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I'm starting to feel like I might be clogging the thread a little with the frequent posts, but at the same time can't help but want to give thoughts and impressions on the stuff I'm reading since it's quite good. First, To Heart 2. I'm really enjoying this VN. It's SO FUNNY! I said that last time I posted about it, but it keeps on doing so and doesn't seem to want to get away from that angle, which is great :D. I managed to finish the Sasara route (Student Council President = nearly automatic Best Girl) but having read the route I get the feeling that I made a mistake going for that route first - someone on here mentioned that it had a lot of good ideas btu didn't really flesh them out and I kind of agree with that sentiment. It was still nice though, but not the best way to start the VN I don't think, and it did leave me a bit worried for some of the other routes and how they'll play out. I'm now reading the Konomi route and enjoying it. The thing is, though, that the story continues to unfold and I'm liking what I read. There was a scene last night which had me in stitches (more below), and that's just one of several. It leads into the other thing I mentioned the last time I posted about the VN - it's hard to choose what route to do next because there are several that seem appealing. I really want to see what would happen in the Tama-nee route, considering how she treats him :D. I also want to see what happens with Yuma (I'm convinced she needs help hahaha), Komaki (who seems interesting and is the one I'd been thinking of saving for last) and now Karin. As far as Karin goes, the scene mentioned earlier was To Heart 2 spoilers It was so hard to stifle what would've been really heavy laughter last night while reading that scene. I'm really enjoying the VN though, and I'm really looking forward to reading what happens next. I also really like how thus far the routes feel quite different from each other. Hopefully that stays the case the more of them I read. The other VN I'm reading atm is Utawarerumono: Mask of Truth. I did manage to get a copy as I was hoping to, and have already put almost 7h30 into it in only a few days, and invariably, every time I decide I want to read, I read more than planned, so I'm really being sucked into and immersed by the story. I'm really enjoying how it's unfolded thus far, though. It seems to be somewhat different than Mask of Deception, but that's to be expected, and fortunately, it's providing a lot of what I like still (the funny SoL moments) while continuing to amp up the story. I'd heard it mentioned that it has several twists that surprise, and that's been my experience as well - I didn't expect Utawarerumono: Mask of Deception and Mask of Truth spoilers With everything that's happened, it really seems like things are going to come to a head, and I really wonder how the events are going to play out. It's still early days yet, but I think I could very well give it an 8/10 as well. I really hope that Atlus continue to localize and publish their stuff in the West, because between just these two VNs Aquaplus really are becoming one of my favorite VN studios. Actually, on that note, there's another thing to be said here. I'm not sure if it's thanks to Atlus, Aquaplus, or someone else, but both Mask of Deception and Mask of Truth come with extra goodies in the box (for the launch editions at least) - an artbook and a pillowcase respectively. IMO it's a really nice gesture for them to do. Neither of those are things I'd really pay much attention to, or even prioritize buying, and both of those things would've meant *some* extra money being spent to produce, package, and ship them instead of just the discs / carts and cases. Even so, they're included, and it makes it really hard to feel like either of the titles were a bad deal in terms of money spent.

