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  1. Want all the traps and CONTENT uncensored?! (warning it will have mosaics, what some fuckers call censorship. However Japan doesn't want it. it is all the fault of those fucking muricans that ruined our anime titties!!) learn Japanese today!
    5 points
  2. As with previous years, the time's come to combat the communists with capitalistic, Christmassy camaraderie. Also as with previous years, I am lazy, so I will be posting the same set of Santa hats with which you may adorn your as-of-yet-inferior avatars: The hats are numbered so that, if you are are technologically and/or artistically inept, you may ask me (a slightly less technologically and/or artistically inept individual) to put a particular Santa hat on for you. Or, as in previous years, somebody else will do it before me, because I've yet to patent my madd skillz. If you're cropping using MS Paint, ensure that "Transparent selection" is enabled under the "Select" tool, and that your secondary color is white. If you're using a fancier program, then use the magic wand or whatever to make stuff transparent, and then do some other things, I don't know. If you want me to put your hat on, first note: You should ensure that you don't already have a Christmassy version of your avatar from a previous year. Specify a number from the hats above, if you have a particular one in mind. If you instead want me to decide which would look best, then I can do that, but prepare your ocular cavities for the worst. You're free to make a special request of some variety, but each additional request increases the probability that it will be poorly executed on my part. Some avatars aren't very aesthetically hat-friendly, such as those in which a character's head is partially cut off from view. Animated avatars require a lot of work. Your avatar may not arrive expeditiously, for I am a busy man. Merry shizzle.
    4 points
  3. what do you think https://twitter.com/CherryKissGames/status/936671839836708864 (NSFW)
    2 points
  4. Warning: Heavily pornographic https://dekirutranslations.wordpress.com/2017/11/30/sansha-mendan-immoral-edition-full-translation-patch/ Thoughts on the game?
    2 points
  5. much christmas, very cheer, wow I can make a version with the girl's face not covered, but doggo's hat would be very off to the side. I AM MAD SCIENTIST Hat size/saturation/darkness/edginess can be adjusted easily, if desired. No number specified, will use 13 to account for head (dis)proportions.
    2 points
  6. Confession: Today I've realized that overdosing on yuri is not without consequences. My girlfriend, during random chatter (we were together at a coffeehouse, so in a public place too), said that while she's not really into women, she wonders how would it be to get hit on/receive a love confession from a lesbian (basically concluding that she would take that as a huge compliment). Obviously, my imagination went directly into picturing that scene. And well, it was kind of adorable. And hot. And apparently I did a very poor job at hiding those thoughts... As if this wasn't bad enough, she soon after said "don't worry, I won't cheat on you with a girl". Somehow, my imagination wasn't appropriately worried when given that idea either.
    2 points
  7. Whelp, that's one more game I don't need to worry about. I guess it's good to know Nutaku still isn't trustworthy?
    2 points
  8. Like Benji said, it's all a matter of opinion, but I found Chrono Clock very enjoyable. Also Cro is one of the most adorable characters ever created.
    2 points
  9. At the end is a matter of personal opinion, but as I see it: it is a very enjoyable VN.
    2 points
  10. That hat fits too well. The Christmas gods have smiled upon you. The deed is done. Evidently, upscaling of hat was required, but it should look less blurry when reduced to avatar size.
    1 point
  11. Analogue: A Hate Story is not a title that necessarily has to be „discovered” or that wasn’t properly appreciated in the time when it came out – among all the VNs developed in the West, it might as well be the one most highly regarded and popular within “proper” visual novel fandom, at least before the recent appearance of Doki Doki Literature Club. Still, it’s a very important game for me personally and for the idea behind this blog, for two reasons. First, Analogue was the first visual novel I’ve ever played and a piece of media that affected me emotionally and intellectually like few other before it or since. It was not only stuck in my head for a long time, as a vivid and emotionally striking memory, but maybe even left a lasting mark on my way of thinking and my moral stances. Second, it’s a perfect example of the power of VNs as a formula that even a single person, or a tiny team can use to create something remarkable and touching, given enough effort and talent. Before I go into details of the game, I have to mention a very good review by Meru that was already featured on Fuwa frontpage – I agree with most points there and encourage you to check it out, but beware, it’s somewhat spoiler-ish. As the game relies heavily on its plot twists, I myself will try to reveal as little of the story as possible. Read the full article at evnchronicles.blogspot.com
    1 point
  12. I have to stop myself from openly shipping girls sometimes tbh. Or IRL yuri goggles. It's an interesting condition...
