ChaosRaven

Hm, I rather wait for Shiei no Sona-Nyl from MangaGamer. I somehow distrust Liar-Soft VN's that aren't from Sakurai. Tokeidai no Jeanne was really bad and ALPHA-NIGHTHAWK's VNDB ratings aren't particular convincing either.

So, like usual, they release nothing on PC?

And yet another one I dropped... The last VN on my list is Amayui Castle Meister, which I unfortunatly didn't finish, but just dropped somewhere around chapter 5 I think. This VN has some major problems, and also a few peculiarities that can massively affect its enjoyment depending on the expectations of the reader. Let's talk first about its peculiartities. This VN is all about Fia, a goddess and sole main heroine. After the protagonist accidentally awakens her at the beginning, he becomes her dedicated slave disciple. This is the first Eushully VN I've read, where you have no choice on which main heroine to choose. Considering the rather large cast of side heroines the protagonist usually gets involved anyway, this might seem meaningless, but at least for me it's still an important choice to make. Now, this doesn't necessarily has to be a bad thing. If you're really into that heroine, this might be the best thing ever. Unfortunately for me, Fia is a slutty airhead boob loli, which describes almost exactly my most disliked character trope. To be fair, I didn't hate her, but having most of the plot and dialog just about her put a heavy strain on my enjoyment. Now, let's have a look at the other heroines. And what kinda stands out, that there's a huge emphashis on lolis. Just from the list of main heroines it's 4 : 3, but at least in the first half, they get vastly more attention than the other heroines. Naming the VN "Amayui Loli Meister" would have been perfectly fitting. Now, I don't want this to be a rant about lolis. In fact, I found the duo of Iol & Micheju probably the best written characters and Lauros (the non-loli) the worst. The consequence was mostly that I tried to avoid H-scenes with them. Not sure if that's what was blocking my progress later on though. Regarding the plot, it was pretty weak. But I also enjoyed Kami no Rhapsody despite its weak plot, so that's also not why I dropped the VN. The killer was the actual gameplay. And no, I wouldn't say that the gameplay is inherently bad. Actually, I enjoyed the early stages quite a bit. The problems were more in how it developed. Amayui's combat resembles the one from Kamidori, which is somewhat infamous for its grindy nature. Having to play maps repeatedly to get certain materials can get quite repetitive. And a major factor that affects my enjoyment of those maps is their size and how fast they can be finished. I think the first three chapters or so, the pacing was still kind of okay, but after that it just got worse and worse. There are a few key factors that vastly reduce the fun of the maps. The first one is the sheer size of them. Eushully has a tendency to think bigger is better and that's just not the case. If finishing a map takes an hour or even more, it really starts to bore me. And there a few more factors that emphasize that process. The second factor would be the respawn portals. I absolutely hated them in Kamidori and I hate them here even more. And the bigger the maps get the more respawn portals are placed on them. It's so annoying to have defeated an enemy just to have it replaced immediately. It just drags the already slow pacing down even more. The third factor would be the lack of AOE skills. In Kami no Rhapsody you could lure entire enemy groups into their doom by well placed AOE strikes. But here you have to kill each enemy unit on its own. And with increasing immunities the maps get more and more like gables with less and less tactics involved. Oh, you've sent your perfect counter unit with the other group into a different direction because you couldn't know that it's required here? Too bad, now you have to waste lots of time to change positions. Combine that with respawn portals and slow movement and you can imagine the 'fun'. But that's not all. Just for Amayui they introduced a new gameplay atrocity - Fia's f***ing monuments. In order to progress you have to give Fia her powers back by cleansing her monuments. Any do you know the best thing about it? Only Avaro himself (and later Dietheim) can do it. So having to clear a huge dungeon with respawn portals with a dozen characters to move isn't enough, Avaro has to go everywhere himself to cleanse all the monuments spread around it. Oh, and there's usually a time limit of 40 rounds, so if you haven't made it in that time, you have to play it again. Even if already cleansed monuments stay that way, all the enemys and respawn portals are back - have fun! So yeah, no way I'll touch that game again with those kind of design flaws again. Heroine ranking: Kisnir > Iol > Micheju >Fia > Lauros > Katlit (Roselyne and Mikschana weren't in my party yet, so I can't really judge them) Overall rating: 5/10 I would only recommmend this to people who are more into lolis and Fia in particular, with a huge patience for slow grinding.

