ChaosRaven

minori (ef, eden*, Supipara, Trinoline...) announced that they will cease all operations of the company.
http://www.minori.ph/minori_rotld.html

Mainly because I wanted to read some VN's which were not available in English and also very unlikely to be translated. But I also liked anime before and was always fascinated with Japanese culture.
I think I tried to read my first VN very shortly after starting learning Japanese with some educational books. Reading Japanese VN's is one of the best ways to help learning Japanese since it's much more fun than just dry learning of vocabulary and grammar. I read about two books about grammar and two smaller ones for Hiragana and Katakana. Though I kind of got stuck when learning Kanji. I even tried Heisig's way of learning it, but I'm honestly not a fan of it. It's just unnatural - if I read a sentence I don't have the time rembering two dozen short stories. And humans usually recognize entire words and not just single characters. I've also read most of Tae Kim's Japanese Guide, which is pretty good.
I think my first VN was Kiriya no Roku Shimai and it was easier than expected since it used very clear language. (Besides simple nukiges) I find plot based VN's the most easy to read since they often use very clear language. Ironically, comedy and slice of life VN's are often way harder since they like to 'play' with the language itself.
Yeah, I'm using a text hooker, mainly because of the damn kanji, not so much because of the grammar. Usually I iterate between translating the Japanese text myself and reading the translated text. For the former, I only use the translations of the kanji compounds I don't know myself from the translator. It's slower and exhausting but more precise. If I get too exhausted, I switch to just reading the translated text. If certain parts get too far off the track, I revert back to translating myself.
To be honest, in the last few years my Japanese was probably more stagnating than improving. Most stuff I really wanted to read I've already read and I've also been disappointed too often to believe in kamiges anymore - there are just more or less flawed VN's. Though, I guess it's just a natural process to get a bit burned out after reading VN's for years.

Read and finished Fatal Twelve over the last couple of days. I really liked it. Building a Battle Royale scenario around the regrets of people who already died, despite being not exactly revolutionary, is an interesting spin on the genre, allowing the storytelling to focus on the characters instead of action and suspense (although there still is plenty of both). And the characters (at least the ones that make it beyond the first few rounds) really are Fatal Twelve's strong suit, especially the ones who are framed as villains at the beginning. I wasn't that much into the love interest, but I think that's due to personal tastes and not bad writing.
The only weak part in FT is its final act, which is too reliant on info-dumping and deus-ex-machinas. But it's not that long anyways, so I don't care that much.

I’m honestly more annoyed by how protagonists quite often suddenly turn into sadists during h scenes, despite never having shown any such tendencies before.

Its not as clear cut and black and white that we can say porn is porn. Regular porn has no story, vn's are usually story based with a touch of porn. It should never have been porn in the first place, just descriptions or softcore porn to keep it in line with the rest of the vn. Shy girls turning into absolute sluts, som3what jealous mc not wanting other men seeing his girl in swimsuits etc just to furiously bang said chick completely nude in the open saying stuff like "it doesnt matter if we get caught" etc a while later. Stuff like that completely breaks both characters and the flow of the story. I wish the writers were a bit more mindful of the story context being regarded in h scenes as well.

Anyway, I'm still playing I Got Transferred to Another World with my Whole School, which is Now Located on a Giant Overpowered Whale, and...

Heh, it looks like I found another Type-Moon reference.
Anyway, this game is definitely fun. The story overall is a lot more fleshed out than in Aselia, but it also lacks ambition, so the result is more or less the same, maybe a bit worse. The first 4 chapters were pretty episodic, each focused on adding a new heroine to the protag's harem, and the story was pretty lighthearted overall. Then it suddenly turned a lot darker and more focused on the overarching story, and it this point it finally started to feel like I'm playing a sequel rather than just another game by the same authors. At the same time, technically this game is a huge improvement over Aselia, and the gameplay is also flashed out a bit. I'm actually impressed how many voice actors I'm already familiar with by their later (or earlier) works. As for the character sprites, faces of some characters look a bit too similar, but overall they look nice. At first I wasn't a fan of the new map movement system, but it turned out that you just need to get used to it.
 

