ittaku Posted November 11, 2018 Share Posted November 11, 2018 Currently playing Sara Sara Sasara https://vndb.org/v1361 Usual fare from Atelier Kaguya Berkshire Yorkshire. Not too challenging story, lovely characters, consistently spread out H scenes that are plentiful. No bad endings. All good clean(?) fun. So far I've finished 2 of the 3 heroines, saving the best for last, though maybe romancing the goddess may have been the best route. There's also the secret box which has extra H scenes for each heroine, though only one for each this time unlike Prima Stella. There's also a Prisara fandisk which has H scene crossovers from both Prima Stella and Sara which I'm looking forward to. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Larxe1 Posted November 16, 2018 Share Posted November 16, 2018 Finished playing Tiny Dungeon Black and White. It felt like reading a good fantasy/harem light novel. Those kind of novels always had an overpowered MC and a cast that goes deredere on the MC with laughable reasons but Tiny Dungeon did better than that and gave credible reasons for the girls to like Hime. Even if Hime really existed, I would want to have been his friend. Feels good seeing people who never give up get rewarded. It then exceeded my expectations near the end. I didn't expect the tragedies that follow since well, it's pretty light-hearted, I expected it to be light. Also my first chuunige in the untranslated novels, it's quite easy to understand. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chronopolis Posted February 6, 2019 Share Posted February 6, 2019 (edited) Playing 果てしなく青い、この空の下で (vndb). I got interested when I saw it on a 2ch top 100 VN's list (youtube). It starts out with the MC living in a small countryside village in the recent past (1990's perhaps). The MC and mere 5 other students of the village school find out that this year will be their last. Hints of modernization are present, urged on by a tycoon scoundrel Doujima who seeks to take over the village. But as the MC spends time and gets to know some of his female schoolmates a bit better, he can't help but think they have a connection to the supernatural occurrences he starts experiencing. Art direction is more realistic, sort of like Kara no Shoujo. All the heroines have black hair(!). There's lots of little sfx, and periods without music. The CG feels a bit underwhelming because of the art style having few details. But it doesn't feel like the developers cut any corners. The sprite variations are expressive and the background CG blends well. Voice acting is fitting for the characters, is quite good. If I have to say, the story is not really moe. There is some moe appeal in there, but the heriones are quite... hard to approach. They have their own way of thinking, and often defy or baffle the protagonist. That and the VN can be a bit heavy. Not a relaxing or happy VN, instead a bit contemplative and unsettling. I would say it is similar but in many ways better than Kizuato (vndb), and compared to Higurashi it is much more subdued (no comedy, less edgyness). Would recommend if you want some interesting older work with decent plot. PS: speaking of no comedy, it reminds me of Sakura no Mori Dreamers which I played a while back. Full length action/horror with no comedy to lighten the mood. It was so stifling I dropped it. Edited February 6, 2019 by Chronopolis kivandopulus and Turnip Sensei 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kivandopulus Posted February 9, 2019 Share Posted February 9, 2019 On 2/6/2019 at 12:57 PM, Chronopolis said: PS: speaking of no comedy, it reminds me of Sakura no Mori Dreamers which I played a while back. Full length action/horror with no comedy to lighten the mood. It was so stifling I dropped it. Which one did you drop? I did not have enough courage to play old-fashioned Aozora myself, so I greatly appreciate any positive/negative feedback on the game like the fact of drop and reason for it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chronopolis Posted February 10, 2019 Share Posted February 10, 2019 On 2/9/2019 at 10:09 AM, kivandopulus said: Which one did you drop? I did not have enough courage to play old-fashioned Aozora myself, so I greatly appreciate any positive/negative feedback on the game like the fact of drop and reason for it. The VN I dropped was Sakura no Mori Dreamers (just played the common route). For Aozora I played 3/5 routes and am planning to finish it. The game has some pretty depressing events. On some routes, you get hints of what happens to the other heroines, and its usually not happy. You should really play it if you are curious. Fumino is best girl. kivandopulus 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
adamstan Posted February 15, 2019 Share Posted February 15, 2019 I just finished Hanahira! as my first attempt at reading VN in Japanese (not counting few paragraphs from Sanoba). Well, it's very short sweet SoL, but I had fun reading it. The language is simple, but it is full of contractions, that sometimes were difficult for beginner like me to get, and of course they also often cannot be found in dictionaries But I managed somehow. 7/10 Now I think I'll try ToHeart PSE. