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Showing content with the highest reputation on 01/05/19 in all areas

  1. So, I finally finished The House of Fata Morgana, and that was quite the ride. Probably the most powerful VN I've read in years emotion-wise - I was literally in tears at the end. I think the last VN that was able to achieve that was Minori's Eden. I had the VN stalled for almost a year or so after the 4 - 5 introductory chapters as I'd call them. Their main purpose was to set up the stage for the real story, but after several short stories that were just loosly connected I got a bit impatient to see the big picture and therefore stalled it a while. But when I picked it up again last week, the VN unleashed its full potential and I almost couldn't stop reading anymore. Overall, there were several aspects that really impressed me about this VN. First, it's really well constructed - pretty much every chapter is an essential mosaic of a big tale. That's not to say I liked every chapter, especially the third and to a certain degree also fourth and fifth didn't really capture me that much. But nevertheless, every chapter had a meaning that allowed the following chapters to build up on it. They wouldn't have been as strong without the introductory chapters. After some initial doubts, I was extremely relieved that in contrast to some other witch VN out there, this wasn't just 80% meaningless filler text and characters. Second, the VN plays with all shades of grey, including bright white and pitch black. It's literally impossible to simply order things in good and evil. Circumstances can massively change people either for the better or worse, and sometimes it's just a matter of perception. There are situations where every action will do a good thing for one side and a bad thing for another, and you'll simply have to make a decision what's more important to you. The writer showed a great understanding how life works. Third, the VN doesn't get lost in grey. Not every character is just a result or product of his or here circumstances. There are still ones that stand out among the masses and refuse to just be a plaything of destiny. And sometimes the brightest light can turn into the darkest black. Fourth, not every character starts out as the epitome of greatness - they need time to grow and develop. I also want to use that opportunity to emphasize how important a plot is to develop its characters - even for a moege. Maybe the deredere isn't as dull and boring if she gets into a situation where she's challenged a bit. And maybe the tsundere isn't just a bitch and shows really admirable virtues given the right situation. Fata Morgana has several characters that might even seem bland at first, but change and develop over time, because the story allows them to do so. Fifth, the writer achieved to make the central tragedy 'special'. Given the time period the story plays in, you could find tragedies and suffering everywhere. Just having a character who experienced great misery isn't sufficient. You need an outstanding character who was victim of a great injustice for that. Visually, the VN certainly hit the mark with its more classical western look, although I still consider the cheaply made blurred photo backgrounds a real downer. In some situations I wasn't even able to decipher what's supposed to be shown on it. In others, the proportions of the sprites didn't fit to the ones of the background at all. It was certainly my biggest gripe about the visuals of the title. The music was pretty great, although I have to say that there were 1 - 2 slice of life tracks I wasn't so fond of - and unfortunately those were probably the most played tracks in the VN *sigh*. But pretty much all tense and dramatic tracks ranged from solid to great. It's a bit unfortunate that the VN didn't have voices though. The VN also frequently seemed to be more expressive when it took a more classic book or novel approach with full images and NVL style. Some of the most engrossing parts were just text and a plain background like a simple book. Although I think they handled the ADV parts with sprites much better in the second half of the VN. Favorite characters: Final rating: 8.5/10 I would have even given an ultra rare 9, but the crappy backgrounds and the lack of voices were a bit of a downer. Still an amazing VN though. I also finished Ann's route of Saku Saku... after more than one year of reading. I also wanted to read Yuuri's route, but Ann's was so boring that I'm not sure if I should just drop it. I recently bought Sakura Sakura and I'd be more interested to read that one as a moege at the moment. Regarding story VN's, Chaos Child will be next.
    3 points
  2. What a dumb thread. Read what you like, even if people like me say its shit.
    3 points
  3. ...During the release of Sakura no Uta some EOPs were scared of what he would do after the fact— more so even when he made a statement saying he might not like it. why is that so? to my understanding everyone´s free to like what he likes, and in case clephas possibly no liking sakuuta, so fucking be it. hell given the mentioned situation those eops couldn´t even read it, so why being concerned/scared/pissed off by anyones personal opinion? i just don´t get it. what´s real fucking bad is certain e-celebs declaring titles of their liking to be the alphas & omegas of galge, in a way basically endorsing sheep mentality. nothing worse than blindly buying whatever overhyped title, only to find it boring as fuck, or the existence of people actively defending bandwagoning as how the community should be. unneeeded toxicity when commenting is one thing, but a bunch of braindead fucks is in no way any better.