Kara no Shoujo if you want to catch and detain mass murderers and Rewrite if you want to date them. 
But yeah, playing Cartagra before KnS would be better. Though the writing in Cartagra isn't as good as in KnS yet.

So Getchu's Bishoujo Game Awards 2018 are out and the glorious winner is: Summer Pockets! Congratulations to Key. 
It follows a list of the twenty best VN's of the contest:
1.) Summer Pockets by Key

(Also winner of Scenario, Music and Movie awards)
2.) Rance 10 by Alice Soft

(Also winner of System award)
3.) Riddle Joker by Yuzusoft

(Also winner of graphics and character awards with Arihara Nanami)
4.) Nukige Mitai na Shima ni Sunderu Watashi wa Dou Surya Ii Desu ka? by Qruppo

5.) Amazing Grace - What color is your attribute? by Cabbage Soft

6.) Fuukan no Grasesta by Eushully

7.) Love x Holic ~Miwaku no Otome to Hakudaku Kankei~ by Atelier Kaguya Bare & Bunny
NSFW
(Also winner of Ero award)
8.) Mirai Radio to Jinkou-bato by Laplacian

9.) Motto! Haramase! Honoo no Oppai Isekai Ero Mahou Gakuen! by Milk Factory
NSFW
10.) Sora ni Kizanda Parallelogram by Uguisu Kagura

11.) Trinoline: Genesis by Minori

12.) Deatte 5-fun wa Ore no Mono! Jikan Teishi to Atropos by Hulotte

13.) Onee-chan no Yuuwaku by Hibiki Works

14.) Raspberry Cube by Madosoft

15.) Kari Gurashi Ren'ai by Asa Project

16.) 9 -Nine- Sorairo Sorauta Soranooto by Palette

17.) Deep One by Nameless

18.) Kotonoha Maichiru Natsu no Koe by Silky's Plus Dolce

19.) Kuroinu 2 ~In'yoku ni Somaru Haitoku no Miyako, Futatabi~ by Liquid
NSFW
20.) Erewhon by Clock Up
NSFW
I'm honestly speechless - I've never seen 6 nukiges in the top 20 before. 
Summer Pockets' copy & paste of Island will also hardly win an innovation price with the two most overused tropes in eroge history - school life and time travel.
And most of the other stuff also looks pretty generic. Even a few simple fan discs made it in.
IMHO, only Mirai Radio to Jinkou-bato and Deep One look somewhat interesting. Not even the Eushully title looks particular appealing this time.
While Yuzusoft's Riddle Joker couldn't win the award this time, they're still the top seller according to Getchu's sales ranking 2018.
Overall, 2018 seems to have been a rather weak year for visual novels. 

Yes, they have completely different stories and characters. First part is also much weaker.
I think he was just trolling, because calling the Rance series as a whole 'underrated' and 'hardly anyone talks about' is just ridiculous.

But that's just the Bayesian rating, which is low for almost every VN with a low vote count. The actual rating is 8.11 which is actually pretty high - I wouldn't call that an underdog anymore.
Anyway, one of my hidden favorites would be probably the old Moero Downhill Night 2 from Jast. It's a moege which was inspired by the racing anime Initial D (which I'm a big fan of). I never understood why it's rated with just a low 6.44 even if it has a way more creative story than most other moeges. Maybe it was punished because it wasn't a damn school life moege. 

This always got me wondering if couples in Japan have to do it with a blindfold - but I guess not even Japan would be that crazy. 
Not a fan of mosaics, since it's often abused to not draw anything at all behind huge blocks of annoyance. Though, it's kinda acceptable if they are very small and the artists did their homework good enough to let your imagination do the uncensoring job.

Finished the Chaos;Child common route and that finale really was... something. I didn't hate it as much as ChaosRaven did but yeah, the twists and reveals were pretty bad. I'll just mention one huge issue I had, because picking apart everything wrong with the last third would probably take me hours (spoilers for C;C and Hatoful Boyfriend ahead):
Despite how little sense the plot made in the last third, it was still paced well enough that it was an engaging read for me. But maybe it was just because I was mentally prepared for things getting stupid down the line from the point
Despite all my ranting, I still kind of like C;C's common route, especially its overall atmosphere and the way it built suspense.