Finally finished Stein's Gate. I've avoided this VN for years, due to the odd art style, the so so impression of the anime, and my general dislike of time loop stories. But since I picked it up cheap in a sale some time ago, I thought I'll just give it a try. Surprisingly, the art was much less of a problem as I thought. While it's certainly not 'pretty', it kind of fits to the whole science theme, and it does get bonus points from me for filling the world with life by drawing background characters. The usage of music was very good. The slice-of-life scenes had more light music, but whenever something interesting happens, like the sending of a D-Mail, the music switched to a more suspenseful soundtrack. It did a marvelous job to create a good atmosphere. The voices were a mixed bag though. I overall liked the female voices, but the male ones were a bit bland to be honest. Daru didn't really deserve such a dull voice considering he's actually (in contrast to Okabe) a real crack. And I hated Okabe's voice and his idiotic laughter in particular so much, that I was absolutely delighted that I could turn off his voice in the options. I wish I could have done that in the anime, since Okabe suddenly got... bearable. The E-mail system was annoying as hell though. After I finished Mayuri's route I was thinking about doing the true route too, but due to the absolute mess of choices required to get to it, I decided that having seen it in the anime was good enough for me. Story-wise there were some really good parts, like some of the time travel theories, but also some grave flaws that significantly lowered the whole experience. Ironically, Stein's Gate's time-line theory almost entirely reflects how heroine routes work in eroges, with key choices that get you locked in a certain route with no way to change it afterwards. I don't consider that particular realistic, but it was certainly highly amusing. It also had a good iteration between slice of life and suspense even if it takes a bit long until gets to the meat of the story. The not so good story-parts usually got revealed if you started to think a bit deeper about some things like... Granted, some of it might be nitpicking, but there was a bit too much ridiculous stuff to to just ignore it. I guess it's essentially chuuni - lots of smart words but little thought behind it - and therefore best enjoyed by not thinking too deeply into it. Plotwise I think they spent too much time reverting things instead of making actual progress in the story and revealing more about CERN. In that regard the VN lacked substance, since besides revealing the identity of FB there's actually very little you find out about them. The time loop scenes also had the problem that only Okabe did develop, while the other characters were kind of frozen in time. One of the main reasons I'm not a big fan of time loop stories. Characterwise, it was also a bit of a mixed bag. I think Kurisu, Suzuha, Mayuri and Daru were pretty okay, but several others were kinda... overdone in some way. Moeka and Lukaku were a bit too screwed up to be believable anymore and Faris was also a bit too over-the-top Nekopara for a story VN. The protagonist Okabe himself almost had a split personality. In the first half he's so deep into his chuunibyou, that he appears almost mentally disturbed, reacting mostly paranoid and schizophrenic - I almost had pity with him. And Kurisu getting involved with him despite how he treated and acted around her was puzzling. And in the second half he suddenly turned into sergeant serious and his whole chuunibyou gets just a mere act he can switch on and off on the fly - I just couldn't believe it. But since he got a lot more bearable and almost likable that way, I was willing to turn a blind eye on it. Overall, it was a decent read, but I was certainly not blown away like others from it. IMHO, other story VN's like Root Double or the KnS series had more substance. Heroine rating: Mayuri > Kurisu > Suzuha > Faris > Moeka (Mayuri was probably not the deepest character, but for some reason I liked her the most) Overall rating: 7/10

*Clephas emerges into reality and the skies turn to pulsing masses of flesh, the ground quickly being covered with light greenish-yellow fluid that dissolves the unwary into nutrients in moments*

In March I've brought you two interviews with notable yuri and otome OELVN developers, talking with Nami and Reine Works' founder, Jackie M. Today, however, we're venturing into the world of very, very traditional romance (with equally high levels of cuteness), as my guest is ds-sans, the author of a lovely freeware VN Sounds of Her Love (be sure to check my review of that game) and the upcoming commercial title Chemically Bonded. I encourage you to join us as we discuss the place of all-ages romance in the VN scene, the role of voice acting in OELVNs and more. Plk_Lesiak: Welcome and thank you for accepting my invitation! While many people in the VN community might recognize your nick, they probably don’t know much beyond that. Could you tell us a bit about yourself? ds-sans: I wouldn't really say that I'm that interesting. I'm currently an undergraduate student at university in the UK studying geography, with an interest in anime and related media in my spare time. (Although, that's died down in recent years.) If I were to describe my current background, it'd be fairly cliché, just like the stories of my VNs. I started developing VNs in 2015, while I was 16, but really showed an interest in January 2014. I didn't make it that far though and only really came back to it to prove that I could do something if I tried. PL: Sooo... Where did the "ds-sans" label come from? ds: In all honesty, I don't think the name really means anything. From what I remember, I think I honestly scrambled a few letters together from a car's registration plate, but this was a good 4 years ago. To clarify though, it has nothing to do with Japanese honorifics at least. I'd only started getting into anime a few months prior and still had no clue as to their usage. The story itself isn't that special, but the name stuck and at this point, I feel that it's too late to change it. PL: You create rather tame, cute romances in a market that seem to reward ecchi and h-content over anything else. Why this formula? ds: Pure romance novels have always been very diverse in the EVN industry, in my opinion. From what I've personally seen, many of the tamer romance titles are either a lot more Western in style or are low-scale non-commercial in nature and target a different audience. As far as I'm aware, there are relatively few commercial B x G titles with no 18+ content which take significant influence from Japanese VNs. Reading Clannad was really influential in my decision to focus on cute romance stories as I wanted to emphasize emotional connections between people over physical. If I were to add scenes like that into the stories, they'd need to supplement that motive as opposed to attracting more sales or getting people off. Katawa Shoujo is a good example of a VN which does h-scenes in this way. It's the formula which my inspiration is driven from, but it's not as if I'm not open to expanding into different genres for different audiences in the future. Read the full article at evnchronicles.blogspot.com

