ChaosRaven

Oh, that's good to know. Then I don't have to wait to continue, if it's an extra scenario anyway.

I wonder from where they got the money to resume operations. It's not that those studios usually just choose to close down. Except Minori of course, but Minori was always a bit weird.

Would be nice to get an ETA for the Perfect Edition. I've Aokana stalled right at the start of Misaki's route and I'm just waiting for that update now.

I've played DameKoi for some time now, but honestly this title didn't age well - and I'm not talking about the art. While it's nice to have a VN with an adult protagonist for a change, he's so indecisive and scatterbrained that he felt more like an insecure teenager than most teenage protagonists I've played. I'll also echo some comments I've seen on VNDB about it: The VN tries pretty hard to be like an episodic anime, but fails because it's a VN and not an anime. There's too much switching around of perspectives without any reason that just drags the pacing down and the protagonist feels undeveloped and bland as a consequence. I also don't understand the route structure of this title. You essentially have to go through half of one heroine's route after another instead of focussing on one heroine. During that time the protagonist comes over as so indecisive to decide for or against that heroine that it borders on rudeness on far too many occasions. And since the VN is so busy showing conversations between other characters, the actual interaction between the protagonist and the heroines comes off badly. Overall, I felt not a glimmer of chemistry between them. And for a VN that is neither particular funny, nor has an interesting plot, or at least some entertaining slice of life, that's pretty much the final nail in the coffin. Also, a short comment about the remake. I don't know who had the glorious idea to change the originally dark text box that only covered maybe a fourth of the screen, into this huge white monster text box that covers almost a third of the whole screen. Without making it almost completely opaque it's hard to read and the text itself only covers about two thirds of the text box. The awfull business-nerd soundtrack also didn't help. But for what it's worth, I kinda liked the heroines - mainly Asami, Kaya and Mitoko. Final rating: 4/10 Overall, that was probably the most bland and boring VN I've read this year and I regret not dropping it earlier than in Himeo's route. What a disappointment!

I hope the low price strategy succeeds, it would be a win for everyone. Guess the Chinese market was also the reason that Noratoto 1 & 2 were so cheap. I just noticed that they also have a Chinese translation included.

Lol, that doesn't even come close to Sekai KS problems yet. I'm still waiting for my Chrone Clock hardcopy which had an original ETA of April 2017.

Nah, I read it but I just don't buy it. Harukaze itself obviously doesn't care about all ages at all and I don't really get why their rebrand Tokyotoon should, except for the translation studio not willing to deal with adult content. Besides that, they can always do the same like Sekai Project and stay 'totally' all ages by cheating in the porn through another brand.

That's exactly the reason why I'm so irritated that they're selling the game so cheap. I'm pretty sure that they could sell more copies for even 2 - 3 times that price if they'd just have included the H-scenes. I mean, how expensive are those voice royalties just for the H-scenses? Greater than the whole rest of the voices + the entire translation + the whole management cost to localize the title? Seriously?! I mean, do they have the British queen doing an H-scene or what?

The decision to throw out the H-scenes here is really irritating. I mean they offer the title dirt cheap for about 15 bucks and people will still be unhappy because of it. If they would have included the H-scenes they could easily sell it for 2 - 3 times as much and probably still sell more copies of it. But I guess it's the same problem like in Moenovels's case: they hired a translation studio that doesn't do adult scenes. Couldn't they just hire a freelance translator instead of Frognation Ltd.?! The title would have certainly sold good enough to offer the translator a fair payment. And considering the apparently not exactly tremendous salaries the competition seems to offer, it shouldn't have been difficult to find one. Not to mention that I doubt that Frognation Ltd. was such a cheap alternative. Can't they just a hire a freelance translator for an H-scene DLC?! They could at least offer a compromise and say that if the title sells good enough, they'll consider it.

I wouldn't go that far, since it did have some rather well written parts, but it's certainly not a must-read imo.

