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You have to accept what I said earlier. Not everyone can get Yuzusoft/sprite on board. Are we supposed to shun a company just because they can't make a big name studio give them the rights to their titles? Besides, I don't think many famous companies are left for picking. Maybe Eushully and August, but that's about it. Everyone else is as obscure as you can get. That sounds like some tech problems or lack of QOL features. I don't know which VNs you mean, but I'll assume it's Sakura Sakura/Yotsunoha or that Laplacian VN. Whatever the case, not every VN is going to be like that. I guess they're limited by what they can do with the original VN engines, which by the way, most of the time suck and is one of the reasons why NN wants to have and use their own homemade engine for all their future VN releases. And here I thought OniKiss was a big name. Damn. I guess it boils down to who considers what famous. Yeah, they are "literally who"-games, but it's very likely that Sol doesn't have the means to pick up anything else. You usually pick up some smaller stuff just to get off from the ground, but apparently, it didn't work for Sol. Not to mention, they had to use a Kickstarter for their first two titles, Sakura Sakura and Newton. Obviously, they are very small, and they had no means to pull off what NN did. I beg to disagree. For the first month Fureraba was out, I saw quite a few discussions about it, and I had an impression it was doing very well as NN's first VN. I agree it may have been a "literally-who"-game (although even that is arguable... I had an impression SMEE titles weren't all that obscure in the first place), but it still put NekoNyan on the map. Can't say the same for Sol Press. They did at least 3 VNs at the beginning, and none of them seemed to have put them on the map. Not Newton, not Sakura Sakura, and not Under One Wing. And somehow, even Onikiss seemed to have been received poorly. I don't know how they managed to do that, but I guess their poor PR hit them in the ass, as well as lack of ability to put it on Steam (still... MG never needed Steam to make Imopara a success story). Anyway, my point is - not everyone can get a well-known publisher. You talk about that, but if we go by that logic, most companies should just buckle up and leave when they are unable to get any big name stuff. It's very unfair, especially towards some new companies that may want to enter the market one day. Aside from the fact that there aren't any many really famous companies left for picking, you also have to accept that it's literally impossible to get some stuff. And besides, other localization companies used to survive on some obscurer titles than what Sol is putting out. That's why I am 100% convinced it's not their licenses that hurt Sol the most, but the way they handled them, how they advertized them, etc. That's their biggest problem even today. I mean, Nukitashi and Iroseka should be at least decent, even if we disregard how famous they became in Japan. But Sol's handling of them is... "eh" at best. That's one of the things that puts NN and Sol Press apart. The way they handle their projects and licenses. Neither has bad picks, it's just that Sol has no fucking clue what they are doing. I attribute this to poor leadership and management.

Here's a little update on that topic, @Dreamysyu. As of episode 5, I am actually of the opinion that the anime is better. Whereas the strength of the Light Novels is in entering a character's head outside of Catarina, the anime finds way of making a lot of this content into events that actually take place in Catarina's presence. From what I'm seeing, it involves giving roles to characters that previously didn't have any in a given part, which is great. Better still is the fact that it's not like it doesn't dive into backstory when it wants to, so it's the best of both worlds, in my opinion. Also seeing the characters being cute is fantastic. My initial reservations regarding the pace of the first few episodes (there were no transitions between scenes!) ended up being because they were trying to reach the school phase within the three episodes, so they cut transitions rather than rush the scenes they covered. A few scenes were rushed, but it's calmed down since.

Oh boy... Honestly, chapter 3 is my favorite so far <3 It's not as long as chapter 2 (I think?) but it's the hardest one to theorize about I just gave up on theories as soon as I finished that one but I'm gonna get my theories back as soon as I re-read everything before chapter 5

1-2 hours, less if I cum across an H scene.

Yeah, I have listened to some of her albums from the 1984-88 period, and have to agree. She is great. I think that 2-3 years ago, while dipping my toes in Jpop for the first time I kind of brushed her off because at that moment I've been searching for something else, but it was clearly a mistake

Aside from titles/companies someone has heard of before? How about titles that have some basic features I'd expect from a VN in 2020, like voice lines playing over mouse click or free button mapping. Even the one-voice-actress, reused-bgm nukige Ammolite keeps shitting out manage to fulfill those requirements. But yes, what it boils down to most is the complete lack of any big name that gets people exited. I like Newton, Under One Wing is fine and Oniikiss is a pretty decent nukige. However, these games as well as the by now infamous Sakura Sakura are the epitome of "literally who?"-games. Which is a shame, since the Sol tech-whizzes responsible for decensoring and upscaling those 2008-resolutions are committing what I can only assume is black magic. which leads me to... They are similar, but that isn't exactly the problem. Nekonyan scored a well-known publisher in addition to their "literally-who"-games. Nobody cared at all about Fureraba when it released. I assume no English VN reader ever heard of it before or cared much. Now, quite a while later, lots of people (me included) were RAVING for Making Lovers to come out and put the Smee name out there. That's the two-step plan: Lure the masses in with a big name (in this case Sanoba Witch) first and when they decide to stay, they'll check out the rest of your catalog. MangaGamer was, as far as I understand, able to get away with completely niché games from their initial Overdrive repertoire because a) There was no real competition and b) most of the initial footing was based on nukige and cheap porn games before Da Capo landed in their laps. And even then, we are now seeing that MG is running out of things people want to see, though I do appreciate their idea behind releasing some non-standard VNs recently. I'm not saying Sol Press is completely hopeless in this area, considering they managed to snatch Favorite, due to SP's utter lack of business sense, management and well... anything worth of basic praise. So if Sol can succeed with Iroseka, maybe those who cared about that will be more open to read - god forbid actually buy - Sakura Sakura.

Decided to pick up 428: Shibuya Scramble again, which I put on hold a couple of months ago for whatever reason. Almost immediately, I was met with this: I think it's safe to say those researchers were right.

If I were to theorize a bit, I'd say I'm highly suspicious of It's going to interesting moving forward and see if I'm right on the money with any of this.

They are still my favorite localization company. I've purchased more than 50 titles from them and I'll continue to purchase more in the future - including Musicus. I've been looking forward to Musicus for a long time and I'm glad it finally got officially announced. I agree with some of the other posters that most people who complain are a small minority, people who don't know much about the localization process, and pirates. Same with the people who complain about JAST, NIS America, xseed, and the other localizers - the complaints are almost always very similar to each other, regardless of the specific localizer or the game or the genre.

I finished reading the entire guide. This is great stuff, and a must read for anybody considering developing a visual novel. I vote for this to get pinned. Question for the OP: If you ever watched the anime Welcome to the NHK, how accurately did it depict the development process of a VN? Here is a humorous example of character creation in the early phases:

Gonna be honest with you chief, I can't even remember the last time I read a VN, let alone finished one