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I didn't see a review thread about 2017 VN's yet, so I'm creating a new one because I usually review my VN's every year. I forgot to do that last year, so I really want to do it for 2017 now. Everyone is welcome to add their own review too of course. Best story VN: Best moege: Best slice of life & drama VN: Best comedy VN: Best ero VN: (NSFW) Biggest disappointment: Now, let's go to some side categories... Best art: Love Tore ~Ecchi na Ren'ai Training~ by Atelier Kaguya This was pretty hard since I played several VN's with great art. But I picked this one since it simply stands out because of it stellar animation. But honorable mentions go to Kara no Shojo 2, Lovely & Cation 2, Hyakki Ryouran no Yakata, Dies Irae and Ourai no Gahkthun. Best sound: Ourai no Gahkthun ~What a Shining Braves~ by Liar-Soft I initially was tempted to pick Hyakki Ryouran no Yakata because of it's stellar atmospheric soundtrack, but since some of the voice actors weren't that good, Gahkthun was overall better. Kara no Shoujo 2 was also pretty good but some soundtracks got pretty dull after a while. Other honorable mentions go to The Shadows of Pygmalion and Dies Irae for some pretty good soundtracks. Best male character: Tokisaka Reiji from Kara no Shojo 2 Closely followed by Masaki Tomoyuki, the other protagnist from KnS2. Honorable mentions go to Jay from The Shadows of Pygmalion, Iwaki Akio from Hyakki Ryouran no Yakata and Valeria Trifa from Dies Irae. Best female character: Shimzu Ichigaku from ChuSingGura46+1 For being a great villainous heroine. Honourable mentions goes to Hazuki Kyouko and Aoki Touji from Kara no Shojo 2, although I consider the latter more as a loyal friend and comrade than waifu material. And another honorable mention goes to the Lovely & Cation 2 girls. Guess that got longer than expected, but that's it for me...

The view outside has no business calling itself a dawn. Sure, morning has just broken – but dawn has a warmth to it, a promise of brighter times, of new beginnings, of respite from the unfeeling night. The gloomy Swedish winter dawn outside brings me only a feeling of cold distance, steely gray sky falling softly onto the white fields below. Snow-laden pines clamber laboriously through the fog, watching the dawn with little more enthusiasm than I myself can muster. It’s mornings like these that make me want to end it. Not seriously. Not bad enough to be something I need to worry about. God, I don’t even check the “I don’t want to live but I also don’t want to die” box any more. I am absurd tiers of not actually depressed. But yeah, fuck this so-called “dawn”. Fuck this dawn for being so empty. Fuck this dawn for being so cold. And fuck me for writing about it; it’s only going to make things worse. View the full article

Best story VN: Best moege: Best slice of life & drama VN: Best comedy VN: Best ero VN: (NSFW) Biggest disappointment: Best art: Best female characters:

I found one that I had to share Just try and read the description out loud without laughing Kimomen Teihen Shoku Demo Kyokon nara Harem Guild no Shu ni Nareru!? ~Densetsu no Kishi ya Seijo, Maou o Tanezuke Kouryaku! Bishoujo Darake Yume no Bouken Seikatsu!~ Can I be with such cute and powerful bishoujos? Can I handle it!? Eyes a'spin with gapelust, hips a'clap anytime I please! That's fantasy! I pursue the impossible dream: to be master of the Harem Guild! "Only handsome guys can be monster tamers." The other Guild members laughed as they rejected him. Wretched and ugly, he couldn't even form a party. No one looked past the aura of failure that shrouded him to appreciate his extraordinarily large cock. Except for one. A demon. The demon saw in the rejected ugly hero a way to dismantle the Guild of Beauties, the troublesome heroines who'd been slaying demons since time immemorial. For the ugly man, it was the chance to teach a lesson to those who'd made him feel shame--- The chance to fulfill his dream of questing--- Yes! He shall wield his demonic dick! Massive cockventure! Ill-reputed sperm will stain the righteous! One man's epic inseminating fantasy begins!!

