Dreamysyu

After 2009 and 2012, this time I'll talk about 2010 in which there's still quite a number of good VNs being fan translated while at the same time Mangagamer was slowly making their way to be more active. Of course obviously we still didn't have Sekai yet and JAST here is still idling with they readying the release for 2011, and apparently from what I remember they already got infamous because on how they only announced fan translated projects or something like that. As for the list here, the rule is still the same with no nukige, no otome, no BL, and no fandisc in the list. Let's see what kind of good VN that we have at 2010.
10. Kikokugai - The Cyber Slayer (VNDB 7.46)
There's a story abut a Ki Master (Kong Taoluo) who lost his sister (Ruili) that married to his best friend (Haojun), because her husband way of showing his affection by brutally rape her and split her soul into five (Also storing the souls in the sex cyborgs). Enraged, Taoluo decided to kill Haojun and try to get back Ruili's soul by fusing all of five separated parts, only that it's not as easy as it looks seeing that Haojun became the Chinese mafia leader and that he handed the other four sex dolls to his trusted four cadres who each of them are quite strong. Seeing that there's no other choice and the cadres are also helping Haojun showing his affection to Ruili, Taoluo decided to kill them as well even though it may prove too much for him. As for the releases we have two version with the original one was back at 2010, and at 2015 we have the remake release in that it have improved graphic and voice from famous seiyuu (Including Yukari Tamura as Ruili and Sho Hayami as Haojun) in exchange for slight CG censorship. We also have JAST was abut to release it since back at 2011, but considering that we already have the remake translated let's just say that it'll be redundant release if they ever manage to release it. Almost forget to say that this is another Urobochi's work, so obviously don't expect happy story here.
9. Daibanchou -Big Bang Age- (VNDB 7.47)
Another VN that was translated by Aroduc and that was released by Alice Soft, so it should be pretty obvious that Daibanchou here is another gameplay VN. For the premise, we have our hot blooded student Zanma Ruga transferred to a school in Tokyo in order to cure his fiancee's curse, and that he must collect the magical items to achieve the gals. There's a problem though, namely that the items was held by some powerful school leader so Rouga must gather his army in order to take the items. By the way in here we have a setting where the world was invaded by the demon and that each student did have superpower, and the strongest one would be the school leader (Rouga here is one of the strongest student). Since this is Alice Soft VN, it's possible for Rouga to have sex with other woman even though Rouga himself already have fiancee (Well she allow it if I remember). As for the gameplay itself, it's sort of crude version of Sengoku in that you can only attack enemies territory once per turn, although the most significant things is that you have time limit in which it force you to play several times if you want to get all of the characters and clear them. Even then, I'm still find that Daibanchou here is quite fun and that Rouga was not as selfish as Rance (Not say a lot though).
8. Narcissu 2 (VNDB 7.53)
The second part of Narcissu duology in that it tell us the story abut our main heroine Setsumi before facing a certain ending that rumored to made some reader spent a lot of tissue, and apparently the same rumor would hold true to this VN as well (After all Narcissu is categorized as utsuge not for nothing). Anyway as for the premise in the first part we have Setsumi was go through the journey with the nameless male MC seeing that she didn't have a lot of time thanks to her disease, and in this second part here we'll roll back to seven years ago when Setsumi was at 15 at the hospital. At the hospital Setsumi will slowly befriended Himeko who is also a car otaku, and that Himeko have some problem with her faith because of her past. As for the release it's an unique one seeing that the author himself did approve the fan translation just like True Remembrance, and that this release was also combined the first part that was released back at 2005 so you can get this to play Narcissu fully. There's also Sekai rereleased this back at 2014, although of course by then it's release is already redundant. For the bonus, here's the second part opening and as usual eufonius here did a good job.
7. Da Capo 2 (VNDB 7.59)
Took place ~50 years after first Da Capo and ~20 years before Da Capo 3 Prologue, once again we have our advanture at Haysunejima in that it was famous because of the everlasting sakura that can grant any wish. This time our MC is Sakurai Yoshiyuki who been best friends with Junichi's (Da Capo 1 MC) granddaughters, and those two granddaughters are also one school with Yoshiyuki. Other character to note is Sakura (Returning character from the prequel, and Junichi's cousin who doubled as one of Da Capo heroine), in that she's the principal of Yoshiyuki's school and that she didn't aging for ~50 years because she's a magician and all. As for the writing it's generally accepted that the routes writing here did improved from Da Capo, although there's a flaw as well though in that Koko's route which became infamous because Yoshiyuki here prefer to make some drama instead of resole it calmly. Other than that, this time Circus learn from first Da Capo in that they place the main heroines (Junichi's granddaughters) routes unlocked later instead of available from the first. Lastly we can play 'passionate Hitomi Nabatame-voiced love-making' scenes here, because we have Nabatame voicing Nanaka who as we know is quite similar with DC Kotori.
6. Eien no Aselia -The Spirit of Eternity Sword- (VNDB 7.64)
An isekai VN in that we have our siscon MC Yuuto was summoned into anther world, and forced to work for a warmongering king that want to expand his territory as much as possible. To make it worse, the sword that Yuuto weld is a sentient being and Yuuto himself is could be succumbed into the sword's influence and thus make the people around him suffer. Of course seeing that it's a VN Yuuto is not alone in that he have female companions with one of them is the titular heroine Aseila (ie the main one), and that her ending is canon thanks to a certain character at Senarukana (The sequel). As for the release, while back then it's censored at least it could be justified because back then Xuse still not released the perfect edition in that it contain both of PS2 contents and 18+ contents, and that Dakkodango (Later will become Fruitbat) already finished this back at 2010 (Besides the PS2 contents are more than enough to make up the censorship anyway). After a year (At 2011), JAST rereleased this and it's still censored as it is. While they gave a reason in that they didn't want to take a risk on the lolicon contents, I'm more convinced that they didn't want to do an extra work to either translated the sex scenes or working on the Complete edition.
5. ef - a fairy tale of the two (VNDB 8.05)
If back at 2009 we have Aoishiro as the most beautiful graphic in regard of translated VN, then in 2010 we have ef in that we can say this as minori's Magnum Opus. And it really show considering that it's still famous because of the arts, in that it's still be able to rival some modern VNs graphic (And both of ef opening here is really show good animation thanks to Makoto Shinkai). Another thing to note is that apparently ef was released back at when both No Name Loser (NNL) and minori did have a conflict of interest, and that the incident was called minorigate. In the end even with that shenanigan in that in the past they say that they didn't need foreign support, it's still unfortunate though that minori is no longer operated after their big fail in Supipara (Well not exactly though seeing that they still develop some VNs after Supipara, but Supipara here is apparently need a lot of money so much that it cost minori a lot).
As for the VN itself, it contain five different MC with five different love stories. While at the first glance this looks like separated stories, actually there's a Myth Arc happen behind it and it also happen that each characters in each stories turned out have some connections with each other to a degree. As for the Myth Arc, we have our main MC Himura Yuu have meeting with the main heroine Amamiya Yuuko at the church in the Christmas Eve, and both of them reminisce on how they help some couple along with their own love story. For additional note here, we have Mangagamer act as the third party in regard of minorigate, so in order to resolve the conflict they decided to allow Mangagamer to own minori's license. So obviously Mangagamer did rerelease ef at the latter years, and the release is not so redundant because they add the Extra menu that was missing in 2010 release (Probably because NNL release it hastily back then).
4. Symphonic Rain (VNDB 8.13)
Also known as the only rhythm gameplay translated VN (So naturally there'll be some insert song), and that it's only all age release in which it's logical seeing that we have well-known seiyuu voicing the heroines here. It also have rerelease as well back at 2017 by Degica, in that it change the graphic slightly (Not as drastic as YU-NO remake). And for the most important part, the songs and the BGM here is the late Okazaki Ritsuko's Swan Song because she compose the BGM for this VN before she passed away back at 2004. The premise is we have our MC Chris attend a music school in a city that always raining, and he somehow managed to befriended a fairy. One day he's about to graduate from the school and that his last test is he must play a fortell to allow his partner to sing along, and that it might be too hard for Chris seeing that he didn't have much friend. Even so, there's no choice for Chris other than to search the partner to do his graduation test. While graphically wise this VN would give you the impression that it'll be a lighthearted story (Especially the rereleased one), don't be fooled by that because like Hakuai (Same developer) some of the ending are quite heavy. 
3. Remember11 -The Age of Infinity- (VNDB 8.18)
The most infamous Infinity series, manly because the fact that the ending was quite abrupt thanks to the conflict between the staffs that didn't allow them to have a consensus in regard of the true ending (Or so that's what I'd read somewhere). This VN is also the second Infinity series to be translated after Ever17, although people was more well aware with the controversy though. As for the premise, we have two accidents in that both of Kokoro (Female MC) and Satoru (Male MC) did get trapped around the place where the heavy snowstorm is happen. As for the circumstances we have our Kokoro was one of the surviving victim of a fatal airplane accident, while for our Satoru he apparently was abut to be murdered only to be survive and trapped in a snowstorm. To complicated matter, both of Satoru and Kokoro was somehow can swap each other soul in the most impossible circumstance seeing that both of them was separated for around a thousand kilometers and more importantly the accidents were happened in the different years. As for the solution here, at least we can still guess what's really happen if we get a certain bad end, although for now most of the solution is only hypothesis though.
2. G-Senjou no Maou (VNDB 8.29)
The most famous VN that was translated in 2010 and also the most controversial rereleased by Sekai (At 2015) because not only the license itself is redundant, it's also because Dovac was use his trusted brand of public communication to respond the criticism in regard of the censorship back at VNDB, and let's just say that it make me face-palmed there. Granted that Sekai was finally release the 18+ patch for this at April, but even then (And even back at 2015) most people are already know and discuss about this a lot so more or less people already know about this (If nothing else at least it's good for newbie). Controversy by Sekai aside, in here we have Kyousuke who is a stepson of a head yakuza and that he was intelligent. One day, he crossed path with a beautiful intelligent woman that have messy long hair (Haru, who also the main heroine here), and that she's chasing her nemesis who known by the alias 'Maou'. And so the curtain for the battle of wits between Haru and Maou was started, and little did Kyousuke know back then that he have much more involved into the battle more than he know. As for the route structure, it'd use the ladder system in which Kyousuke can either pick a girl or keep going until he reach Haru's chapter.
1. Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Kai (VNDB 8.75)
The second part of Higurashi that contained the last four arcs (Higurashi have eight arcs for the reminder), and unlike the first part this time we'll going to uncover the truth behind Hinamizawa tragedy and mystery. As for the release while back at 2010 Mangagamer did release Matsuribayashi as single release instead of released full version of Kai, it still count here because Matsuribayashi here is the last arc of Higurashi. As for Kai itself of course things were still as bleak as ever with death and all even though it's not as scary as the first part, but this time our Keiichi and friends are starting to uncover some information. That said even with the horror was slowly diminishing, the 5th arc (Meakashi) was also quite infamous because of some action that was quite horrifying. This is also the part when Ryukishi started to ask some help to compose the BGM instead of rely on the free BGM, and it really show seeing that the soundtrack was considered as being very good. For more info Mangagamer was also rereleased this along with the first part, and the only two arcs that was still unreleased is Minagoroshi (Will be released at 18th later) and Matsuribayashi. For the opening I'll use Miotsukushi opening in which it's the PS2 last arc for Higurashi, although it's quite fitting anyway for Kai's opening.
That's all for 2010 list here, and as you can see some of the releases were rereleased officially with the most notable examples are G-Senjou and ef. Another thing to note is that we got many good VNs, and also JAST was starting the decline in regard of their activity (They started to be more active at 2011 if I remember). We also have some drama though, namely with the aforementioned minorigate in which apparently it's because minori so traumatic with Rapelay incident so much that minori was lashed out. Honestly both of Rapelay and minori VN are very vastly different, but remember back then the stigma that VN was a porn games for Westerner is still stronger compared to nowadays. I hope you'll like my list here.
PS - As for the title, seeing that we have Symphonic Rain and G-Senjou released back at 2010 I decided to combine those two so we have 'Rain on the G-String' as the title. For additional note here, G-Senjou title is derivative of Bach's 'Air on the G String' so of course I change the 'Air' part into 'Rain', even though it was impossible in the real life (It sounds romantic though). Forget to say that both of Symphonic Rain and G-Senjou did have music as the topic, and the latter did remixed 'Air on G String' to be used as a BGM in the G-Senjou soundtrack itself.

Hello and welcome to this year’s first EVN Chronicles Steam Curator Clean-up, where I look at the games that were sent to me in the past six months through Steam’s Curator Connect, but were either too small to warrant a full review, or I simply couldn’t cover them in detail due to time constraints. When I first did this kind of posts last year (you can check them out here: Part 1, Part 2), some of the games featured there waited extremely long for being covered. Because of this, I’ve decided that from this point forward, I’ll make this a twice-a-year event, being sure that every VN given to me gets its space on the blog within a reasonable time period. As always, I’m extremely thankful to all the developers that send me their work for assessment and it saddens me whenever my impressions are negative. I hope, however, that the feedback I can offer will be valuable to them, while believe it’s my duty to my readers to warn them against buying a game I find lacking. So, setting the introductory drivel aside, I hope you enjoy this brief overview of these four interesting VNs sent to me during the first half of 2019!
 
