Jump to content

VN of the Month October 2009 - Soukou Akki Muramasa


kivandopulus

1895 views

Soukou Akki Muramasa is VN of the month. Among other masterpieces is Steins;Gate and Coμ - Kuroi Ryuu to Yasashii Oukoku. Of course I'm playing the Nitroplus one. Micchi considers this month to be the best in the year for bringing such sugary titles as Mashiroiro Symphony and My Girlfriend is the President.

1. Sora o Tobu, 7tsu Me no Mahou. 空を飛ぶ、7つ目の魔法。 [091002] La'cryma
d41870f688b1a40bf6e8c0c29eccbb3f4c780b6b68041d21f7e4f1599a103405.jpg
Soramitsu's After Story. More MoeMoe, more ecchi, more slapstick, and new characters!
I wonder why it's called a sequel rather than fandisc since it's definitely in the fandisc range.

 

2. Steins;Gate [091015] 5pb. Games 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
steins-gate-3.png
"The universe has a beginning, but it has no end. —Infinite.
Stars, too, have their own beginnings, but are by their own power destroyed. —Finite.
History teaches that those who hold wisdom are often the most foolish.
The fish in the sea know not the land. If they too hold wisdom, they too will be destroyed.
It is more ridiculous for man to exceed light speed than for fish to live ashore.
This may also be called God's final warning to those who rebel."
The story of Steins;Gate takes place in Akihabara, and is about a group of friends who have customized their microwave into a device that can send text messages to the past. As they perform different experiments, an organization named SERN who has been doing their own research on time travel tracks them down. The characters must now find a way to avoid being captured by them.
Game is localized and has English reviews.

 

3. Coμ - Kuroi Ryuu to Yasashii Oukoku -コミュ - 黒い竜と優しい王国 - [091022] Akatsuki Works 1 2 3 4 5 6
63b4309b2d83e87e96e49710378f4564128f5c1cf8afb6823a0b5dd6583bdc73.png
"We are a team. No, a community..."
Legends tell of a mysterious woman known only as "Girl A", who makes herself known to special individuals in a certain city and sings all throughout the night. One such night, Akihito meets four strangers as if guided by her beautiful voice...
There are no feelings of friendship nor any trust between the five individuals, yet they are able to control a huge monster -- a steel black dragon -- by combining their wills and cooperating with one another. Now, on the night they obtain this power, their extraordinary life begins...
Akihito later learns that a terrible price comes with the use of this power: If the monster should be destroyed, their "community" shall disappear along with it...
Five strangers brought together by destiny, they decide to enter the secret world of the "Coμnet" with the help of Kagome, a black witch...
Game is localized and has English reviews.

 

4. Hachimitsu Otome Blossomdays ハチミツ乙女blossomdays [091023] Lupinus
6c3f74d6cba9a69e28f8aa105688d2b43e6bb5cdca7208def549937781806297.png
There is a beautiful town in the country. Kyosuke is back to his hometown for the first time in ten years and starts living with Mizuki and Yuki, his old friends. He lives a peaceful school life there surrounded by them and other classmates, Rin and Konami...
Since I'm in love with you, I can't say "I love you"... The girls try to approach Kyosuke, but they can't make it... Well, what will happen to them in the end...?
Moege with Konami route being decent and the rest pretty much trash due to subsidiary writers.

 

5. Love Delation! らぶでれーしょん! [091023] Smee
017799dbf8504f0dfda7f6a60c0dfabfd368317e6cb0027dd8efaf5af2934f28.jpg
The protagonist arrives back to this hometown. His new school used to be a girls' school, so the ratio of male students to female students is 1 to 9. "Yes, it's a happy school life!!" On his first day at school, he happily opens a door of the classroom... But there are only male students...
As a matter of fact, all male students are in the same class, and not a single girl there... But don't give up. Once he goes out of the classroom, there will be a paradise... "I'll live a happy school life!"
Charage with eccentric comedy. Upon entering someone's route other heroines just disappear, and it's disappointing. Game's mostly about flirt, so as usual need to like girl's personality. Harem route is very weak.

