Leaderboard

https://discordapp.com/store/skus/555856535327342592/under-one-wing https://discordapp.com/store/skus/555867662442430483/newton-and-the-apple-tree

Ok, anyone who has read some of my rants about microtransactions will wonder why I decided to play this f2p smartphone game... until you remember I'm also a Nasuverse fanboy. I made the questionable decision of picking this game up about two and a half months ago, and since then I've been left with a lot to ponder. First, I'll list what I like about this game. 1. Relatively easy to play for free, in the sense that simply doing free quests and story quests can get you the in-game Saint Crystals necessary to roll for higher-rarity servants with only a bit of patience. 2. Charity Servants, the ones that you can get from completing event quests, are often really good (there are exceptions, even so far, but meh), so if you just do the events, you can still build a decent party before going for the higher-difficulty story quests. 3. Leveling up Servants can be fast if you have the items ready. 4. Battle system is decent, if sometimes deliberately frustrating (to encourage you to spend money, probably). 5. Support Servants borrowed from friends can let you clear hard quests easier. 6. The story of the main game is extremely well-written (though the translators made a lot of obvious stumbles by not fixing the language into English grammar at some points). 7. Manages to recreate the often ambiguous emotions drawn out when you played FSN or watched anime like Fate/Apocrypha that gave the series such grandiosity, along with the usual Nasu humor. Negatives 1. Too many obvious ways in which they try to get you to spend money, with the constant summoning campaigns and sudden difficulty spikes during and post Camelot. 2. Blatant Japanese-style gacha-addiction builder. 3. Missions can be extremely long irl time, and AP regeneration speeds make it possible to play seven hours a day on story missions during half-AP campaigns... which eats at rl a bit too much. My Experience My rule when playing standard video games that I already know I want is 'I'll spend $60 and no more', and I kept to that rule, with a lot of headaches from temptation and obsession with cute or awesome Servants (Evil Artoria is just sexy in her portrait at final Ascension, lol). I've managed to enjoy the story of the main game and laugh through the events so far (the GudaGuda events were hilariously designed and written). However, the lack of breathing space between events and summoning campaigns leaves me feeling exhausted even if I only play a few hours here and there. Every time I wanted to sit back and enjoy the story, there was that time limit to get all the great skill-up and ascension items I didn't want to have to farm from the game nodes, and now there is an event coming up that requires you have completed the main story through Solomon... which is annoying as hell, since BB really looks cute, so I want her in my roster to stare at with drool dripping from the corners of my mouth, like with Medusa Rider and Evil Artoria... Yes, that is the level of obsession this game can create for Fate fans. The fact that several familiar faces are available in the beginning-of-the-game gacha (including Archer from FSN and Heracles) is tailor-made to draw a Fate fan in and trap him with his own lust. I don't recommend anyone with a collector's tendencies or addictive tendencies in general play this game, as it is a potential money sink for any such individual, sadly. Since I am such an individual, my words should have weight, lol. It takes real effort for me not to look at the summoning campaigns when I don't have Saint Crystals or summoning tickets. On the other hand, this game manages to actually tell a good story, and, having just finished Camelot (which is a difficulty spike on par with suddenly dipping into a Souls game when you thought you were playing Ar Tonelico level), I can tell you it is worth at least going this far. While it lacks the huge emotionality of Fate/Apocrypha or the original FSN, it makes up for it with the sheer number of personal stories and glorious ends the various Servants manage to meet. The fact that this definitely feels like a Fate story in both depth and detail makes it even better for a Fate fanboy. However, where things fall short is that we have yet another silent protagonist, similar to Fate/Extra. While this makes, justifiably, the Servants the stars of the story, it can be a bit frustrating that your only inputs are frequently humorous interjections. Personally, one thing that has had me laughing on numerous occasions is how gloriously weird some of the Berserker characters are... since they are all psycho to one degree or the other, this can lead to some... interesting results. While our friend Lancelot from Fate/Zero makes an appearance, most of the Berserkers can and do speak, even if their manner is downright crazy or obsessive.

Aaaand - done. All scripts put together and ready for retranslation and editing:

Okay, so when I said the partial patch will be out two weeks ago, I didn't mean it as an April Fools' joke (or did I? :p) Jokes aside, the partial patch is almost ready for release (in fact, it's already ready). I'm just waiting for the QC to get back to me to make sure the patch works properly before I release it. So I ask for your patience! Hoping to settle this by this week!

