November 2017

I delayed this one so I could get fun2novel's input on Yurameku Kokoro ni Michita Sekai de, Kimi no Yume to Yokubou wa Kanau ka (As he put it, this game is boring as hell and spends way too much time implying things without actually doing anything).  While November had some surprisingly great leases (Kizuna Kirameku being primary amongst those), Aoi Tori was the only conceivable winner for the VN of the Month, November 2017.

December 2017

You might think me a bit premature, naming a winner before I played Koi ni, Kanmi or Natural Vacation... but I'll be straight with you when I state that the latter, from the samples I played, is nowhere near the quality of the main two candidates for the month (Miburo and Loveriche).  The latter... I'm just not interested in (yet another sweets shop charage... why are there so many of those, especially on VNs simultaneously released in English and Japanese?).  It was a straight-out competition between Miburo and Loveriche this time around.  I briefly considered disqualifying Miburo, on the grounds that it is a sequel, but it can stand on its own nicely without being propped up by its predecessors, so I went ahead and considered it.  Loveriche, for all that it isn't the best Saga Planets game (that's a competition between Flowlove and Hatsuyuki), is still one of the better games released this year.

In the end, I concluded that Bakumatsu Jinchuu Houkoku Resshiden Miburo was the stronger release, if only by a hair.  Akane as a heroine and the lack of Ayaka as a heroine were the two negative elements that pushed Loveriche below Miburo after the foreshadowing issue and Miburo's historical infodumping cancelled one another out.  So is decided the December 2017 VN of the Month.