ChaosRaven

If I'm curious about a VN that lacks proper coverage, I'll watch the first little bit. Beyond that? No. It's irritating to not be able to control the pace of the clicks, and/or if the Youtuber is (obnoxious) talking during it.
Also, it depends if it's being respectful about how it does the LP - if it's a "full" LP, I won't have anything to do with it. To me it's a more accessible form of piracy - think about it, you don't need to torrent it or anything, so any john doe can jsut open up youtube and go through the whole story with zero effort.
I've done my share of torrenting of various titles I could not get locally, so I'm not gonna sit on a high-horse and act innocent - but piracy of officially localized titles can really hurt groups like MG, SP, and Jast. I avoid that.

I usually prefer H-heavy moege and story titles like Kohime Musou over straight nukiges.
The only two titles I'd currently like to see translated which are really tagged as nukige are Bishoujo Mangekyou -Norowareshi Densetsu no Shoujo- and Boku to Koi Suru Ponkotsu Akuma and its fan disc Boku to Koi Suru Ponkotsu Akuma. Suggoi Ecchi! from NekoPara artist Sayori.

Hey folks, I've reviewed something different for a change... An otome game  
You can find my review here: http://reviews.fuwanovel.net/2016/05/30/ozmafia-2/
 
Comments, constructive criticism, etc... are always welcome!
 
PS: My final score would have been closer to a 3.5 but I gave it 4 stars because of formatting reasons.

Just in case people have missed it, Decay's given a wonderful interview with Sekai Project which you can find here - http://blog.fuwanovel.net/2016/05/interview-with-sekai-project/
Here's a few of the mindblowing statements that can be found within:
So make sure to check it out, people! Personally my favourite part was Audi suggesting EVN developers stop setting their VNs in Japan :3

JAST has a dedicated licensing person.  I know this because I have his e-mail address.  I'm sure Peter gets involved at times also.
I get the impression that JAST personnel have responsibilities that overlap with J-List.  Nicholas Graham appears to be the boss at JAST, and he seems like a capable sort.  Tim manages some projects.  He seems less experienced.  I'm not sure if Makoto is still working for JAST or not.  I agree that Peter seems mostly focused on J-List, and that JAST is a side project for him.
JAST's new forums are now live, and JAST personnel post there.  You should ask these questions to them yourself.
 

I'll quote my thoughts from another thread about the title just for you. 
 

Apparently they want to create a new forum from scratch. Their old one was often victim of bot attacks so they most likely try to create the new one with solid Fort Knox qualities. It took Jast almost a year or more to create their new forum, so MG will take their time too.

Well the forum looks very nice, (though its too blue. Such blue.) 
It doesn't seem to be very active yet, though that is to be expected seeing as it just launched and all. 
 
I felt very special when I registered, seeing as I was the only person online  

I think only people who aren't around a long time could have been surprised about that. MangaGamer usually never announce anything of value before AX and Otakon, since those two where always their big announcement cons. It's already an improvement that they've announced one big title per con this year with ImoPara 2 and Kyonyuu Fantasy. Though they seem to stick to their tradition that only nukiges or smaller doujin are announced. They will hold back their bigger story and moege titles for the two main cons.