This is true. From what I've seen in testing, everyone charges right into this ending. I will probably add such a prompt, but ideally, I will write it such that the player still feels they really want to see where this goes, so they're 'rewarded' for their inquisitiveness. Then again, screwing yourself by grasping at straws was the point in some ways, but I enjoy giving the player choice, so I will. The first CE accepts a profile plus a bunch of other evidence. This testimony was meant to be the only one that required the profiles, and it'd catch people off-guard. I also like this contradiction because it's both direct and indirect. 'I didn't X' vs. 'I don't know'. This case was submitted as an entry to a competition named "I Want To Believe" where the point was to make a mystery out of supernatural elements. To quote them: " In this comp, we want you to create a game that introduces supernatural elements into an otherwise mundane world...or does it? " And so, I indulged in ambiguity. Everything about this case was left ambiguous, pretty much.

Ya i had to stop playing cuz the site went down First off, I take back my little rant about the badge, because apparently i never clicked on it. "My very important attorney badge" will suffice. +1 Regarding alternate ending, maybe there could've been at least one more prompt where Athena can second guess herself from committing to the bookcase, currently Edgeworth will attempt to stop her once you pick the 4th paragraph but it's already all over at that point. ie. It feels more like a baited ending, would've preferred something like: 3rd Cross Examining. Ahaha, Perky is so quirky, and it's hilarious to think about what was going on through your mind when you had to sit down and think and write all of this... spiritually suggestive dialogue +5 Really, Tiago? xDDDDDD Luckily, I know how your game logics works now, so I was able to easily just *again* present a Profile to beat this section. Gawd you love Presenting Profiles as evidence don't you +0 ~~ 4th Cross examine Perky = Peaky? This section I'll have to give you props for. It had an authentic Ace Attorney vibe to it, how a character shifts personality dramatically, the bgm switching to allegro, and the testimony is actually pretty solid only having one glaring weakness after a few presses (Though I kinda was stupid and tried to focus on something like, "the window was closed at the time so you couldn't have sent the key up" because I forgot that Vlad didn't have the key in the first place ._. +10 P.S. Another wrong answer banter i liked, +5 ~~ Bat revelation: OOOOOOHHHH, the train of thought here was well executed! Why would they conceal that they dealt with bats, even when we were openly discussing birds? Could this revelation be the key to solving this case? WHAT IF.... THE MURDER WEAPON WAS THE BAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! BOOM and you even have the Labyrinthia version of Telling the Truth playing during this, love it! +30 Did I winned? I got the credits and The End but that little dialogue at the end is bothering me.. or was it just meant to be a "they really were vampires!" thing? ~~ Tl;DR Pretty enjoyable, it's a 7 or 8/10. All of the main characters are consistent and their dialogues and banter felt natural, the new characters had their own unique flair like Patrick's mindreading and Perky/Peaky's spiritual wackiness/spoiled bratness, the plot literally had a batty turnabout that was executed cleanly and felt really satisfying to figure out, only real complaints are the cross examines that required presenting a profile rather than evidence, but that's partly my own weakness because i had alot of trouble with the few AA games that went that route as well

