What are you playing?

[ChaosRaven]

Just started ChronoClock and my first impression is pretty much: Man, the kawaii level is almost off the scale! Pretty much every heroine I've met so far is a must play route - even Miu who is basically the loli. But what do you wanna do - you almost want to carry her around everywhere just to make sure that nothing happens to her. 

I was also surprised about the many background animations, it's an incredibly pretty game on almost every level. The voice acting is also stellar and the story is both funny and interesting so far. Although I should probably keep my enthusiasm a bit more in check since I didn't progress very far yet, I'd still say that this VN has the best chances to get my moege of the year. Though, that'll probably also depend on if MangaGamer manages to release Hapymaher - the other PurpleSoft title - this year or not, since Hapymaher is considered to be even better than Chrono Clock.

The only negative thing I noticed so far was the text font. I mean they chose a white text color... on white background. And the dark edges were hardly enough to decipher the text. Anyway, I managed to get my text almost black now, so it's pretty much a problem of the past. Still I usually vastly prefer a white text color on a darkened text box. No idea why they chose that combination. Well, Dies had similar problems with its dark red text color on dark background where I also had to made some changes first to be able to read anything.

[Nandemonai]

On 7/2/2017 at 3:20 PM, Canicheslayer said:

While I'm still reading (slowly) Air, I'm about to pause Libra of the Vampire Princess (all these stories about major crashes on several routes, seriously scared me...I'll resume it after some fixes). And so I started DS: Dal Segno.

  Reveal hidden contents

Oh my ! I'm already a fan of her craziness

 

She's the main reason I'm actually interested in Dal Segno.  I did recently beat Sonohana New Gen, but I still have six other games I'm working on, so I'm not quite ready to queue up a new one.

I'm still working on Princess Evangile (at least the common route so I can play W Happiness), Chaos;Head, Tokyo Babel, Shadows of Pygmalion, Majikoi (I want to at least finish the common route before deciding whether I want to wait to see if Jast's translation is better), and Gahkthun.

[Deniz]

Finished Comyu.I really enjoyed it a lot.Yes; writing is repetitive, battle sequences are unnecessarily detailed and most of the time protagonist simply makes things worse than before but epic final route and satisfying closure made these flaws trivial.Soundtrack is great.Mostly lovable cast especially Izawa, Itsuki and Kagome.

[LemiusK]

Finishing up the final episode of Umineko Chiru. It's been a long and bumpy ride. This emotional rollercoaster has been exhausting, constantly shifting from happy moments to sudden tension (no thanks to a certain troll of a witch). Still, despite my problems with the jarring shifts in tone, I'm impressed that even in these two final episodes that were deemed "unnecessary" by many Umineko fans, I'm still able to discover some inspiring life lessons. It truly exemplifies Ryukishi07's talent.

Regarding the characters, I'm really not too fond of Ange, even though I could relate with her bitterness and pessimism.

Spoiler

Her stubbornness being the root cause of the conflict for episode 8 is rather contrived and utterly annoying.

I suppose her character did require closure, but I could now see why people were satisfied enough with the tale ending at episode 6. Personally, I would've been satisfied if it had ended at 7 (even though I was a bit sore that the "truth" about Beatrice's actual motive for the murders was still hinted rather than explicitly explained). 8 felt like it dragged the story on just to throw in a happier outcome. I guess I can see why Ange was pissed at such sappiness.

Nevertheless, in spite of all the flaws, this has been a great journey. God, this was one amazing VN, easily ranking up among the likes of Fate/Stay Night and Steins;Gate.

After my trip to Rokkenjima has concluded, it's finally time to begin the juicy parts of the Muv-Luv story...

Edited July 12, 2017 by LemiusK

[Canicheslayer]

Finished the Minagi's route in Air (yes, finally). The route is not perfect (It was fairly good but not as strong as the two others. Maybe a bit too long.) and the H-scene in the Bad End was just...one of the worst I have ever seen However all is forgiven because Minagi is soooooooooo irresistibly cute. A Top 20 Character

[Riku]

7 hours ago, LemiusK said:

Finishing up the final episode of Umineko Chiru. It's been a long and bumpy ride. This emotional rollercoaster has been exhausting, constantly shifting from happy moments to sudden tension (no thanks to a certain troll of a witch). Still, despite my problems with the jarring shifts in tone, I'm impressed that even in these two final episodes that were deemed "unnecessary" by many Umineko fans, I'm still able to discover some inspiring life lessons. It truly exemplifies Ryukishi07's talent.