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ChaosRaven Posted February 17, 2019 Share Posted February 17, 2019 (edited) So, I finally finished Shin Koihime † Musou - Kakumei ~Son Go no Ketsumyaku~ after literally months of reading. To be frank, this VN really brought me to my limits of my Japanese reading capabilities. It wasn't just freaking long, it also had a huge number of names, places, dynasties and some awkward old language style. With about 80 characters who didn't have just first and last name but also a 'true name', I had to deal with over 200 names over the course of the game. Add to that frequent discussions about political situations and developments during the Three Kingdoms period of China, and you get a real challenge for a foreign reader with some linguistic half knowledge in Japanese and a machine translator. In short, it was pretty exhausting at times. If I should sum up the VN in a few works, then I'd say it's overall a good Koihime VN but a weak remake because it barely addresses the weaknesses of the original Shin Koihime. The story can be roughly split up in three arcs, the Yenren arc when the mother of Sheren, Renfa and Shaoren is still the leader of the Go faction, then the Sheren arc when she succeeds Yenren, and finally the Renfa arc when she's the leader. The Yenren arc deals mostly with the early conflict of the Go faction with Huang Zu. This arc predates the events in the original Shin Koihime. It was overall well written, with Kazuto getting accepted into the Go faction as a celestial messenger. Yenren had a good mother-daughter conflict with Sheren running and there weren't too many characters yet, keeping everything more personal. At that time several key members either were absent or didn't even join yet. Renfa then joins after a while with Shaoren. Ironically the first meeting of Kazuto and Renfa didn't go that well with Renfa being all suspicious about him. They then come together when they try to convince Shishun to join the Go faction. This was a particularly well written part because Kazuto really gets active here and does something together with Renfa without the whole Go clan being present. The end of the Yenren are was rather dramatic and comparable to the Sheren incident in Shin Kohime. The Sheren arc deals mainly with the Go faction getting independent from the child ruler Miu (aka Yuan Shu). They also temporarily join forces with Gi, Shoku under the leadership of Yuan Shao (aka Yuan Shao) against the Tou empire. The relationship between Miu and Sheren was also pretty interesting since they didn't get along at all. Miu was also by far the best loli character because she was a somewhat believable character since child rulers weren't uncommon in that time. She also managed to be totally cute and adorable, while still being royally arrogant and sometimes even shockingly ruthless, not shying away from underhanded murder. A nice thing was also that they tried to get Kazuto a bit more personally involved in combat actions. Though a problem of the arc was that it got more and more crowded after a while, with too much time spent following different factions and events and characters joining the Go faction that contributed little to nothing in any sense *cough* Pao and Ashe *cough*. But overall the Sheren arc was still decent, since Sheren had a good chemistry with Kazuto and was a most excellent lead character, being a driving force for the whole Go faction. The transition to the Renfa arc was unfortunately much weaker than in Shin Kohime and as dramatic as a Mallorca vacation. I question the decision to take over this plot development anyway, since we already got that dramatic impact with Yenren without loosing the most important character. This story arc had several problems. On the one hand, Renfa couldn't replace Sheren at all, and while this was partly an understandable and believable consequence of Renfa being young, naive and a much more ladylike character than her natural born leadertype sister, the story simply lost a lot of steam because of it. Kazuto also reverted to a much more passive role and was hardly noticable anymore. In addition the VN started to get lost in moe blobbing because they wanted to showcase too many characters and events. Many conflicts also seemed to be just been made for another battle, which isn't such a great idea if the battle system itself is just a tagged on mini game. The whole conflict against the Shoku faction in particular was an absolute snore fest. Fortunately, it got better again against the Gi faction. Still, Renfa never really had the impact she should have as one of the most essential characters of the Go faction. In general, they missed the opportunity to make Kazuto a character with some impact - again - despite some improvements at the beginning. The story would have been almost the same without him. Having a too big character cast is also a problem which is almost unique to the Koihime series. They missed the chance to get rid of some unnecessary characters or at least degrade them to minor support characters. There was also too much moe blobbing and too many side events with barely any impact on the main story like the events in the royal court around Kūtan (aka emperor Ling). But overall, despite its flaws the main story arcs were still decent. Unfortunately, the same can't be said about the heroine side stories. The VN didn't just recycle lots of music and character sprites from previous games, they also recycled parts of the heroine side stories. Considering, that those were the weakest parts of Shin Koihime, this was already a very questionable decision. But another problem was the pacing. The whole side story concept still originates from the first Koihime Musou, where it worked because characters were added over the whole time of the VN. So you didn't get too many side stories at once and they were also rather well paced with the main story. The same