Tyr

Am I the only one who doesn't like the Xtended version? The restructuring of the D Route pretty much ruins the whole point of the novel. If it weren't for the horrible paced and anticlimactic last route, I wouldn't like this game as much. I understand why people criticize it and it's kinda justified ... but that's the damn point you bakas lol. This game is not about crappy pseudo science or one mind-blowing twist after another. It's more about... characters. However, that's my route ranking: Route A: 10/10 Best thing ever. That's what Ever17 should have been. I wish every visual novel would be as thrilling and suspenseful and face-paced as this route. Really, it's that good. Route B: 5/10 More than half of it is boring school slice of life. It wouldn't be as bad if you hadn't just read the glorious A-Route. I know this is all about character introduction and such but damn, Route A just introduced even more characters AND was one hell of a ride. Overall, it's not really badly written, it's just not impressive at all. At least the last hour is really good. Route C: 7/10 Not really a full route, more an epilogue to B and the link to A. It's good enough to make it seem that the time wasted on the B route was worth it, at least. ^^ Route D: ??/10 I liked it. The original route, mind you. You probably wouldn't have liked it, so have fun with your Xtended version, haha. (No sarcasm intended.)

I have the Memorial Box. Just saying :3 I have this game too and it works. Just saying :3 I wouldn't say "no way of getting it". And I also didn't need a serial. Just saying :3

Thank you for writing this. These are exactly the same thoughts I had too. I honestly can't understand the "village filler is boring but after that it gets good"-people.. it's exactly the opposite! And oh my god those fucking school girls scenes. Kara no Shoujo 2 is so good most of the time but when those three girls get a scene it immediately ruins every bit of mood or tension. Especially this Tojiko-ripoff.. PLEASE DIE ALREADY. PRETTY PLEASE.. ANYBODY.. JUST KILL HER ALREADY!!! These girl school scenes are the worst thing I read in a long time... oh the irony that Innocent Grey decided to focus on the worst thing of KnS2 for their next games, haha. What were they thinking? "We are so good at writing murder mysteries and so bad at writing yuri... let's drop the murder mystery stuff and just make an all ages yuri series next!"

Eh, if I remember correctly, the staff comment was on twitter. Somebody wanted to thank Key for making great games and Key answered with something along the lines of "Yeah, thanks, but please stop playing our games". Impossible to find nowadays I guess. It was before I used Twitter myself... It was probably... I don't know... six years ago? I think there should be some sources somewhere about Peter saying that he tried to talk with Key. His comment in the opening post of this thread kinda sounds to me that he's still pretty pissed about how he was treated by Key.

I remember that back in the day JAST tried to do business with Key but they didn't want to and some Key staff even said that their games are not for Western people, are too precious to localize anyway and Gaijins should stop importing and playing them. Then, after some financial struggle, Key immediately whored out their games. Exactly the same games no Gaijin was worthy to read, as stated just a few years ago. The Japanese just hate Peter. I don't even know why. Probably because he's a weeaboo and does not westernize the games enough like Dovac does (which means cutting the porn).

I'm talking about translation errors here. The English Ar nosurge translation completely butchers the game. Strange naming decisions and the typical meme inserts are not even the worst, that's to be expected from the NISA translation team. But they're also trying to erase every reference to Ciel nosurge (because Ar nosurge is a standalone game lolwat no it isn't) and the mistranslation of the integral seven dimension concept makes it impossible for the English reader to understand the core of the story. And due to NISA being the dimwits they always are, they also bugged the encyclopedia feature, so you can't access most of the help-topics which are essentially if you want to understand background and setting of the story and characters. English players of Ar nosurge don't understand its story, but that's not because the game is so complex, but because it's practically impossible to understand what's happening in the English translated game because it's missing dozens of pieces of important information and those which are still in the game are mistranslated. And you know what? That's not even the worst yet. Far more offending is the fact that this game had no QC whatsoever because everyone notices immediately that the translator obviously had no idea in what context he's translating what because the amount of translation errors due to missing context is unbelievable. Just to point out one example: there is not one Cosmosphere Level without an "I/you"-error, resulting from the translator not knowing that these are "first person" choices. If you compare this mess to Ar tonelico 1, AT1 is perfectly fine translation-wise. I don't know what high standards you have for niche jrpg translations, but AT1 isn't worse to read than other JRPGs at this time. Not saying it's good English, but at least it's not full of errors like AT2 and AT3 or simply a rewrite like Ar nosurge.

This game would be Kamige if it had a route. Best character in the whole game. <3 And even more Galaxy Express 999 references would have been cool, too.

At least watch some important scenes on Youtube to familiarize yourself with the characters and the setting even more. I can't stress enough how essential Ciel nosurge is for everything that happens in Ar nosurge. I'm not sure why you think you will have more fun with Ar nosurge though. Translation-wise Ar tonelico 1 is by far the best and Ar nosurge the worst, haha.

That's true but Aselia is not really a good example of this. The dark route is kinda foreshadowed in the plot and to me it feels like there is something missing if the player doesn't have the opportunity to go evil.