Well, I guess I'll chime in to support the unpopular opinion - SP is my favorite at the moment. MG is close behind, and JAST USA is a distant third.
In terms of # of games released (a few months ago I crawled through the data for the three companies, so this should be roughly correct): SP is releasing more games per year than MG and JAST USA put together (not that the last one is helping much...). Both SP and MG are accelerating their number of releases recently, especially SP, while JAST is flat and much lower than the other two. Now, of those, the rebuttal will go, most of SP's are random doujinshi nobody has ever heard of, but replace "doujinshi nobody has ever heard of" with "nukige" and the same argument applies to both MG and JAST USA. If you remove both of those from the list and look at the remaining, I expect SP is still in the lead, though I didn't look at this data point. Now, granted, if you're a nukige fan, more power to you, and you probably don't care about the last thing I said. But this is about who I like, and frankly I'm more likely to enjoy a random doujinshi I've never heard of, but which SP decided to localize, than I am to enjoy a random nukige.
The claim that only MG releases stuff in a timely manner is, I'm pretty sure, bunk - I honestly don't know where it comes from. JAST USA is the only real laggard in the industry (I find this post hilarious, since it shows the translation was done three years ago, and we only saw the release last month...). The other two are getting things done in a reasonably timely manner, for the most part. There are outliers like WEE for SP, but there are far more things like the complete retranslation of Clannad that got done on schedule in a year, or the rather punctual release of Root Double, which people nonetheless cried bloody murder about because it was a month late. If you're going to kick and scream about them releasing something at the end of April after predicting a March release, you're setting the bar way, way too high; that's just not how the world works when you're talking about a half-year (or longer) project involving tens of people. If you think differently, I'll eat my hat if you've ever actually been involved in such a project (but if you actually have, then the joke's still on you, because I'm not wearing a hat).
And a point in favor of all three: they've all caused big changes. SP's happens to have been the most recent, but JAST USA has been around and kicking forever, and proved that there was a market here at all. MG found a way to substantially broaden that market and upped the volume substantially. And now SP is changing and broadening the market yet again. We benefit from all three of them. Even if we make jokes at the expense of one or all of them from time to time, they're none of them causing us any problems. Be happy for what you have, and if you think you can do it better, in all seriousness, go do it. This is the place to find people who are passionate about VNs; maybe you can build a crew to found the next big VN localization company that changes the market yet again. It's already happened three times. That it will happen a fourth time is practically a given.

Hopefully you will find something redeeming in it - I will admit, while I liked most of the characters in TB, I would say I never really felt very invested. With the exception of one certain character, (but that would be a spoiler. ) Needless to say, I found that character to be really well done, and conveyed a bond I was emotionally drawn into far more then anything else in TB.
As for Comyu - I dunno, I couldn't forgive it for it's choice of storytelling, I felt like I was robbed of half the VN's setting - what with the completely random side-stories that consisted as the other two routes. I had esp. high hopes for one of those characters, whos' story turned out to be reallllllly weak.
@Canicheslayer I really should try starting up KnS1 again - I stopped shortly after:
Loved Cartagra though, was the first "dark" VN I had read in ages...last being...Muvluv I think? wow, 4 years...that really did leave a mark on me, huh? lol.

Progressed a bit more with Tokyo Babel. Unfortunately the writer doesn't really seem to care about his own apocalyptic story, because he's pretty much just given a bunch of school clowns fancy names of angels and demons. Apart from that it's just run of the mill school life moege. Since it more or less already disqualified itself as a serious story VN, I try to do the same like in Comyu and just enjoy it for the slice of life comedy. It's a lot harder though because characers and writing are several leagues below Comyu. Well, maybe it'll get better sometime... 

Hmm, I think I'll go for the Kara no Shoujo 2 hardcopy.
Not really sure what to think about the Kyonyuu Fantasy announcement. Not the biggest fan of the art, but it's a fantasy title and one of the most popular nukiges. Well I guess at least @BookwormOtaku will be raving...
I'm curious about nbkz from Minori being special guest at AX. Could mean a new Minori title (Soreyori no Prologue plz) - or could mean nothing.

Uh, was it? Where?! Prove? Evidence? Witnesses? Statutory declaration? 

Uh, was it? Where?! Prove? Evidence? Witnesses? Statutory declaration? 