My personal favourite.

https://www.pixiv.net/member.php?id=183606

Hello Ladies & Gentlemen! The western visual novel market, unlike the high-budget JP scene, thrives mostly through amateur passion projects and products of small, indie development teams. While this causes most of the Western VNs to be of relatively poor quality, it also promotes creativity and good stylization over huge word-counts and high production values, which are simply unattainable with highly limited budgets and manpower. This philosophy is further supported by various events oriented towards indie developers, such as NaNoRenO and Yuri Game jam – and while most games produced there might be extremely simple and rather forgettable, there are important exceptions to this rule. And, what’s probably worth mentioning, the rare, memorable games coming from these contests are still just as free as all the other ones. Today, I’m presenting you a list of top 5 Yuri Game Jam VNs – although short and often minimalistic, these games will provide you with enjoyable and creative f/f romance stories, without asking for anything more than a few hours of your time (you can download each game for free through the links in the titles). The Sad story of Emmeline Burns The Victorian drama by Ebi-Hime is the best know and probably most-appreciated Yuri Game Jam entry - and not without good reasons. While short and, as a kinetic novel, following a purely linear formula, this tragic story offers excellent writing, emotionally impactful storytelling and a great aesthetic, all way above the level you would normally see in a contest like this. It also doesn't rely on shock value or leave the reader with a depressing conclusion - with all the titular sadness still in place, it's a hopeful, touching story of love cut short by fate and a great reading experience - one which might have yuri romance as its main theme, but offers much more than just that. Syrup and the Ultimate Sweet While extremely sweet when it goes to artstyle and even the main theme (candy), Syrup and the Ultimate Sweet by Nami is a wonderful short story about prejudice and friendship, that delivers much more than its cutesy exterior might suggest. With well-written dialogues, charming atmosphere and cast of quirky characters it’s a great casual experience – in many ways a polar opposite of The Sad Story of Emmeline Burns, but equally worth reading. Also, with romance being implied rather than in any way explicit, it can appeal to anyone looking for a funny, warm story, rather than just fans of the genre. Once on a windswept night Once on a Windswept Night is most likely the most ambitious Yuri Game Jam VN, with an intricate meta-narrative and multiple mysteries for the player to uncover. With two touching romance stories, multiple hours of content and very solid writing, it delivers much more than you would normally expect from a free game. The visual side of things suffered slightly from the relatively short development cycle, but it doesn’t change the fact that it’s a very creative and in many ways unique experience and, for a game jam entry, an impressive artistic achievement, in many ways on par with Ebi-Hime's commercial projects. First Kiss at Spooky Soiree While not as interesting and brilliantly-written as Syrup…, this tiny VN has a lot of the same charming artstyle and heart-warming mood as the previous Yuri Game Jam game by Nami. Even if it’s too short to offer a comprehensive story of any kind, it works great as an amusing distraction between “serious” readings, with some great lines and creatively-designed characters. Closer to what you would typically expect from a game jam entry, it’s still a pleasant, worthwhile experience. To Libertad This story of a runaway slave and a warrior who saves her life and leads her to a safe haven of Libertad is a pretty standard, but well-written fantasy tale with mild f/f romance added on top of it. The author’s focus on the main characters’ journey and fight for survival, and the bond that forms between them during that struggle effected in something rather universal, that should prove appealing not only for fans of yuri VNs or love stories, but anyone looking for a solid, short adventure tale. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Once again, I hope you’ve found this list interesting and if you want to see more recommendations for short VNs, that are too small to offer material for full reviews, but are still worth looking into, please let me know by liking this post or sharing your thoughts in the comment section below (as YouTube'y as this might sound, I'll be really thankful for feedback). Have a great week everyone!

Warning: Heavy spoilers ahead! If you want to play this VN yourself, stop reading now. I don’t really recommend playing it though… As much as I’m a fan of independent VNs and appreciate the possibilities that crowdfunding opened for the western visual novel market, it’s not completely rare for these projects to end with spectacular disappointment, for various reasons. Carpe Diem: Reboot is an especially interesting example of a visual novel that ultimately failed to live up to the expectations, but not because of lack of effort or poor production values, but through the sheer “virtue” of horrible writing. As I’ll be treating this as a case study of how to screw up a good concept and waste a lot of work, unlike my normal reviews, I’ll be revealing many major plot-points, including some details of the games’ endings. As Reboot mostly relies on its plot twists and mystery elements to keep the player interested, if you want to play it yourself, ignore this review or read it after you’ve completed the game. While the title we’re talking about was released on Steam in September 2017, after a successful Kickstarter campaign, its history starts a bit earlier, with a free VN from late 2015 simply titled Carpe Diem. This very short, but nicely written visual novel served both as a prologue of sorts and an advertisement for the crowdfunding effort which later spawned Reboot. In it, a simple story about two friends (lovers?), Jung and Ai, deciding how to use a rare opportunity to spend a full afternoon together, ended with a twist – the girl was actually a computer program, an object of delusional love of a shut-in trying to escape from his real life. The Steam achievement for reaching the end of the game, “What are you doing with your life?”, served as a somewhat ironic punchline, making clear the main themes the author tried to tackle. Good dialogues and decent execution of Carpe Diem, while in no way breath-taking, definitely showed promise and made many people (including me, although I've discovered it after the Kickstarter campaign was already over) somewhat enthusiastic about its continuation. So, what went wrong? Read the full article at evnchronicles.blogspot.com

