Vokoca

Also always on the lookout for this, but so far I haven't found anything 'larger' than Clannad.
 
If you're just looking for an unique route system, you could perhaps try Axanael. The story is told from the perspectives of six different protagonist, which you all read at the same time. The catch is, that the only 'choices' in that VN are completely luck based (on your first way through at least), as it is the Russian Roulette itself that changes the story. Each time a character participates in the game, there's the possibility of them either dying or getting their wish fulfilled, and the story changes based on that. It's a very novel and entertaining way of reading an interactive story, although it admittedly wears out after your second or third way through, as they didn't go too crazy with the variations for obvious reasons.

Guys, please. Clearly, the best h-scene in the world - no, in the entire universe - is the thrilling bicycle piss marathon from SubaHibi. It isn't hot, it is insufferably long and it makes no fucking sense at all, but even so (or maybe exactly because of that), it is a masterpiece and an achievement in story telling that shall never be matched, ever. 

I still believe that the common route is the best part of Grisaia, across the entire trilogy. It's like a comedy sketch anime in a visual novel form, and it also perfectly captures what the story is about in the first place - a group of quirky outcasts trying to lead a normal life. That's what Grisaia is first and foremost, and as such its main focus are the characters and their interactions with one another - in other words, the comedy.
The whole series went downhill as soon as it tried to have a serious plot, in my opinion. Even ignoring the mess that all the different writers made, it just loses most of its charm as soon as it tried to have a constant narrative, and the third entry in the series just ends up being a trainwreck that comes across more like a Hollywood parody than an epic conclusion.

Don't even bother if you don't speak Japanese. I'd argue the Vita library of VNs is bigger, if you want to include the large PSP library in that as well - but only a bare minimum of these are translated, so it wouldn't really be worth it at all in your case; especially considering the ones that are translated usually have a PC port as well. On that front, the 3DS might be a better choice, as you at least have most of the Phoenix Wright franchise officially localized in English.
I haven't tried on the 3DS, but any sort of game-file manipulation usually requires you to hack your device. This is impossible both on new Vitas and 3DSs, as you can easily softmod both only on lower firmware versions. You would either have to get them used or know for a fact what FW is pre-installed on the particular device you're buying, which might again be way more trouble than it is worth.

Seeing how Dies Irae wasn't quenching my thirst for the #edge, I've decided to pick up Hanachirasu. I was about to just check out the prologue, but that has proven to be a huge mistake... you see, those few scenes before the opening we're all way more exciting and interesting than the entirety of Kasumi's route in Dies.Now this is a super unfair comparison, as I'm essentially putting two opposite approaches to action scenes against each other, but... damn, it only took a  single scene to remind me why I like Narahara so much. The fights feel though out, with actual choreography and logic supporting the flashy coolness, and it's just so damn entertaining to me. I imagine this is extremely subjective, and I bet there are people who hate Narahara's style with a passion - but as soon as he started going into tangents to explain fencing theory, I was sold ten times over.
I'll definitely get back to Dies to check out the story, but as far as action goes Hanachirasu will be my go-to for now.