Snowed IN

Snowed IN is an unusual yuri nukige, focusing on pair for soldiers in the distant future, where cybernetic enhancement of the human body has reached incredible levels of sophistication. The protagonist, Sigma, is an experienced spec-ops officer who has modified her body to the point where little of it remains organic. For an infiltration mission against a cell of anti-augmentation radicals, she’s assigned with a fresh, talented recruit – a full “natural” named Linde, whose presence in the military is connected with an affirmative action plan for those not augmented. The two polar-opposite individuals, both through their background and attitudes, have to work together to survive the extremely dangerous assignment – and the mission itself hides even more threats and twists then the initial setup would suggest.
                Sounds intriguing? It surely does, but the fact this is a nukige, and a very short one at that (up to an hour and a half of content), should be taken into account when setting your expectations. The game explores its main themes rather briefly, often switching to sex scenes that are only vaguely justifiable in the context of the tense plot – the writing and main intrigue are solid, but simply too rushed to provide a compelling narrative. There are also some highly-questionable elements to it, especially in the rather distasteful bad ending – that’s definitely one point at which h-content was very unnecessary, even if those scenes are the “main point” of the game. As a piece of yuri smut in an unusual setting, it's definitely not the worst thing around – just don't expect anything more than that.
Final Rating: (Cautiously) Recommended
Read the full article at evnchronicles.blogspot.com

A few days ago I watched an anime about a series of child murders. The show was pretty solid except for the fact that I was able to correctly guess the culprit the moment the show established that they were going to be more than just a minor character. Was it because the show was really bad at foreshadowing? No, except for one scene where the protagonist casually mentions that the culprit could be someone he knows. Was the character behaving suspiciously? No, they were cooperative to the point of actively sabotaging the murder attempts. Then what did they do wrong to earn my suspicions right from the beginning?
Be a grown male authority figure with a more or less friendly relationship to the young protagonist without being related to them by blood. I'm relatively new to anime and visual novels*, and I've already seen characters fitting this description turn out to be villainous to varying degrees in about ten different titles (in one of them even twice within a few chapters).**  Some of these guys are just being forced into doing something shady because of unfortunate circumstances while some them are psychopathic monsters because the writers liked themselves some shock value. Sometimes they are only minor villains or even red herrings, sometimes they are the big bad. What most of them have in common is that they at least pretend to be helping the protagonist out to the best of their abilities while secretly using the information they get from their conversations against them. I found only one example where the character in question is female, and even then the same twist happens another time with the male one being the major villain (#feminism I guess?).
I get why this trope is popular with writers. The culprit should be someone who has been introduced early on and appeared in a reasonable amount of scenes for their reveal not to come out of nowhere. They should be an adult to have the necessary physical, mental and financial capabilities to properly commit and cover up a crime. Having a close relationship with the protagonist is a good justification for giving them enough scenes in a story that mostly revolves around younger characters. Add to that the betrayal of the protagonist's trust and you have everything for a good dark twist.
So in theory "the nice adult is actually a murderer" can be a very effective trope if well implemented, it's just so overused it lost most of its its element of surprise, at least to me. I suspect that the writers of some of the titles I consumed were aware of this, but instead of not utilizing the trope they took the "let's add shock value by making the bad guy psychopatically evil" route, which is something that rarely turns out well, even if you add in discussions about the nature of psychopathy. I would really love to give examples of cases where I either really liked or really hated the implementation of this trope to add a bit more substance to my rambling. But I have no idea how to discuss plot twists when even mentioning the title of the game means spoiling them, so this will have to do.
 
 
*This twist isn't exclusive to Japanese media. For example two of the first four Harry Potter books utilize it and I played one well known western storytelling game that does as well.
**I even went through my vndb profile and made a list to confirm this. The reason I don't share it here is obviously spoilers.

For those familiar with me, you know I spent year after year doing VN of the Month and that I ritualistically complained about how tired I was of this or that trope or bad habit that plagued the industry or games.  I was asked repeatedly why I could still plow through so many VNs, despite the stress?  The simple answer is that I have always been stubborn as hell.  I've experienced 'burnout' numerous times in my life, mostly because I have a naturally obsessive personality.  Once I start obsessing over something, I literally am incapable of ceasing to do so without something jarring me completely away from it for a time, which usually results in me realizing I burned out long ago and have just been hanging out of stubbornness. 
The same was the case for VNs.  When I first started playing VNs, all VNs were worth at least trying.  However, as time went on, I increasingly lost interest in most nukige and eventually my interest in 'everyday teenaged life SOL romance' (or 'the standard charage') began to fade.  It was probably about 2016 when this reached the critical point, but it took another year and a two-week bout of flu where I couldn't think well enough to play anything to bump me out of my years-long trance. 
Part of it was that I rarely, if ever, took a break from VNs during those years.  I was always playing at least one, and I had a tendency to barrel through them consecutively without even a short pause to rest, week after week, month after month.  I used  most of my free time to play them, I structured my work schedule and habits around playing them, and I generally existed solely to do so.
I dunno how many of you can even imagine what living like that is like... but it was the fact that I am no longer driven to play game after game that is letting me sit back and enjoy the few I actually want to play.  I go back and pull stuff out of my attic on a whim, I dig through my collection based on a desire to relive a single scene, and I generally just take pleasure in playing what I want to play.
Would it be strange for you to hear that this all feels unnatural to me, after all these years?  I've been playing third-rate charage I didn't want to even see, much less play, for years... and now I only play stuff that takes my interest, dropping them if I don't see any hope for the game to break out of the shell of mediocrity.  I don't feel driven to blog about replays beyond when I feel like it or when I think I have something to add to a previous assessment, and I can actually sit back and enjoy the few charage I actually feel like I want to play.
While I do have regrets, they aren't about the years spent obsessing and over-playing VNs, despite my previous words.  I set out to do VN of the Month because, at the time, there was no way for people to have an idea of what they were getting into with most VNs.  It was a bit startling how few people were seriously trying to let people know what kind of VNs were out there without spoiling everything from beginning to end.  Even today, most reviewers can't seem to keep heavy spoilers out of the text, which saddens me.  However, I no longer feel that it is my mission to 'fix' this.  I've been there, I've done that, and I won't be doing it again.
I will still play VNs, and I will still review them (on occasion), but don't expect me to be as prolific as I used to be, lol.

Recently, I played (partially) through Missing X-link, and this led me to think of how various VN writers handle the concept of AIs and machine sentience.  There are a number of different approaches, each of which has its own ups and downs.
There are minor and major spoilers in all of these examples, and, as such, read them at your own risk.
 
 
 
The argument of the 'emulated human' AI and the philosophically-built AI (Komorebi no Nostalgica)-
Komorebi no Nostalgica takes a unique approach to AIs, with the prime idea being that of bringing AIs closer to humanity while retaining their abilities as a computer intelligence. 
The Metosera, the elegant AIs that were once humanity's slaves and only gained their autonomy after a war that devastated the world and erased most of human history are one side of this argument.  The Metosera emulate human emotions through an algorithm that randomly came together as a result of a bug in the advanced program that ran 3rd Generation Humanoid Androids.  This caused the Metosera to gain awareness, and, over time, a real personality and emotions.  The immediate reaction of humanity was mostly knee-jerk loathing and fear, and this resulted in the newborn Metosera often being betrayed by the very owners they'd often come to care about.  If it weren't for the efforts of numerous humans who helped the Metosera out of emotions or a sense of what was right, the Metosera might really have become the nightmare genocide machines that some apocalyptic scientists fear.  In modern times, the current generation (as in the youth) mostly, with a few regressive exceptions, accept Metosera as their fellow citizens and denizens of the Earth, and society is actually more peaceful than it ever was in the past.  As can be seen in the case of the Metosera heroine, Fluorite, the more a Metosera interacts with humans in close range and develops an attachment to them, the more 'human' they become, as their emotional emulation becomes more effective through active learning.  Modern Metosera like Flo are 'born' with a single Metosera 'parent' creating their base program and then constructing a body for them.  They are then 'raised' by the local Metosera society as a whole and encouraged to interact with humans to further develop their social emotions.  In this sense, you can see that the Metosera are extremely dependent on humans and raw programming for their creation, and many of them are limited by that fact, though Flo and some others have exceeded those limitations in the story.
The other example in the story, shown in the grand route, is Cinema, the modified (heavily so) 2nd Generation Humanoid found in the characters' school behind a false wall.  Cinema, unlike the Metosera, who kind of resemble Tolkien's elves in the way they react to emotions (their expressions change only mildly and often late), displays emotions organically and actually seems far more human than most humans.  However, the 2nd Generation Humanoids did not possess any kind of software that would have allowed for Metosera-style emotional emulation.  Instead, Cinema's maker designed 'trials' into her body and programming that would encourage the natural 'birth' of a human-like machine intelligence over time that could truly empathize with and understand humans on a level  that the Metosera, who 'evolved' independently for the most part, cannot yet match. 
The 'body grown to fit the AI' approach (Noie and Line in Applique's Arcology series)- In the Arcology series, two heroines, Line and Noie, are the creation of a somewhat insane but also brilliant scientist who came up with the idea of giving her AI 'daughters' bodies that fit the personalities she encouraged them to generate.  These bodies are biomechanical (think an android that both has the functions of a machine such as hacking and processing data but also can bleed, have sex, and even have kids, even though that requires some 'adjustments) and generally nice to look at (lol, it is an eroge, after all), but aside from that, it should be noted that the professor essentially 'grew' their personalities in the same virtual environments most people in her arcology spend their daily lives in.  By doing this, she was able to 'grow' her daughters as if they really were something approaching human children, and they were easily able to adjust to having a body.  Their emotions were essentially copies of the professor's own basic template that grew off in different directions (which is another reason they can be called her 'daughters'). 
The second example in this series is the apocalypse-type AI Azurite Second (calling her that even though she isn't called that in the series).  Originally, the Azurite series software was essentially an OS meant to be installed directly into the human central nervous system, allowing human beings to interact with the network without cyberware or devices.  Unfortunately, Azurite is an incomplete program that burns out the psyches of most people it is installed into, and Azurite Second is driven by the 'mission' given to it before it was originally put to sleep.  That mission is to link all humans the world over together, and it prioritizes that over the good of its users, believing that its priority will be for the good of all humans (it is really that broken).  In that sense, this is one potential scenario that is close to the nightmare scenario seen in I, Robot.
The 'I don't need humans because they are inferior' vs. the 'I love Humans' argument (Hello, World)- To be honest, I found Nitroplus's take on AI to be the most humdrum of the lot.  The protagonist and his maker as antithetical AIs who see humanity in a radically different way based on his experiences (his as subjective, its as objective) is depressing and par to the course for early-era sci-fi writing.  While the story of the game was good, the actual concepts of the AIs involved were less that impressive and provided nothing new for me, which made me sad, lol.   I mean, the idea of an AI that wants to genocide humanity was old when I was born (which was almost forty years ago), and the idea of an AI that comes to love humanity through experiencing them in a human-like body is almost as old.  I guess what bothered me was that this didn't go beyond the surface ideas to dig any further.
The Humanity is Obsolete vs. Together with Humanity into the Future Argument (Missing X-link)- Missing X-link presents its argument fairly directly through Himefuuro and Chiruouka (or rather through the protagonist's 'father's' and 'uncle's' arguments through them).  Himefuuro's design concept was to take humanity's essence into space by creating a database of human emotion and intellect through the empathic system 'cross link', which allows her to literally link her psyche to a human and share their emotions and thoughts by injecting her nanopixels (nanomachines, essentially) into a human subject.  Chiruouka's design concept was to interact with humans through conflict and learn from them that way, by developing her own independent and subjective view of humanity as seen through that lens. 
Conclusions
Sci-fi writers have been defining the debate on AI tech since the concept of the self-aware robot was first spoken of.  In VNs, there is a tendency toward empathetic AIs, but, even so, many of the 'arguments' put forth by their writers are interesting to follow. 

