Dreamysyu

Hello and welcome to the second part of my NaNoRenO 2020 coverage, where I’ll be going through the most noteworthy games submitted to the most recent edition of the biggest EVN game jam. While in the first part I focused on otome and other GxB romantic VNs, this time I’ll tackle the niche that, in my opinion, contained some of the best projects in the whole event – horror. Once more, I’ll be focusing on complete projects, rather than many demos and prototypes that get submitted to NaNoRenO – and thanks to the extended deadline devs worked with this year, that’s still a lot of interesting content.
                One game from the previous post, Dream Dilemma, also fits into this week’s theme besides featuring GxB romance – however, it was a rather unremarkable, simplistic game and most of those I’ll be writing about today are anything but that. So, please join me in this quick overview of NaNoRenO 2020 horror VNs – and as always, whenever one of them catches your attention, clicking its title in the list will get you straight to its Itch.io games. Of course, all the titles I’m covering are completely free to play. Let’s have some scary (and slightly messed up) fun!
Divilethion

Divilethion is far from your typical scary VN, tilting more to the side of grotesque horror-comedy, with visuals and writing style that contrast heavily with the grim essence of its story – and do so in a brilliant, at times hilarious way. The game follows Lynn, a young high priest in an isolated village “protected” by a monstrous god named Divilethion. While the entity is the only guarantee of survival for the community surrounded by monster-infested swamps and regularly plagues by disasters, the price for its “miracles” is steep – every time, a villager has to be sacrificed and his heart fed to Devilethion. Lynn, cynical and disturbingly diligent about his duties, is soon put to the greatest test yet by the apparently bored deity, asked to sacrifice one thing he might not be willing to give up…
                As serious as this story setup might sound, what sets its tone as primarily a dark comedy is Lynn’s warped perception of the reality around him and the grotesque enthusiasm Divilethion requires from his worshippers. This combined with an unrelenting writing style, never shying away from harsh language and disturbing story developments, creates a striking experience that will likely keep you engaged all the way through, to either a relatively-positive or deeply unsettling conclusion. While overall the game is relatively short, it’s just so full of personality and meaningful story developments it’s hard to not be satisfied with it. I deeply recommend checking it out – very few hour-long VNs left me with such a strong impression.
Final Rating: Highly Recommended
Read the full article at evnchronicles.blogspot.com

Anyone observing the EVN scene should know well that yuri, besides being my personal obsession, is one of the most vibrant niches for non-JP visual novels, with many studios and creators dedicated to this theme and a very active fanbase. This seems to be particularly clear nowadays, as even companies like Winged Cloud, the infamous producers of low-effort VN smut, capitalized majorly on the trend, producing mostly GxG games for the past few years. On the other side of the spectrum, Studio Elan recently pushed the standard of quality for EVNs in general with their modern fairy tale, Heart of the Woods. As a result, yuri fans have a lot to choose from, both when it goes to quality work and amusing trash.
                The game I’ll be writing about today, Aikawa Collective’s Mizuchi 白蛇心傳, definitely aimed for the “quality” side of the spectrum and seemed like something that could rival Studio Elan’s hit with its climate and visual spectacle. This yuri-themed retelling of the famous Chinese folk tale, the Legend of the White Serpent, looked spectacular in its promotional material and easily reached its Kickstarter goal of $8500 in September 2018. While the development cycle for it proved long, going 9 months beyond its initial target of August 2019, it never lost its place as a promising and highly-anticipated yuri EVN. Releasing on Steam and Itch.io in mid-April 2020, it gathered overwhelmingly positive feedback – but, did it truly live up to the hype?
Read the full article at evnchronicles.blogspot. com

For this week title I'd just literally translate 'Kimagure' from Kimagure Temptation and 'Sora' from Yosuga no Sora into 'Whimsical' and 'Sky' respectively then combined both words, so we have 'The Whimsical Sky' as this week VNTS Review title. I did a bit more searching and find out that there's a picture called Whimsical Sky, and of course I wouldn't write my opinion on the picture here. Welcome to this week VNTS Review, and as for this week I would say that this week is quite calm after a big release (Sakuramori) and several announcements so more or less technically it's an average one. That said, I still like this week though if only because we finally have Yosuga no Sora fully translated after nine years of works along with the first update in Ginharu after three weeks of absences, so overall its not too bad to me here. Anyway let's see what I can write for this week VNTS Review here.
This week we have JAST released this nukige in which apparently it's a sequel of a doujin VN, and apparently based on Monster Girl Encyclopedia. While I must admit that it's not too bad here, in the end it's still smaller release from JAST so hopefully they'll be able to up their game to finally released Kimikoi on time (Shouldn't be affected by pandemic as long as they chose to release it in digital version only I think). We also have good news from Frontwing, in that they'll release Yukikoi at 29th later. I wonder if they'll reveal their next project to us later on, in which the next project could be Hatsumira if we look at several info seeing that they said that they've been planned to localized it.
From Sekai we finally have Nine Episode 3 release, in which it's at 5% translated. While it's pretty much inevitable that Sekai will get Nine Episode 4 here, I still hoping that Sekai will manage to get it and if possible repeat their achievement to release two episodes in a year like back at 2019 (If only for Tsubasu's art here). By the way Nine Episode 4 was scheduled to be released at 24th later, and hopefully it's the last episode for Nine VN here. For more updates, we have Nekogami back into QA in which it probably mean that Sekai was about to make sure that it's free of bug, and Amairo Chocolata was at 65% translated. In any case, I'll look forward to whatever Sekai will announce in their 'AX from home' here if they want it seeing that usually their bigger announcement was usually happened at AX.
As for Mangagamer's update, we have Escalayer finalizing the release build and Rance 01 was finished the testing (Both of those are coincidentally from Alicesoft). They also have one more secret project, in which currently was fully translated and edited along with finishing the image editing for the project. As for the first secret project, currently it was at 70% translated along with 68% edited. From the updates, at least I can estimate that the next release from them here would be Escalayer. While for the second secret project, for now I can only guess that it would be a short VN although of course I might be wrong here.
We have Angel Beats was passed 90% mark (93.60%) translated and Miotsukushi Ura was at 24% translated. For more updates, we have both of Yosuga no Sora Motoka's route along with Ginharu Momiji's route were fully translated. The former is more important, because Yosuga no Sora here is a nine years old project and Motoka's route here is the last route to be translated. While normally we should celebrate this occasion because we also have full translation patch available, the patch itself is still not completed just like Rhapsody because the team said that it's still need some editing and QC for the translation to be completed, so I'll just consider it as partial release. Still if you want to play Yosuga no Sora VN after nine years of waiting, feel free to try the patch and have fun. For Ginharu here, we finally have an update after three weeks of absences and with Momiji's route fully translated we have overall Ginharu was at 62.57% translated. While Irru did say that we better not expect the patch in another month, I'm still hoping that we'll get it in June's end at the fastest though so let's just wait and see here.
That's all for this week VNTS Review, and see you next week.

Epic Works is a pretty unique phenomenon in the EVN scene: an African studio, developing games openly inspired by the Type-Moon visual novels and other classic chuunige. Their first release, Episicava, was something of a glorious trainwreck, launching with multiple technical problems and borderline-unbearable, edgy storytelling replicating most of the worst tropes of the chuuni game subgenre. The follow-ups included an unholy abomination of a nukige known as Analistica Academy, and a clunky and inconsistently written, but occasionally appealing RPG VN The Adventurer’s Tale. None of them proved genuinely impressive, but each showed some forms of progress, particularly in the visual department, which by the time of The Adventurer’s Tale’s release got both appealing and consistent in style and quality.
                As unhealthy curiosity is one of the driving forces behind my blogging endeavours, I couldn’t stop myself from being attracted by the studio’s second Kickstarter campaign, aimed at creating another chuunige-style VN in the Episicava universe (although with no direct connection to the latter’s main plot). Despite my disappointment with their debut titles, I was very interested whether this new project, Rainbow Dreams, would represent an improvement for the studio and correct the massive issues with tone and writing quality those earlier games suffered from. And despite apparent development issues and heavy delays, resulting in a January 2020 Steam release, I’m happy to say that while not all problems were remedied to an appropriate degree, when it comes to the sheer entertainment factor, Rainbow Dreams is a major step in the right direction.
Read the full article at evnchronicles.blogspot.com

The story of how I came to read this EVN is kind of like Countdown to silence itself. It started out with a bit of comic relief mingled with human drama (The dev came in and posted a link on the Fuwanovel discord and I grilled him for a bit because my ego is large and my opinions voluminous, but he managed to at least catch my interest). Then trouble struck (My Internet’s been down for hours now and it’s doing a number on me), but this led to some exciting events (I played the VN on a whim and it turned out to actually be good). The ending… well, my Internet’s still not back on, can someone tell the wankers over at Comhem to hurry up and get my router a bloody IP address? Thanks in advance.
13 hours later, I finally have the connection necessary to post this. Holy fuck.

Countdown to Silence takes place in a world where (entirely benevolent and harmless) experiments intended to give humans superpowers have succeeded, but in an unexpected fashion: only their kids got a splash with the supe brush. This ability is called IO for “Information Overlay”, and true to its name it presents itself as an overlay showing you certain information – with varying levels of usefulness depending on your specific ability. The protagonist and (voiced!) narrator, Josh, didn’t get particularly lucky with his: all it shows him is a countdown to when people will speak to him next. While there are _some_ uses for this, it mostly doesn’t give him much benefit. His best friend Kyle has a much better ability: seeing potential conversation choices when talking to people, potentially revealing their secrets but also making him a great guy to talk to. The setting and abilities are used surprisingly well in the story, but don’t expect anything about uncovering government conspiracies or rebelling against society or whatever, it’s just accepted as a Thing in universe. You could probably rewrite the thing without the abilities, but it wouldn’t have the same zing to it, so I can’t say I’m bothered.
No, but self-isolation does, so basically half of us are in the system now.
The VN walks a delicate line between drama and comedy, and will frequently take the edge off tense moments with a comedic segment before ramping up the tension again. Thankfully, it succeeds in the balancing act; neither the comedy nor the drama are cheapened too much by its counterpart. The humor does have indulgent parts; the main character is a weeb into magical girl shows for kids. This doesn’t get too grating in my opinion, and it’s only mentioned in like three scenes, but after reading this many EVNs I still feel it’s a bit cliché. Otherwise, I would describe it as… a bit camp, I guess? On the low end of the scale though. I swear to god if the creator of this isn’t British I need to get my tea-dar fixed.
Nisemonogatari >>> Bakemonogatari
So why do I like it so much? Well, first of all, the plotting is tight: it doesn’t waste time, keeps you interested, and things slide into place from foreshadowing in pleasing ways.
Second, the voiced narration actually adds a lot for me. There’s a constant echo-ish effect to it, it’s clearly not a super high quality recording, but I find it charming. Combined with the rest of the voices in this fully voiced VN (not badly acted, but certainly not recorded with the best equipment), the weird style convention of leaving off most ending periods in text boxes, and the uhh, funky backgrounds, it feels very doujin. Alone, any of these elements would be less than ideal, but together it forms a gestalt I find strangely palatable. Though I still must insist that you really should still end your text boxes with periods – I got used to the style because it was consistent and repetition legitimizes, but it’s not going to be a good fit for most stories and arguably made even this one worse. Anyway, the aesthetic fits the drama-comedy flow of the story pretty well. I’m left with the impression that it all shouldn’t fit together so well, and yet it just does.
So yeah, I really recommend this for a fun and engaging 30-60 minutes or so of content. Extremely positively surprised.
Download free at: https://plotline-progenitor.itch.io/countdown-to-silence

–
Okay, but as we all know I have autism, so let’s nitpick the craft a bit instead as I think the writer has potential and might read this. If you’re not into that, feel free to skip the rest of this.
Hotkeys:
Page up/down do nothing, despite the fact that they’re listed on the Help page! No hotkey to show message history, the SUPERIOR history function.
UI:
There’s no way to replay voice lines besides going back from a later line with rollback (and then they always play due to renpy rollback.) Rollback is the default backlog for mousewheel (my JVN soul cries for it to activate the backlog instead and then have scenario jump and voice replay buttons in that history). Uses default UI rather than anything custom as far as I can tell, though at least the modern Ren’Py default doesn’t make me want to tear my eyes out.
Sound:
Some voices are too hard to hear at the default music volume (full) while others are perfectly fine. I remember a scene where this made me have to go into the settings and lower the music volume to like half (which I left it at). I feel like this could have been avoided with more careful sound design.
Why put this on your download page when you can just change the default settings???
Music doesn’t fade out, it just cuts, which makes scene transitions feel unnecessarily and jarringly sudden. Especially the final line of the game suffers from this – it really needed a soft fadeout to mimic the emotion at that point. Overall, think about transitions more when scripting.
Voices sometimes do not fully match the written line, though the wording is often better than the actual text. One voiced line even adds a word that was accidentally omitted in the text!
Text:
Apart from the aforementioned thing where sentences just end without punctuation half the time, there’s a few typos that could’ve been caught by a careful eye. The phrasing style, and well, the style in general is unusual and feels like veering into the relaxed conventions of, I don’t know, fanfic writing? With everything else it kind of works, but it certainly won’t work for just any tone, and you’ll need to be careful with this in the future. The voiced narration does help sell some fairly long sentences without punctuation, so it’s good we have it.
…And that’s about it, I think.

