You want unpopular opinions? I got unpopular opinions. Here's one.
You know what Wanko is? She's not the best grill (that's the Hulk Hogan grill), she's not the best girl (that's Ben Kei (two words as the bartender) or Nee-san or Miyako or Mayumayu or Seiso-haou or Ageha-san or Yadon or Karin) or even the best pet (Tatsu or Koyuki). She's just a useless whiny loser who gave up because she couldn't cut the mustard one time. Did Ronald Reagan give up because he didn't become President the first time? Did Ronda Rousey quit just because Dr. De Mars told her she sucked that one time she lost in that one piddlyass judo tournament that was only seen by the parents of the participants? No! She got back up, said "fuck you Mom, I'm gonna do it, that's it, period!" and got an Olympic medal and two world titles to shove up her ass. Now she's a fucking movie star.
You want to know what improves athletic performance? It sure as hell isn't that lameass crap you came up with it. It's growth hormone, testosterone propinate, trenbolone and anavar if you're female with more than 5% body fat. Or you embrace the dark side like Shakadou-san. Or you can raise your toukon the EcchiOujisama way, doing 1000 suburi everyday for 1000 consecutive days. That works too. I know because I did it. You know what didn't get the job done? (Insert diet here.)
But the paths of both haou and toukon are just too much for our little pet dog. Oh sure, you can teach her to go fetch or show up when you blow the whistle, but that's all she's good for. Yamato should just cover his dick with peanut butter, blow the whistle and get it over with. "Yeah, that's it, right there, lick up those Scooby SnacksTM Wanko!" Assuming he didn't already do that in the Drama CD games, haven't gone through those yet. I would say I feel sorry for Hideo, but he can and will do better. She is a disgrace to Ekate's voice and should be ashamed of herself.
But...but...the interactive eroge simulator I want needs batteries...
Wait, is that an AC adapter? We're in business! \/
Seriously though, this place looks like the answer to buying products from Japan at a reasonable price. Great share @Zenophilious!
I finally finished this mammoth beast a few days ago and have been letting it all sink in before sharing my thoughts on it. The first thing you need to understand is that you have no idea just how incredibly long it is. You think War and Peace is long? KimiNozo has almost twice as many LINES of text as War and Peace has WORDS. You think the 66 books that come together to make the Bible make a big book? KimiNozo wins again by a large margin - about 77,000 more lines than the Bible has words.
If you decide to challenge this beast and a half, know it's going to be a large investment of time. Whatever you're thinking for length based on that, it's going to be longer. It took me a solid month to get through this putting in several hours per day.
But the real question is, is it worth it? Should you hold your breath that the English translation will one day be completed? tl;dr - it depends. If you want more specific information, you're going to have to keep reading.
I played the Latest Edition, which uses the AGES engine, and it definitely makes the gaming experience more enjoyable. Think going from Muv-Luv to Muv-Luv Alternative. It sounds like a small thing, but for something that will easily take 100+ hours the difference is substantial in the overall experience. Most of the game was redrawn for the new game and engine and the improvements are dramatic. Comparing (high school) Mitsuki in LE to the Mitsuki that showed up in the bonus scenes on the Special Fan Disk is like looking at two different people. Far more beautiful, far more detailed - in all ways she feels so much more real, vibrant and alive. Ordinarily I have limited tolerance for a game being released a million times with only minor improvements each time, but this difference is huge. YUGE even.
Amazingly, there wasn't even a route for Mitsuki until the FOURTH time the game was released (if VNDB is to be believed). Going through this I'm amazed that it made it to the PC and 2 home consoles without anyone thinking that people might want to end up with the hot girl on the cover. Mind blown.
The first thing I noticed right off the bat is that you really feel like you're in the same world as Muv-Luv Extra. Or to be more accurate, Muv-Luv Extra really feels like it takes place in the world of KimiNozo (which came first). It sounds small when I say it like this, but seeing the same backgrounds, hearing some of the same music in similar situations, the Hakuryou uniform and Sky Temple all come together to make you feel like you're in the same world in a way that the various KimiNozo and ML anime simply don't.
Using the Japanese walkthrough I noticed there was virtually no overlap between Mitsuki and Haruka when it came to choices. Literally. Oh, you helped Haruka carry some papers in high school? You fucker! Mitsuki totally won't sex you three years later for that! When you think about it a little bit it doesn't seem like the things you do to get to Mitsuki's route should matter, given what happens to Haruka.