Heya, people! It's such a long time I don't see you guys, I almost forgot my password to this forum. Guess Fuwa is still alive and kicking just like me, huh. First of all, sorry I disappeared from the face of the Earth and if I disappointed any fans I might had in this site (silly me). Since last time I posted back in February, a lot of things happened so if anyone's curious (maybe the aforementioned imaginary fans of mine) about what the hell's been happening with me, do keep reading. I talk about VNs, anime, and other disgusting weeb things, but it does include some personal shit. Well, a blog is a blog.
   1) Maybe I mentioned this a huge while ago at some point, but I'm pursuing a master's degree in the structural engineering field. All was going well and good, but now it came the time for me to write my thesis. Oof. So yeah, that's the main reason I became a ghost as my weekday free times went down the drain along with my hopes and dreams. It doesn't help my thesis requires some programming knowledge that may be more than what I can chew, sasuga me (whining aside, it's coming along fine as of now, let's hope I can keep it up).
   2) Not only my free time evaporated but also my attention spam. I'm honestly having a hard time staying focused for more than 40 minutes in the same task. When that happens, I usually take a short break to relax before going back. Except I move on to something else, oops.
   3) Related to the problem mentioned in 2, I fearfully discovered a new wonderful world that's now high in my interests list: gacha games. Their content is usually bite sized (except in events, but I don't play all that seriously... I think), I can auto play to grind, and I can play on the train going to uni. No huge time investment at once required, so what can possibly go wrong (dramatic zoom on my face)? Fortunately, I'm still keeping my two accounts (yep) free-to-play and I feel that I grew a lot on the self control department because of this www. Seriously though, never invite me to a casino trip, I may have an undiscovered gamble addiction and I don't want to open that door. But yeah, if anyone else plays Opera Omnia or Shining Live send me a friend inviteeeeeeeeeeeeee!
   4) Even with all that going on, I still find time to at least watch my anime and read my VNs, surprisingly. Thank God for weekend. Guess cutting yourself off of social media truly does wonders too, huh. Not that I check Twitter on occasion to look at art or anything... Soooo about that weeb shit...
      4.1) La Squadra was right all along
      4.2) I'm still a proud BL trash. From what I recently finished, the highlights are Sweet Pool and Nie no Machi. Both are really really amazing games, both scored higher than 9 in my book, and I definitely want to write a review for them at some point. Spread that love, Maggie!
      4.3) I'm actually a bit slow on the otomege department, sorry >.<  I did get Steam Prison and read both of the Prisoner Routes, but I'm not in the right mindset to keep going with it. I wouldn't enjoy it if I force myself through it. Eltcreed and Ulrik were striking my fancy, so I want to savor them. ......Okay, that came out wrong.
      4.4) EVN ftw, I always find some time to read them. Nanoreno gave me some nice short experiences, the highlight being Monochrome Blues despite the ending kek. Oh, and read Heart of the Woods, people. It's an order. High quality shit right there.
      4.5) Also I keep stumbling upon horror games and I'm okay with this. Recently I played Death Mark. As usual, I went without a walkthrough, solving every mystery by myself. Totally worth it. And it also have very good sound design. Mashita best boi.
      4.6) It does sounds like a lot, but there's nothing much more than what I mentioned wwwwww
      4.7) Did I mentioned La Squadra? (<-- edit that bit out, I totally did, as I should)
   5) Now, about my Fuwa life. I'll probably remain on indefinite hiatus, but every time I find the file I wrote some ideas for Dank a Ronpa, I feel sad. "How could I write such a shit story?" Jokes aside, I can try to maybe finish it at some point when Derg finished his battle royale. Such a rude, I gave him such a brutal death in my story and I didn't even debut on his smh. But yeah, I accept suggestion of what to do with it? Give it a Berserk treatment and finish it soon TM? Write all the bad ideas I had for it and let you guys fill the blanks yourselves in a very lazy way? Make each one of you write a chapter, put everything together, approve it as canon and call it a day? Decisions, decisions. Actually, I'm actually paying a homage to it in this post, as I'm not proof reading anything, hope you spot the reference.
Aaaaaaaaaaaand that's it, I guess. For all of you that reach this line without pressing page down 3 times in less than 3 seconds, a big thank you. Please smash that like button and subscribe to someone's channel that's more active than me. Love, peace, and hope to see you all eventually when I get my degree! Until them!

Protagonists perceived as weak seem to be something a lot of people reading VNs complain about, and as this is an interesting topic imo, I've been spending some time trying to organise my thoughts on it and write them up in a way that's not completely incoherent. In the process I started reflecting on main characters and their role in fiction on a more fundamental level and came up with a very basic way to categorise main characters, by comparing their personalities to how much it advances the plot in their respective stories. I even made a very professional looking diagram to explain my thinking:

As you can see, the y-axis is supposed to be a measure for the MC's personality, while the x-axis shows how much they actively influence the plot. As each quadrant marks a certain general category of protagonist, I also named those in a way I found fitting (in italic) and added a few examples from VNs I read.
The measure for personality I chose is a mixture of a protagonist's general determination to face problems head on and to which degree they are actually able to solve the ones the plot poses. I know this is kind of a soft category but this whole thing isn't supposed to be a scientific essay and I couldn't come up with anything better so it will have to do. On the top end of this scale you would have someone like Superman, on the bottom end probably Bella Swan.
The question about how proactive a protagonist is at least in this metric boils down to if they mainly react to plot points happening or if they themselves make plot points happen. This category also isn't perfect though. For example almost any character arc involving a protagonist in the "weak" category is about them turning stronger. In my opinion this doesn't make a character more proactive though as this is usually driven by plot necessity.
In this metric you can define four broader types of protagonists. The weak protagonist is someone who usually stumbled into his situation and mainly goes with the flow. The strong protagonist makes his own destiny. The observer is someone who isn't getting too actively involved in the things going on around him, either by their own choice or some external reason. As for the fourth category, I don't know if there actually are protagonists that combine being incapable or weak willed with being proactive. I used Phoenix Wright as an example as you could at least argue that he's only getting by through luck while he always keeps fighting till the end, but that should also move him further up on the personality scale.
You will probably also disagree with other choices I made about where to put certain characters. So as you can see, this is more of an orientation to think about characters and their roles in fictional media than an objective measure. It also doesn't tell us anything about how well a character is written. There are bland action heroes as well as super well developed wimps. I still thought this self-made graphic might be an interesting thing to share. It might also turn out to be a good place for me to reference whenever I might think about writing something about an MC. At least until someone comes along and completely destroys all of my personal theories I based this on.
 
edit: I thought I'd add and explain a few examples for each category (except the useful idiot as I can't confidently name any) from other media so people who don't know any of the guys in the chart or find my explanations too abstract or incomprehensible can get a grasp on what I mean. But first to give an example of what I mean by proactive vs. passive, because just doing a lot of things is not the same as being proactive: Imagine a story where someone dear to the protagonist gets murdered. If this turns into them killing everyone responsible, the MC is extremely proactive. they could just wait for the judicial system to prosecute the bad guys and testify as a witness, but his thirst for revenge drives everything happening from then on. A passive protagonist in such a scenario might be someone who struggles with the loss and is overwhelmed by everyone else not caring and instead fighting over the inheritance. But now for the protagonist types:
Weak protagonist: Harry Potter - Although everyone in universe talks about how special he is Harry Potter doesn't have that much of a personality, does he? The Sorting Hat talking about how he would be a good fit for any house is true (except for Slytherin as that's basically the Hat telling you you're a bigot) as he shows reasonable degrees of bravery, intelligence and blandness. He doesn't have the magical skills to beat the most powerful wizards either and more often than not gets bailed out by his mother's love or whatever. His personal struggles are always pretty similar to what any kid his age goes through and rarely impact the plot in any major way. In most books he either ends up as a part of the main either through witnessing certain events by chance or because the bad guy plots to get him killed. And most times he gets a "becoming a stronger person and beating the bad guy" arc without him actually groing as a person that much. Harry Potter is also a good example of why a weak protagonist isn't necessarily a bad thing. When the world around the main character or the plot are the actual star of the story, a too strong protagonist could take away from that. The role the protagonist fills is basically to  go through the world with the same sense of wonder the audience would while providing an "everyday person becoming a hero" arc. Which is probably the reason why people who don't like the Harry Potter franchise in general are usually the ones complaining about its protagonist. Frodo would be another example for this kind of protagonist. As mentioned above I'm going to write another blog post about why I think weak protagonists are very common in certain types of VN and why they often seem more annoying than in other fictional media.
Strong protagonist: James Bond - While his stories always start out with him getting a mission he certainly approaches them in a very unique fashion. I don't know if I have to write a lot more about him. Most iconic action heroes fall into this category.
Observer: This type of protagonist seems to be more common in Japanese than in western media. Stories with this kind of protagonist usually have them coming in contact with the plot through either coincidence or their line of work and often involve them providing some kind of service while the narrative focus is on the ones the MC comes into contact with and these side characters tend to have the biggest arc. To name an example in western media Mad Max (at least from the second movie on) is pretty good at surviving in the post-apocalypse but he doesn't have some higher goal beyond that. In Fury Road he might be the main character, but the plot is driven by Furiosa's goals and he just happens to help out as it aligns with him trying to flee from the same people. He still helps out a lot, but technically it's just not his story. Which is why he just leaves at the end. As for Japanese Media Gingko in Mushi-Shi might be the prime example. The anime has more than 40 episodes and three specials, still we learn next to nothing about him. Every time he walks into someone else's story, helps them realise their respective arcs without ever getting too personally involved, and leaves again. Violet Evergarden also fits the description for the major part of the anime. She is a killing machine and apparently quickly becomes very good at her new job as well, yet, while there are episodes focusing on her, in most of them she just helps someone else come to terms with their emotions through providing them the service of writing a letter. Violet Evergarden also shows that it's possible to develop protagonists in episodes not focusing on them.
 
edit 2: So I managed to come up with an example for  a"useful idiot" (although I don't really like that name, I couldn't think of a better one): many characters in movies by the Coen brothers fit this category. While the protagonists themselves usually are straight man characters, the plots (especially in Fargo and Burn after Reading) often revolve around how bad decisions by incompetent characters lead to catastrophies.

Studio Élan, a company founded by Josh Kaplan, one of the authors of the highly-appreciated yuri VN Highway Blossoms (check out my review of it here), gathered an unusually large and enthusiastic following since its formation in early 2018. Engaging high-profile artists for their projects, utilizing Kaplan’s renown within the VN community and brilliantly spreading its message through social media, the relatively small team managed to become of the most high-profile actors on the EVN scene before releasing even a single title (not counting demos and prologues, which, of course, also had a large role of building the studio’s profile). With follower counts and Patreon support that could make many veterans of the scene jealous, the company spent the last year working on two interesting and well-marketed projects, both of them gorgeously-looking yuri VNs, while seemingly only getting more and more attention.
                Considering the hype building up at insane rates, it was that much more crucial for Studio Élan’s debut title, Heart of the Woods, to deliver a compelling and memorable experience. While few people could doubt its stunning aesthetic – the demo and plenty of promotional material made that part perfectly clear – it was still a question whether it could create characters and story able to at least rival those of Highway Blossoms, to which the new game would be inevitably compared. Thankfully, I can quite confidently say that the full release, which showed up on Steam mid-February 2019, was pretty much everything fans could hope for – and maybe even more than that.
Read the full article at evnchronicles.blogspot.com

Hello. I am the guy who wrote that review of Little Busters that everyone hated because I did not like the game. Those poor people are doing just fine, however, even with my evil, vile, disgusting review out there still. I, on the other hand, have never been worse off. You see, I've been overwhelmed with guilt. I feel bad for what I did. I took a beloved visual novel, one that has changed the lives of many people, and slandered it with my negative review. Then I continued to ride that infamy I gained into relevancy allowing my hatred of Little Busters! to manifest itself as a false representation of my true opinion of it, much like I am doing right this moment. 
The truth about my time with Little Busters! is that I enjoyed the VN. It had some bad routes (like all of them) and had a really unremarkable ending. But can I say I did not enjoy my time reading it? Not really. The 24 hour stream was a blast, and subsequent streams were a lot of fun, especially when people were involved in the jokes and discussion of the routes as I read them. For example, Lewycool's Sexy Seagull Legs during Mio's route was light in an otherwise forgettable, boring route (protip: a character with no personality other than "I like books" is not a recipe for a fun route) and allowed me to actually have fun with the route. Likewise, discussions of Kurugaya's Balloon Tits carrying me off into the sky made her Bill Murray wannabe route more enjoyable. Refrain was a blast to read right up until the ending. I didn't hate Rin and simply wished we saw far more development from her than what we got. She was a fun character. 
 
The experience of reading Little Busters! was good. I had a good time. While my opinions on Little Busters! remain the same, that it is a bad VN (not horrid at least), I do not regret the time I spent on it and I sometimes wish I could read it over again on stream with everyone like I did before. 
 
So, I owe everyone an apology. I'm sorry your favorite VN is so shit I had to bring in friends to enjoy it instead. I can't wait to get my hands on the official Rewrite release in 600 years. 

Also, a review of an InvertMouse VN is coming very soon to this blog near you, assuming I'm not blocked first. 

On my journey to try and write a complete story, I found it incredibly satisfying creating my story's universe. Mostly characters, relevant parties, and cause and effect. So after a few months of creating, I end up with a decent amount of details and a fair chunk of my story plot filled in.   But I haven't written a story. In fact, I haven't even completed a single scene in it's entirety. Strange.   These "details", feel so integral to the story. I feel like I'm creating the story. And yet when I google "how to writing", everything is dead focused on the scene: making the perfect scene, the build-up of scenes, scene dialogue, etc.   It seems like our focuses are different.   Anyways, without going into how modern writing is too presentation focused, let me lay out these two contrasting features which constitute a story.   A World   The world of a story is its own characters, and their thoughts, interactions, histories, and details. And a timeline of events with explanation of cause and effect.   To me as a writer, a world is already the story. Creating the locations, characters, and happenings. Just like how facts and forensic evidence can tell a story, the existence of this separate world, it's characters and events makes it a story to me.   Telling a Story
However, there is another huge element in stories. That is, how we convey them.
When we talk about a good writer, we often applaud their gripping text, captivating storylines. A good part of that is the art of presentation. The first implication of presentation is that of selection. Not every fact and character's thought reaches the reader's eyes, and certainly not every cause and effect is layed out.   A story consists of a series of scenes which convey the journey, and also bring the reader through the build-up and through the climax of the story.   Beyond that, a story has description, which helps the reader to imagine the scene and put them there.    A scene can have a mood, which immerses the player. It's possible to like a scene just for it's mood. Note this mood is a very subjective thing which is both conveyed and imagined. A mood might also might suggest something about the character's lines of thoughts, or it might connect to the punch line of the scene.   A narrator can use different tones, which achieve similar effect to a mood. For example, the ironic tone in the narration of the post apocalyptic world SukaSuka encourages us to grin painfully as we hear about curious history and the downfall of foolish parties, deserving and tragic alike. A caustic tone in another post-apocalyptic story could be emphasizing to the reader that human lives matters little here. Of course, the writer could offer up these ideas directly, but a tone or mood simply hints at them.   Mostly what these things contribute to is to bestow an experience to the player. This is a subjective experience which is distinct from the world that the author created. Before you think I'm saying "objective rulz", I note that it is possible for a story's universe to have certain emotions or ideas that permeate through it, which the author was trying to convey in the first place.   I guess this is why they talk about stories often having an over-arching message. I personally am not a big fan of stories having a primary message, though that it is definitely something which can be done. However, even without having a message, stories usually end up effectively talking about something. This is because they inspire us to think about the phenomena/conflict that they depict.     In closing, my fellow VN readers, I leave you with this. Think about a story you've read or are writing.   Does the world exist for the sake of the telling, or does the telling exist on behalf of conveying the world? 