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You probably saw many cataclysms in stories you’ve read or watched in the past. Disasters that were natural, technological or magical in nature, limited in scale or apocalyptic, resulting in short-lived crises or civilisation-ending. From Muv-Luv through Swan Song to I Walk Among Zombies, plot-oriented visual novels never shied away from presenting these kinds of scenarios, and along with literature, they’re uniquely positioned to explore deeper consequences they could have for both individuals and whole societies. 
                Fallstreak, a free game released on Steam on October 2018 as a debut title of a small studio under the name Centicerise Productions, is one less-common EVNs tackling this topic. It does so by focusing heavily on a group of people affected by such a catastrophic event – mostly average folk, crippled physically and emotionally by the mysterious Fire of Collapse that ravaged their isolated country without a warning or identifiable source. It’s also, generally speaking, a wonderfully-produced piece of VN that I’m wary of recommending to people due to its surprisingly extreme content and open-ended story, quite clearly meant as an introduction to its world and a prologue to future games utilizing the same setting. So, what are the main reasons to check it out, or to skip on visiting the fantasy realm of Socotrine at least until Fallstreak’s continuation shows up?

The amount of stories-within-a-story and subplots that are never elaborated upon makes Fallstreak feel more like a prologue leading to a proper story than a standalone experience
Fallstreak’s Steam page claims that the game’s protagonist is Adelise Cotard, the daughter of Socotrine’s ruler and a little girl with a mind of an adult. Atypically mature due to the time she spends in the Golden Dream, a lucid dreamworld full of knowledge which she enters nearly every night, Ade is indeed the character through which we initially experience the story. These introductory chapters, rather relaxed and light-hearted, mostly follow her and her group of friends through some everyday situations – a normal life in which only physical scars some of them bear and occasional reminiscence hint at the dramatic past. However, she’s neither sole focus nor the only protagonist of the game. In its second half, when we start learning about other characters’ backstories and the details of Fire of Collapse though flashbacks, she’s not only pushed to the background but mostly absent, with crucial events taking place before she was even born. At this point, the game switches perspectives on a regular basis, focusing mostly on various members of the Lirit family, whose children are Adelise’s classmates in a private school for those orphaned or otherwise affected by the cataclysm.
                In the meantime, we’re also introduced to a ton of information about Socotrine itself, a land isolated from the outside world by the apparently impassable, magical mist. Its impoverished, but stable history was shaken up by the arrival of a refugee convoy from beyond the barrier, around 20 years before the game’s main events. Bringing with them advanced technology and knowledge of the outside world, refugees affected drastically both the land’s political balance and the way of life of its people. Eventually, the convoy’s “Lost Children” revolted against the ruling aristocracy of Socotrine and brought in an era of prosperity. At the same time, the game opens many questions about their origins, actions after traversing the mist and their connection to the Fire of Collapse which nearly destroyed the whole realm. Adelise’s personal story is also apparently related to much of this, with the Golden Dream, her father’s dethronement of the Lost Children’s leader and her mother’s death all signalized as mysteries crucial to understanding Socotrine’s predicaments, although without many hints on how they’re actually significant.

Fallstreak’s story turns bleak without much warning and introduces scenes that wouldn’t be out of place in the darkest of horror stories – it’s not a VN for those faint of heart
If this sounds like a lot to fit into a relatively short, 80k-word VN, it definitely is. I also skipped a number of lore details and subplots that could be considered spoilers, and as you can imagine, very few of those receive any kind of answer or satisfying conclusion. The game does not shy away from extensive infodumps and introducing character after character, many of them either signalizing stories that might be told in the future or being little more than exposition props. It also includes allegorical stories told by various characters, which further draw the readers attention away from its actual plot-points and protagonists. At times the memorable, high-quality visual design and solid characterisation are main things preventing it from devolving into an incomprehensible mess. The unique characters and the sheer beauty of all visual assets make it easier to get immersed in the world and look past the absolute overload of story threads the game bombards you with, without ever tying most of them together.
                While the pacing is definitely an issue in Fallstreak, the most problematic part might still be its tone: it often jumps from rather relaxing slice-of-life moments to unsettling mysteries, and then to over-the-top tragedy and absolutely grotesque violence. The aforementioned backstory of the Lirits is full of gut-wrenching moments, drastic enough to disturb even a relatively experienced and desensitized reader like me. I’m not sure all of them belonged in this story – some very much balanced on the border of absurdity and if they had a real narrative function beyond the sheer shock factor, it’s not clear at this point. It’s not a massive problem if you can handle that kind of content, but it definitely makes Fallstreak not an experience for everyone, especially because the intensity of these segments was not properly signalized by previous events and very much caught me by surprise.

The visual design of Fallstreak is impeccable and helps a lot in fleshing out its characters and world, making them surprisingly memorable
If what I wrote so far paints a pretty bleak picture, it’s because Fallstreak’s problems could’ve been fatal if not for how just this polished and well-put-together it is. The prose and dialogue, despite the heavy exposition and anachronistic jokes that I’m not sure make sense in the setting, are very solid. Elements such as character’s speech patterns and personality quirks save them from being forgettable in the overcrowded storyline. And in the end, it’s the beautiful visuals and music that really make it stand out. The characters look distinct and expressive, while backgrounds and CGs are hard to take your eyes off. The assets are also pretty abundant for a free VN, with just enough environments, sprite variants and full illustrations to consistently keep things fresh. The original soundtrack is very climatic, with mostly sombre piano tunes underlining the sad reality of the game’s world. It all comes together in a way that I’m not sure I’ve seen in another free VN.
                So, ultimately, what do I make out of Fallstreak? It’s definitely not a bad game and the main problems it suffers from came rather from the developers being overly ambitious than a lack of effort. They definitely tried to fit too much into one package and didn’t follow up properly with new chapters. If I read it right and it is a starting point for a commercial franchise, we should already be seeing much more concrete signals about its continuation than the sporadic teasers present on the developer's social media. It’s not an abandoned project, considering I was directly approached by the studio behind it not a long time ago and the latest updates on the continuation are fairly recent, but whether you should read it depends mostly on whether you’re ok with reading a story that is essentially unfinished (and is going stay like that for a while), and whether you're willing to deal with its grimdark elements. For me, it was definitely worth the time I’ve spent reading it and as a free VN, that time is all it will ever ask from you.
 
Final Score: 3/5
 
Pros:
+ Beautiful visuals
+ Climatic soundtrack
+ Memorable main characters
Cons:
– Frequent infodumps and clunky exposition
– Gets over-the-top with the brutality of the backstories
– Feels more like a prologue than a full story
 
VNDB Page
Play Fallstreak for free on Steam

I had someone ask me why I consider some VN battle scenes to be good and others to be low quality just the other day, and I thought I would address this here.  
First, I should state that while visuals definitely have an effect on the quality of a battle scene, the quality of visuals is less than 15% of the reasons why I pick one VN's battle scenes over another's.  The considerations when it comes to visuals are raw quality (artist skill, detail, etc), number of combat-related CGs and sprites, and the quality of the visual effects.
More important (roughly 25% of the whole) is music and sound effects.  It is quite possible to turn a VN whose visuals are mediocre and writing are good into a masterpiece based solely on how the BGMs and sound effects are used.  I've seen it happen (Devils Devel Concept being a prime example), and I can honestly say that this aspect almost always trumps visuals when it comes to determining the quality of a given battle scene.
Another 25% comes from context and presentation.  I split this evenly because these two factors tend to be inter-dependent in battle scenes.  Without the context, you can't tell whether you should care, and presentation (the art of bringing writing, sound, and visuals together to create a collaborative effect on the reader) quality can dramatically alter how you see the battle.
The last 35% is all writing.  My prejudice would have put it at 50%, but realistically, in a VN, writing is at the very least 35% of what determines the quality of a battle scene.  The very simple reason is that making a battle scene interesting requires an eye for detail, for stringing descriptions of character actions, emotions, and words into a cohesive whole.  There are plenty of writers outside of the VN industry who only do this well and literally are incapable of 'peaceful writing'.  That is because what is demanded of writing during a battle scene is fundamentally different from what is demanded outside of battle scenes.  To be blunt, most VN writers have no idea of how to write a battle scene, which is why the good ones stand out so much.  'Tom blasted magic sword at Dave, Dave took it on his shield with a grunt' is about as far as it goes with most VN battle scenes... and that is fairly horrid, since there is no sense of what is actually going on in that exchange. 
It isn't uncommon for VN makers with unskilled writers to simply substitute visual and sound effects for descriptions of the battle simply because the writer can only handle dialogue and minimal or copy-paste action lines.  However, this results in amazingly boring scenes, since there is usually almost no variation in visual or sound effects from scene to scene, action to action.  This means that they are essentially using a square block for a round peg.  I don't know how many third-rate battle scenes I've fallen asleep to over the years...  
Anyway, ideally, a good battle scene should have all the elements come together in one cohesive whole.  However, in practice, that almost never happens.  About the only companies that have ever managed to do that consistently are Nitroplus, Light, and Propeller... and we all know what happened to Propeller and (more recently) Light. 

Ds-sans is a British VN developer whose work I've been following since the times I started writing my blog, first being charmed by his free romance game Sounds of Her Love, (check out my review of it here). Released on Steam March 2017, this very tame and heartwarming, small love story was extremely by-the-numbers and rather cliched, but stood out through its solid execution and likeable heroine. Later, I’ve checked out this author’s first VN, Lost Impressions, which also proved enjoyable despite being something of a mess visually and including edgy story elements typical for many beginner VN writers – a rather standard amateur project, but showing traces of genuine talent.
                As you can imagine, I was quite interested in reading ds-sans’ first commercial VN, Chemically Bonded, announced and successfully crowdfunded in late 2017. It promised to continue the wholesome, romantic climate of Sounds of Her Love, but with a more in-depth, branching story and better production values – pretty much a product catered exactly to someone like me, who enjoys fluffy slice-of-life content in VNs over pretty much everything else. After a full year of delays, the game finally came out on November 2019, proving to be… Very much a mixed bag. But, what could go wrong with a concept this straightforward and such a promising background?
Read the full article at evnchronicles.blogspot.com