can't be said at all for Kakumei though. You already start with lots of characters, forcing you to almost stall the main story, to dig through too many side stories at once. But since the Go faction is complete after a while, nothing new comes anymore. So in the first half I got far too many side stories and in the second half I was pretty much finished with the ones I was interested in. The plot development of the side stories was also often not in line with the main story. Another problem was their not exactly overwhelming quality that reminded me frequently of bad fan fiction. The VN has about 130 CG's - which is huge - but only about 25 for the main story. Sounds great for the side stories though, since they got over a hundred. Well, too bad they had the glorious idea to EVENLY distribute them between all heroine routes. And we are talking here about 16 (!!!) heroines. That results in about ~6 CG's for each heroine - the industry standard for main heroines is about 2 - 3 times as much. That makes BaseSon probably the only eroge company that doesn't seem to understand the concept of main and side heroines. They even went so far to bundle Renfa and Shishun in one route, because they were too lazy to write one for each of them. So Renfa, the most popular Go character wasn't worth her own route while Pao, one of the most worthless and unnecessary characters in VN history got her own route and even more CG's. I think it's mute to say that something went seriously wrong here. Due to the low CG count, several routes also appeared oddly stretched like Meirin's for example. And Kazuto only being an advisor and not the faction leader like in the first Kohime, made the whole mega harem concept questionable here anyway. Audio part was pretty good though, thanks to Go's theme music always having been good. Not sure if all tracks were recycled though. The best ones were still the old ones though. Visual part was so so. It's nice to have Kohime Musou in higher resolution and most background and event CGs were good. But the best character designs still date back to the first Koihime, while most of the newer additions are questionable. Huang Zu was a walking freak show, Raika was a well written character but she was certainly not pretty and Pao was just meh. H-scenes were also below average. Considering this was one of the main strengths of the original Koihime, this isn't good. Especially for a VN with a huge cast of oversexualized heroines, that make it almost impossible to take it serious as a story VN. Overall, I enjoyed the VN mainly for its main story, while the heroine routes were mostly disappointing. I still appreciate the VN for its scope - its one of the rare VN's with an epic story and a really interesting historic setting. But it definitely suffers from a strong quantity over quality problem. I also think the creators should think about where they want to go with the series. If they want to go fan service - this isn't good enough. If they want to go serious, they should stop the moe blobbing, tone down the oversexualized heroines and get a more proactive protagonist. A good inspiration for that is ChuSingura. Favorite characters: Sheren > Renfa > Yenren > Merin > Sai > Miu > Suirei > Minmei > Raika > Rian > Shishun > Ashe >>> Non > Pao Overall rating: 7.5/10 If this would have been my first Kohime title, I might have even given an 8+ rating. But for a somewhat weak remake I don't think such a high rating is warranted. Hmm, besides that I've been digging through some Atelier Kaguya and Anim titles to balance out my all ages VN's lol. Nothing really worth mentioning though. But I really hope to get Haruru Minamo ni! finished soon which I stalled last year for a while. Edited February 17, 2019 by ChaosRaven Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Riku Posted March 26, 2019 Share Posted March 26, 2019 (edited) Didn't play VNs in a while, so decided that March would be my VN month. Kin'iro Loveriche + FD Don't think it's good enough to be VN of the year, but I did enjoy it. Mainly the characters, loved all of them, but particulary Reina and Ria for their interactions with Ouro (and I love characters who talk like that) I really liked the principle of "showing off", it's pretty relatable. Anyway, not amazing, but enjoyable VN (+FD) Suisei Ginka Kinda disappointed. It's not bad, just didn't really find it good. Hikari no Umi no Apeiria + FD Biggest suprise. Loved it. End is half-baked so it fall short being perfect (well, I guess it wouldn't even if the end was better) but still loved it. It's been a while something made me so into it I lost many hours of sleep. Fd was kinda meh because I wasn't interested in the two heroines, but still had nice scenes. (and it's the first time I saw a true love triangle, where each character actually love each other, and not just the guy. Here each one love the other two) Tojita Sekai no Tori Colony Utterly disappointed. It has some good moments, but it felt like a big waste of time. Thought I'd have the time before going to uni, but I'm already late, so even if I basically didn't write much, this will do. Edited March 26, 2019 by Riku Fred the Barber 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