    1 point
  13. @Akshay By the way, if you are okay with fan-tranlations, I might recommend Tilea's Worries. It has some questionable themes, and the protagonist is literally dumber than a brick, but I really like how it combines its comedic nature and immensely dark things that happen behind the scenes.
    1 point
  14. Leige is passively evil, he truly demonstrates sloth. He won't do shit even if literally the world end's. Well anyway we see many perspectives in it, Heath for example is more actively evil. Best demonstration is him waging war just cause he want's to carve Leige's name in Heaven. Even in DD, Dantalian's 'evil' is simply his ambition and want of power. In Ouroboros Record, evil is the protag's obsession. Hell he would most like be deemed more evil than Dantalian, who acts rather similar to an extremist conqueror/king maker.
    1 point
  15. Yeah Dungeon Defense is great had read it some time ago. It's in my top 10. And I just remembered 1 more dark fantasy though this one isn't harem or kinky stuff. Ouroboros Record It's great, the thought process of the protag is just lovely and it has a completly new outlook to the whole 'reincarnating to do life better' which isekai novels generally go with. Well sadly no. of tl'ed chaps till now is only 18 (same as Lazy King chaps are pretty big). I like this one more than DD, though I still like The Lazy King more.
    1 point
  16. there´s no traps in this world if you were to go by emperor trumps doctrin & a virgin´s blood is nothing but a myth. everyone´s a natural born fucker. e.g. nutaku standing synonymous for healthy sexual education, like tools of conservative governmental propaganda. aight.
    1 point
  17. I'd avoid this for the loss of virgin blood alone honestly (hi, yes I do have that fetish). Then again, I'm not into nukige to begin with so it's hard to make myself care.
    1 point
  18. Jup both Majikoi and S has a true route which can be accessed after clearing the main heroines. They are mostly story driven routes with plenty of action and most of the cast also take part in them. I wouldn't call them ecchi, there are scenes but the main story clearly took the focus. I can't really comment on the top routes, because there are a good number of them and I pretty much liked all except the Tatsuko, Margit routes. Also there is a certain heroine who I really liked but she got completly ignored in her route and I even forgot for a time that I was technically playing her route
    1 point
  19. Mr Poltroon

    Majikoi Question

    Light spoilers below. The Agave route is the "True" route. It is certainly not ecchi mainly, though I can see why it would be described as such, for it includes a number of H-Scenes even though the protagonist does not get together with any particular character. It is about the protagonist and his group of friends being threatened by a drug cartel. More than that, but this is as far as I'll venture, for I don't want to spoil things. In terms of story (epic battles and Yamato moments): Momoyo: Majikoi Chris: Majikoi Yukie: Majikoi Tsubame: Majikoi S Cookie 4IS: Majikoi A-2 (It incudes plot developments I really like, but it's not like the others on this list, much) Agave is not a girl route, so I shan't include it, but it would top the list. As usual, the disclaimer stating that I have terrible taste.
    1 point
  20. One Thousand Lies. I see we have a man of good taste.
    1 point
  21. I still have to get to the sequel. TBH, I hate a problem with reading "serious" VNs lately, I need to have a bit of clear mind for those and my mood was so bad in past few months I mostly ended up reading bad or silly ones just to relax. "Hate+" and "Digital: A Love Story" are high on my list but in reality always lose to a thing like Nekopara or some obscure crap I read just for the fun of mercilessly picking it apart. I'll definitely get to those two around the winter break though, otherwise this whole "western VN appreciation" formula will get a bit hollow. PS Next week's review will be One Thousand Lies, I hope you'll enjoy it.