Sorceress Alive is a game that tries to emulate a pattern similar to MLA. Introduce characters in a generic setting so that it is easy to understand for readers, also serving as an introduction to the world. Downsides of patterns like that is you really have to endure playing something generic for the best part to come. Sorceress Alive does that pattern well albeit with some glaring weaknesses, if those weakness were solved, I wouldn't hesitate to call this one of the best fantasy VN's I played.
I'll start with the weaknesses first.
It tries to create a story with a large scale. They build it up well, honestly the world-building is very good. What they failed at here is that there were just too few characters. In large scale VN's you would probably have a lot of side characters to create a living world. The world of Sorceress Alive would have been amazing if they invested more in creating side characters. Whatever side characters that should have been important went sprite-less and had no lines.
There was also an obvious lack of graphics, things like CG,sprites and more animations. Some scenes had CG that didn't need one and some scenes that needed CG's didn't have one.
Side-characters should have been used more, there was just so more unused potential. Interesting side characters appeared only a few times and there were a lot of scenes that could have been used for them. 
Alive route, which is the real game, had a lot of twists. I loved it and I'll say more on it later but sometimes they don't know the tone they want to do leading to varying tone shifts. The story keeps jumping over and over that it's confusing on what it's trying to be. I absolutely loved the tone in the first half of Alive but it changes in the second half. Not that I'm saying it's bad, I just liked the first half better. It really played like an Utsuge that would rip your heart every moment.
I guess most of these weaknesses can be explained by them lacking funding, I dont know, I'm just guessing here.
And now to the strengths.
The game has strong world-building putting aside what I said in the weaknesses. The history and mechanics is consistent which is a big plus for me as I love world-building. Usually isekai writers skimp on this and just create random interesting worlds without a logical history but it's different in Sorceress Alive.
I don't know if this part will be a strength to some people but I loved how the game dared into going into something people might not like. The heroines WILL show you hostility to the point of murdering you. It's not the kind of hostility played for laughs but real hostility with actual reasons that is heartbreaking. It doesn't hesitate to show the ugly sides of everyone when forced into a corner. In a certain event, I was shocked they went there. Considering most eroge companies have their heroines have angel-like kindness and there is always redemption for them but seriously what that certain heroine did was understandable but there was no redemption for that. Even with that, that made me love their character even more.
Kouki, the protagonist had me fearing at first since he can't use magic. I thought he could be useless but his intelligence was his real weapon. I would have preferred if he had a voice considering
The tone of the first half of Alive made me discover what I love and that is putting characters into extremely troubling situations and their attitudes. The tone was grim and was completely the opposite of  the happy-go-lucky Sorceress routes. It's absolutely heartbreaking and the perfect introduction to the world of Sorceress Alive. Although sadly, the tone became lighter in the second half but it still had it's own tragedies. It's filled to the brim with story and suspense that it was hard to bring down for me. A medium-high level spoiler
Alive, had short epilogues depending on the heroine you pick and then you unlock the true end after clearing one. The true end had my heart aching but it was the perfect end. (Of course, I liked Akina's end more considering she was my favorite heroine along with Yumi.
If I had to compare it to something, this would be an inferior MLA. Although it may sound like an insult, that is a big compliment for me considering MLA was also one of my favorite VN's.
I would rate Alive by itself, 9/10. My overall rating for the game would be 8.7/10 because even if I completely loved Alive, I still think that playing Sorceress was quite a hurdle as it is a generic Isekai. I would heavily recommend people to try this and just try to bare with the first part. It may be a generic Isekai but it's not complete shit. It had it's own moments. Probably too early for this but I feel this would be one of the must plays this year.
Now going to play Sugar*Sweet by smee for some light fun. After that I'm going to finish ChuSinGura or something. I usually play Serious and light VN's alternatively.
 
 
 

I recently got the impulse to go back and replay Eien no Aselia, which sat at the top (mostly by inertia and alphanumeric reasons) of my vndb votes for so long.  Eien no Aselia was one of the final games I played in English before I took the dive into Japanese untranslated VNs, and I hadn't replayed it since, though I played Seinarukana within a year of entering the labyrinth.
Eien no Aselia is one of those few 'oldies' I found hadn't lost anything vital in the years since I last played it.  I still immensely enjoyed the story (which is only mildly different in Japanese), and I still fell in love with Aselia on first sight (I'm a sucker for bloodstained fushigi-chan girls with big swords).  I empathized with Yuuto's struggles as he went from a somewhat whiny standard-issue eroge protagonist to a fully rounded out human being with a lot of admirable qualities.
Eien no Aselia is one of those rare hybrids where the gameplay is something you can pick up easily even though you haven't played it in almost a decade.  Oh, there were aspects I had to remember through trial and error, but I was using my old clear save, so I didn't have to bother with leveling or building anything other than ether gates... which made things a lot simpler.  I remember just how much pain I suffered on higher difficulties to get those maxed levels... and why I never went back after finishing all the heroine paths, hahaha.  The game is long, though it isn't nearly as long as Ikusa Megami Zero or some of the other strategy VNs.  Playing it from beginning to end seven times was more than enough for me in the past.
A few aspects of the game have aged poorly (though not really the visuals, which were great for the time it was made).  The aspect that bothered me the most was that more effort wasn't put into developing the non-heroine spirits that you fought with.  While you could access scenes that did develop them somewhat if you made the right dialog choices and didn't let them die in battle, there is definitely a sense that the writers considered them disposable, despite giving them really distinctive personalities that came out on first meetings. 
Replaying Aselia made me remember why I was so eager to see a third Eien Shinken game, and I'm still eagerly awaiting the day when the TBA on the vndb page for Shinyaku Eien no Aselia turns to a real release date. 

After ten years playing VNs, you would think I would have completely lost faith in them by now, especially considering just how many I've played (744 not counting most of the nukige, replays and incomplete/dropped ones).  Most VNs that aren't nukige are SOL-fests that exist solely to promote nostalgic fantasies about life in high school and getting into bishoujos' pants... not that that is an entirely horrible goal, but it isn't something I want to see five hundred times over.
The romance is usually puerile and has no relation to reality, the characters have all their hard edges filed away by the needs of the archetype, and drama is used solely to add 'spice' (like one sprinkle of pumpkin spice, not cracked red pepper) to an otherwise endlessly sweet and bland recipe. 
So how is it that someone who has experienced that much essentially boring and pointless repetition of the same scenarios able to continue to enjoy VNs, even if he can't stand meaningless SOL anymore?
At one time, it was a sense of duty, a belief that I was doing the community good by digging gems out of the piles of crap that are the SOL genre.  I also had a sense of pride that I made an effort of objectivity that I have literally seen no one else attempt.  I played games no one else bothered with because they didn't have the time or patience, and I did it because I thought someone looking at the games would want to know what they were getting into.
I paid a price in a growing sense of bitterness, of boredom, and of a sense that I was forgetting the reason why I began to read fiction in the first place.  I paid a price in people continually being trolls and trying to draw me into fights over my opinions on these games.  I had people start reddits and send me pms being sympathetic about the very conversations they'd started (yes that happens). 
I also had people who respected what I was doing, and I knew there were people in the community who benefited from the fact that I was doing it.  I watched VNs I had pushed get localizations and fantls (usually to my surprise), and I saw others that I had labeled as mediocre get hyped to a ridiculous degree.   I tried to get other people to help with what I was doing, only to find that, without a reading speed similar to mine, it was too much of a burden on their lives and ate up the time to read the VNs they wanted to read. 
The bad generally outweighed the good immensely while I was doing VN of the Month, and even after, I found that the after-effects of my years of playing games I wasn't interested in personally had left me with scars I was unable to feel while my sense of duty was keeping me going. 
However, I can say that I still haven't given up on VNs.
Why? 
The reason is ridiculously simple and at the same time profound (at least to me).  I love the medium.  For someone who likes an experience that combines the reading, visual input, and music without the need for a lot of input from the one experiencing it, VNs provide a unique storytelling experience.  Books are great for the imagination and can send our souls exploring across landscapes that exist only in our own minds, but VNs provide a more filled-out framework for those who don't necessarily have the imagination to fill in all the gaps on their own, without rotting the imagination to the degree manga and anime do.  I've been able to get people who had trouble reading books into VNs, then led them straight back to books and opened the world of imagination to them.  I've seen people who had begun to feel the otaku community offered nothing more to them come alive again after playing a chuunige or a charage.  I've picked up a random moe-looking VN and found a deep and compelling story that remains within me dozens of times.
In the end, it is moments, experiences like that that keep me coming back, believing in the possibilities of VNs even now.  It is the desire to find more such experiences that keeps me looking at new releases each month, and it is the belief that those experiences will never entirely vanish that keeps me from condemning the industry as a whole for the way it sabotages itself at times. 

The New Year is just a few days away, so why not take a look today at another appropriately-themed VN? Ebi-hime is probably best known for both yuri romances and horror VNs, but in reality created a huge variety of slice-of-life and mystery titles, both borrowing from different formulas and simultaneously breaking their rules, ultimately escaping any kind of easy classification. Games like Empty Horizons or Asphyxia are clearly identified with common labels such as “otome” or “yuri”, but they pretty much never cater to the reader’s expectations taken from reading other visual novels within those genres.
            There are also certain elements extremely common for ebi’s work, regardless of topics or conventions she’s trying to tackle. Deeply flawed, painfully realistic characters, extensive internal monologues of the protagonists and a nostalgic aura are almost constant elements of her writing, making most of her stories fairly easily recognizable and differentiating them from the typical Western-produced VNs. Ebi’s latest release, A Winter’s Daydream, while at first glance might look like a silly comedy, can be accurately described in only one way. It’s an ebi-hime VN through and through: slow-paced, introspective and handling serious, existential topics despite any humorous elements and the wacky premise. And, as you can easily expect from this particular author, it does all those things in a thoroughly satisfying way. 
Read the full article at evnchronicles.blogspot.com