adamstan Posted March 26, 2019 Share Posted March 26, 2019 (edited) I'm halfway through ToHeart PSE, (I've been posting my impressions of each route in general "What are you playing?" thread). So far it's nice - of course not anything mindblowing, but well, just nice ancient moege Edited March 26, 2019 by adamstan Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Riku Posted April 3, 2019 Share Posted April 3, 2019 (edited) So, finally read Harumade, Kururu. Man, what a disappointment. I had really high expectations because of all the praises, so it adds to the disappointment. Though the comedy is kinda fine, pacing is terrible and characters are meh, so it's kind of a pain to even reach the few good parts of the VN, which contrary to all the praises, are really few (the interesting science talk is like 1/5 of the entire thing). The only real good part was Akio's for me, because it's the only character I kinda really liked, and the mystery ambiance was nice. So yeah, even if most people say that Natsukumo Yururu is better than this one (notably the pacing), I'm really not in the mood the read it now, so will have to wait. By the way, despite my ranting, I'd say it's overall still not a bad VN, and if you like the characters it'll make it better, so I'd still kinda recommend it. Now I'm not in the mood for VNs anymore, so guess it's time to read some LNs. Edited April 3, 2019 by Riku Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fred the Barber Posted April 3, 2019 Share Posted April 3, 2019 For my first serious foray into reading untranslated stuff, I've been reading Koi-Kakeru Shin-Ai Kanojo for the past week or so. I've frankly been surprised at what an easy time I'm having getting through it; apparently years of osmosis through editing and the occasional grammar reading helped more than I realized. I like most of the heroines, though maybe not the main one, tbh, and I'm looking forward to seeing whatever ending the true route has that's made so many people angry over the years. The foreshadowing is interesting, and the first big hint at deeper problems lying under the surface immediately after they (finally) show the OP video set a pretty promising hook. The humor is great, and the writing is enjoyable even when the main character goes off on monologues talking about the definition of literature. The longest one of those so far brought back fond memories of a similar scene from Majo Koi—and it's almost shocking how many shared themes, topics, and just little quirks there are between the two. I guess Niijima Yuu really writes about Niijima Yuu-ish things. After this, I suppose I'll have to read HatsuSaku or Summer Pockets... though at this point I find it hard to imagine Niijima Yuu writing about any season but spring, so I imagine I'll find both of them a little odd. The music is nothing short of phenomenal. Mizutsuki Ryou has my undying devotion. My favorite track is probably Ayane's song, but honestly, all the music is so good that I get excited every time the BGM changes and I get to hear yet another beautiful song that I've somehow already grown nostalgic for. ChaosRaven, adamstan and Veshurik 2 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ChaosRaven Posted July 7, 2019 Share Posted July 7, 2019 (edited) So I've finally finished Harumina, my first VN from Clochette. I had already started this last year, but then came Hapymaher along and then Shin Koihime Musou Kakumei, and the latter burned me so out from reading Japanese due to its length that I needed a bt of a break from it for a while. But I picked Harumina up again a while ago and finally finished it last week. Overall, this was a very well written moege with pretty high production values. The sprite dynamics are easily on a level with Yuzusoft, so it's not surprising that it's so popular in Japan. I chose this title over the other Clochette titles because it was drawn by Shintaro instead of their usual artist Oshiki Hitoshi. While their character designs are very similar, the ones from Oshiki Hitoshi have too large eyes for my taste. Shintaro's feel more balanced. What makes Harumina stand out amongst other moeges is that they shake up the traditional school life formula with a pretty entertaining setting about Japanese Shinto deities. The protagonist Tatsuki itself is a priest of a local Shinto shrine in Tamatsue and his sister Miori its mountain deity. There's currently no sea deity although the village needs one and so they get a new rookie deity Kanau. Unfortuantely she's pretty inexperienced and so Tatsuki and his sister give her a hand and take over her education. But that's just the beginning of course. They are soon joined by all kinds of other deities, some benevolent others malevolent: Mei the spirited thunder deity, lesser tanuki deities of fortune and misfortune, wrathful storm gods and more. The story isn't too deep but entertaining and the characters are very charming. It felt a bit like a modern and improved version of Shuffle with a bigger focus on Japanese Shinto lore. I've read the routes of all heroines except Miori who was a bit too loli for me. That's not to say she would have been a bad heroine. She was actually a pretty strong character. As experienced mountain deity she was quite the Yoda type. Kanau and Mei were also deities, while Kasumi could be called a 'sleeper'. Only Ema was just your 'normal' child hood friend. It's a shame that Tangiku the tomboyish mermaid didn't get a route, she was one of my favorite characters. And Sachiko and Yoriko there would have been lots of fan disc potential. Too bad that Clochette doesn't make fan discs, I would have really liked one for this VN. The common route had the strongest story parts, while the heroine routes focused more on slice of life and romance. Fortunately, the H-scenes were also rather well integrated into the plot which certainly isn't a given nowadays. Though the protagonist could