnip Sensei

[littleshogun]

Playing Shining Star Supernova demo, and it's just look like normal idol anime in which the producer solved (Or at least involved) in heroines problem, albeit bit darker. As for the voice, looks like it's just very few lines recorded which is understandable considering that they use Japanese voice actresses (ie seiyuu) instead English one. For last comment here, I thought that Mr. Producer (Our MC) here would be just like Atsuya from Dal Segno (Faceless), but turn out he had face and quite handsome at that (I gave credit to the developer for drawing the producer's face).

[Deniz]

Finished Hatsune route of Cartagra.It was a pleasant read.Good mystery with nice comic relief from Nana and overall interesting characters.Now i'm hyped for true route.

[Ramaladni]

On 7/18/2017 at 7:08 PM, Turnip Sensei said:

Spent the last weekend playing Utawarerumono: Mask of Deception and what fun that was. 

Would you say it was worth the money you spent it? I really like Uta but it's a tad on the expensive side.

[Turnip Sensei]

13 hours ago, Ramaladni said:

Would you say it was worth the money you spent it? I really like Uta but it's a tad on the expensive side.

For me, it was totally worth it. 30 hours of really solid story and amazing characters. And I can imagine it being even better if you are really fond of original Uta. I've only seen the anime, so it's not like I didn't get the nice throwbacks and connections, but the kind of attachment to the cast of the Uta1 that comes from personally experiencing the characters through reading and gameplay wasn't there for me.
That said, if you end up buying Mask of Deception I can almost guarantee you'll be dying to buy the sequel to that too, so maybe waiting and seeing if it goes on sale just before or little after the release of Mask of Truth is not bad idea either.   

[littleshogun]

As for the topic, I finished Supernova demo and it was quite dragged down near the end. The reason was because there's some scenes that the idols were being optimistic before their first debut, sudden Mood Whipslash for all of them, suddenly recover, and even at the stage the idols were trying to keep they inner negative thought away before finally ready to sing. Granted it was fitting with what would be called 'The story of fragile idols' or something like that, but still. In the end, it's all successed and the idols (With the group name Starnova) was about to take their first flight.

As for my impression, quite interesting that this VN was paint some realistic look in regard of idol industry although I won't expect much from that though, because it's just like most of idol anime like Idolmaster or Love Live that we get to see one idol got their own episode. As for the heroines, no much to comment here other than Nemu whose sometimes did had a little too much fun for teasing her teammate and the reader as well. For the music, I couldn't confirm it fully but I suspected that it was taken from Sunrider which sometimes could be quite out of place imo. Other than that, no comment for now although once again I wouldn't expect much though for the full release.

[HotTrax]

Da Capo III - I got in a few hours in but I doubt I'll continue. It is just too bland.
Aokana Extra 1 - It was fun for what it was. I prefer Misaki though, so exited for her's. 
Setsuei - Everyone kinda sucks and it goes a bit off the rail during some parts but in ways I can totally get behind. 

[wolfrayet]

50 minutes ago, HotTrax said:

Da Capo III - I got in a few hours in but I doubt I'll continue. It is just too bland.

I actually just finished Da Capo (the first), and after looking at the myriad sequels, alternative versions, rereleases, side stories, etc. I was thinking about diving in and playing through a bunch of them. I kind of enjoyed DC's mixture of vanilla blandness punctuated by insane supernatural contrivances, and it seems that isn't unique to the first game. Anyone have opinions on the Da Capo series as a whole and whether they're worth playing in sequence?

Edited July 25, 2017 by wolfrayet

[Mr Poltroon]

13 minutes ago, wolfrayet said:

I actually just finished Da Capo (the first), and after looking at the myriad sequels, alternative versions, rereleases, side stories, etc. I was thinking about diving in and playing through a bunch of them. I kind of enjoyed DC's mixture of vanilla blandness punctuated by insane supernatural contrivances, and it seems that isn't unique to the first game. Anyone have opinions on the Da Capo series as a whole and whether they're worth playing in sequence?

