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Tbh Muv Luv is much less about waifus and more about the incredible and complex world it builds. Extra an Alternative are two completely different beasts. Do not judge the characters by the little you have seen so far. In Extra everyone is annoying on purpose. Takeru is not an exception. But trust me, after you finish Alternative you'll come to love even the way the characters were in Extra. As for your question, yeah, there are a lot of people who can't stand Sumika and love Muv Luv nonetheless!

Still reading F/SN Heaven's feel after taking a break for studying

Confession: I've rated my 100th VN on VNDB today! ...It was Sakura Magical Girls. ...And it was absolutely horrible.

lol same tbh. But i'm still on S2 for now, combining it with playing YS VIII. Really great show with cool MC for a change. The only thing i despise - Other than that - great. Plus at the end of S1 When i started to watch anime, i also decided to rewatch Sailor Moon, remembering childhood. Although in my case there was good translation on TV back then, so i went with it. It's actually 1 of the 2 anime i can watch with translation, others are only with subs, no exceptions. It's a great show, really. So i had my hopes considering Crystal series, but... After S1 i decided that no, don't wanna watch S2, it's just incomparable to the original in all aspects. It's bad. Added "Yuru Camp" to my backlog when i first had a glance on it. Will start to watch it in the near future as well.

I have necroed this thread to announce that this question, along with many other issues surrounding waifus, have finally been thoroughly researched and analysed. For everybody's convenience, the findings have been condensed down by a Youtube celeb to a 10 minute academic video. Rejoice everyone.

Considering I've been seriously slacking off, I decided to talk a bit about my list of both japanese and western vns that remain on high priority for this season. Aside from a couple shorter, english-translated titles (Karakara 2, amongst others), Engima: I have yet to check and a bunch of doujin/amateur evns, this list consists of major games I'm mostly looking forward to this season. So, without further ado, in order of priority from highest to the lowest: Japanese titles: Yougen Tennyo - A demon prince embarks on a voyage through mortal planes to bring his bride from the heavenly realm. Incredibly artsy and very much underappreciated. Otomimi Infinity - Near future, beast people and all the relatable sociopolitical dilemma. Definitely one of the best mimikko games out on the market. Komorebi no Nostalgica - Distant future and androids. This is a cult classic game, residing within the top 10 sci-fi vns of all time. Akatsuki no Goei (whole trilogy + fandisk, wew) - A pragmatic bodyguard and a spoiled ojousama? What could possibly go wrong? English titles: Lucy - Androids and future, one more time. Highly emotional, western take on a sci-fi story akin to Planetarian. Quite successful. Considering my time is rather limited and I don't want to get stuck in an endless limbo of self-loathing, this is a somewhat reasonable schedule for the next two, three months of my life. I can't hide the fact I'm actually looking forward to Otomimi Infinity the most, considering the game's mostly about themes I currently find entertaining. There are a couple other titles on my backlog which are near the border, but not as near as to actually justify placing them within the list... or at least not until I finish those first. Not saying it might not suddenly change out of the blue, especially since I'm not sure whether Nostalgica is something I'll be able to cope with in terms of my japanese proficiency (I still want to try, regardless). Be sure to drop me a comment, if you want to hear more or feel like this list is completely wrong and I should be playing other titles at the moment Also, MFW still no Dies Irae.

For what it's worth, I found Da Capo 2 to be WAY better than the first one.

Having read one route of Plain, I would recommend against it - if you're not starved for choice - on account of bad prose and lukewarm plot. For busy vn devs: read the first scene then ditch it; the mode of presentation is interesting, though probably only surprising because VNs put so little effort into it a lot of the time (those versed in Fapanese can try みにくいモジカの子 or something instead).