Regarding the characters, I'm really not too fond of Ange, even though I could relate with her bitterness and pessimism.

  Reveal hidden contents

Her stubbornness being the root cause of the conflict for episode 8 is rather contrived and utterly annoying.

I suppose her character did require closure, but I could now see why people were satisfied enough with the tale ending at episode 6. Personally, I would've been satisfied if it had ended at 7 (even though I was a bit sore that the "truth" about Beatrice's actual motive for the murders was still hinted rather than explicitly explained). 8 felt like it dragged the story on just to throw in a happier outcome. I guess I can see why Ange was pissed at such sappiness.

Nevertheless, in spite of all the flaws, this has been a great journey. God, this was one amazing VN, easily ranking up among the likes of Fate/Stay Night and Steins;Gate.

After my trip to Rokkenjima has concluded, it's finally time to begin the juicy parts of the Muv-Luv story...

Actually just finished Episode 6. Didn't know that people said that about 7 and 8. Oh well, I'll see that when I'll read them.

[Vokoca]

Finished Kasumi's route in Dies Irae. I should probably first say that this is not the first VN by Masada I've read. I've read Senshinkan before, and that left me with pretty mixed feelings on the author. I consider myself a fan of chuuni, and the darker (even edgier) the story is the more I'm likely to enjoy it. As such, I was pretty excited when I read Senshinkan at first - Masada's works put on the airs of extremely edgy chuuni... but unfortunately, that is all they seem to do, as on the core they're nothing more but extremely cliched shounen. I was baffled by the stark contrast between the grimdark text and the "Friendship power!" kind of story in Senshinkan, but I just chalked it up to the main theme, given the main character's disposition towards virtues. I did like the story (there was some impressive layering going on), the (villain) characters, but I did have my doubts with the actual chuuni, getting bored to death with never-ending re-matches.

As such, I was more scared of Dies Irae than excited, really. I did want to read it, but I was worried that it might be exactly what I disliked about Senshinkan - but in the end, curiosity won over, and the hyper-edgy Nazi aesthetic made me pick up the game. And, to put it shortly... I was right to be worried.

The prologue didn't sell me on the VN, in fact, it almost made me drop it. It was full of Masada's flashiness for the sake of flashiness, with action scenes serving no other purpose but to show you how damn cool everything is... only I didn't buy it. When I read chuuni, I want infodumps. I want battles that get their rules laid down and thoroughly explained, and have crazy things happening according to these rules. While Masada does this sometimes (Senshinkan had some scenes like that, albeit not many), the prologue exemplified everything I dislike about his writing of fight scenes. It's like he is trying to convince you how amazing everything is with words alone, without actually giving you any reason to be impressed in the first place. It all comes across as pretty... flat.

Luckily enough, the VN turned around immediately as the actual story started. Crazy pseudo-philosophy dialogues, edgy protagonist with clearly defined character that promised an interesting and entertaining point of view, some nice twists, it was great! And then... then the shounen tournament arc happened. The main character that was supposed to be unique, as the VN and the villains would want you to believe, quickly devolved into an insufferably cliched shounen protagonist. I won't go into any details to avoid spoilers, but the amount of shounen cliches in this route was driving me against the wall. What was even worse was Masada's attempt at being clever and self-aware - but making fun of things like friendship power and relying on it only seconds later doesn't make it any better, it makes it downright obnoxious. The actual chuuni was probably by far the biggest disappointment. The only fight scene that was actually exciting was the very first encounter, after that it just got boring. Masada just sticks to describing cool things for the most part, so there's not much to enjoy about the scenes other than mindlessly going with it - it's not like any of it really matters, because the main character just wins by some bullshit every single time in a true shounen fashion, and to make things even worse almost none of the wins even feel deserved. I get that this is the first route, but watching the main character fall for the same shit over and over and in the end be unable to do anything cool at all in a story about crazy battles isn't fun whatsoever - at least there are better characters than him that make the battle scenes at least somewhat exciting.