    3 points
  4. I guess the "only two releases in 2018" thing came from looking at their Wikipedia article? It's not even remotely accurate, fwiw. I'm seeing more than 20 actual new releases in 2018 according to VNDB: https://vndb.org/p162. Plus, there's at least one release which doesn't appear there and only appears on their Denpasoft VNDB page (I Walk Among Zombies); probably more, but I just happen to have been involved with Zombies: https://vndb.org/p162 Still, I agree they didn't have a ton of big-name releases in 2018, but then again, who did? For me, Ditzy Demons, Re;lord, and I Walk Among Zombies were all solid releases, though I am, again, obviously biased on that last one. I also keep meaning to play Fatal Twelve, since I hear good things. And of course some people cared a lot about Maitetsu in theory, though said people probably also complained bitterly when they got it. All that said, they do still seem to have a pretty substantial backlog that I guess they're working through.
    2 points
  5. Just to chip in my thoughts on a couple of those points, since some I strongly agree with, and some I disagree with, and I think I have a somewhat balanced view having been on both the fan and pro side of VN loc... Strongly agree with this one. You will see companies pick up things simply because of staff enthusiasm at times, but it's the exception that proves the rule. Generally speaking, fan translation is probably the best shot for localizations for much older, "classic" titles. Official TLs are actually in worse shape here than fan TLs. It's far more common for fan TLs to have someone in a "translation checker"-type capacity than it is for official TLs, since fan TLs have the luxury of time and (oddly enough) resources. There's barely enough money in professional VN loc to pay a (not very good) rate for TL, edit, and QC; unless you're looking at a truly exceptional scenario (Muv Luv and Clannad come to mind as probably having had more resources available than most official loc projects), there's no money at all to pay for extra hands beyond that. These are generally very light-handed, and ultimately more like guidelines than rules. Except in really superficial, stylistic ways, all the releases even from a single given company will vary wildly in their approach to various localization decisions, due to the influence of the many freelance translators and editors employed by each company. Same. Though I'll caution by adding that, at least in my case, I only feel that way as long as the TL in question is delivered with care and quality, just like I'd want from an official TL. If it's a poorly edited google translate job, then it's worse than nothing, since it puts the nail in the coffin for any chance of a quality translation, and I wouldn't want that for any game I cared about. But that can obviously happen with either a fan TL or an official TL, as the recent Tenkiame release for example shows... Neither fan nor official TL has either a monopoly on or a guarantee of quality.
    2 points
  6. ^Totaly this. Okay sure, unnecessary attacks and insults are indeed the worst and shouldn't be endorsed in any way, but you do realize you give power to those people in the instant you just parrot what they say over and over again. You mention "kamige" in the text, but what do you mean with that? Most of the time it's some game that Moogy, Conjueror, you name it, liked. People forget it's just their opinion, they're free to say it, but it's not absolute truth. There's absolutely no problem to disagree with them. I bet that 90% of the people that vote for Muramasa in those localisation polls every year have absolutely no idea what that VN's plot is about. So stand for your own opinions, be a proud EOP if that's what you want to be. If you're satisfied with what you have now, who cares what they're thinking. There's plenty of translated stuff that's good that should keep fans occupied for a long time, so why not look at what you have instead of begging for what others say it's good (that's maybe not even that good in the first place)? You say that Clephas minding his own business, reading only what he likes (well, for the most part, I guess) is a bad thing, but some people really need to do the same.
