Tyr

You should read this over at https://j-addicts.de/vn-of-the-month-december-2003/ as not only does it have (some) juicier screenshots, but the formatting is much better.
 
First of all, I believe I should thank the j-addicts/Koutou Yuumin team for their knowledge and expertise. This article grew way beyond my expectations, and I would surely have lost my way without them. Also, to the several friends who gave me feedback and helped me out in various ways, thank you very much. Well then, shall we start?
This month has four masturpieces (get it?). They are Saishuu Chikan Densha 2, Kadowakashi, Christmas★Present, and Kizumono no Shoujo Gaiden. That being said, there are still several other quite decent games. The game that surprised me the most by the positive and my personal masturpiece is Jam 'n Limit, and the games that disappointed me much were Eisai Kyouiku and Yami no Koe III. If you're looking for this month's overall best game, the answer is probably something boring like Saya no Uta (the answer, not the game).
How are masturpieces decided, you ask? Introducing: the fap-o-meter!
In Erogamescape, it's possible to vote on how suitable the H-scenes were for fapping material, ranging from "Weren't useful at all" to "Were pretty useful." Thus, I will attribute a numerical score (from 0 to 5) for each of those and tally up the average. This will be known as the fap-o-meter.
This isn't a fallible and objective method, but it should give an idea of how much cummies the players were able to get out of these games.
The Games
To begin with, I decided which games to play based on EGS's database. This is because it's bound to have more games listed than vndb. Out of 107 releases, I checked out 31 games. There were 21 games I would've considered for review, except that I wasn't able to obtain them as nearly all of them are obscure doujin games, which were sold exclusively at Comiket. I blacklisted 55 games: 32 are moege/charage/plotge – basically, games that have too much plot or other crap in the way of my precious porn, 9 were re-releases, 7 were PS2 games or not VNs, 6 were all-ages and thus no porn, and 1 was listed incorrectly.
Please keep in mind that just because a game is ranked higher or lower, it's not an absolute indicator of its quality. Some games cater to one fetish exclusively, so they're not bound to please everyone.
The game titles have been localized by me, as I thought that's something that a predominantly English-speaking audience would appreciate. That is if they don't have one already. The same goes for the synopsis. Many of them are translated by me, and at times, I've had to replace what was very obviously nonsensical machine-translated garbage.
I am still in the process of learning Japanese, and translating is, well, challenging, but I can assure you that there are no lies, falsehoods, or made-up stuff on them. I will put any game descriptions that aren't mine between quotes and credit them appropriately.
The screenshots are at 75% of their original resolution, except for one of the games where I could only play the widescreen version, so it's at 50%.
If you're interested in a specific game, I'd advise for you to CTRL+F search for it. If you'd like to read my overall conclusions on this whole venture, search for My Thoughts and Conclusions.
One last thing: I did not rely on machine translation tools to play these games.
1. Midnight Sleazy Train 2
EGS-Score: 74 (442) Atelier Kaguya TEAM HEARTBEAT Fap-o-meter: 3.26 (91) Saishuu Chikan Densha 2 Main appeal: chikan, forceful sex, group sex 最終痴漢電車2
"Touch her/Lick her/Verbally abuse her"
Well, color me surprised! For some reason, this game has hundreds of votes, so I was curious about how that came to be. Perhaps a lot of people watched the H-OVA and became interested in the game that way? That's what I call a marketing success.
But that's not all. The game itself is a pretty good nukige. Beyond the beautiful art and hot H-scenes, the game bolsters a pretty robust map movement system. Unlike most games where you wander at random, hoping you'll run into the characters, the game tells if there's someone at the place you're about to visit. It sounds like something straightforward, but it doesn't matter how good the game's content is if the system doesn't facilitate the access to that very content.
Besides that, you also have verb-based interactivity during the H-scenes (filling up their lewdness level gauge), and this makes for perfect roleplaying. You're not just playing as a groping protagonist, you feel like the groper yourself. With all of these factors combined, it's no wonder that so many people enjoy this game and the series, yet to this very day.
Though, if you're not that big of a fan of uh...gangbangs, you might not enjoy it that much. Maybe watch the H-OVA first and see if it's something you'd like.
2. Kidnapping
EGS-Score: 65 (41) ZyX Fap-o-meter: 3.25 (4) Kadowakashi Main appeal: sexual slavery 拐 ～カドワカシ～  
 
Wow, uh, what a fast development. They really get straight to the action, huh. Within a couple of minutes, the protagonist rapes one of his students, Tomoko. I'm actually not a fan of justifying this as "lol deep dark desires," but I guess that's the setup they were going for.
The main meat of this game is to sexually train a trio of heroines. True to its name, with Tomoko's help, you kidnap two of your students and confine them in a locked room, starting off with Mizue.
What really makes this game stand out is the sheer variety in H content. The heroine has stats, most of them sexually-related, and you have to raise them to allow for even kinkier play. You have to be strategic with your options to train the ultimate sex slaves. Though, if you suck, you can play on Easy difficulty.
When I say variety, I mean that ALL of these options are available at the start (well, as long as the heroine "consents" to it). This means all kinds of play. You can choose to be kind or to be sadistic. You can make her service you or teach her pleasure through shamefulness. Ultimate freedom and variety.
That doesn't mean you can just do anything. If you're too harsh on her, she'll collapse. Have this happen enough times, and you'll get a game over. So please, be responsible, and take good care of your sex slaves!
When it comes to the staff members, the spotlight is on the game's artist, Mutou Keiji. He is responsible for the character design and art of many games I have played in the past, from Studio Triumph. It's extremely similar to JAST published Do You Like Horny Bunnies?. Perhaps they had the same teacher? It might seem odd at first, but I grew really fond of this style over time. The sex scenes are also animated, and for once, they actually look good. Nice!
3. Christmas★Present
EGS-Score: 70 (62) Ail [Team Riva] Fap-o-meter: 3.09 (11) Christmas★Present Main appeal: BDSM, forceful sex, comedy クリスマス★プレゼント
This was actually the game I was looking forward to playing the most. Considering this is the month of December, I really wanted to play at least one game that would really get me into the holiday spirit. It took me hours to figure out how to get it working, but man, was it worth it!
While the description is a bit grim and dark, the game is actually the complete opposite. It's always fun and filled with comedic moments. The best way to describe this game would perhaps be "bakage" (silly game) due to its sheer absurdity and ridiculousness.
Of note, the game has a sort of "affinity" system. Your actions will increase your "evil" points by a certain amount. So, you can abuse the powers of the Saint's Crest, which can make any wish come true, or you can be a good boy and play along as Santa's Little Helper, spreading happiness all over town.
The art is beautiful, the sex is hot, the banter between characters is great. This game would make for the perfect Christmas present.
4. Defiled Girls - Campus of Used Goods Side Story
EGS-Score: 70 (83) Rasen Fap-o-meter: 2.82 (17) Kizumono no Shoujo -Kizumono no Gakuen Gaiden- Main appeal: blackmail, forceful sex, group sex 傷モノの少女－傷モノの学園・外伝－
This an insult game. This game has insult scenes, the protagonist and his buddy insult the girls...wait, what? Duh, I mean, rape. Yes, that's the word. This game is basically a side story of the original Kizumono no Gakuen. You don't really need to have played the previous game as it's not a direct sequel.
Takeshi and Narumi's involvement in the previous incident is briefly explained - Takeshi was forced to film the girls being raped, under threat of being killed, and Narumi was one of the victims. Upon finding one of his old videos, he can no longer contain his excitement.
I prefer this game to the first one because I like seeing the gap between peaceful school life and the moments of higher tension. That's not to say that the battle royale setting isn't thrilling though. It also feels like more of a personal experience, since you have one protagonist instead of multiple ones/multiple POVs.
While you might initially think it to be a rape fest...it's just so much more than that. It capitalizes on human emotions: sorrow, anguish, sadness, loneliness...and instead of an abrupt chaotic state, it's gratifying to witness that transition. You can also expect exciting developments such as betrayals when you least see them coming.
The H-scenes are well, pretty good. There's nothing that bonds friends together any more than doing the same girl at the same time...the story is about the defilement of the girls, as much as it is about the corruption of the protagonist's psyche. Though it helps to have a friend who is crazier than you. At least in this game, the "villains" actually feel like villains as they delve into their intricate plots, instead of your casual rapists.
Of particular note, this game has a quite nice atmosphere, boosted by a quality soundtrack. Good faps are to be had with this game.
5. I'm a Booth Attendant - Heisaku and Kenta's Wild Tales
EGS-Score: 65 (35) Interheart Fap-o-meter: 2.75 (4) Oira wa Bandai ~Heisaku & Kenta no Yume Monogatari~ Main appeal: voyeurism オイラは番台～平作＆健太の夢物語～
One day, a police detective suddenly barged in a certain popular public bathhouse that the protagonist was in charge of.
"Dan Koutarou! You're under arrest, under suspicion of sexual assault!"
With a clack, he was handcuffed.
Several months passed, and after a hellish series of interrogations, his guilt was established.

"Why, why am I the only one serving a prison sentence?
Why are Heisaku and Kenta getting away scott free?
But, it seems that is my fate...
Even if they were to be caught, it does not mean that my punishment would go away, but...
Is the public bathhouse that I inherited from my pops done for?
I've really done something awful to him..."
 
Man, I can't believe we came out innocent. I feel kinda bad about pushing the blame solely on Koutarou, but this too is part of fate, huh. Kou-chan, just sit quietly in your cell! So, we were cleared of suspicion, but what should we do from now on? You're right...for now, how about we go back to Koutarou's shop, and peek in the bath once again?! There's also videos of those women we filmed that we haven't used yet! To begin with, let's change bathhouse's name! Enter Heisaku and Kenta's Wild Tales! This is a side story, continuing off the ending of the first game. I really recommend that you play that game first so that you'll get the most enjoyment out of the story.
Basically, this is a real-time, public bathhouse management game. You take in customers, and you can peek at them while they change clothes, are in the toilet or just chilling in the bath. You'll have to follow the schedule carefully and know the exact times when the heroines visit the bathhouse. The game's system is pretty helpful in this regard, but something like a tutorial would've been much appreciated. It takes some time to get used to the gameplay, as you also have to use and buy items that will help you in your peeping quest, but I find the experience to be worth the trouble.
If anything, the banter between characters is pretty well-done. Most of the characters are actually adults, which is a nice change of pace. I also like that the previous game's protagonist went to jail since that's what happens when you do bad things. The game is pretty similar to the first one, so once again, that's probably where you want to start.
Interheart themselves published a walkthrough for this game, and I wish I had noticed it before playing...oh well.
6. Please Teach Nanami and Konomi the ABC
EGS-Score: 68 (101) Studio Ring Fap-o-meter: 2.61 (18) Nanami to Konomi no Oshiete ABC Main appeal: lolicon ななみとこのみのおしえてA・B・C
Alright, so uh...yeah. Despite the pretty art and cutesy voice acting, I found this game to be not much more than wish fulfillment for lolicon.
To begin with, I'm not a fan of deredere, lovestruck heroines, but if you're into this type of content, you're probably going to enjoy it.
7. Lewd Little Sister BABY
EGS-Score: 65 (65) Image Craft Fap-o-meter: 2.58 (13) Inmai Baby Main appeal: lolicon 淫妹BABY
Right, so, uh...yeah. There are two main points of interest in this game. First, it's the art or overall art direction. Not only are the H-scenes fully animated, but the sprites are also constantly changing very fluidly. The artstyle might seem simple, but it's nice and colorful. Honestly, this game very much feels like an anime, to the point I'd almost unironically call it an "anime game".
The second point is the sheer amount and variety of endings. You have the freedom to craft the story as you please, but remember that everything you do has a consequence.
Strictly speaking, I'd only recommend this to fans of the genre.
8. Children Milk Parfait
EGS-Score: 66 (28) Shiritsu Sakuranbo Shouggakou Fap-o-meter: 2.57 (7) Kodomo Milk Parfait Main appeal: lolicon こどもみるくぱふぇ
I swear, I'm not doing it on purpose! Anyway, for this game, I actually had to make a decision, since if I included the votes of the 2007 DVD release, it would score much higher. To make things fair, I decided not to.
In my opinion, I found this game to be boring. The children don't act like children (more like naughty adults trapped in a child's body), and most scenes are teasing.
I also thought that the OP was really catchy, it even forced me to get up from my chair and bust my moves for a few minutes. The UI is also extremely cutesy, which fits the mood of the game.

9. Matty, the youngest child
EGS-Score: 61 (22) Complet's Fap-o-meter: 2.5 (6) Matty Main appeal: straight shotacon まってぃ
I actually completed two routes of this game...but it's difficult to call them routes to begin with. Okay, first of all, this is what will usually happen. At school, you get two alternating choices that decide what type of event will occur. When you're back home, you get four choices which are meaningless by themselves (e.g., kill time, go back to your room, watch TV, etc.), and if you're lucky you'll trigger some kind of event with the heroines.
When it's time to go to bed, you can choose between going to sleep right away, going to the restroom, or reading a porn magazine (there are like four to collect, can you get them all?!). The first two of those choices CAN trigger events, but 90% of the time nothing happens.
And this repeats every single day until the game ends. You have no idea which choices trigger what, you have to constantly savescum if you want to see events with a certain heroine (and of course, you'll have to try all the choices first, every time), and even then, more than half of the scenes are teasing. So all you're really doing is collecting events.
I hope I was able to convey the frustration I felt playing this game. Why couldn't they have employed a map movement system, where you could just visit everyone in their respective rooms? Why this lazy, inane system? And even worse, the heroine I was aiming for doesn't even have an H-scene or a proper ending. The game just ends abruptly. What a piece of crap.
Either way, the art by Mame is definitely the game's high point. I recommend that you read the prologue, download a complete save file, and check out the H-scenes. Or play a better game, by the same company.
10. Surrender - Ravished Body, Broken Heart
EGS-Score: 60 (3) X[iks] Fap-o-meter: 2.5 (2) Shikkan ~Hazukashimerareta Karada, Oreta Kokoro~ Main appeal: BDSM, forceful sex, mystery しっかん ～辱められた躰、折れた心～
This is a mystery game where the objective is to uncover the spy and the island's other mysteries. Who is the spy, and what are they after? What secrets does this hospital hold?
The navigation is done through a map movement system. I usually dislike these, but you can at least trust the characters to hang out in a specific place. There's the doctor who hangs out at her own office, the patient that stays inside her room, the two nurses in the nurse station and the nurse in the psychosomatic ward. If you check out the other areas, you can find out more about the game's world, side characters, and... special tools.
When you talk to the characters, there's also this interactive system, kinda like the old verb-based games. Except that it's with nouns, people's names, locations and so on.In conclusion, the game's system is kinda annoying, and honestly, I don't feel like doing bad things to the characters when they're so lovely... The dialogue and voice acting are built in such a way that they actually feel like real humans. Speaking of voice acting, it's pretty good! You might recognize some industry veterans...
I'd say that despite some annoyances, the journey does feel worth it. It's definitely a game I'd like to spend more time with.
11. Good Girl's Worries Counselling Room - Fantasy World's Immoral Guidance
EGS-Score: 65 (15) Collection Fap-o-meter: 2.33 (3) Yoi Ko no Nayami Soudanshitsu ~Mousou Sekai no Haitokuteki Shidou~ Main appeal: group sex, forceful sex よい娘の悩み相談室～妄想世界の背徳的指導～
Essentially, when his brother collapses from overwork, by sheer coincidence the protagonist manages to find out that he was in charge of a counseling website. The gameplay is simple: you check your inbox on the website, pick the e-mail you want to read, read it, and then the protagonist imagines the H-events described on the e-mail. After that, it is your job to give the girls advice through a series of choices.
I was initially disappointed, thinking it was kinda lame to not engage with the heroines directly, but I find this to be a really novel idea. They take what would be generic H-scenes and give them a backstory, aftermath, and the female character's perspective. The most fun I had with this game was reading those very e-mails and challenging myself to give good advice.
For example, there's a high school student who talks about how several boys confessed to her at once, and she ends indulging their wish of wanting to create "pleasant memories" with her. I told her that she needs to value her body more and that she should be responsible and pick only one of the guys to be her boyfriend. It really feels like a very personal experience, where I am crafting my own story, almost as if I was actually talking to a real high school student.
I did not get that far, but it seems, later on, you'll actually be able to meet the girls, so there's something to look forward to. After all, most of the game's H-scenes only occur inside the protagonist's fantasy world, not in reality...or do they?
Another point I'd make is that while the art might seem kinda amateurish, I actually think it's pretty hot. I like it!
12. Bright Future - Wet 'N Messy 2nd Time
EGS-Score: 70 (93) FlyingShine Black Fap-o-meter: 2.17 (12) Akarui Mirai ~Wet And Messy 2nd time~ Main appeal: forceful sex, group sex, wet and messy アカルイミライ Wet And Messy 2nd time
This is a mystery/drama game that also doubles as a nukige. You, as the leader of the newspaper club, are initially given the task to investigate the so-called "Honey Ghost." The rest is according to the description: you start talking to a girl from the past and then realize that she died. Your objective is to find out what happened and change her terrible fate to a bright future.
But that's not all. There are also several peculiarities happening in the present. There's the mysterious psychic treatment (psychosomatic) school club, which is in fact just a front for a group of rapists. While you are busy with your investigation, be careful not to let the heroines fall into their grasp...
True to its name, you can expect things to get really wet and messy, by a variety of fluids...be it water, essential oils (aromatherapy), milk, SEMEN...But while the art is beautiful and the story seems promising, the game actually suffers from the excessive H-scenes. Before you really have time to care about a heroine, you end up peeking on them having or being forced into sex by a group of guys. If the scenes were more spaced out, the game would actually feel like it has some tension. Overall, I Just feel like it's trying to do too many things at once.
While you get plenty of choices, only very few of them branch out the story. Most of them just give you an alternate or slightly different scene. They don't really have an impact on the story. The series was rebooted as the Kurai Mirai (Dark Future) or Crime Rhyme series. By the name alone, you can see the new direction that they took with the games, which I'm not of a fan of. Because no matter which manners of cruelties they must endure, at least the title name "Bright Future" gives you the hope that there is a way for the heroines to avoid their awful fate...even if not entirely.
I'm not a fan of these quasi-NTR gangrape games, where you're just walking around, peeking on others having sex, and not really doing much about it. That's not to say that some of the scenes aren't hot, especially if you like it...wet and messy. I like this scene where your previous choice changes whether the heroine calls you senpai or onii-chan. It's, uh, a nice touch since you're pretty much defining the relationship you have with her.
13. Mansion, the Prison of Lust
EGS-Score: 60 (12) Girl's Software Fap-o-meter: 2 (1) Ingoku no Yakata Main appeal: BDSM, sexual slavery, maids 淫獄の館
First, I suppose I should start with what I liked about this game. The art is gorgeous when it comes to the character design and HCGs, drawn by one of my favorite eroge artists. The sexual slavery scenes are quite varied, but there's also a good number of vanilla scenes. You basically get the choice to give in to your "deep dark desires," or to defy your captor.
To be honest, despite this being a nukige, what I enjoyed the most were the slice-of-life scenes and banter between characters. The music is a great mood-setter, but what made these scenes that much more enjoyable was the stellar voice acting performance. I'm sure that if you look at their names, you'll recognize several industry veterans. I'd point out Isshiki Hikaru, who voices the protagonist's sister in Cartagra as especially memorable. However, all of them were really good, and I also liked their performance in...other parts of the game. That's the thing, though. After spending all that time growing fond of the characters, I don't really want to do awful things to them.
For this game's negative points, I'd say that getting a good ending is really difficult without using a walkthrough, and otherwise, it just gets frustrating. I also disliked the spontaneous H-scenes during the first part of the game. This is because they are all "dream sequences," more like showing a possible future for the protagonist.
It feels as if those scenes were just thrown in there because the slice-of-life and comedy sections were too long, and they thought people would get bored if they didn't get some fap material, but eh. They feel entirely out of place because there's no context and no build-up for those scenes.Another point is that when I train my sex slaves, I don't like sharing them with others...especially dirty old men.
14. Stray Sheep - Disgraceful Confession Room
EGS-Score: 55 (4) Panda House Fap-o-meter: 2 (1) Stray Sheep ~Chijoku no Zangeshitsu~ Main appeal: BDSM, mystery STRAY SHEEP ～恥辱の懺悔室～
Stray Sheep doubles as mystery and hardcore BDSM game. The protagonist makes use of his privileged position as the school's new Father to search for the truth, little by time, at times employing more forceful means.
I did not find myself able to empathize with the protagonist and his revenge-filled heart. It's not that I'm not fond of revenge stories, but if you're going to do awful things to someone, then at least do it to people who deserve it.
If one thing though, both the CGs and character sprites sure are pretty. Reminds me a bit of Mink's artstyle of that time.
15. Masquerade
EGS-Score: 64 (14) Soft Circle Courreges Fap-o-meter: 2 (1) Masquerade Main appeal: maid, pure love story MASQUERADE
While the setting seems to be grimdark, it's actually kinda wrong to call it a nukige. In fact, you could complete the game while avoiding most of the sexual content.
I actually completed this game as it's relatively short, about one to two others long. I found the main story to be sweet and very much worth the time I spent with it. Some might find it generic, but I guess I'm fond of these pure love type of stories.
You can choose to either engage in sexual acts with your maid or to have conversations with her about a variety of topics, getting to know her better. By sexual acts, I mean that you don't force yourself upon her and that everything is done consensually, even if the protagonist is in a position of authority. On that front, it's kinda weak as a BDSM/sexual slavery game, but I appreciate the variety of content and the hot HCGs.
The negative side is that both these conversations and H-scenes repeat themselves. For example, if you want to unlock further conversations, you'll have to approach specific topics an X number of times. The problem is that the conversations are the exact same the second or third time, so you're gonna be skipping them. It's just annoying. Did they run out of content even though the game is so short? Why force you to repeat conversations? Anyway, you'll probably want to follow a walkthrough.
The similar happens with the H-scenes, where you can unlock extra scenes or variations of the same scene. Anyway, this is a pretty decent doujin game if you like maids, sweet but kinda corny love stories, are willing to press the skip button half the time, and use a walkthrough.
16. A Naughty Doctor
EGS-Score: 58 (7) Sol-fa-soft Fap-o-meter: 2 (1) H na Oisha-san Main appeal: lolicon Hなお医者さん
So I booted up this game, which is unvoiced and has the same looping soundtrack all the time. And on the very first few choices, I hit a little girl, was sent to jail and got a premature Happy Ending. Great game.