Which brings me to one of the biggest problems I had with the game. Barely legal high school Mitsuki and short hair OL Mitsuki are two completely people. You see this a little bit in the anime, but given the (comparatively) short time you spend in the present in the anime when compared with the game, it's reasonable to think it's just dealing the triangle/guilt/stress/etc. Not so much with a larger sample size. Everything that made barely legal Mitsuki attractive from a personality standpoint is gone and replaced by a moody, brooding, depressing OL completely beaten down by life. She goes from being one of my favorite characters to someone I don't even want to be around.
It's made worse by the fact that she's the laziest lay in eroge history. CG recycling is taken to a level I would never be able to do with a straight face. I lost count of how many times I was amazed to see the same CG yet again. While you get the feeling that high school Mitsuki would be an absolute freak who would give you a western porn star experience every time, OL Mitsuki is every boring AV idol you're ever seen in the sack.
The situation is compounded by the three main "good" routes (OL Mitsuki, Haruka, Akane) being largely vacant of any happiness. It's one thing to overcome a horrible tragedy and have it lead to something good. That does not happen here. As soon as you think something is starting to go right, within five minutes all kinds of crap will break out and you'll be back to feeling bad for next few hours. The ending of Akane's route made it feel like they intentionally went out of their way to steal whatever happiness you have by being with Akane and ending it on a downer. The others didn't leave me feeling much better. To make matters worse, even when skipping the previously read messages the good/real/true/whatever routes aren't as different from each other as you'd think, or even all that different from the TV series. In retrospect, they did an incredible job of compressing about 50 hours of content down to 5. I was expecting added depth and character development that just doesn't happen.
Like Mitsuki, Haruka also becomes a completely different person. In this case, they are changes for the better and consistent with the changes from the TV series. Suddenly she was able to speak without stuttering and getting too shy to complete a single sentence, her presence is warmer and the fact that no one bothered to cut her hair but did continue to braid it as it got longer is very becoming. It makes no sense, but it's for the better, so I'll fill in the blank with her subconscious mind working to improve her personality while it didn't have much else going on and Fumio giggling while playing with her hair instead of complaining.
While some of the bad endings take BAD to a whole new level (more on one in particular later), generally the "bad" routes are far more interesting, and many don't even feel bad when compared to everything that happens in the good routes. In some routes there is a fair amount of sexual domination and girls pleading just to be the mistress. OL Mitsuki in her old uniform is such a tease, so close yet so far from the girl I love. Given that we see all of the women are willing to share to some extent, it's really disappointing that there isn't a perfect harem route where you find a way to make Mitsuki, Haruka and Akane all happy by being with you at the same time. If there were such a route, I wouldn't complain about the heartache so much. By the time you're done there's a feeling of damned if you do and damned slightly differently if you don't.
LE adds after stories for our three main heroines, and I don't have nice things to say about any of them. (Spoiler: no new H scenes either.) In Mitsuki's you meet her parents in what feels like the most boring scenario they could come up with, and the other two go back to the formula of making you feel as bad as possible and leaving you highly unsatisfied at the end. Again, after releasing this game what feels like 10 times and everything that's been added there's still no harem route where we can make chicken salad out of chicken shit just one time? Fuck you Age.
That's a lot of bad things - we need something to pick this back up. Fumio is AWESOME! The busty red haired nurse you might remember from the anime certainly delivers. There was always something about her, from her voice to exact body proportions from the neck down that just drove me nuts. In retrospect I can say they translated that from the game to the anime perfectly. Most importantly, this route doesn't waste your time and jerk you around before cock teasing and half delivering before taking it away at the end. There is a GLORIOUS H scene, what happens happens afterward and it ends. It tells its story, gets you off and gets out. Perfect. Not the ending I would have wanted, but as she's not one of the real heroines anyway I'll overlook it. Your mileage may vary if she doesn't get your motor running.
Kouzuki Motoko, Haruka's doctor, is the older sister of ML's Yuuko-sensei. You don't get a route with her, but it's not a big loss. Not only is she smoking 24/7 (ewww) but she just doesn't have the raw sex appeal that Yuuko-sensei and their other sister from KimiIta have. Nice tits, but you'll live without them. Trust me.
In talking about side characters that brings me to what may be the worst thing, not only in the game, but the worst route I've ever been down in any VN. I can't say enough about how much I hate this, so I won't even try.
When I have words that strong for a woman with an amazing rack, it's bad. I just can't even with her normal routes or H scenes after that. This made me not complain that Fumio only had a short route and one H scene, because I'm pretty confident they would have found a way to take away everything I like about her and completely ruin my memories if given the opportunity.
