ittaku

Mentioning To Heart 2 is 100% effective way to summon @ittaku

I have To heart 2 for more than a year and just now i started to read it only for this reason.

Chronoclock was actually my first true visual novel I read, and it's safe to say that it was a good choice on my end. I really liked most of the cast, minus D.D lol
It's moege that has an interesting enough premise to keep playing. Grisaia is pretty good, it just takes forever to get through the common route. It also has such a massive shift in tone and only a couple of choices that matter. I can't blame anyone for not wanting to play it all the way through because of that.
Right now I'm getting into Planetarian. I'm not that far in, but the setting has me interested since it's something I haven't seen from Key before. I imagine it won't take me long to breeze through the entire game in one sitting, but we'll see.
 

Other girls are interested in him but it's very much about a couple.

Say I love you for drama - an 8/10 for me
Rakudai Kishi for fantasy - a 10/10 for me

After attempting to play Fruit of Grisaia and failing miserably, I've started playing the very light and fluffy moege offering from Purple Soft, Chronoclock, which many say is their least interesting game. Unsurprisingly I'm enjoying it 1000x more than Grisaia so far. It's easy to see what I play VNs for, and I should stick to what I know works...

Ah, I missed it yesterday. Happy belated, @ittaku!

These all fit your criteria and are select watches too, above average
Say I Love You AKA Sukitte Ii Na Yo
My Love Story AKA Ore Monogatari
Lovely * Complex
Chivalry of a Failed Knight AKA Rakudai Kishi no Eiyuutan
Boarding School Juliet
Golden Time
His and Her Circumstances AKA Karekano
ItaKiss
Snow White with the Red Hair

These all fit your criteria and are select watches too, above average
Say I Love You AKA Sukitte Ii Na Yo
My Love Story AKA Ore Monogatari
Lovely * Complex
Chivalry of a Failed Knight AKA Rakudai Kishi no Eiyuutan
Boarding School Juliet
Golden Time
His and Her Circumstances AKA Karekano
ItaKiss
Snow White with the Red Hair

Oh dear, someone with exactly the same experience as me then. Looks like it wasn't necessarily the fact it was a heavy drama novel after all responsible. It was the shift in tone and execution at fault. If you went in expecting nothing but drama (and enjoyed or preferred that) then it probably would have been fine. Looks like I'm relegated to only playing charage and moege for the rest of my life, and that doesn't bother me one bit. Might even be good news for people who want stuff like that translated that other translators are not interested in tackling, as I might.

Oh dear, someone with exactly the same experience as me then. Looks like it wasn't necessarily the fact it was a heavy drama novel after all responsible. It was the shift in tone and execution at fault. If you went in expecting nothing but drama (and enjoyed or preferred that) then it probably would have been fine. Looks like I'm relegated to only playing charage and moege for the rest of my life, and that doesn't bother me one bit. Might even be good news for people who want stuff like that translated that other translators are not interested in tackling, as I might.

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...

Thanks guys!

Happy birthday to @ittaku! I hope I'm not late.

Happy birthday ittaku

Happy Birthday, @ittaku.

All Best Wishes to @ittaku the Veteran! 

Happy 49th birthday to our @ittaku there, and I hope that you'll have a good year ahead (Also thanks for ToHeart 2 patch).

That's bound to happen. The main reason I like Grisaia is for the comedy, which not everyone likes. Whenever I think back to it I recall that the routes really weren't much fun most of the time. I rather feel like skipping a fair bit of them. But I'm all over the common route.