So, another short review of a VN I've recently finished... Sanoba Witch was a bit of a gap in my list of Yuzusoft VN's. To be honest, I was a bit hesitant about this one from the start. And I should be right. They went with a real hentai plot this time. It's supposed to be about witches, but it's more about the characters being given some kind of geass or trial to overcome to gain something. And during that time they have to do 'stupid things' so to say. Like Tsumugi - the resident boob-loli - having to wear the cloths of a guy. That might have been still okay, however... The Top offender was certainly Nene, the supposed main heroine. In principle a nice character - if she wouldn't have to jerk off every five minutes. And naturally, her witch dress could be straight out taken from a sex shop. I'm certainly not opposed to the sexy witch trope, but the whole thing was just to embarass her anyway. It got old pretty fast and was more annoying that anything else. Tsumugi and Touko also didn't really click with me. While I didn't dislike them, they felt more like side characters. They were just not particular interesting or appealing. What saved the VN for me was Meguru. She's some kind of nerd girl, full into games like 'MonHun' and had some really funny interactions with the protagonist. She wasn't directly affected by the witch powers (fortunately) and her worries were more about making friends and integrating into school. She also had good chemistry with Nene and the trio of her, Nene and the protagonist gave me very good friendship vibes. And one of the best things about her route was that Nene suddenly stopped jerking off every five minutes and turned normal. No idea why, but it was certainly a huge relief, because she was otherwise a nice and likable character. This was the only route I finished. Tsumugi and Touko didn't really interest me and Nene's route would have turned without any doubt into a sex fest. An I don't really read Yuzusoft VN's for that. Heroine ranking: Meguru > Nene >> Tsumugi >Touko Overall rating: 6.5/10 Probably the weakest Yuzusoft I've read so far, both in regards of plot and characters, saved mainly by the cheerful Meguru.

Certainly possible. I'm getting bored pretty fast, especially from pure slice of life. So I'm reading like 4 - 5 different VN's at the same time to get some more variety. That takes its toll on the finishing time.

Finished some more VN's so I guess it's about time for an update. First is Summer Pockets which I just finished a few days ago. Reflection Blue wasn't out yet when I started reading, and I didn't want to switch inbetween, so I've only read the vanilla version so far. Overall, it was a rather fluffy moege with one of the most likable heroine casts I've seen in a Key VN so far. Usually there are few hits but also some misses for me, but here I liked all of the 4 heroines with routes. It's also the first time that the actual main heroine (Shiroha) was also my favorite. Granted, that was also the case for Angel Beats, but I just watched the anime for that. Admittedly, the likable character cast might also have something to do with the nice visuals, since it's probably the best looking Key game to date. At least regarding the character designs. It might be worth noting that they had several character designers. Ao was clearly stolen from Izumi Tsubasu - Palette's main artist. I recognize her character designs from miles away. But also the other artists did a good job. Na-Ga in particular certainly improved a lot since his early times with Key. Just the backgrounds felt a bit more uneven though, with some of them looking rather cheaply made. Music was okay, but I think earlier Key works had more memorable soundtracks. Still on the good side though. That said, there were still some things that were bugging me (like usual). First, the writing was frequently a bit hit and miss. Especially the lewd jokes felt a bit too much at times. While Ao was mostly still on the okayish side, Shizuku frequently felt like she was a cheap hentai chick from Boob Wars. The level of sexism towards her character reached almost misogynic levels at times (nickname 'Boobies'?!?) which I frankly found inappropriate for a Key novel. Ryouchi's stripping fetish also got old pretty fast. Still not entirely sure if he's supposed fan-service for female readers or just a plain joke character. Something I'm also a bit irritated about is its nakige tag. While I do think it's a decent moege, the nakige parts at the end of each route felt a bit short compared to the rather extensive slice-of-life and comedy parts. That's not to say they were bad and it's certainly not about the addition of pointless melodrama. I just wished they sticked with the more serious mood a bit longer and went a bit deeper into the actual mysteries. Which brings us to the actual 'true' routes that were supposed to shed some light into the events... (Warning: Incoming mini rant!) So, let's start with Alka - the first of the after routes. First, it tells a lot about the effort put into a route, if literally 50% of it are straight up copy & paste from one of the heroine routes. And to add insult to injury, the other half felt pretty much like a baby-phone recording. Overall, the whole route felt so unnatural and forced that it was almost creepy to read. Just not in a good and exciting way of creepiness. I ended up just skipping a lot of it... Fortunately, the final Pocket route was a better. It was still rather short and didn't add a lot of meat to the story, but at least it was way less annoying to read than Alka and also didn't just copy & paste half of its content. While it did highlight the relationship of certain characters, it still kept major things too vague or not explained at all. Most of the relevation seemed about stuff that wasn't even a thing in the main routes. As a short sidenote, the VN actually reminded me more of Da Capo 2 than other key VN's. The whole island theme with mysterious phenomenons affecting the heroines ; the location structure at the start to decide which heroine to go for ; two sidekicks instead of just one. There were a lot of similarities. Just that Da Capo 2 explained its themes way better, had overall more substance and was actually a real nakige and not just a moege. That said, its heroine cast was more uneven. Summer Pockets really shines in that regard. Okay, after the bashing, some more compliments again. Regarding the parent & family theme the VN tries so hard to force in its after routes, it did a way better job in the actual main parts about that. The interaction between Kyouko, Hairi and Umi felt very natural and heart warming. Kyouko was a very well written adult character with a strong parent role. And Umi also wasn't just another loli to ****. Heroine ranking: Shiroha > Ao > Tsumugi > Kamome Overall rating: 7/10 Actually, after Alka I was very close to rating it down to 6.5, but after some time to vent and considering I read and enjoyed all the heroine routes to some degree, I think a 7 is fair. Just wished it had a bit more substance. The high rating on VNDB is a bit puzzling in that regard. Though, it includes Reflection Blue that might have improved some things. At least I hope it's more that than just blatant Key fanboyism. Hm, the review got a bit longer than I thought. Guess I'll stop here now and make a separate post for the two other two VN's I've finished in the meantime (well, one of them just dropped). They'll get shorter reviews anyway.