Also part of the LE package is the main story from the Special Fan Disk, again updated to the AGES engine. There is a lot of crossover with the main routes and the skip previously read feature in LE will skip over the parts you've already read in SFD, another significant improvement. You FINALLY get an H scene withOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMG soooooo hot mai waifu high school Mitsuki (although it comes in a bit below expectations), tooooootally 18 9th grader Akane, short haired Haruka and 2 with that green haired bitch who is dead to me. Seriously, out of all of the choices she's the one that gets 2 routes?!?! Someone at Age is clearly a Mitsukiphobe.
Unfortunately they didn't add more scenes with Mitsuki wearing this amazing kimono, which was one of the most beautiful expressions of feminine beauty I've ever seen. Again, your mileage may vary, but I sat here with my jaw hanging down at how incredible this was. In all fairness, high school Mitsuki tends to be incredible no matter what she wears, casual clothes, school uniform, swimsuit...but this was on another level.
Overall, SFD is much more enjoyable than the main game. It doesn't go out of its way to make everything go wrong at every possible moment, and lets you have your little moments of fun. It's extremely short, comparatively speaking. It took maybe 7 or 8 hours skipping the messages displayed in the main game to finish it. I think the best way to describe it is that it captures the essence of everything enjoyable about Muv-Luv Extra with none of what dragged it down.
There are 10 additional short segments on SFD not included in LE (or I managed not to find/unlock them if they are there). This was when the difference in the engine and the redrawn art really stood out. As mentioned Mitsuki had the most dramatic improvements, but others clearly benefited from the higher resolutions and redraws. The first 9 are very short but last one was a good hour or so. It's a pretty epic and worthwhile what if story outside of the story's canon worth your time. As long as you've been through Muv-Luv Unlimited, Akane Maniax and Daikuuji Kiki Ippatsu that is. It's assuming you're familiar with all these characters and stories, which left me a bit lost with the Daikuuji stuff.
Pedophiles will be disappointed that Daikuuji looks like a short adult with her clothes off, but Mayu and Amakawa could easily pass for 8. From a storyline and fapping standpoint I thought all of these wasted my time, although Daikuuji's may set up some wacky fun in Daikuuji Kiki Ippatsu.
Bla bla bla text wall. Yes or no?
Overall, it's a very mixed bag. The good is really good, the bad is really bad to really REEEEEEEAALLLY bad. Ordinarily once I step away from a game for a few days I tend to remember far more of the good than the bad. That wasn't the case here. Everything that dragged it down in the moment has stayed with me and I really don't have any desire to return. The amount of time when it's simply not enjoyable compared to the amount of time it is enjoyable is quite large. I rated it a 5 on VNDB, but that was primarily due to technical aspects and inclusion of the main story of SFD bringing up the all around score. When it's good it's among my favorites, unfortunately that only covers 15ish hours of the 100+ hour experience.
The only way to know if you will like it enough for it be worth the time investment is to actually go through it. I could have gone off on several other profanity-laden rants on creative decisions I didn't like, but I think there is enough here for you to get the idea. Everything that was good has been discussed. If the things I dislike resonate with you as things you dislike, you'll probably have the same sense of disappointment I do now. If you're looking for something to fuck with you, make sure you're never happy for long and come up with constant bullshit to pull the rug out from under you just to make sure you don't accidentally start enjoying yourself, you have definitely found the game you've been looking for.
Having just gone through Kimi ga Nozomu Eien and making my way through KimiAru I'm finding my Japanese reading skills are better than I've given myself credit for. I'm kicking around the idea of translating a short game and seeing how that goes.
However, complex hacking, coding patches or installation packages, etc. is not in my wheelhouse and not something I'm interested in learning. If the process is too complex or too much of a hassle for me to do, knowing me like I know me I'll get sick of it and say screw it long before the project is done.
Here's where you can help me help you. I want to extract a line of text from the game, do some CTRL+C CTRL+F CTRL+V action, type in the English replacement and be done. If encryption needs to be broken, files need to be hacked or whatever else needs to be done to get it to the point where all I have to do is the translating, then someone will need to step up and get that done to get me in the game.
I have three candidates for games to translate and don't have a preference between them. Making the process easy for me is going to be the primary deciding factor in which one I do. The candidates are:
1.Majikoi Drama CD vol.1 (the game on the CD, not the actual audio drama)
2.X-Change R
3.Koutetsu no Majo Annerose
Get me to the point where the only work I have to do is the actual translating, and I'll give one of these a go.
Having just gone through Kimi ga Nozomu Eien and making my way through KimiAru I'm finding my Japanese reading skills are better than I've given myself credit for. I'm kicking around the idea of translating a short game and seeing how that goes.