 

6. Sekirei ~Mirai Kara no Okurimono~セキレイ ~未来からのおくりもの~ [091029] Alchemist
ss20.jpg
The game takes place in the Sekirei timeline, being played as a visual novel. Minato and the Sekirei in Izumo Inn encounter new characters consisting of Sekirei No. 54, Kuruse, Sekirei No. 57, Yahan, Ashikabi Reiji Koya and a baby referred to as Aka-chan. It centers around the discovery of the said baby, who is being pursued by unknown persons after Minato and the Sekirei found her abandoned in the city.
Anime spin-off

 

7. Taishou Yakyuu Musume. ~Otome-tachi no Seishun Nikki~ 大正野球娘。~乙女達乃青春日記~ [091029] 5pb. Games
hqdefault.jpg
Koume is a girls' high school student. One day, Akiko, her close friend, suddenly says to Koume, "I would like you to play baseball with me!" Koume accepts her offer, but can they collect nine players? What do they need first? How about the rules? Will they be able to win against a boys' team...?
Anime spin-off

 

8. Kiss to Maou to Darjeeling キスと魔王と紅茶 [091030] Marmalade 1 
c683cc395a33dba4afd28050ff4345d050341bd74a36174abb839d7e12b786c6.png
Similar to the 7 school mysteries, there is a legend that there exists a maou who will appear when the flowers change color. Keiichi is approached by the school council president Sarasa, who kisses him on the lips. She declares him to be the maou and will serve him.
There is an English review.

 

9. Maikuro ~Ore ga Watashi de Boku ga Atashi de~ マイくろ~オレガワタシデボクガアタシデ~ [091030] Abelia
55878f5d89c2e1616961a41517840c83022ce3fdc44613e1e7375fd9bf6b10ab.png
The male protagonist, Kunieda Yuuma, lives a happy school life with his friends. One day, Yuuma says, "It would be fun if our bodies were suddenly swapped." Almost immediately, there is something wrong with their bodies.... Oh, their bodies are actually swapped! Who did it? What will happen to their school life...?
Unlike most body swap titles this one tries to be serious and deals with delicate themes such as bullying, mental disorder and sexual problems. But emotional depiction is thin and perfection level is low, so it just does not nourish the mind for the most part.

 

10. Mashiro Iro Symphony ましろ色シンフォニー [091030] Palette 1 2 3 4 5 6
53e304f507de6ada2fb22d284f6c91d3a410eceadd0c25e68e054b27c2df9071.png
The Kagami Academy sent Uryuu Shingo and his sister Uryuu Sakuno as part of a planned merger with an all-girls school, Yuijo Academy. Shingo, Sakuno, his best friend Mukunashi Hayata, and more of his friends from the same school temporarily transfer to Yuijo until they officially consolidate. But on their first day at Yuijo, the principal's daughter, Sena Airi, announces that she will never agree to the merger. And the students are not hospitable to the male guests!
Shingo, Hayata, and the others have to work hard...
There are English reviews. Played it after reading 11/10 Joyjason review and hated it immensely because of high expectations.

 

11. Osananajimi wa Daitouryou: My Girlfriend is the President. 幼なじみは大統領 My girlfriend is the PRESIDENT. [091030] ALcot 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
11ae5714004771059ce85c37542175a93244d47ad5c41a956ea00a9f0002c067.png
It started out as an ordinary morning, woken up by my childhood friend. Had a good breakfast… complete with morning hard-ons. An ordinary, everyday eroge scene. Or… so it seemed. Things would never be the same from that day, as peaceful everyday life was blown to bits.
An accident on a spaceship heading to earth, causes it to crash into the office of the Prime Minister of Japan. The ministers end up in a state too horrible to look at. To avoid chaos, the alien choses a girl who happened to be there, and to make ends meet, brainwashed all of mankind.
Nippon adopts a presidential system overnight, and incredibly, a girl, my childhood friend, is the president. The world will answer to her every whim.
Game is localized and has English reviews.

 

12. Sakura Tale  さくらテイル [091030] Fizz
46e028d7b607904e456ce6b7cb0260c982c363781283d3f292fb6b42323b69fd.png
Masamune has just started his school life, but he soon gets involved in a recruiting battle by sports clubs. What saves him is a girl in strange clothing. He is attracted to her, but he meets another girl who looks totally different a few days later.
Light and darkness. He meets his childhood friend at the school dormitory, but she has completely changed.
"Masamune. I'm glad I could save you."
New season. New school. New friends. The story takes place at a school gently watched by a big cherry tree.
A romantic comedy charage with futuristic detailed setting and only couple decent routes. We even participate in a small revolution here! Routes done by subsidiary writers feel rather plain.