Finished Nanairo Reincarnation about a week ago or so. Overall, it was a bit of a so so experience with both, strong highs and lows. Let's start with the strengths of the title, since it certainly has them. The slice of life and comedy parts are for the most part rather well written, and to a lesser degree the nakige parts too, even though there weren't too many of them. Iyo the nerdy zashiki-warashi house spirit in particular was just brilliant. On the one hand she could be absolutely hilarious and shap-tongued, on the other hand she could also switch to a much more serious tone in the blink of an eye. You could even say she was the true master of the house - nobody knows more than she does. They also got the overall family-feeling of togetherness rather well through with Iyo, Kotori, Aoi and Fuyou being the solid heart of the cast. The nakige parts were also well done, even though there weren't too many of them and most of them related to Kotori, who was without any doubt the main heroine. Now to the not so good parts of the VN - and unfortunately there weren't just a few of them. First, the handling of the H-scenes was just awful - for the sake of the story I can just suggest to play without the adult patch. Pretty much all the H-scenes related to the demon characters were enforced and unrelated to any routes. The reasoning for those was also pretty silly and more what you'd expect from a nukige. But even story-wise, there would have been plausible reasons to give you a choice, but for reasons unknown you didn't get that. Especially annoying were the scenes for Iris, a sub-loli character that was so obviously just included as pedo-bait. My personal 'highlight' was the scene that could be labeled as 'dangerous pedophile forces 8 - 10 year old girl into sex against her will' - there wasn't even a 'reason' for that scene. Next problem were the routes. Technically there were four - for Kotori, Iyo, Yumi and Azusa -, but only the one of Kotori really deserved to be called a route (admittedly, I didn't play Iyo's). But the ones of Yumi and Azusa did only bombard you with H-scenes out of the blue, then break up, continue with Kotori's route and reunite with a final H-scene at the end. I've actually no clue why Yumi and Azusa even got a route - they barely qualified as side characters. The characters that should have had routes are Aoi and Fuyou. My only reasonable explanation for this whole route and H-scene mess is that they ran out of time and budget and tried to shoehorn at least the H-scenes in. It's also a bit odd if a heroine gets a better ending in the route of another heroine than in her own. And that's unfortunately not all - the plot itself also had some glaring issues. Although the VN had a clear focus on slice of life and comedy with some nakige elements, they got the glorious idea to include some grim-dark murder case in the second half, you'd usually expect from Innocent Grey. I'd be totally fine with that if they'd actually commit to that. However, they somehow tried to mix it up with some of their comedy, making the plot sections in the best case ridiculous and in the worst case tasteless. It already says a lot that they didn't even take the effort to draw a sprite for their main antagonist. But naturally, the resources were there for pervert-san - a minor character that was only included for the lulz. The police was also presented as completely retarded and their little spook-shows to scare the antagonist just embarassing. Pretty much only Kotori managed to give that plot-arc some dignity. 'That' scene did hit home - I give them that. They should have sticked to what they are good at - slice of life, comedy and light drama - and not dabble in Innocent Grey territory. Imho, the 9-nine series got the slice of life and comedy with plot better done. Heroine ranking: Iyo > Kotori > Fuyou = Kikyou = Aoi > Yumi = Asuza >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Iris Overall rating: 6.5/10 If they'd focused more on their strengths, they could have easily gotten a 7+ rating from me. But this was just to uneven for that.

Just saw this announcement trailer for Vampire: The Masquerade - Coteries of New York and it looks pretty interesting. Apparently it'll be a VN/RPG hybrid which will also have some additional game play mechanics like quests, hunger, feeding, disciplines and time progress. It's definitely it's own thing and not your typical OELVN that tries to emulate Japanese anime tropes, and I'm rather curious how this will work out. Will it get more attention from people who aren't into anime art or just miss the mark? I'm also a bit worried if they go too far with the game mechanics and hurt the narrative with it. Regarding the trailer itself, the backgrounds and atmosphere are great but the characters look a bit wishy-washy to be honest and they don't seem to have different expressions. But I'll definitely keep an eye on that title since I'm a big vampire fan and of White Wolf in particular (Bloodlines is one of my all-time favorite RPG's).