I've finally completed Shiny Days. Or rather, I've managed to complete what I can, but I'm still missing a lot of content that is pretty much impossible to get due to the maze-like routing system that requires you to pick specific combinations of a ton of choices to reach certain route points. Even after doing everything in the official guide from the publisher, I was still only at 70% completion, with 7 endings and several route points missing.
Since then, I've replayed certain parts over and over again, picking different choice combinations in hopes of making progress eventually, but I've only managed to unlock one additional ending and one route point after all that effort. I'm just clutching at straws by now, so I've decided to abandon this project before I go insane.

All in all, this was the worst VN I've ever read and I can't possibly recommend it to anyone. Not only for the terrible routing system, but also storywise and from a technical standpoint. To put it bluntly, it's a steaming pile of sh*t, and the only reason I kept going was because I have a bad habit of being unable to leave stuff unfinished.

Sidenote: Since Shiny Days is supposed to be a more lighthearted visual novel than School Days, I figured maybe Makoto (the protagonist) would be a decent human being here, but it turns out he's still the same scumbag he's always been. He raped 5-or-so different girls over the course of the story, cheated on pretty much everyone, and had no problem lying to their faces in order to cover up his detestable behavior.
The only way the story of Shiny Days could be somewhat enjoyable is if someone ran up to Makoto and punched him in the face every time he does something inappropriate.

I think I need to read something that's actually good now in order to avoid being scarred for life by this horrendous experience.

EDIT: If anyone's interested, this is what the route map looked like after doing everything in the official guide:

Finished Chaos;Child as well - or to be precise, its common route. Unfortunately, I wasn't particularly impressed by it.  (Warning: Rant incoming!!!)
If I would sum up the experience of Chaos;Child in just a few words, I'd say it had a quite good start, a somewhat mediocre middle part and a horrible ending.
Long story: roughly the first third of the story was actually quite decent. The murder cases were interesting, the protagonist much more bearable than in Chaos;Head and the heroines likable. I also liked the fact that the VN had a more 'traditional' cast of moe heroines with routes. Many story VN's forfeit the romance parts for the sake of the plot. That's not really a bad thing, however moeges are popular for a reason. And my vision of a 'perfect VN' has well written heroine routes with romance and moe embedded in a good story. However, this combination is so rare that I could only name two VN's that succeeded at it - Fate/Stay Night and G-Senjou no Maou. Maybe even Sharin no Kuni as well, but that's more or less it. The majority of other good story VN's either don't have romance at all or it's so minor that it's of almost no relevance. For that reason, I had high hopes for this VN after the promising start.
Towards the second third of the VN - the middle part - the VN started to show certain 'signs' that made me worried. To give some background about that, I want to bring up the Higurashi anime, which  marked a bit of a turning point in the anime scene. It had a very unique mixture of cute moe girls and gore. While there were violent animes before, they usually had a very different, darker style - for example Hellsing or Claymore comes to mind. Higurashi made that unusual combi working with a very solid plot and it left a lasting impression due to its gory scenes being particular shocking because of they involved cute moe girls. Over the years, this inspired various other animes to use a similar formula. Good follow-up's were Puella Magi Madoka Magica, less because of its mostly minor gore and more because of its dark themes. Unfortunately, there were also more than enough shows that tried to fake depth by adding gore and just delivering a rubbish plot. Typical indicators of those 'works' were sudden personality swaps that didn't make sense, ridiculous over-exaggerated hysteria and whining orgies from the protagonist that could last for minutes to 'emphasize' the grittiness and maturity of the plot. Furthermore, artificial stretching of the story to delay the revelation of its non-existence as far as possible to the end. And finally, an absolutely disappointing ending when it gets clear that the show had no substance at all.
And Chaos;Child started to show similar signs. Very few revelations and too much slice of life, and so the story got slower and slower to the point of stagnation. A certain key issue involving Yui was probably the turning point. The story got frustrating because there was almost no progress and the villain seemed untouchable. To be fair, at that point the VN still had the potential to be very good.
Unfortunately, after that the last third or so of the VN started and threw that at me:
Oh! My! God! What was that?!? 
I think that was the biggest bogus plot I've seen in the last ten years. I'm still not sure how much of this stuff is actually supposed to be true because it was so buried in nonesense and ridiculum. Trying to go 'chuuni' with their silly swords towards the end certainly also wasn't the brightest idea. Heroines were also more or less dropped and not developed any further. Everything felt rather rushed, after the VN was incredible slow before that. I thought about playing the heroine routes and the true route, but after reading some comments and synopsis about them, it seems that I didn't even read the biggest bullshit yet. If it wouldn't be so ridiculous over-dramatized you could at least take it as goofy comedy. But the VN seems to honestly expect to take this nonesense serious. And what's the point with the sex-delusion system? It might have made sense for the protagonist in Chaos;Head who was a lot more broken - but here?! Overall, there's a rather good thread on Reddit that points out a lot of problems of the VN and I agree with most of them. No idea how it could get such a high rating on VNDB. This is light years away from both Stein's Gate and also Root Double with which it has strong similarities.
Heroine ranking: Hinae > Mio > Nono = Serika ? Hana (It's hard to judge Hana since you don't get to know her very good in the common route)
Final rating: 5.5/10 (Start: 8 Middle: 7 End: 2)
I'm honestly kind of sad that the VN turned out that way - there was so much potential. I would have probably given already a high rating if they just made a somewhat 'normal' ending with more romance orientated routes and didn't try to go hyper extra special. I wonder if this was the fault of Umehara Eiji, the writer who wrote all the bad chapters at the end. He's the only one of the five writers with no previous experience - and it showed.

