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I thought that Dies Irae was a pretty enjoyable read. There aren't a lot of visual novels of its kind that's been translated, so it was a refreshing experience. It had pretentious depth to it , you get the feeling like the writer just got sucked into this world he created. I didn't mind the pretentiousness, its nice to have some variation to stories. Also with all the references to religion, culture and history, its the kind of story that'll promote further reading of the subjects mentioned. Oh like clephas mentioned, i think a lot of people just started nitpicking because Dies Irae was so hyped and people were mentioning stuff like "best Vn ever!" etc. Personally I didn't find anything wrong with it, I loved the characters [va's were great!] , the music, the art, the banter, references, relationships, mystery, reveals and well, the whole grandiose play, to put it simply. There can never be a perfect story that satisfies everyone that reads it. People will always nickpick and sure they have the right to do so. Personally, in regards to stories, I rather not sweat the small stuff and just enjoy the ride. I mean I did choose to get on, and there's ample information about the kind of ride it is . This Vn will most likely make you feel and think about all sorts of things. Its a rainbow . I read the all ages version and for this particular story I don't think h-scenes were necessary, its all about the dialog and the dialog does a good job of painting a clear picture of the characters relationships. Its definitely worth reading without the h content. I pretty much forgot about the 18+ version shortly after I started reading, the story pulled me in . Cheers!

I'll tell you what I'm NOT playing - To Heart 2. After translating it and playing it endlessly and QC'ing it for a decade, I'm never touching it again unless some company wants to do an official localisation.

Hey! I've been lurking for almost a year and finally decided to join this awesome community. Please take care of me!

Well, the fourth anniversary of my VN of the Month series of posts is coming in another week or so... and to be honest, I'm a bit amazed at how long I've kept this going. Four years of playing most of the non-nukige VNs that came out each month, writing something on them, then picking one to be VN of the Month (or not, if none met my standards)... to be honest, my opinion hasn't changed much since the last time this time of year came around. VN of the Month is one of the single most grueling tasks I've ever set myself outside of work, and I can honestly say that there are a lot of times when I just want to put it all aside. However, I inevitably find myself coming back and playing more VNs. If I take a week off from VNs, I inevitably tear back into my addiction with insane glee, and it usually at least takes three or four bad VNs before I finally run down and need a recharge. I thought about making a poll asking if I should stop, like I did the other years... but the results - and the suggestions - are always the same, so I'm really more interested in what people have to say about this whole thing.

I finished Kiss Him Not Me. It was kind of funny throughout, but the ending was unsatisfying in a lot of ways. While the show looked like it had potential very early on, and especially in episode 5, it never really did much with it and ended up being very shallow. I can't really recommend it, any more than I would recommend a generic harem. Started watching Planetes, which is phenomenal so far (three episodes in). It manages to juggle the sublime, the mundane, and the ridiculous while telling a compelling human drama. Also, the music is great! Really excited about this one.

Shuffle Essence! + is the definitive version of Shuffle, which was originally released in 2004. Shuffle was also the first game where Agobarrier, the now-deceased writer of the Tiny Dungeon series, made a claim to fame. First, I should note that I originally played Shuffle in English and was not in any way satisfied with the results. My primary reasons were the low quality of the localization (though it was better than what MG had done up to that point) and certain differences with the anime involving Kaede. To be blunt, the Kaede portrayed in the anime is a solid yandere, so I was kind of disappointed that she was only mildly yandere in the game, lol. Anyway, now to the obvious differences between the two versions of Shuffle... Well, the biggest one is the doubling of the number of heroines. Kareha, her sister Tsubomi, Mayumi, Sakura, the teacher Nadeshiko, and the new divine race girl, Daisy are the new heroines. In realistic terms, they actually consist four separate arcs... Tsubomi, Kareha, and Nadeshiko are connected loosely, with the remaining three routes standing on their own with extensive amounts of new text. This is in addition, to adding a second ending onto Shia's path and extensively re-writing it in the particulars. All in all, the length of the game is more than doubled, since the three heroine arcs are very long. Anyway, the new routes show off something that was only touched on lightly in the anime and the original version of the game... Agobarrier's obsession with harems. Basically, the result of each of the paths is that the 'main wife' of the harem gets picked, and the girls basically make the decision to create a harem without seriously consulting Rin, since he isn't good at refusing them in the first place. If you hate harem situations, this game is pure poison, but if you like your harems, this is good stuff. Now, to the difference between the English and Japanese versions... it does make a difference, obviously. Actually, there is a glaring difference in style between the new routes and the ones made for the original game. While the original routes were decent and tear-jerking, it seems like the popularity of Shuffle in Japan essentially gave Agobarrier license to do what he wanted with the new routes. More detail is given (including in the original heroine routes) and more loose ends are closed up. Each of the routes has a number of non-ero CGs unthinkable in a modern charage, and they are all of about as good of quality as could be produced ten years ago, lol. Overall, the end result of this is a vastly-improved game with a much more solid cast of characters. The holdovers from the original version (abandoned stylistic issues like random cameo scenes) are sometimes jarring because of the remade aspects, but the game doesn't suffer too much from that. Daisy's route, which comes across as a 'true' route (since all the might-have-been-fatal heroine issues are resolved) seems to have been specifically designed to satisfy fans of the original who didn't like the feeling that you were 'abandoning' certain of the heroines (such as Primula or Shia) to their fates by picking another. Agobarrier loved his happy harems, lol. May he rest in peace.

