Tyr

This isn't an insinuation to Franc's liberality, it's a quote from MoeNovel itself, said during an interview. And naturally it was said because France has one of the biggest anime fandoms in Europe. I can't even fathom how this quote can be misinterpreted so wrong, lol.

@Zalor You have a very strange perception of romance if you really think that the inclusion of the romance tag in Saya no Uta, which is at the core nothing but a true love story, is debatable. ^^''

I'm not shittalking gaijins. Why should I? I'm a gaijin myself. I'm just telling you what the Japanese think, and I think that's quite interesting. And also, I'm not insulting anyone who enjoys this game. I think it's a decent RPG. I can see why people enjoy it. My point is another: Cold Steel is a huge disappointment compared to every other entry in the Kiseki series. (That's even the first sentence I wrote in this thread.) It's a bland copycat without a soul on its own. It tries to use the Kiseki formula, but ultimately fails to include its heart too because it's too busy pandering to a different audience than the one which once made the Kiseki series so popular.

I actually think "romance" is an essential part of Higurashi. And I don't think it's strange that nearly every Visual Novel has some romance in it. After all, they are stories about humans and humans seldom work without emotions like affection for each other.

Ah, sorry, I thought this is a discussion thread, you know, because it's called a "Discussion Thread" and OP said: Didn't know actual arguments are forbidden and only blind worshiping is allowed.

No, everything I said are pretty much facts. Which I will show you: Rean is Jesus, as you will see in Cold Steel 2. Also, every third NPC tells him how awesome he looks and every single female character has the hots for him. Not to mention his POWERS!!11. How is this not totally a chuunibyou self-insert? Heroines are one-dimensional copycats of other characters in the Kiseki series. Just look how Alisa tries to be a modern Estelle, but fails because the writer didn't notice that Estelle wasn't such a great character because she was a tsundere, but because she was well-written and human. Nothing like Alisa which is designed after "How to make Tsundere 101". And if the characters are not copycats, they are simply just bland, designed after "How to make [stereotype] 101". And the Persona 3/4 pandering is pretty obvious. XSeed themselves acknowledged that Falcom wanted them to release Cold Steel before any of the other entries of the series (3rd, Zero, Ao) although it's retarded because Cold Steel spoilers everything else. But Cold Steel is heavy pandering, so Falcom thought gaijins will like that. And they were right. And that the Japanese think that Cold Steel is a kusoge and gaijins are pretty dumb for liking it when they could also play Trails in the Sky you can see here.

Cold Steel is an insult to the Kiseki series. It's everything what's wrong with modern JRPG (self-insert jesus protagonist, bland and painfully one-dimensional moeblob heroines and fucking high school dating sim gameplay) and it has nothing of what made Trails in the Sky so damn good (deep characters, great story, good battle system). You know why Falcom forced XSeed to localize Cold Steel instead of the other entries in the Kiseki series? Because they thought stupid gaijins want more moeges ... and they were right. (The Japanese actually make fun of us that we unironically like such a kusoge that is Trails of Cold Steel.)

You're missing the point here, Fred. All the good examples you're mentioning were made under special circumstances thus an exception to the rule: Aokana: anime was announced together with the visual novel. the anime was part of the whole project from the beginning. Clannad, Air, Kanon: anime was made by KyoAni. They have a reputation to lose. Kanon was even a remake of the older Kanon adaptation. Of course it needs to be decent or else it would be pointless. F/SN UBW: made by ufotable because they did a good job with the kara no kyoukai adaptation. In fact, all the other Type-Moon adaptations were so horrible that the fandom believes they don't even exist. same issue here as with KyoAni, they have a reputation to lose, it needs to be good. Those are certainly not part of the norm I was speaking of. The norm are adaptations like Majikoi or Grisaia.

Because, like I said, the pron is an essential part of the story and they can't do a Steam version without ripping out the heart of this game.

The hentai scenes in BokuTen are absolutely ESSENTIAL. Those are some of the most important moments in the story and there is no way to cut them and still get the original feeling and message of this work across. BokuTen without the hentai is utterly shit and nobody should support this abomination. Shame on you, Mangagamer.

Oh, you just mentioned the most popular anime which are based on visual novels. Now try saying good things about the other 450, too.

Well, there are always some exceptions to the rule. ^^

Because anime never intends to be good on its own except when it's an original story. In every other case it's promo for the source material. Anime is not supposed to be good or even being an adequate adaptation. It's about motivating you to buy the original game/novel/manga. Or, if you already read the source, to see your favorite scenes animated because in this case it's just fanservice for people who already know the story.

Confession: Today, I broke up with my waifu. Not that something was wrong, it's just time to move on. Being single is still the best, yo!

@littleshogun Soukoku no Arterial has a perfectly fine interface patch translating everything related to gameplay. I think it's machine assisted translated. There are some little errors I noticed which are probably the result of the translator not knowing some deeper concepts of Japanese grammar, but nothing gamebreaking. It's perfectly fine and considering that they translated hundreds of card, I think it's quite a feat. That's everything you need to play the game. The nekohen patchs should never be used. Heck, they use Google Translate instead of good MT. Shame on everyone who supports this shit.