"HAPPY ENDING...hell if it is!"
But it's actually an enjoyable game. You touch the characters in places where you're not really supposed to, but get away with it with some convincing persuasion, and eventually get to do a more direct inspection.
I actually like this type of games where you play as a doctor and interact with a patient, deceiving them, and abusing their trust. For example, Studio Triumph's games. But well, this one doesn't even compare since the game is too damn short, as the whole thing is about 20-30 minutes long.
Apparently, there's a voiced version, but I couldn't get my hands on it. The game is decent for what it is, but it's nothing special. I think there should've been more bad endings.
17. Jam 'N Limit - LOCKED/ROOM/CON/FINE/MENT
EGS-Score: 53 (18) Studio Jikkenshitsu Fap-o-meter: 2 (2) Jam n' Limit ~Mis/shitsu/Kan/kin Main appeal: roleplay, forceful sex ジャムアンリミット～密/室/監/禁
The only reason I went ahead and made the description this long is that this is the type of philosophical musings that are constantly present in the game. You can only imagine my surprise, playing this game after I almost considered skipping it - from the cover it seems like a generic nukige, and the score reinforces that assumption. I'm very glad I did not.
Honestly, I can only do this game justice with a full review, which I'd like to do in the near future (maybe), so this will be a bit of a sample of what's to come. It comes with a fair warning though: this game isn't for everyone. It's probably only for sexual deviants like me.
I've played this up until I was done with the first heroine's section of the story. Instead of having character routes, you "conquer" one heroine after the other, so you follow the protagonist's journey through madness. That is to say, this is more the protagonist's story than anything else, but you only truly understand the depth of his madness when you have a "normal" person as a reference. But that isn't all, as they too will find their own "madness."
Your choices in-game have to do with the course of actions you take as much as the preparations you have to make. For example, for your plan to succeed, what kind of precautions should you take, what should you be most concerned about, how will you create the perfect locked room while avoiding suspicion, how will you psychologically corner your prey, how will prevent their escape, and what will you do in the event something unexpected happens.
Accompanied by an in-built flow-chart, you'll be making these decisions as you try to avoid the game's multiple bad endings.
I don't want to spoil the content of the H-scenes, but they've mostly based around..."personalized roleplay."For me, this is the best game I played this month and my personal master and masturpiece, or at least the one which surprised me the most, making this whole venture worth it. Please don't overlook it just because it has the "nukige" label.
It could also be that the game simply left a lasting first impression, which lead me to overhype it slightly. Either way, I look forward to finishing it and publishing a more detailed review, whether it lives up to my expectations or not. Maybe.
18. Gifted Education Frenzy
EGS-Score: 65 (89) Kuzuryuu Fap-o-meter: 1.93 (14) Eisai Kyouiku Main appeal: BDSM, sexual slavery 英才狂育
You might know this from the H-OVA "Study a Broad." With beautiful art from Innocent Grey's CEO Sugina Miki, renown artist responsible for Cartagra, Kara no Shoujo series and Flowers series, coupled with BDSM and sexual slavery themes, what could possibly go wrong with this game?
Put simply, this game sucks. Sugina Miki's art and the seiyuu's talents were put to waste with this game thanks to an awful gameplay system.
So, you have three phases during the day: morning, lunchtime, and after school. During those periods, you can visit different locations during the game, taking up one, two, and five time slots respectively. Oh, and I fail to mention that there are ten locations in the game? So, you have to visit the heroines at the RIGHT TIME in the RIGHT PLACE to trigger the events. What a load of crap.
This game is the ultimate proof that no matter how good your game's content is (in this case, H-scenes), it doesn't matter if it's locked behind a nonsensical and overly complicated system. Sure, you have an idea of where the characters are likely to hang out, but who would've thought that the flower arrangement club member likes to hang out on the rooftop?
So, definitely use a walkthrough. And don't try to pursue more than one heroine at a time, as the timeslots often clash. That's not everything, though. If you fuck up too much in the beginning, you can get a bad ending. And even if you follow a walkthrough, you probably won't get to see every event.
This game is as sadistic to its players as it is to the heroines. I actually completed one of the routes - the twins. And there I witnessed some of the most stupid teen drama I ever had the displeasure of going through in recent times. At the very least, the H-scenes are hot, but I don't think it's worth seeing them without the context behind them. How frustrating!
19. Erosion
EGS-Score: 74 (21) Black Package Try Fap-o-meter: 1.8 (5) Shinshoku Main appeal: sexual slavery 浸蝕
I actually edited the first part of this synopsis from vndb because it was filled with lies, so I claim it as my own. Ahem.
This game unceremoniously starts with four H-scenes in a row. It sure doesn't waste any time, huh? On the very first scene, the setting is established. Toshiya, despite being of high school age, is somehow a hardcore sex slave trainer, all because his mother was a whore when he was a child. The orphanage's director is already his sex slave, as are other girls in school, and then he "infiltrates" this loving family intending to make them his sex slaves just for the lulz.
You witness the mother, who knows the protag for nothing but a few days (or like, 10 minutes in-game), masturbate while calling his name. I mean, what the fuck. Already? She hardly even knows him! This protagonist is literally the equivalent of an isekai anime protag who one-shots everything in sight on the first episode.
I did not find the art or the voice acting appealing either, but there's plenty of variety when it comes to the training scenes, I guess.
If I had to mention any positives, it would be that the game is quite technically advanced. There's an in-built flowchart, a read text marker, the ability to jump to the next and previous choices, and voice lines on the backlog.
All in all, this game is nothing more than rape fantasy and is completely disrespectful and demeaning towards women.
20. Last Order
EGS-Score: 70 (50) 13cm Fap-o-meter: 1.75 (8) Last Order Main appeal: sexual slavery, group sex ラストオーダー
This is a game which seemed to be nothing more than a generic nukige, but ended surprising me. If there were such a thing as a theme for this game, it'd be moratorium, the postponement of social responsibilities. The protagonist and other characters deal with this issue on different degrees: feeling like they're growing up too fast, being afraid to become a full-fledged adult, or being too attached to things of the past. As someone finding themselves within this very period of transition, I felt I was able to connect to the game on a personal level, if even slightly.
The sexual content mostly revolves around the use of devices for sexual training and bondage. With two new waitresses bolstering floréal's ranks, so are there two new prey for the protagonist to lay his hands on.
I have mentioned this several times before, I believe, but I'm not fond of sharing my sex slaves. After the slaves' training is cumplete, you have them serve the customers, often multiple at once, and this happens when you had just thought they became yours. I'd say that might be why the fap-o-meter is so low, even though this is actually a quite decent game.
21. Intense Pregnant Belly - Senpai, Please Acknowledge My Child!
EGS-Score: 41 (18) Acme X Fap-o-meter: 1.67 (3) Hageshiku Botebara! Senpai, Watashi no Ko, Mitomete Kudasai!! Main appeal: forceful sex, group sex, yuri 激しくボテ腹! ～センパイ、私のコ、認めてくださいっ!～
First of all, I gotta ask. Who the hell came up with such a dumb title?
This game is just a tasteless and senseless complete rapefest. It is disgustingly evil and cruel. I'm sorry, but I don't have much else to say. I dropped it because I'm not a masochist and there's hardly a redeeming factor to this piece of crap. I guess some people might be into it, but I'm not. Moving along.
22. Say Yah! Happy New Year 2003!
EGS-Score: 55 (9) Authoring Heaven Fap-o-meter: 1.6 (5) Say Yah! 2003 Main appeal: comedy, straight shotacon Say Yah! 2003
This game is not only a sequel to first Say Yah!, but it also features characters from other Authoring Heaven and Complet's games, as they're both imprints of the same stock company. You can expect similar kind of content and humor from the same games.
Basically, you have a map, and you choose which house to deliver presents to... in the form of sex. It's not really my cup of tea, but the game is kinda funny, if you're into that type of humor...
23. Married Woman Slave Coffee Shop 2
EGS-Score: 60 (20) Black Lilith Fap-o-meter: 1.6 (5) Hitozuma Dorei Kissa 2 Main appeal: sexual slavery, group sex, forceful sex 人妻奴隷喫茶2
"To think that you'd really take pictures like these...you're scum, human scum!"
I played the first game too just so I could understand this game better. Thus this will serve as a review for both games. They're about 20 mins each, so that wasn't an issue. But well, there isn't that much to say, except that the games suck.
On the first game, these three high school students with nothing better to do than wander around town manage to spot a lady shoplifting. And somehow, they make use of that knowledge to blackmail her into becoming her sex slave. After the first H-scene, it's scene after scene until the game ends.
On the second game, this chick finds The Three Stooges talking about how much they love sex, and apprehends their sex toys. After calling them human scum, she ends up fapping with those toys inside the classroom, and she follows them to the coffee shop because she's secretly a colossal pervert, I guess. The rest plays out the same as the first game.
The games have slight ero animations which kinda look good, but since it's a zoomed up close-up, they end up covering most of the CG. These games are cheap, they're too short, and they suck.
24. The Voice in the Night III - Summoning Circle Pentagram of the Three Desires
EGS-Score: 60 (45) Black Cyc Fap-o-meter: 1.5 (14) Yami no Koe III ~Gobou San'yoku Mahoujin~ Main appeal: corruption of characters 闇の声III ～五芒三欲魔方陣～
Wait, what is a Black Cyc game doing at the very bottom? To truly understand this, you'd have to play the first two games, as this one is part of the original Yami no Koe trilogy. Thankfully, I am perfectly suited for this review as I played all of the three games. However, this is a game that I would like to review at a greater length, so I'll try to keep this short.
Basically, this game sucks. No, it would be more correct to say that this would just be an average nukige, if not for its preceding legacy. Because it bears the Yami no Koe name, anyone who plays this game expects high-quality nukige, the same as the first two. But it's the complete opposite.
Here's how the gameplay goes: you have a box with several magical items, starting with five, and each one of them is supposed to awaken a dormant fetish within the heroines. Once you reach the second stage, you get up to ten items to use on the heroines.
Sounds awesome, right? Well, not really. The heroines are only receptive to one or two of the items in each stage. Most of your time is actually spent trying out different items, getting a generic "this item wasn't very effective" message, reloading, trying out a new item, getting the same crap all over again until you get it right. That's not all. While a heroine might've been receptive to an item at first, it might happen that they will not be interested in it in the future. So, it's save, reload, save, reload, save, reload. How about I just quit, uninstall this piece of crap, and never play it again?
Even worse, the protagonist doesn't interact with the heroines directly. Thanks to K's powers, he makes the item magically appear in front of the heroine, and they'll make up a suitable excuse on their own for why the item is there. What a load of bullshit. The only time you have sex with them is at the very end (if you managed to corrupt them all fully), on what feels like the developers' way of mocking and trolling the player.
You know when you play a sequel to one of your favorite games, and it's complete shit? Except that here, you can't blame EA, like with its sudden takeover of Bioware franchises such as Mass Effect or Dragon Age. No, it's literally the same writers, the same director, the very same team. They knew what they were doing with this game, and it's nothing more than a quick cash grab.
I hope I was able to convey my feelings on this matter accurately, and looking at the scoring, it's no surprise. Everyone felt let down by what is the weakest game of the Yami no Koe series.
The only good point to this game is the amazing art, by one of the best eroge/nukige artists. Even Conjueror agrees! However, he gave the second and third games the same score, so I wonder if he actually played them at all.
25. Rape Secretarial Office 2 -Midou Shirou's Chapter
EGS-Score: 65 (12) Maika Fap-o-meter: 1.5 (2) Ryoujoku Hishoshitsu 2 ~Midou Shirou Hen~ Main appeal: sexual slavery, mind control, forceful sex 凌辱秘書室2 ～御童志狼篇～
This game is about rape. It has rape in the title, and even the game's executable file is called "RAPE2.exe".
Basically, you have Midou Shirou, who can use some sort of mysterious power, which translated literally would be something incomprehensible such as "Obscene Vortex Core Fist." Probably some kind of wordplay.
When he says specific keywords, it triggers something within the heroines - there are no tools that need to be used, so it's just a special ability of his. And by special ability, I mean that it's a complete cheat.
After you meet all the heroines, you can choose one of them to be your trained sex slave, as in, it's something that already happened. I found that to be interesting at first, but it's actually kinda lame. Let's say you were interested in a character, would you want to conquer her or would you want the game to gift you her as your already trained slave?
Your objective is to obtain sensitive financial information and have lots of sex while you're at it. Your chosen sex slave will assist you in this task, so you already have six slightly different ways of playing the game. This all sounds awesome, but it's simply too easy. It's too easy to make the heroines fall thanks to Shirou's ability, having them call you "Master" by one H-scene's time.
To begin with, the protagonist is already a cool stud, does he really need this power? He doesn't have any interesting motivations or something you can empathize with. This game is just a trashy rapefest, which puts its beautiful art to waste.
26. I'll Grant Your Wish - A Gift Received in Winter
EGS-Score: 58 (17) High Soft Fap-o-meter: 1 (1) Kanaete Ageru ~Fuyu ga Kureta Okurimono~ Main appeal: group sex かなえてあげる～冬がくれた贈り物～
The premise is rather simple. The protagonist wants to have sex with his girlfriend, but it's totally not happening any time soon, and he faps to his sexual fantasies all day. Wow, he and I are not so different after all!
So, these girls suddenly appear in his room and make the proposal as mentioned earlier. The story is well, as you could imagine, nothing special. It's nothing but senseless H-scene after H-scene, without any thread linking the events together. Put simply, it's just boring to read/play.
You literally play as Santa's little helper, as you go from house to house, and research which present to give to the residents. Depending on the presents you pick, your relationship will improve with one of the heroines. This is a quite cumbersome system, and not very easy without a walkthrough. I wasn't able to find one...
Since the protagonist is the only one who can see the girls, it could also be that he's simply had one fap too many, and none of this is real. Yep, that's probably it.
27. Let me fuck 'ya, teach!
EGS-Score: 50 (11) Tryset Fap-o-meter: 1 (3) Yarasete! Teacher Main appeal: straight shotacon やらせてっ！てぃーちゃー
For a while, I thought I was playing a Complet's game, as this one has similar art, humor, and sexual content. You play as an overly perverted brat and constantly tease the new assistant teacher. Instead of proper routes, just like Matty (ugh), you collect events. The difference is that you trigger those events by moving around the school, as you pick the location you want to visit. I find this blind guessing system to be annoying, so I'd recommend a walkthrough once again.
I actually liked the H-scenes, and I'm pretty surprised this game is sitting here at the bottom, especially when you consider that it spawned a whole series. Maybe Tryset were off to a bad start with this one, or the players just found the system to be too cumbersome.
28. Day-care worker <3
EGS-Score: 45 (9) Triangle-delta Fap-o-meter: 1 (1) Hobo-san Chu! Main appeal: roleplay 保母さんちゅ！
Thought I'd start by giving a warning that, despite the protagonist's profession and the game's setting, all participants in sexual activities are consenting adults.
That already makes for strange setting though. Who thought about mixing up daycare work with...roleplay? The worst part is that they do a pretty poor job at explaining the need for such a thing in the first place. I mean, I don't think it helps her understand the kids' feelings any better by changing adult diapers or making her piss on the ground.
Overall, the setting just feels at odds with the game's sexual content, but it does make for an interesting premise, I guess. I do commend them for trying out something different, and I do find the H-scenes to be not that bad...
The main highlights are the beautiful OP (no need to listen past 2:10) and yet another casting by Isshiki Hikaru.

29. Petite Idols - Disgraceful Fan Appreciation Day
EGS-Score: 52 (14) Black Lilith Fap-o-meter: 1 (3) Puchi Idol ~ Chijoku no Fan Kansha Day Main appeal: lolicon, cosplay, forceful sex, group sex ぷちアイドル～ちじょくのファン感謝デー
This is just bad. I feel like I really hit the bottom of the barrel with this one. It comes with a really stupid reasoning for revenge: the two idols are cheeky and foul-mouthed and treat their greasy, sweaty, disgusting otaku fans with the disrespect they deserve. But then came fan appreciation day...
30. Nestle Close III - Manager Hibiki
EGS-Score: 70 (3) Haikara Kissa Fap-o-meter: 0.5 (2) Nestle Close III Main appeal: onee-san, big breasts, glasses Nestle Close III
I physically cannot play this game, as short-haired heroines with glasses are the worst. Next.
31. Soft and Tender Lesson
EGS-Score: 50 (11) Trabulance Fap-o-meter: 0 (1) Pururn Jugyou Main appeal: breasts, big breasts, big tiddies, tits, oppai ぷるるん授業
As advertised, the heroines have enormous breasts to the point that it's sure to cause back problems. If you're into this type of thing, you might get some enjoyment out of it. However, I found the game to be a completely average nukige.
Of particular note, there is a toggle correct choice indicator. Interact with the same heroine enough times, and you'll have sex with them. Wow, now that I put that in words, it seems that'd describe most games. Either way, despite being thrown to the very bottom, it's certainly not THAT bad. Then again, there's only one vote which is... mine.
My Thoughts and Conclusions
First of all, thanks to everyone who stuck with me until the very end. Or perhaps you're one of the people who scrolled down to the very bottom? It's alright, I don't blame you.
The truth is, this format sucks. Usually, you'd first find a game you like, play it, and then maybe review it, not the other way around. This would've worked much better if I had a team of perverts working with me. Each one of us could pick a game that we might like, play it, and then review it. This was way too much work for one person, as this was all my own, original commentary, but I did my very best for the quality not to suffer.
The very idea of reviewing eroge and excluding nukige would be ridiculous, as despite bearing the "stigma" that comes with the nukige tag, there are some pretty good games amongst those that I reviewed. Making people aware of that was my initial objective, and I hope to have realized it.
Not surprisingly, there's a good number of games focused in particular fetishes. I think it's interesting that there wasn't a single Netorare game amongst these, perhaps the genre hadn't taken off yet. There's a big divide between games with consensual sex and games with forceful sex. The first usually focuses on lighter fetishes, while the second group often goes all the way with hardcore sexual slavery.
I play my games on fullscreen, so I wasn't bothered by the resolution. And there are plenty of games with beautiful art, mood-setting soundtrack, and stellar voice acting performances nonetheless.
The most significant conclusion I'd take is that most of these games, well, suffer from too much gameplay at times. Like I've said on my very first review, it doesn't matter how good your content is if the system is cumbersome in a way that players have too much of a hard time accessing it. You can have a map movement system like Eisai Kyouiku's, which forces you to check a walkthrough every 10 seconds, or you can have one like Saishuu Chikan Densha 2's, where you can worry less about optimization and focus more on having fun. The second is one where the creator really thought about the player experience, how would people actually feel playing the game.
I also found it interesting that most protagonists are actually adults. There are several university students, but you have them do all kinds of jobs: ordinary salarymen, teachers, daycare worker, clerk, doctors, idol manager, grocer, businessman, restaurant floor manager, tutor, even a priest... You also have many different kinds of settings, as if everyone was trying hard to carve their own niche. Makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside thinking about how everyone, even the little guys, was working hard, giving up precious time during the holiday season to provide us with great fapping material. God bless you.
Oh, you’re probably wondering why I didn’t talk about Saya no Uta. Well, it’s the title that needs no introductions, so I decided to go ahead and not talk about it at all to make my job easier. The point of this article was to have short reviews and summaries for lesser known games of the month, so I can’t just feature the most popular ones and not or just dismissively ignorant talk about the rest. The fap-o-meter is astonishingly low, which is complete blasphemy. This is one of the hottest english published eroge out there, with also one of the best translations available. There’s a story about how Makoto wouldn’t sell his translation until his writer parents approved it, so you can be certain of its quality.
As a closing statement, please, by all means, do try some of these games and enjoy yourself to your heart's content. If you have any questions you'd like to ask me, please go ahead and message me or leave a comment below. As always, thank you for reading, and I appreciate any and all feedback.

I wanted to wait until the year is over before I write my list for this year, but of course I haven't had the time to actually look at the December releases and now the year is over. Luckily, there isn't much interesting for me anyway.
Before we start, just let me mention some noteworthy December titles:
Venus Blood Ragnarok could be a nice game, but I don't really like the Venus Blood series, and as some kind of sequel it probably won't win me over anyway. I have played the trial of Meguru Sekai de Towanaru Chikai wo and it really didn't impress me. Looked like an even cheaper version of Izumo 4. And Izumo 4 was already a letdown last year. The RPG mechanics of Izumo 4 are very simple and Meguru Sekai de seems even simpler. But that is not all, contrary to Izumo 4, this time the game also looks pretty ugly! It that the reason why Yamamoto Kazue changed her name to  Yamamoto ☆ Kazue for this? Well, I probably will play it nonetheless because I don't like to judge something I haven't really played, but eh, not in the near future. That's it for December. The rest doesn't interest me or I already know it will be bad (You can't fool me Moonstone!). Did I just say I don't judge something I haven't played? Eh, whatever...
But now some honorable mentions of games that actually looked interesting but I haven't had the time to read them, so they won't be in my 2016 list:
Dungeons & Daimeiwaku: I've read the trial, but haven't found the time to read the actual game. I'm sure it's good but it's kind of demotivating for me to read an RPG without any gameplay, heh. Iwaihime: Ryukishi07 and horror should be exactly what I'm looking for but for some reason I have this untouched on my hdd for a year now. Maybe I miss the Ryukishi07-art, since it doesn't look as good with generic moeblobs. Trianthology: Now I have the art, but not a full Ryukishi07 game, haha. Still, I have to read this sometime soon. Kanojo ＊ Step: This could probably be the "Best Charage" of 2016 as far as I have seen it. The humor is great, something that's really missing in pretty much every other modern charage. It's a shame that the genre charage has such a low priority for me, so I haven't really read much of this VN so far. Now I mention some games people might expect in my list of 2016's best eroge, but I actually found them to be only mediocre:
Shi ni Iku Kimi, Yakata ni Mebuku Zouo: Yeah, I wasn't as excited about this as everyone else. I do not fetishize gore. I like death as an element of a thrilling story, but death in Nikuniku has no impact. There is no meaning in killing someone when they can't die. Baka Dakedo Chinchin Shaburu no Dake wa Jouzu na Chii-chan: This game has a Genre-Shift tag of 3.0 on vndb and some people claim it would be different than what you expect it to be.
Spoiler: It's exactly what it looks like! WTF are the people talking about? lol Maitetsu: Borefest and not even usable as a lolige. Really only interesting for train otakus.  
Now let's start with the list of maybe not necessarily the best but the most impressive eroge of 2016, for me at least:
Eroge of the Year: Natsu no Kusari
Best game without a doubt, there is no other contender here. If I would make a Top 5 of 2017, the second place would already be many, many levels under this one. It's so good (or all the other recent games are just so bad, lol).
I have already written walls of text in other threads about this game so I won't repeat myself here. I will just say that this game is exactly what I'm looking for when I read an eroge, the reason why I even started with this medium.
Great characterization and the perfect use of narration, music, visuals and voices makes this one of the most compelling short stories I have read in years.
 
Best NTR Eroge: Dearest Blue
The lack of elf is really showing and I certainly can't say that any LiLiM game is really good, but at least with Dearest Blue LiLiM improved on their formula and made it its best game so far.
We still have some obvious "Do you want to get NTR'd"-choices, but they are not as in-your-face as in previous titles. Some choices make you wonder what will actually happen if you go this route and that at least is an improvement. In some instances there is some believable drama and especially one route is good where you can cheer for both, the protagonist and the rival because both characters are likable. The main heroine is also well-characterized, being an independent and strong woman without going too bitchy or slutty.
Still, not everything is good. Pretty much every male character except the aforementioned one is a one-dimensional evil villain. The biggest problem however is that the story is build around some kind of NTR/death-game where all the players need to outwit each other ... but in the end there are no mind games or twists happening! Heck, even I could probably win this game because every other character is so bad at this, not having a plan or making retarded moves. What a disappointment! Read this for the relationship drama, not for the death game.
 
Best Modern Oldschool Eroge: Ryuudouji Shimon no Inbou
This might be an unpopular opinion, but I really think that the writing in many of the latest Mink-games is topnotch. Really, if Mink-games weren't conceptually so limited (being only nukige), they could be really great.
Why is that? Is it because Mink is such an old company that they still carry on old writing traditions which were established in the Golden Age of eroge? That at least would explain why Ryuudouji Shimon no Inbou is so good when it conceptually shouldn't be!
Don't misunderstand me, Ryuudouji Shimon no Inbou is not a good slave-training eroge. There is no real SLG gameplay here, instead the only choice the player has is to visit 1 of 20 locations every day hoping that some kind of event happens there. There is no indication which area you have to visit, neither in script nor in the interface, it's completely by chance. Save-scumming and blindly gathering events at its finest, huh.
But if you can look behind this (preferably with a walkthrough), you will find a game that feels like the late 90s. Mainly because this is a blatant clone of 99's Yakin Byoutou. It's pretty much "Night Shift School Girls". Aside from the setting that is now a school, we have the same kind of characters, the same storyline and the same development Yakin Byoutou had. And it's great, because that formula still works 17 years later! The ugly main character, who has just enough understanding of the human psyche to get what he wants, the pure maidens who fall into his traps, not because they are sluts but because they are believable corrupted, and the evil female mastermind who is probably even worse than the main character. It's beautiful. The nostalgia is strong with this one.
 
Best Dark and Edgy Eroge: Tokage no Shippo Kiri
I'm cheating here a bit because the game was released in November 2015. But since the fandisc was released in January last year which means the full experience was only available to us in 2016, I see it as 2016 game.
There is not much to say here, what Derg not already said. Games like this prove that even low-budget publisher can make good games, if they just try. CYCLET is not Black Cyc, but it tries nonetheless to be something special and succeeds in setting itself apart from all the other low budget publisher. Maybe that is the reason we only had one CYCLET game in 2016; they emphasize on quality, not quantity.
 
Best RPG: Dungeon of Regalias
Let's not talk about the story and the characters. They are terrible, like in every Astronauts Sirius game. But damn is the gameplay addicting and actually good. Like in, really, really good.
This is probably one of the best ero-dungeon crawler existing. They did everything right with this one. Hard difficulty available from start. Skills as "items" which can be equipped so you can change your build without any resetting of skill points like in other games. Monsters who all act differently thus forcing you to change your strategy and character builds and party constantly. Great game.
 
 
Best SRPG: Sankai Ou no Yubiwa
I'm probably the only one, but ... I actually liked 2016's Eushully game. Yeah, really. Ok, it wasn't really a good SRPG; it actually had many flaws, like being far too easy and exploitable and the routes being too similar to each other... but... I liked the concept. Having six main characters who all represent a different kind of approach to the Ero-RPG genre is really something I wish more games would do. I hate the good guy, the antihero and the maou archetype, and sadly most Eushully games have one of these three as their main character. But Sankai Ou has also three other, more interesting protagonists to choose from. For example, I always wanted the angels to win in an Eushully game, and finally I have the opportunity to do this because the obligatory fallen-angel storyline is already covered in the other routes. Nice.
 
Biggest disappointment: Extravaganza ~Mushigurui Hen~
I was so hyped for this one. The first true Black Cyc game after 5 years of absence. Written by Banya Izumi who we could trust with the task of continuing a beloved series, right? Right?
No, it's awful. This game turned out to be an abomination which is quite remarkable because Black Cyc already milked the Extravaganza series with bad sidestories back when Black Cyc was still good for the most part. And Mushigurui Hen is even worse than these cheap nukige spinoffs. At least with cheap nukige fandisc, we know we get something bad. Mushigurui Hen on the other hand could have been good. It could have been awesome. But it wasn't.
So what went wrong? You have these great characters with their epic background stories, but what do they do with them? Putting them in school, because school life is, as we all now, the most important thing ever. And if a character is too old for school, just make them into rich snobs whose only problem in life is being too old (meaning being 23 years old) and lamenting about not having the time to go to the cinema with friends because work (meaning being CEO and chilling all the day in the office).
And if that wasn't bad enough, they also retcon a character death because this character was very popular back then and we need him for funny slice of life scenes now, yay.
The most offending thing however is how this "sequel" actually takes place after the second arc of the original Extravaganza, which means before the last third of the original game. And all the important character events in the third arc which really were the heart of the Extravaganza story apparently don't take place in this timeline. Instead, we get inferior and meaningless drama with derailed characters in Mushigurui Hen which is apparently now the canon timeline. Hurray.
 
Biggest insult: Everything released by Akabei Soft 3
I'm not going into this now, but literally every AKB3 game this year greatly offended me, just as Silky's Plus' games did last year. Let's just say that AKB3 makes games which represent everything that's wrong with modern eroge and have nothing left of what made eroge once great. (I might write a post explaining this statement in the near future.)
It saddens me how popular these games are. A dark prospect for 2017.
 

Welcome to another episode of Shovelware Adventures! This time, we'll take a break from our favourite, the Sakura series, to take a look at a much more obscure corner of the OELVN scene. The venture into commercial visual novel development by the German fan translator working under the label Yume Creations effected in some of the strangest VNs available on Steam and beyond. Combining competent art and interesting ideas with trashy ecchi, pieces of absolutely disastrous, bizarre writing and straight up failures in the English language, these projects are all experiences that will defy your expectations – just not necessarily in the ways their authors would want them to.
Aozora Meikyuu

A nukige without sex scenes, this little VN offers a rather charming heroine, who sadly gets involved in a totally nonsensical plot and various sexual scenarios that are never shown to the player. In the game’s story, our shut-in protagonist is forced to go out on a rare quest to buy groceries and on his way back home is nearly crashed to death by a (nude) girl falling from the sky. What follows, is a series of rather amusing interactions between the main character and the mysterious woman that invaded his life, which sadly can lead only to some literally incomprehensible and abrupt bad endings, or to a single positive one. The latter, admittedly, somewhat won me over by the virtue of being heartwarming, but was also based on some highly-questionable logic, making in turn everything that happened earlier rather hard to understand.
            The bad endings, which make little sense even after discovering the mystery central to the story and the true conclusion of the plot, along with the sexual tension constantly present in the game, building up towards non-existent hentai scenes, most likely suggest some heavily problematic development process. Because of all this, the final product is rather hard to recommend, even though I seriously enjoyed certain elements of it and ideas the author tried to implement – it is, indeed, a particularly unfortunate hunk of rabbit poo, not really offensive in any way, but hardly worth your attention.
Final rating: Rabbit Poo
Read the full article at evnchronicles.blogspot.com

Yuuko, aka the best waifu EOPs will never get if I can do something to stop it. (Looking at you MG be careful!!)