Welcome to my blog.
Where have we been? Where are we going?
TIMELINE
1980s:
- Early eroge largely consist of still art (what we call pixel art now), very short dialogue/narrative elements, and some primitive interactive elements, while spanning many genres.
1990s:
- The point-and-click adventure game, which has its roots in 1980s video games, establishes itself as one of the most popular genres of eroge. Many games emerge which have interfaces that are visually similar to those of most point-and-click adventure games, but with gradually differing gameplay. These games are all collectively called "adventure games" or "ADV" in Japanese. The general style of having an interface which consists of a rectangular text box at the bottom of the screen, and a collage of visual elements meant to serve as a guide for what the main character sees, is also called "ADV". In other words, ADV becomes a genre that embodies a style of presentation.
- The non-adult game company Chunsoft puts out Otogirisou, a kind of illustrated story in which pictures are placed in the background as visual aids while the full narrative is conveyed as overlaid text. This style of presentation is called a "novel game" or "NVL" in Japanese. The gameplay of Otogirisou purely consists of the player making choices on where to take the story, similar to "Choose Your Own Adventure" books, a simple yet powerful narrative tool which would prove influential to ADV as a whole.
- Two major eroge brands that specialize in ADV, elf and Leaf, create popular games like Doukyuusei and To Heart. These games stand out from their competitors by the way they utilize talented artists and writers to focus on the personalities of charming heroines, rather than treating pixel porn as what matters and the characterization as an afterthought. This character-centric evolution is called a charage (character game) and encompasses both NVL (like Kizuato) and ADV. And with the release of YU-NO and Kamaitachi no Yoru, two ADV/NVL games that have well-written stories, the term scenarioge (scenario game) becomes more popular.
1999:
- Kanon is released by Key. It's the first time a large number of players became very emotionally moved by the story of an eroge, or any ADV at that. Even someone like Baba from Visual Arts, who was just a businessman without much personal interest in ADV, became interested after Kanon. Aside from inventing the nakige (naki game, which means "crying game") genre, it awakened in players a desire for longer scenarios as necessary to deepen their attachment to the heroines. But its most significant role is being the first major moege (moe game) at a time when the term "moe" wasn't even very well known.
2000:
- The doujin NVL Tsukihime comes out, and its quality lets it rank among the very top, if not at the very top, of both scenarioge and charage. See Popular Views on What Defines the Chuuni Genre for more info on the influence of Type-Moon's works.
2000-2006:
- Now that Kanon and Tsukihime have come out, it seems like a dam bursts and a flood of popular and influential ADV/NVL are released. There are comparatively fewer in 2001, with the most notable ones in my mind being Kiminozo and Kazokei. But in 2002 you have Ever17, Higurashi, Kusarihime, Baldr Force, Hello world, Da Capo, and others. And every year after that just has more and more top quality ADV/NVL. The biggest year is 2004, which sees the release of both Clannad and Fate/stay night (successors to Kanon and Tsukihime, respectively).
- Around the middle of the decade, the term "visual novel" is invented among English speaking fans of these games, and basically refers to any game which has an ADV/NVL-style interface and a strong and constant narrative. Since the rest of the world directly bypassed the early history of Japanese eroge and ADV/NVL, they didn't bother with the origins of these styles of games, and just chose a term which seemed to more naturally describe the most famous and representative ADV/NVL. Since then, the term "visual novel" has been recognized by the Japanese too, although the broader Japanese playerbase still commonly thinks that VN is synonymous with "adventure game". In any case, the term is excellent and I like it.
- Over the course of this decade, the major tropes and popular genres of VNs, which were mostly foreshadowed in the late 1990s, are firmly established and standardized. They include TIPs, unlockable routes/end, true ends, bad ends, hidden heroines, time loops/leaps, moe, chuuni, nakige, utsuge, imouto games, and many more. The diverse and awkward gameplay of the 1980s and 1990s more or less disappears.
- Meanwhile, many of the most successful eroge companies like Key, Type-Moon, and Leaf/Aqua-Plus successfully rebrand themselves and reduce their focus on adult content for the sake of marketing their works to the rest of the Japanese "otaku" industries. They adopt the label of "bishoujo game maker". Many of their most popular IPs (intellectual properties) receive anime adaptations or evolve into multimedia franchises, with "Fate" being the most famous example. On the other hand, as these industries embrace VNs, they also learn from them and try to emulate that same appeal within their own IPs; Fate/stay night is especially influential as a progenitor of the "chuuni" genre.
2006:
- Statistically, eroge sales begin to decline. The industry itself doesn't immediately begin to decline, though, because investors take time to notice and react to such trends, companies are still in the midst of developing games, and they will try to shift strategies to fight the trend. The decline in sales won't slow down until 2012.
WHY
Causes of the trend? This was fiercely debated for years and still hasn't been completely settled. But it's more or less clear.
VNs served as a creative outlet without rivals for several years.
At first, in the early 1990s, nobody expect much from eroge. But as we entered the later part of the decade, that changed. Eroge was always a venue for weird and exciting scenarios that wouldn't be accepted elsewhere, and it was easier than ever to make quality audiovisual experiences, with multiple free or cheap VN engines available. Writers like Maeda Jun and Nasu took advantage of the medium's ease of entry, along with the freedom of expression it afforded. It was a fresh, mature alternative to the LN industry. However, that didn't last forever. Major publishers in other mediums distilled the parts of eroge that appealed most to players: the nakige components, the moe components, the fanservice and unapologetic harems, the handy sci-fi tropes, the balloon breasts. Everything except the deep emotional and mental investment that's only possible with literature. And of course, the mature themes and content.
Above all, what VNs brought to the table was no longer as fresh to people. Without a sense of excitement, the fact that VNs require people to sit down and actually read continuously for hours became... problematic. The era of smartphones and social media also heralded the era of low attention spans. People came to think that "adventure games" = "boring". This was coupled with the fact that more and more people play bishoujo games on their smartphones, and who wants to play eroge in public?
Waifu/husbando social games like Fate/Grand Order and Granblue Fantasy dealt especially heavy blows to players' interest in VNs. They let players pick between countless more waifus and husbandos than VNs, have more exciting plots to engage casual players (not some ordinary school life drama), have the slutty outfits and exaggerated figures of nukige heroines, continually put out new content for the most popular characters, let you put your waifu/husbando in your home screen so you can constantly look at her, and tap on the portrait of her/him to hear some flirty line voiced by a popular anime seiyuu. They even copied the feature of some VNs where you can give your favorite hero or heroine chocolates on Valentine's Day or White Day. The proof is in the recent anime Chuubyou Gekihatsu Boy where the "guy who's only interested in 2D girls" stereotype no longer involves VNs on a PSP, but rather depicts a social game on a phone. To be frank, even the latest Fire Emblem game probably makes VNs less appealing by comparison. The main draw of VNs was always the cute and flirty heroines and romance, but these elements have been thoroughly exported.
The exact same situation arose with Japanese web novels on the site Shousetsuka ni Narou. An initial wave of authors pioneered new genres with certain distinctive tropes, most of them related to isekai, and started a trend which has dominated the Japanese web novel scene. But the mainstream LN industry quickly learned and started to put out its own isekai LNs, as well as aggressively recruit these authors (who naturally didn't object to being paid for what they'd initially put out for free online). A few years later, Narou's talents have more or less moved out, and the stories at the top of the popularity charts haven't been supplanted by any new talents. In any case, the major difference between Narou and the VN industry is that Narou authors are overall much better off with editors, whereas the transition from VNs to LNs/anime is absolutely a creative downgrade.
WHAT DO
1. Copy FGO.
Social games are a natural evolution of the appeal of many VNs. Unfortunately, they're also largely vapid experiences with have less voice acting, silent protagonists, a massive cast of heroines who receive little character development, a disjointed narrative, a story that's mostly dialogue and constantly interrupted by battles, and many other flaws that prevent them from achieving literary excellence.
These games have invariably underestimated how popular they'll become and worked with cheap art assets and flimsy storytelling, only to fix this by hiring better artists and writers for the more recent arcs of their ongoing main storylines. However, even those recent arcs are still shallow experiences compared to VNs. The best they can do is have good comedy--no one will ever feel as empathetic toward the characters as they do in VNs.
But of course, despite the problems with social games' storytelling, they are still... inevitable. They will still successfully rake in cash from people with personalities prone to gambling addiction. So one VN company after another has tried to become the next FGO. Eushully, light, August, Key, Lilith, Frontwing, Nitroplus and many others have pursued social games, virtually all of which failed to really take off like FGO--in part because they weren't very well-made, and in part because the Fate franchise is more popular with more devoted fans.
Frankly, this solution has been thoroughly pursued by all sorts of VN companies, and we know exactly what happens: it fails unless they're very lucky.
2. Give up.
This is a wise and fine choice. The river of life flows ever onward. Sometimes it's best to accept defeat.
3. Make NOT a visual novel.
Be Kodaka Kazutaka. Start from the idea that you want to make an adventure game. Then to appease your producer, call it a detective game instead, and add a 3D world with gameplay that takes place within it while occupying a lot of the player's time, so it in no way feels like a pure ADV. Make the narrative largely dialogue-driven. Write in a way that wastes less time on subtlety and imagery and takes more advantage of humor, twists, and action. Then call it Danganronpa and be successful, while feeling that you tricked the world by making an adventure game with the quality storytelling of an adventure game that doesn't feel like an adventure game.
Too Kyo Games plans to water down a full-fledged ADV-quality scenario with meaningful realtime gameplay, by partnering with studios that actually know how to make fun games. It's a long-term experiment on tricking people into playing adventure games.
4. Make a visual novel, but be better.
Find a slightly new angle. Gather the A-Team. Target non-traditional markets. Cultivate one's prestige. In short, reorganize and rebrand. But still make a visual novel, with ordinary 2D art and probably little to no gameplay.
The only problem is that people don't like VNs anymore because smartphones shrunk their brains until they had flea-sized attention spans. So at best, such "better" VNs will simply exist in the top tier of modern VNs, able to survive and maybe make a little profit. These are VNs for the sake of creators who want to stay in the VN industry despite how comparatively little it pays.
Aniplex.exe, a new VN brand started under Aniplex that Makura staff like Sca-ji are involved with, seems to fall under this category. They're identifying as makers of "novel games" probably because that sounds more respectable these days than bishoujo game. I'm frankly more interested in Sca-ji's other still unannounced projects (but that's just because I'm not personally a fan of Konno Asta or Umihara Nozomu).
5. Copy FGO, but EVOLVE.
Before Light's "Pantheon" mobile game died mid-development, Masada planned for it to have a substantial scenario. That kind of story would fatally clash, like matter and dark matter, with social games as they exist today. Unless they rethought the entire premise from scratch, I assume they'd have to at the very least dilute such a lengthy narrative into segments with constant breaks, rewards, and mini-games. And they'd have to make a tough choice about whether they seriously want to market it for smartphones, or stick to PC like Granblue Fantasy.
It's easier to not evolve or just give up. But moreover, I think industry veterans are just pissed off and unable to accept that something as amazing as VNs can't find its consumers anymore. So they will struggle. Visual Arts will struggle, for sure. Key pretended to be half-dead in their 20th anniversary message, but they were actually hard at work. They've let Maeda take on the scenario of a high budget smartphone game called "Heaven Burns Red". Will he be able to do for social games with "Heaven Burns Red" what he did for VNs with "Kanon"? I'm not too optimistic, since I haven't seen any indication that the overall story concept was Maeda's.
6. ???
To quote Sca-ji, a writer who's qualified to talk about the unique worth of eroge, from late October: "People across various otaku industries have said, 'I want the wonderful culture of eroge to stay alive.' They're going out of their way and doing many things to make that happen. If I'm pessimistic, this might be our last chance to revive this industry, so I'm cheering them on. Do your best. ... People around their late twenties to thirty years old have started to take positions of power in society, praising eroge and doing many things for us."
ZZZ
「Kanon」や「CLANNAD」「Angel Beats!」など…「泣きゲー」からアニメ原作まで、美少女IPを仕掛け続けた28年！ ビジュアルアーツのユニークなブランド戦略と経営思想を馬場隆博社長に聞いてみた
『ダンガンロンパ』、『東京クロノス』、『グノーシア』の開発者が語る。「アドベンチャーゲームは滅ぶのか？」緊急座談会
「なぜエロゲ業界は衰退してるのか」 それをまとめた画像が話題にwwwww
https://twitter.com/gannbattemasenn/status/1015644154271973376
https://enty.jp/avestan
https://twitter.com/sca_di
https://vndb.org/
EPILOGUE
A new decade is upon is, and we're in the midst of a wave of 20th anniversaries that inevitably prompt retrospection.
What I'm keeping an eye on, out of concern for the industry, as we enter it:
- Too Kyo Games
- Heaven Burns Red (unveiling on February 28) and Visual Arts as a whole
- Sca-ji's Twitter account
- Aniplex.exe as a whole
- Any news from Masada about new publishers for Pantheon
- Major non-adult scenarioge companies like Spike-Chunsoft and Mages (they may absorb some talent or try to carry on eroge culture)
- Any actual new VNs from Nasu, like the Tsukihime remake
ADDENDUM I: A Note on Death VS Decline (added 1/28)
 