So after playing VNs for 20 years with heavy emphasis on moege and charage, I finally gave in and purchased Fruit of Grisaia after being told by so many people how good it is in terms of story, writing and how solid the localisation is. The first thing that struck me is the game is wordy... long.. I mean real fucking long. Huge passages are spent on exposition with lots of what the MC is thinking, his take on the world at large, plenty of backstory that continually fills in as you progress and how it fits in with the route as you're playing it. The writing is solid indeed and thought provoking. The heroines are all reasonably interesting, though after having played so many VNs, there was nothing new in their personalities I hadn't seen before. The localisation is indeed solid; on my rating it almost reaches a 9/10. The only reason I wouldn't give it a 9 is that I know enough Japanese to see certain less than ideal choices in translation though none of them are massive fails, and all nuance was captured, so it's easily an 8.5 (This is my localisation rating, not my rating for the game itself.)
So I planned to start out with Makina's route since she was the least appealing heroine to me (I always go from least to most favourite heroine) but it took forever to get past the common route. It went on and on and on. I struggled to read much every night as it would make me sleepy after an hour or so of reading close to the end of the night. This was a bad sign for me. Anyway I soldiered on because of all its redeeming features and finally branched into Makina's route. I kept reading and reading and reading and waiting for that moment where it grabbed me and I simply couldn't let go of the story. 3/4 of the way through Makina's route, and many sleeps interrupting the story later, it never happened... I realised I'd lost the fight. I just didn't care about what was happening, found the endless tirade from the MC tiring to read, and didn't warm to anyone or anything. I starting mashing the ctrl key during the MC's thoughts, and then randomly through what looked less interesting. I got tired of the endless strategy scenes. Finally I gave up and mashed ctrl to the end of the route to at least see the end, which I didn't like. Since I liked the other girls much more, I then downloaded a full save game to check out the H scenes of the other heroines, some of which were pretty appealing, but not enough for me to wade through another trillion lines of story to get through, and I was mad at myself for paying money for a localisation that had not been decensored. The only thing I could think of by the end was the translator Koestl deserves a medal for translating so much fucking text, though if he actually enjoyed the game I could see how he managed to do it.
Sorry guys, I failed. I'm still only interested in charage and moege with significant romance as the primary part of the story. I'm just too old to get excited by dark themes and bad shit happening to people. I lived through gen X and depressing us as teenagers was like shooting fish in a barrel. Most of us got over it. As a middle aged man I've seen more than my fair share of actual bad shit happen to people I love and care about, and I only want mild drama and then serious happy escapism as my reward.

So after playing VNs for 20 years with heavy emphasis on moege and charage, I finally gave in and purchased Fruit of Grisaia after being told by so many people how good it is in terms of story, writing and how solid the localisation is. The first thing that struck me is the game is wordy... long.. I mean real fucking long. Huge passages are spent on exposition with lots of what the MC is thinking, his take on the world at large, plenty of backstory that continually fills in as you progress and how it fits in with the route as you're playing it. The writing is solid indeed and thought provoking. The heroines are all reasonably interesting, though after having played so many VNs, there was nothing new in their personalities I hadn't seen before. The localisation is indeed solid; on my rating it almost reaches a 9/10. The only reason I wouldn't give it a 9 is that I know enough Japanese to see certain less than ideal choices in translation though none of them are massive fails, and all nuance was captured, so it's easily an 8.5 (This is my localisation rating, not my rating for the game itself.)
So I planned to start out with Makina's route since she was the least appealing heroine to me (I always go from least to most favourite heroine) but it took forever to get past the common route. It went on and on and on. I struggled to read much every night as it would make me sleepy after an hour or so of reading close to the end of the night. This was a bad sign for me. Anyway I soldiered on because of all its redeeming features and finally branched into Makina's route. I kept reading and reading and reading and waiting for that moment where it grabbed me and I simply couldn't let go of the story. 3/4 of the way through Makina's route, and many sleeps interrupting the story later, it never happened... I realised I'd lost the fight. I just didn't care about what was happening, found the endless tirade from the MC tiring to read, and didn't warm to anyone or anything. I starting mashing the ctrl key during the MC's thoughts, and then randomly through what looked less interesting. I got tired of the endless strategy scenes. Finally I gave up and mashed ctrl to the end of the route to at least see the end, which I didn't like. Since I liked the other girls much more, I then downloaded a full save game to check out the H scenes of the other heroines, some of which were pretty appealing, but not enough for me to wade through another trillion lines of story to get through, and I was mad at myself for paying money for a localisation that had not been decensored. The only thing I could think of by the end was the translator Koestl deserves a medal for translating so much fucking text, though if he actually enjoyed the game I could see how he managed to do it.
Sorry guys, I failed. I'm still only interested in charage and moege with significant romance as the primary part of the story. I'm just too old to get excited by dark themes and bad shit happening to people. I lived through gen X and depressing us as teenagers was like shooting fish in a barrel. Most of us got over it. As a middle aged man I've seen more than my fair share of actual bad shit happen to people I love and care about, and I only want mild drama and then serious happy escapism as my reward.