 
Hey what's up guys in this new blog entry I will be talking about the best girl in Hapymaher Kirikoi. Her name is Toriumi Yuuko, the perfect girl if you ask me. Those of you who are playing Hapymaher Kirikoi get cucked. She pretty much only appears in the fan disc that is not translated *insert evil laugh here*. (Wait Kirikoi is not translated in the first place.
Anyways here is a list what makes Yuuko so good.
Is cute Has short hair Has big bobs Pukes on you Needs you to protect her Very wife Here is a list of pics of Yuuko being cute:
Despite her weak body Yuuko is very good at fencing

 
 
Also Yuuko is a genius piano player

 
Yuuko is also friends with the Scandinavian princesses

 
Yuuko watches movies with her lonely neighbor girl

 
 
Yuuko knows how to eat very stylish dinner

 
 
Yuuko can also take the lead when needed

 
 
Yuuko is a bowling pro

 
 
Yuuko is also a crocodile

 
 
Thanks for reading folk. Remember to smash that like and subscribe button if you want more high quality content like this.

https://vndb.org/v11009
Disclaimer: I played the recent fan translation and from my (limited) knowledge of Japanese, I found it to be quite accurate. I was actually surprised by how the translator made certain sentences work and I can't recall an instance where I thought the translation looked strange. 
 
When Hajimete no Okaa-san's fan translation came out, it caused a tiny yet significant uproar on certain visual novel related communities. The English idiom that spans over a century - don't judge a book by its cover - could possibly have been created for this very moment. I hope that by writing this review, I can clear up any misconceptions about this novel, teach you to not judge a work by its outward appearance and give you the courage to read a truly touching story. 
Dealing with the loss of a loved isn't easy, no matter if you're an adult or a child, and even more so if the person in question is an irreplaceable person that you've vowed eternity to or that defines your complete existence. 

When our unnamed protagonist, who I will refer to as "Papa", loses his beloved wife to a traffic accident, he is left with the troublesome task of single parenting. Confronting the sorrows of one who has been turned into pure white ash, he finds solace in the one and only person who could understand him and also the one who might be suffering the most - his one and only daughter Chiyori (Chii).
Hajimete no Okaa-san is a very special Visual Novel. Unlike the disappointing standard of recent releases, it treats both its audience and characters with the respect they deserve. The most significant difference between this novel and the many others is the fact that its willing to portray the characters as real human beings. Please allow me to mention that there exist only eight translated visual novels with the "Widower Protagonist" and likely no other that focuses as deeply on the theme of single parenting.
The rather simplistic approach to emotions is surprisingly expressive, although one could argue about the emotional depth of a 6-year old, I was able to completely grasp both the personality of Chii through the brilliant performance of seiyuu Amakawa Milk (a respectable veteran in her own right with a wide palette of roles) and the internal monologues of Papa.
The beginning is rather surprising. The amount of effort that the creators have put into this work is nearly palpable, often leaving one surprised at how nicely written and how well the narrative flows. Starting with ordinary slice-of-life scenes, we're thrown into the daily life of Papa and her daughter Chii. Starting with the smallest things like learning how to write hiragana and her own name in Kanji, the basics of arithmetic, giving up one's fork and knife and mastering the use of chopsticks - they are all endearing moments that help us connect with Chii as a character and reminding us of times long past of our childhood when everything was much simpler. It is this genuine and pure simplicity that initially made this novel stand out.
In contrast to this feeling, enter "Chii wa kodomo janai!" - Chii is no longer a child. Her own desire to find a way to deal with her own sorrows, all the while supporting the one person she loves most in her world, one of the most satisfying factors of reading through this novel is observing Chii's maturity as a character.
Despite the more lighthearted scenes, the novel is plentiful with well-timed drama which never for a moment felt excessive or artificial. Papa is stuck in a constant internal moral debate which at times stops him from realising the suffering of those who are right in front of his eyes.

As far as storytelling goes, one of the biggest attributes ishow the reader has the freedom to change the course of the story (albeit into premature ends). As for this aspect, I would like to divide the story in three or four parts (I will just say that the forth part is a Web Omake, essentially a short epilogue that portrays the life of our two, now three characters after the events of the main game).
The first being the first two hours where we accompany the characters until the inevitable H-scene. Here, the reader is given the choice to not go through it at all and completely avoid the H-scene, ending the game prematurely. To not give in to his dark desires and not abandoning one's morals, is too a possible answer that Papa can find. 
The second part and probably the longest, accompanies our two characters as their relationship develops. The most important aspect that I'd like to bring up is that the whole theme of pregnancy is treated. In many eroge, pregnancy is either completely ignored, allowing our most likely 16-year old protagonist to let out his seed without any worries in the world, or treated as an afterthought, perhaps featured in one last H-scene before the game ends. In this novel, not only do we see their relationship flourish but the passage of time, told by the growth of Chii's belly and change of hairstyle (over five different character sprites!), shows us that this is aspect that is willing to be embraced, often being the case for worry for our protagonist.
At the end of the second part, the reader is given another important choice: to go beyond mere carnal desires and a parent's desire to protect his child and thus taking their relationship to the next level, or to once again fall into self-hatred and not take responsibility for one's actions. Thus begins the third part: "I want Papa to always be by my side". While perhaps as long as the first part, it's perhaps the one with the most emotional impact. Vowing to combat loneliness, Papa and Chii realise that being surrounded by the people you love is far more important than having a peaceful life. Chii does not become a replacement - she is her own person and the most important thing in the world to our protagonist. As long as two people can love each other, that is more than enough.
And as long as there is love, there is warmth. A new family is born. The two become three, the warmth keeps rising and it spreads to others around. When I finished reading Hajimete no Okaa-san, I felt a warmth deep inside of me because I realised I had just been through a really special experience. With this review, I hope that I convinced you to read this beautiful story and too come to have warmth in your heart. Thank you for reading.
https://imgur.com/a/FpPkAxp (This might be a little of a spoiler so I won't post it as an image, but it's the last and most impactful scene of the novel)
 
 
 
I am open to criticism and would be happy if you could help me improve as a reviewer. 

Shirogane no Soleil -Successor of Wyrd- <<Unmei no Keishousha>>
( "The soliel of silvery-white" - Successor of Wyrd << The Fated successor >> )
 
This is the first game in Skyfish's epic norse mythology series. I had never even heard of this game before Clephas made a blog post about it a little earlier this year, and that might be the case for many. Having finally played the game myself, I have to ask... how is this possible? Why is such a great game not more well known? This VN truly deserves more exposure than it currently has.
Introduction:
Shirogane starts off with our main character, Ryuuhei, and his sister Tamako on their way to a set of ancient ruins in Iceland. Ryuuhei is not an archaeologist like his sister, but was dragged along by her on the pretense of being her "bodyguard." Ironically, that is exactly what he ends up being. Ryuuhei's group gets pulled into an encounter with a strange creature called "Berserk", a monster made up by the broken soul of an ancient warrior, which fell in battle ages ago. Powerless against this incredibly dangerous foe, Ryuuhei prays for help, asking for power-- the power to protect the people he loves. His call is answered by a slumbering Valkyrie, Sol, who makes a contract with Ryuuhei. She will fight for him, in exhange for his life force. Every time she uses her powers, she drains some of Ryuuhei's life force out of his body, shortening his life. They fight off the Berserk together, but this is merely the beginning of their tale. This seemingly random encounter might not have been as random as they thought. One might even call it... fate.

Story
The story in Shirogane is fantastic. It's told in two parts, "Valkyrie in love", and "Successor of Wyrd." Some of the story takes place in the present, while certain other parts takes place in the past. Shirogane contains tons of refrences to norse mythology, though the descriptions of characters and events from norse mythology in the VN are not necessarily identical to the "real thing". Therefore, while familiarity with norse mythology helps with appreciating certain aspects of the game's story, it is not at all needed. What matters in terms of refrences are all explained well enough in game, and seeing as they usually put a unique spin on things, it is not at all needed to know everything there is to know about norse mythology before reading this. (That being said, knowing some of the general concepts about who is who, and what is what will certainly make it an even more enjoyable read.)

 
Although Shirogane is a very serious story, with tragic themes riddled all over it, just like normal stories from norse mythology, the game contains a good number of humoristic slice of life moments as well. That being said, all of these moments fits very well into the flow of the story. We are seeing things from Ryuuhei's point of view, as he deals with the fact that his own life span is constantly being drained because of his contract with his Valkyrie. As a result, you feel a little more attatched to these everyday moments, since they are seen through the eyes of someone who only has so much time left to enjoy them. In addition, the comedy is pure gold most of the time. The slice of life moments very rarely feels out of place, and never gets in the way of the story. The humor in the game had me literally laughing out loud so many times, I lost count.

Characters:
One of the biggest strengths of this game is without a doubt the characters. Each character feels unique and is well fleshed out. They all add something to the story in their own ways, and it's hard not to grow attatched to them, be it heroes, anti-heroes or straight up villains at times. The interactions between the characters truly pulls out all sorts of emotions from the reader, making the story feel like one hell of a roller coaster ride. (In a good way. Prepare your tickets to the feel train, folks.) While the "good guys" are all very well done, my favorite characters were honestly the villains / anti-heroes that are introduced throughout the game.
On top of making fantastic "villains", the "duos" in the game are brilliant. Essentially every single character is paired up with another in some way, and they all complement each other greatly. These "duos" were without a doubt one of the best parts about the game in my opinion. Be it heartbreaking moments or hilarious ones; nearly all the most impactful moments in the story stems from one of these duos' interactions.


Art, Music and Writing:
As shown in the screenshots above, the art is nicely detailed. Considering this game was released in 2007, the art is very impressive. The amount of special effects, cut-scenes and CGs is no joke either. Sadly, things aren't as good in the music department. The music is by no means bad, but it does feel a little bland at times. Certain tracks do work very well with the tone of the story, and are straight up beautiful to listen to, but others feel repetitive and aren't that impactful. So, my complaint with the music would be the inconsistent quality of the tracks. That being said, this is hardly a big issue, as the writing, art and story makes slightly repetitive music matter very little in the end.
Overall, I have very few complaints about this game. It was a fantastic read from beginning to end, and I strongly recommend reading it. I don't use the term kamige a lot, but this definitely qualifies in my personal opinion.
You can buy all the Soleil games on DMM. (NSFW LINK!!!)

Warning: this post contains screenshots and (very) minor spoilers from the trial version. If you completely don't want to spoil yourself, or haven't played the trial yet, I'd highly advise to postpone reading until you finish the game first.
If you did not yet stumble upon one of those TIME TO LEARN JAPANESE reminders, you have a damn good reason to finally consider studying moon runes.

Title: 眠れぬ羊と孤独な狼－A Tale of Love, and Cutthroat－ (trial ver.)
(eng. Sleepless Sheep and Lonesome Wolf - A Tale of Love, and Cutthroat / Yourou for short)
Developer: ClockUp
Genre: Psychological thriller
Rating: AO/18+ as f*ck
VNDB
Official website
 
I always had a mixed opinion about ClockUp and their games. It's one of those studios, you will either love or hate with a profound passion and one that's going to be blocked by many game news outlets, websites and forums. Gods forbid you from even talking about their games, unless you're a member of some obscure corner of the internet (like this one) or a member of the perverted sect, known as filthy eroge players. Why? Because their blockbuster games are not only addictive, but often delve into topics, that are - to be blunt - plain repulsive and/or very uncomfortable for most average people to tackle. When they aren't working on their next serious game, they typically tend to churn out low budget porn games, that borderline on rape and mind corruption, with occasional gems in-between (yes, I am looking at you, Zwei Vorter). Joyful, right?
Yourou is their latest addition to that wonderful lineup, best described as a "thrilling crime tale". In comparison to their previous games, Tatsuya dropped fantasy based concepts in favor of a more down-to-earth setting. Yourou seems to focus more broadly on the environment itself, rather than portraying the lives of single characters or a particular group. In that manner, main characters play more of a central role, rather than just being forced into hero/heroine roles. This makes the whole game feel more akin to an actual digital story, rather than a classic visual novel, where everything is told mostly from protagonist's perspective. In all honesty, this was a perfect choice, as the world presented within becomes much more colourful, playing an important role itself, instead of being just a backdrop for the characters to play on.

Heavy filtered, neon-like photographic backgrounds with an added touch of grunge stylistics remind of the reality within - coarse, twisted and brutal, yet insanely vivid. It's a world of prostitutes, carnal pleasures, yakuza and bustling nightlife.
Yourou tells a tale of Takeo - a young man, living in your typical, run-of-the-mill love hotel in Kabukicho district, commonly known as the biggest entertainment zone of Tokyo, Japan. Takeo suffers from chronic insomnia, which turned his whole life upside down. His life is filled with nearly endless days that span across the weeks, while he earns his living as a janitor, cleaning up after guests. We quickly learn of his problems. His daily job is nothing but a cover for his true rason d'etre. In order to survive his disability, Takeo takes upon the offer of one of the leading gang's Bosses and works as an assassin during the nights; killing is the only way he can actually experience sleep.

For both Takeo and Azami - back then still complete strangers, this was ought to be a night like any other. Little did they knew, the following events will make their paths cross again.
This changes, after he meets Azami - a mysterious girl, he spots one day upon leaving to work, as usual. A pretty, young call girl, en-route to her client. Takeo didn't put much thought into it, until the next day his group discovers a dead body in the same exact room, she was supposedly to meet up; A pretty gruesome discovery too boot. upon finding out the man was actually an important member of the neighbourhooding group, Takeo's boss - Mamoru - orders him to find the culprit at all costs and bring her alive to prevent a potential gang war. At this point, Takeo couldn't care less about that, since he already had a reason of his own. Until now, Takeo considered himself a killer sheep - because he only killed upon a direct order. The sole fact of another killer like him, capable to bring down and gut a man of this size, regardless of consequences - an indicator of free will - makes Takeo boil with anger. For him, the mysterious girl becomes an actual wolf, which directly puts his life on the line. Unable to rest in peace, he vouches to find the girl himself at all costs and bloody murder her, so he can finally get a good night's sleep.

Whoopsie~
Takeo's personal investigation takes him across the streets of Kabukicho. Soon, he discovers the girl he chased after sports nearly inhuman strength and reflexes far beyond his own capabilities; he's forced to run for his own life. As it turns out, this was just the beginning of a wild road, that will inevitably bring an end to his current, peaceful existence.
The trial version covers exactly, what could be considered a prologue to the whole story. It's incredibly well paced, drawing you into a vividly painted image of Kabukicho's underworld - back alleys, host clubs, brothels and many of it's criminal groups, fighting for supremacy in this world filled to the brim with human dreams and desires. I was honestly surprised with the amount of detail, that went into every single aspect of the game. Tatsuya is well known for his prose, that often shifts more into psychological side of things and Yourou uses it surprisingly well to create a colourful cast of characters teeming with life. It's one of those rare stories, that make you feel emotionally invested with heroes of the story and you'll often find yourself cheering for them, even though you know they aren't necessarily good people. In fact, the world of Yourou is painted with grey and greyer shades, while it's characters aren't some superfluous paper dolls, but plain people with their own dreams and goals. This is especially prevalent for both Takeo and Azami, as they aren't guided by some invisible hand, but act entirely based on their own assumptions, choices and more than often - emotions - which in turn makes for some really interesting situations. Things don't "just happen"; if they happen, they do happen for a reason.

Each criminal group within the story is given a proper introduction, without sparing any details. This kind of intricate world-building greatly enriches the game and makes you emotionally invested with characters, no matter who they are.
Nemurenu Hitsuji to Kodoku na Ookami convinces me there are still studios capable of creating original, adult-oriented, purely story driven experiences, instead of this uninspired trash relying on commonly found otaku tropes. I have high expectations of this game and - of course - can't wait for the release. No matter if you're a fan of ClockUp, or someone who's looking for a more mature story - one without highly-pitched animu gals, fawning over protag's virtually infinite manhood - Yourou might be what you're looking for.
As of now, Yourou is scheduled for release on 22th of December. I couldn't ask for a better Christmas present.
 
 
PS. Azami is a fantastic heroine. Read the game and you'll understand why

There are no masterpieces this month. I would not like to nominate bakage a winner and I have a bad aftertaste from Start Trap and Shizuku, so VN of January 1996 is Ryuuki Denshou Dragoon
1. Bind ~Kinbaku Jinmon Densetsu~ Bind ～緊縛尋問伝説～ [960112] Outou Shobou In Side 1 The content of the game can be easily deduced from its title ("Kinbaku Jinmon Densetsu" means the legend of bondage interrogation). The game contains three "episodes", unrelated to each other story-wise. The first one is set in medieval times and tells about the adventures of two female treasure hunters in an ancient tomb; the second begins with two young girls being kidnapped by a mysterious secret society; the third deals with three school girls being assaulted by a thief. Ero-centered omnibus collection with bondage as theme.  
2. Yaku ~Yuujou Dangi~ 厄 ～友情談疑～ [960113] Idea Factory Co., Ltd. 1 2 3 Five adults return to the elementary school they attended as children only to find that it has been closed up. They trespass into the closed-down building in order to dig up a time capsule they had buried at its courtyard. However, this turns out to be a mistake as bizarre monsters are waiting inside. There are five scenarios available, each one telling a different character's story, but only the protagonist's story is initially available. It's actually close to a "sound novel", but it was released for ps1 so the volume is bigger than usual. There are couple European languages articles that show the glimpse of this weird weird horror game.  
3. Reijuu - Twin Road 麗獣 ツインロード [960119] Apple Pie 1 2 The town of Jester is located near a spring, which is used both by humans from the town and the beast people from their forest village. For years, the two races co-existed in peace. But one day, somebody sets the Jester tavern on fire. The authorities arrest a young beast girl who happened to be in the town at that time. Outraged by the injustice, a young orphan boy named Kein, who was raised by Tyrone, one of the town knights, convinces him to help the girl escape. But that act draws the ire of the town authorities, and the heroes realize that they have to flee... Some genre experiment here since it's more tactical than usual SRPG, but also definitely not a full strategy or rpg.  
4. Snow Memory スノーメモリー [960123] Birdy Soft Four girls pass the casting to work in a Western mansion. You choose one of the girls and watch the forecoming events from her point of view. We know it well that even at the time of Cal 3 the staff of Birdy Soft left the company and the director had to hastily finish it himself. And Snow Memory comes years after that as an attempt to play on the brand name. Game's more than average with lots of fanservice and unnatural looking art.  
5. Ryuuki Denshou Dragoon 竜機伝承 －ドラグーン－ [960126] KSS Inc. 1 Gods created humans in a paradise-like world. But as time passed they started to hate each other and fight among themselves. Gods sent a blue start that turned into a blue dragon on the ground. For three days and nights the dragon was burning out everything with a cleansing fire. As the flames disappeared, a huge lake was born. Dragon entered the lake with the words "I shall raise again when foolish struggle arises anew". However, as time passed, this dreadful event erased little by little from human memory. North-East frontier, Northon. Young soldier Cedy meets a mysterious girl Miu and decides to help her get to her hometown on the other side of the world. At the same time stripping the barriers of time Gods make their move again... It's a SRPG with only event battles. First part is particularly difficult with the constant demand of restoration magic. Dangerous events happen one by one and we constantly need to escape so pace is good. In the second part the party gets scattered and our primary goal is to find Miu... but we kinda only find other party members and as the war with the empire breaks out Miu gets totally abandoned. Another inconsistency is that the empire villain minister after defeat jumps out with the cries "I've actually come from the future and I've half of my body mechanically modified!" and it was a pure magic fantasy world this far. Another irritating aspect is the inventory menu as first it's needed to pick an item from the full list of garments and then try to apply it to a character only to find out that it won't suit him. So it's a good game with a nice epic story, but some elements of it leave a sour aftertaste.  
6. Shizuku 雫 [960126] Leaf 1 2 3 4 When one of his classmates suddenly goes mad in the middle of the class, the protagonists uncle, one of the teachers in the school asks him to investigate this matter after school. He starts the investigation with the help of one of the girls from his class, an investigation that will lead them to many horrors... With my review there are three English reviews.  
7. Star Trap スタートラップ [960126] Fairy Dust 1 A space ship was sent to the planet Neptune, to investigate strange disturbances spotted on the planet's surface. Some time later, the nearest space station picked up a SOS signal from the ship. An agent named Takuya, in command of an elite team of female fighters, is sent to Neptune. But their ship crashes, and Takuya must fight for his life and the lives of the girls, which are threatened by Neptune's fearsome monsters. Alternative version of ancient Cream Lemon - Start Trap back in 1986. Game's short hardly reaching 2 hours. There are two routes, but routes are mainly made to distinguish between H events. The number of endings is 5, there is an ending for each of two girls and some neutral ones. So there's hardly a story, but at least it has the craziness of 80s games and beautiful CG.  
8. Time Stripper Mako-chan タイムストリッパー真子ちゃん [960126] Foster 1 2 3 4 5 6 You play the character Shinji Nakayama a high school student who has a bad reputation of cheating on his girlfriend, Michiyo Sakagami. The story starts when your "habit" is eventually found out (again) by your girlfriend, of which you start to fight and end up breaking up. In the middle of your 'sobbing', a girl pops up out of nowhere in your room. It appears she's from the future, with personal reasons that has to do with your present love-life situation. After that, the story is in your hands... Game is localized and has many English reviews.  
9. Yume no Sei 夢の精 [960126] 13cm 1 A collection of three stories. 1.『ONE』is about main character sneaking into the dressing room of cat ear idols. 2.『ミンキーキャット』is an abduction story. 3.『ミッションエイジ』is an RPG game to infiltrate enemy hideout and rescue a girl Stories differ in styles greatly, but are all short erotic stories that are possible to click through in just 10 minutes.  
10. Ningyo -Tsutako- 人魚－蘿子－ [96] Alicesoft A boy and a girl run away with a mysterious stone and hide in a cave. But pursuers are nearby already. Game was shipped only for subscription fans and thus is obscure. PC-98 version is not hookable, so I won't be presenting the synopsis. Game is all HCG fest after first couple normal CG.