Hm, Jast actually has the most interesting announcements for a change. I'm having an eye on Tokyo Necro and Gears of Dragoon 2 for some time now. A bit weird that they're skipping Gears of Dragoon 1 though. Aksys stuff is all Vita, so nothing for me. The only two titles from Sekai Project that 'might' be interesting are Watashi-tachi Marriage 1 and Nie no Hakoniwa. Though there's not enough info about them yet, to really judge them. MangaGamer brings their anual Rance title like usual, so nothing for me either here.

Only the first part was translated if I got that right. I've already read that already in Japanese a few years ago. Wasn't an easy read, so I'm thinking about reading it again. But I have to finish some stuff first I'm currently reading.

I see, so the all ages version is tagged as adult-only but still has an adult patch to get even 'adultier'. Guess a VN just having girls in it already makes it adult-only for the Steamquisition. Reminds me of Musicus, but that was at least also available from MangaGamer directly.

Looks interesting, but I can't get it on Steam even if I wanted to, since it's blocked in my region. Is this also sold somewhere else?

Finished the second episode of Supipara a while ago. I've read the first one years ago already and due to the whole funding campaign mess, the seond one vanished from my radar for quite some time. I then picked it up after Higurashi since I wanted something short and also to get it finally finished. Overall, it was okay. As typical for a Minori VN, the atmosphere was a bit more on the melancholic side, which I quite liked. The second episode focused on Ange, which is the resident tsundere in Supipara. Her story arc is about compensating for the loss of her mother by making a deal with the witch Alice to gain special powers to help others. Those special powers enable her to see into the future and prevent bad things from happening. However, that powers also comes with the price of sacrificing parts of her happy memories. Naturally, when she gets closer to the protagonist, this is causing problems to their developing relationship and the protagonist tries to help her overcome those issues during the route. It wasn't the deepest plot arc, but still nicely written due to the likable characters. However, Ange itself felt a bit like she was written too much to fit the tsundere cliche. While undoubtly a good person, she talked a bit too much nonesense for my taste. Meaning, she lacked the sharp intellect to back up her foul mouth. Actually, the true star of this episode - just like in the first one - is Alice the witch. It's pretty obvious that she was intended to be the main heroine, destined for the final true route. She resembles Yuuko from ef a lot, being Minori's unique smart-dere character type. Funny and talkative, but also smart and mysterious. I absolutely adore her. Graphics were still impressive, due to the many CG's and the fantastic scene lighting, even if some of the character faces felt a bit simple for todays standards. It's a pity that the VN could never be finished, because the ending of the episode made it quite obvious that the first two episodes were just small fragments of a much bigger story. Especially Rikka and Momiji seem to know a lot more than they were willing to reveal so far. Not to mention Alice, who's quite obvious a big blob of hidden secrets. It also makes the VN hard to rate since it's obviously incomplete. Heroine ranking: Alice >> Momiji > Rikka > Sakura > Ange Overall rating: 7/10 (I'd rate the story lower since it's just incomplete, but it gets a bonus for Alice, atmoshere and graphics) I've also read Making＊Lovers and frankly it wasn't my cup of tea. It took me literally months just to finish Saki's route, because it was just so painful to read. The writing was extremely goofy and didn't fit the cast of supposedly adult characters at all. Actually, there was not a single character that seemed to have a mental age beyond 12. There was also pretty much no common route at all and the characters started dating like they were coupled by a dating agency. An overlapping friendship theme also didn't exist since the heroines only exist in their own routes (juding by Saki's route at least). The protagonist -let's call him Hamster-kun - was also presented as somewhat mentally retarded and really annoying. It's as if they made the idiot friend the actual protagonist. A plot also didn't really exist, so you're stuck with an endless loop of dumb and unfunny jokes, connected by some arbitrary H-scenes. In terms of positives, the art was quite decent - it's a pity that it was wasted on such a bad writer. The custom dates were also a good idea and some of the heroines at least had potential. Generally, I think the writing would have fit more to loliges or at least school life VN's with a strong comedy theme. For a romance VN involving adult characters, it felt just completely inappropriate. But to be perfectly honest, I don't think I'll read another VN from this writer or company again. Just not my cup of tea. Heroine ranking: Don't care Overall rating: 4/10