Anyway, it's not like I hated the whole thing. I enjoyed the characters (maybe except Ren... and Kasumi, to some extent, even though I wanted to like her), I liked the story that got hinted at (as I mentioned above, the first half of the common route actually got me really hyped, hopefully there is more of that kind of stuff here), and I liked the route ending. At the very least the last battle was pretty cool, and so was the way it turned out. I can only hope that the VN gets better from now on, but so far, I'm not impressed.

 

 

12 hours ago, LemiusK said:

Finishing up the final episode of Umineko Chiru. It's been a long and bumpy ride. This emotional rollercoaster has been exhausting, constantly shifting from happy moments to sudden tension (no thanks to a certain troll of a witch). Still, despite my problems with the jarring shifts in tone, I'm impressed that even in these two final episodes that were deemed "unnecessary" by many Umineko fans, I'm still able to discover some inspiring life lessons. It truly exemplifies Ryukishi07's talent.

There are people who say this? The Umineko "fanbase" really is the worst. Never before have I seen a story where so many people would ignore almost half of it just to make themselves feel smart via pathetic theory-crafting that just picks the convenient parts and dismisses the rest. It's even sadder that this is happening to Umineko of all things, considering its subject matter. I'm glad you were able to get something out of these two episodes; after all, Umineko is trying to get across a message, and the last two episodes are crucial for that. Any "fans" looking on it strictly as a mystery story are not only doing the story huge disservice, but probably can't read at all in the first place.

[Albedo]

24 minutes ago, Vokoca said:

I can only hope that the VN gets better from now on, but so far, I'm not impressed.

 

 

So, I'm also playing Dies Irae (except that I'm about to start the final route) and while it does get better, the shounen crap never goes away. Nor does the remedial high-school level philosobabble, sadly.

[ChaosRaven]

1 hour ago, Vokoca said:

It was full of Masada's flashiness for the sake of flashiness, with action scenes serving no other purpose but to show you how damn cool everything is... only I didn't buy it. When I read chuuni, I want infodumps. I want battles that get their rules laid down and thoroughly explained, and have crazy things happening according to these rules. While Masada does this sometimes (Senshinkan had some scenes like that, albeit not many), the prologue exemplified everything I dislike about his writing of fight scenes. It's like he is trying to convince you how amazing everything is with words alone, without actually giving you any reason to be impressed in the first place. It all comes across as pretty... flat.

Yeah, I had a very similar impression that the VN and its battles in particular are suffering a lot from 'style over substance' syndrome. And I think you nailed one problem of them with your statement about the 'rules'. Although the recent Chusingura I played didn't have as flashy battle sequences as Dies, I enjoyed them overall much more since I could follow them much better. I simply knew what was going on and what tactic one character was using to counter the other due to the somewhat clearer sword fighting rules. The fights were more focused, faster and the characters more concentrated and did less trash talking.

Dies uses an almost a contrary approach with lots of trash talking and unusual weapons like a guillotine arm where its harder to imagine how the battles are supposed to work. Not sure if I can criticise the VN for that since pretty much what makes it 'chuuni' I guess. Though I can definitely say that I like the former less chuuni and more 'substance over style' classical sword fights more.

Still, I don't want to make my usual mistake and judge the VN too soon. I currently stalled it for a while until I get motivated again, but if I pick it up again I'll try to finish 1 - 2 routes first before making a final judgement.

 

Anyway, meanwhile in Chrono Clock...

Seems like green is the new blue this year. 

Edited July 12, 2017 by ChaosRaven

[Fred the Barber]

3 hours ago, ChaosRaven said:

Anyway, meanwhile in Chrono Clock...

Seems like green is the new blue this year. 

Hahaha, that's a great one. I can completely understand how they could make that mistake at a language level, but when you're actually playing the game, damn, those eyes are definitely green. I feel like I need to make a list of these sorts of problems for QC people to look at, because for translators and editors, it's basically impossible to catch all occurrences of this flavor of mistake...

[littleshogun]

3 hours ago, ChaosRaven said:

Seems like green is the new blue this year. 

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.

[ChaosRaven]

12 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.

Interesting, I didn't know that. I wonder if the original Japanese writer is some kind of traditionalist and wanted to call the eye color 'aoi' or if it was just a simple mistake. Not sure it the translator is to blame here, since it's not really his job to fix logical mistakes or plot holes of the original. 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.

[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).