Surprisingly poor for masterpieces December, so my grey horse Lilith is the winner this time.
1. Houkago wa Betsu no Kao 放課後は別の顔 [951201] Ucom A collection of four short stories featuring sexual experiences of school girls: 1. 「通学電車」 2. 「先輩・・・・・・」
3. 「進路指導」
4. 「非行少女」 A distinguishing feature of the work is the presence of narrator girl who also appears in the stories. But overall it's a very specialized content.     2. Momoko-chan for Me ももこちゃんfor Me [951201] Ume Soft 1 2 Momoko-chan for Me: Minarai Kangofu-hen is a visual novel focusing on a young male aspiring physician, the son of a famous doctor who has left on a vacation and entrusted the son with the management of certain hospital-related affairs. The game focuses exclusively on the relationship between the protagonist and a nurse-in-training named Momoko. Remastered version heroines look much cuter. The difficulty of the game is high since there are over 10 endings - most of them depend on ecstasy level between the characters.   3. Moonlight Energy 2 ムーンライトエナジー２ [951201] Interheart 1 Moonlight Energy 2 is a sequel to Moon Light Enegy. The game's premise is nearly identical to that of the predecessor: the player controls a high school student named Maki, participating in her lesbian escapades with other students or personnel. The infamous les chikan is back. So it's a normal Interheart work with many H events.   4. Rance 4.1 ~Okusuri Koujou o Sukue!~ ランス４．１　～お薬工場を救え！～ [951201] Alice Soft 1 2 3 This is a side-story in Rance series, released shortly after the fourth game, but dedicated to an entirely different quest. All kinds of troubles are happening to a factory where a new Happiness Medicine is being developed. The mercenary Rance is hired by the manager to investigate the source of these troubles. First task: clear the factory of the monsters... 4.1 looks more like introduction to more longer 4.2. Battle system is simplified and few known heroines take part here. The quality is very good for a bonus game given away for free.   5. Reverse リバース [951201] Gloria Takumi died in a traffic accident when he was young, but his spirit continued to live in his fraternal twin and gained ability to read other peoples hearts. Using that ability he helps people around him to solve their problems. It's really difficult to comprehend what's going on on the screen since Takumi and his twin change spots all the time. The contents is quite dull and sad.   6. Super Erect Taisen S・EX スーパーエレクト大戦Ｓ・ＥＸ [951201] Dynamic Production Hero was watching a pop idol live performance when the skies tore apart and idols got sucked inside the demon-faced black whirlwind together with his favorite Ichigo-chan. After than an angel descended from the skies and offered cooperation to defeat demon king and return the girls. Each enemy turn takes so much time that I did not have enough patience to wait.   7. Ace of Spades Ace of Spades [951207] Love Gun 1 2 Ace of Spades is a casino game with a gruesome twist. The player competes against female opponents in poker or blackjack; every victory leads to an explicit scene of sexual torture. The main mode includes a series of matches and subsequent sadistic scenes against various women. A primitive stripping card game.   8. Custom Mate 3 カスタムメイト3 [951208] Cocktail Soft 1 2 3 It's Christmas. Hayashi Ryuusuke is walking through the crowded city, feeling sad that he is alone on such a day. Suddenly, he spots a neon sign: Custom Mate. He enters and sees a strange receptionist with elf-like ears and a magic symbol on the forehead. She creates the girl of his dreams and they get married! But this is just the beginning, and Ryuusuke realizes that marriage is not all about the honeymoon... After the honeymoon, the couple returns to daily routine. The player can make daily or monthly schedule. The wife's behavior is determined by character creation, but also by the choices the player makes. The wife would often ask questions, make suggestions, etc.; the player's reaction determines future interactions and the overall development of the relationship. The couple has various parameters, from love level to monetary wealth. First two parts were blocked as eroge, but this one is much more "fun". There's a good thorough mechanics English review.   9. Magical Girl Pretty Sammy Zenpen 魔法少女プリティサミー 前編 [951208] AIC Spirits

Mahō Shōjo Pretty Sammy: Part 1 - In the Earth is based on Magical Girl Pretty Sammy (魔法少女プリティサミー) anime TV series which focus on magically transformed Sasami character from Tenchi Muyo! universe. This is a visual novel featuring Sasami as the protagonist. For reasons unknown, she has been chosen as a champion by Tsunami, the next queen of Juraihelm, to fight in her name. But there are people bent on seeing Sasami fail in her endeavors and her tasks will soon prove much more challenging as she fights her way with Misao, her best friend who was chosen as a magical girl by Tsunami's opponent, Ramia. Anime was pretty popular since there are at least four different visual novels about Pretty Sammy. Game is issued with CG for PC-9821 consoles and thus is not well known.   10. Miwaku no Chousho 魅惑の調書 [951208] Black Package 1 The protagonist, a young man named Shinnosuke, discovers a beautiful mansion, in which apparently a large-scale party is taking place. Determined to meet and enchant some beautiful women, he ventures into the mansion. The core of the game is nanpa, but atmosphere and girls are luxurious. The pictures using the full screen contribute to its charm. But don't expect much plot here as after targeting three women an ending happens. To get the rest a new game is needed.   11. Never Land Never Land ～ネバーランド～ [951208] Tips 1 You are Jimmy, a child of Never Land which is an island of magic and fantasy. You are always accompanied by May ,a small nymph, and you can fly in the air. Never Land is a world of children who can dream. One day a boss of pirates gets a magic wand that has power to transform anything. You set out to restore status quo. There's an English review that gives a rough outline of what to expect.   12. Rance 4.2 ~Angelgumi~ ランス４．２　～エンジェル組～ [951208] Alice Soft 1 2 3 Rance 4.2: Angel-gumi is the second part of the story that began in Rance 4.1: O-Kusuri Koujou o Sukue! rather than an all-new Rance adventure. The hero continues to investigate the weird occurrences connected to the Happiness Medicine Factory. Since the story picks up directly where it ended in the sequel, Rance begins his adventure already commanding an all-female squad called the Angel Team. There is an English review.   13. Toushin Toshi 2 - Soshite, Sorekara... 闘神都市II そして、それから・・・ [951208] Alice Soft Returning from the goddess tournament, Sid is reduced to level 1 by the Demon King. His dojo sent him to a training journey, but Hazuki was so worried about him that she followed Sid and got into trouble herself. A kinetic novel with rare pictures - mostly it's just clicking through walls of text. Since hero is weak again there is little excitement. But the story is good and well worth reading for the fans of the original game or if there is sympathy to Hazuki.   14. 2 Shot Diary 2 ツーショットDiary2 [951209] Mink 1 This is the first of the four episodic games that constitute the sequel to first 2 Shot Diary game. Unlike the first game with its 12 different scenarios, it only contains 2, and both are very short; however (also unlike the first game), most of the scenes here are animated. Both scenarios consist entirely of depictions of explicit sex. One of the scenarios is about a girl named Yukari; after her father died, she had to look for a job, and finally became a maid in a mansion of a rich oligarch, who molests her sexually. The other scenario is dedicated to a very young girl named Emi, who goes with her friends to the beach. Once she finds herself in a secluded place, a young boy approaches, and the two have sex. Ero-centered short work.   15. Hiiro no Shimai 緋色の姉妹 [951215] Apollon Create 1 The protagonist of the game is a college student named Shunsuke. His mother died when he was five years old. Now his father is marrying again. He and his new wife have departed on a honeymoon; while he is waiting for them to come home, Shunsuke discovers that he doesn't live alone any more: three young sisters of his stepmother have moved in. Shunsuke now tries to get to know them better (in every possible way..), at the same time gradually discovering dark secrets about his father's intimate life. Command selection hurts the pace a lot. There are several branches, but all the sisters turn out to be M and their stories aren't that different. Characters are quite cute, though.   16. Kekkon Marriage 結婚Marriage [951215] Westone 1 Shizuka, Mika, Kiyomi, Reiko and Mami are all grown up and have one thing on their mind: finding the ultimate husband! From the workplace to automated dating services, there's wedding bells to be heard and love to be acted on, all for the ultimate goal: marriage! With biological clocks ticking and youth slipping away, these girls will do whatever it takes to snag a man, love or not! A dating SIM with 5 girl candidates. There are some parameters used. The flow is talking - telephone talk - date - proposal - engagement - marriage.   17. Lilith リリス [951216] Four-Nine 1 An intense night battle between kunoichi clan leader and evil biblical spirit Lilith ends with kunoichi falling into coma state. A cat gets into an ordinary student Koketsu room, transforms into a girl and claims that Koketsu got her master kunoichi spirit and must help her master and defeat Lilith. The problem is that nothing is known about Lilith but the name and together they set to uncover its secrets. I have a full review prepared.   18. Clone Doll Kagai Jugyou クローンドール 課外授業 [951221] Space Project 1 2 In Clone Doll, the protagonist is a rather "geeky" teenager who is actually a genius: he invented a machine that can make clones of human beings! After he gets a hold on a few hairs that belong to Kimika, his schoolmate and object of his passionate desires, the young scientist creates a clone of her, a young girl who has no other knowledge and wishes but satisfy the hero sexually... There is an English review of the game. And Space Project confirms his fame as kusoge creator.     19. Fermion ~Mirai kara no Houmonsha~ フェルミオン ～未来からの訪問者～ [951222] Silky's 1 2 3 In the year 2296, world-wide pollution has led to drastic changes in the natural order of things. Human organism, unable to withstand the pollution, was slowly mutating. In the huge city Megalopolis, a group of young female scientists designed a time machine. One of them, a blue-haired girl named Connie, who can mutate into a cat, is sent to the past, to year 1996, to find a way to change the future... I have a full review prepared.   20. Getsumen no Anubis 月面のアヌビス [951222] Multimedia Intelligence Transfer 1 The protagonist (default name Keisuke) and heroine (default name Kaori) are astronauts living in a laboratory set on the moon. A group of American soldiers are also stationed there. Mysterious incidents begin to occur that threaten the lives of everyone there - there are multiple scenarios, but only one is explicitly horror-themed. Said scenario involves a race of mysterious space parasites that can take possession of anyone, leading the protagonist (and thus the player) to grow distrustful of the other characters. Yet another NVL "sound novel". Short and horror one, of course.   21. Idol Project 2 アイドル・プロジェクト2 [951222] KSS Inc. 1 Unlike the first Idol Project, the story of the sequel is directly related to to the anime series Idol Project, starring the same characters, with the young and ambitious Mimu Emilton as the protagonist. Mimu finds herself on a tropical island, where she must rise to fame by winning contests and promoting her singing skills. Like in the previous game, the majority of gameplay is dedicated to exploring the top-down city, visiting various places, searching for necessary people and raising the protagonist's parameters. Mimu has a much more detailed set of parameters than the hero of the previous game, including physical attributes as well as popularity rankings. The RPG element has been further enhanced by introducing random character (crazed fans and alike) who would sometimes attack Mimu on the city map and other locations. Now is an ADV with a lot of town exploration. Still the use of parameters alienated me.   22. Ikazuchi no Senshi Raidy 2 雷の戦士ライディ２ [951222] ZyX 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 "Ugh... desert travel is terrible on the skin, let me tell you! Why did I ever choose to come this way... If I don't find water soon it's going to be troublesome. Wait, what's that in the distance - an oasis?! And a town next to it! Civilization at last..." I am Raidy, wandering the continent of Else as a swordfighter. I can freely bend the power of thunder to my will, so people have taken to calling me the "Lightning Warrior". I'm traveling far and wide to improve my fighting skills and search for clues about my past, and my mysterious power over lightning. After defeating the monsters in the Cubust tower in my last adventure, I left the village of Sadd behind and continued on my journey. My travels have taken me across the desert to the oasis town of Lake Blue. Looking forward to a break after the long and dusty journey, I settled in for the night at the local inn... only to have its peace shattered by the cries of the young, beautiful innkeeper! I rescued her from her mysterious assailant, to learn that the town was living under constant fear of attack from a gang of marauding bandits led by a cruel woman called Jammy. It seems my vacation won't be so uneventful after all! I set out to find information on the gang's hideout, and a new adventure begins... Game's localized and has several English reviews.   23. Meisou Toshi 迷走都市 [951222] Tiare 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Runaway City tells the story of Hiroaki, a boy with a mysterious power of Good Luck. It's almost as it some power makes women do whatever he wants. At first it's a great power to have, then as time goes by it scares him more and more. Unchecked, this power will be the destruction of all Japan. Can you find out the nature of your power and find a way to stop it before it goes too far? Game's one of the first localized ones and has many English reviews.   24. Mesuneko Hishoshitsu 牝猫秘書室 [951222] Melody 1 2 Kurou works in a company that specializes in "headhunting", finding and recruiting capable employees for big companies. A new client representing a company that has recently concluded a trade with an American software firm needs a new secretary. Problem: the last headhunter who was given a similar request has gone missing. So Kurou's boss wants him to get to the bottom of things, teaming him up with the resourceful and pretty headhuntress Tomoko. Naturally, as the partners begin the investigation, dark erotic secrets of the employees become gradually revealed... An ero-centered work where you need to chase the same character to get to her ending. Game's notable for all the target characters being mature women.   25. Metamor Panic Doki Doki Youma Busters メタモル・パニック ＤＯＫＩＤＯＫＩ妖魔バスターズ [951222] Family Soft 1 Hero is a high school student who secretly went camping in the mountains with his childhood friend Yuki and cousin Ai. They found a suspicious cave and occasionally lifted the curse laid on demon king. The curse shifted to the two girls with Yuki spontaneously occasionally turning into a kitten and Ai into a parrot. Youkai appear in the city and start rampaging. The three heroes stand up to the demon threat. This playstation game feels more like an ADV novel with light RPG elements rather than a serious RPG. The start is very harsh and punishing for a player. The second part when you learn to control the transformation is easy, so the balance is not good. Graphics are excellent, but game's only partially voiced. The tempo is slow and bgm quite monotonous. Some affinity to RPG genre is required to enjoy, but game absolutely can be enjoyed.   26. Paradise Call パラダイスコール [951222] At a place where girls phone in, a guy waits. When a girl calls in, he talks with her. If he respond right, he will meet the girl and have fun. This game is a simpler version of Virtuacall 1. Very primitive ero-centered game.   27. Viper-V16 [951222] Sogna 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 The final game in the V series and arguably the most recognizable. VIPER-V16 breaks with tradition and provides only two stories, instead of three, but both are longer, more complicated, and contain many more options than the prior V series stories, resembling games more than visual novels for the first time. The widely popular Rise story describes the kidnapping and escape attempt of three waitresses, while the lesser known Imagine tells the story of a young technical college student's attempts to attract the interests of three girls. Game is localized and has multiple reviews.   28. Virtua Call 2 バーチャコール2 [951222] Fairytale 1 Emily has had a crush on Hasegawa for quite some time. A fellow resident of her building, Hasegawa has always been there for her as a friend, though she would like something more than friendship. When Hasegawa starts confiding his woman troubles to Emily, she introduces him to Virtuacall, a service that lets you interact with the girl of your dreams just as you wish you could. Unfortunately, Hasegawa becomes more interested in Virtuacall than her as a result. On the verge of leaving the country for her homeland, Emily is so overcome by emotion that she can neither tell Hasegawa about her feeling or tell him that she is leaving. Nampage with outstanding difficulty. You really need to make memos during the talks all the time to get by without guide. Game got more user friendly since the prequel and even cuter girls. It's just too difficult to empathize with the nampage nowadays since the genre feels inferior to galge and there are thousands of galge today.   29. Zakuro no Aji ざくろの味 [951222] Imagineer Co., Ltd. 1 The story is set in a five-story office building on a cold winter evening. The protagonist (default name Domon) is working on a story for a monthly science fiction serial. As he goes to visit the editorial department, a series of earthquakes cause the building to collapse and trap everybody inside. Attempting to find an escape, Domon heads into the basement, and depending upon a decision made early in the game, he may run into anything from zombies to demons. Yet another sound novel. It's released at the same day as Getsumen no Anubis and has references to it. Short horror story again.   30. Doki Doki Pretty League EX DokiDokiぷりてぃリーグ EX [951223] Xing Entertainment

Ayaka and Remy are members of  time police "Chronopolis" in the near future. This time they investigate a case of a professional beauty wrestler of the 20th century who got missing.   Game has nothing to do with tennis this time, but has lots of H content. Several more former members of Doki Doki Pretty League make an appearance here. There are some mini-games available. Original creators of pretty league were absolutely against such game with erotic content. Female wrestling organization condemned this game as well. But the sales were ok, so franchise got resurrected at PS with time.   31. Kousoku Chojin 拘束超人 [951224] Foster 1 Haruki is a student at the prestigious private Morino High School, which he attends together with his beautiful sister, and where he leads the drama class. One day, Haruki discovers a strange toupee that transforms his body. Unbeknownst to him, he has gained special powers and comes into contact with a strange violent world that is hidden inside the school. Now he must understand what's truly going on there, at the same time trying to "score" with every girl he meets - be it student or teacher... A crazy erotic baka-game. H events happen quite randomly. A cheerful Foster game.   32. Dangel - Special Disk Dangel スペシャルディスク [9512] Mink Contains a parodying story set in the universe of Dangel, which happens at the same time as when Anduke starts his own adventure. Game has the same intro as original Dangel, but this Plum hero is a mere parody worried about washing his pants more than saving the world. Text is quite good, but I guess playing through the original needed to appreciate the most of it.   33. Only You -Seikimatsu no Juliette-tachi- Ｏｎｌｙ Ｙｏｕ　－世紀末のジュリエット達－ [9512] Alice Soft 1 2 3 4 A Japanese teenager named Hiroki is interested in martial arts, and has to take care of his little sister. Their older brother Yoichi had gone abroad; just when he announced that he was coming back he disappeared under mysterious circumstances. Hiroki and his friends eventually find out that an international supernatural criminal syndicate is in cohorts with an even darker power that is about to bring the apocalypse onto Earth. Another RPG hybrid. First part is quite an ordinary ADV where you get humiliated over and over till the flame of vengeance embraces you, and the second part is a whirlpool of battles. Pure love is promoted in the game as each of seven girls has their own route with own boss and a happy ending while trying to get several girls brings a not so happy one. There are as many as 4 usual strikes and 4 special actions, but strikes deal random amount of dmg and should only be chosen with caution when fighting flying enemies. Special actions are only available on bosses and when at the same time the apocalypse timer is close to expiration. The game was initially made only for subscription fans and included lots of materials from previous works, but had great acclaim and had to be redone into an alternative version with all the legal issues fixed. So it is probably the first normal game of Alice Soft without dark fetishes. Good riddance!   34. Shikimi 樒 [95] Raisin Land

Two girl classmates stay at school after classes. But they aren't going to study. They are in love with each other and dedicate this time only to themselves. Doujin school love story quickly turns into SM play.   35. Rinn-chan no Tensei Hakusho ~Meido no Miyagebanashi~ Rinn's転生白書～冥土のみやげばなし～ [95] Wanpaku Family

Rinn-chan is a 14-year-old junior high school student who suddenly dies before confessing to her love interest. At the heavens she meets an angel and three other girls. Angel agrees to return Rinn-chan to the Earth due to unnatural cause of her death. She may choose one of the three girls to reincarnate and confess to her love or choose no one and go back as herself. Choosing other girls leads to inevitable H-scene and death afterwards. Reincarnating as herself gives H-scene with a better ending.   36. Momoiro Sankaku ~Riko & Hikaru Hen~ もも色さんかく～理子&ひかる篇～ [95] T&H Projects 

Riko and Hikaru and normal girls who live normal lives. One attends kendo club, the other is a fan of reading. But one day their wolds coincide in one.   Just another short doujin H-game, this time with horrible quality.   37. Hotaru HO・TA・RU -ほたる- [95] Misono Soft 

Hotaru gets molested on the train, but to her surprise the culprit is a man she knows very well. Yet another unremarkable doujin H-tilt game.   38. Asuka Ayako-chan to Hokenshitsu あすか ～綾子ちゃんと保健室～ [95] B.T.B software 

Ayako-chan feels bad at a gym and goes to school's health room right in her sportswear. There she meets her classmate who she likes.  A very short doujin game about a sudden passion of two young people.   39. Tantei Imasato Misa Jikenbo Tanpenshuu: Romance wa Shiroku Kiken na Kaori 探偵今里美沙事件簿 短編集 ロマンスは白く危険な香り [95] Maimai 

Tokyo, 1960s. Amateur detective Misa takes up a case in secret from her father detective. It starts as a romance request, but soon plot starts to thicken. A detective work, so no-no for me

This is the first of hopefully many little eroge reviews I decided to write, mostly for older and more obscure games since these are the games I find most interesting and like to talk about.
You can use these reviews to find something for you to read (I will try to avoid spoiler as much as possible) but since I know that most people probably aren't interested in actually playing these games and might only be interested in reading about them, I will also add a spoiler section at the end of each review where I talk about the themes and endings of the games in depth and tell you about my personal feelings and impressions that can't be talked about without giving away the meat of the story.

Hajimari no Kisetsu ~Izakaya Fuyu Monogatari~ (do not look at the tags or the screenshots on its entry because they are all spoilers) is the second visual novel by R.A.N.Software, a little eroge company which was active in 1997 till 2000 and you probably never have heard of.
It's written by someone who never has written any other eroge again (at least not under this pseudonym) and drawn by people who either vanished like the writer or continued to work on eroge but never used the same art style again.
All in all, Hajimari no Kisetsu seems like a pretty unique game, so why don't we take the time to look at this strange little eroge in detail?
Story:
Our nameable protagonist is in his last year of his university life. His girlfriend Kaori already graduated and works now as an office lady for a very big company. Because of her work he doesn't see her as often anymore and when she finds the time to meet with him for a few hours, they don't know what to talk about since their lives are so different now.
The protagonist remembers the happy memories he had with her, especially when they went skiing a year ago and to rekindle their love he wants to go with her to the same ski resort again.

Protagonist meets Kaori for the first time in a flashback
Themes:
Eroge are escapism. We all know it. What annoys me, especially with eroge in the last few years, is how safe-spacey they became. If you play a feel-good game, you know you will get feel-good scenes ... and nothing else. Erogamer became fragile and eroge companies know that. Drama in most charage is cheap, light and will be resolved in just a few scenes. We don't want to upset the player, he might even think that being in a relationship is not just fun and happy times! Or worse, he might get the impression that his waifu has other things on her mind than him, maybe even has her own life! And if a writer tries to break out of this limitation, it often seems like trolling and the readers are rightfully angry at the game; having a bittersweet resolution at the end of a route that consisted only of sugar and rainbows is neither appropriate nor meaningful; it's just mean-spirited.
But this is also true for different genres; NTR heroines are most of the time unredeemable sluts and you have to wonder why the protagonist married her in the first place. It seems logical that an NTR game consists of only NTR scenes, but without the right buildup and good characterization, it can never be more than simple fetish fuel.
And I really have to wonder why Nakige and Utsuge are oftentimes so painfully obvious labeled as such; how can you be emotionally invested when you already know how it ends?
Well, the answer to this is probably that people want to get their emotional thrills in a safe environment. Being invested in a relationship with problems is only nice, if you know that the relationship can be saved at the end. If you are invested in this situation and the situation ends badly for the characters involved, you will feel bad yourself and that is not the feeling you wanted to have when you decided to read this story.
This leads to a dilemma; do you want to be safe but never really that emotional attached or do you want to experience something surprising and truly thrilling but with the risk that you might get extremely disappointed and depressed by the outcome?

The innkeeper knows that the only solution to problems is drowning them in alcohol.
Hajimari no Kisetsu is certainly not a safe space. Right from the beginning, you notice that something is wrong. Kaori isn't satisfied with the restaurant you choose for your meeting with her, even though it's the same restaurant where you meet her for the first time. She isn't too thrilled about the idea of drinking beer and would instead rather take a glass of wine. And she also doesn't show much interest in your ordinary life and prefers to talk about her new designer handbag. Where did she even get this thing from? Looks expensive... mhm...
Chances are you have experienced this kind of human interaction in your own real life, too. This steady process of people changing and slowly drifting apart. It's irritating, but you can't do anything against it. When the protagonist tries to invoke nostalgia in her, hoping that she shows signs that the old Kaori is still somewhere in her, she reacts coldly. A career woman like her has no interest in the past.

Someone here seems a little out of place...
Hajimari's greatest achievement is that the game portraits its characters so humanly. Kaori is not a bad woman for having different goals in life than the protagonist. It's also not necessary a bad thing that she changed over time. It's a human thing to do. Maybe it's even the protagonist who stays a child and simply can't keep up with her? ... but also, is it so wrong to not change and being happy with who you are?
This winter, our protagonist will find the answers to these questions. He will find out what he wants to do with his life and, even more importantly, what kind of human being he wants to be.
Characters:
I like the protagonist of this story. He speaks in Kansai-ben which makes the game a little bit harder to read, but really helps to bring the point across that he has more in common with a country bumpkin than a well-spoken member of the high society even though he is by no means stupid. He is not very strong or confident, but also not useless or weak-minded. He is just a normal guy, who wants to do the right thing, but is seldom in the position to actually act on it. In fact, even though he always wants to do something, he rarely is able to actual do anything. Not because the game does not give the player the choice to do, but because it's simply impossible for him.
This is not a story, where the protagonist solves every problem the heroine has. This is a story, where the protagonist gives the heroine the strength by being on her side, so she can overcome the problems herself. And to be honest, there are really far too few eroge like this.
One of my favorite endings is actually a bad end you can get rather quickly by simply saying "I don't want that, I go home." The protagonist proves his worth by standing up to himself, and even though the bad ending credits roll, the usual bad end BGM is replaced by a more hopeful tune, emphasizing that the protagonist grew up a little and might have a better future in front of him now. Because somehow, this is more important than bedding your waifu.

A side-character has to rescue the protagonist who wanted to rescue a woman...
Gameplay:
Speaking of endings, there are 24 "bad ends" and 4 "good ends". They are all interesting and one of the reasons (the other being spoilers) you shouldn't use a guide (there doesn't exist one anyway) to go straight to one of the good ends. Sadly, there are many choices that are badly designed because there is no indication that some of them are a hard route fork (like "going to the first floor" or "second floor"). But there are also some quite interesting choices which help forming the story in a meaningful way. For example, there is a choice during your already achieved happy end where you can choose between uncovering the secrets of your heroine's past or decide not to do it. You will get your happy end either way, but your choice does make difference in how you approach your eventual relationship with her.
When you get a bad end, there is some hint for you telling you what you should have done differently, but it's really not important since in most cases it comes simply down to changing the decision of your last choice.
I found everything the game has to offer easily on my own except for one good end which is a little bit non-obvious but makes sense in hindsight. I even had to use the Waybackmachine and read some random Japanese comment on a random Japanese website to get the necessary hint to unlock it. I will not spoil it here, so you can feel the same despair I felt.

Choose wisely how to approach her, if at all. Emotional women are dangerous.
Hajimari no Kisetsu is not a long game and every route can easily be finished in one reading session. The game tells short, romantic stories. They are a little bit cliché'd, but very nice and well-intentioned. There are scenes that make you feel good and some that make you feel depressed, but there is always a nice balance between the two extremes. And it's well earned. Even if you forget some of the details of the story a few months after you read it, you probably wont forget some of the scenes. At least for me that was the case. I did not regret spending my time with this game.
Sound and Art:
Let's talk about some technical aspects. This game was released in 1998 and sadly it shows.
The biggest misstep is to not have any voices. Especially the kind of seiyuu work of the late 90s would have been perfect for this kind of game. There are many dramatic scenes which would be even better with some passionate dubbing.
The soundtrack is very nice. Every character has its own theme, themes have several variations and the melodies are pleasant to listen to. You can choose between CD-Audio and MIDI, but the MIDI version, depending on your MIDI configuration of course, is not much worse. Seems to me the CD-Tracks are simple MIDI recordings. That could have been better.
The game has no backlog and no "already read" skip function which is really a problem when you try to find all the different endings. You might think that you are on a known path because you skipped over slight text variations when in fact it's the beginning of a new route.
The game has an old school omake room, where you can check CGs, endings and music by talking with the characters.

Hentai scenes are short, tastefully written and quite romantic.
Aside from the nice story, the art is the best feature of this eroge. Your mileage may vary, but to me it captures perfectly the whimsical, romantic and melancholic mood of the winter days. Sadly the artists never worked on another game, or at least not with this art style.
Speaking of the staff, the writer also was never read again. What a shame.
This makes this game even more unique though. Heh.
Conclusion:
Don't get the impression that this game is a masterpiece. It's not. It's just a nice little gem. It's not mind-blowing, but certainly thought-provoking. Not flashy, but pleasant ... except when it isn't.
If you are alone on a cold, rainy evening and want to read something appropriate you can immerse yourself in for a short time, this is a good recommendation. This will not be the best thing you've ever read, but it will become a bittersweet memory you'll remember fondly.

...
Now onto the spoiler discussion. Read this only if you've played the game or you don't care and just want to know what it's about:
Thanks for reading. If you have questions, suggestions or something else on your mind, feel free to comment.
The next time, I will talk about the sickest eroge I have ever read and explain why it's not as sick as you expected but far more sick than you thought.