This is perhaps one of the few games from my first five years playing untranslated VNs that isn't a chuunige that I remembered vividly.  I decided to pick this up again because I wanted some good catharsis, and I was tired of waiting for Mangagamer to get off their butts and actually release this. 
Boku ga Tenshi ni Natta wake is what is called a 'soft utsuge', in the sense that there are no good endings but it focuses more on the bittersweet sorrow rather than the absolute despair of a 'hard utsuge' like Houkago no Futekikakusha.  Each of the first three heroines has a bad and a normal ending, and no matter what you choose, darkness awaits.  The fourth heroine, the angel Aine, is the true heroine and only has one ending (the true ending) which is also bittersweet, though there is some sense of salvation for the protagonist, albeit at a price. 
The first three heroines are the aggressively helpful osananajimi (who is the only one of the heroines who knows his past) Naruko, the soft-mannered but somehow gloomy Yuri, and the standoffish Minamo.  Thankfully, only Naruko falls into an archetypical role (osananajimi characters have a very limited range of roles), which is nice for someone looking for something with unusual heroines. 
This game focuses on a sort of tug of war between the apparently apathetic Kirinokojima Tomoe, who actively loathes romance in general, and the optimistic clumsy angel Aine, who believes in romance as the ultimate force for human happiness with all her heart.  Tomoe is kind-hearted under his apparently apathetic exterior, inevitably caring about what happens to the people Aine wants to help, but his belief that romance only brings suffering and is a force for evil in the world is so strong that he is constantly wavering on whether to go along with Aine or not.  This conflict, though it is not one born of malice, defines the main storyline, as the characters worry about what is best for the people involved.
The first six chapters of the game are the common route, and each chapter covers a different romantic mess that draws Aine's attention.  These messes are never simple nor easily resolved, and regardless of which path Tomoe chooses in the end, nothing turns out perfectly.  The seventh chapter covers the heroine routes, which are much more intimate and have an impact that quite naturally surpasses that of the arcs of the common route.
Yuri
I advise anyone who plays this game to play Naruko's route third, regardless of which of the other two paths you do first.  I say this because Aine's (the true path) splits off immediately before you would otherwise head into Naruko's route... 
Yuri's route is pretty... sick-minded.  Sorry, the writer of this game probably has a serious mental illness, and I shouldn't be insensitive about it, lol.  Anyway, there are hints of what Yuri's conflict is in the common route, but it escalates rapidly once you actually get to her route and her personal issues are laid bare.  Tbh, Yuri's route is the most horrifying of the initial three routes for reasons that become obvious to anyone who plays it, and I wept at the normal ending and was somewhat disgusted at the bad ending (both times). 
Minamo
Minamo's route is a bit less psychotic than Yuri's... but in exchange, the issues are more 'worldly' and familiar to the average reader.  The central conflict involves Minamo's work as an idol and a combination of her past issues, family issues, and the inevitable problems of a celebrity in Japan getting involved romantically with someone else.  While this path is milder than Yuri's, it is a lot easier to empathize with, and it also epitomizes Tomoe's nature to a greater degree than the other two paths. 
I didn't bother with the bad ending this time, instead going for just the normal one.  The normal ending is bittersweet and strikes me as the ending that most fits Tomoe's personality outside of the true ending.  It is sad, though.
Naruko
This is by far my least favorite path in the game, though it isn't just because I dislike osananajimi paths.  I won't go deep into why I didn't like this path either time I played it, because I don't want to spoil anything important, but I will go ahead and cover the spoiler-free issues.  This path is the only one of the first three paths that actually touches upon the reason for Tomoe's apathetic/asexual personality, and it also is the only one that touches upon the truth of what the angels work is.  As such, it is absolutely vital that you play it before the true route even if you want to go straight to it, since the explanation isn't repeated in the true route.  Moreover, Naruko's route's normal ending serves as an example of the game's true central conflict that is vital for understanding the true route.
True Route
What can I say about the true route/Aine route?  It is by far the best path in the game (though the ending is still deeply bittersweet), and after you finish it, there is a sense of salvation for Tomoe that doesn't exist in any of the other paths.  I say a sense of salvation, but it is salvation at a cost, as is typical of every blessing any character in this game experiences.  This path reveals the fullness of why Tomoe hates himself to the point where he rejects all possibility of happiness for himself, and, to be honest, I replayed the rest of the paths solely so I could re-experience the heart-jerking events of this route in the same manner I did the first time. 
I can recommend this to someone who wants catharsis and doesn't mind a darker atmosphere than you would see in a nakige.  It is also something I can recommend to utsuge lovers (if you liked Swan Song for the emotional elements, there is a good chance you'll like this).  I do not recommend this for people who want undiluted happy endings.

One of only two games written by Kazutaka, the writer of the somewhat comically-named Doushite Daite Kurenai no!?  Onna no Ko Datte Yaritai no! (incidentally, despite the title, the aforementioned game is not a nukige, which is in itself humorous, lol).  It is also the game that gave substance to Ensemble's quest to define itself as a specialist company in trap protagonist and ojousama-ge.  Ironically, it is also the flat-out best SOL game the company has ever made, which makes it somewhat sad for me that Kazutaka faded out after this game was released.  I can say right out that the only reason I still try Ensemble games is because of the experience I had with this one.
One of the parts anyone who first plays this game will notice is that the protagonist is voiced.  More than that, 'Mizuki' is voiced by a female VA that was able to put a hint of androgyny into the voice, giving you the impression that it was quite natural that most people mistake him for a girl.  Another part of this game that is obviously noticeable from the start is that the writer has really done his research into the art field.  'Mizuki' has an extremely wide and deep knowledge of all forms of art and their care, and this serves as one of his (actually, it is easier to think of him as a girl with a penis, lol) charm points for the reader, along with his obvious love of housework. 
One part that makes it easy to regard this game's path as being far more in-depth than the norm for an SOL-focused game is the way the choices are handled.  Essentially, before you exit the prologue, you will have already chosen your heroine, since all choices are concentrated in a very short period of time at the beginning of the game.  By choosing to essentially get the choices 'out of the way', the writer manages to avoid one of the most common pitfalls of VNs in general... breaking engrossment in the game by inserting choices into every important scene.  This game essentially ignores the lie of player agency (Clephas: Player agency in a VN, pfft), which is definitely a positive in this case.  This allows the protagonist's and the heroines' personalities and actions to become clear to the reader (and there is no doubt that you are a reader with this VN) without the interference of random choices or the need to keep which heroine you want to go for in the back of your mind constantly.
Ootori Rena
Rena is the game's obvious main heroine.  She is the daughter of the town's owner and permanent mayor (literally, their business bought the town in which the game is based).  She is also an art dealer from a family of art dealers.  It is tempting, at first glance, to call her a tsundere... but for once, this archetypical characterization fails.  Rena is very straightforward in how she expresses her feelings, having a policy of expressing her emotions openly regardless of what they are.  She is also very mature in the sense that she has a solid grasp on what her responsibilities are to those around her, coming from her upbringing as the successor of a family of primary art dealers (art dealers that primarily 'raise' artists and sell their works as opposed to buying artists' works that already have an established market value). 
I say she is the main heroine, and indeed, her path is one of the few paths where the protagonist is forced to confront his own issues head on.  For better or worse, in most of the paths, Shin/Mizuki manages to avoid directly confronting his past and his own weakness, making this path an obvious favorite for me.  That said, this was the first path I played originally, so I couldn't help but play this one first again.
Chiharu
Chiharu is my yome!  lol  Seriously, if you were to ask me which heroine (as opposed to 'which girl' since Akie is my favorite girl... I love haraguro characters) touched my heartstrings (and my libido) the most, it would be Chiharu.  Chiharu is the single-minded but kind-hearted bodyguard that serves Rena.  She is very serious and kind-hearted, but it often shows in odd ways, because she is somewhat socially awkward.  Her reactions are also driven by her early upbringing and profession, the former of which was strict and the latter of which is professional security. 
Chiharu's dere is... frighteningly powerful.  Oh, this can be said of all the heroines, really, but Chiharu is a very loving soul.  I love Chiharu's path for a lot of reasons, but the biggest reason is that she is, at heart, someone who just wants someone who can accept her from the bottom of their hearts, flaws, disabilities, and all.  This very human worry is what turned Chiharu from a two-dimensional character to a person in my mind.
Also:  「だって幽霊って死んでるんだよ、死霊って生きてないんだよ、生きてなければ殺傷することもできないじゃないか、刀で死人は斬れないよ怖いよ！！」
Chiharu "But ghosts are dead!  Ghosts aren't alive!  If they aren't alive, you can't kill them!  You can't kill the dead with a katana!  I'm scared!"
「いえ、テレビは斬れます。寮の器物損壊はやめてください」
Akie "No, but you can cut the TV.  Please refrain from damaging dorm property."
Shizuku
Shizuku is an art auctioneer and the daughter of the head of the Karasuma Group, a company that specializes in the resale of art.  She and Rena are on bad terms, not the least because their places in the art industry make it inevitable.  To most people, she is a sharp-tongued (dokuzetsu) but elegant-looking girl who dominates her surroundings by her very presence.  In private, she is an intensely loving and passionate woman who will do absolutely anything and everything for the person she loves.  However, she has a bad habit of jumping to conclusions (something that can be said of the other two heroines above as well, though not of Yuki and Anastasia), especially when it comes to Shin.
Tbh, this is the most frustrating of the routes to speak of, because so much of her profile is spoilers for the other routes.  Let's just say there are some seriously hilarious antics that occur partly because of Shii-cha- *coughs* ahem, Shizuku's tendency to jump to conclusions, her willingness to do anything for the people she loves, and Rena's inevitable reactions, lol. 
This path is primarily hilarious, but it also gets into the more intimate elements of Shin's 'why' in a way that even Rena's path doesn't.  Tbh, if I were to put a recommended route order up, it would be Rena>Shizuku>Chiharu>Yuki>Anastasia.  My reasoning for this is because this game actually benefits from experiencing it in an order that could be seen as 'main to sub' instead of 'sub to main' as I would normally recommend.  All the paths are good in their own ways, but the knowledge from Rena and Shizuku's paths enhance the experience of the other three paths to a rather large degree.  Moreover, playing Anastasia's path without having played Rena's would make it somewhat confusing, and I'm pretty sure some important points would be missed by first-timers. 
For now, I'm going to stop, because I need to take a rest from SOL for a few days, but I'll finish this one up soon.
 

Welcome to VNTS Review, and as for this week I can say that it's more lively compared to the last week. The reasons is simply because we have man announcements and one of those announcement is Baldr Sky Steam store that was finally opened, although right now I'm quite anxious in that there's high chance that they'll censor it. Other than Baldr Sky Steam store, we have Seven Days release date announcements as well in which it's sort of Conjueror's Swan Song because it's his last translation job besides Rewrite+ before he doing the action that ended his life. We also have Mangagamer and fan translation updates as well, and JAST also join the updates here with them announced Kimikoi release month at February later. Let's see what I can write for this week here, and I'll explain the title at PS later (Of course it's not because Winged Cloud released yet another their Sakura VN, although I appreciate them though in that their recent VNs MC are always female instead of faceless male).
For Baldr Sky Steam store, let's just say that I have mixed feeling on that. The reason is definitely not because Sekai still set the release date as soon (I understand if they need more time to polish the engine), but rather it's because apparently it'll be censored according to the rumor. While I can just dismiss the rumor as nonsense, I start to see that there's some indication that the release will be lack of sex scenes. The silent response from Sekai there didn't really help at all, and in fact it make it worse. In the end, if the censorship must be happen, then I'll obviously blame GIGA because it mean that they're the same as Pulltop and that Sekai releases always have 18+ patch add on. So for now I just hope that whatever GIGA planned in regard of the replacement for the sex scenes should be worth the trouble if the censorship is inevitably happened, and if it's very important to them. At least I can say that the font is far better compared to what we see at Baldr Force which show a hard work from Sekai's programmer, seeing that the engine is supposed to be very hard to crack.
I'm not surprised to see that JAST delsy both of Katahane and Flowers Autumn releases seeing that the fall is already over and that there's no word about those two, but instead I'm very surprised with JAST suddenly announced that their Kimikoi are already ready for the release at February later. For more info, they also already have the pre-order for that. So if you want to see on why Kimikoi here is occasionally alluded as well known Doki Doki Literature Club predecessor and want to see 'passionate Hitomi Nabatame-voiced love-making' scenes (And moreso if Baldr Sky is really censored later on), you can do the preorder at JAST's site. For now I'll just hope that JAST didn't delay Kimikoi release at February later.
From Mangagamer, we have some updates from them at their usual biweekly updates. The updates are Sukehime was fully edited, Rance 02 was halfway edited, Sona-Nyl was at 55% edited, WanNyan image editing was completed, and Sakuramori was about to enter the testing soon. Out of those announcements, I'm interested with Sakuramori the most so I hope that the testing for it would be going well.
We have Ninetails released the new demo for Frontier, so perhaps you may try the new demo before decided whether you'll get Frontier that'll be released at 20th later or not. Speaking about the upcoming releases, we have a rerelease of a nukige by Cherry Kiss at this month (I'll just say that it's a redundant one because it's already fantranslated), and Seven Days at two days later (13th) in which it's been famous as the VN that was created from the crowdfund. I have not much to say other than I hope the releases will be successful.
For the fan translation, currently we finally have Loverable was past three quarters (75.22%) edited and Miotsukushi Omote waa at 68% translated. We also have new project with the current progress was at almost halfway (49.7%) translated, and the VN in question is Chiccakunai Mon in which apparently it's a loli nukige so you may need to be very open minded if you want to play this later (I'll pass this anyway). Lastly we have a surprise new Amayui rough patch release that apparently translated 63% of the narration and that it's still not TLC-ed, which is fine enough to me seeing that I already survive Soukoku no Arterial 'translation'. While it sounds good enough, unfortunately I can't check in regard on how much the narration that was translated so let's just say that I'll pass on Amayui's partial patch here until there's a 100% translated narration patch in the future (Whether it's fully TLC-ed or not).
That's all for this week VNTS Review, and sorry for being late here. See you next week.
PS - For the title, the 'Sakura' part here is obviously from Sakuramori. As for the 'Literature Club' here, it's in regard of Kimikoi release month announcement which as we know it have similar twist like a certain very well known free OELVN (Doki Doki Literature Club).