Exactly, very good video. If you can't find anything in CheatEngine, the game uses custom encoding for its characters and thus is practically impossible to hook. No VNR black magic can change this. Just give up. ^^ If you can find something with CheatEngine (game uses SJIS/UTF), it is theoretically possible to hook. It's another question whether VNR supports the engine or maybe someone made an H-Code of course... but, well, at least you don't need to lose hope yet, haha ^^ Sadly, I don't use Windows 10 (and probably never will) and I also don't know where I could get some PS3 rips to check some PS3 VNs myself. That's why I asked. Whether VNR supports a game or not is not really interesting for me, because in the next VNR update things can change again. What's more interesting is whether some games even have the possibility to be hooked.

Please, just check whether this game uses custom encoding for characters or not. That's really the only thing that matters when it comes to the hookability of emulated games.

Uhm... no? There weren't any "blacks" in Ancient Egypt. And the only Arabic group in Egypt were... well, Egyptians. What are you doing here? Are you one of those guys believing in this "Black Egyptian hypothesis" or something? It's pretty ironic that you claim to develop the ultimate "Western" visual novel using historical revisionism... but then, seeing how Americans these days love to engage in political, historical and sociological balderdash, this may very well be exactly what the target audience wants.

No, JAST bought G-Collections sometimes later. At first, it was an English subsidiary of CD Bros while JAST USA was a subsidiary of .. well, JAST.

I know this is old but, uh, I think you're forgetting G-Collections. Back then, G-Collectiion was the big vn publisher for us, not JAST. Because at that time JAST was still thinking that nukige are the way to make money, while G-Collections tried to give us something more, beginning with Kana Little Sister. (Which btw never had issues when it was released. The "issue" was that the crack wasn't easy to apply and most pirates didn't get the game to run, haha) Well, not everything published by G-Collections was good, especially later when they decided to go more nukige, but still... this was definitely the most important English publisher for visual novels in the beginning of this century. Also, this thread makes me sad. For me, Yume Miru Kusuri is one of the "newer" visual novels... And you guys are saying it's already old ;_; Are you sure you know what you're talking about?

Haha, that's exactly my genre. The following recommendations have a (good) story and aren't (just) gruesome gorefests. I will not mention the most obvious ones (most Black Cyc games, Innocent Grey, some of elf's masterpieces like Kawarazaki-ke no Ichizoku 2 or all the games which are easily found on vndb with the death of heroine tag). I will also only mention games which have a value beside killing girls. These are good eroge which happen to include the killing of heroines as an important aspect of the story (which makes them obviously even better): Heaven -Death Game-: Main character wins a trip to a deserted island. But as soon as he gets there, a Battle Royale starts and he must kill the other participants to survive. And contrary to most other Battle Royale visual novels... he will kill. This VN is an RPG and you can even decide whether you want new members in your party, or just kill them, hehe. This game has probably the most beautiful death CGs I have ever seen (that's Mink for you) and the story is interesting at first. Sadly, the game is far to easy and you probably don't trigger the really sick events because you are just to good at killing the others. By the way, look at this delicious teaser: 3M -Marionettes manipulate the marionette-: Most people think that this is just a guro nukige, but that's not true. The horror writing is brilliant, characters and story are very engaging. Only downside is that it will probably never get its concluding chapter. Hotaruko: Very good mystery game about your girlfriend and her past you're trying to uncover. Best thing is this nice feature while killing innocent little girls that the animation of the scene is linked to you mouse movement. It's like an interactive killing mini game! Very satisfying. I wish more games had a feature like this. Some other games where your heroines die horribly, but your main character is not involved in the act of killing (or is he?): Love Letter: Kinda like Kara no Shoujo, the girls around you get killed and you don't know why and want to solve this mystery. Game starts as a nice horror flick, then evolves into some kind of detective story. Story is good and the conclusion satisfying. Omokage: Probably the most gory non-doujin eroge. You are trapped in a mansion and need to escape before you and your friends get killed. Pretty slasher horror-like. Don't look at the screens on its vndb page, they're endgame spoilers. 13-nin no Uruwashiki Kedamono: Story is about 13 trapped individuals and the death game they are forced to play. Main character and heroines are pretty bland, secondary characters and their relationships and background stories however are great. Death scenes and CGs are very beautiful (Mink again). Not really a very good game story-wise but the setting and the secondary characters are written very well. I didn't check before I started writing because there were far to many to bother. Please forgive me. OTL

Uhm, I'm pretty sure I posted exactly what you asked for; a vn about the mystical land, full of spirits, curses, etc with an emphasis on creepy. But I guess this wasn't actually what you wanted. You wanted more something along the lines of children's fairy tales, am I right? Because that's what all the examples you mentioned are... I'm not sure those should be described as "creepy" or "dark" though...