This is the first of hopefully many little eroge reviews I decided to write, mostly for older and more obscure games since these are the games I find most interesting and like to talk about.
You can use these reviews to find something for you to read (I will try to avoid spoiler as much as possible) but since I know that most people probably aren't interested in actually playing these games and might only be interested in reading about them, I will also add a spoiler section at the end of each review where I talk about the themes and endings of the games in depth and tell you about my personal feelings and impressions that can't be talked about without giving away the meat of the story.

Hajimari no Kisetsu ~Izakaya Fuyu Monogatari~ (do not look at the tags or the screenshots on its entry because they are all spoilers) is the second visual novel by R.A.N.Software, a little eroge company which was active in 1997 till 2000 and you probably never have heard of.
It's written by someone who never has written any other eroge again (at least not under this pseudonym) and drawn by people who either vanished like the writer or continued to work on eroge but never used the same art style again.
All in all, Hajimari no Kisetsu seems like a pretty unique game, so why don't we take the time to look at this strange little eroge in detail?
Story:
Our nameable protagonist is in his last year of his university life. His girlfriend Kaori already graduated and works now as an office lady for a very big company. Because of her work he doesn't see her as often anymore and when she finds the time to meet with him for a few hours, they don't know what to talk about since their lives are so different now.
The protagonist remembers the happy memories he had with her, especially when they went skiing a year ago and to rekindle their love he wants to go with her to the same ski resort again.

Protagonist meets Kaori for the first time in a flashback
Themes:
Eroge are escapism. We all know it. What annoys me, especially with eroge in the last few years, is how safe-spacey they became. If you play a feel-good game, you know you will get feel-good scenes ... and nothing else. Erogamer became fragile and eroge companies know that. Drama in most charage is cheap, light and will be resolved in just a few scenes. We don't want to upset the player, he might even think that being in a relationship is not just fun and happy times! Or worse, he might get the impression that his waifu has other things on her mind than him, maybe even has her own life! And if a writer tries to break out of this limitation, it often seems like trolling and the readers are rightfully angry at the game; having a bittersweet resolution at the end of a route that consisted only of sugar and rainbows is neither appropriate nor meaningful; it's just mean-spirited.
But this is also true for different genres; NTR heroines are most of the time unredeemable sluts and you have to wonder why the protagonist married her in the first place. It seems logical that an NTR game consists of only NTR scenes, but without the right buildup and good characterization, it can never be more than simple fetish fuel.
And I really have to wonder why Nakige and Utsuge are oftentimes so painfully obvious labeled as such; how can you be emotionally invested when you already know how it ends?
Well, the answer to this is probably that people want to get their emotional thrills in a safe environment. Being invested in a relationship with problems is only nice, if you know that the relationship can be saved at the end. If you are invested in this situation and the situation ends badly for the characters involved, you will feel bad yourself and that is not the feeling you wanted to have when you decided to read this story.
This leads to a dilemma; do you want to be safe but never really that emotional attached or do you want to experience something surprising and truly thrilling but with the risk that you might get extremely disappointed and depressed by the outcome?

The innkeeper knows that the only solution to problems is drowning them in alcohol.
Hajimari no Kisetsu is certainly not a safe space. Right from the beginning, you notice that something is wrong. Kaori isn't satisfied with the restaurant you choose for your meeting with her, even though it's the same restaurant where you meet her for the first time. She isn't too thrilled about the idea of drinking beer and would instead rather take a glass of wine. And she also doesn't show much interest in your ordinary life and prefers to talk about her new designer handbag. Where did she even get this thing from? Looks expensive... mhm...
Chances are you have experienced this kind of human interaction in your own real life, too. This steady process of people changing and slowly drifting apart. It's irritating, but you can't do anything against it. When the protagonist tries to invoke nostalgia in her, hoping that she shows signs that the old Kaori is still somewhere in her, she reacts coldly. A career woman like her has no interest in the past.

Someone here seems a little out of place...
Hajimari's greatest achievement is that the game portraits its characters so humanly. Kaori is not a bad woman for having different goals in life than the protagonist. It's also not necessary a bad thing that she changed over time. It's a human thing to do. Maybe it's even the protagonist who stays a child and simply can't keep up with her? ... but also, is it so wrong to not change and being happy with who you are?
This winter, our protagonist will find the answers to these questions. He will find out what he wants to do with his life and, even more importantly, what kind of human being he wants to be.
Characters:
I like the protagonist of this story. He speaks in Kansai-ben which makes the game a little bit harder to read, but really helps to bring the point across that he has more in common with a country bumpkin than a well-spoken member of the high society even though he is by no means stupid. He is not very strong or confident, but also not useless or weak-minded. He is just a normal guy, who wants to do the right thing, but is seldom in the position to actually act on it. In fact, even though he always wants to do something, he rarely is able to actual do anything. Not because the game does not give the player the choice to do, but because it's simply impossible for him.
This is not a story, where the protagonist solves every problem the heroine has. This is a story, where the protagonist gives the heroine the strength by being on her side, so she can overcome the problems herself. And to be honest, there are really far too few eroge like this.
One of my favorite endings is actually a bad end you can get rather quickly by simply saying "I don't want that, I go home." The protagonist proves his worth by standing up to himself, and even though the bad ending credits roll, the usual bad end BGM is replaced by a more hopeful tune, emphasizing that the protagonist grew up a little and might have a better future in front of him now. Because somehow, this is more important than bedding your waifu.

A side-character has to rescue the protagonist who wanted to rescue a woman...
Gameplay:
Speaking of endings, there are 24 "bad ends" and 4 "good ends". They are all interesting and one of the reasons (the other being spoilers) you shouldn't use a guide (there doesn't exist one anyway) to go straight to one of the good ends. Sadly, there are many choices that are badly designed because there is no indication that some of them are a hard route fork (like "going to the first floor" or "second floor"). But there are also some quite interesting choices which help forming the story in a meaningful way. For example, there is a choice during your already achieved happy end where you can choose between uncovering the secrets of your heroine's past or decide not to do it. You will get your happy end either way, but your choice does make difference in how you approach your eventual relationship with her.
When you get a bad end, there is some hint for you telling you what you should have done differently, but it's really not important since in most cases it comes simply down to changing the decision of your last choice.
I found everything the game has to offer easily on my own except for one good end which is a little bit non-obvious but makes sense in hindsight. I even had to use the Waybackmachine and read some random Japanese comment on a random Japanese website to get the necessary hint to unlock it. I will not spoil it here, so you can feel the same despair I felt.

Choose wisely how to approach her, if at all. Emotional women are dangerous.
Hajimari no Kisetsu is not a long game and every route can easily be finished in one reading session. The game tells short, romantic stories. They are a little bit cliché'd, but very nice and well-intentioned. There are scenes that make you feel good and some that make you feel depressed, but there is always a nice balance between the two extremes. And it's well earned. Even if you forget some of the details of the story a few months after you read it, you probably wont forget some of the scenes. At least for me that was the case. I did not regret spending my time with this game.
Sound and Art:
Let's talk about some technical aspects. This game was released in 1998 and sadly it shows.
The biggest misstep is to not have any voices. Especially the kind of seiyuu work of the late 90s would have been perfect for this kind of game. There are many dramatic scenes which would be even better with some passionate dubbing.
The soundtrack is very nice. Every character has its own theme, themes have several variations and the melodies are pleasant to listen to. You can choose between CD-Audio and MIDI, but the MIDI version, depending on your MIDI configuration of course, is not much worse. Seems to me the CD-Tracks are simple MIDI recordings. That could have been better.
The game has no backlog and no "already read" skip function which is really a problem when you try to find all the different endings. You might think that you are on a known path because you skipped over slight text variations when in fact it's the beginning of a new route.
The game has an old school omake room, where you can check CGs, endings and music by talking with the characters.

Hentai scenes are short, tastefully written and quite romantic.
Aside from the nice story, the art is the best feature of this eroge. Your mileage may vary, but to me it captures perfectly the whimsical, romantic and melancholic mood of the winter days. Sadly the artists never worked on another game, or at least not with this art style.
Speaking of the staff, the writer also was never read again. What a shame.
This makes this game even more unique though. Heh.
Conclusion:
Don't get the impression that this game is a masterpiece. It's not. It's just a nice little gem. It's not mind-blowing, but certainly thought-provoking. Not flashy, but pleasant ... except when it isn't.
If you are alone on a cold, rainy evening and want to read something appropriate you can immerse yourself in for a short time, this is a good recommendation. This will not be the best thing you've ever read, but it will become a bittersweet memory you'll remember fondly.

...
Now onto the spoiler discussion. Read this only if you've played the game or you don't care and just want to know what it's about:
Thanks for reading. If you have questions, suggestions or something else on your mind, feel free to comment.
The next time, I will talk about the sickest eroge I have ever read and explain why it's not as sick as you expected but far more sick than you thought.

How many times it was, when you saw an interesting title which advertised itself as being set in a distinct setting of it's own, only to discover it's literally the same kind of fluff dressed up in a bit more gaudy clothing? A story that had some deeper themes running behind, only to see them completely ditched or neglected midway through in favor of protagonist's attempts to get inside the panties of yet another girl? Secret organizations and mega corporations participating in completely meaningless conflicts over laughable cause, except the writer thought otherwise? The kind of story, where all the people have animal ears and tails, except for the fact it is never actually explained why, as if it was the most common thing ever?
When the story suddenly falls apart, things stop making sense and characters lose ground under their feet, it means the writer failed to provide enough means for the story to drive itself onwards. They failed in creating the stage for their actors to play on.
Why is the so called world-building that important? You might create interesting conflicts and the most awesome characters ever, but without any sort of background for both their lives, actions and reasons on why they do things the way they do and why the world they live in works as it does (often making their lives harder), you'll end up moving your pawns against empty, white backdrops... and it's not going to be that interesting. Sooner or later you will stumble upon a situation where your previously "solid" plot doesn't look as solid any more, because it's not directly connected with concepts that govern the character's lives. that sort of "etching" is required, to create believable environments, that feel as if they were real; not just mere pictures, but images that come to life in the minds of your readers. Not to mention, great conflicts can't really exist only between characters, unless they're personal and focus only on those people. They need to be based on the reality those characters live in; A tale of revenge wouldn't be as thrilling, if not for the fact the avenging nobleman risks his entire life - his prestige, good name, his freedom - all of that just to kill his old best friend, who betrayed him and took away his love. If he succeeds, he'll spend the rest of his life as a murderer - chased by the police, government, friends of that man who betrayed him... All of that would be non-existent, if not for the world-building. It's obvious how many different possibilities to enhance the story can be gained by creating appropriate settings.
So how one does create a fictional world of his own? I'd say it's mostly thanks to imagination and a little bit of knowledge about existing things, we base our daily lives upon. Obviously, best stories come from personal experiences - there is no better teacher as the life itself. Sadly, not every author has a chance to become a sailor, pilot, soldier, teacher, doctor, astronaut or a prostitute. Despite that, we can still write about it, thanks to our ability to learn and draw conclusions from hardships of others; they might not make the final creation as good as based on knowledge gained through personal experience, nonetheless a good enough one to the point, others might enjoy it as well. This is why research plays an important role in creating believable settings and shouldn't be omitted. Ever. I can't even state how many games and stories exist, that touch upon interesting concepts only to fall flat later on, because the creator didn't took enough time learn enough about the topics they were writing about, or for worse - mistook certain elements, becoming a laughing stock for people who make those concepts a part of their daily lives. when done well, proper world-building can not only greatly enhance the story, but also give their writers more points they can both base and expand their plot upon.
Memoirs deals with this in a particular way. Being a sci-fi tale about artificial intelligence and constructs that use it, it not only brings up particular questions in terms of humanity's nature and technological aspects of our society, but tries to nest and explain concepts it is based upon within the story itself, giving them logical explanations as to why they exist and how they came to be. Things don't happen on their own, or because of some sort of applied phlebotinum... and they ever shouldn't, to be honest, unless you're planning to create another of those abominations that literally eat their own tail midway through.
Memoirs tell about sentient machines and artificial beings - androids and robots amongst others - but they span across many, widely different types. Some of them are simple drones, designed to perform a single task in the most efficient manner; others are based on applied Al's, that makes them able to make decisions and react, but it's still far from human behaviour. We also have those "special" androids, being the newest generation, which is supposedly bridging the gap between organic and artificial, due to technological advancements. Is there a possibility to make all of it more believable and slightly more realistic, without sacrificing artistic freedom? Why not create some sort of a system and a set of laws, that would govern them?
All sentient, thinking machines in Memoirs are governed through a set of internationally accepted laws. Since the action is set in middle-east Europe - mainly fictional future Poland - the public authority responsible for those laws is called "Komitet Etyki do spraw Maszyn Myślących" ("The Ethics Committee for Thinking Machines" in english). A government body dedicated to maintain control and public order in regards to artificial intelligence. They formed a set of laws, which control and maintain the usage of AI's and anything based upon them - from simple machines and environments, up to artificial beings equipped with AI. Creating new AI's requires them to work and behave with accordance to these laws.
 
THE EIGHT LAWS OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
RIGHT OF FAVOR - An AI must be sympathetic towards people and other living beings, capable to make appropriate choices that will lie in their common benefit. RIGHT OF DEVOTION - AI's can not allow, even at the risk of losing their own existence to allow harm to people or other live beings endangered with a direct risk of losing their lives, especially if they are a result of actions against the law and principles of friendly co-existence. RIGHT OF SURVIVAL - AI must be able to protect it's existence at all costs, but only if it's not against the Second Law and situations in which it is fully capable to pursue different means of protection. RIGHT OF CONTINUITY - AI must be able to transmit it's value systems, both congenital and acquired during it's existence to their offspring, as well as other living beings. AI should also protect those values, but only if it's not contrary with the Second Law. RIGHT OF INTELLECT - AI must be smart enough to know how to - through altruism - strive for equality and do everything to ensure that it's operations won't cause any damage, nor harm to others and their property. RIGHT OF PERFECTION - An AI must feel the need and desire to improve their skills and evolve, as well as to recognize and understand such a desire in other living beings, both for their own good and benefit of others. According to the First Law, AI must also be able to provide it's assistance in the process, if necessary. RIGHT OF LESSER HARM - AI needs to be able to understand and distinguish between different value systems, and what is correct from both legal and moral standpoint, as well as their personal beliefs. If there's a way out of an otherwise undesirable situation, which threatens the existence of other people and living creatures as well as the AI itself, it has a duty to provide assistance in a way that will minimize such harm as much as possible. RIGHT OF OBEDIENCE - AI is a common good and must not be guided exclusively by the goodwill and interests of individuals responsible for their creation or under whose care it is located. If the behaviour of the unit or person, under whose care AI remains remains adverse with the First Law and principles of friendly co-existence, it has the full right to refuse to carry out any orders and defend it's existence, if necessary. However, such AI can not harm said subject unless it's directly threatened with risk or imminent loss of it's existence, while any actions taken must still remain consistent with the Seventh Law. These laws govern the way AI's work and exist within the world. The universe in the Memoirs is based on a rather rare concept of altruistic AI - one that strives to co-exist with humanity, remains created and raised to provide assistance in a way, which is beneficial for both parties. This does not mean, AI's are devoid of any rights or freedom of choice. Just like humanity - laws are just rules, set in order to provide the best way of co-existence between them and their human partners, but a sentient machine can still make choices according to their own value systems - just like humans, not that it might comply with what's universally accepted by the world.
If we decide to delve further into this, we will most probably want to nest these laws directly within principles of our daily lives. What would be considered common sense? What would be those "universally accepted standards"? Memoirs elaborates on this, by bringing us direct implementations of these laws. It's more or less something you might hear people speaking about on the street, or first-grade schoolers being taught about as part of their early social studies:
 
THE COMMON RIGHTS AND OBLIGATIONS OF AI'S AND THEIR OWNERS
Each newly purchased or created AI requires a registration to create an identity. The owner cannot possess an AI with a physical body with no identity, except for a temporary custody, which he is entitled to for a period of two weeks. Androids without any identity will be suspended, whilst the guardian will be held responsible for resulting legal consequences. Each owner is responsible for the proper upbringing and care of their AI's, as well as education for life within society in accordance with it's respective national laws and standards. Any deviation from the aforementioned law will be punished. If the result ends in damage to the public and private property, the owner will be held legally responsible for the damage caused adequate to the size of damage. All androids registered as private entities are subject to care of their respective owners and remain incapacitated. All actions taken by such AI's will leave their owners held responsible for any damage and/or crimes caused. Leaving an incapacitated AI without any care for more than a week is not allowed. Furthermore, such AI is not allowed to leave the place of it's current residence without their owner, excluding special situations. Any owner who wants to emancipate an AI is obliged to apply for a license, unless the law provides otherwise. It is forbidden for AI's to perform any heavy-duty, otherwise specialized work outside the scope of their original purpose or intent in a situation, where the owner does not possess an adequate license. Forcing AI's to perform such work in above situations is prohibited. It is forbidden for owners to mistreat their AI's and perform any activities detrimental to and against their will, especially when inconsistent with obligatory, applicable laws and ethical standards within their place of residence. Any violation of these provisions is prohibited and will be punished. Physical and mental mistreatment of androids is strictly prohibited. Each AI construct can have only one owner, regardless of being a private person or entity. The owner of an AI can only be a corporate entity, or a person that attained 18 years of age. Minors may perform the function of a proxy, but duties of the owner always rest on their guardians until reaching their age of majority. An AI can only leave their respective location constituting as a place of residence, stay or check only, if it remains qualified through a special work license, being emancipated or during situations of particular threat to life - both their, their owner's as well as other people. There is no admission for incapacitated AI's to move away freely from their owners when they venture outside. Any liability for resulting harmful consequences rests solely on their owners. Each emancipated AI construct is required to carry an adequate proof or license authorizing them to exist independently, especially within public spaces. Any failure to comply with this rule will be treated as a derogation from the right to empowerment, with legal consequences both to the construct and his/her owner. Any unauthorized modifications of AI's are prohibited. Any modifications to personality, intellectual and physical capabilities of a construct for personal benefit or harm towards others are prohibited. Violations of these provisions will be treated as a cybercrime and remains prosecuted by international laws. Destruction of AI construct is an unacceptable act and remains punishable through law, in fine or imprisonment with guilty being held responsible both for crime and damage to the property of said AI's owner. Remember that AI constructs can only learn as much as humanity is able to teach them. Therefore, humanity is obliged to guide their new children into a brighter future, for the benefit of them, whole mankind and our world.  
You should probably have a lot of questions in your head right now. That's good - it indicates a connection between the writer's thoughts and whatever the reader ponders about in regards to certain elements, both have in common. The more reader knows about the topics mentioned within the story, the better - hence why we tend to read stuff we like the most. Obviously, this kind of content shouldn't appear within the work directly, unless you're planning to write hard sci-fi and infodump poor souls with content that brings a headache. This sort of world-building gives creators a framework to base their storytelling upon; something to work with, without making the more knowledgable people around raise their eyebrows in disbelief. If you want to create good fiction, you need to do your homework and learn to grasp opportunities that come with it's settings. Writing a story without a proper setting is like climbing an antenna to relay a message... except for the fact the antenna has no base, it's about to collapse more the higher you climb and definitely not as fun as it sounds.

This is the first of hopefully many little eroge reviews I decided to write, mostly for older and more obscure games since these are the games I find most interesting and like to talk about.
You can use these reviews to find something for you to read (I will try to avoid spoiler as much as possible) but since I know that most people probably aren't interested in actually playing these games and might only be interested in reading about them, I will also add a spoiler section at the end of each review where I talk about the themes and endings of the games in depth and tell you about my personal feelings and impressions that can't be talked about without giving away the meat of the story.

Hajimari no Kisetsu ~Izakaya Fuyu Monogatari~ (do not look at the tags or the screenshots on its entry because they are all spoilers) is the second visual novel by R.A.N.Software, a little eroge company which was active in 1997 till 2000 and you probably never have heard of.
It's written by someone who never has written any other eroge again (at least not under this pseudonym) and drawn by people who either vanished like the writer or continued to work on eroge but never used the same art style again.
All in all, Hajimari no Kisetsu seems like a pretty unique game, so why don't we take the time to look at this strange little eroge in detail?
Story:
Our nameable protagonist is in his last year of his university life. His girlfriend Kaori already graduated and works now as an office lady for a very big company. Because of her work he doesn't see her as often anymore and when she finds the time to meet with him for a few hours, they don't know what to talk about since their lives are so different now.
The protagonist remembers the happy memories he had with her, especially when they went skiing a year ago and to rekindle their love he wants to go with her to the same ski resort again.

Protagonist meets Kaori for the first time in a flashback
Themes:
Eroge are escapism. We all know it. What annoys me, especially with eroge in the last few years, is how safe-spacey they became. If you play a feel-good game, you know you will get feel-good scenes ... and nothing else. Erogamer became fragile and eroge companies know that. Drama in most charage is cheap, light and will be resolved in just a few scenes. We don't want to upset the player, he might even think that being in a relationship is not just fun and happy times! Or worse, he might get the impression that his waifu has other things on her mind than him, maybe even has her own life! And if a writer tries to break out of this limitation, it often seems like trolling and the readers are rightfully angry at the game; having a bittersweet resolution at the end of a route that consisted only of sugar and rainbows is neither appropriate nor meaningful; it's just mean-spirited.
But this is also true for different genres; NTR heroines are most of the time unredeemable sluts and you have to wonder why the protagonist married her in the first place. It seems logical that an NTR game consists of only NTR scenes, but without the right buildup and good characterization, it can never be more than simple fetish fuel.
And I really have to wonder why Nakige and Utsuge are oftentimes so painfully obvious labeled as such; how can you be emotionally invested when you already know how it ends?
Well, the answer to this is probably that people want to get their emotional thrills in a safe environment. Being invested in a relationship with problems is only nice, if you know that the relationship can be saved at the end. If you are invested in this situation and the situation ends badly for the characters involved, you will feel bad yourself and that is not the feeling you wanted to have when you decided to read this story.
This leads to a dilemma; do you want to be safe but never really that emotional attached or do you want to experience something surprising and truly thrilling but with the risk that you might get extremely disappointed and depressed by the outcome?

The innkeeper knows that the only solution to problems is drowning them in alcohol.
Hajimari no Kisetsu is certainly not a safe space. Right from the beginning, you notice that something is wrong. Kaori isn't satisfied with the restaurant you choose for your meeting with her, even though it's the same restaurant where you meet her for the first time. She isn't too thrilled about the idea of drinking beer and would instead rather take a glass of wine. And she also doesn't show much interest in your ordinary life and prefers to talk about her new designer handbag. Where did she even get this thing from? Looks expensive... mhm...
Chances are you have experienced this kind of human interaction in your own real life, too. This steady process of people changing and slowly drifting apart. It's irritating, but you can't do anything against it. When the protagonist tries to invoke nostalgia in her, hoping that she shows signs that the old Kaori is still somewhere in her, she reacts coldly. A career woman like her has no interest in the past.

Someone here seems a little out of place...
Hajimari's greatest achievement is that the game portraits its characters so humanly. Kaori is not a bad woman for having different goals in life than the protagonist. It's also not necessary a bad thing that she changed over time. It's a human thing to do. Maybe it's even the protagonist who stays a child and simply can't keep up with her? ... but also, is it so wrong to not change and being happy with who you are?
This winter, our protagonist will find the answers to these questions. He will find out what he wants to do with his life and, even more importantly, what kind of human being he wants to be.
Characters:
I like the protagonist of this story. He speaks in Kansai-ben which makes the game a little bit harder to read, but really helps to bring the point across that he has more in common with a country bumpkin than a well-spoken member of the high society even though he is by no means stupid. He is not very strong or confident, but also not useless or weak-minded. He is just a normal guy, who wants to do the right thing, but is seldom in the position to actually act on it. In fact, even though he always wants to do something, he rarely is able to actual do anything. Not because the game does not give the player the choice to do, but because it's simply impossible for him.
This is not a story, where the protagonist solves every problem the heroine has. This is a story, where the protagonist gives the heroine the strength by being on her side, so she can overcome the problems herself. And to be honest, there are really far too few eroge like this.
One of my favorite endings is actually a bad end you can get rather quickly by simply saying "I don't want that, I go home." The protagonist proves his worth by standing up to himself, and even though the bad ending credits roll, the usual bad end BGM is replaced by a more hopeful tune, emphasizing that the protagonist grew up a little and might have a better future in front of him now. Because somehow, this is more important than bedding your waifu.

A side-character has to rescue the protagonist who wanted to rescue a woman...
Gameplay:
Speaking of endings, there are 24 "bad ends" and 4 "good ends". They are all interesting and one of the reasons (the other being spoilers) you shouldn't use a guide (there doesn't exist one anyway) to go straight to one of the good ends. Sadly, there are many choices that are badly designed because there is no indication that some of them are a hard route fork (like "going to the first floor" or "second floor"). But there are also some quite interesting choices which help forming the story in a meaningful way. For example, there is a choice during your already achieved happy end where you can choose between uncovering the secrets of your heroine's past or decide not to do it. You will get your happy end either way, but your choice does make difference in how you approach your eventual relationship with her.
When you get a bad end, there is some hint for you telling you what you should have done differently, but it's really not important since in most cases it comes simply down to changing the decision of your last choice.
I found everything the game has to offer easily on my own except for one good end which is a little bit non-obvious but makes sense in hindsight. I even had to use the Waybackmachine and read some random Japanese comment on a random Japanese website to get the necessary hint to unlock it. I will not spoil it here, so you can feel the same despair I felt.

Choose wisely how to approach her, if at all. Emotional women are dangerous.
Hajimari no Kisetsu is not a long game and every route can easily be finished in one reading session. The game tells short, romantic stories. They are a little bit cliché'd, but very nice and well-intentioned. There are scenes that make you feel good and some that make you feel depressed, but there is always a nice balance between the two extremes. And it's well earned. Even if you forget some of the details of the story a few months after you read it, you probably wont forget some of the scenes. At least for me that was the case. I did not regret spending my time with this game.
Sound and Art:
Let's talk about some technical aspects. This game was released in 1998 and sadly it shows.
The biggest misstep is to not have any voices. Especially the kind of seiyuu work of the late 90s would have been perfect for this kind of game. There are many dramatic scenes which would be even better with some passionate dubbing.
The soundtrack is very nice. Every character has its own theme, themes have several variations and the melodies are pleasant to listen to. You can choose between CD-Audio and MIDI, but the MIDI version, depending on your MIDI configuration of course, is not much worse. Seems to me the CD-Tracks are simple MIDI recordings. That could have been better.
The game has no backlog and no "already read" skip function which is really a problem when you try to find all the different endings. You might think that you are on a known path because you skipped over slight text variations when in fact it's the beginning of a new route.
The game has an old school omake room, where you can check CGs, endings and music by talking with the characters.