However, complex hacking, coding patches or installation packages, etc. is not in my wheelhouse and not something I'm interested in learning. If the process is too complex or too much of a hassle for me to do, knowing me like I know me I'll get sick of it and say screw it long before the project is done.
Here's where you can help me help you. I want to extract a line of text from the game, do some CTRL+C CTRL+F CTRL+V action, type in the English replacement and be done. If encryption needs to be broken, files need to be hacked or whatever else needs to be done to get it to the point where all I have to do is the translating, then someone will need to step up and get that done to get me in the game.
I have three candidates for games to translate and don't have a preference between them. Making the process easy for me is going to be the primary deciding factor in which one I do. The candidates are:
1.Majikoi Drama CD vol.1 (the game on the CD, not the actual audio drama)
2.X-Change R
3.Koutetsu no Majo Annerose
Get me to the point where the only work I have to do is the actual translating, and I'll give one of these a go.
Having just gone through Kimi ga Nozomu Eien and making my way through KimiAru I'm finding my Japanese reading skills are better than I've given myself credit for. I'm kicking around the idea of translating a short game and seeing how that goes.
However, complex hacking, coding patches or installation packages, etc. is not in my wheelhouse and not something I'm interested in learning. If the process is too complex or too much of a hassle for me to do, knowing me like I know me I'll get sick of it and say screw it long before the project is done.
Here's where you can help me help you. I want to extract a line of text from the game, do some CTRL+C CTRL+F CTRL+V action, type in the English replacement and be done. If encryption needs to be broken, files need to be hacked or whatever else needs to be done to get it to the point where all I have to do is the translating, then someone will need to step up and get that done to get me in the game.
I have three candidates for games to translate and don't have a preference between them. Making the process easy for me is going to be the primary deciding factor in which one I do. The candidates are:
1.Majikoi Drama CD vol.1 (the game on the CD, not the actual audio drama)
2.X-Change R
3.Koutetsu no Majo Annerose
Get me to the point where the only work I have to do is the actual translating, and I'll give one of these a go.
I used dv8cag to get my copy of Rose Guns Days off of Amazon, and I can't recommend them enough. Talked to a real person, they charged a reasonable fee (through Paypal, so I felt safe using them), and it was a super easy process. I don't believe they have any sort of rules against 18+ products. The only things they don't ship are things with batteries.
http://minatosoft.com/10th_anniversary/spark.html <-- if you want to download a special game (226 MB)
＾is about a girl named Urla (ウルラ) in which Jun Inoue is the MC ...... Kazuko, Miyako, and Yamato does not appear whatsoever in the story.
It really depends on what my aim is. I enjoy a good nukige more than most people here - Sexy Demon Transformation and Forbidden Love With My Wife's Sister are two of my favorite H games period. They know exactly what they are and don't pretend to be anything more. They set up simple characters you want to fuck and gets you there without wasting your time. The former gives you a fun setting with some wackiness that plays into anime sensibilities while the latter gives you a HOOOOOOOOT chick you can't help but want. I give both of them one boner up.
If I'm going to put 10-50+ hours into a game, I like for it to have H scenes with the characters. I'm not going to give some pretense - I'm a healthy man and I love women. If I like the character enough to go through a route with her, obviously I'm into her enough to want to H her. The downside with games that have it as a feature but not a focus is that you aren't always in the mood when the scenes come up, and sometimes you really are more interested in seeing the story progress than yet another H scene. That's what the scene replay function is for. As you can see in my VNDB I've been through an eroge or two in my time, and my willingness to sit through something that bores me for 20 hours to get to an H scene is gone at this point in my life. For that longer investment of time I need something worthy of that investment - interesting plot, fun characters, engaging gameplay (ala Bunny Black, Eiyuu Senki, etc.), something. The fact that it has H content with women I find attractive brings me to the table. Everything else it does well keeps me there.
To celebrate the upcoming release of Lamune 2, you can now download Lamune 1 free for a limited time. (Normal price 4104 yen)
http://dlsoft.dmm.co.jp/detail/hobe_0156/
Visual novels are too feminist. The guy always has to slave away for the girl's pleasure and to gain their approval. Even when they finally get it, they have to keep up appearances or all that lost work will go to waste. Have you seen some of the shit they do for these women? Some might say that the men are capturing the easily fallen women, but it's actually the other way around, these minxes manipulate the man into doing their biddings and only rewarded with minor shows of affection.
Nukige are the only real male supremacist games, at least there the male is in control and the one who is getting the most benefit.
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