I can only talk about the numbered titles, Da Capo II and Da Capo III.

The former seems to be, by all accounts, the best they have done with the entire series. There's still plenty of vanilla blandness and still plenty of insanity. The main difference is that it is not quite as bland because they managed to create a cast of characters that all play off each other pretty nicely.

The same cannot be said for Da Capo III. While the cast is still numerous, they aren't together quite as much and they get relatively few moments to shine altogether. It also moves away from the... semi-normal setting the previous two games had, so while the setting is somewhat interesting... not too much is done to make good use of it. I haven't finished it, though, so I don't know how many insane twists and turns it may or may not hold.

[Not_At_All]

People talking about Utawarerumono makes me a little sad. Is there a chance that parts 2 and 3 will someday come to PC? Loved the first one and would love to play some more RPG/VN hybrids that are any good. 

 

On topic: I played Edelweiss this weekend and wasn't too impressed. Horrible translation might have something to do with it, but I didn't find anything interesting about it outside the fact that it had a teacher's route.

Eiden Fantasia had much better translation and I liked Sakura's route, but Rin's route was just retarded.

[Toranth]

13 hours ago, HotTrax said:

Setsuei - Everyone kinda sucks and it goes a bit off the rail during some parts but in ways I can totally get behind. 

Yay, Setsuei!  One of my favorite VNs.  I hope you're playing the prettier original version, rather than the generic meoblob remake.  Actually, I'm just happy someone is playing it - I really hope you play it through the end, as I think it's entirely worth it.

[DharmaFreedom]

  So for the last couple of weekends i'm been reading Dal Segno, well trying to get through it at least. I'm on Himari's route and I guess the best part about the route is the flirtatious banter between the Atsuya and her. It feels very 'real', its the kind of silly happy conversations you have with your own partners in real life, the teasing and trying to one up each other playfully. 

  The story though..., there is simply no hook in it for me, nothing to motivate me to put more time into it. There's not much happening and when that happens, it starts feeling a bit empty. I'll read it for 15 minutes then do something else instead. Since I have the game, I feel compelled to finish it before moving on to the next Vn, so I'll have to power through it when I have the time .

  Anyway, maybe the story with bloom towards the end or something. I think i'm about 3/4's of the way through Himari's route, so I'm hoping it'll get better or its just her route and the others routes are actually much better! 

[BookwormOtaku]

Playing Dies Irae and have started playing Kei's route...honestly kind of disappointed so far. The intro for a certain new character was really well done and it seemed things were setting up to get real and then...it seems to be following the same track as Kasumi's route, heck I've already run into a design pet peeve of mine with some VNs: where the dialogue for a scene is 99% the same as  before with that 1% being new dialogue but because of that small bit the skip function doesn't work for that scene

Also playing Princess Evangile and working on beating Chiho's route...and I couldn't help but laugh at how the route contradicts itself writing-wise in its plot set up:

Spoiler

So Masaya's main worry is his father's somehow going to get into the school and cause trouble, which is why he's leaving the school so everyone will be safe...but in a later scene it shows how hard getting as much as a message into the school is. Not to mention the game has already made it clear the school has a number of so far pretty efficient security staff which I'm sure can handle a bum with a knife.

On a side note, hey Chiho's father's VA is the same VA for Felzen from the KF series.

[BookwormOtaku]

Okay, pretty much finished Chiho's route in PE and...I can see why this one got so much flack. I don't consider it a bad route, but it has some serious structure problems, from the plot punting of a certain major event to the Sports Festival to the fact that we still had two more chapters to read after the route's climax; the conflict for that just not being as interesting or exciting as before. Now moving on to Ritsuko's route, the route everyone seemed to like, and I really hope I'm not disappointed.

 

On a side note, does anyone else wish Chapter 24's conflict with a certain character had ended like this?

Spoiler

 

Come to think it, if you consider the events of Part 7: Steel Ball Run, Masaya randomly having a stand might actually make a little sense