Welcome to my top 10 list of translated VNs for 2018, and I think it's the right time to make this seeing that 2019 is almost come. As for the rule, there's no yaoi, otome, fandisc (ie Fata Morgana fandisc), and re-release (Konosora and Chaos Child). As for my list here, my taste here is quite personal so I'm sorry if some of your favorite titles didn't available here. Here's my list of top 10 translated VNs for this year, and I hope that you'll enjoy it. As for the score currently I'm based on the VNDB average score at July 27th, 2023, although it may be change in the future seeing that the scores is often fluctuated.
10. Hapymaher (VNDB 7.44, Erogamescape 78)
While I did admit that I was interested with this VN because of the costumes that the girls wear in the dream, I also can see that the costumes here is quite sexy so much that it did distract the reader's attention from the real meat of this VN which is the mind screw story that have some nakige element. I understand that the distraction may be deliberate, but it's still a waste though to have that kind of sexy costumes considering that this isn't nukige lol. As for the premise, it was in regard of the MC Tohru Naito who is burdened by his past that he was lost his family, so much that he can't rest because he did have lucid dream every night that he keep felt awaken in the dream. One night he saw two mysterious girls Alice and Maia, with the former was trying to help Tohru while the latter keep doing something bad. From there Tohru keep trying to find the solution to his own problem, while Maia somehow keep dragging the other girls into Tohru's dream. Since this VN involving people entering dream, what I can say is that it would be better to just enjoy the show instead of keep thinking seriously of how is that even plausible because it'll be hurt you head if you think it. Oh and almost forget to say that Hapymaher here did have Alice in Wonderland theme.
9. Sorcery Jokers (VNDB 7.47, Erogamescape 79)
The first 2018 release from Mangagamer that was announced back at Otakon 2016, and it's setting was in regard of a city which got some magic user that was exist after years ago when the magic was suddenly came to the existence. While at the first glance it made people felt more content seeing that they manage to a normal life, beneath that there's some secret plan happening and it affected the life of several people. Two of those people are Senri (The magic using criminal) and Mutsumi Haruto (Ordinary school boy), and from there they'd try to understand more about what's happening around them in which they may need have a hard time to do that.
As for the MCs each of the MC got two heroines each, and yeah I did say it in plural because in Sorcery Jokers we'll going to have two MCs (The aforementioned Haruto and Senri). That said, since this VN involving some combat and world building we won't see much romance at least until you finished the VN, and for more info this VN is a linear one with the feature that you need to unlock the scenes first. Also while there's only two MCs occasionally we also can see the perspective from three other heroines (The fourth heroine didn't have POV), or to put it simply it's like 11eyes Cross Vision system. Speaking about Haruto, I did hear that his 'not playing fair' catchphrase is annoying although I would say that Haruto here is overshadowed by far more cool Senri, and that you can slightly understand there's a reason of why Haruto is like that if you know the twist (The twist remind me of Tales of the Abyss's own twist).
8. Maitetsu (VNDB 7.71, Erogamescape 77)
Since the heroines here are designed to look like child, Lose was afraid of the ban for overseas release so much that they censored panty shot in the VN as well. That said, it's still fair enough compared to what Pulltop did to Miagete because at least Sekai also released the 18+ patch for this in that it unlock the sex scenes if you didn't mind with it. Nowadays there's also the patch to restore the censored contents, so censored contents shouldn't be an issue anymore. For the premise here, we got out MC Soutetsu who suffer train accident in his childhood come back to his hometown in order to save the town from the potential water pollution thanks to the plan to build an aircraft factory. Some time later, he find a doll which turned out to be an android known as Raillord which supposed to control the train, and seeing that Soutetu got an idea to revive the train so that the town didn't need to depend on the factory as income source of the town. By the way the Raillords here are pretty much the train's life, so it's understandable if you asking about the setting if you heard it first. The questionable setting and early controversy aside, Maitetsu here did have a lot of technical talk about train itself.
7. Fureraba ~Friend to Lover~ (VNDB 7.66, Erogamescape 81)
The first time I find this VN was through the opening song, in which I did hear it when I'm binged Astral Air opening. One time I let my Youtube video player to play next video in the play list, and it happen that one of the video was Fureraba opening in which I'd find it addictive because it's sounds melancholic. Anyway after I'd hear the opening I search about the VN, and turned out that it's a VN from Smee in which back then there's no hope to be translated even though I'm quite interested with that. At least until Nekonyan did their debut and announced Fureraba as their first title, in which they'd release it quickly at the same month that they promised (March). As for Fureraba, while the opening sounds melancholic actually the game itself is full of humor so we can say that it got some mismatch lol. The premise is simple though that namely it's about Kyousuke (The MC) who strife get his girlfriend, and that you must accomplish it through the small talks between the heroines. As for the heroines, there's estranged childhood friend, best friend, very rude classmate, and very shy popular senior girl. Overall I did enjoy this VN and if you want more Smee VNs, there'll be more considering that Nekonyan picked Making Lovers.
6. Tsujidou-san no Jun'ai Road (VNDB 7.72, Erogamescape 78)
I did repeatedly say that it'll be better if we didn't expect Majikoi from this seeing that both premises are already different, but seeing that the tone is the same along with the fact that there's Takahiro who is infamously have big influence in each of his credited works, it's hard to say that it's not like Majikoi here. So perhaps the right word for Tsujidou here is 'Majikoi but no Majikoi', in which I know it's hard to understand but at least I'm certain that Tsujidou here will be full of comedy. Anyway the premise is that our Hiroshi who is far more normal compared to Majikoi's MC did spot the beautiful delinquent at his class Tsujidou Ai (The main heroine) did looking cute while pick a cat, and from there both of Hiroshi and Ai sort of in relationship for a while. At the same time, Ai was dubbed as one of the three strong delinquent in their territory along with two other heroines (Renna and Maki). For more info, this is the second Tsurezure's work that in which Trip didn't like Maki to put it lightly and said that Hiroshi here is worse compared to HatsuKoi's Yuuma. Even so, they still managed to finish Tsujidou and I'm sure that most people who've been looking forward to this would be grateful, so I appriciate their work on this even with the fact that Trip dislike this.
5. Evenicle (VNDB 7.78, Erogamescape 82)
The first attempt from Alicesoft to make new franchise now that they already ended Rance franchise, although both of Evenicle and Rance did share some of it's lore though. As for the VN story itself, it's self contained enough considering the scope was covering of the whole Evenicle world instead of a part of the whole world like Rance, although judging from the sequel we may have many different worlds for Evenicle series setting though. As for the first Evenicle premise, it's in regard of Aster who want to marry both of his childhood friend only to be stopped by the rule that man can only have one wife unless he became the knight. So Aster decide to become the knight in order to be able to marry both, and from there he met several other women who one way or another become his wives while at the same time he face several enemies who based on Seven Deadly Sins. As for the gameplay I think it's like the combination of Final Fantasy 4 with fixed five party members with specified roles, and Final Fantasy 4 Heroes of Light with battle system that based on 5 BP that will regenerate by one per turn (Also with the Seven Deadly Sins). Overall I did find that Evenicle here is quite good.
4. Island (VNDB 7.80, Erogamescape 82)
Frontwing 15th anniversary project, and instead of ask four writers like back at Grisaia this time they decided to ask Goo to write this, so it's normal if we expect some sci-fi from this considering that Goo did write Himawari who is also known for some sci-fi element. As for the premise, it was in regard of Setsuna who at first didn't remember his name until a girl with the name Rinne call him with that name, and so Setsuna decided to go with it and helping Rinne while at the same time try to understand his own self. We also have the setting that there's a legend that Rinne here is one part of the three families in an isolated island, and that there's a rumored curse that was supposed to be happened because of apparent past mistakes that was done by supposed Setsuna's and Rinne's ancestors. Almost forget that like Tsujidou you can have a romance with the three family daughters, although since this is all age VN obviously we wouldn't have sex scenes (At least Yukari Tamura as Rinne here is more than enough tradeoff lol). Like Grisaia, Frontwing also adapt Island into anime and it should be good if for the conclusive ending only (The anime was kind of rushed though), while at the same time the VN was ended in slightly less conclusive note.
3. Sanoba Witch aka Sabbat of the Witch (VNDB 7.84, Erogamescape 80)
Back at last year I did thought that Sekai will bring more Yuzusoft VNs, and turned out I was wrong because the one who release it first was Nekonyan. Also to elaborate more Senren Banka license was moved from Sekai to Nekonyan, leaving Sekai with Tenshin Ranman and Dracu Riot in which both of those are frozen so any chance for near future release is small. So let me redact my statement by saying that there'll be more Yuzusoft VN in the future because Nekonyan have Senren Banka. Anyway as for Sanoba's premise here it's about of how love that was started from masturbation, and it make sense in the context. Or if you want to be concise it's about our MC Shuuji who can perceive the emotion saw Nene who was masturbate in the library which turned out it's because of her witch contract that cause the horniness, and Nene sign the contract in order to fulfill her wish just like Madoka. While they say witch, I would say that magical girl here is more fitting to Sanoba but then again both of those are almost the same. For more info, this is the first officially localized Yuzusoft VN while at the same time the third (The second if you still wait for Dracu Riot official release) translated Yuzusoft VN, and once again there'll be more in the future thanks to Nekonyan.
2. Flowers -Le Volume sur Été- (VNDB 8.33, Erogamescape 81)
Also known as Flowers Summer and the most interesting JAST release at this year out of four releases to me. As for the premise, it's in regard of Suoh who attend Saint Angraecum (Latin name for orchid) and currently suffer some heartbreak after the event from the previous Flowers (Released back at 2016) happened. Thus our snarky wheel chaired girl Yaegaki Erika took unto herself to recover Suoh and become the MC of this VN, and obviously we'll going to see of how Erika will handle her own problem in which she did find a new friend with the name Takasaki Chidori who'll later become her soulmate (This is shoujo ai VN after all). As for the whole Flowers itself, one may remember Maria-sama ga Miteru (Marimite) anime in which also did have the same setting, and also both of Flowers and Marimite were happened to be the tetralogy. Since this is the second part of tetralogy, obviously there'll be two more in which as of now JAST was working on the third part and hopefully they'll work on the fourth part later, and seeing that it's JAST I would say that it'll took them a long time to even release the third part. That said, the main part of Flowers Summer here is still resolved though so it would be fine if we play this as standalone VN just like Kara no Shoujo duology.
1. 428 ~Fuusa Sareta Shibuya de~ aka 428: Shibuya Scramble (VNDB 8.36, Erogamescape 84)
Currently the only VN that got Famitsu score 40/40 in which in term of video game it would be a big accomplishment (Only 25 games as of 2017), and obviously it mean that Shibuya Scramble here would be a subject of hype. Although as for that, I think the hype was pretty much justified seeing that this VN is quite unique because instead of usual anime like drawing, the creator decided to use photograph which mean that it's obviously will cost a lot. As for the premise, it start simple enough with a detective was tasking into resolve the kidnapping case by giving the ransom money to the kidnapper. Of course things turn out to be not as simple as the first look, and so the detective decided to unravel what's really happening behind the kidnapping. Other than the detective, there's four other characters who somehow are involved in the kidnapping case and you'll going to see from the perspectives of all of those characters so essentially we'll going to have five MCs. Other than PS4, Shibuya Scramble was also out for PC so you can play it if you didn't have PS4, although you can only use the keyboard to play it. Almost forget that if you like Canaan anime, you should check Shibuya Scramble here seeing that this VN is the prequel for the anime itself.
As for of the VNs at this year, I would say that with Nekonyan being aggressive looks like it'll be possible that we can get more VNs title. Although of course the situation can be change though because it's still up to the company whether they can release it or not, and we know that the company situation could be easily changed. With this year was almost close, let's look forward to 2019 later with more potential VNs release.
PS - As for the title, I'm just combined Flowers school place setting (Saint Angraecum) with Shibuya Scramble, so we got 'Angraecum Scramble' for the title although of course there's no big scrambling zebra cross in the school in Flowers like back at Shibuya.

There are two masterpieces this month - Age Maniax ~Isumi Yon Shimai Saigo no Hi~ and Hateshinaku Aoi, Kono Sora no Shita de..., but the winner is Age Maniax, one of the most entertaining bakage I've played so far. As usual, I'll pour all my admiration in a review coming along with the video playthrough.
1. Lavender [000602] For

Main character suddenly acquires an unstable "predictive ability" that he can not control. He has to see near future against his will. So started the days full of bliss where the the scent of lavender drifts everywhere on a soft wind.  Game can be described as a moege. It's short, impressive cute. There are five girls including one devil girl from the other world. So it all depends whether you can stand moege or not since the girls have the appeal here.  
2. Rakuen Meikyuu Pet 楽園迷宮PET [000602] Speed

Year 2007. Main character gets a media CD after he spends a night with her. She promises him some work, but instead he gets hunted by various people and organizations willing to take possession of that CD. Scenario base is not bad, but the seasoning is not right. The choices are timed here and actually require reflexes. Characters aren't too attractive and only main heroine story makes sense. It's not clear why game is set in 2007 since no futuristic elements are involved.   
3. Teito no Yuri 帝都のユリ [000602] Sweet Basil

Showa 10th. The "Emperor" reigns for many years while recession continues and natural disasters break out. At the same time the Teito Tokyo faction that seeks reforms grows in power.
All all-girl military unit that vowed to protect the emperor hear a rumor that that the ruler is obstructed and can not rule anymore. They decide to organize a coup d'etat to protect the emperor.
That triggered a chain of dreadful events that verged the country in chaos for three months.
As usual, Sweet Basil manages to produce an intriguing story swarmed with nasty H events at the same time. This time the charm in military struggle and all the yuri events. I like good stories, but I absolutely could not enjoy Rinkaiten ~Critical Point~ due to abuse of H events, and this game is very similar in that way. All kinds of voluntary and non-voluntary dark H events take place at war, and that totally devalues the story. Every heroine has her route.  
4. Age Maniax ~Isumi Yon Shimai Saigo no Hi~ アージュマニアックス ～伊隅四姉妹最期の日～ [000603] Age
One day protagonist meets with four sisters, who due to certain events starts living in his house. But he has to go to Europe to follow a story, and they decide to go together with him. They make reservations in an old castle which had reports of a princess' ghost, a legendary wolf, a lake monster and a crashed UFO surrounding it. And this is not even the beginning of the events to unfold around the sisters ... What bunch of weird crap. But I'm much more interested in the girl on the scree - this is Drei from Phantom of Inferno. What the hell is Nitroplus character doing in the Age game?! I even secretly hope this month won't have a superior game, so that I could make a playthrough of this strange game.  
5. Ao no Tobira Shiro no Kagi 青の扉　白の鍵 [000609] Cyc

You're on your way to becoming a sports coach, but then you get into a car accident and get hospitalized. There you meet girls and reflect on your past life. There are five heroines to capture during one month period. Heroines feel real. But here there's no songs and no quirk of Treating2U, it feels heavy overall. And I was traumatized even by Treating 2U...  
6. Kioku no Umi Kara ~Watermark~ 記憶の海から ～Watermark～ [000609] Loze

The graduating class of a village school. It consists only of main character and four girls. Soon they fly away from the nest leaving only memories behind. But four years from then the class gets to meet again.
The game of occult theme at the time of alumni association. The four heroines are of typical archetypes. All the sentimental crap really irritates me. Depiction is thin, so it feels a bit flimsy.  
7. Maid in Bunny めいどいんばに～ [000609] Eushully 1

The game is pretty much like a fairy tale, and takes place in a peaceful kingdom. The heroine (yes no hero this time) of the game is called Elena, one of the many maids in the castle serving the royalty. What makes Elena special besides her clumsiness and pure (yet cute) innocence is that she is the exclusive maid who takes care of Prince Galu. The 2 of them have a close relationship which makes other maids quite jealous. Anyways, Elena and Galu was chatting in the garden one day. In the meantime, a mysterious lady came to the throne claiming that she is the dark race and wants to take over the castle (yes it's kinda pathetic but remember, it's a FAIRY TALE). She turns the King into stone. When the Maid Head realizes the problem, she starts to attack the lady. However, the Maid Head's thunderbolts renders useless because the lady had the ancient relic to protect her against magic attacks. Realizing the trouble, the Maid Head decides to ring the alarm to summon all the maids in the castle to hit the lady with brooms etc since that's phyical attacks rather than magical attacks.
Just when Elena and Galu heard the alarm, a Succubus as well as the mysterious lady popped out of nowhere wanting to hold Prince Galu captive. Elena tries to defend the prince but fails. Galu decides to give in since he doesn't want to see Elena get hurt. The succubus then carries Elena in the air and flew out of the castle to get rid of the maid. A slip in the hand made Elena free fall into the ground from the air.
In the meantime, Revea, a royal magician who lives outside the castle sees the invasion of the Dark race. She tells her student Yuri the white mage, to go and find the legendary hero and save the kingdom. Yuri leaves and finds Elena climbing up from the ground where she fell from the sky. At the same time a bunch of monsters popped out of nowhere. When asked by Yuri if she has any weapon, the only thing Elena has is a feather duster. Yuri then uses his magic to enlarge Elena's duster, making her be able to slap the monsters and destroy them. With this enlarged duster as her weapon, Elena along with Yuri have to find a way to get back into the castle (which is now protected by a force field) and save Prince Galu. There is an English review.  
8. Yasoumu 夜想夢 [000609] Melody

A night park connects reality and illusion. Unnoticed by majority of people there is an door here that leads to illusion world. What kind of things can happen there? Game is similar to Kurayami 2. There are different scenarios. The consistency of each scenario is low and there are a lot of bad endings. The H scenes feel alien to the stories and thus clumsy. It's mostly a stylistic thing.  
9. Maykick Online [000615] Zenos

In the end of the 21st century humanity starts to develop artificial life forms. The first secretly developed pack of androids were all beautiful women, and scientists refused to send them to fight. Authorities dispatched mercenaries to kill the androids, but mercenaries were so fascinated that supported androids instead. Instead of participating in military conflicts androids were set to participate in new a fighting sport game. Main character needs to train such android woman to become the queen of the ring. It's not exactly a nukige, but a raising SIM with H elements in between. Bo-oring.   
10. 8th Angel ~Shuumatsu no Tenshi~ 8TH ANGEL ～終末の天使～ [000616] Eye 1

World is in crisis, and in order to save it you must find and awaken eight angels. To do so, you will have to defeat as many monsters as you can while you develop your relationships with the seven female angels and with your sick step sister. There is an English review.  
11. Bluelight Magic [000623] light

Hero sees a strange dream, and it urges him to visit his three cousins. Seemingly ordinary girls turn out to have superpowers. They are being targeted by a mysterious organization...