Finished Kasumi's route in Dies Irae. I should probably first say that this is not the first VN by Masada I've read. I've read Senshinkan before, and that left me with pretty mixed feelings on the author. I consider myself a fan of chuuni, and the darker (even edgier) the story is the more I'm likely to enjoy it. As such, I was pretty excited when I read Senshinkan at first - Masada's works put on the airs of extremely edgy chuuni... but unfortunately, that is all they seem to do, as on the core they're nothing more but extremely cliched shounen. I was baffled by the stark contrast between the grimdark text and the "Friendship power!" kind of story in Senshinkan, but I just chalked it up to the main theme, given the main character's disposition towards virtues. I did like the story (there was some impressive layering going on), the (villain) characters, but I did have my doubts with the actual chuuni, getting bored to death with never-ending re-matches.
As such, I was more scared of Dies Irae than excited, really. I did want to read it, but I was worried that it might be exactly what I disliked about Senshinkan - but in the end, curiosity won over, and the hyper-edgy Nazi aesthetic made me pick up the game. And, to put it shortly... I was right to be worried.
The prologue didn't sell me on the VN, in fact, it almost made me drop it. It was full of Masada's flashiness for the sake of flashiness, with action scenes serving no other purpose but to show you how damn cool everything is... only I didn't buy it. When I read chuuni, I want infodumps. I want battles that get their rules laid down and thoroughly explained, and have crazy things happening according to these rules. While Masada does this sometimes (Senshinkan had some scenes like that, albeit not many), the prologue exemplified everything I dislike about his writing of fight scenes. It's like he is trying to convince you how amazing everything is with words alone, without actually giving you any reason to be impressed in the first place. It all comes across as pretty... flat.
Luckily enough, the VN turned around immediately as the actual story started. Crazy pseudo-philosophy dialogues, edgy protagonist with clearly defined character that promised an interesting and entertaining point of view, some nice twists, it was great! And then... then the shounen tournament arc happened. The main character that was supposed to be unique, as the VN and the villains would want you to believe, quickly devolved into an insufferably cliched shounen protagonist. I won't go into any details to avoid spoilers, but the amount of shounen cliches in this route was driving me against the wall. What was even worse was Masada's attempt at being clever and self-aware - but making fun of things like friendship power and relying on it only seconds later doesn't make it any better, it makes it downright obnoxious. The actual chuuni was probably by far the biggest disappointment. The only fight scene that was actually exciting was the very first encounter, after that it just got boring. Masada just sticks to describing cool things for the most part, so there's not much to enjoy about the scenes other than mindlessly going with it - it's not like any of it really matters, because the main character just wins by some bullshit every single time in a true shounen fashion, and to make things even worse almost none of the wins even feel deserved. I get that this is the first route, but watching the main character fall for the same shit over and over and in the end be unable to do anything cool at all in a story about crazy battles isn't fun whatsoever - at least there are better characters than him that make the battle scenes at least somewhat exciting.
Anyway, it's not like I hated the whole thing. I enjoyed the characters (maybe except Ren... and Kasumi, to some extent, even though I wanted to like her), I liked the story that got hinted at (as I mentioned above, the first half of the common route actually got me really hyped, hopefully there is more of that kind of stuff here), and I liked the route ending. At the very least the last battle was pretty cool, and so was the way it turned out. I can only hope that the VN gets better from now on, but so far, I'm not impressed.
 
 
There are people who say this? The Umineko "fanbase" really is the worst. Never before have I seen a story where so many people would ignore almost half of it just to make themselves feel smart via pathetic theory-crafting that just picks the convenient parts and dismisses the rest. It's even sadder that this is happening to Umineko of all things, considering its subject matter. I'm glad you were able to get something out of these two episodes; after all, Umineko is trying to get across a message, and the last two episodes are crucial for that. Any "fans" looking on it strictly as a mystery story are not only doing the story huge disservice, but probably can't read at all in the first place.

Long time no see! 
Having finished all of Kasumi's route and some of Kei's route of Dies Irae, I think I might drop it. It's certainly not a bad VN all in all, I think. The characters, story, and music are all pretty good... but I also don't necessarily feel that they're any more than that, and that's certainly not enough to drag me through another 20-30 hours of this. The thing is, I wasn't really invested in anything by the end of Kasumi's route, and especially given the length, that isn't a good thing. I'm honestly sort of bored with the VN and looking back on everything, it's failed to elicit even the slightest emotional response from me... Again, it is a solidly produced VN, and I don't even necessarily feel like it's particularly poorly done story, but it feels very style over substance... I'm sorry this is such a rambling mess, it's very late where I am.  But if anyone thinks that I should keep going with it, I'd be happy to listen. And likewise, if anyone thinks that dropping it is the right choice, do say so, because I'm sort of on the fence right now.
I also might pick up Chrono Clock. The girls look cute and I've heard good things, so I might as well give it a shot. It's been a long time since I've played a moege because I dislike 90 percent of them, but there's always a chance that it's part of the 10 percent, right? 