    2 points
  7. Welcome to the second and last part of my 2018 Curator Connect Clean-up (if you missed the first half, check it out here)! The horror themes were strong in the VNs sent to me this year and while it will be less explicit in this part, they’re not completely gone either, mostly represented by Perseverance – an episodic, postapocalyptic game which strives to prove that story-driven experience featuring zombies is still not passée in 2018 (and, possibly, that the Telltale storytelling formula is not as dead as the studio that created it). Other than that, we’ll get to experience an ominous sci-fi mystery Event-D and two low-budget, simple romance VNs, all of them holding some surprises… Not always positive ones, though. The Wilting Amaranth I have pretty complicated feelings about Reine Works’ visual novels – on one hand, they show genuine effort, have decent visuals and are not cynically exploitative even when implementing sexual content. On the other, they always struggle when it goes writing and characterisation, to the point they always short of being genuinely good and compelling. The Wilting Amaranth showcases these problems especially well – while the set-up protagonist’s personality and her backstory are all simple (a lesbian-in-denial princess, pressured by her parents into an arranged marriage, is accidentally summoned by a witch to her remote tower), they’re interesting enough to carry a simple, romantic plot. Where it pretty much falls apart is the heroines and how their characters are developed: the witch is shy and stuttering to the point she’s barely able to hold a conversation at any point of the plot and her quirks grow tiring very fast. The other possible love interest, a prisoner of the witch who tried to assassinate her for a bounty, is a first-class sociopath who can do all kinds of despicable things if it makes her some money, but switching her attitude in certain scenarios for no clear reason. Even with how short the game is (around 3-4 hours of reading) there’s no real justification for how these characters are developed and sadly, it takes away quite a lot of fun from the experience, with contains not-awful production values and some fairly cool ideas. While reading it is not a complete waste of time, it’s also not something I would ever strongly recommend, even for yuri fans. Final rating: (Cautiously) Recommended Read the full article at evnchronicles.blogspot.com
    1 point
  8. Good to hear grammar is at least not a clusterfuck I could probably manage with a ton of computer terms in katakana. Thanks.
    1 point
  9. For the grammar it was easy but it uses a lot of computer terms in katakana which may confuse you at first.
    1 point
  10. Dergonu

    What are you playing?

    I decided to buy the PSvita version of ChuSinGura, as I've been really curious about how they'd handle an all-ages port for that game for a while now. (A proper one, and not that... abomination that's on Steam.) Since I am re-reading the game atm, I figured I might as well get the PSvita version now, and finally get an answer to my questions about this version. I must say, I'm really impressed with how well done this is. So far I have only found a couple of small things that were changed, and those were... obvious ones. (I mean, a loli having sex with dogs isn't exactly all-ages material, lol.) General overview of what I've seen from a good 6-7 hours ish into the game: - All perverted jokes and refrences to sex are kept completely intact. I was very surprised by this, but yeah, it doesn't seem like they've toned this down much at all. A couple of examples: - The outfits for some characters have been altered a tiny, tiny bit. (Fuwa and Shinpachirou had their nipples hidden by adidng a tiny bit more cloth to their tops, and Matsunojou and a few others had the very obvious outline of their nipples toned down a little.) - CGs showing nipples/ genitals are changed so that there's some convinient cloth just barely covering what needs to be covered, but the text etc still remains exactly the same, and the CGs are still plenty frisky. Overall it seems like the only changes are: - H-scenes being replaced by "all-ages" friendly scenes. (They do have new text and new CGs for these.) - A handful of scenes that cannot be "covered", such as Tsunayoshi talking about having sex with her dogs have been changed to her just doting on her dogs in general instead. (Which honestly just feels more... natural. The whole dog sex thing was kind of pushing it, lol. For those of you who don't know, Tsunayoshi was known as the "dog shogun" for his law basically branding stray dogs as deities, and there were rumours about him being intimate with dogs as a result.) - CGs showing nudity have said nudity covered, but the text and the rest of the scenes/ CGs remain the same. I am curious how a few things that happen later in the game gets handled, so I'll make one post for each chatper. Chapters 3 and 4 in particular should be... interesting. Though, based on how well Ch.1 has been done, I'm sure they've done a good job with the rest of the game, too. Man, I'm really glad this game wasn't butchered by Sony's stupid policies. How Inre managed to get a game this lewd and uncut on the PS-store, I don't know, but god bless'em. I wish every all-ages version of eroge got handled like this.
    1 point
  11. The only meaning I know is "English Only Peasant" and "Japanese Only Peasant". If someone knows a less insulting meaning of the acronym please share it.