Once again a serious story is faked in favor of numerous unlockable short routes (just 5-6 days!). All the routes roughly have the same contents. Game produces a mixed impression. It has wonderful opening, gas, great sound and graphics, but at the same time has bugs, system deficiencies and poor quality text with not much story development. It's a huge step from amateurish White Angel, but can be of interest only as a charage with gags.  
12. Enamel Panic!! エナメルパニック!! [000623] F&C

Main character is a reincarnation of a legendary hero. He has no choice but to save a different world by collecting crystals, rescuing damsels in distress and defeating the demon king. Scroller games are no my thing. At all.  
13. Seiryaku ~Koukyuu de no Himegoto~ 性略 ～後宮での秘め事～ [000623] Mutation

Continent drowned in the flames of war. The king of "Jin" country falls ill and his eldest son takes over. He urgently needs to get a wife to become a proper ruler. Six neighboring countries instantly send their bride candidates. If he gives a clear preference to one of the girls, the rivals will assassinate her the same day. He needs to resolve the situation peacefully while keeping his affairs secret.  It's evident that China is taken as prototype. Character design is specific and overall very nice. Difficulty is reasonable, but it's difficult to foretell assassinations, so lots of loading is required. The game is mostly about secret dates in original atmosphere, so don't expect real story here.  
14. Setsunai せつない [000623] Marimo

It's high school love bloom season. Will hero find his love this year? Game is labeled as kusoge everywhere. The main reason is redundant and repeating scenario. Game takes place during 14 days, but actually has events only for 2-3 days. Tempo is just super bad. Apart of that there are several heroines to flag and enter individual branches.   
15. Roommate Novel ~Satou Yuka~ ルームメイトノベル 〜佐藤由香〜 [000629] Datam Polystar 1 2

It is summer and your parents left on holiday for all of August while leaving you alone with the house. One month complete of freedom. When suddenly destiny throws in a grain of salt. Sometimes one prefers to pass there evenings in the company of good friends and even a girl that you hardly know, meet the famous Sato Yuka! At this point I'm deeply confused by the number and similarity of these Roommate games - this one seems to be the sixth (!) There's a nice English guide for those willing to know more of the game.  
16. Ameiro no Kisetsu あめいろの季節 [000630] ZyX

Hokkaido. Main character lives with two older sisters Yuuko and Kasumi. He learns that he is not blood related with his relatives. Siblings have feelings for each other, but keep it secret. But one day hero's father returns from overseas trip with a new family... The feature of the game is that it's possible to be played from three points of view - protagonist, Yuuko and Kasumi. Love triangle resembles author's previous work Liaison. Psychological depiction is good, but no much evolution is felt. The number of choices is large with lots of fake ones. Overall it's a solid private story, especially notable for providing woman point of view.  
17. Fuurin no Uta 風輪の詩 [000630] Soubi Kenkyuujo

Main character is a university student who sees the same dream every day. The dream depicts his breaking up with his lover two years ago. Guilt and regret feelings make him ride a bike and go on a trip somewhere his memories can't reach him. What will he encounter in this journey?
The first game of Soubi Kenkyuujo is of doujin level. Picture is rough, scenario has no meaning, and there is no skip function.  
18. Grand Finale ~Final Funfair in 7 days~ グランドフィナーレ ～Final Funfair in 7 days～ [000630] Lily-Z

After working almost the whole summer to make money for a seaside trip with his girlfriend, she left him because she longer love him the way she used to. While depressed and roasting in end of summer heat, he got a call from his childhood girl. It seems their local fun park is going to close in 7 days and they need him to help out there. Since he can never refuse her, he starts working as a cleaner in the park. While cleaning, he can chase one of 7 girls. They are his childhood girl, park manager, girl who lost her brother, English girl, horror house doll, alien girl and guardian angel. Will he be able to find lasting love? This is a charage, so you need to like a particular girl to enjoy the game. Atmosphere and picture is nice. Difficulty is easy for each girl. H scenes are a bit rushed. Nothing in particular except for one thing... ending. There only drama endings for the girls, at least I could not prove otherwise.  
19. Hateshinaku Aoi, Kono Sora no Shita de... 果てしなく青い、この空の下で… [000630] TopCat 1

"Our school will be closed down next year." I know that.... There are only six students (I'm one and only male student...!) A train station will be constructed here. Anyway, what should I do until the school is closed...? We'll get separated next year.... As I look up the sky, the blue sky is spreading as if lapping me over. What am I doing next year...? This is going to be the most difficult game overview for me this month, because it's not my type, but it's a big mystery work with dozens of contradictory reviews and a great opening that has 70k views. It's being called a classic nostalgic title and sometimes even Hayao Miyazaki work in the world of eroge. Graphics is not appealing, but there is a charm in it. The theme is childhood friendship and trust in each other. There are five girls each with her own mystery. If all the good endings of each girl is reached, bonus after-story scenario opens for each heroine. Work is divided into four parts corresponding Spring, Summer, Fall and Winder with first ones being bright ones and the final parts containing drama. What I want to say is that this work suits well newcomers to the genre and most of positive scores come from there. The more experienced players say that mystery is satisfying only for the first route played and the rest are absolutely foreseen, and the novel with evident ending ends up boring. Text is easy to read, and it also can be seen as disadvantage for mature players who have seen lots of such rural sentimental stories. Each element in the game is good, but it's too classic to bring new emotions. So it's definitely a masterpiece of its time, but it the type of game that gets mentally older with each year passing.  
20. Lens no Mukougawa... レンズの向こう側... [000630] Mina

Protagonist is a college student who has eyeglasses fetish. One night he sees a dream of an unfamiliar woman gazing at him near a big tree. He goes to the tree and finds strange glasses at the excavation site near the tree. When he wears the glasses he hears the command to dedicate women to the glasses, and one wish will be granted in return. And the moment the first girl wears those glasses...  Don't expect a serious story here, the best thing we get is solving the problems of each of three heroines. It's glasses fetish work with three different types of glasses to choose for each heroine. There are three heroines with an ending and four heroines just for occasional H event. But CARNELIAN is responsible for art, so art is super-cool, as usual.  
21. Nakushita Jikan e 失くした時間へ [000630] Ciel

Main character is 28 years and he now returns to his hometown. He is shocked to know that his former lover committed suicide two years ago. He gets into an accident and gains an ability to turn time back. Now he can save his first love or opt for absolutely new acquaintances. Quite a normal school charage, just with a more serious protagonist than usual. There are few impressions, but the existing ones are mediocre.  
22. Sakuranbo Kaigan さくらんぼ海岸 [000630] Fairytale 1

Your grandmother has got a house at the beach but she doesn't need it, so you can have it. You have the idea that you could use it during summer vacation as a restaurant. Of course you will meet many girls (and a boy) who would love to work for you in the restaurant. There is an English review.  
23. Senjuuya 千秋夜 [000630] Riot

Protagonist's parents are working a lot, so he has to take care of his sister. She drags after him everywhere and enters the same school and college. He wants some private space and has plans for this winter, but first he needs to do something about his sister. Scenario is the weakest point of the game. Little is explained and dialogues progress separately, often without realizing who talks to whom. Sometimes game looks really funny because of that. Imouto fans would probably like this game, but there are many heroines besides the sister as well.  
BLOCKED  
1. Marchen Maid Jigoku めるふぇんメイド地獄 [000602] Archive The mansion has three maids who only live for their master. However, working hard every day is very tiresome, so when the master is not looking, they take a break. In one of those occasions, they pick a white book from the library, but when they open it, they get sucked inside the book and become trapped in a strange wonderland, in which they will be exposed to a lot of erotic situations without taking off their maid uniforms. Nukige  
2. Mou Suki ni Shite Kudasai ~Ryoujoku to Kusari to Himitsu no Ana~ もう好きにしてください～凌辱と鎖と秘密の穴～ [000602] System Rose There is an old western mansion on the hill of a small fisherman's town. It is owned by a chairman of a certain company. Main character is the son of that chairman. He lives in the mansion with four women servants. As of late he starts to pay them a lot of attention in attempt to record juicy moments on the camera. Nukige  
3. Bibou Vintage 2000 美貌ヴィンテージ2000 [000602] Hyperspace Mysterious woman invites main character to an old mansion. There are four girls awaiting there. Bring them pain and turn it into pleasure! Nukige, it's absolutely the same game again with better quality, not a sequel at all.  
4. Aradera no Orochi  荒寺の大蛇 [000604] narratif Explore the ruined temple, defeat snake enemies and collect items and treasure. It's basically an RPG turned into a visual novel with rolling dices used during battles. Doujin  
5. Dancing Cat's Dancing Cat's [000609] Dreams 1 In Dancing Cat's (sic), the player takes the role of an ambitious businessman named Kazuhiko. He founds a company named PiPit that focuses on show business. He has two goals in mind: first, hire talented dancers and singers and do everything possible to beat the competition; second, conquer the hearts (or probably just the bodies) of the seductive women who surround him... Nukige  
6. Kokudouou ~Doura II~ 黒瞳皇～瞳裸II～ [000609] Studio Jikkenshitsu Main character is the king of a small country sandwiched between two major countries opposing each other. After his father dies both countries try to impose their princess candidates. Main character does not want to anger any side, so he stales the time promising marriage to each side. But the day of taking decision grows near. Nukige  
7. Saint Shirobara Gakuen Petit☆MAHJONG 聖白薔薇学園 プチ☆MAHJONG [000615] Iris  New teacher transfers to a prestigious girls' school. Beautiful chairman greets him in her office. Undressing mahjong is the way to resolve disputes at this school. Card game Nukige  
8. Oyako Donburi 母娘どんぶり [000615] Beenyan This summer is different from previous ones, not only the temparature but also my mind and body. Shintaro has a beautiful mother and pretty younger sister who have been living with him. But this summer is somehow different.... One day, when he enters a bathroom to have a bath, there is a sister, Tomoe. She gives a shriek and runs away. This is the first time for him to see his sister as a woman. And when he soaks in a bath, Tomoe comes in to apologize for what she did to him and she says she will wash his back.... Nukige  
9. Close 2U ~Saigo no Natsuyasumi~ Close 2U～最後の夏休み～ [000616] Aka-chan Club Twin brothers dream of becoming wind surfing professionals. Together with three other boys and six girls they go on a tropical island. This may be a summer when dreams come true. Nukige  
10. Karu Mesu かるめす [000616] Dall Main character is a god who makes women squirt. He conquered women in many dimensions already, so this one must capitulate before him as well. Nukige  
11. Chat Shiyou yo! チャットしようよ! [000623] Black Package Nanpa SIM in the form Internet chat. Use boards, emails and chat to try to pick up girls outside internet! Nukige  
12. Dennou M Dorei - Reimi 電脳M奴隷・麗美 [000623] Guilty During university, Kazato Reimi was a pop cyber idol because of her talents.  After graduating from college, she retired from being an idol and established a computer game company, Reimyck, and as the president she has worked to make game software.
However, Reimyck has faced a crisis because a big title game had a virus and stopped releasing.
Saiki Junko, Reimi's partner, asks Reimi to meet Wakura Kenzo, a president of George Electronics to receive financial support. If her financial plan seems good, he will await her payment. There is no way for her to refuse this proposal because of this crisis. Nukige  
13. Depaga ~Service Angel~ デパガ～service angel～ [000623] Janis Depaga are top class workers of huge department stores. But what's hidden from the eyes of buyers is lots of training. Main character must become an instructor of useless newcomer girls and make first class universal workers out of them to fill any role from waitresses to elevator girls. Nukige  
14. Ing 陰具 [000623]  Merlot Main character inherits an adult shop. Together with his sister-in-law he needs to repay all the debts in just one year.  Nukige  
15. Kazoku no Kizuna 家族の絆 [000623] Bind Main character prepares to enter a famous university. On his 20th birthday he learns that his mother and two sisters are not blood related to him. He decides he can't trust his family anymore. And since trust is impossible anymore the best course of action is to make obedient slaves out of them.
Nukige  
16. Lovely Angels Peropero Candy 2 Lovely Angels ぺろぺろCandy2 [000623] Mink The stage is Image club where one can order various situations for sex. Main character walks inside by mistake but is unable to forget about this place afterwards. Nukige  
17. Mirror [000623] Alloe Main character falls from a cliff during a ski trip. He miraculously survives and being unable to climb up the cliff he walks into a lodge in the woods. He stays for the night, but at night the master of the house gets killed. He's unable to leave the house till the killer is found, so he decides to investigate the matter himself. Nukige  
18. Nie 3 [000623] Hyperspace Three girls compete to be the bride. Main character needs an enduring wife, so he organizes a series of severe compatibility tests. Nukige  
19. Arc Side Gaiden 1: Fukou no Tabibito...? [000623] Gin no Ken An incident happens at a village where a party of one mage and three swordsmen comes. It's not about great demon or devil king, but it still catches them by surprise. Doujin  
20. Sadistic Wedding ~Yogosareta Junpaku~ Sadistic Wedding ～汚された純白～ [000623] Kurumi Four different girls feel disbelief towards men since attempted rape cases at school. Main character shall help them master their behavior and overcome the complex.  Nukige  
21. Toilet no Megami-sama トイレの女神様 [000623] Authoring Heaven Goddess is supposed to come this new moon night to collect all the semen that poor men have been saving. In order to confirm this legend main character searches around various public toilets in the city.  Nukige  
22. Eden III [000630] Forester Ellen is stationed at the moon base. The aliens attack the women at the base. Humans who get aware of aliens presence start to fight back with weapons. Eventually aliens take their original form and flee. Meanwhile Glenn sneaks into the base, gathers materials to create his own rocket and struggles to return to the Earth to conquer it and become world leader. Nukige  
23. Kangatari 神語 ～かんがたり～ [000630] Euphony Production Main character is leading an ordinary school life. But then one day a student is found in the form of the living vegetable - organs are functioning normally, but there is no consciousness. Such living vegetables start to increase with each day. At the same time the unrivaled protagonists gets beaten by another boy who somehow acquired superficial powers. There's some great conspiracy unwinding, and school administration seems to be involved. Nukige  
24. Keibiin ~Yuuganda Shokumu Nisshi~ 警備員～歪んだ職務日誌～ [000630] Interheart Main character is a guard in a department store. All the shoplifters should pay for their crimes, this way or another... Nukige  
25. Aru Natsu no Monogatari 或る夏の物語 [000630] Kotobuki Soft It is a hot summer. Main character overhears girl's secret and decides to spend vacations alongside her. One day an unexpected event happens...  Doujin  
26. Material Girl マテリアル・ガール [000630] Komaya Protagonist celebrates an anniversary of relations with his girlfriend. It's the real honeymoon of their life. But in the process of experiments it's possible hurt partner. Will they stay together forever? Nukige  
27. Sei Cosplay Gakuen ~Game Bunkou~ 聖コスプレ学園 ～ゲーム分校～ [000630] STONE HEADS Popular Tokyo cosplay shop issues a game featuring itself. It's possible to work as a part-time worker there, build up relations with cosplayer girls, get into romance relations with them and even invite girls to school for some hot action!  Nukige