Damn

So, before following the recent Battle Royal trend and start playing... Fatal Twelve, I wanted to first clear up my backlog a bit. Therefore, since I kinda liked Gahkthun, I started playing Sekien no Inganock. And since I also got Himawari in a sale just like Stein's Gate, and the latter turned out to be pretty okay, I started that one reading too. When I started reading Inganock, I was honestly surprised how grim it was. I think the last VN I read that was that grim was probably Saya no Uta, although that was even more grim. While Gahkthun did showcase a prosperous and lively city centered on the high society and their dark secrets, Inganock is an almost desperate place. A city suffering from various super natural sicknesses, mutating, mutilating and killing vast amounts of people. The city is split into several levels, with the healthy and wealthy people at the top, and the sickly and poor deported to the lower slum levels. The whole theme reminds me a lot of Fallout and Shadowrun. It's a bit depressing, but the atmosphere still sucks you in. The protagonist is a doctor who tries is best to heal the poor and help where he can. He's a really likable dude who's currently top candidate for my protagonist of the year. The writing is a bit more on the poetic side sometimes, but overall it's pretty good and has a very mature touch. Kia is an innocent child Gee rescued in the slums and also behaves like that. Atty is technically also a victim of a sickness, but she was lucky enough to just be turned into a cat girl and could be more or less considered Gee's girlfriend. The three stick together and pretty much build a family with some funny and touching interaction between them. Art is a bit outdated though. Music is better even if some get a bit more repetitive after a while. If it comes to presentation, Gahkthun is certainly the better title. Can't judge the story yet though. Himawari is almost the opposite like Inganock. You have your loli moe blob and the writing is a mixture of goofy comedy, lots of cutesy talk and rather dull slice of life. To be perfectly honest, it's absolutely dreadful. I knew that it was supposed to have a weak start, so I waited until the second chapter - and it got worse. Overall, there are massive problems in almost every area, beginning from the lackluster world building to the characters, the writing and the whole tone of the VN. Warning: Rant incoming! While it's possible that it gets a bit better later on (it can't really get worse anymore), the fact that I don't give the slightest damn about the whole cast anymore, makes it pointless for me to continue => Dropped. Heroine rating: Don't care >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Aoi > Aries Overall rating: 2 / 10

Honestly speaking. I don't expect much from out of a Visual Novel whenever I read them leisurely I just accept them for what they are at face value, if a certain title sucks, then it sucks balls, if the visual novel was compelling and epic in proportion, then lucky me I guess for not wasting my time and got a decent entertainment and learned something new in the process People get disappointed for setting high standards and expectations for certain things in life. To make life simple and easier, I consider stuffs such as videos games, Anime, books, and Visual Novels in particular as akin to "Food" Yep sound crazy since I'm one of those All foods could be consume in so many different ways however while they may all be edible, not every food provides the same nutrients and we somehow get fed up from eating the same food everyday that we oftentimes explore other types of dishes in satisfying our taste buds Same goes with Visual Novels Anime, and video games. All of these are entertainment in general however each offers a unique experience contrary to each other. My answer to your question is: It depends on what you make out of your experience from watching anime or reading Visual Novel in general.

To be honest when i started and played muv-luv extra i really disliked Sumika, but after i played Alternative... She was best girl (well together with Meiya) as far as i was concerned, this has never happened to me before with anime or visual novels as well except for Muv-luv. Though like it has been said, alternative is more about the complex world it builds, and it is amazing.

More like some people think their opinion are fact and everyone else who thinks differently are trash. Not to mention when they put titles on themselves like "I'm a gamer" they feel their opinion matters more. Funny since it doesn't actually matter -.-' There can be one to a million reason "why now". From a business standpoint they may see a "future" in VNs, maybe they are leaving a door open for the chance that VNs get more popular in the west. I'm leaning towards, that they want to distinguish themselves from Steam as you said

The "why now" with GoG still isn't clear to me, and especially how open they're being about their policy towards ero patches. For some reason, they've decided that they want to be in on the action. VN sales are just a drop in the bucket. I don't think that's a primary motivating factor. Free publicity and attention for their platform? Could be. Or maybe they want to sell other games to VN fans. But perhaps the most compelling reason is that they want to distinguish themselves from Steam, and this isn't about VNs at all per say. They want to say, "We want to work with developers, not against them. We're a friendly place for up and coming indie devs. Come and sell your wares with us." It could also just be that, having made highly sexual games like the Witcher, they're sympathetic to sexualized games and think they can provide a better platform for them. Maybe they want this to be part of their brand.

