ChaosRaven

I like mystery of all kinds: More serious stuff like Innocent Grey VN's or Ever17, with a healthy bit of moe and chuuni like G-Senjou no Maou or with a more erotic touch and vampires like Kiriya Hakushakuke no Roku Shimai or Bishoujo Mangekyou -Norowareshi Densetsu no Shoujo-. Still hoping for Caucasus from Innocent Grey to be picked up by MangaGamer or Jast. Though judging by the sales of KnS2 it doesn't look to good I fear. I also like fantasy, especially classic medieval western style like the stuff from Eushully (not necessarily with gameplay though) or asian style 'Romance of the Three Kingdoms' like Koihime Musou. I wish someone would finish the translation of August's Aiyoku no Eustia. Maybe I shouldn't wait and just gor for the half-translated version and read the rest in Japanese. The fan translation of Shin Koihime Musou is also at the top of my wish list. And I like VN's with knight girls, like Walkure Romanze, Seikishi Melty ☆ Lovers and especially Unionism Quartet. The expansion for Unionism Quartet was announced today, so I'll play that as soon as it's available. Trap protagonist stories also have a strange attraction on me for some reason I can't really explain. I guess it's the strange mixture of semi-yuri, wolf in sheep's clothing feeling and the constant thrill of being discovered that makes it kind of interesting. I really liked Otoboku (both anime & VN) and I really like to see more from Caramel Box. I'm also bullying MangaGamer for some time now to license Navel's Tsuriotsu series. Unfortunately with little luck so far *sigh*. But at least I've gotten some Japanese stuff from Ensemble to read for this year. Besides that I can almost read everything as long as it's good, has shiny art and isn't too fetish heavy or depressing.

Hmm, judging by this definition I would say it's the exact opposite: Princess Evangile is the moege and Noble Works the charage. From what I've read so far Noble Works has lot better character interaction while Princess Evangile was mostly the protagonist watching a huge moe blob talking with each other and giving every five minutes a comment. The protagonist in Noble Works also has some common sense what I can't exactly say for the one from Princess Evangile. Character interaction gets better in the individual routes though. Before that it's mostly Konomi that saves the day. Btw, I kind of like how dynamic the sprites in Noble Works are. I can't remember another VN where the character sprites could turn around and look away from the protagonist.

I'm currently in the middle of Maya's route and so far it's certainly one of the better written moeges I've read. Though currently it's dragging on a bit, especially compared to the pretty cool start of the VN. The disappointment that Chiaki didn't get a route is also still nagging at me. And why Makoto didn't get a route either is beyond me considering that she seems to be the closest thing to a main heroine so far. When they decided which girls get routes they certainly didn't go after IQ. I probably just read Maya's and Akari's routes. Hearing Sena's voice almost makes me fall asleep and Shizuru is too immature for my taste. Hinata is kind of okay, but she's too loli for a romance route. But I do like the interaction between her and the protagonist - it's absolutely hilarious at times. They have a good chemistry.

I really want this Kickstarter campaign to succeed. I enjoyed Ever17 quite a bit and this ones seems to be very highly rated and a worthy successor. And not to mention that it has an ADULT protagonist who's NOT a school boy and it has a very interesting story premise which is NOT about school life. It's hard to believe that it's written by a Japanese writer. Over the years I almost got the impression that they are genetically programmed to write about school life or there's a law like mosaic censoring which forces them to include school life themes in everything they write. The only exception seems to be if they're writing about tentacles, in which case they seem to be allowed to omit school life themes and... uh wait... I suddenly get a very bad feeling. That can't be true!!! Anyway, the campaign doesn't look that bad so far. It's slowly getting close to 50 %. If the Libra campaign is over public attention will move to Root Double I guess. Considering how much money Libra gained in the last days, I think Root Double should do well too.

Well, the main problem of being a tsundere fan is, that they tend to have much shorter lifetimes than others, because they always have to deal with the foul mood and violent temper of their loved ones... *Removes ten years from expected lifetime*

Hmm, every tsundere that was posted so far was my favorite heroine in her respective visual novel. Does that mean I'm a... tsundere fan?! I'm... shocked. Michiru doesn't count though since she's a fake.