Oh, that's nice. I'll pick it up just at release.

That really takes me back. I got in contact with visual novels around the time MangaGamer started localising them. Still remember learning about them through the Shuffle intro logos. It was my second VN after Fate/Stay Night. I had downloaded it from some barely trustworthy torrent and thought it was a fan translation like Fate, since I had no clue at that time that they were actually sold in the west. Actually, Tsuriotsu is also coming to Steam - in Chinese and Japanese. Unfortunately, no English in sight. Still curious to read this and find out if Luna is really so great that she deserves the Getchu character award she won three years in a row. MangaGamer's latest title selections felt a bit low profile to be honest. Though they had some questionable title choices in the past as well, so it doesn't have to mean anything. They are probably just buried in their countless Rance projects. Still kinda hope they can get their hands on Kara no Shoujo 3. Story titles of that quality are so rare nowadays.

As a non-native English speaker I'm probably not the best to judge the translation quality, but I personally had no issues with it. And if I remember correctly, MangaGamer did re-translate all episodes from scratch for the Steam release back in the days, which took quite a while. So they certainly spent a lot of effort to get the translation right.

Quite some time since my last update, so I guess it's about time to write a few words before I forget everything. I guess I'm late to the party, but I finally read ~150 hours of Higurashi. I had somehow missed the news that this also got a graphic update from PS3, so I ignored that for quite a while, since I didn't want to be emotionally scarred by Ryuukishi07's drawing skills. That said I enjoyed the ride quite a bit, at least for the most part. Higurashi is widely considered as *the* classic horror and mystery VN, which I think isn't really accurate. I'd say Higurashi is first and foremost a VN about friendship. And it might well be the best VN I've read about that theme so far. Actually, it frequently reminded me of Steven King's It, which also has a group of friends trying to fend of an ancient evil and which is also a personal favorite of mine (both movies actually - I didn't read the book). Along with the friendship goes a lot of slice of life and comedy, which somehow hit a nerve with me. I found the slice of life very entertaining and the comedy freaking hilarious for the most part. Mostly because Ryuukishi07 found a good balance of when he could get a bit over the top and when to get serious. Especially the gaming sessions reminded me of my own youth, even if I didn't cheat that much. I swear! It also has to said that with the graphics update, the VN felt extremely polished. The art style did fit perfectly and the music and voice acting were also top notch for the most part. Ryuukishi07 also has a talent to create powerful scenes by choosing the right music and sound effects to emphasize his writing. This applies for both comedic and serious scenes. On the other hand, he also a tendency of not finding an end. Actually, for people who want to read this mostly for the thrills, this might actually be a rather boring experience, due to the excessive slice of life and comedy. I personally enjoyed it a lot, so I wasn't really bothered by it. The actual plot is a bit of a mixed bag and I want to split this into two parts. The first part is the world building, which is imho one of the biggest strengths of the VN. The whole history of the village and the aftermath of the damn conflict on the different characters is really well written. Especially the two Mion/Shion episodes 2 and 5 shine brightly in that regard, finding the almost perfect balance between slice of life, comedy, drama, world building and horror. The second part is the actual main plot about the repeating Watanagashi murders, and that's the part I wasn't completely satisfied with. First, it takes literally 6 episodes (!!!) until this part actually progresses. Until then, you just get some hints about what could go on, and tons of unrelated side stories. The VN in structured into 4 question and 4 answer arcs, but it's actully more like 6 question arcs and 2 answer arcs. The individual endings also felt a bit lackluster since having one of the characters go nuts for no reason wasn't really that interesting, especially if it's repeated in a similar manner half a dozen times. It's probably best to see episodes 1 - 6 as character routes and the final two episodes as true route, though episodes 5, 6 and part of 7 from the answer arcs felt like they could have easily merged with their equivalent question arcs to get a better pacing and progress. The final episode which should have been the great show-down was also unfortunately more a huge let-down. The hints in the previous episodes weren't particular difficult to follow, even if you ignore the somewhat obsessive hint sections of each episode, so I wouldn't exactly say I was surprised by the final resolution. However, it was probaby the most boring story resolution he could come up with, bundled with the worst writing of the whole VN. Honestly, you expect a show-down with a great ancient evil and what you get is instead: Seriously, did he play too much Resident Evil at that time? The only well written parts in episode 8 were the orphanage scenes. Though it already started in the second half of the previous episode with Satoko's overdramatized story arc. And as well as most characters were written, Ryu really has to work on the quality of his antagonists. Nevertheless, despite its flaws this was overall a very well written story, I enjoyed quite a bit. Character ranking: I loved the whole group of friends, though Rika, Mion and Hanyu maybe a bit more than the others. Overall rating. 7.5/10 (Could have easily been an 8+ rating with a better story resolution)

