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Hi folks, We’re aware of the community’s concerns and are working to address them. We’re doing a lot of listening and behind-the-scenes work right now, even if not all of that is visible. Here's a quick explanation of the situation at hand so you know what’s happening: There are two Sekai Projects operating independently, but in parallel. There’s the US Sekai Project and the Japanese Sekai Project. They are not the same company. This is not to say that we don’t associate with each other or that there’s no business relationship between us, but it is to say that we are separate entities making separate decisions about separate projects. Sekai Project Japan handled the Chinese release of WAGAMAMA HIGH SPEC. We (Sekai Project US) did not participate in any negotiations, we did not participate in the QA process. Our only involvement was to put the release on Steam--just like we’ve done with previous Chinese-language Sekai Project Japan releases. Previously, this process hasn’t caused problems. We are not here to throw Sekai Project Japan under the bus. This is a sensitive situation and not all details can be made public, including basic information about parties involved. We are not blaming them. Both Sekai Project Japan and Sekai Project US are currently working to resolve the issue. Thank you for taking the time to read this. We’ll be continuing to work to improve the state of VNs in the West because everybody deserves a good VN!

Really now? I'm sure there are nuances and aspects of it that will escape you without knowing the language and its natural variants, but you can't have a valid opinion if you don't know it? Maybe you also need to be a native speaker or even a seiyuu yourself, otherwise you don't have a full understanding of the craft? I'm pretty sure there's tons of things that come into VA work that has little to do with exact meaning of what is said. I fail to see how knowing the language would change things so fundamentally you can't have a conversation without it.

If all you care about is product, and you have no scruples at all about where they come from, then the Internet is your oyster. People who buy products from reputable sources--especially fans and hobbyists--tend to have certain expectations about quality and legitimacy.

Just chiming in on this thread briefly to vouch that the post by @Sena-chan above is from a representative of Sekai Project, since it's a new account and you all might understandably be suspicious of it. They contacted me just to clarify that for them, since they didn't have an established presence here.

I've been avoiding commenting in this thread because I don't know Japanese and therefore can't judge Japanese voice actors. I'd recommend the same to you and to anybody else commenting without actual knowledge of the language. It's okay to enjoy hearing Japanese voice actors, even if that does smack somewhat of fetishism, but I just don't think people like you and I are really in a position to judge. I more or less agree with Kastel's take on this one:

If we're talking actual Japanese dubs of western stuff, they can be surprisingly good. I started watching the Japanese dub of Friends as a joke, but actually found myself enjoying the Japanese voice cast quite a lot. The localization for the jokes were on point, too. Pretty good stuff. Japanese Chandler is something else, lol. Japanese voice work in anime/ VNs etc tends to be very high quality. This comes from it just being a much bigger market over there, so there's higher expecations for the VAs, as opposed to the west, where you kind of take what you get. Even amateur VAs in Japan can be pretty darn amazing, because they have much more competition, and a much harder time getting jobs compared to the western scene, so they kind of have to be good to even be considered. I'm amazed at how many incredibly skilled VAs do really "cheap" doujin work, just to get their names out there.

Walkthrough is missing Kodachi Nagi route (only available after first playthrough) and the true ends to 4 of the main routes (Shirasaki Tsugumi, Sakuraba Tamamo, Misono Senri and Suzuki Kana), 3 of the characters don't have a 2nd ending which are Mochizuki Maho, Serizawa Miyu and Ureshino Sayumi (which is already noted). Not sure if Takigawa Aoi has a route or not considering the VNDB page for her (the sexual content), the Japanese walkthrough guide doesn't seem to mention her, it's possible she is part of Mochizuki Maho route but I'm not sure, I'll find out eventually myself. I'm currently making a copy of the walkthrough here (on Notepad) and replacing the words with the right ones from the game.

