ChaosRaven

Otoboku! It's probably the inspiration for all the trap protagonist VN's from Ensemble and it has an English translation from MangaGamer. If fantasy is okay then Koihime Musou is great. The protagonist is a chosen one and a lord and all the girls get to live in his harem. The protagonist in Kamidori is also an alchemist with a growing influcence and money in the city. It's a gameplay title though. Edit: Oops, sorry they are all older than 2012 except Kamidori maybe. Anyway, I just leave them like that, maybe you're still interested.

I think the protagonists in Key's Clannad and Kanon were kind of okay, though they didn't work an 'organization'. Not a big fan of the newer Key VN's though. Canvas 2 had a good protagonist I think. He was a teacher so if working for 'school' as organization is okay for you... lol Innocent Grey has rather competent protagonists, especially Reiji from KnS. Cartagra's Shugo probably a bit less but i still liked him. They are kind of involved with the police as detectives so they have some influence.

Hmm, I think for pure romance with an English translation I liked Da Capo 2, Hoshizora no Memoria, Kira Kira, Otoboku, Canvas 2 and the Shuffle series the most. Untranslated, there's certainly way more but I haven't read enough in Japanese yet to be able to give good suggestions for them. Edit: Added Otoboku.

I got absolutely every other ending KnS1 had to offer, I just skipped the true ending since it required a complete replay. I read enough from the walkthrough and spoilers to know that it's almost identical with one of the other endings. And a complete replay just for 'another' bad ending?! Figuring out the master mind was enough, that was the important part. I didn't really care about some icha icha with Toko because I was never really interested in her. Maybe I might have played the final endings in KnS2 if the VN would have been more interesting. The events in Tokyo were still kind of okay, but this village... *sigh* ... it was so boring it was pretty much hell. No, hell is the wrong word since in hell there's at least 'some' entertainment - a few demons are flying around, a bit of torture here and there - but this village wasn't llike hell it was like limbo or the void *shudder*. I thought the common route in Princess Evangile was boring last year, but compared to the village episodes in KnS2 it was almost an action thriller. Only the Tokyo events kept me going, and even those were mostly slice of life. And the culprit of the village murders was also far too easy to figure out. Still, I might have forgiven that, but the second story arc around Yukiko was just bogus and so underdeveloped that it completely runined my motivation to read any further. Yukiko was on the cover but she was barely a side character - the title is called KnS2 but the story had barely anything to do with KnS1. And why was Reiji the protagonist and not Masaki - it was HIS story after all?! Why the whole double protagonist nonesense? Anyway, simply too much 'business decision' for me to force 'Kara no Shojo' into the title to increase sales numbers. KnS2 was supposed to be a mystery thriller, but there was nothing mysterious about it and no tension at all. It felt more like a slice of life VN with a slightly more mature story than usual. It wasn't bad, but Cartagra and KnS1 were way better. I'm not even sure if I'm still interested in KnS3 anymore. I'd rather read another title from their program like Caucasus, Flowers or Pianissimo. Well, we get Flowers... someday (It's Jast after all).

Well, KnS is pretty much a kinetic novel in disguise. It's not that there would be long heroine routes like in most other titles. I also skipped the true route in KnS1 since it was simply not worth a complete replay just for some minor differences. Did the same with KnS2 and skipped the second playthrough with the normal and the two true endings completely since I don't think there's enough new content to be worth the replay. If you could just skip to the new content, then maybe, but the whole location selection make that pretty much impossible.

Honestly, what exactly did they expect? That they can just hold out their hands and collect the money without doing something?! If you want to sell something you have to work for it, that's just normal. I know this isn't your fault, but I think this statement shows exactly what's bugging a lot of people since the start of the Kickstarter campaign: A lack of dedication from the original developers. This is particular obvious since the Libra team showed exactly a lot of this dedication. While I really hope that this campaign will succeed and also backed it pretty much from the start, I think things would look a lot better if you could feel a bit more interest and enthusiasm to let this whole campaign succeed from the original developers.