    1 point
  22. Clephas

    Kizuna Kirameku Koi Iroha

    For obvious reasons, VN vets rarely get up their hopes for games by new VN companies. Generally speaking, most of them are charage or nukige, and those that aren't usually flop on their faces. So, it should come as no surprise that the people I chatted with about this game generally didn't have any hopes for it. However, that is probably because they didn't take a look at the team of scenario writers. The first one, Gihara, was the writer for Tenka Gomen, Shin Koihime Eiyuutan, Shin Koihime Musou Kakumei (responsible for the rewrite), Harvest Overray, and Girls Be Ambitious (something of a cult classic for Japanese fanboys of a certain stripe). Nissy was involved with Hanasaki Work Spring and Gin'iro Haruka. Finally, Toishi Hiroki was involved with Sakura, Sakimashita and Floral Flowlove. By most standards, that is about as solid a team as you can find for any single VN, even if it is essentially a combat sports charage in the same vein as Unionism Quartet and Shirogane Spirits. So, after having done a bit of research on the game and its story, I picked it for my second game this month. Happily, I wasn't disappointed by the results. Oh, by any standard, this game doesn't even approach Aoi Tori for raw quality of storytelling or music. It also has as much lost potential as any other fantasy charage that put effort into creating a complex setting (inevitably, they never go far enough). The protagonist is a little too similar to some others I've encountered, such as the one from Walkure Romanze or Aokana, in that he starts out as a self-pitying loser and spends the entire game in a supporting role. That said, for what it is (a combat sports charage), it is nice and fun. The protagonist, Touki, is a swordsmith who makes spiritual blades combined with mechanical parts called 'Origami' who has lost his ability to make them, leaving him with a bunch of wasted talent and people wondering why he is wasting it (sound familiar?). The combat sport in the game - called Jindou - is basically one-on-one ritualistic duels between wielders of these mechanized spirit blades (the blades grant the user increased physical abilities based on their ability to draw their power out), and three of the four heroines are competitors (two of them newbies, one the highest-rank veteran, a setup that is traditional to the sub-genre). The last one is a fellow maker of Origami, an American arms dealer's daughter named Freesia. The protagonist does manage to get past the big personal issue in the common route, so there is no 'diversion' onto another path in life as is common in many VNs with a similar protagonist (in other words, ignoring the protagonist's scars and leaving him as a loser). This is a huge plus, as this type of character goes... but it is shortly after that event that the paths split. Shion Shion is the protagonist's kouhai, a girl who was going to give up the sword because, due to her high ability to draw out spiritual energy, keeps breaking Origami... and on top of that, she is excessively kind, making it difficult for her to consider hurting others, despite her choice of a future profession. Despite her kind-heartedness, she is a power-fighter, breaking opponents with smashing blows and enduring attacks to lash out at the right moment rather than using technique or speed to overwhelm them. Her path is... interesting. It has the protagonist going farther into confronting his personal issues and past than in the common route, and as a result a rather nasty chain of events occurs that leads into the story's drama after the competition. On a whole, that made this an interesting path... but I was left feeling a bit bored with the rather predictable ending bits. This path could have done with a more bittersweet note in the ending, despite this being essentially a charage (thus requiring good endings). Tsubaki Tsubaki is the school champion and a member of the Suzakuin Family... a family that symbolizes the ultimate swordsman in their sport, because they do everything themselves, from training and fighting to management and the making of the Origami. Tsubaki considers herself to be like an older sister to Touki, whom she lived with for three months as a child when she was learning how to make Origami. Her style is efficient, defined by refined technique, foresight, research, and a cold drive to win. As a result, she tends to let enemies come to her then destroy them with counter-attacks. Her path forces her to confront her own limitations and break the boundaries set by her family, and most of the drama comes from