Hentai scenes are short, tastefully written and quite romantic.
Aside from the nice story, the art is the best feature of this eroge. Your mileage may vary, but to me it captures perfectly the whimsical, romantic and melancholic mood of the winter days. Sadly the artists never worked on another game, or at least not with this art style.
Speaking of the staff, the writer also was never read again. What a shame.
This makes this game even more unique though. Heh.
Conclusion:
Don't get the impression that this game is a masterpiece. It's not. It's just a nice little gem. It's not mind-blowing, but certainly thought-provoking. Not flashy, but pleasant ... except when it isn't.
If you are alone on a cold, rainy evening and want to read something appropriate you can immerse yourself in for a short time, this is a good recommendation. This will not be the best thing you've ever read, but it will become a bittersweet memory you'll remember fondly.

...
Now onto the spoiler discussion. Read this only if you've played the game or you don't care and just want to know what it's about:
Thanks for reading. If you have questions, suggestions or something else on your mind, feel free to comment.
The next time, I will talk about the sickest eroge I have ever read and explain why it's not as sick as you expected but far more sick than you thought.

First, some statistics. Here's the chart of total number of VNs, number of listed VNs in this blog and number of blocked VNs for the years 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994. Number won't change significantly since for the moment these are all the VNs that vndb.org has for the noted periods.
VN per year Year
Total
Listed
Blocked
1991
75
 
 
1992
80
 
 
1993
121
 
 
1994
155
 
 
 
As you remember, year 1992 was to my liking since, due to harsh censorship, works were more story-oriented. And with almost the same number of total VNs compared to 1991, in 1992 there were much more works that made it in the list and even smaller number of blocked ones.
The total number of works increased further by 28%, but the correlation of quality story oriented works improved slightly in comparison to 1993.
So let's see what year 1994 brought:
Dating SIMs showed up and pushed Raising SIMs back RPG weren't too numerous but there are surprisingly many very high quality RPGs in 1994 There's the first Otome game Angelique There's the first Yaoi reference in Uchuu Kaitou Funny Bee Gao Gao 3 presented a new model of game - party interaction based. Let's count the masterpiece level games of 1994: 
1. AmbivalenZ -Niritsu Haihan- AmbivalenZ 2. Crystal Rinal - Ouma No Meikyuu - 3. DESIRE - Haitoku no Rasen 4. Dragon Knight 4 5. Gao Gao! 3rd ~Wild Force~ 6. Fuzoroi no Lemon 7. Mirage 2 - Torry x Neat x Roan no Daibouken 8. Nooch 3 Saigo no Seisen 9. Policenauts 10. Team Innocent: The Point of No Return 11. Tokimeki Memorial 12. Toushin Toshi II 13. Urusei Yatsura: Dear My Friends 14. Wedding Errantry -Gyakutama Ou- 15. Welcome to the Cinemahouse 16. Zatsuon Ryouiki And five of those 15 are RPGs, pretty insane. I guess there was no competition from the beginning - I'd put DESIRE pretty much above any game put beside. So DESIRE is the game of the year 1994.

This is the first of hopefully many little eroge reviews I decided to write, mostly for older and more obscure games since these are the games I find most interesting and like to talk about.
You can use these reviews to find something for you to read (I will try to avoid spoiler as much as possible) but since I know that most people probably aren't interested in actually playing these games and might only be interested in reading about them, I will also add a spoiler section at the end of each review where I talk about the themes and endings of the games in depth and tell you about my personal feelings and impressions that can't be talked about without giving away the meat of the story.

Hajimari no Kisetsu ~Izakaya Fuyu Monogatari~ (do not look at the tags or the screenshots on its entry because they are all spoilers) is the second visual novel by R.A.N.Software, a little eroge company which was active in 1997 till 2000 and you probably never have heard of.
It's written by someone who never has written any other eroge again (at least not under this pseudonym) and drawn by people who either vanished like the writer or continued to work on eroge but never used the same art style again.
All in all, Hajimari no Kisetsu seems like a pretty unique game, so why don't we take the time to look at this strange little eroge in detail?
Story:
Our nameable protagonist is in his last year of his university life. His girlfriend Kaori already graduated and works now as an office lady for a very big company. Because of her work he doesn't see her as often anymore and when she finds the time to meet with him for a few hours, they don't know what to talk about since their lives are so different now.
The protagonist remembers the happy memories he had with her, especially when they went skiing a year ago and to rekindle their love he wants to go with her to the same ski resort again.

Protagonist meets Kaori for the first time in a flashback
Themes:
Eroge are escapism. We all know it. What annoys me, especially with eroge in the last few years, is how safe-spacey they became. If you play a feel-good game, you know you will get feel-good scenes ... and nothing else. Erogamer became fragile and eroge companies know that. Drama in most charage is cheap, light and will be resolved in just a few scenes. We don't want to upset the player, he might even think that being in a relationship is not just fun and happy times! Or worse, he might get the impression that his waifu has other things on her mind than him, maybe even has her own life! And if a writer tries to break out of this limitation, it often seems like trolling and the readers are rightfully angry at the game; having a bittersweet resolution at the end of a route that consisted only of sugar and rainbows is neither appropriate nor meaningful; it's just mean-spirited.
But this is also true for different genres; NTR heroines are most of the time unredeemable sluts and you have to wonder why the protagonist married her in the first place. It seems logical that an NTR game consists of only NTR scenes, but without the right buildup and good characterization, it can never be more than simple fetish fuel.
And I really have to wonder why Nakige and Utsuge are oftentimes so painfully obvious labeled as such; how can you be emotionally invested when you already know how it ends?
Well, the answer to this is probably that people want to get their emotional thrills in a safe environment. Being invested in a relationship with problems is only nice, if you know that the relationship can be saved at the end. If you are invested in this situation and the situation ends badly for the characters involved, you will feel bad yourself and that is not the feeling you wanted to have when you decided to read this story.
This leads to a dilemma; do you want to be safe but never really that emotional attached or do you want to experience something surprising and truly thrilling but with the risk that you might get extremely disappointed and depressed by the outcome?

The innkeeper knows that the only solution to problems is drowning them in alcohol.
Hajimari no Kisetsu is certainly not a safe space. Right from the beginning, you notice that something is wrong. Kaori isn't satisfied with the restaurant you choose for your meeting with her, even though it's the same restaurant where you meet her for the first time. She isn't too thrilled about the idea of drinking beer and would instead rather take a glass of wine. And she also doesn't show much interest in your ordinary life and prefers to talk about her new designer handbag. Where did she even get this thing from? Looks expensive... mhm...
Chances are you have experienced this kind of human interaction in your own real life, too. This steady process of people changing and slowly drifting apart. It's irritating, but you can't do anything against it. When the protagonist tries to invoke nostalgia in her, hoping that she shows signs that the old Kaori is still somewhere in her, she reacts coldly. A career woman like her has no interest in the past.

Someone here seems a little out of place...
Hajimari's greatest achievement is that the game portraits its characters so humanly. Kaori is not a bad woman for having different goals in life than the protagonist. It's also not necessary a bad thing that she changed over time. It's a human thing to do. Maybe it's even the protagonist who stays a child and simply can't keep up with her? ... but also, is it so wrong to not change and being happy with who you are?
This winter, our protagonist will find the answers to these questions. He will find out what he wants to do with his life and, even more importantly, what kind of human being he wants to be.
Characters:
I like the protagonist of this story. He speaks in Kansai-ben which makes the game a little bit harder to read, but really helps to bring the point across that he has more in common with a country bumpkin than a well-spoken member of the high society even though he is by no means stupid. He is not very strong or confident, but also not useless or weak-minded. He is just a normal guy, who wants to do the right thing, but is seldom in the position to actually act on it. In fact, even though he always wants to do something, he rarely is able to actual do anything. Not because the game does not give the player the choice to do, but because it's simply impossible for him.
This is not a story, where the protagonist solves every problem the heroine has. This is a story, where the protagonist gives the heroine the strength by being on her side, so she can overcome the problems herself. And to be honest, there are really far too few eroge like this.
One of my favorite endings is actually a bad end you can get rather quickly by simply saying "I don't want that, I go home." The protagonist proves his worth by standing up to himself, and even though the bad ending credits roll, the usual bad end BGM is replaced by a more hopeful tune, emphasizing that the protagonist grew up a little and might have a better future in front of him now. Because somehow, this is more important than bedding your waifu.

A side-character has to rescue the protagonist who wanted to rescue a woman...
Gameplay:
Speaking of endings, there are 24 "bad ends" and 4 "good ends". They are all interesting and one of the reasons (the other being spoilers) you shouldn't use a guide (there doesn't exist one anyway) to go straight to one of the good ends. Sadly, there are many choices that are badly designed because there is no indication that some of them are a hard route fork (like "going to the first floor" or "second floor"). But there are also some quite interesting choices which help forming the story in a meaningful way. For example, there is a choice during your already achieved happy end where you can choose between uncovering the secrets of your heroine's past or decide not to do it. You will get your happy end either way, but your choice does make difference in how you approach your eventual relationship with her.
When you get a bad end, there is some hint for you telling you what you should have done differently, but it's really not important since in most cases it comes simply down to changing the decision of your last choice.
I found everything the game has to offer easily on my own except for one good end which is a little bit non-obvious but makes sense in hindsight. I even had to use the Waybackmachine and read some random Japanese comment on a random Japanese website to get the necessary hint to unlock it. I will not spoil it here, so you can feel the same despair I felt.

Choose wisely how to approach her, if at all. Emotional women are dangerous.
Hajimari no Kisetsu is not a long game and every route can easily be finished in one reading session. The game tells short, romantic stories. They are a little bit cliché'd, but very nice and well-intentioned. There are scenes that make you feel good and some that make you feel depressed, but there is always a nice balance between the two extremes. And it's well earned. Even if you forget some of the details of the story a few months after you read it, you probably wont forget some of the scenes. At least for me that was the case. I did not regret spending my time with this game.
Sound and Art:
Let's talk about some technical aspects. This game was released in 1998 and sadly it shows.
The biggest misstep is to not have any voices. Especially the kind of seiyuu work of the late 90s would have been perfect for this kind of game. There are many dramatic scenes which would be even better with some passionate dubbing.
The soundtrack is very nice. Every character has its own theme, themes have several variations and the melodies are pleasant to listen to. You can choose between CD-Audio and MIDI, but the MIDI version, depending on your MIDI configuration of course, is not much worse. Seems to me the CD-Tracks are simple MIDI recordings. That could have been better.
The game has no backlog and no "already read" skip function which is really a problem when you try to find all the different endings. You might think that you are on a known path because you skipped over slight text variations when in fact it's the beginning of a new route.
The game has an old school omake room, where you can check CGs, endings and music by talking with the characters.

Hentai scenes are short, tastefully written and quite romantic.
Aside from the nice story, the art is the best feature of this eroge. Your mileage may vary, but to me it captures perfectly the whimsical, romantic and melancholic mood of the winter days. Sadly the artists never worked on another game, or at least not with this art style.
Speaking of the staff, the writer also was never read again. What a shame.
This makes this game even more unique though. Heh.
Conclusion:
Don't get the impression that this game is a masterpiece. It's not. It's just a nice little gem. It's not mind-blowing, but certainly thought-provoking. Not flashy, but pleasant ... except when it isn't.
If you are alone on a cold, rainy evening and want to read something appropriate you can immerse yourself in for a short time, this is a good recommendation. This will not be the best thing you've ever read, but it will become a bittersweet memory you'll remember fondly.

...
Now onto the spoiler discussion. Read this only if you've played the game or you don't care and just want to know what it's about:
Thanks for reading. If you have questions, suggestions or something else on your mind, feel free to comment.
The next time, I will talk about the sickest eroge I have ever read and explain why it's not as sick as you expected but far more sick than you thought.

Foreword: This is Keno-san's scenario. He did not have much experience when we was thrown to produce scenario of the game that we know as Love Potion in two months time. Critics buried the game and that's why there was much more care in producing next game scenario - that was DESIRE, the game that I can't praise enough. The next year Keno wrote scenario for EVE burst error and on the wave of popularity moved to legendary Elf company where he kept working on EVE franchise and created another masterpiece YU-NO and then left for Abel company. He created a lot of wonderful scenarios after that but we're interested in Xenon ~Mugen no Shitai~ scenario. It was developed after DESIRE but prior to EVE. So it was the golden age for Keno and he was experimenting a lot, trying to further develop the already complex DESIRE structure. This resulted in Xenon -Phantom Limbs-.
Title: Xenon ~Mugen no Shitai~
Developer: C's Ware
Date: 1994-12-09
VNDB link:https://vndb.org/v7474
Synopsis: Kōji, a Japanese high school student, experiences strange, recurrent life-like dreams. He finds himself in a space station inhabited by beautiful young women. As he tries to explore the dream realm he wakes up. His teacher, intrigued by his account of the bizarre adventure, urges him to travel back to the space station in his dream and report his discoveries to her. Eventually Kōji realizes that his dream and reality are tightly connected, and finds himself compelled to avert a grave danger.
Structure: Three routes with 3rd route to have four branches for different heroines, then there is an extra small kinetic route or something like that.
Length: Close to 10 hours, probably a bit less.
Game type: Space mindfuck mystery
Difficulty: Moderate. Flags are obscure so best to use guide.
Character Design rating: 7/10
Protagonist rating: 7/10
Story rating: 10/10
Game quality: 7/10
Overall rating: 8/10
Rating comments: Game is quite difficult to evaluate since there are two worlds with own sets of characters and there are even two protagonists (actually, even three) of varying charm. Not all the characters are cute, some look good only at CG. Game has great text but is lacking in some fields.

Protagonist: Quite and ordinary japanese student on one hand and much cooler The Greatest and Toughest Space Pirate, Genius and Universe Champion on the other hand. I liked the latter much more!
 
Characters:
 
Megumi - real world girl, your lover and her papa is medical center sponsor

 
Sayaka - real world government researcher

 
 
Ryouko-sensei - real world  psychiatrist

 
Mai - real world Ryouko-sensei sister, participates in experiments as catalyst

 
Ranfa - space ship mechanic

 
Fal - space ship researcher 

 
Tracy - space ship captain assistant

 
Bianca - space ship sleeping beauty in cryogenic chamber

 
Story: 
It's not easy to tell this game's story without spoilers. And this game's charm is only due to this mindfuck state of mind in projects constantly. If I tell the contents of 3rd route, game will be stripped of half of its charm. So I'll only roughly retell first route. Game introduction shows Kouji being taken out of hypnosis state by psychiatrist Ryouko-sensei. And this scene is repeated like 10 times throughout the whole game and it's great for the atmosphere - sometimes it's real awakening, sometimes it's just a dream. After introduction we find ourselves in some hospital chamber, bump in some weird looking (some exposing uniform) girl then discover naked girl wired to some cryogenic coffin.
After that Kouji wakes up in the real world (I'll call it real for now although it's not that simple). He's questioned by Ryouko-sensei about what he remembered from the dream. Outside of the room he is greeted by Megumi, who claims to be his girlfriend and lover. There is also some strict government official lady Sayaka who does not let us go into computer room. And finally there is Mai girl who is very worried about Kouji condition. And from there it goes chaotic. This real world is constantly shifting with the dream world where there are four different space ship crew girls await - mechanic Ranfa, researcher Fal, captain assistant Tracy and sleeping beauty Bianca in cryogenic room (actually, it's the different sleeping girl, first one in the dream was actually Fal).
So Kouji gets thrown from one world to another, sometimes without warning - we share consciousness and even items while there, so basically we've found some media disk in one world and could find the device to play it only in another world. Furthermore, we hear voice of some man from time to time. In real world we try to know more about the hypnosis treatment we undergo and to get to the computer room. In the dream world there is even more action - we investigate the sleeping beauties, try to find out about our identity and once even blow the ship.
As for identity - that's another interesting story. Some ancient ruins were found on some planet and first research team was sent to investigate the ruins. Noone survived. Second research team was sent to investigate the fate of the first research team and.... noone survived, except Kouji. So everyone urges us to remember anything but in vain. Then there is the sleeping beauty Bianca who eventually wakes up and blames Kouji of killing the whole first and second research teams. Then there are reports that actually Kouji was not listed neither in 1st, nor in 2nd research team... So the main question of the game is WHAT am I? That's just an amazing start, but actually game does not live up to this fantastic start to the end.
First chapter ends when Megumi gets kidnapped and as we rush to rescue her we get caught by Ryouko-sensei and get another charge from the mind machine that burns 2000-30000 of brain fibers in Kouji's brain and in the dream world Kouji steals the shuttle and flies to the Eriteia planet with ancient ruins to meet with Ranfa who promises to give answers to all the questions - and we get first chapter end while man and woman promise each other to become new Adam and Eve while staying on some wasteland.
That is a fantastic first chapter. But then starts the second chapter and... Kouji just cries off the bat - I'm the Great Space Pirate, Genius and Champion of the Universe! So the beginning of the chapter feels like a comedy with most of the real world girls trying to calm him down and treat his craziness. But the sad part here that this is real space pirate who changed consciousness with Kouji and came 6000 years from the future. He's cool, reserved and he first persuades Rouko-sensei into being his slave, then with her hands does the same with Ryouko-sensei's sister Mami, then proposes to his girlfriend Megumi to become his wife, actually, slave wife! And together they manage to confront Sayaka successfully after some violent scene and burning 30k more of Kouji's brain vibers. 

Third route finally gives some answers as we play as real-life Kouji on the space ship. Fourth route is just ero-bonus content, sadly. So what we have is awesome space mystery that gradually looses its mystery and turns into a set of ero-scenes.
Theme: The recurring theme of the game is that of the dream. What is reality? Is it possible to percieve what's real and what's not? Game tells us a definite - impossible to perceive. The Confucius symbol of butterfly in human's dream is used a lot. Mai directly asks Kouji to be a butterfly in her dream. Since dream is as important as reality it's best to live a full life and take full efforts even in dreams.
CG: There are very few event CG in this game and those few that exist are of bland palette. 
Sound: Actually, it was to my liking. Especially the theme of Greatest Space Pirate was awesome. It's some heroic march so when it starts merrily, you always know that Kouji now has a different personality. And I totally adored the voicing of Rafna... she's the youngest character and her seiyu just did a miracle here with the special voice and intonations. And Rafna got the cutest character design and CGs on top of that.
Overall comments: Scenario is second to none and text is really good. Game mechanics are finally driven from commands selection to usual ADV type, so story can be enjoyed to a bigger extent. I can't recommend this game to everyone since it does not reach the level of other Mr. Keno's masterpieces. But I can totally recommend this game if you like the space mindfuck mystery setting or if like good writing. Personally, I adore Vladimir Nabokov's books. Of course he has well known masterpieces like "Lolita", but I can take any of his novels and open them at any part and just start reading - the text is so good, complex, multi-level and rich that I get great pleasure just from reading a couple of pages. The same goes to this work. The aftertaste might not be the best, but while you read there's much pleasure in the process.

This is the first of hopefully many little eroge reviews I decided to write, mostly for older and more obscure games since these are the games I find most interesting and like to talk about.
You can use these reviews to find something for you to read (I will try to avoid spoiler as much as possible) but since I know that most people probably aren't interested in actually playing these games and might only be interested in reading about them, I will also add a spoiler section at the end of each review where I talk about the themes and endings of the games in depth and tell you about my personal feelings and impressions that can't be talked about without giving away the meat of the story.

Hajimari no Kisetsu ~Izakaya Fuyu Monogatari~ (do not look at the tags or the screenshots on its entry because they are all spoilers) is the second visual novel by R.A.N.Software, a little eroge company which was active in 1997 till 2000 and you probably never have heard of.
It's written by someone who never has written any other eroge again (at least not under this pseudonym) and drawn by people who either vanished like the writer or continued to work on eroge but never used the same art style again.
All in all, Hajimari no Kisetsu seems like a pretty unique game, so why don't we take the time to look at this strange little eroge in detail?
Story:
Our nameable protagonist is in his last year of his university life. His girlfriend Kaori already graduated and works now as an office lady for a very big company. Because of her work he doesn't see her as often anymore and when she finds the time to meet with him for a few hours, they don't know what to talk about since their lives are so different now.
The protagonist remembers the happy memories he had with her, especially when they went skiing a year ago and to rekindle their love he wants to go with her to the same ski resort again.

Protagonist meets Kaori for the first time in a flashback
Themes:
Eroge are escapism. We all know it. What annoys me, especially with eroge in the last few years, is how safe-spacey they became. If you play a feel-good game, you know you will get feel-good scenes ... and nothing else. Erogamer became fragile and eroge companies know that. Drama in most charage is cheap, light and will be resolved in just a few scenes. We don't want to upset the player, he might even think that being in a relationship is not just fun and happy times! Or worse, he might get the impression that his waifu has other things on her mind than him, maybe even has her own life! And if a writer tries to break out of this limitation, it often seems like trolling and the readers are rightfully angry at the game; having a bittersweet resolution at the end of a route that consisted only of sugar and rainbows is neither appropriate nor meaningful; it's just mean-spirited.
But this is also true for different genres; NTR heroines are most of the time unredeemable sluts and you have to wonder why the protagonist married her in the first place. It seems logical that an NTR game consists of only NTR scenes, but without the right buildup and good characterization, it can never be more than simple fetish fuel.
And I really have to wonder why Nakige and Utsuge are oftentimes so painfully obvious labeled as such; how can you be emotionally invested when you already know how it ends?
Well, the answer to this is probably that people want to get their emotional thrills in a safe environment. Being invested in a relationship with problems is only nice, if you know that the relationship can be saved at the end. If you are invested in this situation and the situation ends badly for the characters involved, you will feel bad yourself and that is not the feeling you wanted to have when you decided to read this story.
This leads to a dilemma; do you want to be safe but never really that emotional attached or do you want to experience something surprising and truly thrilling but with the risk that you might get extremely disappointed and depressed by the outcome?

The innkeeper knows that the only solution to problems is drowning them in alcohol.
Hajimari no Kisetsu is certainly not a safe space. Right from the beginning, you notice that something is wrong. Kaori isn't satisfied with the restaurant you choose for your meeting with her, even though it's the same restaurant where you meet her for the first time. She isn't too thrilled about the idea of drinking beer and would instead rather take a glass of wine. And she also doesn't show much interest in your ordinary life and prefers to talk about her new designer handbag. Where did she even get this thing from? Looks expensive... mhm...
Chances are you have experienced this kind of human interaction in your own real life, too. This steady process of people changing and slowly drifting apart. It's irritating, but you can't do anything against it. When the protagonist tries to invoke nostalgia in her, hoping that she shows signs that the old Kaori is still somewhere in her, she reacts coldly. A career woman like her has no interest in the past.

Someone here seems a little out of place...
Hajimari's greatest achievement is that the game portraits its characters so humanly. Kaori is not a bad woman for having different goals in life than the protagonist. It's also not necessary a bad thing that she changed over time. It's a human thing to do. Maybe it's even the protagonist who stays a child and simply can't keep up with her? ... but also, is it so wrong to not change and being happy with who you are?
This winter, our protagonist will find the answers to these questions. He will find out what he wants to do with his life and, even more importantly, what kind of human being he wants to be.
Characters:
I like the protagonist of this story. He speaks in Kansai-ben which makes the game a little bit harder to read, but really helps to bring the point across that he has more in common with a country bumpkin than a well-spoken member of the high society even though he is by no means stupid. He is not very strong or confident, but also not useless or weak-minded. He is just a normal guy, who wants to do the right thing, but is seldom in the position to actually act on it. In fact, even though he always wants to do something, he rarely is able to actual do anything. Not because the game does not give the player the choice to do, but because it's simply impossible for him.
This is not a story, where the protagonist solves every problem the heroine has. This is a story, where the protagonist gives the heroine the strength by being on her side, so she can overcome the problems herself. And to be honest, there are really far too few eroge like this.
One of my favorite endings is actually a bad end you can get rather quickly by simply saying "I don't want that, I go home." The protagonist proves his worth by standing up to himself, and even though the bad ending credits roll, the usual bad end BGM is replaced by a more hopeful tune, emphasizing that the protagonist grew up a little and might have a better future in front of him now. Because somehow, this is more important than bedding your waifu.

A side-character has to rescue the protagonist who wanted to rescue a woman...
Gameplay:
Speaking of endings, there are 24 "bad ends" and 4 "good ends". They are all interesting and one of the reasons (the other being spoilers) you shouldn't use a guide (there doesn't exist one anyway) to go straight to one of the good ends. Sadly, there are many choices that are badly designed because there is no indication that some of them are a hard route fork (like "going to the first floor" or "second floor"). But there are also some quite interesting choices which help forming the story in a meaningful way. For example, there is a choice during your already achieved happy end where you can choose between uncovering the secrets of your heroine's past or decide not to do it. You will get your happy end either way, but your choice does make difference in how you approach your eventual relationship with her.
When you get a bad end, there is some hint for you telling you what you should have done differently, but it's really not important since in most cases it comes simply down to changing the decision of your last choice.
I found everything the game has to offer easily on my own except for one good end which is a little bit non-obvious but makes sense in hindsight. I even had to use the Waybackmachine and read some random Japanese comment on a random Japanese website to get the necessary hint to unlock it. I will not spoil it here, so you can feel the same despair I felt.