Shiravune already releasing a translated version of Dohna Dohna is pretty surprising - it's Alice Soft's latest project after all. It looks kinda cool with its hyper-stylish art style, but I also find it difficult to figure out what this VN is actually about. But it's also a bit shocking to hear that Sol Press intends to self-destruct by... not paying taxes?! That can't end well.

They put a VN full of rape and guro on Steam and act surprised that it gets banned?!? The level of naivety shown here is baffling.

Oh my, it's ages since I played this. If your questions aren't already covered by my summary here, I'm not sure if I can remember any more details. I don't really use discord, so it's either via forum posts or PM.

So, the recent release of The Sekimeiya: Spun Glass went pretty unnoticed so far, but currently seems to get some attention thanks to a comment on VNDB. It actually has a rating above 8.5 with over 60 votes there, which is unusually high for an OELVN. There aren't even that many JVN's that high. It's a scifi mystery thriller that actually looks pretty professional. It uses NVL style, which I personally don't like that much, but if the story is good it might not matter that much. So, for everyone who isn't already jumping on Muramasa and looking more for a SciFi mystery VN in the spirit of the infinity series titles like Ever 17, this might actually be worth a look. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1432500/The_Sekimeiya_Spun_Glass/?utm_source=vndb

Reception is rather lukewarm so far and considering I'm two full Yuzusoft titles lagging behind already, I'll probably give this a pass at least for now.

Maybe it's the market place? Amazon.jp has that as well and then it's not Amazon itself shipping the goods, but some private persons instead. Probably the case for at least half of the stuff I buy from there...

Never used DMM, DLSite or Gyutto, so I can't really say anything about those. But you can probably find a dozen other online shops like Trader, AmiAmi or Akiba Sofmap in Japan that sell hard copies. Usually, you can get all hard copies from Amazon.jp, so you don't really need other shops. UNLESS you want a hard copy bundled with a certain wallscroll. Then it can get pretty difficult since VN developers have a tendency to make all kinds of exclusive deals with certain shops regarding those. I use Tenso as proxy service and it was 100% reliable so far, so I can just recommend it, since it also has an English interface. You can also send several orders from different shops there and ship all of them in a big package from there. That's what I usually do, since you can keep deliveries there for 30 days. I think some shops also ship directly internationally. Even Amazon.jp, although that applies only for all ages goods I think. Nevertheless, getting hard copies shouldn't really be a big problem. The stuff that's really hard to get are merchandising articles like wallscrolls and dakimakura. They are often only available for a limited time in certain stores or even worse - just on special cons. The only chance to get such stuff then is usually Amazaon.jp or auctions.yahoo.co.jp. And rare dakimakura of popular characters can go up to 50.000 ¥ that way.

The shop situation is just so much better in Japan. You can pretty much get everything from Getchu, both download and hard copy versions. And Amazon.jp is still neat to get things cheaper or older versions that might be out of stock at Getchu. In addition to that you can also get merchanising articles like tapestries or dakimakura there, which are pretty much non-existant in the west. Here Steam kinda works for all ages stuff, even though there's still always a dice roll that they find an absurd reason to not allow it, but for adult stuff it's just a mess. It's really unfortunate that there's no agreement for an alternative to Steam. Everyone just sells his stuff on his own store front otherwise, even if MangaGamer occasionally also sells VN's from the others. You can get some stuff from Amazon, but it's pretty random. Sadly, there's no equivalent to Getchu at all. itch.io seems to be getting more popular for OELVN's but is so far completely ignored for translated VN's. But considering that it seems to be the Epic Store's way to sell nerd stuff (the app can be downloaded from there), it might get more popular in the future.