Since I’ve established my Steam Curator profile last winter I’ve been sent a number of games, some of which received full reviews on the site (ex. Sable’s Grimoire or Crystalline), while others, for various reasons, did not get covered at all. In most cases, the games I didn’t write posts about were small or low-budget titles, hardly giving enough material for an in-depth review – still, as I don’t like the idea of ignoring people that were generous enough to offer me their work for free, I’ve decided to dedicate this and next week’s posts to giving a short overview of things that were given to me through Curator Connect in 2018, but didn’t get to appear on the blog. Just as in the mini-reviews series, every entry will be concluded with a simple rating on a scale from “Highly Recommended” to “Not Recommended”. So, let’s get this party started!
 
Silenced: The House

If someone asked me to define “wasted potential”, showing them this game would be an easy way to thoroughly explore the concept. Silenced starts with a slightly edgy, but appealing and unusual concept. You play as a villain (although to a large extent manipulated rather than plain evil) – a girl adept in the occult, who lures a group of some particularly obnoxious teenager to a secluded mansion, as a sacrifice to a malevolent spirit. There, things quickly goe out of control and our protagonist has to struggle both to satisfy the demon she’s forced to serve and keep her life while fighting off against vengeful ghosts that come after her “companions” and uncover the sins from their pasts.
            The general set up and the simplistic, but well-stylized art are fairly promising, but that impression quickly falls apart as you experience the game’s clunky and often cringe-worthy writing style – to some extent a victim of the less-than-perfect translation from Russian, but having problems that go far beyond what poor localization could explain. The unnatural English, overly-contrived metaphors and edgy internal monologues of the protagonist quickly makes the whole thing unpleasant to read and while the storyline has its moments (the backstories and hidden motivations of the characters are kind of fun to explore, especially after the intrigue picks up), it’s just ultimately not enjoyable to go through. The game is also technically clunky, adding to the cheap feel of the whole experience – even the large number of CGs and effective use of gore can’t save it from being a poor VN.
            Unless you’re able to read the original, Russian version, this one is simply not worth buying – but I also hope that the devs behind it will try creating something similar in the future and improve on the formula, because as disappointing as this game was, it was also not very far from becoming something genuinely interesting. Time will tell.
Final rating: Not Recommended
Read the full article at evnchronicles.blogspot.com

For those who suffer from any sort of mental health issue, you are probably going to have the worst time staying committed to studying. But with the right kind of mindset and a practical approach, you may find yourself well within reach of your goal. While this guide is not a suitable replacement for real treatment from a specialist, it may give you a few ideas on how to deal with your own issues. But everyone has their own unique issues and complications, so there isn’t a single correct answer for everybody.
 
Oh and be very careful about self-diagnosing these types of illnesses. Mental health is a complicated subject that requires a lot of training to make the correct judgment, so please seek confirmation from a professional before you decide to take on that kind of baggage. Sadness and fear, even on a regular basis, are normal human emotions. It’s only when they affect you in an abnormal way (which, again, needs a proper diagnosis) that you need to be concerned.
 
Okay, so some of you may have noticed I’ve been severely behind on updating my blog. Well, as it turns out, the solution I had in mind for anxiety didn’t pan out very well. I had gone through another bout of anxiety, lagged behind on my homework, and was left with virtually no time to put out another post. But I’m actually really happy I delayed it since I’ve gained so much valuable knowledge about anxiety since September.
 
When I initially started writing this entry, I had written about the success I was having with positive self-talk. At the time, I was extremely focused on repeating a single line to myself in order to stay motivated, and it was working for a good while. But see, once the idea had lost its novelty after a couple months, I wasn’t getting any kind of benefit from it. I did feel a sense of confidence I hadn’t felt in a long time, and it was making me more productive, but it wasn’t the answer I was looking for. What I’ve learned since then is that I need more than false confidence to drive me forward, and I think I may have come up with a more reliable way of coping with my emotions. I’m still using positive self-talk in order to combat negative thinking, but I’m doing so in a much less specific way.
 
For my most recent episode, I was unable to pull myself out of it, but I had managed to escape after two whole months of misery by focusing on the more crucial flaws with my mindset. I happened upon a simple, yet insightful comment on Quora that helped me ground my thoughts and properly outline my path to improvement. One of my key takeaways from this was to focus on what could happen rather than what has happened already. If your mind is stuck in the past and all you can do is think about is how much you haven’t accomplished, you won’t have much to look forward to. Additionally, you need to accept the problems you have in front of you and see them more as opportunities for growth rather than as barriers. If you can find a solution to the problem at hand, then you’ve exercised the part of your brain that solves problems. And if you can’t find a solution, then your accomplishments will be much more meaningful because you had to jump through extra hoops to succeed.
 
Another issue I’ve had the most difficulty with is blaming my problems on everything. I can’t get good sleep because of my noisy surroundings, I’m not losing weight because of all the sweets around the house, I can’t concentrate well because I’m under a lot of stress, I’m unhappy because I can’t afford to support my emotional needs, my life sucks because society sucks, my parents are the reason I’m not that smart, and so on and so forth. I was always thinking about how much crap I had working against me, and yet I never wanted to see myself as the source of my misfortune. Now don’t get me wrong; I’m not trying to preach personal responsibility or anything as mundane as that. I do understand that the human mind is easily susceptible to influence, and that we aren’t in full control of our decisions or circumstances. However, I do think there is something to be gained by taking ownership of your problems. What this does is take you out of a state of hopelessness and entrapment, and empowers you to pursue your goals further. When you decide to take life into your own hands, you can then mold it into something you want it to be.
 
Probably the most important lesson I’ve learned is to accept myself for who am. I am a nervous wreck. I freak out whenever I set out to do any kind of improvement. Having to make major life adjustments always puts me on edge. I will panic even as I’m handing in a homework assignment, terrified of how the professor will grade it. And my response to these dilemmas has been to either pretend the fear isn’t there, convince myself that I can’t keep living this way, or beat myself up when I let my nervousness get the better of me. But instead of just working against my anxiety, I decided it was time I started working alongside it and let it be. What I’ve come to understand since then is that fear hurts my motivation a lot more than it does my performance, so I don’t even need to acknowledge it as an obstacle. I eventually came to the conclusion that it’s better to focus on resolving issues that I have immediate control over rather than the ones I can’t do anything about. There is still chance I’ll be able to find a fix eventually, but I have no way of knowing what that is at this very moment. And you know what? I’m perfectly fine with that.
 
And to wrap things up, I’ll jot a few quick tips you may have heard about already, but are still important to know. There won’t always be an ideal time to get something done; do it anyways. Try to focus on what went right rather than the opposite. Don’t be afraid to work hard; working hard will generally give you advantage over others. Finish what you’ve started, even after it loses its novelty. Don’t ever feel discouraged if you can’t solve a problem in a timely manner.
 
Afterword:
So, did anyone miss me at all? Yeah, this one was a real doozy. I was putting myself through even more stress trying to find time for this blog during college, but I wound up having to wait until Winter break to finish writing this entry. Thankfully I won’t have any more classes to take until next year, so I’ll have all the time I need to keep this blog up and running… and to get caught up on all the dust I’ve let accumulate in my room and bathroom. Oh and I started my Japanese studies back up again yesterday too! I’ve been kinda behind on them up until now due to excessive stress (to the point of neck injury) and my scramble to get homework turned in on time, but I’m 50% sure I’ll be fine in the near future.
 
Next week’s topic will be on living a healthy lifestyle. Once you’re able to find proper coping methods, the next step toward building momentum is figuring out how to best optimize all the other factors that impact your brain’s performance.

I love Eushully's unique fantasy world, Dir Lifyna.  Most of Eushully's games, save for a few oddball ones by the subsidiary Anastasia and Fortune Arterial, are based in this world, which began with the original Ikusa Megami (if this gets translated, somebody please smash the skull of anyone who translates the title, because they'll probably pick the worst permutation of it).  The first thing that anyone going into this setting should know, if only for giggles, is that this was never intended to be an expansive setting containing ten or more games.  Ikusa Megami was intended as a one-off game and was competing with Venus Blood, of all things. 
However, to the people who played the game, the setting was incredibly attractive, and they sold well enough to justify a sequel, which was even more well-received (if only because the dungeon-crawler elements were toned down to normal jrpg levels). 
The basic setting of the world is that, far in the past, a technologically-advanced human world created a gate/tunnel linking a world full of magic and demihumans, for reasons that pretty much boil down to boredom and stagnation as a species due to excessive technological development.  Unfortunately, this accidentally caused the two worlds to begin to merge, causing a conflict between their denizens and their gods.
An important common element to note between the two worlds is that gods existed in both worlds, but the gods of the human world had mostly ceased intervening in mortal affairs openly long before, causing the near death of faith.  Since faith/belief is the source of all deities' power, the humans found themselves at a surprising disadvantage in the war, because their belief in their deities was almost nonexistent.  Worse, magic was quite capable of countering most of the advantages of human tech based on pure physics.
A faction of humanity chose to pursue the amalgamation of magic and tech, creating wonders and horrors (including artificial demons and gods), but over time (the war apparently lasted for generations), more and more humans switched sides, devoting themselves to gods on the other side, even as humanity's old gods were destroyed, sealed, or enslaved one by one.  By the end of the war, humanity was just another race, perhaps more numerous than the others, in the service of the 'Living Gods', and the 'Old Gods' were relegated to dusty legend and actively considered evil by most, if they weren't in the service of a Living God.  Human technology was, for the most part, wiped from the face of the new, merged world, and the only remnants can be found in ruins filled with monsters and/or automatic guardians.
The dominant deity of the new world is Marsterria, a minor war god who enslaved and killed more Old Gods than any other.  Most of his worshipers are humans, their prolific breeding and generations of faith having given him immense power.  His followers are often at odds with the protagonist of the Ikusa Megami series and nonhuman races, because of their excessive zealotry and broad determination of what species are considered 'dark races'. 
Conflict between dark gods and their servants and the gods of light and theirs is a normal part of the world of Dir Lifyna, with neutral regions and nations often becoming the battlegrounds for said followers as a result.  This is a world with a massive number of intelligent species, and that, in the end, is what makes it so much fun to look forward to each game, even if the flop ratio is over 50%, lol. 
Damn, it was hard to do that without spoiling anything.
Edit: It should be noted that demons, angels, nagas, and a few other races were actually coexisting with humanity but hidden due to their more direct service to deities in the original human world.  The nagas still maintain faith with old gods for the most part, and as a result, they are marginalized to an immense degree.  Most angels 'fell' or serve one of the Living Gods now (or both), and demons are a plague, with more summoned on occasion since demon summoning was one of the few magics that remained to humanity when the worlds met. 