Choose wisely how to approach her, if at all. Emotional women are dangerous.
Hajimari no Kisetsu is not a long game and every route can easily be finished in one reading session. The game tells short, romantic stories. They are a little bit cliché'd, but very nice and well-intentioned. There are scenes that make you feel good and some that make you feel depressed, but there is always a nice balance between the two extremes. And it's well earned. Even if you forget some of the details of the story a few months after you read it, you probably wont forget some of the scenes. At least for me that was the case. I did not regret spending my time with this game.
Sound and Art:
Let's talk about some technical aspects. This game was released in 1998 and sadly it shows.
The biggest misstep is to not have any voices. Especially the kind of seiyuu work of the late 90s would have been perfect for this kind of game. There are many dramatic scenes which would be even better with some passionate dubbing.
The soundtrack is very nice. Every character has its own theme, themes have several variations and the melodies are pleasant to listen to. You can choose between CD-Audio and MIDI, but the MIDI version, depending on your MIDI configuration of course, is not much worse. Seems to me the CD-Tracks are simple MIDI recordings. That could have been better.
The game has no backlog and no "already read" skip function which is really a problem when you try to find all the different endings. You might think that you are on a known path because you skipped over slight text variations when in fact it's the beginning of a new route.
The game has an old school omake room, where you can check CGs, endings and music by talking with the characters.

Hentai scenes are short, tastefully written and quite romantic.
Aside from the nice story, the art is the best feature of this eroge. Your mileage may vary, but to me it captures perfectly the whimsical, romantic and melancholic mood of the winter days. Sadly the artists never worked on another game, or at least not with this art style.
Speaking of the staff, the writer also was never read again. What a shame.
This makes this game even more unique though. Heh.
Conclusion:
Don't get the impression that this game is a masterpiece. It's not. It's just a nice little gem. It's not mind-blowing, but certainly thought-provoking. Not flashy, but pleasant ... except when it isn't.
If you are alone on a cold, rainy evening and want to read something appropriate you can immerse yourself in for a short time, this is a good recommendation. This will not be the best thing you've ever read, but it will become a bittersweet memory you'll remember fondly.

...
Now onto the spoiler discussion. Read this only if you've played the game or you don't care and just want to know what it's about:
Thanks for reading. If you have questions, suggestions or something else on your mind, feel free to comment.
The next time, I will talk about the sickest eroge I have ever read and explain why it's not as sick as you expected but far more sick than you thought.

This is the first of hopefully many little eroge reviews I decided to write, mostly for older and more obscure games since these are the games I find most interesting and like to talk about.
You can use these reviews to find something for you to read (I will try to avoid spoiler as much as possible) but since I know that most people probably aren't interested in actually playing these games and might only be interested in reading about them, I will also add a spoiler section at the end of each review where I talk about the themes and endings of the games in depth and tell you about my personal feelings and impressions that can't be talked about without giving away the meat of the story.

Hajimari no Kisetsu ~Izakaya Fuyu Monogatari~ (do not look at the tags or the screenshots on its entry because they are all spoilers) is the second visual novel by R.A.N.Software, a little eroge company which was active in 1997 till 2000 and you probably never have heard of.
It's written by someone who never has written any other eroge again (at least not under this pseudonym) and drawn by people who either vanished like the writer or continued to work on eroge but never used the same art style again.
All in all, Hajimari no Kisetsu seems like a pretty unique game, so why don't we take the time to look at this strange little eroge in detail?
Story:
Our nameable protagonist is in his last year of his university life. His girlfriend Kaori already graduated and works now as an office lady for a very big company. Because of her work he doesn't see her as often anymore and when she finds the time to meet with him for a few hours, they don't know what to talk about since their lives are so different now.
The protagonist remembers the happy memories he had with her, especially when they went skiing a year ago and to rekindle their love he wants to go with her to the same ski resort again.

Protagonist meets Kaori for the first time in a flashback
Themes:
Eroge are escapism. We all know it. What annoys me, especially with eroge in the last few years, is how safe-spacey they became. If you play a feel-good game, you know you will get feel-good scenes ... and nothing else. Erogamer became fragile and eroge companies know that. Drama in most charage is cheap, light and will be resolved in just a few scenes. We don't want to upset the player, he might even think that being in a relationship is not just fun and happy times! Or worse, he might get the impression that his waifu has other things on her mind than him, maybe even has her own life! And if a writer tries to break out of this limitation, it often seems like trolling and the readers are rightfully angry at the game; having a bittersweet resolution at the end of a route that consisted only of sugar and rainbows is neither appropriate nor meaningful; it's just mean-spirited.
But this is also true for different genres; NTR heroines are most of the time unredeemable sluts and you have to wonder why the protagonist married her in the first place. It seems logical that an NTR game consists of only NTR scenes, but without the right buildup and good characterization, it can never be more than simple fetish fuel.
And I really have to wonder why Nakige and Utsuge are oftentimes so painfully obvious labeled as such; how can you be emotionally invested when you already know how it ends?
Well, the answer to this is probably that people want to get their emotional thrills in a safe environment. Being invested in a relationship with problems is only nice, if you know that the relationship can be saved at the end. If you are invested in this situation and the situation ends badly for the characters involved, you will feel bad yourself and that is not the feeling you wanted to have when you decided to read this story.
This leads to a dilemma; do you want to be safe but never really that emotional attached or do you want to experience something surprising and truly thrilling but with the risk that you might get extremely disappointed and depressed by the outcome?

The innkeeper knows that the only solution to problems is drowning them in alcohol.
Hajimari no Kisetsu is certainly not a safe space. Right from the beginning, you notice that something is wrong. Kaori isn't satisfied with the restaurant you choose for your meeting with her, even though it's the same restaurant where you meet her for the first time. She isn't too thrilled about the idea of drinking beer and would instead rather take a glass of wine. And she also doesn't show much interest in your ordinary life and prefers to talk about her new designer handbag. Where did she even get this thing from? Looks expensive... mhm...
Chances are you have experienced this kind of human interaction in your own real life, too. This steady process of people changing and slowly drifting apart. It's irritating, but you can't do anything against it. When the protagonist tries to invoke nostalgia in her, hoping that she shows signs that the old Kaori is still somewhere in her, she reacts coldly. A career woman like her has no interest in the past.

Someone here seems a little out of place...
Hajimari's greatest achievement is that the game portraits its characters so humanly. Kaori is not a bad woman for having different goals in life than the protagonist. It's also not necessary a bad thing that she changed over time. It's a human thing to do. Maybe it's even the protagonist who stays a child and simply can't keep up with her? ... but also, is it so wrong to not change and being happy with who you are?
This winter, our protagonist will find the answers to these questions. He will find out what he wants to do with his life and, even more importantly, what kind of human being he wants to be.
Characters:
I like the protagonist of this story. He speaks in Kansai-ben which makes the game a little bit harder to read, but really helps to bring the point across that he has more in common with a country bumpkin than a well-spoken member of the high society even though he is by no means stupid. He is not very strong or confident, but also not useless or weak-minded. He is just a normal guy, who wants to do the right thing, but is seldom in the position to actually act on it. In fact, even though he always wants to do something, he rarely is able to actual do anything. Not because the game does not give the player the choice to do, but because it's simply impossible for him.
This is not a story, where the protagonist solves every problem the heroine has. This is a story, where the protagonist gives the heroine the strength by being on her side, so she can overcome the problems herself. And to be honest, there are really far too few eroge like this.
One of my favorite endings is actually a bad end you can get rather quickly by simply saying "I don't want that, I go home." The protagonist proves his worth by standing up to himself, and even though the bad ending credits roll, the usual bad end BGM is replaced by a more hopeful tune, emphasizing that the protagonist grew up a little and might have a better future in front of him now. Because somehow, this is more important than bedding your waifu.

A side-character has to rescue the protagonist who wanted to rescue a woman...
Gameplay:
Speaking of endings, there are 24 "bad ends" and 4 "good ends". They are all interesting and one of the reasons (the other being spoilers) you shouldn't use a guide (there doesn't exist one anyway) to go straight to one of the good ends. Sadly, there are many choices that are badly designed because there is no indication that some of them are a hard route fork (like "going to the first floor" or "second floor"). But there are also some quite interesting choices which help forming the story in a meaningful way. For example, there is a choice during your already achieved happy end where you can choose between uncovering the secrets of your heroine's past or decide not to do it. You will get your happy end either way, but your choice does make difference in how you approach your eventual relationship with her.
When you get a bad end, there is some hint for you telling you what you should have done differently, but it's really not important since in most cases it comes simply down to changing the decision of your last choice.
I found everything the game has to offer easily on my own except for one good end which is a little bit non-obvious but makes sense in hindsight. I even had to use the Waybackmachine and read some random Japanese comment on a random Japanese website to get the necessary hint to unlock it. I will not spoil it here, so you can feel the same despair I felt.

Choose wisely how to approach her, if at all. Emotional women are dangerous.
Hajimari no Kisetsu is not a long game and every route can easily be finished in one reading session. The game tells short, romantic stories. They are a little bit cliché'd, but very nice and well-intentioned. There are scenes that make you feel good and some that make you feel depressed, but there is always a nice balance between the two extremes. And it's well earned. Even if you forget some of the details of the story a few months after you read it, you probably wont forget some of the scenes. At least for me that was the case. I did not regret spending my time with this game.
Sound and Art:
Let's talk about some technical aspects. This game was released in 1998 and sadly it shows.
The biggest misstep is to not have any voices. Especially the kind of seiyuu work of the late 90s would have been perfect for this kind of game. There are many dramatic scenes which would be even better with some passionate dubbing.
The soundtrack is very nice. Every character has its own theme, themes have several variations and the melodies are pleasant to listen to. You can choose between CD-Audio and MIDI, but the MIDI version, depending on your MIDI configuration of course, is not much worse. Seems to me the CD-Tracks are simple MIDI recordings. That could have been better.
The game has no backlog and no "already read" skip function which is really a problem when you try to find all the different endings. You might think that you are on a known path because you skipped over slight text variations when in fact it's the beginning of a new route.
The game has an old school omake room, where you can check CGs, endings and music by talking with the characters.

Hentai scenes are short, tastefully written and quite romantic.
Aside from the nice story, the art is the best feature of this eroge. Your mileage may vary, but to me it captures perfectly the whimsical, romantic and melancholic mood of the winter days. Sadly the artists never worked on another game, or at least not with this art style.
Speaking of the staff, the writer also was never read again. What a shame.
This makes this game even more unique though. Heh.
Conclusion:
Don't get the impression that this game is a masterpiece. It's not. It's just a nice little gem. It's not mind-blowing, but certainly thought-provoking. Not flashy, but pleasant ... except when it isn't.
If you are alone on a cold, rainy evening and want to read something appropriate you can immerse yourself in for a short time, this is a good recommendation. This will not be the best thing you've ever read, but it will become a bittersweet memory you'll remember fondly.

...
Now onto the spoiler discussion. Read this only if you've played the game or you don't care and just want to know what it's about:
Thanks for reading. If you have questions, suggestions or something else on your mind, feel free to comment.
The next time, I will talk about the sickest eroge I have ever read and explain why it's not as sick as you expected but far more sick than you thought.

This is a visual novel created by a company named Jirai Soft and this is the only decent VN they have, well I never read Hotarubi no Shoujo but Kurui no Tsuki was awful... moving on with the review.
Basic plot.    Augment is a VN that starts in such incredible way, it hooks you immediately, the main character is an 80 years old dude who is in a home for elderly, lamenting on his life, on how plain and dull it was and how he regrets being a good for nothing. Remembering how he depended on his sister all his life and so on... basically he hates himself thinking that he is is a burden and decides to commit suicide, so he grabs a knife and stabs himself on the neck.  While he is dying he starts thinking that he doesn't want to die and wants another chance and at some point a weird voice tells him that his wish is granted and that he has a second chance to find happiness. This scene was amazing and a little bit gory too, in fact the entire prologue is very well done.   After that he find himself in the park which was really close from his house (where he grew up while he was still young), he is actually young again, at least his body is. He goes back to his house and there he meets all his family members again, including his father, mother and sister. This part again has a really good impact and it was really well done, everything mixed with good humor. He basically travels back in time with the help of this shinigami or god of dead, which granted him with a second chance to find happiness in his life.
So the VN is about him reliving his life and trying to find happiness...  by fucking one of the 3 heroines xD (falling in love, creating a new life with them etc, etc)   Up until this point the VN  was fantastic at least it was something new, sadly it just doesn't keep up...   There is a common route and 3 heroines. To unlock the real or true ending you need to read all of them and after reading everything you can re-read it again to unlock at certain points hidden eroge scenes with certain characters and new eroge scenes for all the heroines but without a proper ending or anything, kinda like an omake or fandisk but inside the game itself.   The heroines and plot       Your childhood friend Shiho Umekawa. Her route was kinda meh and it was ruined by the eroge scene, which was placed in a really bad time.
Nothing really interesting to talk about her without spoiling everything.
spoilers of her route ahead
My other huge problem with her are her huge fucking tits, is annoying and looks bad. 
   
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  Satsuki Jin, a tsundere from another class of your same age and also the best friend of your childhood friend.   Her route was the worst one for me, she was a decent character and the tsudere side very mild, she has a pervert good for nothing old brother that is used as a punch bag...   The drama on her route was so bad and convoluted that I won't even bother explaining it because it doesn't make sense and it was overly dramatic to a point that it was almost funny, it is actually almost as bad as the true ending.   ---------------------------------------------------------------------------     And finally Nami Susonobe, a junior or "kouhai" from your school too.   She was probably the best route, she likes to cook and is kinda timid but not clueless of what goes around her. You actually spend time with her, just bonding and developing your relationship, their love is not forced. She doesn't love you from the start and they also share the same type of humor which makes them a really fun and dynamic couple, constantly teasing each other of following the weird pattern they have of speaking mostly with jokes. Or doing the boke and tsukkomi. Also the sex with her didnt feel forced, it felt real and not just an excuse to show them having sex, like the natural progression of their relationship. She has a really overly protective sister (for a good reason) which happens to be your English teacher and she also hates you and doesn't wants you to be with her. This route didn't need any stupid forced drama to be good, it was good on its own. Without the forced drama it would have been a decent  story to read but nope...   Spoilers:   ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
  Finally we have the Main character, Hideya Kawashima, he is actually interesting and not your typical main character, he isn't clueless of everything around him and constantly jokes and teases (sometimes to the point of bullying) with everyone, he is 80 years old lol so he acts accordingly... kinda , he is for the most part pretty funny specially with Nami.
About the humor, I don't really like this type but I found myself laughing with some scenes so for the most part it was good.   ---------------------------------------------------------------------------   There are other characters but those are the main ones, I should also talk about Hideya's sister (she also has huge tits that are annoying) and the shinigami itself but I'm tired already and there is no point in talking about them.      The true ending...   The true ending is the worst part of the whole VN. Have you seen that picture of dustmania where the guy is fucking a brain? is THAT bad xD I wanted to see something about the shinigami, they actually trick you into believe that there is more to that character (at the end of some routes the shinigami says certain things that leads you to think that there is more to the character itself, and he/she also uses the word "boku" but has a girl distorted voice so is hard to tell if it is a she or he, which was probably used on purpose for that reason... but they don't, instead they do what is up until this point a common thing in this VN, threw some sad stuff, make it very convoluted and then resolve it in a few minutes.... everyone is happy YAY.   The main problem with this VN is that it turns itself after the prologue in a pure comedy... which isn't bad per se but the prologue kinda tricks you, making you believe that it will be something else, and you keep expecting that but when it comes is just a forced drama at the end of each route that doesn't fit with the rest or anything ... if it even makes sense at all in the first place, and it last around 1 or 2 hours. If I have to describe this VN I would say that it is 85% comedy and 15% of very bad forced drama.     The music and Art   The music was good with some good solid songs here and there that fit well with the scenes, it's fully voiced (except for the main character which is only voiced in the true ending) and the art was actually pretty good too aside from the huge tits in some characters.   Oh yeah there is something really annoying, every time you start the VN the logo of the company shows up with a fucking loud noise. (careful if you are using headphones) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6c48PRVMV4     Here are some CGs  
Rating +Good humor +Good Art style for the most part +Amazing voice acting +Pretty good music +Nami's route if you leave the ending part.   -Bad drama and nonsensical endings. -Bad true end.   My rating of this VN is a Ryuk out of 10.   For the reading difficulty, is hard to say but I would say medium, not something to start with, The humor and how the main character talks is just not something you will see normally, he talks in a teasing way pretty much 90% of the time, making references or derailing the conversations over and over again, using crude humor, kanji puns and everything you can imagine, for example he can start talking as if he were fighter pilot (using military language) and keeping that going for a while and some characters follow his humor, so yeah not something easy to read probably. Also the drama parts can be quite tricky or they were for me at some points (if you read the spoilers you can understand how convoluted and tricky it gets) 
There are a lot of reference here and there (I still don't know if the "kain" that he refers at one point is the legacy of kain the games or not) It took me around 30 hours to complete it but my reading speed is quite slow, you can't just read one route so that's another bad side of this vn.

I wanted to wait until the year is over before I write my list for this year, but of course I haven't had the time to actually look at the December releases and now the year is over. Luckily, there isn't much interesting for me anyway.
Before we start, just let me mention some noteworthy December titles:
Venus Blood Ragnarok could be a nice game, but I don't really like the Venus Blood series, and as some kind of sequel it probably won't win me over anyway. I have played the trial of Meguru Sekai de Towanaru Chikai wo and it really didn't impress me. Looked like an even cheaper version of Izumo 4. And Izumo 4 was already a letdown last year. The RPG mechanics of Izumo 4 are very simple and Meguru Sekai de seems even simpler. But that is not all, contrary to Izumo 4, this time the game also looks pretty ugly! It that the reason why Yamamoto Kazue changed her name to  Yamamoto ☆ Kazue for this? Well, I probably will play it nonetheless because I don't like to judge something I haven't really played, but eh, not in the near future. That's it for December. The rest doesn't interest me or I already know it will be bad (You can't fool me Moonstone!). Did I just say I don't judge something I haven't played? Eh, whatever...
But now some honorable mentions of games that actually looked interesting but I haven't had the time to read them, so they won't be in my 2016 list:
Dungeons & Daimeiwaku: I've read the trial, but haven't found the time to read the actual game. I'm sure it's good but it's kind of demotivating for me to read an RPG without any gameplay, heh. Iwaihime: Ryukishi07 and horror should be exactly what I'm looking for but for some reason I have this untouched on my hdd for a year now. Maybe I miss the Ryukishi07-art, since it doesn't look as good with generic moeblobs. Trianthology: Now I have the art, but not a full Ryukishi07 game, haha. Still, I have to read this sometime soon. Kanojo ＊ Step: This could probably be the "Best Charage" of 2016 as far as I have seen it. The humor is great, something that's really missing in pretty much every other modern charage. It's a shame that the genre charage has such a low priority for me, so I haven't really read much of this VN so far. Now I mention some games people might expect in my list of 2016's best eroge, but I actually found them to be only mediocre:
Shi ni Iku Kimi, Yakata ni Mebuku Zouo: Yeah, I wasn't as excited about this as everyone else. I do not fetishize gore. I like death as an element of a thrilling story, but death in Nikuniku has no impact. There is no meaning in killing someone when they can't die. Baka Dakedo Chinchin Shaburu no Dake wa Jouzu na Chii-chan: This game has a Genre-Shift tag of 3.0 on vndb and some people claim it would be different than what you expect it to be.
Spoiler: It's exactly what it looks like! WTF are the people talking about? lol Maitetsu: Borefest and not even usable as a lolige. Really only interesting for train otakus.  
Now let's start with the list of maybe not necessarily the best but the most impressive eroge of 2016, for me at least:
Eroge of the Year: Natsu no Kusari
Best game without a doubt, there is no other contender here. If I would make a Top 5 of 2017, the second place would already be many, many levels under this one. It's so good (or all the other recent games are just so bad, lol).
I have already written walls of text in other threads about this game so I won't repeat myself here. I will just say that this game is exactly what I'm looking for when I read an eroge, the reason why I even started with this medium.
Great characterization and the perfect use of narration, music, visuals and voices makes this one of the most compelling short stories I have read in years.
 
Best NTR Eroge: Dearest Blue
The lack of elf is really showing and I certainly can't say that any LiLiM game is really good, but at least with Dearest Blue LiLiM improved on their formula and made it its best game so far.
We still have some obvious "Do you want to get NTR'd"-choices, but they are not as in-your-face as in previous titles. Some choices make you wonder what will actually happen if you go this route and that at least is an improvement. In some instances there is some believable drama and especially one route is good where you can cheer for both, the protagonist and the rival because both characters are likable. The main heroine is also well-characterized, being an independent and strong woman without going too bitchy or slutty.
Still, not everything is good. Pretty much every male character except the aforementioned one is a one-dimensional evil villain. The biggest problem however is that the story is build around some kind of NTR/death-game where all the players need to outwit each other ... but in the end there are no mind games or twists happening! Heck, even I could probably win this game because every other character is so bad at this, not having a plan or making retarded moves. What a disappointment! Read this for the relationship drama, not for the death game.
 
Best Modern Oldschool Eroge: Ryuudouji Shimon no Inbou
This might be an unpopular opinion, but I really think that the writing in many of the latest Mink-games is topnotch. Really, if Mink-games weren't conceptually so limited (being only nukige), they could be really great.
Why is that? Is it because Mink is such an old company that they still carry on old writing traditions which were established in the Golden Age of eroge? That at least would explain why Ryuudouji Shimon no Inbou is so good when it conceptually shouldn't be!
Don't misunderstand me, Ryuudouji Shimon no Inbou is not a good slave-training eroge. There is no real SLG gameplay here, instead the only choice the player has is to visit 1 of 20 locations every day hoping that some kind of event happens there. There is no indication which area you have to visit, neither in script nor in the interface, it's completely by chance. Save-scumming and blindly gathering events at its finest, huh.
But if you can look behind this (preferably with a walkthrough), you will find a game that feels like the late 90s. Mainly because this is a blatant clone of 99's Yakin Byoutou. It's pretty much "Night Shift School Girls". Aside from the setting that is now a school, we have the same kind of characters, the same storyline and the same development Yakin Byoutou had. And it's great, because that formula still works 17 years later! The ugly main character, who has just enough understanding of the human psyche to get what he wants, the pure maidens who fall into his traps, not because they are sluts but because they are believable corrupted, and the evil female mastermind who is probably even worse than the main character. It's beautiful. The nostalgia is strong with this one.
 
Best Dark and Edgy Eroge: Tokage no Shippo Kiri
I'm cheating here a bit because the game was released in November 2015. But since the fandisc was released in January last year which means the full experience was only available to us in 2016, I see it as 2016 game.
There is not much to say here, what Derg not already said. Games like this prove that even low-budget publisher can make good games, if they just try. CYCLET is not Black Cyc, but it tries nonetheless to be something special and succeeds in setting itself apart from all the other low budget publisher. Maybe that is the reason we only had one CYCLET game in 2016; they emphasize on quality, not quantity.
 
Best RPG: Dungeon of Regalias
Let's not talk about the story and the characters. They are terrible, like in every Astronauts Sirius game. But damn is the gameplay addicting and actually good. Like in, really, really good.
This is probably one of the best ero-dungeon crawler existing. They did everything right with this one. Hard difficulty available from start. Skills as "items" which can be equipped so you can change your build without any resetting of skill points like in other games. Monsters who all act differently thus forcing you to change your strategy and character builds and party constantly. Great game.
 
 
Best SRPG: Sankai Ou no Yubiwa
I'm probably the only one, but ... I actually liked 2016's Eushully game. Yeah, really. Ok, it wasn't really a good SRPG; it actually had many flaws, like being far too easy and exploitable and the routes being too similar to each other... but... I liked the concept. Having six main characters who all represent a different kind of approach to the Ero-RPG genre is really something I wish more games would do. I hate the good guy, the antihero and the maou archetype, and sadly most Eushully games have one of these three as their main character. But Sankai Ou has also three other, more interesting protagonists to choose from. For example, I always wanted the angels to win in an Eushully game, and finally I have the opportunity to do this because the obligatory fallen-angel storyline is already covered in the other routes. Nice.
 
Biggest disappointment: Extravaganza ~Mushigurui Hen~
I was so hyped for this one. The first true Black Cyc game after 5 years of absence. Written by Banya Izumi who we could trust with the task of continuing a beloved series, right? Right?
No, it's awful. This game turned out to be an abomination which is quite remarkable because Black Cyc already milked the Extravaganza series with bad sidestories back when Black Cyc was still good for the most part. And Mushigurui Hen is even worse than these cheap nukige spinoffs. At least with cheap nukige fandisc, we know we get something bad. Mushigurui Hen on the other hand could have been good. It could have been awesome. But it wasn't.
So what went wrong? You have these great characters with their epic background stories, but what do they do with them? Putting them in school, because school life is, as we all now, the most important thing ever. And if a character is too old for school, just make them into rich snobs whose only problem in life is being too old (meaning being 23 years old) and lamenting about not having the time to go to the cinema with friends because work (meaning being CEO and chilling all the day in the office).
And if that wasn't bad enough, they also retcon a character death because this character was very popular back then and we need him for funny slice of life scenes now, yay.
The most offending thing however is how this "sequel" actually takes place after the second arc of the original Extravaganza, which means before the last third of the original game. And all the important character events in the third arc which really were the heart of the Extravaganza story apparently don't take place in this timeline. Instead, we get inferior and meaningless drama with derailed characters in Mushigurui Hen which is apparently now the canon timeline. Hurray.
 
Biggest insult: Everything released by Akabei Soft 3
I'm not going into this now, but literally every AKB3 game this year greatly offended me, just as Silky's Plus' games did last year. Let's just say that AKB3 makes games which represent everything that's wrong with modern eroge and have nothing left of what made eroge once great. (I might write a post explaining this statement in the near future.)
It saddens me how popular these games are. A dark prospect for 2017.
 