This is a thought that has been on my mind for some time. Now we all know the chances of a high school couple staying together forever are slim. You meet new people once you leave school, etc. I do know that it’s possible. But do you think visual novels present teenage romance in a way that is realistic?

after months of reading I finally finished little busters <and no I don't have any intention of doing masatos route> I gotta say this was one of the best visual novels I have ever read, very good mystery, interesting unusual story, great characters and to my surprise the additional routes were integrated in a really cleaver way into the overall story, really like sasegawas route and it threw a really good twist into a already established ideea, kana's route was amazing and the ending I taught was fantastic altho a bit confusing, at first I didn't really like sayas route but when I hit the replay section and the story started to unravel both saya and her route gained a lot of points in my eyes and I really started to like her <the ending sucked btw, I knew from the moment you find out sayas story at the middle of the route how this would end but the ending still sucked> the only real route that I hate was kamikitas, it was more or less worthless and didn't add anything to the main story or any hints like the other routealso It would have been nice to get an ending to kurugayas route that didn't suck, considering how much asspulling the writers did on some ocasions I'm kinda bummed out at how sad both of kurugayas endings were overall this is a must read in my opinion for anyone who is interested in visual novels also im missing 7 achievements on steam and like 3 cgs but I just can't be bothered <pretty sure i get the cgs by doing idiot riki and sayas ecstasy mode> now if you will excuse me I just discovered that there is a little busters wiki so ima gonna get me sum answers

For the hell of it, I decided to make up a 'suggested playlist' for people who like/are interested in chuunige who have just begun to play untranslated VNs. There are two variations on this guide. One is a 'test the waters, gradually take a dip, then dive into the depths' guide. The other is a 'Spartan Guide', which starts out with medium difficulty VNs and moves into harder and harder ones at the top tiers. Each VN list will have four tiers, based on a combination of my estimation of difficulty in reading. For those unfamiliar with the term 'chuunige', some examples of chuunige that are translated are Fate/Stay Night, Tsukihime, Sorcery Jokers, and Tokyo Babel. I believe you can get the drift from those four examples, lol. Soft Landing Tier 1 suggestions (difficulty ranges from a 4-7 on a scale of 10)- Tiny Dungeon series, Draculius, Hyper→Highspeed→Genius (main path only), Ryuukishi Bloody Saga, ExE Tier 2 suggestions (difficulty ranges from a 5-7.5 on a scale of 10)- Bloody Rondo, Shinigami no Testament, Gensou no Idea, Sinclient, Innocent Bullet. Yurikago yori Tenshi Made Tier 3 Suggestions (note: VNs on this list range in difficulty from 6-8 on a scale of 10)- Evolimit, Bullet Butlers, Hello, Lady, Izuna Zanshinken, Devils Devel concept Tier 4 Suggestions (note: VNs on this list range from 6-10 on a scale of 10)- Jingai Makyou, Soukou Akki Muramasa, Silverio Vendetta, Zero Infinity, Vermilion Bind of Blood, Tokyo Necro, Bradyon Veda Spartan Tier 1 Suggestions- Evolimit, Yurikago Yori Tenshi Made, Izuna Zanshinken(starts at the high end of 'soft landing' tier 2 up through the middle of tier 3) Tier 2 Suggestions- Hello, Lady, Bullet Butlers, Devils Devel Concept Tier 3 Suggestions- Vermilion Bind of Blood, Jingai Makyou Tier 4 Suggestions- Silverio Vendetta, Zero Infinity, Tokyo Necro, Muramasa, Bradyon Veda Some Last thoughts Understand, I know people who are just fine with conversational Japanese and even a number of native speakers who can't handle Bradyon Veda or Muramasa. I honestly suggest you leave those two to last, no matter what. Bullet Butlers is slightly harder than Evolimit due to fantasy terminology. Vermilion is the easiest of the Tier 4 from 'soft landing'. I honestly suggest that anyone just beginning with this list do ExE or Draculius first, because if you can't understand what is going on in either of those even giving yourself time to do so, then you won't be able to play anything else on the list. Suggestions Toss aside stupid pride when playing chuunige and use a text hooker and kanji parsing engine (Mecab or jparser in TA will do fine). Chuunige often use kanji in ways almost unique to the individual writer or that are so archaic that even a native speaker won't grasp them immediately. This is a bad habit of chuunige writers in general. Some writers even revive kanji that have been out of common use since the middle of the twentieth century. Don't feel like you are a traitor for looking up verbs or nouns you haven't encountered before. Almost all chuunige writers use 'literary Japanese', which is almost never seen in anime or manga. Literary Japanese, just like literary English, still uses terms that went out of use in the verbal part of the language decades or even centuries ago. Still, the verbs and nouns themselves are most likely in the dict on your parser, so it should be easy to look up their meanings.