 

13. Skyprythem [091030] Armonica
fa9674b8f948423f4bfd37a7acdb164a2fc660c5317795290396d2eb250c33ed.jpg
Kazuki has just entered the school. After an entrance ceremony, his classroom teacher tells the class, "We are going to have the same wing." Same wing.... This means every classmate works together for the same goal. Yes, they are gonna compose a song which will be played at the school music festival. Each student has to find a partner and compose a song together. It is called the "Feather Partner". Though there are various girls at school, who will Kazuki choose as his partner?
For a musical themed game it lacks actual songs. Scenes are short and constantly abrupted with consequent warping to next one since the period is half a year. Too many immature elements stocked up.

 

14. Soukou Akki Muramasa 装甲悪鬼村正 [091030] Nitroplus 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
6e279d1cdecf8eeb9d971e46913ff4c061442f06b3a4944c4ad5b2c34573b6a3.jpg
In the first half of 20th century, Rokuhara Shogunate rules Japan with an iron fist of robotic suits of armor called Tsurugi, while the West wants to turn Japan into another military base. A policeman called Kageaki Minato arrives into a city of Kamakura to solve various different cases involving Tsurugi users (or Mushas), and when all other means are proven useless, defeats them with a skillful use of his own Tsurugi, the bloody red Muramasa. But he doesn't do that out of justice. He only wants to atone for his past sins and to defeat the most powerful Musha, one known as the Silver Star.
“The devil I shall meet, the devil I shall cut. The saint I shall meet, the saint I shall cut.”
This is the phrase that Kageaki says when fusing with Muramasa, and this is the phrase that tells both his past and his future…
"Good and evil balance out each other."
"This is not a hero's story. Those who aspire to become heroes are not needed."
There are English reviews, but I need to play it myself. Naturally.

 

15. Trouble@Vampire! ~Ano Ko wa Ore no Goshujin-sama~ とらぶる@ヴァンパイア!~あの娘は俺のご主人さま~ [091030] Luxury
a9eea6313f11abf12527f95ca563bfd9041945cc05169edf8f273c82885d16bb.png
Ritsu is a new teacher at a prestigious ‘classical’ all-girls school. One day, he saves his students by protecting them from some magic, but ended up getting severely hurt. When he woke up, he saw a girl named Shion, who actually is a vampire. She called him her servant since she had bit him to save him from death after he had lost too much blood.
Romance grows through interaction with students, so development is mostly sober despite unhuman heroines like vampires and werewolves. This setting is hardly utilized as normal humans would fit there as well. Even though there some battles, it remans a bland charage.

 

BLOCKED
 
1. Kyonyuu Fantasy 巨乳ファンタジー [091023] Waffle 1 2 3 
Lute Hende is a recent graduate of the Edellant Kingdom’s Knight Academy. Unfortunately, due to his not being a very good fighter Lute graduated last in his class and is generally regarded as a good for nothing by his peers and teachers. As a result he’s assigned to the backwater border town of Boan, where they believe he’ll remain largely out of sight and out of mind. However, an encounter with a beatiful and deadly succubus will lead him to uncovering a conspiracy against the crown. Dealing with this will only be the first step in Lute’s rise not only amongst his fellow knights but eventually into the upper ranks of the kingdom itself.
Nukige, including it only because of missable reviews
 
2. Shuffle! Essence+ [091030] Navel 1 2 3 
Bonus disc that comes with the Limited Edition of Shuffle! Essence+
Contains 3 short scenarios.

Fandisc

2 Comments


Recommended Comments

Trouble@Vampire - I enjoyed this game, even if it has aged horribly.

Soukou Akki Muramasa- Umm... if you haven't played this and you can play untranslated, there is probably something wrong with you.

Comyu- Kagome is still one of my top ten heroines of all time, and I have no problem with man-whore protags.