Touki helping her stand on her own feet and realize there is something beyond her training and family's expectations for her to live for. It was a good path, overall... but it completely ignores the issues lurking in the background that erupted in Shion's path, so it left me feeling a bit unsatisfied. Freesia Freesia is the daughter of the CEO of a major arms-maker in America. Upon meeting Miyako (Tsubaki's older sister) she became obsessed with Jindou and eventually discovered a talent for making Origami. She is at the school as a special student, exempted from class because of her high scores and her father's connections. Early in the story, she becomes obsessed with becoming Touki's student. She is very aggressive and straightforward, never bothering to conceal her feelings about anything. She is a perfect example of the fine line between a genius and an idiot (or a madwoman), as some of her Origami are... strange (when she made a light saber, I had to rofl). Anyway, her path is about the way of the craftsman, and it is kind of interesting... However, I feel that they approached it all wrong. First, during the climactic face-off in her path, the results are sort of disappointing. The fight itself is nice, but it feels too much like 'oh, she is the heroine, so lets let her have her way!' Moreover, I am honestly confused that they chose that as the climax, since there is relatively little emotional buildup immediately before. As such, I had to rate this path the lowest of the three I've written about so far, by several levels. Saya Saya is Touki's childhood friend (though he doesn't remember her at first), a brilliant swordswoman who, at first, has no idea of how to use an Origami. Her attitude toward Touki is very much that of a close friend, rather than a deredere heroine, which is unusual for this kind of setup. In addition, she is the 'true' heroine, though if you want to unlock her without playing the other paths, you can do so through the extras menu. As a fighter, she is a speed type, quite simply the fastest of all the heroines by several levels. In addition, she is also highly skilled, though perhaps a few levels below Tsubaki due to her inexperience with Jindou. Saya's path is the 'true path' of this game, and the game treats it as such. The storytelling has even more depth than Shion's path, and it delves far deeper into the past - both Touki's and that of his bloodline. The fights in this path are several levels better than in the previous paths, at least partly because some of them are 'real' (you'll see what I mean if you read this). In addition, several characters whose true desires and intentions never came into the open in the other paths come into play in this path, thus making it... your standard true path, lol. Overall Like a lot of 'true path' games, this game neglects the non-true heroines to an extent and places far too much emphasis on the true path. However, as a whole, the game is a fun read. The three non-true heroine paths read like charage paths, whereas the true one is almost a chuunige there at the end. As a whole, the game is a bit higher in quality than Shirogane Spirits or Unionism Quartet, because it manages to feel 'real' at times (something neither of those games manages, because they never escape the 'combat sport' aspect of their stories). In the end, it was a decent VN, and in another month would have been a decent candidate for the VN of the Month.
    1 point
  23. While I can't exactly say that I'd shed a tear for loosing a trap route, the message Nutaku is sending with that action is questionable at best. You could get the idea that Nutaku's 'moral codex' doesn't go along as well with gay relationships as expected from an open-minded and liberal company. They could get some very bad publicity because of that. If they dislike the content of the VN so much that they are cutting large junks of it, then I wonder why they decided to translate that VN in the first place. I mean, the number of untranslated VN's is still huge, so it shouldn't have been particularly hard to find one to their liking.
    1 point
  24. Nandemonai

    Majikoi Question

    Light, as in the one from Death Note? Come on, he isn't smart. He's psychic. His "plans" involve setting up his pieces in such a way that unless everyone always does exactly what he expects them to do, he's screwed. But things never work out like that. "Some damn foolish thing in the Balkans is going to start a war."
    1 point
  25. We were definitely shocked when the 2nd item pledged was a $1500 package! Everything's been going by so fast, we're absolutely stunned haha.