I was being sarcastic, dude. I was hinting at the fact that every coverage of this game was only talking about gay sex. Now after the game is released, people talk about how good the romance and the love stories are. Huh, that's more what I was expecting this game to be. That was my point. Also, your argument is pretty weak if not wrong. Liar-soft made quite a few eroge with high sexual content. Heck, the very first games were pretty nukige-ish. Maybe you are the one who should look at liar-soft's portfolio.

I'm interested in hooking some Chinese RPGs. Is there a good machine translator for Chinese like ATLAS is for Japanese?

I searched through my magazines and I found this one covering nearly every eroge from 1982 till 2000 with the most influential and popular getting bigger coverage. This may be something for you. It's called: パソコン美少女ゲーム歴史大全1982-2000 The first 25 pages are featuring the most popular eroge from 1982 till 1996 which essentially means the timespan before eroge went to Windows. Obviously, there are also many hidden gems which aren't popular but nonetheless quite good. Ushinawareta Rakuen is one of those. Nearly every game by Fairytale is good, especially the two Fairytale Hardcover games Necronomicon and Ballade for Maria. Elf, Silky's and Mink are companies spawned from Fairytale so you will find many good games here too. I also like Fairy Dust. Maybe you have seen the Anime Cream Lemon with its many short storys? Fairy Dust is the company behind this series and they also made many eroge which are often sequels to the anime episodes. I also like Jealousy (made by Interheart). Good story, great animations. There are also many good RPGs and non-H visual novels. There is also a version of this game for FM Towns. Sadly, it's only a floppy version without any improvements over the original.

For me, the perfect waifu is a being which helps me improve myself. A waifu will comfort me when I'm sad, will motivate me when I'm lazy and will support me in achieving my goals. When I wake up in the morning and I don't know why I should even get out of the bed, I look at my dakimakura beside me and it makes me smile and let's me think that life isn't so bad after all. And when I was a bad boy during the day I don't even dare to enter the bedroom at the end of the day because she's there and I know she's disappointed of me and that breaks my heart and I swear to myself that I will be a better person in the future. That's what having a waifu is all about in my opinion. Speaking of waifus, I haven't seen any waifu material in the last 5 years to be honest. Nowadays, all characters are only wish-fulfilling otaku-pandering with no mind of their own. Only fetishized moe-tropes. I think the worst thing with otaku media in the last few years (and the reason why I think it's objectively bad) is that it doesn't even try to improve the reader/watcher anymore. Back in the day, waifu games had a protagonist who needed to go trough some character development before the heroine would fall in love with him. He needed to try to be worthy of her. The message was "Even you can be awesome and be loved, if you're really trying." Today, everyone loves the protagonist from the beginning for no reasons and every part of the heroine's personality is designed to cater to some superficial fetish like hair color or the amount of tsun and dere. The message here is "We love you even though you're a disgusting hetare." In my opinion that's the most harmful message you can give to the modern otaku audience.

I read mainly old eroge, often PC98, FMT or PCE games. The games you mentioned are only popular in the west because they were localized here. Well, except for Yu-No of course which is popular even today in Japan. To be honest, I hate Kanno's writing and I hate Yu-No, too, so I don't even see it as one of the best eroge ever like many other people do. I'm more of a true elf fanboy, not C's Ware. Are you interested in which games were popular in Japan back then? I have some old Japanese game magazines which feature monthly best of lists, so maybe I can find something there. Or do you want to know which games were most influential? Or maybe just some personal recommendations? This is my favorite PC98 game. I wrote a short paragraph on vndb why I think it's as good as it is:

That was your fatal first mistake. The anime is horrible. Except for the opening of course. I can still sing Love Destiny even today... ~~aitai ai ai ai ai no ni, aenai ai ai ai konya wa~~ ~~moe tsukite mo ii kore ga saigo no shinjitsu~~

I don't think obvious spoiler should be part of the hook...

Dustmania Grotesque: brain fuck

ATLAS is a good machine translator. LEC is also pretty capable. When ATLAS was released it was state of the art. Sophisticated parsing algorithms, complex dictionaries, many options to configure. It's sad that it doesn't really get updated anymore, but it's still a very good tool. I really don't know what people are expecting when they use a machine translator... magic? Are those people also believing that one day we will be enslaved by an artificial intelligence? Sorry, but that is Science Fiction (with an emphasis on fiction), just like a machine translator who can translate like a human could. This will never happen. It's simply not possible. ATLAS is pretty good. It wont get much better than this. Don't blame the software for not living up to unrealistic expectations. What do you mean?

That doesn't make any sense. Kamidori pretty much only consists of vanilla hentai (with monster girls). Rance mainly features Comedy Rape. Princess Evangile has only vanilla scenes. And Boob Wars is obviously limited to one specific fetish. None of the examples you mentioned actually has the variety you criticized. They all are offering only a specific kind of hentai content. Haruka on the other hand has a multitude of different fetishes, ranging from vanilla to hardcore, from normal to kinky. Just look at the chart Arcadeotic posted. Maybe Haruka is not your cup of tea, but you certainly can't blame the game for not having enough variety.