have been a bit more involved in the action, he was a bit too passive for my taste. Heroine ranking: Mei = (Tangiku) > Kanau = Kasumi > Ema = (Sachiho) > Miori = (Yoriko) Overall rating: 7.5 / 10 (Could have even gotten an 8 with a more proactive protagonist) I guess this will probably be my moege of the year if nothing unexpected happens. Besides Harumina I've also played some more Atelier Kaguya titles, mostly their two premium teams Bare & Bunny and Honky-Tonk Pumpkin. Honky-Tonk's Yoppy feels a bit stagnant with his art even if the animation is still top-notch. I think Onee-san Sensei had less animated scenes like Kajuu 100% which fells like a step back. Bare & Bunny's choco chip has certainly improved his art quality, even if I think he had his peak with Shigokare. Nee-chan no Susume was better than Love×Holic but the tendency to endlessly stretch out the time until you finally get your girl is still very annoying. I think I still like Namaiki most from Bare & Bunny, even if it's not one of their top rated VN's. I also tried Guildmaster from Astronauts Sirius which was probably the most buggy mess I've ever seen, even considering Jast standards. I guess their transition to Unity didn't go as well as expected. But I also found gameplay and art quality below their usual standard. It's certainly by far the worst title they've ever released. The 6.5 rating on VNDB is almost flattering, on EGS it's even sitting on a 40%. I dropped it pretty soon - what a disappointment after the well received Hyakki Ryouran no Yakata! Next on my list is Niizuma Lovely x Cation and hopefully finally Reminiscence which is sitting on my harddisc for almost an eternity now. Edited July 7, 2019 by ChaosRaven Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ittaku Posted August 5, 2019 Share Posted August 5, 2019 Playing Akatsuki no Goei. Can't complain as it's been fun so far. adamstan 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dergonu Posted August 5, 2019 Share Posted August 5, 2019 Or right, this thread exists. Let's help it stay alive ( ゚Д゚)/ Been playing Tetsu to Ra recently. I really like it. It has this really oldschool feel to it, despite being fairly new. It's like they designed the whole UI and what not with the intent of making it look like games from the early 2000's. Story wise I find it very enjoyable. I was expecting a nukige ish game, but it actually uses a lot of time setting up the protagonist and his motives, as well as the world and the other characters around him. Heck, so far I have been reading for hours, and have only seen a few H-scenes. I went into the game with somewhat low expectations based on a review I read, but quickly found that I strongly disagree with that review. The game is great so far, and it only keeps getting better in my opinion. Looking forward to reading more. Just need to finish up moving so I have more time to read, bleh. Will try to write my own review of it once I finish. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
koichi Posted August 5, 2019 Share Posted August 5, 2019 just finished shukusei no girlfriend 3. with this, all shukusei series is finished and i have to say i enjoyed it . the best part about this series if i have to say is the heroine which make the game itself is fun to play, while the story itself is quite mild but enjoyable especially if one is a charage lover (don't expect something emotional, this is rather a light-themed story). the pacing of story is fast, so it almost doesn't waste anything, and the ending itself is satisfying. Now my short impression for each series : Shukusei 1: (My Rating:8) Yuuri (the series 1st heroine) is the best and cute, yeah. She (in my experience) is the type of heroine that is rarely encountered. i dare say she is the best heroine among the others in the series. Rather than the story, Yuuri character herself is the one that made the game fun to play. Shukusei 2:(My Rating:7.3) for this one, the story development and the heroine, maya (2nd heroine), is rather straight, so it's a bit lacking compared with Shukusei 1. Rather recommended for one that prefer straight romance and heroine Shukusei 3:(My Rating:8) When it came to the story, i have to say it beats the other 2, although chara wise, kanoko (the 3rd heroine) is better than maya, but still not on yuuri level. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chronopolis Posted August 7, 2019 Share Posted August 7, 2019 (edited) On 8/5/2019 at 6:15 AM, koichi said: Yuuri (the series 1st heroine) is the best and cute, yeah. She (in my experience) is the type of heroine that is rarely encountered. i dare say she is the best heroine among the others in the series. Rather than the story, Yuuri character herself is the one that made the game fun to play. What was so rare about Yuuri as a herione? The series looks really light-hearted, I like the OP's. Grats on finishing it. Edited August 7, 2019 by Chronopolis Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