Yeah, I had a very similar impression that the VN and its battles in particular are suffering a lot from 'style over substance' syndrome. And I think you nailed one problem of them with your statement about the 'rules'. Although the recent Chusingura I played didn't have as flashy battle sequences as Dies, I enjoyed them overall much more since I could follow them much better. I simply knew what was going on and what tactic one character was using to counter the other due to the somewhat clearer sword fighting rules. The fights were more focused, faster and the characters more concentrated and did less trash talking.
Dies uses an almost a contrary approach with lots of trash talking and unusual weapons like a guillotine arm where its harder to imagine how the battles are supposed to work. Not sure if I can criticise the VN for that since pretty much what makes it 'chuuni' I guess. Though I can definitely say that I like the former less chuuni and more 'substance over style' classical sword fights more.
Still, I don't want to make my usual mistake and judge the VN too soon. I currently stalled it for a while until I get motivated again, but if I pick it up again I'll try to finish 1 - 2 routes first before making a final judgement.
 
Anyway, meanwhile in Chrono Clock...

Seems like green is the new blue this year. 

Finished Kasumi's route in Dies Irae. I should probably first say that this is not the first VN by Masada I've read. I've read Senshinkan before, and that left me with pretty mixed feelings on the author. I consider myself a fan of chuuni, and the darker (even edgier) the story is the more I'm likely to enjoy it. As such, I was pretty excited when I read Senshinkan at first - Masada's works put on the airs of extremely edgy chuuni... but unfortunately, that is all they seem to do, as on the core they're nothing more but extremely cliched shounen. I was baffled by the stark contrast between the grimdark text and the "Friendship power!" kind of story in Senshinkan, but I just chalked it up to the main theme, given the main character's disposition towards virtues. I did like the story (there was some impressive layering going on), the (villain) characters, but I did have my doubts with the actual chuuni, getting bored to death with never-ending re-matches.
As such, I was more scared of Dies Irae than excited, really. I did want to read it, but I was worried that it might be exactly what I disliked about Senshinkan - but in the end, curiosity won over, and the hyper-edgy Nazi aesthetic made me pick up the game. And, to put it shortly... I was right to be worried.
The prologue didn't sell me on the VN, in fact, it almost made me drop it. It was full of Masada's flashiness for the sake of flashiness, with action scenes serving no other purpose but to show you how damn cool everything is... only I didn't buy it. When I read chuuni, I want infodumps. I want battles that get their rules laid down and thoroughly explained, and have crazy things happening according to these rules. While Masada does this sometimes (Senshinkan had some scenes like that, albeit not many), the prologue exemplified everything I dislike about his writing of fight scenes. It's like he is trying to convince you how amazing everything is with words alone, without actually giving you any reason to be impressed in the first place. It all comes across as pretty... flat.
Luckily enough, the VN turned around immediately as the actual story started. Crazy pseudo-philosophy dialogues, edgy protagonist with clearly defined character that promised an interesting and entertaining point of view, some nice twists, it was great! And then... then the shounen tournament arc happened. The main character that was supposed to be unique, as the VN and the villains would want you to believe, quickly devolved into an insufferably cliched shounen protagonist. I won't go into any details to avoid spoilers, but the amount of shounen cliches in this route was driving me against the wall. What was even worse was Masada's attempt at being clever and self-aware - but making fun of things like friendship power and relying on it only seconds later doesn't make it any better, it makes it downright obnoxious. The actual chuuni was probably by far the biggest disappointment. The only fight scene that was actually exciting was the very first encounter, after that it just got boring. Masada just sticks to describing cool things for the most part, so there's not much to enjoy about the scenes other than mindlessly going with it - it's not like any of it really matters, because the main character just wins by some bullshit every single time in a true shounen fashion, and to make things even worse almost none of the wins even feel deserved. I get that this is the first route, but watching the main character fall for the same shit over and over and in the end be unable to do anything cool at all in a story about crazy battles isn't fun whatsoever - at least there are better characters than him that make the battle scenes at least somewhat exciting.
Anyway, it's not like I hated the whole thing. I enjoyed the characters (maybe except Ren... and Kasumi, to some extent, even though I wanted to like her), I liked the story that got hinted at (as I mentioned above, the first half of the common route actually got me really hyped, hopefully there is more of that kind of stuff here), and I liked the route ending. At the very least the last battle was pretty cool, and so was the way it turned out. I can only hope that the VN gets better from now on, but so far, I'm not impressed.
 
 
There are people who say this? The Umineko "fanbase" really is the worst. Never before have I seen a story where so many people would ignore almost half of it just to make themselves feel smart via pathetic theory-crafting that just picks the convenient parts and dismisses the rest. It's even sadder that this is happening to Umineko of all things, considering its subject matter. I'm glad you were able to get something out of these two episodes; after all, Umineko is trying to get across a message, and the last two episodes are crucial for that. Any "fans" looking on it strictly as a mystery story are not only doing the story huge disservice, but probably can't read at all in the first place.