    1 point
  12. Update: It was really friggin' good. Wish the Steam 18+ patch worked properly though. At first there were no voices in NSFW scenes, but that was fixed quickly. The achievements still don't work though, so there was some skipping and poking around to get them. Now I have to impatiently wait for more Nitro+chiral in English.
    1 point
  13. Will do, seems like a lot of people do so maybe I'll type up a review of my thoughts and open a new thread to talk about it when I get there.
    1 point
  14. Maitetsu, I Walk Among Zombies Vol. 1, The Ditzy Demons Are In Love With Me, Re;Lord 1 The witch of Hertfort and stuffed animals, Fatal Twelve, Mhakna Gramura and Fairy Bell, A Light in the Dark, Neko Para Extra, Neko-nin exHeart 2, Shining Song Starnova, Love's Sweet Garnish, Lynne, AIdol, Girls in Glasses, CyberRebeat, Last Stanza, Hard Work, Creature Romances and Innocent Forest: The Bird of Light are titles published by SP last year. While this looks like a lot, most of them were either short titles (not that much to translate) or english original titles that were just published under SP (they probably weren't really involved in those but just put their name on it and got some profit for using their name). The only ones I can see that are medium length or longer and not originally english are Maitetsu, Fatal Twelve and The Ditzy Demons Are In Love With Me. The Ditzy Demons Are In Love With Me actually got a release date early 2018, but it got pushed back to the end of the year, from what I seem to remember it was because it still lacked the Chinese translation and Sayori wanted to release it with all the language options. This would mean that they kind of screwed up by giving it a release date before really checking if it actually could be released within that time. Then there is Maitetsu which was a huge blunder with the censorship issues. Fatal Twelve I haven't really heard that much about so I guess they probably did a decent job with it.
    1 point
  15. I think the fact that fan translations are still coming is very interesting, considering there's at least some market for translations to make money from. Tsurezurescans (who I do not really know much about) seem to be an anomaly in my mind in that I don't see many people really complaining about quality of translation, and they are working pretty consistently, when fan translations seem to be on the back burner/disappearing. I honestly appreciate the effort by anyone putting in proper time to put out fan translations, even if they are poor quality, because I don't think they close any doors because there is no license and if they are poor quality then anyone can make a new one still. That all said there are obviously merits and and demerits to official translation companies. I think ideally larger visual novel companies would themselves expand out from Japan and hire translators to ensure the quality of their products as I'm sure they care more about it and their brand than third party licencors. But as it is we really benefit from having so many companies translating visual novels for the obvious fact there are lots of them that might not get touched otherwise, or at least not for a long time. Though there's obviously the fact that this means if its a machine translation or a busted translation then we might not ever get a good one unless fans are really skirting on copyright infringement to do their own translations or fix the official one. So yeah, good and bad.
    1 point
  16. Overambition has been their downfall. They tried getting as many licenses as they could from their genesis until around 2017 without any preparation on how to get those licenses translated and out in a reasonable period of time.
    1 point
  17. For that to happen it probably requires another outrage from anti censorship people, though so far the titles that have been banned from steam have not had enough of a following to cause the same kind of outrage Nekopara and Huniepop did. As long as they target things that are niche I doubt there will be a large enough backlash for them to stop banning random VNs.
    1 point
  18. You should delete this thread though because it will be TOXIC
    1 point
  19. Thank you very much to each and everyone of you that took the time to read and respond to my discussion (Over 1,000 people!). It's nice to have some people to relate to that plays visual novels because I don't really have anyone like that at the moment who I could talk to about it and I just had to get my feelings out there. I already said it but happy new year; I'll be on the forum regularly and will be posting again on topics or creating new ones, I'll cya soon!