And they say incest only seem cool to people that don't have singlings.

Finally finished ef - the fairy tale of the two. Interesting read ....... that managed to gut punch me in the feels harder then anything I've ever read. Emotionally, I was almost destroyed... At least the Shindou twins are my favorite twins. Both Kei and Chihiro were great. I think I need a read that is a bit more light hearted for now

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Exactly in a hundred years a group of Internet archeologists, who will analyze old websites to research history, are going to discover a snapshot of this this forum in the depths of archive.org, and they will be amazed at how wrong right this prediction will have turned out to be.

Fiction Positive Effects on Brain: Books>LN (caveat: well-written)=>VNs>Manga>Anime. Why? Imagination. Imagining what is going on in a fictional story is the part that expands your brain. LNs and VNs are interchangeable for obvious reasons.

In earlier SOL VNs (those I just termed moege), there was a tendency for heroine/protagonist character development to be minimal. Most of the time, the (rather lazy) writers would use a gobi (an ending like uguu or nyaa) and/or a few obvious moe character traits to define the character from the beginning, and they never really swerved from that original character definition, even after the formation of a lovers' relationship. 'Nakige' began as a sub-genre of moege (primarily under the aegis of Key) where rather obvious situations were used to create cheap catharsis with the promise of a 'happy ending' (or the equivalent of) in the aftermath. As time went on, nakige gradually became distinct from the parent genre, as less moe-focused companies began to produce games that qualified. The key point of a nakige vs an utsuge, incidentally, is that in a nakige the point is to provide catharsis with a happy result, whereas utsuge provides catharsis but doesn't guarantee a happy result (utsuge started appearing about the same time as nakige but had almost no overlap with moege). Charage are an evolution of the original moege genre that retains the moe elements while also going more in-depth with character development (more involved and often showing traits that aren't necessarily designed to create a moe result). Since these turned out to be more popular than their predecessors, 'pure moege' eventually just... vanished (save for a few occasional reboots by companies producing low-budget games). Depending on the year, anywhere from 60% to 80% of the non-nukige VNs produced in a year will be charage since 2008. If you want examples of nakige... Kin'iro Loveriche and Komorebi no Nostalgica are both (relatively speaking) recent examples of this. For an example of a charage, Noble Works, Princess Evangile, or Wagamama High Spec are recent (localized) examples. Note that 'drama' in a charage path is generally mild, resolved quickly, and leaves little in the way of negative after-effects. For an example of 'pure' moege, To Heart 2 or the original translated version of Shuffle (before the extensive rewriting seen in Essence + version) would be decent examples. Edit: Understand, in a broader sense, most non-nukige VNs can be considered 'moege' in the original sense, because most otaku media uses the moe concept in its artwork and character designs. As such, 'moege' as it is currently used, is just an umbrella term for VNs with such elements. A 'pure' moege is one where there is little else but such content.

Not exactly on topic, but if I've learnt something about "golden ages", be in literature, cinematography, videogames, even life itself ffs... is that people tend to idealize the past and consider the current state to be on decline. Most often that not it's just a biased perception. Not to say that it's not possible to talk of some golden age in some way, but experience tells me to not pay much heed to those doomsayers that babble about how brilliant the past was and how bleak a future awaits us.

You're living in the golden age English wise.

Euphoria.

There is, actually.

Yes.

The Cynical Brit, TotalBiscuit, John Bain. 4 years he fought hard against cancer and unfortunately lost that fight. His video game reviews are portrayed as very objective, giving the viewers the facts and quick rundown of various games. So objective that he refused to release a review of a game after a short twitter fight with one of the devs as people may view his negative critiques on the game as just personal bashing. He retired from totalbiscuit on April 30th after treatment for his cancer had made it too difficult for him to think clearly. July 8, 1984-May 24th, 2018. 33 years old. https://twitter.com/Totalbiscuit/status/999787845127634944

It gets worse.