Finished Kasumi's route in Dies Irae. I should probably first say that this is not the first VN by Masada I've read. I've read Senshinkan before, and that left me with pretty mixed feelings on the author. I consider myself a fan of chuuni, and the darker (even edgier) the story is the more I'm likely to enjoy it. As such, I was pretty excited when I read Senshinkan at first - Masada's works put on the airs of extremely edgy chuuni... but unfortunately, that is all they seem to do, as on the core they're nothing more but extremely cliched shounen. I was baffled by the stark contrast between the grimdark text and the "Friendship power!" kind of story in Senshinkan, but I just chalked it up to the main theme, given the main character's disposition towards virtues. I did like the story (there was some impressive layering going on), the (villain) characters, but I did have my doubts with the actual chuuni, getting bored to death with never-ending re-matches.
As such, I was more scared of Dies Irae than excited, really. I did want to read it, but I was worried that it might be exactly what I disliked about Senshinkan - but in the end, curiosity won over, and the hyper-edgy Nazi aesthetic made me pick up the game. And, to put it shortly... I was right to be worried.
The prologue didn't sell me on the VN, in fact, it almost made me drop it. It was full of Masada's flashiness for the sake of flashiness, with action scenes serving no other purpose but to show you how damn cool everything is... only I didn't buy it. When I read chuuni, I want infodumps. I want battles that get their rules laid down and thoroughly explained, and have crazy things happening according to these rules. While Masada does this sometimes (Senshinkan had some scenes like that, albeit not many), the prologue exemplified everything I dislike about his writing of fight scenes. It's like he is trying to convince you how amazing everything is with words alone, without actually giving you any reason to be impressed in the first place. It all comes across as pretty... flat.
Luckily enough, the VN turned around immediately as the actual story started. Crazy pseudo-philosophy dialogues, edgy protagonist with clearly defined character that promised an interesting and entertaining point of view, some nice twists, it was great! And then... then the shounen tournament arc happened. The main character that was supposed to be unique, as the VN and the villains would want you to believe, quickly devolved into an insufferably cliched shounen protagonist. I won't go into any details to avoid spoilers, but the amount of shounen cliches in this route was driving me against the wall. What was even worse was Masada's attempt at being clever and self-aware - but making fun of things like friendship power and relying on it only seconds later doesn't make it any better, it makes it downright obnoxious. The actual chuuni was probably by far the biggest disappointment. The only fight scene that was actually exciting was the very first encounter, after that it just got boring. Masada just sticks to describing cool things for the most part, so there's not much to enjoy about the scenes other than mindlessly going with it - it's not like any of it really matters, because the main character just wins by some bullshit every single time in a true shounen fashion, and to make things even worse almost none of the wins even feel deserved. I get that this is the first route, but watching the main character fall for the same shit over and over and in the end be unable to do anything cool at all in a story about crazy battles isn't fun whatsoever - at least there are better characters than him that make the battle scenes at least somewhat exciting.
Anyway, it's not like I hated the whole thing. I enjoyed the characters (maybe except Ren... and Kasumi, to some extent, even though I wanted to like her), I liked the story that got hinted at (as I mentioned above, the first half of the common route actually got me really hyped, hopefully there is more of that kind of stuff here), and I liked the route ending. At the very least the last battle was pretty cool, and so was the way it turned out. I can only hope that the VN gets better from now on, but so far, I'm not impressed.
 
 
There are people who say this? The Umineko "fanbase" really is the worst. Never before have I seen a story where so many people would ignore almost half of it just to make themselves feel smart via pathetic theory-crafting that just picks the convenient parts and dismisses the rest. It's even sadder that this is happening to Umineko of all things, considering its subject matter. I'm glad you were able to get something out of these two episodes; after all, Umineko is trying to get across a message, and the last two episodes are crucial for that. Any "fans" looking on it strictly as a mystery story are not only doing the story huge disservice, but probably can't read at all in the first place.