Saga Planets new VN was quite well received - not only on VNDB but also on EGS. Must admit that the whole knight girl & princess stuff looks quite tempting. It'll be interesting to see how it'll perform in the upcoming Getchu Bishoujo Game awards. The structure doesn't really matter. Even a one-liner would have been okay. My year reviews always tend to end up a bit over the top...

That's the quote of the month, period. I'm more amazed at it being translated though. That Dekiru Translations guy know his priorities well.

tbh the issue is so transient that any motions I'm not already taking (for example, I'm attending a university program which I feel is constructive and will probably get me both a job and daily interaction of some sort) are wasted effort. Literally it felt better once dawn ended and morning began, and that's basically just waiting 'til nature decided to turn the brightness slider up a bit you've been memed, boi probably The ending was definitely a meme since I actually felt better after writing the thing.

I think that's not really the same thing we are talking about. Umineko is told from 3rd person POV and in those character jumps are quite normal. And if Kindred Spirits on the roof is written like Sakurai's other VN's, it's probably also 3rd person POV. Didn't play the others, so I can't judge. Though technically I played Katahane for a few hours, but I dropped it because I didn't like it and I can't remember the writing structure anymore. And in Sorcery Jokers it definitely doesn't work 'perfectly' - it's an absolute mess so far. Not just because of the sudden POV changes, but also because of the unfunny jokes and some really dull written characters with Haruto and his ultra-annoying 'that's not playing fair' statements in particular. The VN even goes so far to show the exact same scene from the 1st person POV of two different characters. This can be interesting if there's a certain twist behind it like in Root Double. But in Sorcery Jokers it's done for completely pointless slice of life scenes just to drag the pacing down. I still hope it's just a messy beginning and gets better after a while, because I definitely won't finish it like that. Currently, the only thing that keeps me reading is Senri and that there are occasionally still interesting story bits showing up.

It's even worse, Katawa Shoujo is a depiction of virginial american's dreams. But Katawa has to be unrealistic, it is telling a pretty passionnate story, something that is closer to Key's stuff, we don't need realism in such works, we need to feel the emotions, that's the most important thing. When you say realistic, you have to apply the same formula in real life and get the same result, i'm sorry, but 1-2-3 exceptions doesn't mean anything, it's called a stastistical error, at most.

Just like a few months ago when I gave away a copy of Littlewitch Romanesque, I bought the collectors edition of Eiyu Senki when it came out which had two extra copies one uncut *which I've already given away* and the All Ages Steam Copy. Last time the code went to someone had already had the game so this time let's see if it goes to someone who's never played it. The Code is 68XYV-5GWBH-D40FE Enjoy it whoever claims it!

Eh, when you have extensions like this, it's really not that hard.

hm... old kirikiri is a bit tricky... new kirikiri and old kirikiri has the same problem, they dont support word-wrapping, but new kirikiri support space while old kirikiri is not, and i assume, the problem is because of the spacing issue... if you use xp3tools from insani.org, i believe there should be 3 tjs files which you need to include in your patch... edit: i'm blind, looks like this is a new game, eh... then, i believe there is no spacing issue here, how about use garbro to repack the xp3?

Oh, right, i have to debunk this. Pulling out is NOT a safe way of contraception, at all, actually, EVEN Before you unleash the pastry cream into the bun oven, you have some cream that escape from it, no matter your skill.

I'm on a Alice x Marisa mood lately

WHUT BE YOU!!

This series of spell chants from Light games, lol.

its been claimed. not by me so stop looking at me with those hateful eyes. >.>