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I feel like I've seen far more posts from Ange and Pik_Lesiak that would inform me about them than I have from Clephas, and yet I scored far better on Clephas than the other two. It's possible that the difficulty of questions was way different per quiz too. Like, I literally have no idea how you're supposed to know what Ange's favorite food is because I've never seen that topic come up here. Unless maybe that's a Discord thing idk.

Finished some VN's so I guess it's time to write a few words about them. 9-nine-:Episode 4 was the grand finale of the 9-nine- series. This part felt significantly darker than the previous entries. It's impressive how some characters that might appear all nice and friendly on the outside, can reveal a pitch black darkness inside of them. Even the protagonist himself could get pretty scary when driven into a corner. The writer could without any doubt also write a pure horror VN. That said, the romance part with Noa was probably the weakest of the four and also felt a bit forced, considering Kakeru kept his memories that time. I think it would have been better, to move the final clash into a fifth episode. There also wasn't that much mystery this time, since the fronts where mostly clear and there was a bit too much branch hopping for my taste. Nevertheless, the physical and psychological duel was pretty intense. Overall, it was a pretty cool finale, but I wouldn't rate it quite as high as others. Overall rating: 7.5/10 I also finished Kami no Rhapsody. This was one is a bit hard to rate. Plot-wise it was certainly the weakest Eushully title I've played so far. Technically the whole story consists of doing trials to prove that you're the most worthy candidate to become the successor of the 'Divine Enforcer'. Naturally, there are also competitors who also want to claim that position and whom you have fight on certain occasions. Overall, not a bad story setup, if it would be just for the prologue until the real story starts. However, the 'prologue' is about... 9 from 10 chapters and then the game is over after some final boss fights. A whole crowd of characters join your party pretty soon, which didn't really make sense. So this felt more like a game with light VN elements comparable to Huniepop, but with much higher production values. It did have a lot of character events though, even if most of them were just slice of life and H-scenes. Characters and mood were also rather fluffy and nice with a clear emphasis on moe. So, while the story certainly was nothing to write home about, the gameplay was actually pretty decent. I REALLY appreciate that they pretty much got rid of grinding in this game. Each map had just a limited amount of skill medals and ability runes you could get from it. That means that it usually didn't make sense to play a map several times. In addition to that, the maps were usually not too big and could be finished in a reasonable time of ~10 - 20 minutes. There were still a lot of maps, so gameplay still took up a considerable amount of time. but there was a better feeling of 'progress'. The gameplay itself was fairly addictive. Your characters fight on a small hex map against enemy units with 2 - 5 tiles of movement speed depending on the character. Units also have a zone of control and flank and rear attacks do more damage. Mana can be used for spells or to deploy more allied characters. This made spell casters usually a bit weaker in comparison, since mana was often too valuable for spells. Overall, the title felt a bit like they ran out of development time and had to release it while the writers just got finished with the character events and didn't have much time for the main story yet. Its saving grace is the decent gameplay, high production values and some likable characters. I could recommend it for the gameplay, but not for the story. Heroine ranking: Mistoria > Forzasleyn > Elgamisera > Lavirie = Nekol = Noelia = Patra > Others Overall rating: 6.5/10 The last one is Psychedelica of the Ashen Hawk - an otome VN. The predecessor Psychedelica of the Black Butterfly had an interesting story premise, nice visuals and music, but unfortunately the writing was pretty poor. However, since I bought them in a bundle, I wanted to at least give the successor a try. A gothic romance in a medieval setting - what could go wrong? Well, it could be written by that writer again, to name one. Granted, it was 'slightly' improved and there weren't that much filler episodes to finish this time around in order to progress the story. However, the writer still has a 'special talent' to take an interesting story premise and write it in the most boring way possible. Music and visuals also felt like a step down. The protagonist 'girl' was also cross-dressing and looked like a guy which make the whole thing feel a bit like Shonen-Ai. It wasn't particular romantic anyway, but still felt a bit awkward. I actually wanted to get on the route of Hugh since he was kind of mysterious, but somehow ended up in a route of two others mass murdering half of the town. No clue how I got there and it was probably a bad end, but after hours of dreadful boredom, it felt like the perfect ending to me. Overall rating: 5/10

Having read about 15 VNs based on anime the Date a Live one is in my opinion the best of the visual novels based in anime so ye I would probably go for that one, not only due it it being more easily accessible but also the higher quality.

Smaller indie VNs sometimes already do that by letting you customize your MC in various ways, like giving them a darker skin tone or changing gender, but it comes with the cost of them not showing up in CGs and dialogue/story being generic enough to not clash with any possible configuration. I don't self-insert very much so for me the bland or invisible protagonists detract from my enjoyment. I'd indeed take a protagonist that is very much unlike myself, like a woman or a black person, over an empty shell any day. The curious part of your question is that I'm not sure how to interpret the framing. Are you trying to make a protagonist that is essentially a self-insert but black/have a background that will appeal to black readers? If the protagonist has as little presence as those in JP eroge (meaning it won't lean very heavily into any kind of identity or personality traits to not get in the way of the reader filling the blanks), I don't think that would matter that much to usual VN readers. They should still have enough in common with the MC to self-insert without much issue, like they do for Japanese protags. It you want a well-defined black protagonist and a plot that refers to their race in meaningful ways... Than I definitely wouldn't mind it, but that's because it'll be clearly someone's story, and not masturbatory waifu fantasy. Other people that look for stories over fap material will also likely be interested with the unusual setup, like Zaka already suggested. The main issue is to communicate clearly what you're aiming for/what your game has going for it and not overstating the identity stuff.

Hi ungrave! I'm new here too. Learning Japanese AND getting to play fun VNs is a great idea! Hmm. I think I should take notes...