Hey all, it's time for another convention! Anime Central is starting just tomorrow, the 20th of May. It's the biggest convention until July's Anime Expo, and most of the major players of the VN world will be there! Except for JAST, I can't actually find them or J-List on the exhibitor's list on acen's website. All times below are CDT, or UTC -0500, I believe.  I will attempt to keep this OP up to date with all the latest developments.
VisualArts/Key
VisualArts is one of ACEN's "premium partners" so they get a nice posh booth that you'll want to visit if you're a Key fan (Booth 11). They will also have a panel, too. It will be held at 4PM on the 20th. 
"Join CEO Takahiro Baba, Artist Na-Ga, and Composer Shinji Orito for this multimedia industry panel all about your favorite games and shows from VisualArts!"
Announcements: VisualArts announced that the Clannad side-stories will release in just a few weeks, and that they have plans for an Angel Beats localization.
Sekai Project
Sekai Project will of course be present as well. They'll have a premium booth at Booth #61. Their panel will be at 5:30PM on the 20th.
Sekai Project has teased two new announcements from two new partners. It's always hard to predict exactly what Sekai Project will announce, especially since they have a fondness for partnering with pretty obscure doujin and OELVN developers. They've announced some pretty big stuff recently, though, so who knows? Sekai Project were previously planning a livestream but it unfortunately had to be canceled due to a lack of manpower.
Announcements: Sekai Project announced a couple new doujin titles, the sci-fi doujin VN 2236 A.D. and a side-scrolling platformer MAGICALxSPIRAL. The previously announced yuri VN Ne no Kami will have an IndieGoGo launch on May 25th.
MangaGamer
MangaGamer may have the dinkiest booth (Booth #410), but they'll have the biggest panel, at 9PM on the 20th.
MG has teased six new announcements for this show, one of them from a new partner. You can see their site for it here. Things to expect from MangaGamer: A new hardcopy announcement, perhaps euphoria. An "official" announcement for The House in Fata Morgana's fandisc, which has already been announced within the first game, MG seems to be waiting to give it a proper announcement. For the remaining four announcement, I'm guessing one of them will be a BL or Otome title, basically whatever Good Haro is translating next. We might also hear about the next Alice Soft title they're licensing at this point. Many people are expecting their new partner to be Chuablesoft, which is indeed possible considering their CEO took to twitter last year to engage english fans and talk about localization possibilities. That could just as easily be one of SP's announcements, however, or maybe they haven't yet made a commitment to the western market. They're also overdue for announcing their future SonoHana plans. There's a lot of possibilities with MG's announcements, it'll be interesting to see how they play out.
 
@Yotek says that he'll be at the event and will attempt to record the panels for those interested.
So what are you all expecting?

There's a new interview of Operation Rainfall with MangaGamer. It's the first part of two. Nothing earth-shakingly new, but still a nice read.
Most interesting part for me was about Supipara and MangaGamer being positive that they'll not only release the two already existing chapters, but also the following ones that would still have to be developed by Minori. I would have really liked to hear more details about that, especially how Minori is going to solve the problem that Nanao Naru, who was their main artist for until Supipara isn't working for them anymore. He's working at Nanawind for a few years now and has drawn the art for Alia's Carnival! for them.
So what will Minori do? Fake the art style, or try to hire him again, or will they just use a different art style instead?

There's a new interview of Operation Rainfall with MangaGamer. It's the first part of two. Nothing earth-shakingly new, but still a nice read.
Most interesting part for me was about Supipara and MangaGamer being positive that they'll not only release the two already existing chapters, but also the following ones that would still have to be developed by Minori. I would have really liked to hear more details about that, especially how Minori is going to solve the problem that Nanao Naru, who was their main artist for until Supipara isn't working for them anymore. He's working at Nanawind for a few years now and has drawn the art for Alia's Carnival! for them.
So what will Minori do? Fake the art style, or try to hire him again, or will they just use a different art style instead?

I've finished my first route in Ozmafia now. I went for Pashet the cat girl first for obvious reasons. 

The route was a bit short and more about friendship, but I still liked it. Pashet herself is the don of famiglia 'Boots' (don't ask) and somehow resembles lady Oscar from The Rose of Versailles a bit, one of my all-time anime favorites. She's a great character and I really wished her route would have been a bit longer so I could have seen more from her.
The VN itself is extremely stylish, starting from the unique and elegant character designs, over the fantastic soundtrack to the somehow flowery writing style and conversations. Although it could be probably be criticized that it's more style over substance, even if I've probably not seen enough yet to give an accurate judgement about that. The voice acting was very good, BUT there is a catch. There's just partial voice acting and not in the sense of one chaper this way and another chapter that way, very often it changes from one sentence to the next which was a bit annoying to be honest. It actually felt a bit like the script was changed or edited after the voices were recorded.
The setting is some kind of crazy mixture of popular western fairy tales, Italian mafia gangs and French aristocracy. Actually, the whole city gave me some Parisian vibes. Though I had a few culture days in that city about two months ago, so maybe it was just nostalgia.
The ruling famiglias in that city are really one of a kind. The Oz famiglia are some kind of gentlemens club and more or less the main famiglia that takes the protagonist girl in at the start. The 'Grimm' famiglia are a real chaos club with Hansel and Gretel being the VN version of Bonnie and Clyde. The Wolf gang seems to be Ozmafias take on the 'Sons of Anarchy' while the 'Boots' famiglia somehow resembles french royalty.
Obviously, the VN takes itself not all too seriously, even if the story has technically some rather gory parts inbetween which are usually just not shown. But it's somehow remarkable how different the whole style is in comparision to common bishojo titles with high school setting. The guys are (for obvious reasons) represented much more mature and civilized which is a rather strong contrast to the usual teenage simpletons. Fuka, the protagonist girl was more on the simple side so far, but she's still charming and likable.
I'm not really sure yet how many routes I want to play. For now I definitely want to play Axel's route, since he's the 'knight' tsundere character and was pretty cool so far. After that, we'll see.

