Fred the Barber

It's been a while, but I'm pretty sure the Deus Machina Demonbane protagonist fits your requirements, and there is a romance angle, IMO... alongside a bunch of other stuff which is the reason for which one would normally play Demonbane. If you haven't played Karakara (it looks like you haven't, from your VNDB?), now is probably the right time. It's been a while here too, but I think the protag would meet your requirements? And you should play it anyway; it's criminally underrated. This is a super off-the-wall recommendation, but I Walk Among Zombies actually meets the originally specified criteria, albeit in a weird way (and you have to be patient on the romance angle, but it's definitely there). While it definitely does not meet the rephrased "characters with no sex drive" way of saying it, the MC is as far from the embarrassed and/or perverted protagonist mold you're talking about as one can get.

Mikandi and Libra... is a special case. They probably lost money because that's what happens when you hire absolute hacks with no clue what they're doing and no capacity to do the work and then pay them several times the industry rate. That aside, I think most VN Kickstarters even by the companies who knew better have at best broken even, and probably more have lost money than have broken even. TBH, the worst part about VN Kickstarters is how everybody ends up feeling like they lost... At least this one is through the rough part. Let's just hope the project turns out well.

Disclaimer: though yes I've done some contract work with Sol Press, I don't have any real insight into the financials. That said... Presumably they won't say that the sequels WILL be translated because they literally don't know if they'll be able to afford it. The stretch goals may be "astronomically high", but they're what it will cost them to license and localize the game. They don't have $80k sitting around to throw after a game that people aren't willing to shell out that same amount for, and thus they'll have to wait to see if the first game is actually successful enough (read: makes a lot more money than what comes in from the Kickstarter) to justify doing the sequels. I certainly wouldn't expect any real confirmation at this point, because they can't actually commit to throwing that much non-existent money after the game.

I didn't know about Fruitbat Factory, so thanks for sharing that. In addition, JAST also shared it several days ago. I don't know why so many people are talking about how MangaGamer saved the day... probably literally every other English loc industry player helped this thing out more by advertising it earlier in the cycle. I'm honestly doubtful whether MG's 3-minutes-before-it-was-over tweet did anything at all, except apparently buy them a lot of adoration. Edit: And I should have read the whole thread. FWIW, I don't think there were any bad intentions on anyone's part, and I think all the industry players who helped support this did Sol Press a solid (heh). I just think MG probably deserves the least credit, given how last-minute and likely completely unhelpful their support was. But then again, I should really wait until I see flying pigs before I start expecting an English VN fan to say anything positive about Sekai Project, I guess...

Fate/Stay Night is probably too obvious, but the Grail War certainly seems like it should qualify. How about Shadows of Pygmalion? The MC is a member of one of two warring factions. Also maybe Koihime Musou? Doesn't get much more competitive than a multi-sided national war.

This is actually the point of Kickstarter, you realize, right? And it's also how market valuation of goods ought to work. The same thing can be worth different amounts of money to different people. VNs are a long tail industry, and English localization of VNs are doubly so. If a small number of people want to chip in more money to see a shaky industry like that stay afloat, why is it "unreasonable" of them to do so, and why is it "depressing" to see companies willing to leverage that? There are no inherent victims in this setup; it's a win-win. Everybody involved (from the companies, to the people paying more, to the people paying less) end up getting something they want at a price they're willing to pay. To be clear, other complaints about Kickstarters, I absolutely think can be vaild—complaints about delays, especially. But I don't see anything to complain about in some people choosing to pay more (even a lot more) than others for something they're passionate about.

If you like ChronoClock, you should play the much better moege that was released (in English) a few months later, WagaHigh (though I probably like the art a bit better in ChronoClock, admittedly; Purple Software stuff looks amazing). It's very moege, and though the hook sounds less interesting, it's actually used much better than ChronoClock uses its (really interesting but tragically under-leveraged) hook.

Yeah, it does seem to be a really fine line to walk... Honestly, I've recently found that I prefer kinetic novels, or at least non-traditional route structures. It kind of makes sense to me that it's just hard to tell five distinct, compelling stories with the same cast of characters, each of them focusing around a different one of them, vs. fitting together one really, really good story around your whole cast.

Much like Mr. Tiag of Poltroon, the main thing I liked about Grisaia was the common route... in fact, that's so true that I only ever played one route (Sachi's, basically just because it was the first option), which I didn't like, and then I've never gone back to the game since. The common route comedy consistently delivered for me, and I laughed out loud a lot, but then when I actually saw a route, I just got nothing from the game anymore. I keep telling myself I'll go back and play more, because the girls were fun, but it's been a few years now, and it doesn't seem likely to happen at this point...

I don't remember a lot of detail of this show, but I do remember thoroughly enjoying it back when I watched it. It had a pretty different feel from most stuff I'd seen before, but in retrospect, that may have been because I just wasn't exposed to much shoujo romance at the time. But regardless, it was good stuff. Also, I'm 100% with you on shoujo romance being more satisfying than boy-targeted stuff. I should really go out of my way to watch more shoujo stuff... Me, I've been watching Kill La Kill recently, and I'm sorely disappointed in all the people who thought it was cool to hate on a fantastic show like this back in the day, since they managed to scare me away from watching it for a long time, until a friend asked me to watch it with him while he's rewatching it. We're currently a little over halfway through and both having a wonderful time with it. It's chock-full of exactly the right kind of insanity to push my buttons, from the premise to the plot to the execution. I definitely would not have enjoyed watching something this unapologetically horny a few years ago, and I can't help wondering if I wouldn't have been right there on the "eww" train with people, but today, I am absolutely here for the whole package Kill La Kill has to offer. Also worth mentioning is that Kill La Kill has literally the best subs I've ever seen (the official ones on crunchyroll). They are consistent, and consistently delightful, full of fun and spirit and a little edge of sauciness. I can't get enough of them. I dream of doing work this good.

Yeah, if you want to truly complete everything (and in particular, if you want to get the joke ending) you have to do literally everything... but I dunno how feasible that even is on your own. I basically did what you said you're doing, and I still missed a bunch of things. You've got two reasonable options: use an online guide, which will suck all the joy out of it accept that you don't need to see everything and that the game tells a whole and complete story without needing to see the joke ending (this is what I did) And I suppose a third option where you first do the second bullet point, and then do the first bullet point because you feel you really need to see the joke ending.

For folks skeptical/worried about future releases, the upcoming localization of Volume 2 just got rather quietly announced on twitter: And I'm here to tell you, there's no coincidence the ratings for volume 2 are consistently a lot higher than those for volume 1. Volume 1 can be a bit slow at times and in the end doesn't feel like it accomplishes much (presumably because it's the intro volume), but volume 2 constantly kicks all kinds of ass.

Nico from https://vndb.org/v10619