    1 point
  20. This is a list of good games to begin your journey into playing VNs in Japanese. Inevitably, most of these games will be moege, charage, or nakige. There is little to be done about this, as chuuni, sci-fi, and fantasy-action VNs have linguistic barriers that will be too much for someone still struggling with reading conversational Japanese. In particular, the biggest barrier for someone who is used to dealing with Japanese that is 'spoken', rather than 'written' is the existence of literary Japanese. The turns of phrase, different wording, etc. that an inexperienced reader might run into can either be seen as a learning experience or as pure confusion, depending on your level and state of mind. As such, I am only putting down games that are readable for someone who understands spoken Japanese but is weaker in literary Japanese. I will also put a 'second level' for those who are interested in challenging themselves a little but not too much. This one will be for those who are willing to see if they can handle the easier action scenes, more difficult event descriptions, and the like. First Level: Maji Suki Marginal Skip Suzunone Seven Kamikaze Explorer Tsuisou no Augment (this game is hilarious, and it is not a moege. I recommend this to people who liked the atmosphere of Yume Miru Kusuri) Akabanzu - Real na Sekai de Boku ga Kimi ni Dekiru Koto (this game has only minor scientific terms and jargon, mostly related to AI and MMO's. Since it is distinctly possible you ran into these terms just watching anime, I went ahead and put this up.) Chuning Lover (this game is just generally rofl) Ichiban Janakya Dame Desu Ka (one of the few almost-pure comedy in my personal lineup) Otomimi Infinity Sakura Iro Quartet (this and the game above are for mimikko fetishists) Ryuusei Kiseki (sci-fi moege, fairly easy. Hardest parts are when the protag begins preaching about his hobby) Shiawase Kazoku-bu Sukimazakura to Uso no Machi (surrealist fantasy moege... mildly funny, interesting in general) Toppara - Zashikiwarashi no Hanashi (use this as your crash course in youkai) 12/30/2014 edit Love Revenge Real Imouto ga Iru Ooizumi-kun no Baai 08/15/2016 Edit Sakigake Generation Minamijuujisei Renka Primal Hearts Primal Hearts 2 World Election Koko Kara Natsu no Innocence Second Level: Irotoridori no Sekai (yeah, it is being translated, but it isn't done yet) Konata yori Kanata Made (relatively low-difficulty action/event scenes, as well as being an excellent entry point into the utsuge genre) Tiny Dungeon series (relatively normal conversational and event scenes, and the actions scenes are relatively low-difficulty, if somewhat fast-paced) Draculius (similar to above in the action) Haruka ni Aogi, Uruwashi no (this game is probably one of the top three non-action/sci-fi/fantasy games I've played and it is harder than the games on the first level... but in exchange it is also a lot better, lol) Hyper→Highspeed→Genius (relatively high difficulty to first level, but it is easier than the games I'd prefer to introduce people to, lol) Koisuru Otome to Shugo no Tate - The Code Name is "Shield 9" (fanboys of fantranslations know this as one of the many dead projects) Ore no Tsure wa Hitodenashi Kaminoyu (this one and the one above are your source for non-human love in this stage, lol) Otome ga Tsumugu, Koi no Canvas (higher difficulty than first level primarily due to the art terms) Aete Mushisuru, Kimi to no Mirai Akatsuki no Goei (first one only, later ones are too hard for Second Level) Re: birth Colony Lost Azurite (this, Tiny Dungeon, and Draculius are probably the hardest games on this list) Fake Azure Arcology (direct link to the game above, and ditto) Kimi to Boku to Eden no Ringo Koiiro Soramoyou (famous for certain VN fanboys) Kimi to Boku to no Kishi no HIbi (recent release, fairly easy, good protag) Lunaris Filia (a vampire charage, for those who want some of that) Naka no Hito nado Inai!! Tokyo Hero Project Dracu-riot Sakura Tale Tojita Sekai no Tori Colony (this game is pretty hilarious, especially if you insist on seeing all of the loop ends before getting to the true end) Tsuki ni Yorisou, Otome no Sahou (similar to Koi no Canvas, in that the terms that will give you the most trouble are the technical ones - this time for sewing and clothing design) 12/30/2014 edit Zannen na Oretachi no Seishun Jijou Kimi no Tonari de Koishiteiru Sekai wo Sukuu Dake no Kantan na Shigoto Nanairo Reincarnation (borderline within this if you are familiar with the base concepts of youkai and ghosts as understood by the Japanese) Sakigake Generation Edit: This will be the last in my series of lists. I will edit them with additions occasionally, but I won't be making any new ones. Have fun yall.
    1 point
  21. What happened with you, old man? What a boring answer. You lost that spice.
    0 points
  22. Stormwolf

    What are you playing?

    Many vn's are somewhat ruined by misplaced comedy.
    0 points
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