    1 point
  26. 1 point
  27. Hang in there <3
    1 point
  28. 1 point
  29. Yes, I just liked a post from 2014. It deserved a like. It deserves all the likes. (/ω\)
    1 point
  30. Clephas

    Aoi Tori

    Aoi Tori is Purple Soft's latest project, a VN based in a girls' school in the mountains, where the protagonist, a priest (I'm assuming Episcopalian/Anglican for various reasons), goes to school as an exception, as he cannot live outside of the school without being taken by demons. Ritsu, the protagonist, possesses the power to take others' negative emotions, thus enhancing their feelings of happiness and joy, and this power works best when he has sex with them. Now, given that he is a young man, you'd think from this description that he was going around finding girls that were in trouble and 'saving' them that way... given eroge culture. However, if anything, it is the reverse... girls that are desperate to escape their personal reality come to him, seeking the happiness he can give, and he has reduced himself to something like an automatic mechanism for giving them what they want. To be blunt, his point of view seems very close to that of a lifelong prostitute, save for the miraculous ability he possesses... moreover, a prostitute who didn't choose the work (his first experiences were all oneshota, apparently). One day, his monotonous days of sex and quiet prayer (it sounds odd, but outside of school, that is pretty much what it was like), a century-old vampire named Mary Harker appears before him, having intruded into his home behind the chapel, and he lets her stay out of kindness. At the same time, a voice (referred to as the 'demon on the phone') tells him over the phone that he has a rather dark fate awaiting him and his power isn't what he thinks it is. This night is closely followed by a number of meetings and reunions... a devout girl with a self-destructive streak a mile wide (Akari), the young teacher who stole his virginity (Risa), and the twin sister he never knew he had (Sayo). In addition, you have Mikako, who is Risa's sister and Ritsu's only friend... and who is a genius as well as a pragmatist. Overall, it is an interesting cast of characters, even for a Purple Soft game. I'm going to be blunt, the part that will put off at least some of you is the sheer amount of sex in the first part of the VN. The game begins with two h-scenes, neither of which involves affection or love, and, while this is a good intro into Ritsu's situation, it also will probably drive the romantics amongst you a bit crazy, judging by my previous experiences. So... if you can't stand a protagonist who doesn't bother refusing sex from women and is used to having sex with girls he doesn't know, you probably won't like this game. That said, there are relatively few similar h-scenes after this, probably in order to keep you from getting too swallowed up by his attitude toward sexual activity. Ritsu is a rather strange young man, even setting aside his destined role as the Prince of Darkness (Mary's term for it). As the demon on the phone puts it, 'You are a madman who can only be satisfied by saving others.' That fits him perfectly, and that part of his personality never really goes away. He is fundamentally a giver, above all other things. Even if he can be convinced by the heroines to be selfish in the now, when things come to a climax, he always falls back on that nature. He is also a natural S and a hedonist (though he is not conscious of this most of the time), and he doesn't have it in him to become paranoid or maintain his anger for long. That said, once he decides on the result he wants, he will literally do anything to achieve it. Mary Harker Mary Harker, in any other game, would be the true heroine. I don't mean to be mean about Akari... she is creepy has hell sometimes, despite her apparent normality (you'll see what I mean if you actually read the first two h-scenes), but if I began this game without a walkthrough or seeing the cover of the game package, I probably would have assumed she was the true heroine. The reason is very simple... she is the catalyst that sparks the game's engine at the beginning, and, given eroge custom, that heroine usually is the true one. Now, her personality... Mary is probably the most cheerful and normal vampire I've seen outside of a 'nerfed' vampire setting (this one isn't, since just a bite is enough to turn someone and she takes injuries from her own prayers and the sun). Nonetheless, she has lived a century, and that has had various effects on her psyche, though the biggest one is a growing awareness that maintaining her humanity and human persona is becoming harder and harder. It is only because of Ritsu that she is able to have some kind of a hope for the future, and she is pretty dependent on him during the story. Despite that, she is also sort-of an oneesan character outside of her own path. She does have a lot of experience under her belt, and her attitude toward him at some times skirts the motherly. Her own path is... a clash of two people destined to live in darkness, her and Ritsu. They are both people who don't understand romantic love at the beginning, so seeing them change is somewhat amusing, but the bigger issue is that their natures press down on them, making a happy romance difficult. Overall, it was a highly emotional experience that I enjoyed thoroughly. I do wish - as I almost