Finished Hapymaher and it was a bit of a so-so experience. Not exactly unexpected though, considering Chrono Clock had its fair share of problems too.
But the first half of Hapymaher was actually pretty good. The dream world scenes had a sense of mystery and danger, while the real world scenes were more light and slice of life oriented. The iteration between both worlds was decently paced and kept things interesting without neglecting the lighter moe parts. And the heroines were not only very likable, but also contributing to the plot, with Maia being the highlight as the mischievous loli-villain of the dream world. Until that point the VN was scratching on an 8 rating in my book. Unfortunately, the second half couldn't keep up wih that quality.
The VN teases Alice in Wonderland in the first half, and just when you're about to tumble down the rabbit hole and experience a world of wonder and mysteries... you get stuck in the entrance and can't move forth or back anymore. This was just about the time when the endless dream starts with the party, christmas and gender-change events. Instead of giving you an interesting sub-plot in a fascinating meta world, the VN just throws the whole plot overboard and tortures you with slice-of-life and bogus events of almost unparalleled boredom. I had to heavily abuse the skip button to make it through that mess with a healthy mind. And the routes weren't much better. Yayoi's didn't fit at all to her personality, Maia's did barely exist and Alice had so many personality changes in her route that I hardly knew who she was at the end. Saki's was probably the 'less worst' since it at least followed the main plot around Maia, but the revelations were still very minor. And the so called true-route was just the continuation of Alice's apruptly ending half-route. Still enough to ridicule all other routes, including the actual main plot around Maia and let you end up with a girl you hardly know or care about. So yeah, the plot was certainly not developing the way I wanted. 
The VN has still some rather good points. The heroines are all very likable, especially Yayoi, Maia and Alice. Saki was the only one that didn't really click with me. She was a bit of a bitch and I didn't like her voice that much. In contrast to her Maia was just fantastic. Hapymaher was good when she was on the screen and unfortunately she didn't have much screen time in the second half. Her seiyuu also did a marvelous job in making her mischievous, dramatic and mysterious. And Yayoi was just gorgeous. 
The art is certainly one of the strongest points of the VN - it's certainly one of the most pretty VN's I know. The music is also pretty decent, offering good tracks for both slice of life and dramatic scenes, even if the tracks get a bit repetitive after a while.
Heroine rating: Yayoi = Maia > Alice > Keiko >> Saki
Overall rating: 7/10 (The plot certainly wouldn't justify that rating, but it gets lots of bonus points for art, music and heroines)
Some personal observations:
I played Hapymaher at the same time like Fatal Twelve and it gave me some comparison material why HapyMaher's plot failed and the one of Fatal Twelve succeeded. Fatal Twelve has about 15 character sprites, 60 event CG's and lots of background locations just for the plot and it's a medium length VN. HapyMaher has just about 10 character sprites, and despite its 75 event CG's only 20 - 30 are relevant to the plot - the rest are H-scenes. There's also a severe lack of background locations with almost the whole dream world consisting of 'plantified' real world locations. Add to that a long length VN and it's getting clear why it's difficult to make a good story out of that. Although the H-scenes in Hapymaher are certainly gorgeous, they sacrificed too much for it.