Considering how much money Libra gained in the last days, I'm still optimistic that Root Double will make it. It has 10 days less than Libra after all, so everything looks much tighter. But I'm pretty sure it'll get a heavy backing spike in the last days. *keeps fingers crossed*

I don't know, I wouldn't call a title like Unionism Quartet which has about 50 H-scenes with harem patch light on H-content anymore. Walkure Romanze maybe, since some of it's scenes are actually just kissing scenes and all of them together are still below 30. I think the M&M titles I played from Atelier Kaguya and Astronauts still had below 100 scenes and I consider them already nukige territory, except maybe Kirya Shimai. On the other hand, Beat Blade Haruka aparently has about 200 scenes which is certainly... yeah, that's really an insane amount of H content. Not sure what you mean with many Kamidori's character designs not being moe. I mean, I can understand that Sugina Miki's designs from Innocent Grey or M&M's designs might be considered not exactly the classic moe style, but Eushully girls looks as moe as it gets. Though I agree that the title is probably better called gameplay hybrid than ero-moege despite its heavy H-content. I think with Steam releases getting more and more popular, VN's without H-content will also get more common. So the term 'eroge' will continue to get more and more unfitting to include them all. At least for the market of VN's with an English translation, which is, granted, still rather small compared to the Japanese market. Still, it kinda hurts if a title like Eden is called just a eroge.

Doesn't character design means he's drawing them? I always thought developing character personalities and such would be the job of the writer. I mean, I've no idea how a scenario writer should write a story without defining its characters himself. VNDB also lists many artists as responsible for character design so I find it hard to believe that this part is about writing and not drawing.

I think I really saw the term chuunige used the first time in this forum, however I mistook it first for chuunibyou and couldn't understand what's so fascinatiing about a genre about a particular annoying type of teenager who has some screws loose. Since the term was used for some VN's I had already read, I somehow caught on its true meaning. I think it does a good job to specify a rather common type of action-oriented story VN and I therefore started to use it myself. Not sure if I'm really using it correctly though, since for me it's just an action VN with a teenage hero. I don't really feel comfortable with the charage term though. It seems to describe a character focused VN or a VN that puts a lot of effort into developing its characters. But for me, that's not really a genre, it's more of a trait of a good VN since you can find well developed characters in all kinds of VN's: nakige, utsuge, moege, chuunige, nukige... not so much. If someone calls as VN a charage, I don't really know what to expect, except that it has probably well developed characters. So I'm not really using that term myself despite having seen it used frequently. Maybe it's just me, but I somehow have the feeling that the common term 'eroge' is used more rarely now than it used to be. I don't really like it myself since it's often used as a synonym for visual novel, but since visual novels don't necessarily have adult content this is simply wrong. Instead I came fond of the term moege since it somehow fits very good to the common type of light hearted VN's about pretty girls. It also works for both, VN's with or without adult content which makes it compatible will all ages VN's. I've also started to use the sub-term 'ero-moege' to describe moeges with a strong focus on adult content like Koihime Musou, Walkure Romanze, Unionism Quartet or Kamidori. They are not nukiges, but I would only suggest those titles to people who are interested in the H-content. Not sure if it's perfect but it works for me. I actually would prefer to call them eroges instead, but unfortunately this term is already (mis-)used for all VN's.

Bringing Seinarukana to Steam is a really good move from Jast. Especially considering that gameplay titles seem to be quite expensive ports according to what Peter Payne said once about Yumina. This will certainly help to finance the title and (hopefully) show that gameplay titles can sell well in the west. And maybe someday, we can see Eushully titles getting licensed. Apparently Hunipop did sell pretty good on Steam so Seinarukana should have good chances too, even if the titles might be too different in nature to be really comparable. I think this will the first full fledged VN gameplay hybrid on Steam so it should be very interesting to see how well it'll be received. Since Steam is all about gameplay, this should be more in line with what people expect from a title released on that platform. Considering Jast's not exactly great history with quality assurance, I wonder if it might be a good idea to release the adult version first, fix all bugs that are reported and then release a bug free all ages version on Steam afterwards. Though it might backfire if dissapointed customers of the non-Steam adult version start bashing the title as soon as it's released on Steam and crippling Steam rating and sales in the process.

lol That made my day!