Taisho x Alice was sadly remembered in the western otomege fandom for one of the worst otome localizations disasters. It read like garbage, had several bugs and it featured amateur english voice acting as if reading engrish wasn't enough. It failed so spectacularly the localization didn't even get past episode 1 out of 3. Well, thankfully tbh. Still, the damage was there and for a long time we believed we would never see a proper localization of this cute fairy tale reimagination in the west.
Until now.
Primula (TaiAli developer) decided to give english audiences one more chance, complete in a multilanguage package with japanese and chinese options to boot! Rejoice folks as Taisho x Alice episode 1 is now available on steam with a proper translation (translator this time around is our precious verdelish and from what I read from her previous VN translations it's likely top notch)! Episode 1 have only 2 heroes but they have full proper routes. The rest is in episodes 2 and 3, coming soon if episode 1 sells well enough. It's not always we get second chances in VN localization scene so let's say one huge thank you to Primula and support if you can and if you dig cute otomes! *points to strong female protagonist tag in VNDB, hint, hint*
 
DISCLAIMER: sadly I wasn't paid for this promotion, I did it out of hype alone.

Originally, when this game came out, I bought it, played the first part of the prologue, facepalmed over the protagonist's actions, then dropped it.  I still don't think that choice was a mistake, even now.  That's not to say this is not an excellent game (it is), but the fact is that Kouki being a total doofus at times is annoying as hell. 
This game is split into two parts, Sorceress and Alive.  The two parts have significantly different story progression and outcomes, and it would be safe to say that Sorceress is a different game from Alive in many ways.  Sorceress can be called a 'combat sport charage', as it focuses primarily on the heroines, romance, SOL, and the Rave tournament.  This in itself is quite an enjoyable example of the sub-genre, though the gap between Kouki in his 'strategist mode' and his 'dense doofus mode' is startling at times. 
Alive is more of a plotge with chuunige elements (I've had people describe it as a chuunige, but it doesn't have most of the major qualities of one).  The story there is darker and much denser, showing sides of the various characters you can't see in Sorceress.  Though, tbh, it is bound pretty tightly to some tropes familiar to most otakus. 
The heroines are Azuria, Akina, Yuzuriha, Miya, and Riri.  Riri only has an ending in Alive, but she does play a role in both parts of the game. 
Azuria is your typical mother-like oneesan character... with the classic physical features to go along with it.  Of the five, I think she has the strongest personality second only to Yuzuriha, who is intense behind her calm appearance.   She wields earth magic, which she uses mostly in a defensive manner at first (though she does expand her repertoire).
Akina is your typical 'fire magic tsundere'.  To be honest, there really isn't any need to explain her further if you've seen any number of anime tsunderes with fire magic.  They all act the same way and are equally predictable.  Her relationship with Kouki ends up somewhat like that of Yuuji and Shana in Shakugan no Shana (the first half of the season) in some ways.
Yuzuriha is the quiet bullied girl of the group.  She uses ice magic, and her manner seems to reflect this...  However, she is probably the most passionate and loving of them all by several degrees.  Her relationship with Kouki has a rather larger portion of psychological dependence than the other paths, but I still think of her as the strongest personality of the group.
Miya is the apparent 'imouto' character, constantly clinging to the protagonist, always with a mischievous smile on her face.  While there are definitely hidden depths to her personality, it is somewhat hard to get at them early on.  She wields wind magic, which reflects her (apparent) whimsical nature.
Riri... is your typical arrogant tsundere ojousama, with fight-loving traits blended in.  To be honest, she has the least amount of character development, so I have to say I think she got gypped.  That said, she is a great rival for the Sorceress part of the game, and a wielder of darkness magic.
An important character to keep in mind is Yuumi, who is the most powerful mage in the school, a wielder of light magic that dominates her opponents easily.  Her personality is apparently hedonistic and driven by the whimsy of the moment.  She also is extremely lazy.
Sorceress
I'll state here again that Sorceress is basically a charage with battle elements tacked on.  This isn't necessarily a bad thing.  The 'working together to win the tournament' element provides an excellent reason for the protagonist to get close to the heroines despite his original meeting with Akina, and the actual individual story progression is quite good.
However, except for Yuzuriha's ending, the character endings were somewhat disappointing in comparison with the deeper character development of the common route and the drama of their individual routes.  This is understandable in retrospect, if you've played Alive, but it was still irritating.  Considering how much the romance of the paths built up the characters' dreams for the future, the lack of a 'significantly after' factor to the endings was disappointing.
The action in this game in general is about the same as a low-end chuunige (reasonable action, low on descriptions of what happened...). 
Alive
Alive is a far darker story, which strips away the veil hiding the nature of the Queendom (females are dominant due to a low rate of male births), and there is a lot of death and destruction...  For those who loved the characters in Sorceress, Alive can be painful at times, though the catharsis is pretty decent, especially in the middle and later parts of the story. 
To be honest, due to the structure of this game, it is really, really hard not to spoil anything important.  So, I'll just say that the story is good... for what it is.  It is not terribly unpredictable (though I imagine some will think there is a light mindfuck in there), and the twists were rather obvious.  However, for what it is, it is enjoyable. 
That said, it isn't without a few severe flaws endemic to its structure.  Alive is essentially a single path with seven endings (one normal, five good, and one true).  As a result, there is little effort to give further life to such characters as Riri or Yuumi (until near the end), and I was immensely disappointed with how the endings were handled... in particularly the true ending.
While the five main girls all have a 'years after' ending, the lack of a harem ending (I'm not joking) after making all the girls fall in love with him (not kidding) is just ridiculous.  In addition, the true ending fell flat... yes, it was nice in an abstract sense, but for someone who read through the last part of the main path on the edge of his seat, I had to wonder what the writer was thinking.  While it does bring tears to the eyes somewhat, there were at least a half-dozen ways it could have been easily turned into a bawling tear-jerker final scene that would have had all the readers dribbling snot and going through whole tissue boxes.  This lack  of a satisfying catharsis to top off the game was a somewhat flat ending to an otherwise excellent game.

I love my cat.
Let’s get that out of the way from the beginning. Even though she is gone, as of today, I have never, for one moment, believed that I would ever stop loving her. For seventeen years and eight months, this calico wonder has made her home in my heart, never failing to wrap me around her paw and jerk me around by my heart strings.
As the undisputed mistress of all she surveyed (all eleven rooms and corridors of it), she has dominated the lives and conversation of our family for almost long enough for a child to have graduated from high school. In a very real sense, she was one of the most important pillars of our family, and her presence both lightened the atmosphere and gave us something to talk about even in the darkest of times.
My cat loved people… primarily because she knew a few stares and quiet nuzzles could get any given person to pet her or give her what she believed she wanted at any given moment. She liked being with people, even if it was just in the same room, completely ignoring one another (incidentally, her favorite game).
In her youth, distant as that is to me now, she was a rambunctious and hyperactive ball of calico fluff, her medium-length fur usually disheveled from one event or another until she chose to let us smooth it out. When we got saltillo tile on the first floor, she could be found with red dust on her belly constantly until it was sealed. When new carpet was put into the master bathroom, she was the first to roll on the floor, and when new furniture was brought into the house, she was always the first to ‘test’ it. Heck, I couldn’t keep her out of my computer chair when I wasn’t sitting in it.
As she grew older, she retained many of her kitten-ish traits, being enthusiastic and affectionate to often extreme degrees, given our previous experiences with cats. She purred loudly, meowed insistently, ran at ridiculous speeds only to slam into walls, and generally made us laugh and smile.
When we went out of town, she always made her displeasure known upon our return.
She was an inside cat, mostly by our choice. While she enjoyed short periods outdoors, she could generally be trusted to want back in whenever her slaves decided to go back in, due to an incident with a coyote in her misspent (I can hear her indignant meow at the thought of her time ever being misspent in my head, even now) youth. If her life was a somewhat boring one by feline standards, she made up for it by being loved and lovable in general.
When she first became ill, over a year ago, I had my first close encounter with absolute panic. The cat, as we always referred to her (subcontext: Empress) as being, was listless, had lost her appetite, and she had, for some reason, decided that my sink was her new home.
We took her to the vet, where she was diagnosed as having thyroid problems, as is typical in elderly cats (as she was by this time). We began giving her medicine on a daily basis, and for some time, she was doing relatively better, even if she never quite regained the spunk and vigor of the now-lost past.
However, a month ago, what vigor had returned to her was rapidly lost. She gradually ceased to eat, began to have bowel problems… and she began to starve to death. The only time she seemed happy was when she was sleeping on one of us, being lightly caressed, comforting herself with her own purrs.
It was with a heavy heart that we listened to the vet start speaking of quality of life, a typical speech made whenever a loved one nears death… and, our hearts already broken, we eventually assented to euthanasia.
Less than five hours later, I don’t know if it was the right choice. Was it a mercy, an act of love? Was it a betrayal of the absolute trust one can only gain from an animal when that pet is treated as family? Or was it something in between… I can never know. While I understood many things about my cat, I will never know what she thought on this, her last day, what she felt toward us as she went into the final sleep.
I will never know. There are so many things about that last day that I will never know. I feel my heart breaking all over again as I write this. I feel the empty feeling of loss. The standard words are no comfort. The euphemisms and trite words of comfort that come out of people’s mouths at times like this feel like excuses and obfuscations. The bitter flavor of grief sours food in my mouth and makes the world a darker place.
I can’t even make the excuse that she wouldn’t want me to grieve for her… because she is a cat, and no cat would ever miss out on a chance to be the center of attention.