Awesome timing, I just started reading Chaos;Child via patch about a week ago. If I'd known that they'd release it on Steam now, I'd have waited. 
Though, judging by the picture here in the Steam screenshots, they didn't translate the names of the talking character, which is a bit disappointing to be honest. Anyway, I'll still buy it.
Regarding Chaos;Head, I'm fine that I didn't read it (or to be precise, I dropped it early because of whiny Takumi). The protag in Chaos;Child isn't supposed to know what was behind those murders - only that they happened. So the immersion is bigger because no info is spoiled and the revelations will probably also turn out more interesting that way.

For me it was I Walk Among Zombies if it comes to releases from last year - man, what a piece of crap.
Himawari was also pretty bad, but that wasn't a release from last year.

For me it was I Walk Among Zombies if it comes to releases from last year - man, what a piece of crap.
Himawari was also pretty bad, but that wasn't a release from last year.

Otome make consoles their target demographic. Consoles mean no porn, and no porn means they need something else to attract a fan base.
All ages slice of life or drama cannot carry sales on their own, unless you're already an established player like Key or in the science; series.

So, I finally finished The House of Fata Morgana, and that was quite the ride. Probably the most powerful VN I've read in years emotion-wise - I was literally in tears at the end. I think the last VN that was able to achieve that was Minori's Eden. I had the VN stalled for almost a year or so after the 4 - 5 introductory chapters as I'd call them. Their main purpose was to set up the stage for the real story, but after several short stories that were just loosly connected I got a bit impatient to see the big picture and therefore stalled it a while. But when I picked it up again last week, the VN unleashed its full potential and I almost couldn't stop reading anymore.
Overall, there were several aspects that really impressed me about this VN. First, it's really well constructed - pretty much every chapter is an essential mosaic of a big tale. That's not to say I liked every chapter, especially the third and to a certain degree also fourth and fifth didn't really capture me that much. But nevertheless, every chapter had a meaning that allowed the following chapters to build up on it. They wouldn't have been as strong without the introductory chapters. After some initial doubts, I was extremely relieved that in contrast to some other witch VN out there, this wasn't just 80% meaningless filler text and characters.
Second, the VN plays with all shades of grey, including bright white and pitch black. It's literally impossible to simply order things in good and evil. Circumstances can massively change people either for the better or worse, and sometimes it's just a matter of perception. There are situations where every action will do a good thing for one side and a bad thing for another, and you'll simply have to make a decision what's more important to you. The writer showed a great understanding how life works.
Third, the VN doesn't get lost in grey. Not every character is just a result or product of his or here circumstances. There are still ones that stand out among the masses and refuse to just be a plaything of destiny. And sometimes the brightest light can turn into the darkest black.
Fourth, not every character starts out as the epitome of greatness - they need time to grow and develop.
I also want to use that opportunity to emphasize how important a plot is to develop its characters - even for a moege. Maybe the deredere isn't as dull and boring if she gets into a situation where she's challenged a bit. And maybe the tsundere isn't just a bitch and shows really admirable virtues given the right situation. Fata Morgana has several characters that might even seem bland at first, but change and develop over time, because the story allows them to do so.
Fifth, the writer achieved to make the central tragedy 'special'. Given the time period the story plays in, you could find tragedies and suffering everywhere. Just having a character who experienced great misery isn't sufficient. You need an outstanding character who was victim of a great injustice for that.
Visually, the VN certainly hit the mark with its more classical western look, although I still consider the cheaply made blurred photo backgrounds a real downer. In some situations I wasn't even able to decipher what's supposed to be shown on it. In others, the proportions of the sprites didn't fit to the ones of the background at all. It was certainly my biggest gripe about the visuals of the title.
The music was pretty great, although I have to say that there were 1 - 2 slice of life tracks I wasn't so fond of - and unfortunately those were probably the most played tracks in the VN *sigh*. But pretty much all tense and dramatic tracks ranged from solid to great. It's a bit unfortunate that the VN didn't have voices though.
The VN also frequently seemed to be more expressive when it took a more classic book or novel approach with full images and NVL style. Some of the most engrossing parts were just text and a plain background like a simple book. Although I think they handled the ADV parts with sprites much better in the second half of the VN.
Favorite characters:
Final rating: 8.5/10
I would have even given an ultra rare 9, but the crappy backgrounds and the lack of voices were a bit of a downer. Still an amazing VN though.
I also finished Ann's route of Saku Saku... after more than one year of reading.  I also wanted to read Yuuri's route, but Ann's was so boring that I'm not sure if I should just drop it. I recently bought Sakura Sakura and I'd be more interested to read that one as a moege at the moment.
Regarding story VN's, Chaos Child will be next.