So after playing VNs for 20 years with heavy emphasis on moege and charage, I finally gave in and purchased Fruit of Grisaia after being told by so many people how good it is in terms of story, writing and how solid the localisation is. The first thing that struck me is the game is wordy... long.. I mean real fucking long. Huge passages are spent on exposition with lots of what the MC is thinking, his take on the world at large, plenty of backstory that continually fills in as you progress and how it fits in with the route as you're playing it. The writing is solid indeed and thought provoking. The heroines are all reasonably interesting, though after having played so many VNs, there was nothing new in their personalities I hadn't seen before. The localisation is indeed solid; on my rating it almost reaches a 9/10. The only reason I wouldn't give it a 9 is that I know enough Japanese to see certain less than ideal choices in translation though none of them are massive fails, and all nuance was captured, so it's easily an 8.5 (This is my localisation rating, not my rating for the game itself.)
So I planned to start out with Makina's route since she was the least appealing heroine to me (I always go from least to most favourite heroine) but it took forever to get past the common route. It went on and on and on. I struggled to read much every night as it would make me sleepy after an hour or so of reading close to the end of the night. This was a bad sign for me. Anyway I soldiered on because of all its redeeming features and finally branched into Makina's route. I kept reading and reading and reading and waiting for that moment where it grabbed me and I simply couldn't let go of the story. 3/4 of the way through Makina's route, and many sleeps interrupting the story later, it never happened... I realised I'd lost the fight. I just didn't care about what was happening, found the endless tirade from the MC tiring to read, and didn't warm to anyone or anything. I starting mashing the ctrl key during the MC's thoughts, and then randomly through what looked less interesting. I got tired of the endless strategy scenes. Finally I gave up and mashed ctrl to the end of the route to at least see the end, which I didn't like. Since I liked the other girls much more, I then downloaded a full save game to check out the H scenes of the other heroines, some of which were pretty appealing, but not enough for me to wade through another trillion lines of story to get through, and I was mad at myself for paying money for a localisation that had not been decensored. The only thing I could think of by the end was the translator Koestl deserves a medal for translating so much fucking text, though if he actually enjoyed the game I could see how he managed to do it.
Sorry guys, I failed. I'm still only interested in charage and moege with significant romance as the primary part of the story. I'm just too old to get excited by dark themes and bad shit happening to people. I lived through gen X and depressing us as teenagers was like shooting fish in a barrel. Most of us got over it. As a middle aged man I've seen more than my fair share of actual bad shit happen to people I love and care about, and I only want mild drama and then serious happy escapism as my reward.

I'm on the complete opposite end; I hate the "realistic" (can't fit enough quotation marks around that word, so I wont even try) first time scenes, where the guy busts before putting it in, the scene has to stop in the middle and/or the everpresent painful hymen breaks. The main attraction of fiction is escapism, so why would I want to escape into incompetent fucking? 
Same reason why I don't want to see condoms. I have to deal with this sense-numbing garbage IRL already, because out here pregnancy and disease are actually a problem. So keep that stuff the fuck away from my fantasies at least.
@the original topic: Drawing a good H-CG is hard, considering you have to see the important parts without obscuring the POV of the camera. Everyone hates floating dicks, so sometimes the art requires a dumb and uncomfortable sex position to show everything off or to simply have more variety. If we go by an average 3-scenes-per route, 4 main characters basis, drawing the same 2 or 3 positions 3 or 4 times would get both boring to draw and to look at pretty quick.
That applies to porn in general and is the reason why it's 18+. 

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.

Added "Say I Love You" AKA Sukitte Ii Na Yo.