To be blunt, a database site will never be perfect. VNDB is the best of the group, but that's mostly because there isn't anything else worth mentioning out there... and the effort it would require for a new site to surpass its utility is probably beyond volunteer helpers. Why? Because vndb already fills its niche pretty much completely and mostly free of corporate influence. While it doesn't combine a news site like most other otaku databases do, it doesn't really need one... and the most important stuff (the existence of and release dates for new VNS) are posted regularly. Edit: I should also mention that the main reason I hate erogamescape is for all the horribly wrong tracks it sent me off on in my first two years playing untranslated VNs. I ended up buying and playing horrible games that had been bot-hyped about a half-dozen times, and that still infuriates me, even today.

Honestly, I can see nothing wrong with VNDB: I find it a truly amazing site and hard to believe that so many VNs are covered in an easy to look up way. There are so many trash VNs out there that I surely would have given up on VNs if not for that site. Since I don't use VNDB on mobile devices there is not a single thing I can complain about. I hope the site continues to exist as long as I read VNs And if you are really not sure about the rating of a VN try the VNDB profiles of Fuwa members like Clephas said and see how they rated it. I do that a lot to get an even better idea!

Erogamescape suffers from the results of being directly exposed to the much larger (currently and past, though who knows about the future?) VN market that is Japan. To be blunt, you get people down-voting stuff for kicks, company-owned or hired bots in the hundreds voting others up, and no real effort on the part of the site administrators to rein it in. The troll voting is worse on vndb, to be honest... percentage-wise, there are a significant number of fake players who vote games down or up without even playing them, based on the fact that their votes predate the games' releases (shouldn't it be relatively easy to fix that? oh well). That said, the real issue with Erogamescape is that you can't trust the ratings on anything that is hyped (in other words, by one of the big names before they went down) by a relatively 'big name' company... or anything mainstream, really, if you aren't a huge charage fan. In other words, Erogamescape requires too much filtering and preexisting knowledge from the viewer/reader/observer to even get what the real ratings of a given game are... whereas vndb is a bit simpler. Anything translated, cut off 90% of the ten, 9, and 1-3 ratings (since people either way overrate or way underrate depending on their prejudices and experience), then recalculate the average. The rest, subtract all votes prior to two days after the initial release. That's if you are paying attention to voting scores. VNDB is relatively simple to figure out... just find the tags you have an interest in, then set the list so the highest rated ones (usually translated) come up first, and browse. The primary virtue of the site is the huge amount of basic info it holds on most of the VNs released since VNs came into existence. Also, another way to figure things out is to find a member of Fuwa who shares your tastes, take a look at his vndb profile, then figure out what you want to play from that. The issue with vndb for the whipper-snappers (AKA, 'you young people') is that it is a PC-specialized site. It is meant to be navigated via PC browsers with a keyboard and mouse, not finger-swipes and tapping, so it is extremely unwieldy when done from smaller tablets and smartphones. VNDB's secondary utility lies in the fact that most Japanese games have the Japanese-language (kanji and kana) available to copy to a search engine in order to discover walkthroughs, websites that sell the games by download, and other stuff. Searching a game by the romanized name is generally a dead end for that kind of thing, and remembering the precise kanji for the whole title can often be annoying, so that is seriously convenient, at least for me. Honestly, if you can't navigate vndb, I dunno what to tell you... of all the otaku database sites I've navigated over the years, it is the easiest, at least for me. Myanimelist is a pain in the rear to navigate, as are most of the other anime database sites. VNDB is a breeze in comparison, since it doesn't present you with a dozen similar titles or barely related titles even if you put the exact one in the search box... What is lacking on vndb is decent summaries/intros of most games, since most are poorly-translated translations of the Getchu or official pages, lol. Edit: oops forgot to answer your question in my urge to rave, no, it isn't illegal, since most games have pics on their official sites. What is illegal is ripping the cgs and posting them online for profit...