When did Lukako suddenly become a football player

Aight I'll bite, since I've been playing nonstop Ace Attorney these past couple weeks (current on Prof. Layton vs Wright) but I'll take a slight detour since Tiag's pretty cool I'll just point out some dialogues that i liked, nitpick them cross examinations, and other misc comments as a filthy elitist casual. Don't need to take any of my following bolded points system seriously First off, wtf is this bland description for Athena's attorney's badge? Where's the "My spanking brand new attorney's badge!" or "Proof of my profession"??? all we have is a lame generic "one of my possessions" ?!?!#!!!@!!! (-10, where's the defense attorney pride!!) I'm only up to the first Cross Examination, but the writing's not too shabby; Athena feels like Athena (+1 for having her be the lead defense attorney, she needs more luv), Nick not being able to make the trial because of staying up all night marathoning an 'old tv show' with Maya who's now sick from overeating burgers sounds just about right, and Edgeworth being visibly disgruntled that he approved of this particular vampiric charge because he was also probably too busy watching them Steel Samurais last night was funny. (+5, you got the characters down pretty good) Only issue with the first cross examining is that it's somewhat tricky because the bulk of it is spent Press spamming to build the Court Record since Athena waltzed into this trial with absolutely no information whatsoever. Which is fair in terms of the plot, but now all of a sudden you have like 5 different pieces of evidence and it's like "I know we need to point out 'hey this guy can't be a vamp because...' but which evidence will contradict which statement to get that message across?!! #getgudson (-1, too much infodump pls) I don't know if there's multiple solutions, but after a while I finally realized "Oh wait, you can present Profiles too." So you just present the Defendant's profile. There we go. But yeah I think something like the Autopsy report with the BLED OUT statement or some other combination should've also worked to pose the "He's not a vamp because he didn't drink blood!!!" contradiction #SaltythatIwasted5minutesSpammingEveryEvidenceWithEverystatementOnlyToThenRealizeTheAnswerWasPresentingDefendant'sProfile (-5, need a bit more flexibility in pointing out this contradiction with evidence instead of just profile) 2nd cross examining was pretty hefty. A bit of narrative pinpointing would've been nice on the "Is there anything that's suspicious?" part when attempting to forcibly move the trial forward because of the amount of tangents there are like that one dead end(?) 'is my client lying' bit, though I did really like the amount of effort put into some of these tangents xD ie. picking the Key you run into the tangent about whether it was possible for the key to be planted after body discovery (which, again, wth man, the answer is Presenting the Victim rather than Presenting the Body Discovery Report for the whole "the victim putting the chair against the door creating the locked room is why its impossible for someone to plant the key afterwards". That was a lame epiphany. +1 for Athena's reaction for picking the wrong answers though) (-30, same as above) THE BODY DISCOVERY REPORT IS OBVIOUSLY SUSPICIOUS, BECAUSE THIS PARAGRAPH'S MISSING A COMMA!!!! ,,,,, (+10, hilarious omg xD) NVM IT'S BECAUSE IT DIDN'T MENTION THE SMALL PARCHMENT THAT WAS FOUND AT THE SCENE!@# wtf tiago, you're already making us have to combine TWO pieces of evidence to progress?!@# Did the main games even do that? DIS TOO HART (+1) Oh crap, we finally now have a pic of the room, now we have to examine it, pick out a suspicious spot, and maybe present evidence on why this spot is suspicious. Uhhh, I'll play some more sometime later. But it's a decent one, Tiago P.S. Your penalty / wrong answer banters are S+ tier (+40, yup, you got these characters down *thumbsup*) Edit: Ooops, I got the 'alternate' ending, godddamit i actually felt smart for doing the whole gust of wind thing, but now i wanna find the truth....

MMM: Murder Most Misfortunate Saw a creator of that VN post on reddit on his team's experiences making the VN and after it went on sales. Thought I'll post it here as my purpose of creating this create is to give people ideas on the business side of making Visual Novels:

Try watching something worse.

I think everyone is over thinking it. What do people say as experienced as other mediums? like Film or books? Just need to be at it for a while. When you start comparing this VN with another you can probably be counted in the experienced group. Ignoring Nukiges, the average casual VN reader may not have read as much as most people on these forums.

Turns out Fureraba isn't really a VN, since the protagonist lives with his mother:

+1 I'm also way past the point of being embarrased for the things I enjoy. I wasn't always like that though, and there was a period in my life when I felt insecure telling people about my hobbies or tastes, as I've always been also into very rare, obscure and uncommon stuff and was concerned about how people would react to that, whether it would cause them aprehension and make me less likeable. But, you know what, I've come to understand that the only people you have to care about are those who like you for who you are, and accept your quirks as part of your personality. Those are the people you can hope to get in a long term relationship with, the rest doesn't matter as there will always be people who dislike you no matter how hard you try. Might as well be yourself then. My passions and tastes are a big part of who I am, and I'd rather be disliked for who I am than be loved for who I am not. EDIT: Gosh I forgot to reply to the original topic Many friends and/or acquaintances know I'm into anime, though they're not interested enough to ask me what I personally like. My big brother (10 years older) is actually an anime fan as well. That's a funny story. We were actually raised apart, and never got to see each other very often up until a few years ago. Then we discovered we were both big weebs (maybe it's in our genes? lol). He doesn't read VNs though. I've recommended him a few, but since he now has a pretty busy life I doubt he'll find time to get into this hobby. My parents also know about my anime and VNs fixation. I got my mother to watch a few animes together, and I think she kinda came to appreciate them at least a tiny bit, considering her first thoughts were "those are cartoons for kids". I never managed to show my father any though. VNs are out of reach not only for them but also for many of my friends and relatives, since they don't understand English well enough to read them, let alone japanese lol.

No.