koichi Posted August 7, 2019 Share Posted August 7, 2019 (edited) 8 hours ago, Chronopolis said: What was so rare about Yuuri as a herione? The series looks really light-hearted, I like the OP's. Grats on finishing it. This is my analysis about yuuri personality (sorry if it's a bit lacking): In the school, she acts like a refined girl , but in reality she is a prideful girl with a positive personality and easily get carried away. Being gifted with beauty and talent, and how she is quite famous in school, this make her overconfident and always acts rather arrogant, seeing herself as an existence that above others (even comparing herself to Zeus). Due to this, she always tries to take lead over others. She is shown to be quite lazy, to the point she makes Kanako to do cooking and cleaning for her (which Kanako complies happily). Despite so, she also hide her insecurities through this attitude. She dislike boring things and prefer to live her life full of excitement. the main part of her personality, being positive, arrogant and overconfident remains the same for the rest of story, although after going out and fall in love with the protagonist, she developed a dere side has become more attached to him (even more as the story progresses) and try to be more independent for him. as far as i know, yes , as far as i know (i said this 2x because it's important), arrogant type heroine tend to cast away this part of them when they fall in love with protagonist, but yuuri is not. well, i recommend to try to play at least 1 hour and you will find her personality and interaction with protagonist to be quite fun. unless you are not fan of charage and light-hearted story, this one is not for you. Edited August 7, 2019 by koichi Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stormwolf Posted August 7, 2019 Share Posted August 7, 2019 On 7/7/2019 at 10:01 PM, ChaosRaven said: So I've finally finished Harumina, my first VN from Clochette. I had already started this last year, but then came Hapymaher along and then Shin Koihime Musou Kakumei, and the latter burned me so out from reading Japanese due to its length that I needed a bt of a break from it for a while. But I picked Harumina up again a while ago and finally finished it last week. Overall, this was a very well written moege with pretty high production values. The sprite dynamics are easily on a level with Yuzusoft, so it's not surprising that it's so popular in Japan. I chose this title over the other Clochette titles because it was drawn by Shintaro instead of their usual artist Oshiki Hitoshi. While their character designs are very similar, the ones from Oshiki Hitoshi have too large eyes for my taste. Shintaro's feel more balanced. What makes Harumina stand out amongst other moeges is that they shake up the traditional school life formula with a pretty entertaining setting about Japanese Shinto deities. The protagonist Tatsuki itself is a priest of a local Shinto shrine in Tamatsue and his sister Miori its mountain deity. There's currently no sea deity although the village needs one and so they get a new rookie deity Kanau. Unfortuantely she's pretty inexperienced and so Tatsuki and his sister give her a hand and take over her education. But that's just the beginning of course. They are soon joined by all kinds of other deities, some benevolent others malevolent: Mei the spirited thunder deity, lesser tanuki deities of fortune and misfortune, wrathful storm gods and more. The story isn't too deep but entertaining and the characters are very charming. It felt a bit like a modern and improved version of Shuffle with a bigger focus on Japanese Shinto lore. I've read the routes of all heroines except Miori who was a bit too loli for me. That's not to say she would have been a bad heroine. She was actually a pretty strong character. As experienced mountain deity she was quite the Yoda type. Kanau and Mei were also deities, while Kasumi could be called a 'sleeper'. Only Ema was just your 'normal' child hood friend. It's a shame that Tangiku the tomboyish mermaid didn't get a route, she was one of my favorite characters. And Sachiko and Yoriko there would have been lots of fan disc potential. Too bad that Clochette doesn't make fan discs, I would have really liked one for this VN. The common route had the strongest story parts, while the heroine routes focused more on slice of life and romance. Fortunately, the H-scenes were also rather well integrated into the plot which certainly isn't a given nowadays. Though the protagonist could have been a bit more involved in the action, he was a bit too passive for my taste. Heroine ranking: Mei = (Tangiku) > Kanau = Kasumi > Ema = (Sachiho) > Miori = (Yoriko) Overall rating: 7.5 / 10 (Could have even gotten an 8 with a more proactive protagonist) I guess this will probably be my moege of the year if nothing unexpected happens. Besides Harumina I've also played some more Atelier Kaguya titles, mostly their two premium teams Bare & Bunny and Honky-Tonk Pumpkin. Honky-Tonk's Yoppy feels a bit stagnant with his art even if the animation is still top-notch. I think Onee-san Sensei had less animated scenes like Kajuu 100% which fells like a step back. Bare & Bunny's choco chip has certainly improved his art quality, even if I think he had his peak with Shigokare. Nee-chan no Susume was better than Love×Holic but the tendency to endlessly stretch out the time until you finally get your girl is still very annoying. I think I still like Namaiki most from Bare & Bunny, even if it's not one of their top rated VN's. I also tried Guildmaster from Astronauts Sirius which was probably the most buggy mess I've ever seen, even considering Jast standards. I guess their transition to Unity didn't go as well as expected. But I also found gameplay and art quality below their usual standard. It's certainly by far the worst title they've ever released. The 6.5 rating on VNDB is almost flattering, on EGS it's even sitting on a 40%. I dropped it pretty soon - what a disappointment after the well received Hyakki Ryouran no Yakata! Next on my list is Niizuma Lovely x Cation and hopefully finally Reminiscence which is sitting on my harddisc for almost an eternity now. Was this written by the guy who was said to be terrible at ending his stories? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ChaosRaven Posted August 8, 2019 Share Posted August 8, 2019 (edited) 8 hours ago, Stormwolf said: Was this written by the guy who was said to be terrible at ending his stories? Harumina actually had four writers. I'm no expert about writers, but the only one I heard who is a bit infamous for his story ends is Kinugasa Shougo - the story writer of Akatsuki no Goei. And that one isn't part of the writer team here. Edited August 8, 2019 by ChaosRaven Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stormwolf Posted August 8, 2019 Share Posted August 8, 2019 5 hours ago, ChaosRaven said: Harumina actually had four writers. I'm no expert about writers, but the only one I heard who is a bit infamous for his story ends is Kinugasa Shougo - the story writer of Akatsuki no Goei. And that one isn't part of the writer team here. That was the vn i was thinking of. Think i made the post in the wrong thread or something Haven't even heard of Harumina. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
onorub Posted January 12, 2020 Share Posted January 12, 2020 ~necro necro yay~ Finished Muramasa and it made it to my top ten, making it my favorite non-collab nitroplus VN and easily my favorite unstranslated VN. Ichijo route was a masterpiece while Kanae and True routes felt like slightly better versions of what i usually see in nitroplus, except with amazing endings (in true route case, it was more like an amazing epilogue). My biggest complaint by far is that the final battle in the true route tried too hard to be epic and ended up looking like something from Demonbane (considering the tone of the story up to that point, that's not a compliment). Overall, i actually kinda disagree with the people going crazy and using superlatives about Muramasa because i felt like it wasn't the best at anything, but it was great at so many things that it became a classic among VNs. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Riku Posted May 17, 2020 Share Posted May 17, 2020 (edited) Welp, wasn't planning to at first, but kinda wanted to write something to sort my thoughts, so decided to write about what I read in the past year. Main problem is most are from months ago and only a few are recent, so will just write a line or two. (thank god I mostly read LNs this past year, so it'll be quick) Hikoukigumo no Mukougawa: Eiri's route was great, and I remember being greatly satisfied by her ending. Sengoku † Koihime ~Otome Kenran ☆ Sengoku Emaki~: Took me two whole weeks to read, iirc. Was totally worth it. Heroine wa Tomodachi Desu ka? Koibito Desu ka? Soretomo Tomefure Desu ka?: That one was kinda weird in the sense that it was actually pretty great (character interactions, etc) considering the setting. Unfortunately I hated the way it ended. Everything was great, then sudden all the girls became sluts wanting to be the MC's slave. So it went from great moments and humor to characters only thinking about sex and nothing else. Was really disappointed as until it went in that direction it was really good. Otome ga Tsumugu Koi no Canvas: Honestly I don't remember much. Read it to taste the water with trap MCs, but found it pretty average. Ou no Mimi ni wa Todokanai!: Can be summed up in one word: AXL. Not amazing, but never boring and pretty entertaining like all their works. Houkago no Futekikakusha: Man, I hated this one. I tried liking it because it's from Takehaya, but couldn't. Too many things I couldn't agree with. I could understand some people liking it, but overall I would never recommend it to anyone. Ryakudatsusha no In'en + Ryuukishi Bloody † Saga: First one is despair, and second one is MC obtaining his happiness. Wasn't amazing or anything, but if you played the prequel seeing the MC becoming happy is really nice. Evolimit: I've been wanting to play this one for a loooong time because of Clephas, and I have to say I was pretty disappointed. It's good, yeah, I can't deny that and I, myself, thought it was good. Just that I was pretty much into Shizuku from the start, so most of the time was just me wanting to be done with the other routes, and when I actually got to it it was different from what I expected. I can't count the number of times I let the VN run in the background for hours while doing something else instead. So basically, even if I think it was good, I couldn't get invested emotionally so it ended up being kinda meh, I guess. Astraythem: And here come the reason of this post. Let's get this out of the way first, it has a lot of flaws, plot holes and things I really can't agree with. But in the end, it comes out on top of all the ones above to me. Why? Because I was really invested emotionally in this one. The fact that this basically is a whole VN dedicated to a single heroine (who is really great) helped with that. I like MC devoted to a single heroine, and this one take it to another level.