Something you should consider if you are checking VNDB ratings is that it's extremely important to know WHAT you are looking for. The VNDB rating isn't just a measurement for quality, it's also a bit of a mind-fuck-meter. A rating how screwed up the content is. I give you an example from my earlier VN times when I was still young and naive: One day I was just looking for a nice feel-good moege and was picking Sharin no Kuni because it was highly rated and I liked the art. The VN started quite nice with the protagonist walking peacefully in the fields. Then a girl came running by and I thought, hey she's really cute, I'll probably go for her route first. The next thing that happened was... a guy appeared, shot her in the head and she died. I was actually so shocked that I rage uninstalled and didn't touch the VN again for at least half a year. Another example: Ef - A fairy tale of the two looks like a very beautiful moege and also has a pretty good rating of 8,2. Now, ef is one of the only VN's that got an ESRB rating and MangaGamer posted it 1 - 2 years ago without saying for what VN it was just to see the reaction. Almost everyone thought it was for Euphoria: Adults Only 18+, Blood, Nudity, Sexual Violence, Strong Language, Strong Sexual Content. And so far ef is the only VN where I had to stop reading in the route of one of my most favorite heroines because it was so depressing that I couldn't continue anymore. And then I played Kara no Shoujo... *dies* Anyway, the whole point of those examples is to show that a high rating doesn't necessarily mean that a title is 'better' than others, it can also mean that it is simply 'different'. Usually, if I'm looking for a feel-good moege, then I look for ratings between 6.5 and 8.0. If it's higher than 8.0 then you're most likely already in nakige or even worse - utsuge territory. But there's another factor which is at least or even more important than the pure rating: The vote count. Many people who don't like a VN simply don't vote for it or they are so uninterested in that they don't even bother to try it. That's the reason why there are some highly rated titles with much lower vote counts. In case of popular moeges, many people follow the hype and then bash the title because they expected more serious story content. Nukiges are even lower rated than moeges by default, so you can enjoy even titles with a rating of a lowly 5. Story titles, including nakige and utsuge, are the most highly rated titles on VNDB. Usually, they get at least a 6 just for trying even if it's the biggest crap ever written. The good ones usually have a rating of at least > 8.0. If they are lower they aren't good or they have a certain style not everyone likes (Liarsoft titles come to mind). The best titles like F/SN or G-Senjou have both a very high rating and a high vote count. So in short words, the vote counts indicates how popular a title is while the rating stands not just for quality but also how sophisticated its content is. Shuffle might just have a rating of slightly below 7, but it has a vote count of almost 2.500. You won't find a lot of VN's with a comparable vote count. For obvious reasons time also matters. But most VN's will never get such high vote counts regardless how old they are. I guess that got longer than intended, but human "voting psychology" is quite fascinating. I usually also compare EGS and VNDB ratings and sometimes even those have vast differences I have a hard time understanding.

Judging by your avatar I guess you like scifi stuff. Therefore I would also recommend Comyu, but also add Demonbane, Soullink and Ever 17 to the list of suggestions if you haven't played them yet.

If it comes to tsunderes, nothing beats Rin Tohsaka!

I usually switch on the fly between reading the machine translation and the Japanese text wih looking up the unknown words depending on how fit I am. I'm currently using Chiitrans Lite for that thanks to a suggestion in a thread of this forum. Before that I used ITH and Translation Aggregator. IMHO the biggest advantage of Chiitrans Lite that no sentences are lost because the clipboard hooks of Translation Aggregator are so unreliable. I've never seen anyone complaining about that so I'm not sure it it's a common problem, but at least for me it was a huge problem that got solved with Chiitrans. I also used Tae Kim's Guide to Learning Japanese already even if I'm not finished with it yet. It's a great guide and IMHO better than my own Japanese textbooks. Though I'm probably not ready yet to get rid of the machine translation part. But I start to recognize the simple kanji and kanji words which is a huge sign of progress for me. Maybe in 1 - 2 years I take the next step. Oh yeah, Ryukishi07 and his twisted believe that he can actually draw *shudder*. I'm still not sure if he became a famous horror writer because of his writing skills or because the people were just so shocked of his art that they required medical assistance. The PS2 graphics for Umineko are pretty good though.

Fortissimo EXS has indeed fine art, however it's from La'cryma which is related to Circus. Therefore there might be the chance that MangaGamer are going for it since they have a partnership with Circus. Currently I try to avoid reading VN's from companies with a partnership with one of the English publishers MangaGamer, Jast or Sekai Project because I've the naive hope it might get officially licensed. Purple Software is a bit of an exception because Sekai Project announced Chrono Clock when I already had bought Hapymaher. It was a very pleasant surprise. Can't say the same for MangaGamer though. They seem to replace their partners every year and I'm slowly loosing faith that they'll license anything from Navel, BaseSon or Caramel Box ever again. Sakura no Uta is probably more interesting because of its famous writer SCA-Ji. But popular writers tend to be a bit hit and miss for me. I like Nasu and Looseboy, but Ryukishi07 is somehow confusing since he constantly seems to swap between kamige and kuzoge quality writing and I couldn't understand the hype around Romeo at all. The only thing I've read from SCA-Ji so far is Ikikoi and that was far from impressive. I read that several years ago and at that time it was quite entertaining because the route endings were so creative. There was everything from hilarious, romantic to completely screwed up. However, the characters were lacking somehow and left a never again feeling when I was finally finished with it. So, no Shiny Days for me.