I think overall the voice acting level is significantly higher on average in JP subs, however there are some great english performances. Growing up used to watching a language's dub certainly makes it easier to watch. If you listen to something enough, you just recognize it as "that", without judging it. And that familiarity is a positive reaction, usually. When we complain that EN cutesy voices sound bad, there is some level of bias. Since we're used to JP cutesy voices, and we hear English people talk all the time, but Japanese people not so much. My usual gripe is that their delivery isn't expressive enough and they don't have the breadth to emphasize all these different situations. Besides those, I guess the most common culprit for a bad dub is a bad script. A good English performance really needs a good English script -- not the accuracy of the TL so much, but whether those lines can be naturally acted out in the scene. Unnatural English sounds REALLY bad. Lastly, the Japanese have mastered the art of doing KAWAII voices. There are so many variations, and they still manage to come across clear even when talking fast or using shrill tones. The japanese language might actually help here -- there are so many ways to customize a character's speaking patterns (old-fashioned, personal quirks, etc.). It probably can be done in English too, but that level of adaptation/script-writing is rare, I imagine. There is also little need to make someone sound peculiar, when simply doing a good VA will serve the purpose. Curious what people think about a dub like Sunako from Shiki.

I kind of understand, but on second thought, it’s like an Indian restaurant selling salmon sashimi. If the chef can’t even tell the difference between salmon and rainbow trout, why sell it in the first place? It’s not only a disrespect for genuine salmon, the customer will definitely get upset too.

In case you missed it, there is a Humble Bundle containing mostly visual novels on sale right now. For a total of 15$ you can Clannad, the voiced edition of G-Senjou no Maou, two Sunrider titles, and several EVNs like the yuri title Highway Blossoms (which you can get for just 1$). Everyone paying at least 10$ also gets 20% off National Park Girls and Heart of the Woods. Also includes a weird looking game called Genital Jousting. I already own most titles but will probably go for the 10$ for Ladykiller in a Bind and Purrfect Date as well as the Heart of the Woods coupon. I'd be willing to gift the other titles to anyone who asks nicely (including Genital Jousting!) although just one game per person if interest is high enough.

China has a long history of VN fan translation, and a fairly big market for official releases. In the past two years, there are quite a few Chinese translation companies releasing on steam and achieving good sales figures, so I'm not surprised to see companies like Sekai trying to capture a share of this market. What I am surprised to see is how they actually do it. Yesterday Sekai released "WAGAMAMA HIGH SPEC" Chinese translation. To our surpise, it's 100% identical to fan translated patch, even the mistakes like misspelled words. It's very well known in Chinese VN community that this translation involves a scandal. The original translation team gave up the project, then picked up by a second translation group. It was planned for release using the name of both groups, but the original team leader stole the translation then released the game using original team name just before the second group released the final version. Basically, he personally didn't translate anything but claiming he did everything... Since it's not a monetised issue, the two version translation is just a joke about how messy fan translations nowdays among Chinese VN community. What really surpised me is that this guy sold "his" translation to Sekai Project, and Sekai didn't perform any kind of due diligence before buying the translation. Until people buying the game suddenly realised idential translation, then we know what actually happened. Fan translation is always a grey area. Is this copyright infringement? Probably not, but it is really hurting Chinese VN translation community when a large company like Sekai blindly buying translation and earning money, while the real translators get nothing in return.