「姉さんに恋をして、姉さんも恋をして、姉さんと恋をした」 Unfortunately, like I said at first, it has flaws and things I really couldn't agree with, and some were explained in the very first post of this thread, so I didn't give it that high of a rating, but in the end I still really liked it and I'll probably remember about it for a while. (don't think I'll ever reread it, though. Can't really say it have a good replay value) While I'm here, to answer the question in the post 5 years ago (though I guess @Funnerific forgot since then, but oh well): Spoiler You probably forgot since then, but in chapter 3 Doc realized that when two people time travel at the same time at the same point, they fuse together. So basically, Epilogue Tsukumo is the fusion of the MC of chapter 1 and 2 as well as the Tsukumo of this world. They made it happen by sending this world Tsukumo 5 days in the future at the same time as 1999 Tsukumo arrived in the future, making them fuse. Natsuki, on her end, got to know the truth about everything from Doc's mouth, so she knows about Tsukumo and Onii-chan (got the letter too) and can know accept being with Tsukumo as he's the one for whom she started having feeling for in the world, as well as the Tsukumo she waited for years. Anyway, what I wanted to say is, while I honestly think Evolimit's plot was better, in the end I prefered Astraythem. No matter how "good" something is, if you can't get invested in it, something "less good" might actually be better, no matter how flawed it is. In the end, everything comes down to the reader's feelings. Edited May 21, 2020 by Riku Chronopolis 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Funnerific Posted May 18, 2020 Author Share Posted May 18, 2020 13 hours ago, Riku said: Astraythem: And here come the reason of this post. Let's get this out of the way first, it has a lot of flaws, plot holes and things I really can't agree with. But in the end, it comes out on top of all the ones above to me. Why? Because I was really invested emotionally in this one. The fact that this basically is a whole VN dedicated to a single heroine (who is really great) helped with that. I like MC devoted to a single heroine, and this one take it to another level.「姉さんに恋をして、姉さんも恋をして、姉さんと恋をした」 Unfortunately, like I said at first, it has flaws and things I really couldn't agree with, and some were explained in the very first post of this thread, so I didn't give it that high of a rating, but in the end I still really liked it and I'll probably remember about it for a while. (don't think I'll ever reread it, though. Can't really say it have a good replay value) While I'm here, to answer the question in the post 5 years ago (though I guess @Funnerific forgot since then, but oh well): Reveal hidden contents You probably forgot since then, but in chapter 3 Doc realized that when two people time travel at the same time at the same point, they fuse together. So basically, Epilogue Tsukumo is the fusion of the MC of chapter 1 and 2 as well as the Tsukumo of this world. They made it happen by sending this world Tsukumo 5 days in the future at the same time as 1999 Tsukumo arrived in the future, making them fuse. Natsuki, on her end, got to know the truth about everything from Doc's mouth, so she knows about Tsukumo and Onii-chan (got the letter too) and can know accept being with Tsukumo as he's the one for whom she started having feeling for in the world, as well as the Tsukumo she waited for years. Appreciate the explanation. I was new to Japanese at the time so I probably missed it. This sure is late though wow. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Riku Posted November 7, 2020 Share Posted November 7, 2020 Didn't play a VN in months, and what's better than restarting with the monster that is ChuSinGura 46+1? lol Anyway, it was great and my opinion doesn't really differ from most people. Chapters 1 and 2 are amazing, 3 is great, 4 is good and 5 is meh until it finally picks up (which was around the end for me). Aside from chapter 5 where I stopped playing here and there because it was meh, I played the other four without stopping (well, not literally, but you get it) As for the heroines, I'm really influenced by the story, so of course I liked Kuranosuke, Yasubei and Chikara more than Emoshichi. Quite liked Shinpachi too, so hyped for her route in Bushi no Kodou. (as well as her own FD) On the more technical side, I was really surprised by how easy it was to read. Of course, it has some difficult old stuff here and there, but overall it was pretty easy and thanks to that it only took me 75 hours to read, which I find rather honorable considering the average Japanese reader is around 50 hours. Now, time to read Bushi no Kodou. ChaosRaven 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Riku Posted November 11, 2020 Share Posted November 11, 2020 Finished yesterday and skimmed through Shinpachi Love Nagaya FD today. Was pretty good and a really worthwhile FD. However, the endings killed me inside. Same for Shinpachi's if route. Pretty simple, but after all you went through, simple is actually nice. But the ending makes you die inside again. There is Love Nagaya, and it's cute, but it kinda leaves a bad taste knowing she's the only one to get this treatment, as well as, you know, her route means that... Anyway, my original intention was to play Miburo after that, but now I'm not that keen to do that. Anyone having played Bushi no Kodou would understand why. The Shinsengumi doesn't really leaves a great impression here. Add to that their story is basically a tragedy and the MC is useless (from what I heard. Poor guy is being compared to Suguha who went through amazing character growth) So, yeah, probably won't play it this year, unless someone convinces me to. To conclude, really passed a great time on this story. It has humor, amazing action scenes and emotional scenes. Diffinitely going to replay one day. Now the question is, should I go back to Light/Web Novels, or continue with some VNs. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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