There were few EVNs in the last few years that I’ve seen seriously hyped up by other VN fans and brought to my attention through multiple recommendations and positive reviews – particularly beyond titles by a handful of relatively well-known and respected creators such as ebi-hime. The game I’ll be writing about today, Soundless -A Modern Salem in Remote Area-, is one of such exceptions, enthusiastic opinions about which intrigued me to a major degree, even though it ended up being two years before I finally picked it up. And this is not where the curious and unusual things about it end: this freeware visual novel was released in late 2017 by a small circle under the name of Milk+ and is heavily influenced by the denpa subgenre of horror – one reliant on distortion of reality and chains of bizarre events, true meaning of which is usually hidden under multiple layers of mystery. It mimics extremely well the visual style and climate of the early 2000s’ Japanese games, offering a now rarely-seen call-back to parts of visual novel history highly nostalgic to many fans. And thankfully, there’s a lot more to it than just the interesting stylisation and riding on memories of the past…
Read the full article at evnchronicles.blogspot.com

First, as I state in the title, I'm coming off my fifth playthrough (all paths and endings) of Tokyo Babel.  As such, I am - very obviously - deeply fond of the game.  I'm also a fan of the writer Higashide Yuuichirou (for reference, he also wrote Ayakashibito and the scenario for Fate/Apocrypha). 
However, in this post I wanted to address some of the complaints I get from those who play the game.  First, I will address the major complaints I've taken personally from those who read or have read it untranslated, then those who read it translated.
Untranslated
1.  'This doesn't feel like a Higashide game/isn't as good as his other games!'  For better or worse, Higashide went in a different direction, style, and approach in Tokyo Babel in comparison to his previous works.  Ayakashibito is the basis for most untranslated Higashide fanboys' love, but it needs to be said that anyone who has played the two games will barely see any resemblance beyond the writing style. 
Ayakashibito was about a young man struggling against the world as he tried to carve out a life for himself with his adoptive sister.  His emotional struggles with unreasonable and unreasoning prejudice, as well as the active malice of powers both great and small, struck a chord in a lot of the people who read it.  Moreover, it is by far the most slice-of-life focused of all Higashide's titles, whereas a huge portion of Tokyo Babel is fighting, preparation for fighting, and dealing with conspiracies.
2.  'I loved Dies Irae and this was recommended to me based on that, but it doesn't match up.'  This one makes me laugh.  Sorry, I'm not trying to be contemptuous, but, despite some surface resemblances, Tokyo Babel is wildly different from Dies Irae.  Higashide is not a poet.  Masada is.  Higashide is calculating where Masada is impulsive.  As such, I can honestly say the only resemblance between the two is that they both have a preference for fantasy and melodrama.  Dies Irae is an opera, whereas Tokyo Babel is more straightforward and to the point, in comparison.
3.  'Why is there no ero?  All his other games had ero, so why not this one?'  I have to wonder if anyone but me was surprised at this one being the third most common complaint I got from those I recommended this game to.  Yes, his other games have a mix of good and horrid ero (Ayakashibito is particularly infamous for its side-character scenes), but Tokyo Babel was written from beginning to end as an all-ages novel.  Surprisingly, I agree with those who think the lack of ero in Tokyo Babel had a negative effect.  To be blunt, I can't see Lilith not finding a way to shove Setsuna into Raziel's futon or failing to trap him in a room alone with Sorami... and that's setting aside several moments in her path that would have made for some great 'desperate and somber H' scenes.  Higashide, for all that his ero scenes were sometimes awful (again, Ayakashibito), always made them relevant to the story and used them to enhance its flow... something many chuuni writers who utilize ero content fail to do.
4. 'What the heck is it with this game's weird mix of styles?!'  I'm not an art bigot, so I'm not the best person to answer this question.  This game's art style differs from previous Propeller games to a significant degree at times.  Is that a good or bad thing?  Hard to answer... though I do think the decision to make the main characters look younger than in previous games (with some exceptions) was questionable, lol.
Translated
1.  'What is with the translation?!!!!'.  Aah... this is the idiot argument.  Sorry, but I've said this a thousand times before 'Japanese to English translation is an oxymoron'.  Conjueror was pretty much the only translator brave enough to jump into translating something like Dies Irae or Tokyo Babel precisely because fans of this type of game are such a-holes when it comes to translations.  Yes, it isn't perfect.  Yes, it doesn't somehow magically mirror Higashide's brilliance perfectly.  However, I would like to make a few major points for those who insist they could do better...
Japanese has numerous concepts, sayings, and even casual phrasing that simply don't translate into English without a much larger number of words to fill in the gaps in the language.  One reason I always recommend anyone who can read a game in Japanese (even if they have to use a parser and text hooker) do so is because it is impossible to perfectly replicate everything in a localization to English.  It is possible to get across many concepts with creative language and a wide vocabulary in English, but that sometimes means spending minutes or even an hour on a single line, trying to create something that can somehow retain the best parts of the original.  Chuuni translations tend to be awkward (both anime and games) because the language used requires more of this, and it becomes too easy to fall into the habit of robotically spewing out the translation instead of actually writing it into prose (look at the FGO cell phone game and you'll see what I mean).
2.  'This wasn't as dramatic as I thought it would be!'  This one puzzles me... but then, I never played the game all the way through in English (I went up through the Miyako fight in Raziel's route to get an idea of what it was like), so maybe more was lost in the localization toward the middle and end than I thought. 
3.  'The subject matter made me uncomfortable'...  Ah yes, this one.  To be honest, even I felt the remnants of my upbringing pounding on the doors of my psyche at times when I played this game.  To be blunt, to anyone brought up in a devout Christian (or even Muslim) household, playing any of the routes can be enormously uncomfortable at times.  By the nature of the process of 'suspending disbelief' that occurs when you read something fantasy, your prejudices and upbringing inevitably play into how you see the game.  To be blunt, by Christian standards, this game is blasphemous, lol.  In Japan, due to the way the divine is seen (impossible to explain if you haven't studied it, so I won't go into this here), this game doesn't feel that way.  However, this game can cause some odd reactions in some Westerners.
4.  'I don't get the humor.'  Sad to say, but a good portion of humor in Japanese VNs simply doesn't translate very well.  The funniest scene in the game (in my opinion) is the drunken party in Sorami's path... but there are several points in this scene that don't translate (think plays on Japanese wording, puns, and phone number styles) that had me cracking up every time.  Sad to say, but, for those playing translated JVNs, this is something you'll just have to live with.
 
Conclusion
I didn't really refute any of the complaints here... but I did try to address them.  Tokyo Babel is one of the few of my favorite games that have been translated (though more of them have been in recent years, including Hapymaher and Dies Irae), but it is also the one of my translated favorites that is most likely not to be mentioned when someone is asking about this type of game. 

The monotony of school is an oppressive force on a kid's life. Psychologically omnipresent, you don't even need to be within its walls to feel its chains shackling you. Home is just made an extension of its presence with homework. And more then just the boredom of rote memorization and a lobotomizing curriculum, there is a social arena where you must interact with the other prisoners. Regardless of how you feel about them, its important to at least maintain a sociable facade.
Unlike College where education is on your own dime, and therefore your own time. The grade school schedule from kindergarten through high school is rigidly compact, and generally you have little say in what you get to study. Regardless of talent, interest, or relevancy, you are stuck in a classroom where most other students are just as unenthused to be there as you.
8th Grade, 13 years old and my last year in junior high. I didn't need to put more than a minimal effort into my studies to attain the reputation as an honor student. Although on a superficial front I got along with everyone, I lacked any true connections that extended beyond the solidarity of being prisoners of the educational system I've just described. Life was dull, but everyone told me the path I was walking down had success and stability at the end of its road. That assumed I would continue playing the honor student role I fell into though. Despite the agency of free-will, I was complacent. Despite my ennui, I had little initiative or courage to stir things up.
The irony of attending a Catholic school and passively turning a blind eye to the bullying occurring. The frustration of my sexuality awakening but being too emotionally impotent to do anything about it. This is the context in which I discovered Yume Miru Kusuri: A Drug That Make You Dream.
Past midnight, and I had just finished downloading a copy of the VN. I had promised myself to install it then go to bed. Opening the application up as a test, I was greeted with a soothing yet hypnotic track. Three girls with blank expressions were looking up at me amid an infinite expanse of vaguely drawn school desks. For minutes I just listened, utterly mesmerized. It was as though I was experiencing a drug that was making me dream.
Winter break started the next day, and I had previously installed another visual novel that I was intending to start first. But as my consciousness was drifting in the dazed state before sleep, the title theme track kept ringing in my head. The next day I decided to start my vacation playing this VN instead, and that has made all the difference.
The opening scene, an image of a generic blue sky with soft clouds. The narrator himself falls asleep and soon finds himself in an odd dream. Upon violently waking up, soothing music akin to the title screen track plays, and without even realizing it my own thoughts are absorbed by Kouhei's inner monologues. His thinking was so natural, and familiar. And that's when I noticed, I was Kouhei Kagami.
The issues of bullying, interpersonal relationships, and the desire to escape the dullness of reality (albeit not through drugs, for me anime was my escape) were all subject matters I understood, and more importantly related to. The way things play out in the various routes always remain grounded in a firm realism. Which easily allowed me to project myself into the situations. But unlike a generic self-insert protagonist, what made Kouhei so relatable was his distinct voice. He was hesitant to tread towards anything that could shake him off his honor-student trajectory, and yet he was equally tempted and fascinated by such things. Smoking, sex, drugs, standing up to social forces; all things that even the most straight laced of teenagers will probably be tempted by. If not for the things themselves, then to grab control of your own life by actively doing something you shouldn't do. This is how Kouhei and I were kindred spirits.
The way the story and Kouhei's perspective completely resonated with me led me to voraciously read something for the first time in my life. Before I always viewed reading as a chore, and I only ever reluctantly did so. Reading this VN however, led me into feeling as though everything was happening was to a slightly older, Japanese version of myself. It was that immersive quality that sucked me into the VN's world. That was my baptism into VNs.
I'm 22 now, and rereading this VN I can't help but think back on myself and who I was when I first discovered it. Not only have I long since graduated high school, somewhere amidst my early adulthood I also learned to stop being such a passive participant in life. Yet while I can no longer identify with Kouhei Kagami like I did when I first read his story, I can still understand his thinking and actions so clearly. Almost like reading his perspective brings me back to my perspective when I was in my early teens.
In that respect, Yume Miru Kusuri is kind of the Catcher in the Rye of VNs.

Hello there, all you good people still following my content-starved blog! There will be no regular review post this week (I’ll be catching up next week with one about Reine Work’s Our Lovely Escape, and hopefully a week after that with one of the long-overdue games sent to me for review), but I’ve wanted to take this opportunity to share the reasons behind the recent slowdown on the site and talk a bit my plans for the future. A warning: this will contain a lot of personal musings that most of you are probably not very interested in. However, I kind of need this opportunity to vent and reset. I’ll add a tl;dr version at the end of this post.
Outside of my, not-extremely-successful attempt to jumpstart a new wave of activity on Fuwanovel, there have been a few other things happening behind the scenes. The major one was my academic project on visual novel fan translations, which led me to submitting a paper for an international fan studies conference in Cracow. Preparing the speech in English (this was the first time I wasn’t speaking in Polish on such an event), running a survey with people involved in fan translation projects… It all took a lot out of me and gave me little time and energy to actually enjoy VNs as such. It also coincided with a minor health issue, which despite its non-threatening nature made it impossible for me to sit straight for nearly two weeks – a truly infuriating thing when you should be working on your computer and are basically running out of time. This was probably a major factor which destroyed my motivation for working on the project, which in turn made it be the most painful and depressing one to date. I, however, still made my short presentation in the presence of prof. Matt Hills, one of the most influential researchers in my obscure field of study, and learned quite a lot from other speakers. Here’s some photographic proof, courtesy of my girlfriend who once more agreed to help me inflate my ego by documenting my speech. 😉

As you can see, I was asking the Heavens to help me and my listeners to get through those 20+ minutes of my horrible English accent. Not sure to what degree my prayers were heard, but at least there were no fatalities. Oh, and in the lower-left corner, it’s Matt Hills. That was both awesome and terrifying.

And here’s a rare moment where my conference ID wasn’t hanging backwards! You can see the fear in my eyes – one would think after nearly 10 similar presentations I’d be a little bit calmer, but it’s apparently in my nature to stress out over everything.

And here’s me taking one of two questions that were still possible to ask after I’ve used all the discussion time for my way-too-long PowerPoint slideshow. And yup, I will insert Flowers whenever that's even remotely appropriate. Suou x Rikka forever. You can't stop me!
While, in general, my project was fruitful and I’m satisfied with my performance, I also ended up so physically and emotionally drained that I’ve ditched the other two days of the conference, just enjoying my time in Cracow. Even after coming back, I had a day of what could be described as a full-on breakdown before I kind of got my shit together. All this, of course, has some very real consequences for the blog: for quite a while, I didn’t have the time and energy to really read VNs. And, obviously, without any new material to cover, I didn’t write anything either. It’s the first time since establishing the Blogger site that I have no “emergency” posts to use or quick ideas to supplement more involved write-ups with, even despite switching to the biweekly schedule. And honestly, I don’t expect to write much in-advance anymore. The “one post every two weeks” frequency is here to stay and I’m going to be flexible about it, switching content and dates when necessary.
The other thing is that I still want to make the blog a little bit more of my personal space. I’ve kept up the regular stream of content both to become a better writer and to prove a few things to myself. I think I’m satisfied with what I’ve achieved, and while I’m definitely not discarding the general profile of the blog and the responsibilities I’ve taken upon myself (like covering the games sent to me), I’m going to have fun with it too. Write silly stuff connected to the weeb culture and my peculiar experience with it. I’ve already hinted at this at the beginning of the summer, but I’m even more determined to make it happen now. No hobby I’ve picked up over the years was this intellectually stimulating and satisfying as this one and I want to do all I can to keep it this way– I can't let things go too stale.
And while I’m doing all this weird stuff and overthinking things, I hope you guys will stay and still read my crappy writing. Exploring the creativity and passion of EVN devs is not something I’ll ever get tired of, and I hope we can enjoy their stuff together for years to come. Thank you all for following my work, and until next week!
 
tl;dr I’ve been to a fan studies conference which, together with minor health issues, ate a month and a half of my life. I’ll get back to “serious” posting next week, returning to the bi-weekly schedule. I might sneak in some weird posts about Japanese popculture between “proper” EVN ones. EVNs are love, EVNs are life (still). See you next week for actual content!