Disclaimer: I received this game for free from the publisher for a Steam curator page I run. For privacy reasons, I can’t say what that page is. I’ve been cautiously optimistic about this game since the demo was released. On the one hand, the premise seems interesting, the demo was enjoyable enough, and it has some nice art. On the other hand, I’ve disliked just about everything else I’ve played by Reine Works so far. Blossoms Bloom Brightest bored me. I hated all but one of the characters in The Seven Districts of Sin‘s demo. I generally don’t like stories that have homophobia in fantasy settings, even if the story is itself anti-homophobia, so that made the demo for The Wilting Amaranth leave a bad taste in my mouth. The demo for Our Lovely Escape was okay, but didn’t really inspire excitement in me for the full game. But I’m not sure I’d call any of the stuff I played bad. There’s clearly been effort put into them. Maybe they’re just not to my taste. So, despite my previous experiences, I was willing to give Reflections ~Dreams and Reality~ a chance. There’s some very good art; the backgrounds in particular (by DarkChibiShadow, who’s also a visual novel dev in their own right; I highly recommend Tomai) are stunning. Case in point: Reina’s bedroom. In a rarity, there are two different sets of sprites in the game, and it’s possible to switch between them at any time; Set A (the default) matches the main CGs, while Set B matches the chibi CGs. I personally find Set B to be much more expressive and fit better with the backgrounds, despite the CG incongruity. (Also, everyone’s taller in Set B for some reason.) The game makes use of partial voice acting in the form of “grunts,” short phrases, and the like. I can’t say I’m a huge fan; I’d prefer either full voice acting or none at all. But I don’t dislike it enough to turn off the VA completely, which is good, because there’s no way to turn off the VA without also turning off the other sound effects (which are disproportionately loud compared to the voices; watch out if you’re wearing headphones). Main characters (in order of introduction): Reina: The protagonist. She is known as the “Magic Mirror” because of her magical power to show people their true selves. However, said power takes an extreme physical and mental toll on her, and after having her power continually exploited in her childhood, she ran away to escape it. Solmaris: The protagonist’s best (and only) friend, a werecat whom Reina nursed to health after she found him injured as a child. Leo: An unfailingly-polite giant-slayer (as opposed to a giant slayer; he’s pretty much average for a human). Wynn: The son of the chief of a werewolf tribe. He’s the only LI to have three endings (good, bad, special) instead of two (good and bad). Ronah: The flirty, haughty queen of the frozen kingdom of Eisheim. Cara: A princess of an undersea kingdom. She’s an optimist who wants to abolish the concept of royalty in favor of democracy. She’s a little bit naïve (okay, a lot naïve). Thiria: A half-human dragonkin who’s self-conscious of how small her dragon form is and wants nothing more than to be able to live in human society. Sho: A mage with the power of exchange; he can grant people’s wishes for a price. He’s kind of a massive jerk. Blanc: The only son and heir of the Descartes family who owned Reina when she was a child, he is determined to protect her from his family. He doesn’t appear until the second common route. Peony: An extremely eccentric woman who’s convinced that Reina is a fortune teller. She also doesn’t appear until the second common route. Whew, that’s a lot of characters. A problem games with lots of love interests can have is that they sacrifice content for variety; rather than taking a few LIs and fleshing them out a lot, they take a lot of LIs and only flesh them out a little, making the whole experience less satisfying. Does Reflections suffer from this problem too? Read the full post on Pixels, Polygons, Prose! [Major Spoiler Alert]

Ah, sorry! I put a spoiler warning in the article itself but forgot to put one here. Thanks for the comment. I wouldn't really recommend this game unless you get it for free like I did (or maybe for extremely cheap). It's not terrible, but it definitely wore out its welcome for me.

I frequently watch Japanese dubs of Western movies, and they're pretty good. It's almost like they were Japanese movies to begin with or something similar. The other day I watched the dub version of Leon: The Professional, and man they nailed the loli.

why take one sentence from my post? i do go on to explain why its not just fanboying over japanese dub. and, i do know enough of the japanese language and how they speak to have an opinion. no, im not a native speaker or a translator for the language but that doesnt mean i know nothing about what im talking about. i wouldnt mind if you presented something that went against anything i said but you basically just say "you cant have an opinion on the matter." while ignoring everything else i said.

As far as I remember, the H-scenes don't add that much to the plot. Well, technically one of them does but the all ages version gives you all the information you need to follow the plot.

yes, and its not just fanboying for the japanese version. there are english dub versions taht are on the same level or better than japanese dubs such as ghost stories, golden boy, full metal alchemist brotherhood. BUT the reason japanese dubs are better is because there is an entire industry surrounding it. voice acting is huge in japan with video games, anime, singing sometimes where a role in a hentai could be used as a starting point for some big name voice actor. these actors need to be the top of their game and deliver the best performance possible while it seems like in america we're having a hard time filling a quota.

Indeed. Sometimes we just want to set game on auto mode and see the story unfold without unnecessary clicking. Though i just try to search Non-Utsuge, Non-Nakige, simply Happy-Go-Lucky kind of comedic stories on VNDB. Somehow It has become crucial to research a VN before thinking of playing it, just to avoid hitting a frustrating dead end.... To a certain extent, in RPG games like Monster Girl Quest Trilogy, we can raise our stats through Cheat Engine but, it is still very difficult to mod J games.

Of course I can't. Would you invest your time into shit? No? See, that's exactly what I mean.

So it's been about 2 weeks, any progress on that partial patch?

I usually use a walkthrough. If it's a vn where you can chose your own route to select, or a kinetic novel then I don't need a walkthrough for that. I do read a lot of vns with a ton of choices, so I definitely need a walkthrough for those vns. Sometimes I try to play without a walkthrough, but I always get bad ends. Anyway I definitely recommend using a walkthrough especially for Key vns.

I've seen this issue before with another Cyberworks game. Use this...

/slightly OT I said that I tend to avoid physical editions, but actually Cruise Sign is first physical VN that I bought (second one being To Heart PSE)