always do - that she had a nice long epilogue after story, but I have resigned myself to not receiving what I wish for most of the time, when it comes to that. Akasabi Risa and Akasabi Mikako Akasabi Risa was the protagonist's first sexual partner. Like all the girls who had sex with him in the past, she was seeking escape from reality by having him give her happiness, but she, unlike the others, was actually in love with him from the beginning. Risa is a consummate actress, hiding her true intentions behind her feelings, a technique she apparently developed in the years she was away from Risa. She is also essentially a 'giver' type, willingly giving everything for those she cares about. Mikako is a pretty unusual character. If it weren't for her fondness for Ritsu and her love for Risa, I would be tempted to call her an emotionless sociopath, based on her surface actions. I called her a pragmatist above, but this isn't despite her emotional reactions... it is her natural state of being. Pragmatism is usually a product of socialization and rationality being prioritized over emotion. However, in Mikako's case, she is able to (and does so automatically) completely analyze and render meaningless her emotions before they reach the surface. Her love for Risa is pretty much the only exception, and it is that emotion that renders her as almost human (her fondness for Ritsu exists because she loves Risa and Risa loves him). Now, the demon on the phone takes on a rather more direct role in this story than in Mary's, where he/she is merely speaking to the characters. In fact, the demon's interference is what brings this path's conflict to the surface, and overall, it made this path more interesting than it otherwise would have been. To be blunt, without the demon's 'help', it is highly unlikely that Risa, Mikako, and Ritsu would get together, based on the revelations in this path. There are a number of reasons, but the biggest one lies with the fact that Ritsu quite simply doesn't have strong emotions toward his sexual partners normally (once he actually loves them, it is different)... not even remnant lust. Kurosaki Sayo Kurosaki Sayo is Ritsu's twin, separated from him at birth. She is a cynical, emotionally twisted young girl whose only love is Ritsu (though she does have affection for others based on whether they make Ritsu happy or not) and whose hobby is toying with him and Mary. She appears on the scene shortly after Mary's arrival, guided by the demon on the phone. She is also a part of the demons' plans for him, and that plan is the center of her path. This path is an utsuge-style path... don't expect a happy ending. There is a good reason why Sayo was given to a different orphanage by their mother, and that reason becomes apparent fairly early after Ritsu chooses her. I enjoyed this path and it has some really good cathartic moments... but I honestly thought they were a bit excessively obvious in foreshadowing this one. Afterwards (read this if you don't mind a bit of spoilers) Remember, this is a spoiler. As techniques go, it is interesting, and I felt the need to mention it before Akari's path because of how it leads into it. Umino Akari Akari is... the girl whose outer personality and inner desires are most in conflict. Akari is a devout Christian (Ritsu's assessment), kind-hearted, gentle, and takes pleasure in giving of herself to others. However, she is also strongly driven to seek out danger, corruption, and self-destruction in every way, shape, and form. As one of the milder examples... she is afraid of heights but she willingly participates in the school swim club's high dive competition. A more extreme version is the one you run into at the beginning, in the first scene, where, after watching her friend have sex with Ritsu, she is drawn to him and has sex with him as well. Akari's path is... interesting. Actually, the beginning of the path is slow, because the story refrains from going to the extremes you saw in the common route and the other paths. However, that slow build up is a near-perfect lead into the solid drama leading up to the ending. There is actually very little I can say about this path without spoiling it, but I can say that I liked the ending. I cried numerous times throughout the path, and the ending itself satisfied me completely, a rare event in and of itself. One thing I should note is that there is a distinct Chrono Clock reference in this path, which startled me a bit. It was actually a stronger link than the mention of the kotodama-users early in the common route. For those who are interested, I'll respond in a PM, but I'm unwilling to spoil this. I did laugh though. I'm unsure if this is an affectation or not, but it is interesting. Overall I'm seriously tempted to scream 'kamige!!!' to the sky... but in retrospect, they game does have some distinct flaws. The main one of these is the somewhat haphazard approach to the beginning of Risa's path (it felt kind of like they were shoving things along a little too forcefully in that one). However, even so this is one of the better games that have come out this year, and, in its own way, keeps the Purple Soft fantasy nakige tradition started with Mirai Nostalgia alive and kicking. Where Chrono Clock fizzled and Amatsutsumi committed the sin of using the ladder-style progression system, this game manages to both satisfy and feel like it treats the non-true heroines well.