So, I finally finished The House of Fata Morgana, and that was quite the ride. Probably the most powerful VN I've read in years emotion-wise - I was literally in tears at the end. I think the last VN that was able to achieve that was Minori's Eden. I had the VN stalled for almost a year or so after the 4 - 5 introductory chapters as I'd call them. Their main purpose was to set up the stage for the real story, but after several short stories that were just loosly connected I got a bit impatient to see the big picture and therefore stalled it a while. But when I picked it up again last week, the VN unleashed its full potential and I almost couldn't stop reading anymore.
Overall, there were several aspects that really impressed me about this VN. First, it's really well constructed - pretty much every chapter is an essential mosaic of a big tale. That's not to say I liked every chapter, especially the third and to a certain degree also fourth and fifth didn't really capture me that much. But nevertheless, every chapter had a meaning that allowed the following chapters to build up on it. They wouldn't have been as strong without the introductory chapters. After some initial doubts, I was extremely relieved that in contrast to some other witch VN out there, this wasn't just 80% meaningless filler text and characters.
Second, the VN plays with all shades of grey, including bright white and pitch black. It's literally impossible to simply order things in good and evil. Circumstances can massively change people either for the better or worse, and sometimes it's just a matter of perception. There are situations where every action will do a good thing for one side and a bad thing for another, and you'll simply have to make a decision what's more important to you. The writer showed a great understanding how life works.
Third, the VN doesn't get lost in grey. Not every character is just a result or product of his or here circumstances. There are still ones that stand out among the masses and refuse to just be a plaything of destiny. And sometimes the brightest light can turn into the darkest black.
Fourth, not every character starts out as the epitome of greatness - they need time to grow and develop.
I also want to use that opportunity to emphasize how important a plot is to develop its characters - even for a moege. Maybe the deredere isn't as dull and boring if she gets into a situation where she's challenged a bit. And maybe the tsundere isn't just a bitch and shows really admirable virtues given the right situation. Fata Morgana has several characters that might even seem bland at first, but change and develop over time, because the story allows them to do so.
Fifth, the writer achieved to make the central tragedy 'special'. Given the time period the story plays in, you could find tragedies and suffering everywhere. Just having a character who experienced great misery isn't sufficient. You need an outstanding character who was victim of a great injustice for that.
Visually, the VN certainly hit the mark with its more classical western look, although I still consider the cheaply made blurred photo backgrounds a real downer. In some situations I wasn't even able to decipher what's supposed to be shown on it. In others, the proportions of the sprites didn't fit to the ones of the background at all. It was certainly my biggest gripe about the visuals of the title.
The music was pretty great, although I have to say that there were 1 - 2 slice of life tracks I wasn't so fond of - and unfortunately those were probably the most played tracks in the VN *sigh*. But pretty much all tense and dramatic tracks ranged from solid to great. It's a bit unfortunate that the VN didn't have voices though.
The VN also frequently seemed to be more expressive when it took a more classic book or novel approach with full images and NVL style. Some of the most engrossing parts were just text and a plain background like a simple book. Although I think they handled the ADV parts with sprites much better in the second half of the VN.
Favorite characters:
Final rating: 8.5/10
I would have even given an ultra rare 9, but the crappy backgrounds and the lack of voices were a bit of a downer. Still an amazing VN though.
I also finished Ann's route of Saku Saku... after more than one year of reading.  I also wanted to read Yuuri's route, but Ann's was so boring that I'm not sure if I should just drop it. I recently bought Sakura Sakura and I'd be more interested to read that one as a moege at the moment.
Regarding story VN's, Chaos Child will be next.