Usually, I focus mostly on the perspective of a consumer when I write in this blog.  I do this because I am and always have been primarily a consumer of material rather than a creator.  However, that doesn't mean I've never created anything... just that I haven't published anything (well, under my own name... ghost writing doesn't count) since some early fiction on Deviantart over a decade ago. 
So, since I'm not writing as many reviews, I chose to start a small corner describing the techniques I use when I'm writing fiction (which I still do as a hobby, though I stopped posting it after the last site I posted massively on went under).
Today's corner is about the techniques I use when creating a character (usually the protagonist and his immediate surrounding characters, as well as the antagonist) in the brainstorming process.  There are two types I use... the flow of thought type and the 'important points' type.
The flow of thoughts (similar to flow of consciousness style of writing) involves simply writing out all the qualities, the basic history, and abilities/talents/weaknesses of a character as they occur to you in prose form.  This is very similar to the character summaries given on official websites, but in much more detail, with specific important points (to you) described in detail.  Immediately after I complete this process, I ink out the setting (I usually create a setting in parallel to the characters) and then I start the 'sculpting' process.  The sculpting process involves slowly shaving away or altering parts of the character that don't quite fit with the full setting, are excessive (it is easy to make fantasy protagonists over-powered, for instance), or just don't seem to be internally consistent in retrospect.  The final step is to try to write an intro scene for that character that would make sense for that character in the universe you've created, giving you an impression that you can use to form their role in a story.
The second method I use is more mechanical.  In this case, I write out all the qualities in list form, based on what kind of character I'm interested in making.  I usually use this for side-characters, as it is a much 'dryer' approach.  Essentially, I create Personality, History, Relationships, and Abilities/Talents/Quirks/Weaknesses categories.  Relationships is generally the first category I focus on, connecting their strand of the web to that of the protagonist and/or other characters.  The second is usually either History or Personality.  The reason is that this defines the nature of the Relationships, giving it a more distinct form.  Last is the Abilities/Talents/Quirks/Weaknesses category.  To be blunt, while this is important to their role in the story, it is the aspect that is most likely to be subject to change based on what is necessary to keep the plot going.
These are the basic techniques I use... to be honest, since I've never been formally educated in creative writing, I don't know how close my methodology is to that which is commonly used, but I find that this works best for me.

As it’s probably very clear by this point, I like visual novels. Like, a lot. I also happen to like KFC, which definitely places in my top 3 of fast food chains available here in Poland, occasionally coming very close to claiming that number 1 spot. The only thing stopping me from enjoying its antibiotic-filled, industrial chicken goodness every other day is the lack of convenient locales (in stark contrast to McDonald’s, as the closest one is in a very cosy corner just 10-minutes’ walk away from my place, just beckoning me to claim those coupons for cheap coffee). Thus, there should be nothing preventing me from enjoying a parody/advertisement VN aimed at stroking that unsatisfied urge for greasy, over-salted chicken treats. I Love You, Colonel Sanders! A Finger Lickin’ Good Dating Simulator, released on Steam two weeks ago and developed by a niche studio under the name Psyop, had the potential to not only be a whacky marketing tool for KFC, but also a fun joke VN – with the backing of a giant corporation and a team of not-completely-clueless people working on it, it could've easily exceeded everyone’s expectations. However, it really, really didn’t…

Whatever you might think about this game, it’s hard to argue with the extreme, masculine charm of its iteration of Colonel Sanders. Quite a… FILF? No… DILF? Ugh, nevermind…
I Love You, Colonel Sanders! was created with a very clear agenda in mind – it’s a device to promote KFC’s new mac and cheese dish and, more broadly, make you think about its blood-vessel-clogging menu for much of your reading experience. In this regard, it seems to be extremely successful on both macro and micro scale. It was the talk of the day on social media and even gaming sites for quite a while, achieving that for what was probably a tiny fraction of the cost of a traditional marketing campaign. It also really made me want to go to KFC, although that feeling was deeply bitter-sweet (bitter-salty?), as nearly none of the menu items featured in the game are a thing in the Eastern-European shithole I live in. We actually have some crappy “California” seasonal menu with pineapple in everything – a major turnoff, if you ask me. But, if I actually was in US, I’d be rising my cholesterol levels with that disgustingly-fatty pasta dish until I got sick of it – thus, I think the advert part works well enough.
                When it goes to the visual novel itself, it’s exactly the wacky collection of memes, caricatural characters and paper-thin plot you would expect it to be. Some say it’s just another pseudo-parody VN making fun of anime tropes, but those are really less prevalent than pure randomness. Also, all those absurd "gags" probably sounded way more fun in the script than they actually are after being brought to life. You start as a genderless student enrolled in a crash-course cooking academy, having to navigate your way through a number of “funny” choices in order to achieve two goals: show your fellow student, Colonel Sanders, that you’re a person worth his affection, and a chef good enough to become his business partner (both parts are connected to different choices and getting the cooking part right is actually a bit tricky). In all of it, there's a pretty clear message about simple cooking being supreme over snobbish culinary experiments, and Colonel Sander’s chicken dishes being exquisite, so I guess it conveys something akin to KFC’s driving philosophy. The ending you get mostly depends on whether you follow these "ideals" in your choices. There’s also a tiny bit of charisma to Sanders himself and the protagonist’s best friend, Miriam, and a few jokes connected to those two were actually amusing. The whole rest of the cast and the “main plot” itself are garbage.

The exaggerated, wacky characters and abundance of memes would not be a major issue if they were employed in witty, genuinely funny ways – they are not…
There are also other elements in I Love You, Colonel Sanders! that you would expect from this kind of meme game, like random game-overs (you can thankfully go back to the choice just by clicking “try again”) and over-the-top music. The latter might actually be the worst part of the whole experience – it gravitates between utterly generic and seriously obnoxious, with the loud cacophony that kicks in during all more intense moments (like the cook-off sections) being simply unbearable. Interestingly enough, the game also isn’t a dating sim by any definition – while you have to deal with a few timed choices (pretty annoying and unintuitive when it goes to which answers are the correct ones), there are no gameplay mechanics to speak of. From the technical viewpoint, it’s extremely limited even for a visual novel, with no manual save (this is thankfully not so problematic with just how short it is), no backlog and dreadfully bare-bones options menu – basically just sound sliders and two pre-set graphical levels. This probably stems from the fact that it wasn’t made in a dedicated visual novel engine (I assume it was done in Unity), but it’s still an embarrassment for a semi-experienced studio to ignore quality-of-life features to this degree. Options like textbox opacity (hope you like white text on white background), text speed or skip-read options are in every modern VN for a reason, and I find ignoring them unacceptable even in a game this short.

…I mean, your teacher is a talking Corgi! Sitting on a pedestal! That’s funny, right? Right???
If I can find something good about this VN, it would probably be visuals – most character designs are fun and assets are all-around solid. The variety of expressions on sprites is very satisfactory, and there are even some surprising traces of actual effort, like the alternative clothing made pretty much exclusively for the short ending sequence of the game. The opening animation could be described as pretty awesome and I’d be genuinely impressed if the VN itself was this vibrant. The fact it isn’t, and how messy its script is, makes me think that the production was rushed, without much time for devs to get really creative – which is a shame, but on the other hand, it's hard to argue with the memetic spread of this game and the generally-positive response it got. People were definitely amused by it, and that’s what the whole project was about. We can complain about how uninspired it is or how it lacks substance (unless you count chicken grease, there's a lot of that), but that doesn’t change the fact it was effective.
                And, as the last issue, there’s the immortal question of “what does it mean for VNs”? Unlike with the cases of DDLC or Devgru-p’s Hitler waifu game, I Love You, Colonel Sanders! enforces the image of visual novels as those whacky, shallow anime games not only through its outer appearance, but all of its content. It also, as mentioned before, mixes up what a dating sim and visual novel are, playing into popular assumptions. I’ll still ask all those crying about the damage to VNs image to calm down – I assure you, 99% of those that discount VNs as just waifu games for weebs wouldn’t be interested in them anyway. And, in the long run, the formula being used in all kinds of ways might be better than it being dead beyond our hermetic niche. I just hope that the next game of this kind will be just slightly more competent, showing at least a bit of the technical functionality and storytelling potential of modern VNs. It only takes a bit more effort to achieve that.
 
Final Score: 2/5
 
Pros:
+ Works as an advertisement
+ Good visuals
Cons:
- Mediocre humour
- Story? What Story?
- Music that will make your ears bleed
- Embarrassing lack of quality-of-life features
 