Shuffle Essence+ is the definitive edition of Shuffle, not just the tokuten disc.  It was a partial rewrite with several new paths, not just side-stories.

Link to comment

Interesting to see that there's a lot of big releases along with Nitroplus being aggressive by releasing two title at October 2009, so let's see what I can comment on those.

Comyu - Supposedly 9th project for Amaterasu, but because of a certain circumstance it become their 8th project and the full patch for that was released back at 2014. As for Comyu itself, it's quite infamous because Akito (Our MC) here like to repeat the word 'red' along with him like to defend any female regardless on whether the female character in question is good or not. In the end I guess the reception in the overseas is quite fair, and I think it's more related to the MC who more or less quite controversial on his own. By the way the writer did retain his writing style in Hello Lady (Will be released by Nekonyan at some times in the future), in that instead of 'red' word Narita will repeatedly remind himself of his goal and in his case it's 'revenge'.

Mashiro Iro - Well it's just an ordinary charage and it won't be interesting if one dislike that genre in the first place, so I won't say anything in regard of that. I still wish this to be localized though, if only for Tsubasu's art (Joyjason like her art) and that I think her art might be beautiful because Kawamura (The Precure designer character in that her design was cited as being beautiful) was trusted to draw the design of Mahiro Iro anime version. Art aside, I think this might be good if one want to see more charage so perhaps Nekonyan might be more than possible to put our hope for Mashiro Iro translation, even though Palette is working together with Sekai as of now.

My GF is the President - If Alcot somehow decided to make the second series of it, I think we may have genderbent Joe Biden fighting against genderbent Donald Trump in a fierce election like we have nowadays, and of course the pandemic would be one of the topic that Alcot make fun of. Also the MC here would be able to date both of Joe Biden and Donald Trump (Obviously) with Joe Biden was the MC's childhood friend. My imagining for hypothetical sequel aside, the VN here is more or less just moege with some interesting plot and that it have some 2009 world politic joke (I mean with the name such as Ohama and Putina it should be obvious). It also fan translated at first back at 2010, before the team decided to sell the translation to JAST and they surprisingly quite quick to release it back at 2011. Another thing to note is that it's the first Alcot VN to be translated, following with Shinikiss and Clover Days with the latter still in editing work by Nekonyan.

Funbag Fantasy - Apparently the VN itself got some good story, although the heroines breasts are too big to me though lol so I'll pass.

Muramasa - One of Nitroplus VN that has the license was taken over by JAST, and to this day we still don't see it being released by them along with it have some progress. So perhaps it's better to say that the license is dead, although whether we can have this to be localized in the future is uncertain as of now. Anyway the VN itself did quite dark with many deaths and all, and apparently the heroines here is not the exception. After seeing many positive comment on this I hope that someday we'll see this in English, although obviously it's not easy to fulfill. One more thing to note that the translator may need to port it to Unity in order to allow it to have ADV interface seeing that Muramasa's original interface is not suited for English, so it would be another things to consider on how much the effort would be needed to localize this.

Steins Gate - Another Nitroplus VN, although it's obviously more popular and it spawned a successful anime adaptation along with several spin offs and adaptations. One of the spin offs is Steins Gate 0 in which rather than sequel like people says it's more like interquel if one know the story. Of course like any well received works, some people think that the story is lack of polish and that it's sort of overrated, but still it won't change the fact that it's one of very famous works. Obviously the developer realize that, and so they decided to keep milking this by adding some Steins Gate reference into their later works with the most blatant one adding one of Steins Gate main character (Daru) as Robotic Notes DaSH MC (One of them). As for Daru being DaSH's MC, after I consider that he's created as perverted best friend archetype I think he's not fit as the MC because usually his archetype was created as some sort of foil to make the MC in the VNs look better. My DaSH rambling aside, I think Steins Gate here is good although I don't exactly like on how the staffs force Daru as the MC in DaSH.

That's all for my comment in regard of October 2009 releases.

PS - From the last month I forgot to note that we'll also going to have Haruka no Sora translated by the same team as the one who translate Yosuga no Sora, and they'll do it after they released the full patch of Yosuga no Sora (Still a long way seeing that they still cleaning the translation even with the full translation patch for it already available).

Edited by littleshogun
Link to comment
Guest
Add a comment...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...