So, I finally finished The House of Fata Morgana, and that was quite the ride. Probably the most powerful VN I've read in years emotion-wise - I was literally in tears at the end. I think the last VN that was able to achieve that was Minori's Eden. I had the VN stalled for almost a year or so after the 4 - 5 introductory chapters as I'd call them. Their main purpose was to set up the stage for the real story, but after several short stories that were just loosly connected I got a bit impatient to see the big picture and therefore stalled it a while. But when I picked it up again last week, the VN unleashed its full potential and I almost couldn't stop reading anymore.
Overall, there were several aspects that really impressed me about this VN. First, it's really well constructed - pretty much every chapter is an essential mosaic of a big tale. That's not to say I liked every chapter, especially the third and to a certain degree also fourth and fifth didn't really capture me that much. But nevertheless, every chapter had a meaning that allowed the following chapters to build up on it. They wouldn't have been as strong without the introductory chapters. After some initial doubts, I was extremely relieved that in contrast to some other witch VN out there, this wasn't just 80% meaningless filler text and characters.
Second, the VN plays with all shades of grey, including bright white and pitch black. It's literally impossible to simply order things in good and evil. Circumstances can massively change people either for the better or worse, and sometimes it's just a matter of perception. There are situations where every action will do a good thing for one side and a bad thing for another, and you'll simply have to make a decision what's more important to you. The writer showed a great understanding how life works.
Third, the VN doesn't get lost in grey. Not every character is just a result or product of his or here circumstances. There are still ones that stand out among the masses and refuse to just be a plaything of destiny. And sometimes the brightest light can turn into the darkest black.
Fourth, not every character starts out as the epitome of greatness - they need time to grow and develop.
I also want to use that opportunity to emphasize how important a plot is to develop its characters - even for a moege. Maybe the deredere isn't as dull and boring if she gets into a situation where she's challenged a bit. And maybe the tsundere isn't just a bitch and shows really admirable virtues given the right situation. Fata Morgana has several characters that might even seem bland at first, but change and develop over time, because the story allows them to do so.
Fifth, the writer achieved to make the central tragedy 'special'. Given the time period the story plays in, you could find tragedies and suffering everywhere. Just having a character who experienced great misery isn't sufficient. You need an outstanding character who was victim of a great injustice for that.
Visually, the VN certainly hit the mark with its more classical western look, although I still consider the cheaply made blurred photo backgrounds a real downer. In some situations I wasn't even able to decipher what's supposed to be shown on it. In others, the proportions of the sprites didn't fit to the ones of the background at all. It was certainly my biggest gripe about the visuals of the title.
The music was pretty great, although I have to say that there were 1 - 2 slice of life tracks I wasn't so fond of - and unfortunately those were probably the most played tracks in the VN *sigh*. But pretty much all tense and dramatic tracks ranged from solid to great. It's a bit unfortunate that the VN didn't have voices though.
The VN also frequently seemed to be more expressive when it took a more classic book or novel approach with full images and NVL style. Some of the most engrossing parts were just text and a plain background like a simple book. Although I think they handled the ADV parts with sprites much better in the second half of the VN.
Favorite characters:
Final rating: 8.5/10
I would have even given an ultra rare 9, but the crappy backgrounds and the lack of voices were a bit of a downer. Still an amazing VN though.
I also finished Ann's route of Saku Saku... after more than one year of reading.  I also wanted to read Yuuri's route, but Ann's was so boring that I'm not sure if I should just drop it. I recently bought Sakura Sakura and I'd be more interested to read that one as a moege at the moment.
Regarding story VN's, Chaos Child will be next.

Could you elaborate on what "it" is? Since it's not talked about anywhere, how would we know about it?

Fantastic news, the title deserves a Steam release so much! 

alright, for all the shit steam gets, good on them for allowing vns to be fully uncensored now.