Finished Kasumi's route in Dies Irae. I should probably first say that this is not the first VN by Masada I've read. I've read Senshinkan before, and that left me with pretty mixed feelings on the author. I consider myself a fan of chuuni, and the darker (even edgier) the story is the more I'm likely to enjoy it. As such, I was pretty excited when I read Senshinkan at first - Masada's works put on the airs of extremely edgy chuuni... but unfortunately, that is all they seem to do, as on the core they're nothing more but extremely cliched shounen. I was baffled by the stark contrast between the grimdark text and the "Friendship power!" kind of story in Senshinkan, but I just chalked it up to the main theme, given the main character's disposition towards virtues. I did like the story (there was some impressive layering going on), the (villain) characters, but I did have my doubts with the actual chuuni, getting bored to death with never-ending re-matches.
As such, I was more scared of Dies Irae than excited, really. I did want to read it, but I was worried that it might be exactly what I disliked about Senshinkan - but in the end, curiosity won over, and the hyper-edgy Nazi aesthetic made me pick up the game. And, to put it shortly... I was right to be worried.
The prologue didn't sell me on the VN, in fact, it almost made me drop it. It was full of Masada's flashiness for the sake of flashiness, with action scenes serving no other purpose but to show you how damn cool everything is... only I didn't buy it. When I read chuuni, I want infodumps. I want battles that get their rules laid down and thoroughly explained, and have crazy things happening according to these rules. While Masada does this sometimes (Senshinkan had some scenes like that, albeit not many), the prologue exemplified everything I dislike about his writing of fight scenes. It's like he is trying to convince you how amazing everything is with words alone, without actually giving you any reason to be impressed in the first place. It all comes across as pretty... flat.
Luckily enough, the VN turned around immediately as the actual story started. Crazy pseudo-philosophy dialogues, edgy protagonist with clearly defined character that promised an interesting and entertaining point of view, some nice twists, it was great! And then... then the shounen tournament arc happened. The main character that was supposed to be unique, as the VN and the villains would want you to believe, quickly devolved into an insufferably cliched shounen protagonist. I won't go into any details to avoid spoilers, but the amount of shounen cliches in this route was driving me against the wall. What was even worse was Masada's attempt at being clever and self-aware - but making fun of things like friendship power and relying on it only seconds later doesn't make it any better, it makes it downright obnoxious. The actual chuuni was probably by far the biggest disappointment. The only fight scene that was actually exciting was the very first encounter, after that it just got boring. Masada just sticks to describing cool things for the most part, so there's not much to enjoy about the scenes other than mindlessly going with it - it's not like any of it really matters, because the main character just wins by some bullshit every single time in a true shounen fashion, and to make things even worse almost none of the wins even feel deserved. I get that this is the first route, but watching the main character fall for the same shit over and over and in the end be unable to do anything cool at all in a story about crazy battles isn't fun whatsoever - at least there are better characters than him that make the battle scenes at least somewhat exciting.
Anyway, it's not like I hated the whole thing. I enjoyed the characters (maybe except Ren... and Kasumi, to some extent, even though I wanted to like her), I liked the story that got hinted at (as I mentioned above, the first half of the common route actually got me really hyped, hopefully there is more of that kind of stuff here), and I liked the route ending. At the very least the last battle was pretty cool, and so was the way it turned out. I can only hope that the VN gets better from now on, but so far, I'm not impressed.
 
 
There are people who say this? The Umineko "fanbase" really is the worst. Never before have I seen a story where so many people would ignore almost half of it just to make themselves feel smart via pathetic theory-crafting that just picks the convenient parts and dismisses the rest. It's even sadder that this is happening to Umineko of all things, considering its subject matter. I'm glad you were able to get something out of these two episodes; after all, Umineko is trying to get across a message, and the last two episodes are crucial for that. Any "fans" looking on it strictly as a mystery story are not only doing the story huge disservice, but probably can't read at all in the first place.