VNDB Page
Play I Love You, Colonel Sanders! for free on Steam

(original: https://forums.fuwanovel.net/blogs/entry/2488-random-top-100/)
I played so many VNs over the past year that i've managed to replace over a fourth of the list, so it felt adequate to post a updated version. Like before, "not a be-all-end-all list by any means and i care about choice-making gameplay a lot more than other VN fans do, so if some of my placements look ridiculous, that's why."
youtube playlist version: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLYFP5FO6EHdqvR4S0KWZDMllPXy3hZjaY (will be updated if i make yet another version of the list)
New entries are underlined.
VNs i consider “close to great”:
100) Lamento Beyond the Void (great atmosphere and art)
99) EoSD for Busy Person + Extra (entertaining characters and endings)
98) Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney (great characters, good mystery-solving and story)
97) Comyu (good story, entertaining fight scenes)
96) Fashioning Little Miss Lonesome (entertaining story and endings, amazing common route)
95) Ar Tonelico II (good characters, great story and soundtrack)
94) Vampirdzhija Vjedogonia (entertaining story and fight scenes)
93) Danganronpa 2 (entertaining characters, good mystery-solving, good finale)
92) Danganronpa V3 (entertaining characters, great mystery-solving, good finale)
91) MajiKoi A1&A2 (entertaining characters and story)
Vns i consider “borderline great”:
90) Fatal Twelve (entertaining story and characters, fun choice-making)
89) Evenicle (fun characters and gameplay)
88) Eve: Burst Error (entertaining story, great female protagonist)
87) Dangan Ronpa (entertaining characters, great story, great finale)
86) ChuSinGura 46+1 (entertaining characters, great fight scenes)
85) Utawarerumono: Mask of Truth (good story and characters, great finale)
84) Kikokugai The Cyber Slayer (great atmosphere, good fight scenes)
83) Higanbana no Saku Yoru ni + 2nd night (good characters, entertaining story)
82) Hapymaher (interesting story, good atmosphere)
81) Flowers: Volume sur Été (great art, charming characters)
80) Eden* (good story and art)
79) Utawarerumono (entertaining characters, good story)
78) Shikkoku no Sharnoth (good protagonist, great atmosphere, great finale)
77) Rance VI (entertaining characters, good story)
76) Paradise Lost (interesting story, entertaining fight scenes)
75) Kizuato (fun characters, great introductory route, great set of joke endings)
74) Hello, world (overall fun story, great set of normal endings)
73) Psychedelica of the Ashen Hawk (great world building and plot twists, good characters)
72) Flowers: Volume sur Printemps (great art, charming characters, good use of mystery-solving)
71) Dies Irae: Interview with Kaziklu Bey (great art and fight scenes)
70) Ayakashi Gohan (amazing protagonist customization, fun common route)
69) Air (good story and characters, good soundtrack)
68) The Letter (favorite branch system for a linear story)
67) Symphonic Rain [1/5 routes done] (charming art and soundtrack, great at subverting expectations)
66) SeaBed (amazing atmosphere, interesting story)
65) Narcissu (good story and ending buildup)
64) Dengeki Stryker (entertaining story, great middle route)
63) Collar x Malice (entertaining story, good set of villains)
62) Chaos;Head (entertaining characters and choice-making, great plot twist, good world building)
61) Remember11 (good characters, great ending system, interesting ending)
60) Ourai no Gahkthun (good atmosphere and characters)
59) Nijuuei (fun story, good atmosphere)
58) Monster Girl Quest Trilogy (amazing gameplay, good story and characters)
57) Kusarihime (amazing atmosphere and background usage, good characters and endings)
56) Battle Goddess Verita (good story, great RPG gameplay)
VNs i consider “near-classics”:
55) The House in Fata Morgana: A Requiem for Innocence (good story and characters, amazing art)
54) Eiyuu*Senki (great gameplay, fun characters)
53) Ayakashibito (good world building, entertaining fight scenes and characters)
52) Akaya Akashiya Ayakashino (great atmosphere and endings, entertaining characters)
51) Akai Ito (entertaining protagonist, good atmosphere, favorite OP song)
50) 11eyes (good characters and fight scenes, great atmosphere)
49) Tsujidou-san no Jun’ai Road (entertaining characters, good choice-making)
48) Sekien no Inganock (great art, great atmosphere, good characters)
47) Planetarian (good pairing, great dialogue)
46) 9 Hours, 9 Persons, 9 Doors (entertaining characters, good true ending)
45) Kira Kira [1/4 routes done] (good characters, great common route, great ending)
44) ef a fairy tale of the two (great story in the second half, good characters)
43) Chaos;Child (good choice-making system, good characters, good story)
42) 428: Shibuya Scramble (fun characters and story, amazing choice-making, greatest production values in the genre)
41) Sharin no Kuni (favorite single villain, great story, great plot twist)
40) Root Double (amazing choice-making system, good true ending)
39) Virtue’s Last Reward (great ending system, great multiple route mystery)
38) Kara no Shoujo (great atmosphere, good mystery-solving)
37) Aselia The Eternal (great world-building and New Game+ content)
36) Chou no Doku Hana no Kusari [1/5 routes done] (great atmosphere and protagonist)
35) Cartagra (great art, entertaining characters, great endings)
34) Aoishiro (great choice-making, entertaining bad ending branches on some routes)
33) White Album 2: Introductory and Closing Chapters [3/6 routes done] (fascinating characters, good story and atmosphere)
32) The Fruit of Grisaia (entertaining characters, great endings)
31) Code: Realize (amazing common route, entertaining story and characters)
VNs i consider “classics”:
30) Rose Guns Days (great story and characters, charming art)
29) Mahoutsukai no Yoru (amazing production values, good story)
28) Kamidori Alchemy Meister (great RPG gameplay, amazing New Game+ content)
27) Battle Goddess Zero (favorite story in a VN-RPG hybrid)
26) Cross Channel (fun characters, great choice-making and ending)
25) Taishou Mebiusline (great route variety, good ending system, favorite vocal song)
24) Swan Song (amazing atmosphere, good story and characters)
23) Steins;Gate 0 (good story and characters, great use of true ending)
22) Sengoku Rance (entertaining characters, most replayable work in the genre due to amazing gameplay)
21) Rewrite (entertaining characters, good story)
20) Phantom of Inferno (entertaining story and characters, great atmosphere, great action scenes)
19) Yumina The Ethereal (entertaining story, amazing use of multiple routes for a VN-RPG hybrid, great true ending)
18) Kichikuou Rance (amazing gameplay and world-building)
17) Kara no Shoujo 2 (great mystery, entertaining characters, great true ending, favorite ED song)
16) G-Senjou no Maou (great true route, great soundtrack, favorite set of villains)
15) Song of Saya (favorite atmosphere, amazing use of endings, fascinating characters)
14) Muv Luv Alternative (great action scenes, great sci-fi atmosphere)
13) YU-NO (amazing route system, good story and characters)
12) Higurashi When They Cry + Kai (amazing story, great characters and soundtrack)
11) Dies Irae (favorite fight scenes, entertaining characters and story)
VNs i consider “classics among classics”:
10) Umineko When They Cry + Chiru (favorite story, favorite soundtrack, great characters)
9) Wonderful Everyday (great story, good mystery, good characters, great alternate endings, favorite monologues)
8. The House in Fata Morgana (amazing story, favorite CG and character art, good choice-making, great soundtrack)
7) Tsukihime (amazing choice-making, amazing atmosphere, great characters)
6) MajiKoi (favorite overall character cast, most consistently entertaining work in the genre)
5) Little Busters (favorite common route, great true route, favorite post-true end content)
4) Ever17 (great story, favorite multiple route mystery, great true ending)
VNs i consider “all-time greatests”
3) Steins;Gate (great story, entertaining characters, favorite protagonist, favorite pairing, favorite ending)
2) Fate/Stay Night (great story, favorite ending system, favorite route, favorite single choice)
1) Clannad (favorite route system, high amount of optional scenes, amazing After Story, fully explores choice-making in a school drama setting)
Top VNs i didn’t read (raw VNDB ratings, 35 votes minimum):
Rance 10
Flowers: Volume sur Automne & Hiver
Baldr Sky Dive1&2
Soukou Akki Muramasa
Ken ga Kimi
Sakura no Uta
Shingakkou Noli me tangere
Shinigami to Shoujo
Sengoku Koihime
Schwarzesmarken
Closing thoughts: After Aselia and Ayakashibito, i've read pretty much every translated VN i really wanted to. Also, after Hello world and Kusarihime, i feel i've read pretty much all older VNs with no chances of being translated i wanted to. Now i plan to be a little more laidback with my reading, making this kinda of the end of a chapter for me.
 
 

Anyone who has read one of my reviews knows I'm something of a cynic and a pessimist.  I try to think the best about every VN I go into, but my first impulse is to see what is wrong, rather than what is right. 
Whether it is optimism and rose-colored glasses or pessimism and cynicism, and excess of either is often a negative influence on the quality of a review.  Generally speaking, I usually make an effort to find something I like about a VN's concept before going in, then I start the VN trying to enjoy it as an outgrowth of that.  By the end, this usually results in me having experienced both the negative and positive aspects of the VN... the problem is, when reviewing, it is all too easy to forget what is good about the VN.
As a result, when I'm writing up a review, the first thing I do is write up a list of the good points I found, ignoring the mitigating negative factors.  I then build the review around these and include the negative points in with the rest... but you can probably tell that being positive just doesn't come naturally to me, since I tend to be pretty harsh.
However, by using this system, I've found dozens of VN gems over the years that I probably would have discarded for perceived negative qualities if I didn't use this process.  Indeed, early on in my reading of untranslated VNs, I dropped numerous ones simply because they had a negative aspect that I got obsessed with.  I would later go back and replay them, only to find that the negative aspect wasn't as big a deal as I thought at the time, since I made the effort to go back with a differing perspective.
A poor quality in a reviewer is the tendency to ignore the negatives about something you like.  Another one is to rate things entirely based on aspects you only have a vague grasp or focus on (in my case, due to my eye problems, I'm not the best judge of artwork, and my musical sense is entirely based on how it enhances the atmosphere, rather than raw quality comprehension).  I'm a story reviewer.  I review almost exclusively based on the story, characters, and presentation.  As such, art and sound rarely have a place in my reviews, since I don't think I'm qualified to evaluate them except in the most general of terms.
I can tell when a VA did an exceptional job, because it stands out enough for me to notice.  I will even mention this in the review, since it takes a lot for a performance to stand out to me.  However, I never pretend to know the ins and outs of specific aspects of VA or musical quality.  I simply don't have the right kind of ear for that kind of thing, not being musically inclined. 
One thing I've noticed in some reviewers who prefer niche genres (such as myself) is to display a tendency I refer to as PGRD (or Popular Game Reactionary Disorder).  It is a fictional mental disease that many of us who have a distinct preference for a niche genre display that causes us to have a knee-jerk negative reaction to popular works, simply because they are mainstream.  This is a problem that is particularly common in Western otakus of around my age, who became fanboys during a time when watching anime, playing Japanese video games, and reading manga had a rather strong stigma that left us feeling isolated and defensive.  However, it is also present in people who prefer niche genres (I get the double whammy, being both).  That sense of isolation leads to a tendency to over-praise our favorite materials and bash anything that we see as being too popular.
In reverse, there are those who automatically dismiss anything that isn't mainstream.  Both types are reactionary in nature and have little to do with the quality of the materials in question.  Being a long-time sci-fi addict, I can't understand why anyone would enjoy Avatar (the movie).  However, if I make the mistake of saying that in front of a fanboy of the movie, I will inevitably get a vociferous lecture on how misunderstood the movie is by science fiction fans...
There are many such examples of such behavior I have experienced over the years, both in myself and in others.  As such, a reviewer has to be willing to examine his own motives for liking or hating something.  Are you being cynical for the sake of being cynical?  Are you over-praising something to the point of overlooking the obvious problems with it?  Are you making excuses while thinking you are making a reasoned argument?  On the other side, are you ignoring the voice of reason to give you an excuse to dislike something? 
In the end, bias is unavoidable... but it is a reviewer's duty to do their best to cast aside as much of it as possible, because people use our reviews as reference points when they pick what they want to play/read/watch.

Winged Cloud, creators of the infamous Sakura series, are visibly past their prime, which shows not only in their diminishing Patreon support and smaller interest in their games in general, but also the lack of marketing effort and innovation. For two and a half year now their VNs are only becoming shorter, simpler and more iterative, making the already not-particularly-impressive projects from the peak of studio’s popularity, such as Sakura Nova or Sakura Fantasy, look like absolute heights of quality and ambition. At the same time, the company seems heavily disinterested in actively promoting their work or opening new niches, even nearly dropping the production of straight eroge for the sake of pushing out more yuri games, feeding of this niche's popularity with Western audience. And few things symbolise this sorry state of affairs quite like the Sakura MMO trilogy, the latest three entries in the mainline Sakura franchise, this time tackling the grossly overused theme of gameworld isekai.
            Coming out between October 2018 and June 2019, with little fanfare (the second and third game pretty much appeared out of nowhere, with no communication from Winged Cloud’s social media accounts before the releases) and to a rather lukewarm reception from players, Sakura MMO games still stand out in some ways from Winged Clouds usual output. Particularly, it was the first time since Sakura Beach that a game in the series received a direct sequel, and the only instance one received two. This, at first glance, makes it look like one of most ambitious projects Winged Cloud ever attempted, but one thing should be said in advance: all three Sakura MMO games are very short (3-4 hours) and heavily overpriced, with each costing $10. For the amount of content you’d usually find in one 10-15 dollars VN, you’re asked to pay 30, while also having to deal with issues that wouldn’t be there if it was all released as a single product or a well-constructed episodic game, like your choices not transferring between parts and somewhat shoddy continuity. But aside from it being a shameless cash-grab, is there something worthwhile within this trashy sub-franchise?
Read the full article at evnchronicles.blogspot.com

I do not regret playing this game.
I needed to say this first, because this game has a pretty high level of emotional impact.  The actual characters are quiet for the most part, but the relationships in this game are so twisted that even thinking about them being real would make a saint wince. 
This story centers around a young personal servant, Kumagata Arima, and his young mistress, Otobe Supika.  It is the Taishou Era (pre-WWII, late teens to late twenties of the twentieth century), and Japan's first age of modern prosperity is at its height.  Supika is an apparently sickly ojousama who reluctantly goes to school at the urge of her personal servant Arima, who takes care of all her personal needs (up to and including dressing her and doing her hair).  Arima is an apparently devoted servant who can be relied on without reservation by his sickly mistress...
Well, there is a lot more to it, but this is as far as I can go in terms of specifics without spoiling it for you.  Tasogare no Folklore is a game where not knowing too much is an important aspect of enjoying the story, so I really suggest you don't read the official site or the Getchu page.  Instead, I will explain what kind of game it is.
Tasogare no Folklore's primary attractions are the disparity between the darkness hidden in the depths of the characters' home and the apparent strength of their relationships, particularly the one between Supika and Arima.  Their relationship is not as simple and straighforward as it seems on the surface, and the way it twists is the source of a lot of the sick fascination I felt watching the train head for the broken tracks. 
To be straight, this is a dark game with no miraculous salvation.  Oh, there are a few times when a 'convenient' outcome occurs, but those are the exceptions rather than the rule.  The characters' feelings for one another are real, but they are also muddied by circumstance and events in the past.  As a result, their relationships are twisted to an extreme degree (though Supika and Arima's relationship is so twisted even the other characters can't understand it). 
However, the presentation of this game is top tier.  I'm almost tempted to cry 'kamige', but that is going too far, lol.  This game is a dark fantasy, but it is also a quietly intense love-romance.  It also has elements of a number of genres, but in the end, what stuck with me was that I felt it was a romance from the beginning.
There are two endings (and one extra story based off the 'good' ending) in this game... a 'good' ending and a 'normal' ending (in Tsukihime style).  The good ending is a happy one... but I say that with the caveat that it is still bittersweet.  The environment Supika and Arima are forced into is not one that goes for charage-style 'purely happy' endings, after all.