Doubtful. The English VN scene has been influenced as much by choose-your-own-adventure books and MUDs as it has been by anime games. It's not like the Japanese invented the concept of using a video game to tell a text-driven story. What the Japanese DID pioneer is using the VN medium to create a bustling market for professional story-driven porn, something Westerners haven't even come close to emulating.

Huh, no one mentioned Demonbane yet? Well, of the games I've played that might fit the bill, Demonbane is clearly the best. Edit: Also, if you liked Tokyo Babel, take a look at Shadows of Pygmalion (by the same dev).

Well, the most obvious recommendation here would be Hoshiori - from the same creator as both of HatsuKoi and Gin'iro Haruka. If you want more then perhaps you may as well try Miagete because I'd heard that it's quite good, and it was from same creator as Konosora. Also perhaps you'll in the mood for playing White Album 2 because I'd heard that it's one of the best VN from the high score alone, and perhaps you could find out why later. Hope those recommendations here would be help. PS - Almost forget here, but I think you could try Mashiro Summer here considering that it's writers were also wrote both of HatsuKoi and Gin'iro Haruka, although you might find that VN was quite unpolished compared to their tone works's VNs though.

Don't worry, man. It's not me, I'm not going to reveal your dirty VN history (aaaand you won't reveal mine haha). I'm from UERJ! Structural engineering of all things!

Wasn't there a comment by Decay here? Oh well I disagree with you as, and I may be proven wrong, the English VN creation only came to be because of the Japanese one. I may not go deep into the point of explaining every aspect of both markets, but I need to get the more information I can and sort it according to the development of my essay. I need to remind you this is not a simple translation project (and it will probably never become a fan tl project), but an academic paper that will deal both with the translation itself and a topic that is almost unknown by the brazilian academy. As long as I don't loose myself in the middle, I believe my material should be as informative as it can be. I loved your idea regarding VNs on Steam, and I have not think of this possibility before. I will look into it soon. Thank you so much for your help <3 What college are you from? I'm afraid to ask because my professor said that another of her students was interested on VNs too. Too much of a coincidence?

As a fellow almost-graduate (those final assignment things are surely hard), I'll try to help you. This article is an interesting read, it talks about those old adventure games that were focused on interactive elements, as sanahtlig pointed out: https://medium.com/mammon-machine-zeal/a-brief-history-of-visual-novels-641a2e6b1acb Anyway, good luck, man! If you need more help, I can get you some coffee, I'm from Rio too .

To Heart 2 and Dies Irae couldn't be more different in genre...

Scripting comes before testing. Testing and beta testing are the same thing. Beta testers play on an actual build of the game and their duties involve proofreading and testing for stuff involved in script implementation, like lines that display incorrectly, are cut off, that kind of stuff. They also test the program itself, making sure that there are no bugs or crashes. You need the script in the game to do this or else there's not much point. The main effort involved in "scripting" is making sure the game works with English text on a English locale computers without any issue. Sometimes, this actually involves rewriting the entire game engine from scratch. This is often what's happening when a game is stuck in "scripting" for a long time. Another reason for it to be stuck there is sometimes the Japanese developers actually handle all the technical work and the process of requesting features/changes and waiting for Japan to implement them can take a very long time depending on the company. MG not wanting to rely on this process is one of the reasons they started reprogramming many games with their own engines in Unity. Once the programming groundwork is laid, updating the actual game script into a live build of the game tends to be not much effort at all, so there's no real reason for them to wait until after proofreading to do that tech work. This is true sometimes even with amateur projects. On Dracu-Riot, it takes us no more than a minute to get the game running on the latest version of our scripts.

FEELS ;_;