The most creepy depiction of ancient Japan can be found here: https://vndb.org/v14314 It's a pretty old game, but also pretty realistic in how it shows how dirty and corrupt the old Japan was. The Japanese hate this game because they tend to idealize their history. But for Western people there is tons of information and creepy imagery to be found you probably didn't know of yet. Also, this is one of the two video games Roger Ebert loved. And he hated video games. ^^ It's kinda an open world game and a hidden gem, especially if you have an interest in ancient Japan and Japanese mythology.

I stopped playing Fire Emblem after Fujoshis took over, lol. I was always more of a Langrisser guy anyway.

Kamidori is a Fire Emblem clone. So just play any Fire Emblem game and you will get the exact same gameplay but without pron (and with VN-cutscenes between the missions).

This game came out before Eternal was formed, right? So does this mean the battle system in this one is even worse than Yumina? That would be... oh my god... is this even possible?

The problem with Kara no Shoujo 1 is that some of the flags are ridiculously hard to trigger. I remember the last investigation scene where you had to click on a pixel which is not in any way highlighted from the rest of the picture before you click on another more obvious spot which ends the investigation. (Kara no Shoujo 2 lets you decide for yourself when to end an investigation scene which seems more fair to me.) The detective gameplay wants you to think for yourself to solve the case ... but you can't because of random flags everywhere. So you need to consult a guide. Which kinda breaks the immersion. Without I guide I could get some of the normal endings... but the true end? No way. Following the guide to get 100% showed me how stupid this game is designed at some parts. Well, this thread motivated me to continue reading Kara no Shoujo 2. Now I'm at chapter 4, second village flashback. This got good again, haha. I'm honestly surprised how good this as a mystery novel is. This is certainly a level of quality I would not expect a visual novel to have.

No, I can't, because I haven't yet finished reading Kara no Shoujo 2, so I can't make definite statements. However, I can say what I saw the first few hours. A big chunk of the game is not from Reiji's point of view. In fact, the point of view shifts constantly and it's often just a third person narrator. There are some non-skippable hentai scenes in the beginning and I found them to be awesome because they really enhanced the characterization of some secondary characters. That's exactly how I like my porn. On the other hand, there is some development with Reiji's character I'm not particular fond of. But to be honest, nothing is really out of character and just because I don't like it doesn't mean it's not a perfectly legit way to develop this character. I do however find it strange when Reiji suddenly decides to porny talk his way through a scene. Well, that's a Mangagamer translation for you, haha. But nothing mood breaking, really. Well, at least as far as I read. I hope it doesn't get worse, haha. Just because I had fun with it doesn't mean I don't acknowledge its flaws. It's a bad detective story, I would never argue against that. Kara no Shoujo 2 is objectively better in every way. It's also much better than Kara no Shoujo 1, I think.

One scene with Shugo's sister is not missable because it's a reward for solving the first half of the game. Without it, you don't get to the second part. After that I think you can get a normal ending without another scene. I know this because I played like this too the first time. I like to play my protagonists as loner. Their tragic background story is more engaging that way for me. I don't know about the true route though. It's possible that you need to H Toko for it. Everything else is a side dish or a bad end and not necessary to collect. I'm reading Kara no Shoujo 2 at the moment and it has definitely more forced hentai scenes. It kind of bothers me lol. Same. ^^ Just don't gather character points with map choices. Yes. It's a variation of the normal/true ending. It's not a hentai scene though.

Uh, how about the game which pretty much invented the genre? https://vndb.org/v185 Back then, most eroge were pretty linear. That also meant that they were quite short. Most of the time, you could H every heroine in one run (with the last being your new girlfriend most of the time, lol) The idea behind this "new" dating sim concept was to enhance playing time with challenging the reader. Firstly, you only get one heroine at most, thus several runs are necessary. Secondly, the "challenge" here is to get the girl. That means you had to "capture" your heroine which essentially means to win her heart. The difference to modern charage is that there is no challenge in modern eroge whatsoever. The reader expects to get the route he wants the first time. And the protagonist will solve the drama for him, the reader just needs to read. If not, he will complain about "stupid choices". He will also complain if the girls doesn't like him from the beginning, because that's not helping with his escapism. He wants to read something where he, the player, is loved by everyone. I'm not trying to judge, mind you. But there is clearly a difference in what the audience expected back then and now. Some English translated examples are https://vndb.org/v241 (dating sim) and https://vndb.org/v206 (vn).

Pretty much most old school dating sims. Has certainly something to do with different types of otakus back then and now. Before moe was "invented", girls were behaving much more realistic which means the perverted protagonist was pretty kimoi to them. He first had to show them that he is deep down a good guy before they started to put down their pantsus. Not to confuse with all the old school nanpa games where you play an alpha-male who nanpas teeny sluts. Same time in history, but different approaches to different target audiences. Although there are games where nanpa evolves into true love... Nearly everything in the history of eroge and its evolution can be explained with the otaku-culture at that time. Sadly, most people nowadays only know the "third generation" of otakus (moe otakus) and entertainment targeted at them which is certainly not the best at depicting the process of falling in love. I mean, just look at how the trope "classic tsundere" evolved into "modern tsundere" to see what I mean.