I recently finished Kanojyo-tachi no Ryuugi. Going into the VN, I somehow mixed up this title with another VN, Yuri Kago no Naka, and thought it was going to be a hyper-chuuni novel. Well, it definitely wasn't that, but it was pretty good anyways.   The VN starts out with the MC returning to old home where he sees his older twin sisters for the first time in five years. He is pretty miffed when his older sister Tobari ignores him completely. Especially since he (MC's name is Kotarou) holds a bit of an inferiority complex towards her. She does recruit him to the theatre club in order to perform at the upcoming school festival.  He's going to be playing the main heroine alongside her as the hero. Yep, it's a VN with crossdressing. The MC is voiced, too (hooray!)   I found the BGM well-fitted for each of the scenes. It looks like they paid attention there. Was really impressed by the voice acting for Tobari, Akane, and Suzutsuki. The early dialogue had  a bit of characterization, but the voice acting really gave it life. Though when I saw Seseri's (blue-haired hopelessly genki-naive type) character I cringed at the thought of having to bear with her for the rest of the VN.    I really liked Suzutsuki's (Pink-haired girl) route who I played first. Her route was super short (literally 6-7 scenes!!!), but it had this amazing atmosphere. She ends up being my favourite girl. Next I played Seseri's route, which mostly boring. Then was Akane (the older twin sister). Her route wasn't extensive like I thought it was, but it does provide some important facts about the sisters and their family. After that I skipped the other two minor heriones and went  for the Tobari's route, the true herione's. While doing her route, I still found the events seems pretty underwhelming (just seemed like Kotarou arguing a lot with Tobari). But then the latter part of her route comes, and it's pretty good. At the end of the route there's this big perspective change which pretty much is the culmination of the entire route. It was amazing the first time, but it took me a second read to connect the pieces. Now I finally get why everyone on erogegamescape keeps saying the game exists for the sake of Tobari. Basically the whole game is revolving about Kotarou's (the MC) and Tobari's relationship (or apparent lack of one), and her mental state.   It's kind of an unexpected work (old, heavy character-focus, and yet not being about the normal romance progressions), but the cg, music, voice acting, and characters are all quite good. Would recommend to someone who wants to read a character-focused story and doesn't mind the crossdressing, the unusual combination of elements, or the short length.   As a side note, I think the crossdressing was more to allow Akari and Tobari to exhibit some S-traits during the sex scenes. The sex scenes are generally pretty mild, but the thing is, Kotarou is actually in the M position a lot of the time, which makes it feel more 'out there' than most crossdressing vns. I dunno. Kotarou's not bad relatively speaking, but some of the stuff made me groan a bit inside.    

Finished 凍京NECRO. It's probably not much of a surprise, given how this VN is presented, but 凍京NECRO is an example of what happens when you have way more flair than substance. Luckily for Nitro+, though - the flair is really fucking cool.
This entire visual novel is just a ridiculous budget explosion. From throw-away one-time use sprites to the numerous 3D-animated fight scenes, 凍京NECRO does all it can to impress the reader with its presentation. And for what its worth, it works for the most part - the 3D is pretty iffy, and probably downright shit by western standards, but if you can look past that it is really enjoyable. The models, animations and particle effects might look decent at best, but they do make for some really cool scenes when they all come together.
The story... is really good too, for the most part. It is fun and complex, full of crazy twist and turns in each of the four routes - but things start to fall apart a bit as soon as the plot tries to go outside the box. The story deals with life and death and what they mean - or so it'd like you to think, because it never really goes much deeper than the surface level. Just like the nonsensical sci-fi, it is there just to be entertaining rather than to send some profound message. It tries to, however, especially with the true route. Now don't get me wrong, the true route is presented in one of the coolest ways I've ever seen, and it's really exciting while it is all happening - but as soon as you stop to think about it it doesn't really make all that much sense. There is also this strange meta angle that doesn't quite stick the landing either - but it's not really given too much weight just like everything else, so it doesn't really detract from the overall enjoyment.
All in all, I've enjoyed 凍京NECRO a lot - but no matter how hard Nitro+ might try, the next Muramasa it is not.

It's still an incredibly difficult process trying to learn by reading but the one thing it has in its favour is that you have something motivating your learning. I seriously suggest learning some grammar on the side though through some formal process, either through online guides or buying yourself an old fashioned textbook and working your way through it. Vocab is the easiest part of learning Japanese if you can just look it up on a dictionary. Grammar is the cornerstone of learning the language, especially since its grammar is wildly different from English. What's worse is that the casual +/- slang you encounter in visual novels, anime and manga isn't really taught well anywhere in particular but once you get the grammar you can start learning how casual speech and slang deviates. Text hookers will fail a lot on casual grammar and slang.