Hey, it's the first time I was negative, for a change. What did you think of it? 
http://reviews.fuwanovel.net/2016/05/09/gahkthun-of-the-golden-lightning-2/

Excellent job. They fixed everything, that's why kickstarter is floating around 10k now, they indeed did excellent job.

Win10 has one big advantage at least in comparison to Win7. You can DPI scale the screen on the fly which works like an image zoom. This is very convenient if you're playing Japanese VN's with a text hooker. Since you can't use fullscreen mode for those because you need the translation window next to it, the VN windows get often very small because they use rather low resolutions. In this case you can set DPI scaling to something like 125% to increase the window sizes. I use that with Lovely & Cation to get its Window almost to full screen size. Since it's a 4:3 resolution game, there's still perfect space for the translation window next to it.
Though newer titles often don't need such tricks. The Walkure Romanze series or AliceSoft's new Tsumamigui 3 for example use either high resolution art assets and/or very good scaling methods so that their windows can simply be resized to higher resolutions.

You are pretty severely mistaken about various plot points. There are very good reasons why they occurred. Unfortunately, I can't go into details without massive spoilers. Also, a lot of Root A's events are more important than they seem. There's a ton of subtle foreshadowing in particular.
Root A is fairly different from the rest of the VN, so how much you enjoyed it isn't terribly representative of how much you'll like the remaining parts of the story. They strongly prioritize characterization and world-building over suspense. That said, I would recommend getting all of Root A's heroine scenes before moving on. They have some valuable information and contribute a bit to characterization (though all three characters get much more development later on). The normal ending is also a must-read.

I didn't have any problems with Win10 and visual novels yet, but text hookers are trouble makers. Chiitrans sometimes crashes and ITH requires a new version called ITH_VNR.
I made a complete reinstall of Win10 on my own computer but I did upgrades on the ones from my parents and there weren't any problems with previously installed programs.
However, I have to run Paint Shop Pro in compatibility mode since it seems to crash quite often otherwise.
So most programs seem to run fine, but not all of them.

Played more today and it was quite a ride so far. I was almost glued to the screen because there was so much tension with one event coming after another. Fortunately, the title switched a gear back now from its speed to give the characters some time to calm down and reflect on the events. Besides the radiation problem there were some
that really made me curious about what's going on. I also think I started a love triangle between Kazami and Ena. At least I hope so. 
I think I'm also slowly getting used to the Senses Symphathy System - which means I'm getting used to dying. It really does a fantastic job... in sending you straight to hell because of some simple 'misunderstanding'. I guess there must be some relationship to the AI of the first Resident Evil movie, because the system can be a real bitch. Usually it goes like this:
Scene 1:
SSS: "Do you want to do A which makes you look like a coward, or B which is courageous but more dangerous?"
Me: "Hmm, B of course!"
SSS: "Sorry, you die because you were too careless and foolish."
Me: "Shit!" 
Scene 2:
SSS: "Do you want to do A which makes you look like a coward, or B which is courageous but more dangerous?"
Me: "Not again darling, this time I choose A!"
SSS: "Sorry, you die because you hesitated too much."
Me: "You're kidding!?" 
Scene 3:
SSS: "Do you want to do A which makes you look like a coward, or B which is courageous but more dangerous?"
Me: "It's clear that it's B this time, but I don't know how to trigger it because I can't figure out the right combination for the six sympathy sliders."
SSS: "Sorry, you die because you acted like a coward."
Me: "Hrrrnnnghhhh!!!"