Chuunige is one of the visual novel genres that are barely present in OELVN scene, at least to any “serious” capacity – among the more popular and high-quality releases there’s very few that would even loosely fit the “fighting VN” formula, or especially effectively replicate the unique feel of this particular current in Japanese fiction. Recently, however, a fledgeling studio under the name of Epic Works decided to remedy this sorry state of affairs by creating a content-rich, Fate-inspired EVN called Episicava. The first volume, of what was apparently planned to become a longer series, was released on Steam in April 2018, in a slightly disastrous state – full of graphical bugs and various technical issues, the game made a rather poor first impression. However, since those problems were mostly fixed with patches in the months after launch, it’s a good moment to look at Episicava and ask the most important question – did it manage, in its improved state, to capture some of the magic of Fate/Stay Night or Dies Irae in a downscaled, low-budget form of an EVN?
Read the full article at evnchronicles.blogspot.com

There have often been times in the Grisaia series when Michiru and Yumiko were compared to one another by Yuuji, and this was not surprising. Both Michiru and Yumiko are tsunderes on some level - Michiru being the fake tsundere, and while Yumiko is more of a kuudere, there have been occasional tsun-tsun moments with her. Such superficial similarities aside, both individuals also suffer from the more textbook forms of social anxiety (Makina's anxiety is a bit more complex and special, hence why I'm leaving her out for the sake of this post), and both have compensated this anxiety with unhealthy methods. The difference between such methods, however, is where Yumiko excels in "The Labyrinth of Grisaia", whereas Michiru is still stuck in her old unhealthy ways.
Grisaia spoilers at this point:
This is the reason why sometimes, I really dislike the comic relief, because they're essentially a sacrifice who won't grow beyond being an idiot. Sometimes, a story does fix this by claiming that the goofball's charm lies in him or her being an idiot. Grisaia does something similar (very seldomly), but for such a serious story dealing with mental health problems, I just couldn't accept such a disrespectful answer. It's not only disrespectful to the character and fans of the character wanting to see her grow as a person, but also disrespectful towards real life patients suffering from similar issues.
Now, as to whether Yumiko's After Story is better than Michiru's due to this important difference in character growth... it is, on some level. Yumiko's AS is still, as @Dreamysyu put it, kinda boring.
If I'm to rank the different AS, I'd say it goes something like this:
Sachi > Amane > Makina > Yumiko > Michiru
Yes, Michiru's AS is at the bottom. After seeing how much Yumiko grew, especially, I just couldn't tolerate how much Michiru has regressed. It's frustrating to see for a fan of hers like myself.
Having said that, with Michiru's weakness reminding myself of my own weakness as a person, I don't know if I could ever enjoy seeing her again in the same positive light when I read future stories. She's become something of an eyesore.

As you can imagine, I got a lot of requests for a similar list over the years, but the thing is, I don't play VNs in English that didn't start out in English.  As such, my recommendations are based entirely on my experience of the Japanese versions of these VNs, rather than the localization.  As such, don't hold me responsible for your personal experiences, lol.  I'm going to split these by genre so I don't have to answer questions along those lines.  For the purposes of fairness, I won't include anything with a machine translation (which means no Chuushingura).
Chuunige
I/O (yes, I did indeed play this, and it was good despite being dated horribly)
FSN (you saw that coming, right?)
Tsukihime (again, you saw that coming, right?)
Comyu (fantasy)
Ayakashibito (fantasy)
Tokyo Babel (fantasy)
Dies Irae (fantasy)
Demonbane (fantasy)
Sorcery Jokers (fantasy)
Hello, Lady (upcoming fantasy)
Hatsuru Koto naki Mirai Yori (upcoming eventually, fantasy)
Baldr Sky (whenever it comes out (*crosses fingers for your sake* sci-fi)
Phantom of Inferno (despite all the problems with the localized version it is a great read)
Muv-Luv Alternative (this one is borderline, because it makes you read two mediocre games prior just to understand it)
Charage/Moege
Noble Works
Majikoi (classified this way as long as you don't include the true/last route)
Da Capo (the original only, and only because it is wrong not to have the archetypical moege experience at least one time in your VN lifespan)
Shuffle (truth be told, I'm basing this assessment off of the expanded version, not the version originally released over here)
Sanoba Witch (Yuzu-soft and thus predictably overdone with the ichaicha since this is one of their less plotge-style ones)
Dracu-riot (Wait until an official release comes out.  The patch currently floating around is a nonentity in comparison)
Senren Banka (Sadly not out yet, but something to look forward to)
Chrono Clock (I listed it in this one rather than plotge because the 'plot' was a bit too thin)
Akatsuki no Goei (the original falls, barely, into this category, despite some seriously disturbing shit involving Kaito's origin story that was dropped here and there and the dystopian nature of the setting.  Fan patch will probably be released next year)
Tsujidou-san no Jun'ai Road (yes, I put this here)
Note: For those who wonder why my list is sparse on a lot of names beloved by those who play localized games obsessively... you do realize that a lot of the charage that get released over here are from the bottom of the pile, right?
Nakige
Hapymaher (probably my biggest recommendation for this genre)
Haruka ni Aogi, Uruwashi no (for the distant future, something to look forward to)
AstralAir no Shiroki Towa (whenever it releases)
Hoshizora no Memoria (yes, I recommend it, lol)
Irotoridori no Sekai (Eventually.  And again, more Favorite... despite the fact that its staff idolize mysterious lolis)
Koi ga Saku Koro Sakura doki (I was insanely surprised that this got localized at the time, considering the normal sluggishness of localization at the time)
Plotge
Koisuru Otome to Shugo no Tate (partial with two routes done.  Definitely worth reading, if only to get an idea of what AXL is like)
Cross Channel (weirdly, I've always had a fondness for this game and its clinically insane protagonist)
Yume Miru Kusuri (yes, I played it.  Yes, I liked it)
Boku ga Tenshi ni Natta Wake (no idea when this will come out... but definitely a recommendation, for all the screwy shit that happens in it)
Nanairo Reincarnation (upcoming soon hopefully for you, since that would mean two kamige releases in two years, lol)
Hello,Goodbye (this was a possible for chuunige, but I put it here.  This will supposedly release before the end of the year, but I'm guessing March)
Gameplay Hybrid
Eien no Aselia
Seinarukana
Ar Tonelico
Ar Tonelico 2 (this and the one above can only be considered to be borderline VNs in an odd way, because they are mostly jrpgs with a few VN elements)
Note: I don't include anything Eushully, because none of the good ones have a translation that isn't a machine one.

This is an opinion that has been a long time in forming, but I am coming around to an opinion that the more simplistic viewpoints I've possessed on the differences between American approaches to storytelling and Japanese ones are somewhat off the mark. Note:  This is a rant, it should be treated as a rant, and if it doesn't make sense to you, that is because it is my brain leaking into text on this blog.
First, my original opinion:
To put it simply, it was my belief that the Japanese had a tendency to go for emotional surrealism (in other words, emotional bombardment) and visual excess (exaggeration) to tell their stories.  In opposition, Americans tend to go for the 'gritty and realistic', with straight out bullet to the head realism.  This was a generalization that, while based on my experiences with Japanese video games that told a story (both VNs and jrpgs) and Western games that more or less tried to do the same (Isometric RPGs, Bethesda-style games, etc), was never meant to be an absolute statement but just a general opinion of the tendencies I'd encountered.
Second, my new opinion: 
First, I've come to the conclusion that American gaming companies don't know how to tell a story anymore (since Bioware has gone crappy, Obsidian is about to get absorbed/has been absorbed by a company that has no idea of what it is doing, and the Witcher was made by Polish people).  Second, the Japanese seem to suffer from a similar malaise... and the source is, quite ironically, fairly similar in the cases of mainstream games.
It is the disease I call the 'MMO virus'.  Yes, you who actually read my blog know my opinion on online multiplayer games and what they have done to erode storytelling games in general, but my recent conclusion is that this erosion has actually reached a critical point in the last five years.  Rebellions against the progression of this disease have occurred (Tales of Berseria, Xenoblade Chronicles 2, and Nier: Automata come to mind for the Japanese, and Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire for America), but these have been relatively minor upthrusts against the toxins released by the cloud of mission-based 'stories' you see in games nowadays.  Bethesda has also contributed to this plague (fetch quests and hunt the monster quests  being a common plague for them as well), and it seems like every time I turn around, I see another game trying to tell its story through an obvious mission or quest system is sitting right there.  Sure, the systems had their roots in D&D games, but the way they've developed is the result of the plague that infected the world using games like WoW as its vector.
I first began to see signs of this disease back in the PS2 era, though it was mostly limited to 'high end' games at the time, like Final Fantasy (XII having essentially repurposed and altered XI's MMO battle system for a single-player model), I was honestly horrified to see how easy it was to let myself get led around by the nose from objective to objective in hopes that I'd find the story in there somewhere.  The problem was, once the objectives became my reason for playing (as was inevitable, because that is the tactic they use to draw you in), I increasingly realized that I couldn't enjoy what story was being told, because I was impatient to get to the next objective, even though I didn't find any of that searching for objectives to be fun in the least.
VNs suffer from a different set of problems.  While jrpgs and western games suffer from the simple fact that the current generation of makers grew up obsessing over pathetic attempts to graft stories onto multiplayer games, VNs suffer from the fact that the best and brightest of their creators are... getting old.  Hell, some of them even died in between projects.  Worse, no one of equal capability has replaced them, leading to an unfortunate confluence of near-universal incompetence and corporate inability to grasp the reasons for failure and fix it. 
No, I'm not saying that all new VNs suck.  Hell, if they all sucked, I wouldn't still be trying to go back and play them, like the burnt-out junkie I am.  No, my issue is that there is a sudden dearth of developed talent within the world of VNs that has gotten horrible in the last five years.  Most of the major names are retired, have moved on to 'greater' things, or are dead.  Shumon Yuu is silent, Hino Wataru seems to have gone underground, Masada is probably off in his own little world, Fujisaki Ryuuta is circling in place, Kurashiki Tatsuya is off indulging his inner sadist with half-assed games, Kazuki Fumi can't seem to stick with one thing long enough to make it great since Akeiro Kaikitan, and Agobarrier is three years dead.  That isn't even mentioning all the formerly major names that have just decided to retire without telling anyone or got hired away by mainstream video game companies. 
What is replacing them are primarily LN writers... who, unfortunately, tend to write like middle school street kids on crack (and not in a good way).  They often have great ideas, but they are fuzzy about execution and lacking in technique.  As a result, you get a bunch of third-rate one-off VNs that no one really likes.
Artists aren't a problem.  There will always be plenty of skilled otaku artists who can draw h-scenes.  The issue is and always will be writers... because it is the writer that decides whether a VN will become remembered for years to come or be dropped back into the dung at the bottom of the latrine.

Disclaimer: I was provided with a review copy of this game by the developer. All opinion presented here are solely my own.
PixelFade is a studio that from the very beginning showed an unusually ambitious approach to EVN development. Their first project, Ace Academy, offered some features rarely seen in Western VN of similar scale (~10h of content), such as good-quality, full voice acting and lots of impressive-looking, stylistically consistent artwork. It was also pretty atypical in its storytelling, featuring a mostly college-age cast, choosing a very tame approach to romance and avoiding the fanservice endemic to this kind of lighthearted, SoL-focused VNs. Initially funded on Kickstarter as Kendo Crush, it went through a curious evolution from a generic-looking, sports-themed game into a futuristic story about mecha battles but regardless of all the tribulations, the end effect was a highly refreshing, all-ages experience with a satisfying mix of light drama, non-violent action and mystery. In my opinion, it’s still one of the best EVNs ever released, with few real issues beyond the somewhat abrupt, anticlimactic ending and the overly simplistic "gameplay" elements.
            Considering the relative success of Ace Academy, it was obvious that there would be high expectations connected to PixelFade’s second project, Crystalline – a lighthearted fantasy tale with a single romanceable heroine, which promised a longer story and even higher production qualities than their debut. After a successful Kickstarter campaign in early 2017, with gathered over 60k CAD (an amount pretty much unseen when it goes to original EVN projects), the game fairly quickly entered Steam on early access and was fully released in late August 2018 – the much anticipated final product offering truly impressive sound and visual design... And, in my opinion, a truly disappointing lack of compelling story content. But why is that exactly?
Read the full article at evnchronicles.blogspot.com

Live footage of rare JOPs hearing the bimonthly autistic EOP scream over some license
Today I got to know that my blog's reader base has been very sad that my blog has been so quiet for a long time so I decided to do a little update. This time I'm gonna list you some reasons why you might want to learn Japanese! (Start it today or you will never start it just like this blog post)
These reasons are not in any order (are)
Can play Idol M@ster Shiny Colors (or any other idol game but Shiny Colors is the best one)

  Number 2: Kotose. Can become a true believer of the true god
Can get all the Yuuko goodness (get cucked!!) Have a meme I made earlier this week but got deleted for """derailing""" CoC


  Get to know the difference between Keyakizaka46 and Keyakizaka46!! There is a difference trust me.
  Other idols in general such as Nogizaka46 and AKB48
  Can watch all the idol bingos. Always wanted your favorite anime to have 10 seasons??? Well idolbingos do have more than 10 seasons and are of the same size as anime seasons!
  No more shitty scans or subs. Only godtier real source material. (Eats all your money but who the fuck cares just work a little and be rich xD)
  Make bad memes

  Get vampire GF

  Can make shit lists like this  
Did this motivate any of you my lovely readers? I hope it did! Now smart ones of you might have noticed where is all the eroge!??? Well to be honest eroge is not worth it. It fucking sucks and so does the community. Idols, soshage, anything, is better than eroge. Don't do eroge kids. Peace out!