I've watched the first five episodes now and so far I'm liking it more than I thought I would. They toned down the ridiculous oversexualisation and the cringeworthy dialogs to a much more bearable level, which is a huge relief. Pacing seems a bit fast though, but that's to be expected when coming directly from the VN. I'd rate art and animation quality definitely above average. Surprisingly, the character designs look a lot more pretty in the anime than in the VN, which is a bit unexpected. The anime isn't rated particular high on MyAnimeList, but overall I'm liking it so far and it feels a bit underrated. I definitely don't regret my decision to have switched to the anime. Hope it stays that way...

I think the only thing that could make the current experience even worse would be to have to use a guide with it. The absolute minimum a VN has to offer for me is a somewhat consistent story flow, and that's impossible with this system. I rather go for the anime instead.

So I finished the prologue of Yu-No and to be perfectly honest I've little motivation to continue. Let's just address the elephant in the room, this is NOT a visual novel! It seems a bit like an adventure game, but that would require the system to make some sense, which is not the case here. Overall, I'd call it an InfoPointClickige. In addition to your typical location screen with a text box at the bottom, there are usually about a dozen info points highlighting some points of interest. If you click them, you get an info dump of almost immeasurable value - something like "The sky is blue" - and the great thing about them is that you can't click them just once but several times to get even more valuable information - like "There are also clouds". And it gets even better, if you clicked the point often enough it greys out to indicate there's no more information, but often enough you just have to click another info point often enough to get it active again to get 'even more' valuable information - like "And the sun is shining". There are also direction points which you can use to change the location. But they usually only work if you've clicked enough info points, otherwise you get the information that you didn't click enough info points yet to continue (phrased a bit differently). It's also usually predefined which direction point you have to use, otherwise you get the information that you have to use a different direction point (phrased a bit differently). In general info points are a lot more flexible than direction points since you can click them in arbitrary order. And they also allow you to interact with characters. You have info points on their mouth to talk with them and on boobs and buttocks to sexual harass them. Which is great since our protagonist is nicknamed Libido-kun (I'm not kidding) and you may guess three times what his most favorite hobby might be. Not that the other characters would be much better... And did I mention that you also have to click the character mouths multiple times to get more text out of them? But fortunately there's also an auto mode, which will display all sentences of one info point click without interruption - for the rare cases when an info point click gives you more that one sentence. It's very helpful indeed! Gets the cringeworthy dialogs over even if you're still stunned of shock. Granted, the dialogs get better towards the end of the prologue and there seems to be an interesting story buried deep below all those info points. But I think this is one of the rare cases where it's better to watch the anime. No idea who's able to read that mess. Seems to be made for Starcraft pros with an APM > 300 due to all the clicking.

I already bought this 1 - 2 weeks ago, but I'll wait for the final release to read it. Can't say I'd miss the protagonist being voiced - I usually switch them off anyway, because they are horrible. There are some exceptions with decent voice actors like Kara no Shoujo 2, but those are rare. And I'm still shuddering from listening just 5 minutes to the protagonist of Yu-No a few days ago.

