How hard is it to buy downloadable VNs from Japanese sites?

[shadowolf64]

With the release of Koiken Otome I have been looking at the link under the Fuwa blog for buying it. Up until now I have been sticking to VNs released officially in English or resorting to other means to acquire them but I would like to support the developers so I'm looking at buying them from Japan. indo not want to deal with importing and having a bunch of physical copies. So I only really want to get download versions. 

My question is how easy is this? Does it depend on the game? The site for Koiken Otome seemed to be Western friendly and mostly in English so that was a good sign but I wasn't sure how the conversion of yen to dollars would work. Do most banks do this automatically or would I have to get a prepaid card with yen or something like that? 

Any advice or experiences you have had buying digital from Japan would be appreciated. 

[Narcosis]

Very easy, when you know what to do.

[Fiddle]

Bear in mind that the downloadable version of a game sometimes has a different technical makeup from the retail version. Thus, the English patch may or may not work with the downloadable version. You might want to contact the group about that.

[Nosebleed]

It depends on the retailer the developer uses.

Generally speaking, dmm and dlsite are fairly foreign friendly, so you shouldn't be too worried (except for the part Fiddle mentioned) but other sites might require some extra steps. 

[Dergonu]

Another site that works fine for us foreigners is Gyutto, though the whole site is in Japanese. I made a guide a bit back on how to buy games there:

 

[shadowolf64]

6 hours ago, Fiddle said:

Bear in mind that the downloadable version of a game sometimes has a different technical makeup from the retail version. Thus, the English patch may or may not work with the downloadable version. You might want to contact the group about that.

Wow that is something I never thought of before. Interesting guess I'll have to make sure the patch works on the download version somehow then. 

[Deep Blue]

be aware that most of the vns have drm (limits of installs, online check, intrusive software to run the vn, etc) 
buying is fairly easy most of the time, just check the derg's guide, 99% of the sites work in the same way.

edit: site tested by me that work without proxy or anything:

dlsite, getchu and gyutto, you can pretty much buy any vn there.

[Xavier12]

You can also buy physicals from some international shops like amiami or just take some proxy shippers to buy from wherever you want.