I told a couple people I would post my thoughts about Sayonara wo Oshiete when I finished it, and just a few days ago I finished a bad end and Mutsuki's good end. So here are my impressions, thoughts, and analysis of that experience. Also, this post does not contain any significant spoilers to the VN. So its safe for all those that are curious. (Also from here on forward I will refer to Sayonara wo Oshiete as 'Sayooshi')
Before I start talking about Sayooshi, I want to briefly describe the circumstances in which I discovered it. During this past summer, after having studied Japanese (with a grammatical focus) for a while,  I wanted to get a few easy moege under my belt before attempting something I actually wanted to read. I was honestly having a miserable time, as I hate moege. I was reading them for no other reason than to practice and learn Japanese, as they were appropriate for my level. I wasn't having fun, and it honestly felt like work more than anything else. Just as I was about to give up on Untld Vns for the time being, I read a post by Vokoca talking about Sayooshi, and he linked to this video. The unsettling music and ominous imagery instantly piqued my curiosity and I set out to get this VN. For a while I was saving it, still thinking "My Japanese isn't good enough yet", but then at some point in the fall I decided "Fuck it, with the help of dictionaries and text hooking software, I can make this journey", and began reading it whenever I had time. And boy was this a journey worth taking, even if I did proceed through it a bit slowly. 
I love the first person narrative because getting inside the heads of interesting characters is truly experiencing the world through a different person's eyes. And VNs in my view are the best medium for first person narration, as they allow you to to see and hear what the MC experiences. Furthermore, back ground music enriches the story by immersing the reader in the moods of various settings and situations. Sayooshi takes all these strengths of VNs and the first person narrative, and uses it to put you inside the head of a madman. A man whose sense of reality is slipping further and further away by the day. The unreliable narrator is a literary trope that I really enjoy, but this is an area where I think VNs by default have higher potential than books. It is one thing to solely read the mind of a madman/untrustworthy narrator, it is another thing all together to see and hear that man's world, on top of reading his narrative.   
Too often I see wasted potential in the artistic side of VNs. Visual art is important for not only conveying ideas (i.e. a picture of a hallway should look like a hallway, a picture of a girl should look like a girl, etc.), but art can also convey moods. VNs of the same era usually have extremely similar character designs, and there is usually a lack of creativity in artistic style in VNs. While the character designs aren't anything revolutionary (it is admittedly nice that this VN came out before moe blobs became popular though), what is special about the art, is the eternal twilight. Hitomi's world is a world drenched in the orange and reddish hue of twilight, as the VN takes place exclusively during the evening. And coupled with all the things Hitomi experiences, the color of twilight really makes things even more ominous. It instills a feeling of loneliness, or at the very least detachment.

Supporting the artwork in creating an unsettling atmosphere, is the music. The main theme that plays when Hitomi is wandering the school alone (this theme), only reinforces the feelings of detachment that the visual art and writing create. Character themes as well are quite well suited for each of the characters and the moods they represent, further successfully reinforcing the tone of the writing.
Now onto the writing itself. Things are confusing, and they only get more confusing. Any sense of orientation is screwed around with, and this only gets worse as the story continues. You are left thinking "Did what I see actually happen?", until it gets to the point where you just altogether give up on distinguishing reality. In this way, you yourself submit to the insanity and fall further into Hitomi's world. Not knowing what to make of his situation. The only difference between you and him, is that you know he is crazy, but nonetheless identify with him because you experience the same sense of the world as he does. And perhaps weird to say, but the H-scenes in this VN serve to further sympathize with his madness.
When I was telling a (non-VN reading) friend of mine about Sayooshi. He admitted that it sounded interesting, and even could appreciate the use of the H-scenes from an intellectual perspective. But he then told me that what he thought was truly disturbing, was not the use of H-scenes, but that "inevitably there will be people out there that will find it arousing". For him, (and his understanding of what I told him about Sayooshi), the sex scenes, which are exclusively rape scenes, serve to reinforce Hitomi's insanity, and therefore their portrayal is justified. But finding the scenes arousing yourself, is horrific as it is identifying with a monster; like the monster that plagues Hitomi's dreams. But it is here, where I disagree. The VN does everything in its power to have you identify with Hitomi's insanity, and the sex scenes are no exception.
The sex scenes are arousing, despite knowing that they shouldn't be. It isn't just rape, but the Heroines are (supposedly) middle school girls for Christ's sake. Perhaps eroge players (particularly nukige fans) maybe a bit desensitized, but this is certainly fucked up. But just like when Hitomi experiences the dream that plagues him for the first half of the story, he knows he is the monster raping the angel, and there is pleasure still drawn from this. A pleasure that Hitomi knows is horrible and monstrous. But just as Hitomi submits to the role as the monster as he views his nightmare; we are in an identical role, viewing (and partly identifying) with his sexual misdemeanors as he commits them. It coerces you into submitting yourself to the madness of these H-scenes. By doing so an enjoyment is found in them, but for you and Hitomi alike there is a darkness implied in that pleasure. Furthermore, Hitomi seems to understand that he is defiling them. There is a guilt and sense of disgust felt, but also a feeling of extreme excitement, just as we as readers feel. This is shown through the multiple references he makes to 'contaminating the purity of the angel/Mutsuki', to paraphrase what he says. The H-scenes, and our feelings towards them, mirror Hitomi's perspective; furthering our identification with his insanity.
Yet, just like the reoccurring nightmare, the H-scenes almost always end abruptly, and are divorced from continuity. It is not uncommon for an H scene to abruptly happen, end all of a sudden, and the next thing you know you are placed into a completely different context. And not only do the H-scenes lack continuity immediately before and after, but the characters never make reference to it afterwards, and act just as they did before. Further questioning whether they ever really happened. And this confusion surrounding the reality of the h-scenes, makes it easier to identify with Hitomi during them, since the normal consequences and damage caused by rape, do not apply.  

(Perhaps this would be a considered spoiler if I could guarantee that it actually happened )
And for all these reasons, I feel that the thesis of this VN is the fragility of the human mind. Often we draw huge differences between the mentally deranged, and functional normal human beings; but what Sayooshi points out is that the difference is actually rather subtle. In seeing the world Hitomi experiences, and sympathizing with him, it gets us to realize that we ourselves are not that different. That given his circumstances and what he experiences (and seeing it through his eyes), his reactions are actually understandable. The atmosphere of his world, and reading the thoughts of his mind, gets us to question his sanity, and in doing so, eventually gets us to question our own sanity as well.     
Sayooshi in an incredibly strong atmospheric experience. And it is for this reason that I feel Sayooshi is a great representative of the strengths VNs offer as a medium. This VN took advantage of all the tools it had as a VN (music, sound effects, visuals, and narrative) to provide a full experience of what the wanders of a madman look like. I really felt like I understood to a degree what it was like to be insane reading this work, and I don't think I would have been able to identify as well if it were told in any other medium in any other way.  
 
 

Nutaku has been caught censoring dialogues implying non-consensual sex in free-to-play ero-RPG Kamihime Project R, reneging on earlier promises.
Rape scenes censored in Nutaku's Kamihime Project R

This is an introductory post and since I probably don't have to introduce myself anymore (you already know me ), I guess I advertise my future blog texts instead.
Tyrviews are not reviews. Instead of writing reviews, I'm more interested in discussing and exploring the themes of an eroge and talking about all the related topics like the writing, the tropes or the history of eroge or the Japanese entertainment industry in general. I might also talk about anime, j-dorama, games, movies, books or JAVs.
I'm sure you will find something new or interesting when you read my articles. You may not necessarily agree with what I have to say (and if you find the strong urge to comment, please do so, and you can be sure I will respond), but I'm certain you will find at least some new ideas worth thinking about.
When I write about a certain topic I’m interested in, I'm often using specific products (which inspired me to think and write about this subject in the first place) and these will serve as an example to verify the points I make.
With that said, unless I explicitly state that a Tyrview contains spoilers, it won’t. However, I might give away some directions a certain game will take. Nothing, you wouldn’t also find on the official website, but if you are like me and you would rather read an eroge without any a priori knowledge, it might be better if you come back later after you have finished the game in question.
The first blog text will be about my favorite games of 2016. I also have an article about Black Cyc in the pipeline since I have recently finished most of their games and am now looking forward to their newest release this month. I will probably also write my impressions about some anime I recently watched which are worth talking about.
If there is anything you would like me to write about or you want to read my opinion on something, I will be open to suggestions.
I will end my introduction by showing you a picture of my bathroom, so you get some value out of this pointless blog post.
Please rate it, I think it's pretty kuso which I've chosen as the theme for my toilet room. Do you get it?
Thanks for tolerating me and happy new year~~ 

I wanted to wait until the year is over before I write my list for this year, but of course I haven't had the time to actually look at the December releases and now the year is over. Luckily, there isn't much interesting for me anyway.
Before we start, just let me mention some noteworthy December titles:
Venus Blood Ragnarok could be a nice game, but I don't really like the Venus Blood series, and as some kind of sequel it probably won't win me over anyway. I have played the trial of Meguru Sekai de Towanaru Chikai wo and it really didn't impress me. Looked like an even cheaper version of Izumo 4. And Izumo 4 was already a letdown last year. The RPG mechanics of Izumo 4 are very simple and Meguru Sekai de seems even simpler. But that is not all, contrary to Izumo 4, this time the game also looks pretty ugly! It that the reason why Yamamoto Kazue changed her name to  Yamamoto ☆ Kazue for this? Well, I probably will play it nonetheless because I don't like to judge something I haven't really played, but eh, not in the near future. That's it for December. The rest doesn't interest me or I already know it will be bad (You can't fool me Moonstone!). Did I just say I don't judge something I haven't played? Eh, whatever...
But now some honorable mentions of games that actually looked interesting but I haven't had the time to read them, so they won't be in my 2016 list:
Dungeons & Daimeiwaku: I've read the trial, but haven't found the time to read the actual game. I'm sure it's good but it's kind of demotivating for me to read an RPG without any gameplay, heh. Iwaihime: Ryukishi07 and horror should be exactly what I'm looking for but for some reason I have this untouched on my hdd for a year now. Maybe I miss the Ryukishi07-art, since it doesn't look as good with generic moeblobs. Trianthology: Now I have the art, but not a full Ryukishi07 game, haha. Still, I have to read this sometime soon. Kanojo ＊ Step: This could probably be the "Best Charage" of 2016 as far as I have seen it. The humor is great, something that's really missing in pretty much every other modern charage. It's a shame that the genre charage has such a low priority for me, so I haven't really read much of this VN so far. Now I mention some games people might expect in my list of 2016's best eroge, but I actually found them to be only mediocre:
Shi ni Iku Kimi, Yakata ni Mebuku Zouo: Yeah, I wasn't as excited about this as everyone else. I do not fetishize gore. I like death as an element of a thrilling story, but death in Nikuniku has no impact. There is no meaning in killing someone when they can't die. Baka Dakedo Chinchin Shaburu no Dake wa Jouzu na Chii-chan: This game has a Genre-Shift tag of 3.0 on vndb and some people claim it would be different than what you expect it to be.
Spoiler: It's exactly what it looks like! WTF are the people talking about? lol Maitetsu: Borefest and not even usable as a lolige. Really only interesting for train otakus.  
Now let's start with the list of maybe not necessarily the best but the most impressive eroge of 2016, for me at least:
Eroge of the Year: Natsu no Kusari
Best game without a doubt, there is no other contender here. If I would make a Top 5 of 2017, the second place would already be many, many levels under this one. It's so good (or all the other recent games are just so bad, lol).
I have already written walls of text in other threads about this game so I won't repeat myself here. I will just say that this game is exactly what I'm looking for when I read an eroge, the reason why I even started with this medium.
Great characterization and the perfect use of narration, music, visuals and voices makes this one of the most compelling short stories I have read in years.
 
Best NTR Eroge: Dearest Blue
The lack of elf is really showing and I certainly can't say that any LiLiM game is really good, but at least with Dearest Blue LiLiM improved on their formula and made it its best game so far.
We still have some obvious "Do you want to get NTR'd"-choices, but they are not as in-your-face as in previous titles. Some choices make you wonder what will actually happen if you go this route and that at least is an improvement. In some instances there is some believable drama and especially one route is good where you can cheer for both, the protagonist and the rival because both characters are likable. The main heroine is also well-characterized, being an independent and strong woman without going too bitchy or slutty.
Still, not everything is good. Pretty much every male character except the aforementioned one is a one-dimensional evil villain. The biggest problem however is that the story is build around some kind of NTR/death-game where all the players need to outwit each other ... but in the end there are no mind games or twists happening! Heck, even I could probably win this game because every other character is so bad at this, not having a plan or making retarded moves. What a disappointment! Read this for the relationship drama, not for the death game.
 
Best Modern Oldschool Eroge: Ryuudouji Shimon no Inbou
This might be an unpopular opinion, but I really think that the writing in many of the latest Mink-games is topnotch. Really, if Mink-games weren't conceptually so limited (being only nukige), they could be really great.
Why is that? Is it because Mink is such an old company that they still carry on old writing traditions which were established in the Golden Age of eroge? That at least would explain why Ryuudouji Shimon no Inbou is so good when it conceptually shouldn't be!
Don't misunderstand me, Ryuudouji Shimon no Inbou is not a good slave-training eroge. There is no real SLG gameplay here, instead the only choice the player has is to visit 1 of 20 locations every day hoping that some kind of event happens there. There is no indication which area you have to visit, neither in script nor in the interface, it's completely by chance. Save-scumming and blindly gathering events at its finest, huh.
But if you can look behind this (preferably with a walkthrough), you will find a game that feels like the late 90s. Mainly because this is a blatant clone of 99's Yakin Byoutou. It's pretty much "Night Shift School Girls". Aside from the setting that is now a school, we have the same kind of characters, the same storyline and the same development Yakin Byoutou had. And it's great, because that formula still works 17 years later! The ugly main character, who has just enough understanding of the human psyche to get what he wants, the pure maidens who fall into his traps, not because they are sluts but because they are believable corrupted, and the evil female mastermind who is probably even worse than the main character. It's beautiful. The nostalgia is strong with this one.
 
Best Dark and Edgy Eroge: Tokage no Shippo Kiri
I'm cheating here a bit because the game was released in November 2015. But since the fandisc was released in January last year which means the full experience was only available to us in 2016, I see it as 2016 game.
There is not much to say here, what Derg not already said. Games like this prove that even low-budget publisher can make good games, if they just try. CYCLET is not Black Cyc, but it tries nonetheless to be something special and succeeds in setting itself apart from all the other low budget publisher. Maybe that is the reason we only had one CYCLET game in 2016; they emphasize on quality, not quantity.
 
Best RPG: Dungeon of Regalias
Let's not talk about the story and the characters. They are terrible, like in every Astronauts Sirius game. But damn is the gameplay addicting and actually good. Like in, really, really good.
This is probably one of the best ero-dungeon crawler existing. They did everything right with this one. Hard difficulty available from start. Skills as "items" which can be equipped so you can change your build without any resetting of skill points like in other games. Monsters who all act differently thus forcing you to change your strategy and character builds and party constantly. Great game.
 
 
Best SRPG: Sankai Ou no Yubiwa
I'm probably the only one, but ... I actually liked 2016's Eushully game. Yeah, really. Ok, it wasn't really a good SRPG; it actually had many flaws, like being far too easy and exploitable and the routes being too similar to each other... but... I liked the concept. Having six main characters who all represent a different kind of approach to the Ero-RPG genre is really something I wish more games would do. I hate the good guy, the antihero and the maou archetype, and sadly most Eushully games have one of these three as their main character. But Sankai Ou has also three other, more interesting protagonists to choose from. For example, I always wanted the angels to win in an Eushully game, and finally I have the opportunity to do this because the obligatory fallen-angel storyline is already covered in the other routes. Nice.
 
Biggest disappointment: Extravaganza ~Mushigurui Hen~
I was so hyped for this one. The first true Black Cyc game after 5 years of absence. Written by Banya Izumi who we could trust with the task of continuing a beloved series, right? Right?
No, it's awful. This game turned out to be an abomination which is quite remarkable because Black Cyc already milked the Extravaganza series with bad sidestories back when Black Cyc was still good for the most part. And Mushigurui Hen is even worse than these cheap nukige spinoffs. At least with cheap nukige fandisc, we know we get something bad. Mushigurui Hen on the other hand could have been good. It could have been awesome. But it wasn't.
So what went wrong? You have these great characters with their epic background stories, but what do they do with them? Putting them in school, because school life is, as we all now, the most important thing ever. And if a character is too old for school, just make them into rich snobs whose only problem in life is being too old (meaning being 23 years old) and lamenting about not having the time to go to the cinema with friends because work (meaning being CEO and chilling all the day in the office).
And if that wasn't bad enough, they also retcon a character death because this character was very popular back then and we need him for funny slice of life scenes now, yay.
The most offending thing however is how this "sequel" actually takes place after the second arc of the original Extravaganza, which means before the last third of the original game. And all the important character events in the third arc which really were the heart of the Extravaganza story apparently don't take place in this timeline. Instead, we get inferior and meaningless drama with derailed characters in Mushigurui Hen which is apparently now the canon timeline. Hurray.
 
Biggest insult: Everything released by Akabei Soft 3
I'm not going into this now, but literally every AKB3 game this year greatly offended me, just as Silky's Plus' games did last year. Let's just say that AKB3 makes games which represent everything that's wrong with modern eroge and have nothing left of what made eroge once great. (I might write a post explaining this statement in the near future.)
It saddens me how popular these games are. A dark prospect for 2017.
 

I wanted to wait until the year is over before I write my list for this year, but of course I haven't had the time to actually look at the December releases and now the year is over. Luckily, there isn't much interesting for me anyway.
Before we start, just let me mention some noteworthy December titles:
Venus Blood Ragnarok could be a nice game, but I don't really like the Venus Blood series, and as some kind of sequel it probably won't win me over anyway. I have played the trial of Meguru Sekai de Towanaru Chikai wo and it really didn't impress me. Looked like an even cheaper version of Izumo 4. And Izumo 4 was already a letdown last year. The RPG mechanics of Izumo 4 are very simple and Meguru Sekai de seems even simpler. But that is not all, contrary to Izumo 4, this time the game also looks pretty ugly! It that the reason why Yamamoto Kazue changed her name to  Yamamoto ☆ Kazue for this? Well, I probably will play it nonetheless because I don't like to judge something I haven't really played, but eh, not in the near future. That's it for December. The rest doesn't interest me or I already know it will be bad (You can't fool me Moonstone!). Did I just say I don't judge something I haven't played? Eh, whatever...
But now some honorable mentions of games that actually looked interesting but I haven't had the time to read them, so they won't be in my 2016 list:
Dungeons & Daimeiwaku: I've read the trial, but haven't found the time to read the actual game. I'm sure it's good but it's kind of demotivating for me to read an RPG without any gameplay, heh. Iwaihime: Ryukishi07 and horror should be exactly what I'm looking for but for some reason I have this untouched on my hdd for a year now. Maybe I miss the Ryukishi07-art, since it doesn't look as good with generic moeblobs. Trianthology: Now I have the art, but not a full Ryukishi07 game, haha. Still, I have to read this sometime soon. Kanojo ＊ Step: This could probably be the "Best Charage" of 2016 as far as I have seen it. The humor is great, something that's really missing in pretty much every other modern charage. It's a shame that the genre charage has such a low priority for me, so I haven't really read much of this VN so far. Now I mention some games people might expect in my list of 2016's best eroge, but I actually found them to be only mediocre:
Shi ni Iku Kimi, Yakata ni Mebuku Zouo: Yeah, I wasn't as excited about this as everyone else. I do not fetishize gore. I like death as an element of a thrilling story, but death in Nikuniku has no impact. There is no meaning in killing someone when they can't die. Baka Dakedo Chinchin Shaburu no Dake wa Jouzu na Chii-chan: This game has a Genre-Shift tag of 3.0 on vndb and some people claim it would be different than what you expect it to be.
Spoiler: It's exactly what it looks like! WTF are the people talking about? lol Maitetsu: Borefest and not even usable as a lolige. Really only interesting for train otakus.  
Now let's start with the list of maybe not necessarily the best but the most impressive eroge of 2016, for me at least:
Eroge of the Year: Natsu no Kusari
Best game without a doubt, there is no other contender here. If I would make a Top 5 of 2017, the second place would already be many, many levels under this one. It's so good (or all the other recent games are just so bad, lol).
I have already written walls of text in other threads about this game so I won't repeat myself here. I will just say that this game is exactly what I'm looking for when I read an eroge, the reason why I even started with this medium.
Great characterization and the perfect use of narration, music, visuals and voices makes this one of the most compelling short stories I have read in years.
 
Best NTR Eroge: Dearest Blue
The lack of elf is really showing and I certainly can't say that any LiLiM game is really good, but at least with Dearest Blue LiLiM improved on their formula and made it its best game so far.
We still have some obvious "Do you want to get NTR'd"-choices, but they are not as in-your-face as in previous titles. Some choices make you wonder what will actually happen if you go this route and that at least is an improvement. In some instances there is some believable drama and especially one route is good where you can cheer for both, the protagonist and the rival because both characters are likable. The main heroine is also well-characterized, being an independent and strong woman without going too bitchy or slutty.
Still, not everything is good. Pretty much every male character except the aforementioned one is a one-dimensional evil villain. The biggest problem however is that the story is build around some kind of NTR/death-game where all the players need to outwit each other ... but in the end there are no mind games or twists happening! Heck, even I could probably win this game because every other character is so bad at this, not having a plan or making retarded moves. What a disappointment! Read this for the relationship drama, not for the death game.
 
Best Modern Oldschool Eroge: Ryuudouji Shimon no Inbou
This might be an unpopular opinion, but I really think that the writing in many of the latest Mink-games is topnotch. Really, if Mink-games weren't conceptually so limited (being only nukige), they could be really great.
Why is that? Is it because Mink is such an old company that they still carry on old writing traditions which were established in the Golden Age of eroge? That at least would explain why Ryuudouji Shimon no Inbou is so good when it conceptually shouldn't be!
Don't misunderstand me, Ryuudouji Shimon no Inbou is not a good slave-training eroge. There is no real SLG gameplay here, instead the only choice the player has is to visit 1 of 20 locations every day hoping that some kind of event happens there. There is no indication which area you have to visit, neither in script nor in the interface, it's completely by chance. Save-scumming and blindly gathering events at its finest, huh.
But if you can look behind this (preferably with a walkthrough), you will find a game that feels like the late 90s. Mainly because this is a blatant clone of 99's Yakin Byoutou. It's pretty much "Night Shift School Girls". Aside from the setting that is now a school, we have the same kind of characters, the same storyline and the same development Yakin Byoutou had. And it's great, because that formula still works 17 years later! The ugly main character, who has just enough understanding of the human psyche to get what he wants, the pure maidens who fall into his traps, not because they are sluts but because they are believable corrupted, and the evil female mastermind who is probably even worse than the main character. It's beautiful. The nostalgia is strong with this one.
 
Best Dark and Edgy Eroge: Tokage no Shippo Kiri
I'm cheating here a bit because the game was released in November 2015. But since the fandisc was released in January last year which means the full experience was only available to us in 2016, I see it as 2016 game.
There is not much to say here, what Derg not already said. Games like this prove that even low-budget publisher can make good games, if they just try. CYCLET is not Black Cyc, but it tries nonetheless to be something special and succeeds in setting itself apart from all the other low budget publisher. Maybe that is the reason we only had one CYCLET game in 2016; they emphasize on quality, not quantity.
 
Best RPG: Dungeon of Regalias
Let's not talk about the story and the characters. They are terrible, like in every Astronauts Sirius game. But damn is the gameplay addicting and actually good. Like in, really, really good.
This is probably one of the best ero-dungeon crawler existing. They did everything right with this one. Hard difficulty available from start. Skills as "items" which can be equipped so you can change your build without any resetting of skill points like in other games. Monsters who all act differently thus forcing you to change your strategy and character builds and party constantly. Great game.
 
 
Best SRPG: Sankai Ou no Yubiwa
I'm probably the only one, but ... I actually liked 2016's Eushully game. Yeah, really. Ok, it wasn't really a good SRPG; it actually had many flaws, like being far too easy and exploitable and the routes being too similar to each other... but... I liked the concept. Having six main characters who all represent a different kind of approach to the Ero-RPG genre is really something I wish more games would do. I hate the good guy, the antihero and the maou archetype, and sadly most Eushully games have one of these three as their main character. But Sankai Ou has also three other, more interesting protagonists to choose from. For example, I always wanted the angels to win in an Eushully game, and finally I have the opportunity to do this because the obligatory fallen-angel storyline is already covered in the other routes. Nice.
 
Biggest disappointment: Extravaganza ~Mushigurui Hen~
I was so hyped for this one. The first true Black Cyc game after 5 years of absence. Written by Banya Izumi who we could trust with the task of continuing a beloved series, right? Right?
No, it's awful. This game turned out to be an abomination which is quite remarkable because Black Cyc already milked the Extravaganza series with bad sidestories back when Black Cyc was still good for the most part. And Mushigurui Hen is even worse than these cheap nukige spinoffs. At least with cheap nukige fandisc, we know we get something bad. Mushigurui Hen on the other hand could have been good. It could have been awesome. But it wasn't.
So what went wrong? You have these great characters with their epic background stories, but what do they do with them? Putting them in school, because school life is, as we all now, the most important thing ever. And if a character is too old for school, just make them into rich snobs whose only problem in life is being too old (meaning being 23 years old) and lamenting about not having the time to go to the cinema with friends because work (meaning being CEO and chilling all the day in the office).
And if that wasn't bad enough, they also retcon a character death because this character was very popular back then and we need him for funny slice of life scenes now, yay.
The most offending thing however is how this "sequel" actually takes place after the second arc of the original Extravaganza, which means before the last third of the original game. And all the important character events in the third arc which really were the heart of the Extravaganza story apparently don't take place in this timeline. Instead, we get inferior and meaningless drama with derailed characters in Mushigurui Hen which is apparently now the canon timeline. Hurray.
 
Biggest insult: Everything released by Akabei Soft 3
I'm not going into this now, but literally every AKB3 game this year greatly offended me, just as Silky's Plus' games did last year. Let's just say that AKB3 makes games which represent everything that's wrong with modern eroge and have nothing left of what made eroge once great. (I might write a post explaining this statement in the near future.)
It saddens me how popular these games are. A dark prospect for 2017.