Tsujidou-san no Jun'ai Road

It's an interesting post but there's a few false equivalents. Such as, this company is successful, so it means that their marketing/business strategy is the recipe for success. Well, without sales figures it's quite difficult to tell for certain, but I'd say these games are sucessful for different reasons. For example, Neptunia was poignant at the time for its meta-commentary on RPGs, overused tropes and videogames in general. In reality, the gameplay is quite lacking, even on the remake, and the story gets old pretty fast, becoming a victim of the tropes it parodies. Although, it is important to note that the remake was rewritten, while the original had a more interesting and fresh story. Nekopara's success has a lot to owe to its short length, cheap price, beautiful art by Sayori and most of all, the E-mote system (whatever you may call it). That is, having the characters move and breathe, as if they were really alive inside our very screens. But beautiful art, a cool story and characters...blah, blah, blah, none of that matters. What matters is memes. No matter how good or bad Neptunia was at the time, it became popular because of its almost cult following in communities like 4chan, where many gamers for the first time felt that they were playing a game made for them specifically, as people, through the use of constant forth wall breaks. They felt that the characters resembled them in certain ways and it helped strengthen this bond between them. Over time, I'd say that Neptunia de-evolved into mere yuri bait, but I risk triggering the anger of many fans. Nekopara instantly became known as "the game where you can fuck cute catgirls". To those people who weren't deep enough into otaku culture to know about the existence of bishoujo games, Nekopara might've been their first contact with the genre. And what can I say, it helps that it doesn't beat around the bush with an overcomplicated plot, to the point where it can almost be labeled a "moenukige". Above all, this game is important because it is an escapism fantasy for us humans, who live in a world ruled by cats, giving us the illusion that for once we can rule over the cats. What these games have in common is being poignant at the time, offering something fresh or never-before-seen...but it's difficult to predict that a game will or not spread like wildfire on social media. An example would DDLC, which is innovating in a way because of how it messes with your game files, but it got popular thanks to its shock factor. It also helps that it's short and a free-to-play game. So, the idea of releasing a translation on as many languages as possible isn't exactly worthwhile especially since most people can speak English and most eroge aren't exactly Shakespearan novels either...and while it is important for Japanese developers to take in account the foreign audiences when making their game, they run the risk of adapting the game to fit certain standards or values, robbing them of what made us like them in the first place.

I finished Eden* last week, and man was that a trip. Despite the length, the time spent with Sion felt genuine and precious. What stood out to me was how expressive everyone was. Even if it was basic, just having animation for the characters saying their lines made them feel more alive. I remember specifically Elica and Sion having scenes where it would show them from different perspectives, not something I've seen that often. I swear it's the music that makes these kind of games get to you. I enjoyed the soundtrack, and would get misty eyed with a couple songs in particular. This track in particular hit hard. Sion's theme fit so well, and felt bittersweet in so many ways. It's a shame that the ost was a bit hard to find, considering the quality. I enjoyed it overall, and recommend it to anyone interested in reading a short yet high quality end of the world love story. Just be careful with those feels though. On another note, I've been rereading The Fruit of Grisaia from the very beginning for the second time since MangaGamer released the unrated version not too long ago. I forgot most of what happened in the common route, and have been enjoying it my second time through. I know it's the MangaGamer version for sure since there's some scenes that caught me off guard when I read them, thinking "wait there's no way this was in the steam version lol". It's interesting to read again having completed most of the routes. Plenty of foreshadowing, and an altogether different perspective. There's been a couple times where I've turned off the in-game music, and can see that scene in a completely different light. It's all so good. I'm taking it pretty slow to let it all seep in naturally instead of rushing through it all at once like I did when I first read it. Funny enough, I'm planning to follow the same route format I did the first time around Yumiko > Michiru > Sachi > Amane > Makina My reason for reading it again:

disadvantage is the much higher percentage of bot and troll voting.

Everything besides the UI looking good. And sometimes not being able to sort by columns when doing searches.

There was visualnoveler but a few years ago it got taken down and turned into a VN/game development site. It sucks because in some ways I actually liked it more than vndb

Erogamescape is essentially the Japanese alternative to VNDB. Its advantage is that the ratings / popularity aren't biased by translation status.

That tag excludes what you don't want--but note that if the NTR is too easy to avoid then the choices / gameplay come down to "Do I want to be NTR'd?" That type of game might not have the competitiveness or suspense you're looking for.

Why you search for that? VNDB has everything we need.

Can you please not write about stuff you have no idea about

I'd rather call it circumstantial. Besides, true, ImoPara is very popular but even if we believe that imopara would still be in top 5 on its fourth year, having two imopara games on 3-rd and 10-th or 7-th and 8-th places is surely more profitable and beneficial to MG than having a single ImoPara game on the, say, 5-th or 4-th place. Also, as you can see, ImoPara 2 was announced in the beginning of 2016 so its announcement not only didn't hurt ImoPara's sales but likely boosted them helping it to move up in the rankings for that year. ImoPara is not even a kind of series that should be hurt by the upcoming sequels to begin with... Not to mention, that ImoPara 2 was announced exactly one and a half years after the first.

Nah, I think a good portion of Asia is like that. That's how people explained Barbie flopping spectacularly in China for example, while the super-cute brands like Hello Kitty sell wonderfully.