... I've created an account. I'm actually around lurking the forums for a few years now, but since I was mostly active in the MangaGamer forums I always hesitated to create an account here since I prefer to have at least 'some' presence in one forum instead of no presence in many forums. Unfortunately, the MangaGamer forums suffer from 'Down Syndrome' for quite a while now and I'm slowly beginning to believe that they axed it for good. I was even worried that the Fuwa forums got infected too, considering they were down a few times too recently. Creating the account was already an adventure of itself, because the account confirmation e-mail wasn't sent and I had to contact the admins to get the account validated. Anyway, I think I've never written an introductory post in a forum, so bear with me. Hmm, I guess it's best to start with how I got to VN's: My first visual novel was Fate/Stay Night and I found out about it because I heard that the anime was based on it and there was a route for Rin Tohsaka who is one of my all time favorite characters. I couldn't resist and then searched for other visual novels for animes. And so I found Shuffle through a... *cough* torrent *cough*. That brought me to MangaGamer (where I bought it later on) and with Koihime Musou I got more or less addicted to VN's. What draws me the most to visual novels is the same that brought me to animes: Art, and especially bishojo art :-). I was always a huge art junky, not just manga art, but also western fantasy and science fiction art. I was and still am a big fan of drawings from Luis Royo, Cris Ortega, Jonathon Bowser, Jose del Nido or Keith Parkinson just to name a few. My favorite VN's in English so far are Fate/Stay Night, G-Senjou no Maou, Koihime Musou and Tick Tack. In general I like stuff from Navel, AkabeiSoft2, BaseSon, Innocent Grey, Caramel Box, Eushully and Favorite. My favorite character is Ai from Tick Tack *points to avatar*. Last year I also started reading Japanese VN's with a text hooker since I ran out of English VN's that interest me. I had about 2 years preparation time with educational books but it was still tough, because the kanji are very hard to learn and extremely easy to forget. The Japanese also tend to drop particles left and right which is a particular nasty habit of them. Still, it kinda works and I've now access to the Japanese VN's I always wanted to read. Last year I read everything from Ricotta (Walkure Romanze, Princess Lover) and some stuff from Ciel (Fault!! eries), Feng (Hoshizora e Kakaru Hashi + fan disc), Atelier Kaguya/Astronauts artist M&M (Kiriya Hakushakuke no Roku Shimai, Demonion) and from Clip Craft (Unionism Quartet). This year I try to tackle some stuff from Hibiki Works/Akabei Soft3 artist Iizuki Tasuku (Lovely & Cation 1 & 2, Melty Lovers), Tigre Soft artist Tomose Shunsaku (Akatsuki no Goei, Reminiscence), Purple Software artist Koku (Mirai Nostalgia, Hapymaher, Chrono Clock), Ensemble artist Kimishima Ao (Hana to Otome ni Shukufuku o, Otome ga Tsumugu Koi no Canvas, Otome ga Kanaderu Koi no Aria) and Eushully artist Hatozuki Tsumiki (Ikusa Megami series, Madou Koukaku, Kami no Rhapsody). I won't manage to read everything but we'll see how far I'll come. I'm about to start cross reading Akatsuki no Goei and Lovely & Cation. I'm also interested in stuff from Light and August, but I'm not sure if I can handle the story heavy content yet. I'm not a big fan of straight nukiges since I need at least a bit of story, but I like some ero heavy titles like Koihime Musou, Unionism Quartet, Walkure Romanze or Kiriya Shimai. I keep my distance from fetish heavy stuff like Black Lilith, Clock Up, etc. Semi-dark stuff from M&M is pretty much my limit. But I can stomach gory stuff if it's of non-sexual nature like in Innocent Grey VN's. And while I can read nakige, I do have problems with utsuge if it gets too depressing. I like mystery and moeges although I'm slowly getting fed up of the never ending school life theme. Especially since I prefer more mature characters. I usually don't play loli routes even if some loli characters are amongst my favorites like Eden's Sion, Hoshizora's Mare, Comyu's Mayuki or F/SN's Illyasviel. A relationship requires a certain maturity of the involved characters, both in a mental and physical sense. If I don't get that feeling then I prefer to stick to the role of the responsible and caring onii-chan. There are also characters I just like to hang out with because they are funny or otherwise entertaining. I like interesting characters in general, not just female ones. For example, G-Senjou's Azai Gonzou is a fantastic antagonist character. I don't read VN's just for heroine routes with H-content. On the other hand, I'm not a big friend of story VN's with characters that are just mere plot devices. A VN without interesting and/or likable characters is just a soulless husk for me. Ah, I fear that got far too long already, so I better stop now with a final greeting to everyone.