It really hurts to read this. I don't know what Sekai, Jast or one of the other English VN publishers pay translators, so it's hard to judge if MangaGamer pays more or less in comparison. But MG's main translator Kouryuu was always open about the low payment. He even went so far to suggest NOT to work as a VN translator. That's not to say that I couldn't understand Arunaru. If agreements are broken that's definitely not something to taken lightly, especially for such an efficient translator like Arunaru. I wouldn't be surprised if that has something to do with their recent payment processor issues. That must have been a huge hit for them. However, there are two other things Arunaru might have a point. First, MangaGamer's refusal to use Kickstarter. While I can understand that it's a bit of an unreliable affair, it's definitely something that should be considered for some special projects if it allows better payment of the involved translators and editors. Second, the number of sold copies per title doesn't seem to have increased so much since their earlier times. 500 - 2000 copies was a reasonable number in the past as well. Just that they are selling more VN's now. But that also means that Steam is an important thing because it allows much higher sales numbers. And what I'm a bit irritated about is that MG doesn't seem to use the trick of cutting out adult content from a title into a separate adult DLC to get it through the Steamquisition. Pretty much all other VN publishers do that, and if it means selling several thousand more copies you HAVE TO at least try to do it. Anyway, I don't think getting rid of all western VN publishers is the solution. Being back to fan translations and earning exactly 0 cent per character doesn't exactly sound like an improvement. Maybe VN translator is something you can only do part time if you love the medium.

I think I appreciate story VN's much more nowadays than in my early years when I was focused more on moege. I still like moege, but I'm definitely more spoiled and demanding now in that regard. Though there are still some things that didn't change. I'm still a fanboy of some VN franchises like Kohime, Unionism Quartet or Walkure Romanze and I've still Ai from Tick Tack as my avatar.

Very interesting! It would be really cool to see a real AAA VN again. Not sure how exactly it'll be a direct sequel though to MuvLuv Alternative. Will it have the same characters or does it just continue after the first one ended with new characters. It's a long time when I played it but... And I wonder if it'll really be a big thing again, or just a fan disc. Regarding the anime, wasn't there one already years ago, which was apparently not so great? So I guess this will be a new (and hopefully better) one.

In exchange, they didn't have the resources anymore to give the main antagonist a sprite. Apparently, this was more important to them. Awesome decisons... *sigh*

Minori VN's are usually very heavy on drama, I'd therefore recommend eden. And if you'd still be willing to give highschool theme a try, then I'd suggest ef - A Fairytale of the Two which is also from Minori. It's the only VN I ever had to stop reading, because it managed to throw me in a serious depression. And Fata Morgana no Yakata is probably one of the best drama VN's ever written - I highly recommend it.

A VN Kickstarter with a 180.000 $ goal - that's quite... ambitious. It's a popular Key VN so it has probably good chances to reach it, but I don't think I've ever seen such an expensive Kickstarter campaign for a VN. Would have been nice if they'd listed the differences between Rewrite and Rewrite+ in the FAQ section, since I've actually no clue what they are.

By oversaturation I mean there are too many companies for the existing market. If you look back to the early years of eroge when Fate and Clannad were released, there were much less companies at work that released products of adequate quality, so the few that did exist could sell a lot more titles. I'm also not sure if the total number of companies is really getting smaller since there are also new companies joining the competition, and there's usually not a extra forum post when that happens. So the overall negative impression might be misleading.

I actually played Hoshizora e Kakaru Hashi in Japanese from Feng and I kinda liked that. It's a pretty old title though and their shorter titles after that weren't particular impressing. I think I even tried Gakkou no Seiiki but dropped it pretty soon. That's probably because the Japanese eroge market is highly oversaturated, which is holding back bigger productions like MuvLuv Alternative was to be realized. So while I wouldn't say that I'm happy that a rather average studio closes, I at least hope that this gives the more established (or even new) companies the chance to make better games. Though, for what its worth I consider the closing of Light a huge loss, since they were one of the only ones that still tried to make story rich titles (even if I wasn't the biggest fan of Dies Irae). Feng... not so much. Though, it's not unlikely that the employers find a new job at other studios. At least their writer Nakahiro now seems to work for Purple Software with Realive - that's not the worst company you could end up with.

I was really hyped when I saw that this VN get localized. It'll be a day one buy for me when it's released. It pretty much combines all the things I like: murder mystery, Japanese history and knight girls. I was even thinking about reading the Japanese version, but fortunately that won't be necessary anymore.