    1 point
  31. So, I finally finished Caucasus. This was the one VN from Innocent Grey I still wanted to read, even if it's in Japanese. Since it had a considerably lower rating than the Kara no Shojo series I did expect some weaknesses, although I wasn't really sure what they might be. Well, I was about to find out soon enough when I started reading. Caucasus has a lot in common with the last Japanese VN I read, Hyakki Ryouran no Yakata. So much in fact, that I'd say the latter was at least inspired by the former. In both VN's the protagonist is a university student in folklore that stumbles into a mysterious mansion by accident where strange things are happening. Though here you're accompanied by a girl instead of being alone. But there's also a wedding ceremony going on, in this case between the youngest daughter of the Nanatsuki family - Shion - and her fiance Rokuyou. An interesting thing about Caucasus was that some tags indicated that it might have some supernatural elements. Though, having read it now, this assumption was wrong. That's not saying that the tags were wrong, I just interpreted them in a different way. Without spoiling too much, the story is inspired a bit by a certain historic person with the name Elisabeth Báthory. Caucasus is a typical case of making one step forward but two steps backwards. While IG's previous VN Kara no Shoujo had some detective gameplay elements, it was still mostly a VN with some investigation scenes at certain points. In Caucasus they decided to go full out with the detective gameplay and combine it with the map location choices. That means there are now frequent map movement sections where you can freely decide where to go, and every location can investigated and every person questioned. For each of this sections this can be done multiple times until a timer runs out. While this system might be great for detective enthusiasts, there are unfortunately so many possible things to do and consider now that it made the VN literally incomprehensible without using a guide. Actually, it made me think countless time about the recent thread about VN's with too many choices, since this was certainly a prime example for such a case. They also had the glorious idea to give almost every girl a happy ending. While the idea sounds great in theory, the execution was 'questionable' to say the least. The usual strategy to win a girl in a VN is to try to spend as much as possible with her. Technically that's also the case here, just not really the way you'd think how. So in order to win a girl in Caucasus you have to... question her. No kidding, during the investigation sequences you not only have to investigate locations, you also have to pay your chosen one a visit, usually about ~2 times and just do nothing or question her about the murder case. Usually there's at least a slice of life sequence to get to know the girl even in other VN's from Innocent Grey, but not here. That was really, really lazy from IG. Furthermore, although you can get most girls there are technically still just two endings, not counting the bad ones. The normal one and the true one. The normal one can be gotten for Akane, Narumi, Ai, Venio and Shion while the true one can be Venio, Shion and another one I don't want to spoil here. Though Shion is not really winnable, at least in the true ending. So if you want to really get all the endings for each girl you have to replay an insane amount of investigation sequences since you can't just skip them. Overall, the best is to decide for one girl for each ending and just get a 100% save to get the rest of the CG's. That's not to say it would be all bad. The plot is interesting, and the characters look and act authentic and the story sections are well told even if they are far too often interrupted by investigation sequences. There's also a large story block told towards the end through a book which should have better been revealed bit by bit during the story instead. The story also isn't as grim as Kara no Shoujo and you can save pretty much every girl which was nice. On the other hand, the infamous perpetrator scenes were missing and just replaced by a few H-scenes which dragged the thrill and suspense a bit down. The art also has IG's great trademark art style. Overall, I think it's still a good story VN even if it's clearly weaker than Kara no Shoujo. I'd say it's roughly on par with Cartagra even if both have different strengths and weaknesses. In case of Caucasus the main weakness is without question the detective gameplay. They should have skipped or at least reduced it a bit and flesh out the story further instead. Heroine rankings: Narumi > Souko = Shion > Venio = Ai > Akane Overall rating: 7.5/10 I also tried two more nukige from Atelier Kaguya. The first one being Konomama dato Otouto from Honkytonk Pumpkin which was far too fetishy and overall the weakest title from this particular team so far (5.5/10). And the second one was Baku Ane 2 from Bare & Bunny which was kind of okayish even if I expected more (6.5/10). I hope the new Shigokare will be better. On the story front the next two VN's I will try are Reminiscence from Tigre Soft and Haruru Minamo ni! from Clochette. I hope the former will be better than its predecessor Akatsuki no Goei while the second one will be my first VN from Clochette, so I'm eager to see how it turns out. And yeah, I'm still trying to finish Shin Koihime † Eiyuutan anytime soon. I really hate that you're supposed to be in a relationship with literally everyone. It's almost as bad as in Moeshuden. Maybe not just as bad, since some routes actually focus on a certain girl, but others are just a huge clusterfuck.
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