Do you happen to have Office installed? If so, here's what fixed it for me:
1. Open Task Scheduler
2. Go into the task scheduler library > Microsoft > Office
3. You will notice that OfficeBackgroundTaskHandlerRegistration is set to repeat every single hour
4. Right-click the task and disable it
That's what fixed it for me at least, haven't had the popup ever since. If you don't have that Office task scheduled for every single hour, there is still a good chance you will find your problem in the Task Scheduler. Just open it up when you notice the popup and go through all the categories, sorting the tasks by the last time they were ran. You can also manually run them to check if that was what you were seeing.
Hope this helps!

Do you happen to have Office installed? If so, here's what fixed it for me:
1. Open Task Scheduler
2. Go into the task scheduler library > Microsoft > Office
3. You will notice that OfficeBackgroundTaskHandlerRegistration is set to repeat every single hour
4. Right-click the task and disable it
That's what fixed it for me at least, haven't had the popup ever since. If you don't have that Office task scheduled for every single hour, there is still a good chance you will find your problem in the Task Scheduler. Just open it up when you notice the popup and go through all the categories, sorting the tasks by the last time they were ran. You can also manually run them to check if that was what you were seeing.
Hope this helps!

Finished 凍京NECRO. It's probably not much of a surprise, given how this VN is presented, but 凍京NECRO is an example of what happens when you have way more flair than substance. Luckily for Nitro+, though - the flair is really fucking cool.
This entire visual novel is just a ridiculous budget explosion. From throw-away one-time use sprites to the numerous 3D-animated fight scenes, 凍京NECRO does all it can to impress the reader with its presentation. And for what its worth, it works for the most part - the 3D is pretty iffy, and probably downright shit by western standards, but if you can look past that it is really enjoyable. The models, animations and particle effects might look decent at best, but they do make for some really cool scenes when they all come together.
The story... is really good too, for the most part. It is fun and complex, full of crazy twist and turns in each of the four routes - but things start to fall apart a bit as soon as the plot tries to go outside the box. The story deals with life and death and what they mean - or so it'd like you to think, because it never really goes much deeper than the surface level. Just like the nonsensical sci-fi, it is there just to be entertaining rather than to send some profound message. It tries to, however, especially with the true route. Now don't get me wrong, the true route is presented in one of the coolest ways I've ever seen, and it's really exciting while it is all happening - but as soon as you stop to think about it it doesn't really make all that much sense. There is also this strange meta angle that doesn't quite stick the landing either - but it's not really given too much weight just like everything else, so it doesn't really detract from the overall enjoyment.
All in all, I've enjoyed 凍京NECRO a lot - but no matter how hard Nitro+ might try, the next Muramasa it is not.

Finished 凍京NECRO. It's probably not much of a surprise, given how this VN is presented, but 凍京NECRO is an example of what happens when you have way more flair than substance. Luckily for Nitro+, though - the flair is really fucking cool.
This entire visual novel is just a ridiculous budget explosion. From throw-away one-time use sprites to the numerous 3D-animated fight scenes, 凍京NECRO does all it can to impress the reader with its presentation. And for what its worth, it works for the most part - the 3D is pretty iffy, and probably downright shit by western standards, but if you can look past that it is really enjoyable. The models, animations and particle effects might look decent at best, but they do make for some really cool scenes when they all come together.
The story... is really good too, for the most part. It is fun and complex, full of crazy twist and turns in each of the four routes - but things start to fall apart a bit as soon as the plot tries to go outside the box. The story deals with life and death and what they mean - or so it'd like you to think, because it never really goes much deeper than the surface level. Just like the nonsensical sci-fi, it is there just to be entertaining rather than to send some profound message. It tries to, however, especially with the true route. Now don't get me wrong, the true route is presented in one of the coolest ways I've ever seen, and it's really exciting while it is all happening - but as soon as you stop to think about it it doesn't really make all that much sense. There is also this strange meta angle that doesn't quite stick the landing either - but it's not really given too much weight just like everything else, so it doesn't really detract from the overall enjoyment.
All in all, I've enjoyed 凍京NECRO a lot - but no matter how hard Nitro+ might try, the next Muramasa it is not.