I think by saying "I don't agree that there should be only H-scenes to 'prove a point'" I've claimed exactly the opposite. So, you're actually agreeing with me.

No, they were absolutely unnecessary! At that point of the story,

Well, it has been Ai from Tick Tack for years now. More from her: Nuff said, I love her!

I've just finished Walkure Romanze Retell II, so I'm finally through with all Ricotta VN's now. Though I've just played Celia's route in Retell II. There's still Akane's route, but currently I'm not really in the mood to play it. I've therefore started my cross reading of Akatsuki no Goei Trinity and Lovely & Cation 1 & 2 now. This will be quite a ride since the former is, like the name indicates, a trilogy, and the latter also has two parts. Akatsuki no Goei Trinity is also a re-release of the whole series in high resolution art. The original was just in 800 x 600 while the new version is in wide screen 1280 x 720 which is quite an improvement: Old: New:

Something that's really bugging me for a long time now, is the endless list of sexual fetishes which comes almost unseparable with the whole visual novel genre. Why is it, that since I started reading VN's, I came to know about three dozen sexual fetishes at least?! And half of them I'd prefer to forget and a quarter of them I would prefer to not even exist. I mean, meanwhile I probably know more sexual fetishes than a professional porn star, which is quite irritating considering I'm usually just going for vanilla stuff.

Uh, why?! Group J didn't even have its turn for voting yet.

I'm more of a vanilla guy and don't like strange fetishes. The more creepy ones like scat, bestiality or guro are even deal breakers. I won't read a VN if it has such fetishes. Considering genres, I don't play yaoi for obvious reasons (no girls, no deal). I'm also not a big fan of straight nukiges although I have to admit that I sometimes succumb to temptation if the art is very pretty. Utsuge is also a bit of a problematic genre for me. I can get very attached to characters I like, which is usually a great experience if everying is going well. But if really bad stuff happens to them it can severely backfire and hurt me a lot more than it should.

Technically, we shouldn't have to rely on a fan translation for Navel stuff considering MangaGamer once had such a close partnership with them. But since they started to change partners like underwear and going mostly for VN's of questionable quality, I almost lost my faith in them.

I'm not on twitter so I can't vote, but if I could I would vote for Hatsuyuki Sakura. I don't play 640 x 480 VN's anymore because I start to see pixels on the screen, so Baldr Force is out of discussion anyway. The other two look kind of old so I'm not sure if I could even motivate myself to read them. Scarlett looks more interesting than Aozora, but its VNDB rating is too low for a decent story VN. In the long run I hope that either Dies Irae, Eustia, Ikusa Megami, Tsuriotsu or Oretsuba will make it though.

From this years more or less confirmed English releases I'm looking forward to Da Capo 3, Tokyo Babel, Supipara, Chrono Clock, Root Double, Flowers and Seinarukana. Although my list of Japanese titles to read for this year is already full, but I will definitely get the fan disc for Unionism Quartet when it's available.

When it was accounced I wasn't so interested in it, but I reconsidered because the title got a shitload of awards in Japan which made me curious. It's also drawn by Onigiri-kun who's IMHO AliceSoft's best artist. Not sure if I'll regret my decision to play it though. There's certainly a lot of H-content I rather don't want to see. But apparently the title allows you play the good guy and avoid all the nasty tentacle stuff, so I'll give it a try.

Those people have it with cats, do they? They worked in a company called 'Cait Sith', which is a fairy cat from celtic mythology, and created a game where a bakeneko cat girl tries to ascend to a nekomata super cat girl. Then the company gets disbanded and the members move to another cat obsessed company called Nekoneko soft. I'd never guess what kind of pet those guys might have at home.

I always thought he's the harbinger of moe because he reviews moeges long before we get to read them...