Haha, that flowchart just makes it needlessly complicated, YU-NO isn't that difficult at all. Once you get onto a route it is mostly linear, and the game does let you know when you can cross onto a different world-line, so you at least know when to look out for what you pick.
As for me, I've took the plunge and re-read Cross Channel in Japanese some time back. I've always wanted to do this, considering its reputation and the... embarrassing TL it has in English. hoping I'd find much more enjoyment in the VN this time around. And I did - the writing was playful and funny, a lot of the laughs I had while reading came from the writing alone. The nuances themselves were also fun for sure - but my overall issues I had with the VN my first time throuh remained. That is, the entire true route is just incredibly boring, and it explicitly hand-waves a lot of the plot details away, since they (usually) don't even matter that much to the VN's plot. Now, I'm not saying every story should explain everything in minute detail - I am a big fan of works that leave certain things to interpretation - but there is a big difference between details that were purposefully omitted, and details that didn't even exist in the first place. I feel like Cross Channel falls into the second category, as in one point the author almost directly tells you that he doesn't have to explain shit because nothing of it even matters anyway - and while I can agree with him to a certain point, it did kind of leave bad taste in my mouth. It's also baffling how incredibly bad the voice acting is even after all these re-releases, and how none of the pacing issues are fixed either (I was reading the Final Complete version, that essentially ended up being the exact same as the original, just with a bunch of worthless stuff on top no one asked for),  but I suppose I can't blame the writer for that too much.
Overall a very enjoyable read with some great comedy and intriguing characters, but I feel like there was room to improve. But hey... maybe I just don't get it. 

What kind of horror are you looking for? If you're looking for straight-forward horror with ghosts and gore, the Corpse Party series is probably the go-to. There's also Iwaihime on the untranslated end of things. For psychological horror, you might want to look into Higurashi, or something from the denpa genre, like Sayooshi - this one isn't translated either.

I couldn't recommend this one enough. I love denpa, and it was this VN that got me to fall in love with that genre. According to the TLwiki page, the translation is at 42%. So, probably in a year or two the translation will be done. And maybe they will release a partial patch sometime in between too. 
As for already translated titles, Saya no Uta is great. And I've only heard good things about Phenomeno. So I'm vouching for the people who recommended those. 

Nice write up, you clearly put quite a lot of work into it, but... I don't really get what the point of this is. What are you trying to do exactly? Learn Japanese? Translate a visual novel? Read a Japanese VN without much understanding of the language?
There are easier ways to go about almost all of these. Using a text hooker would probably help you with all three of these - there's no point in manually looking up every single word when you can just copy the text out, and there are text parsers that can look up the definitions for you on the fly, too. For translation, you could just use a CAT tool to build your translation database, so you don't lose the things you've already translated. You might potentially remember things a little bit better if you write them down by hand and look them up each time like you said, but I don't think that's really worth it given the time-investment, especially if your goal is just to read.

Nice write up, you clearly put quite a lot of work into it, but... I don't really get what the point of this is. What are you trying to do exactly? Learn Japanese? Translate a visual novel? Read a Japanese VN without much understanding of the language?
There are easier ways to go about almost all of these. Using a text hooker would probably help you with all three of these - there's no point in manually looking up every single word when you can just copy the text out, and there are text parsers that can look up the definitions for you on the fly, too. For translation, you could just use a CAT tool to build your translation database, so you don't lose the things you've already translated. You might potentially remember things a little bit better if you write them down by hand and look them up each time like you said, but I don't think that's really worth it given the time-investment, especially if your goal is just to read.

I could probably do the TLC. I've went through Sui a couple of months back, for better or worse - and while there's a lot of bad in there, there are some arcs that definitely deserve a translation, like the Natsumi and Tomoe ones. 

Nice write up, you clearly put quite a lot of work into it, but... I don't really get what the point of this is. What are you trying to do exactly? Learn Japanese? Translate a visual novel? Read a Japanese VN without much understanding of the language?
There are easier ways to go about almost all of these. Using a text hooker would probably help you with all three of these - there's no point in manually looking up every single word when you can just copy the text out, and there are text parsers that can look up the definitions for you on the fly, too. For translation, you could just use a CAT tool to build your translation database, so you don't lose the things you've already translated. You might potentially remember things a little bit better if you write them down by hand and look them up each time like you said, but I don't think that's really worth it given the time-investment, especially if your goal is just to read.