ChaosRaven

So, after a long break with VNs I'm finally back. I'm currently reading Gahkthun of the Golden Lightning, and I'm loving it so far! Right now I've finished 3 chapters, and I'll try to write a more extensive reaction after I finish the whole VN.

Imho, H-scenes which are there for 'story reasons' are the worst. It essentially means their only purpose is for shock factor to illustrate brutal rape or abuse. Which in the end is just a bad excuse to appeal to fans of hardcore fetish sex. There are much better ways to convey love or drama than H-scenes, which makes them almost by definition optional and just for eye candy.

Imho, H-scenes which are there for 'story reasons' are the worst. It essentially means their only purpose is for shock factor to illustrate brutal rape or abuse. Which in the end is just a bad excuse to appeal to fans of hardcore fetish sex. There are much better ways to convey love or drama than H-scenes, which makes them almost by definition optional and just for eye candy.

Oh god I think I'm gonna become hella spoiled by Yuzusoft
I forgot that they actually put in the effort to change character sprites to go in tandem with what whatever the characters are currently saying. Bless whoever they hired that has enough OCD to take the time to do all of that.
It actually makes me want to listen to the entire dialogue rather than doing my whole min/maxing sweetspot reading because it really does amplify the reading experience significantly.
~~
Anyways I ended up going for Riddle Joker, cuz I need me some high school superpowers
Friggen' Himawari, bless its the-whole-is-greater-than-the-sum-of-its-parts-cough-Aqua-Best-Girl took a whopping the entirety of Episode One+Two for me to finally settle down and really start enjoying the narrative for what it was, but Riddle Joker was instant hook line and sinker for me and I'm enjoying everything right off the bat.
Protagonist is (first) Satoru Arihara, a combat-capable-but-slacking-in-studies realist high school boy and he's part of a secret organization of "Astrals" who seek to use their powers for the greater good, vigilante style.
His latest mission: to infiltrate the nation's first prominent Astral education/research facility.
He has a younger sister, too. Foster sister. Nanami Arihara. And man, every VN I'm reading lately is making me realize I'm simply the siscon type, godhelpme, Nanami is fantastic. She's the well meaning younger-than-protagonist-but-responsible/mature-enough-that-she-essentially-takes-care-of-him-like-an-older-sister-type, but she's very, very shy/introverted around others and will have her vulnerable moments where she'll call "Satoru-kun" the coveted "Onii-chan" instead. She's also Satoru's partner in crime in the secret organization they're in, so they have that dynamic going on for them as well. Jeez, what more can you ask for in a brother/sister relationship?

I'd go straight back to sleep all day errday, just so I could get awakened again and again and again by such a kawaii sister lel.
 
But step aside Nanami, first impression best girl hands down goes to:

Ayase Mitsukasa.

Anyone who knows me, knows pink is an automatic win, no questions asked. Pink, responsible role model, student council president...all this is about as common and standard as it gets but I shall never tire of it heh.
Now, I would've been fine with Ayase as is because I'm ez, but hoh boy this oughta be fun(SLIGHT SPOILERS):
 

So, I finished two more VN's...

Gekkou no Carnevale is the first one. It's a bit of a mixed bag and therefore it took me quite a while to finish it. That said, I only finished Rebecca's route. I also wanted to play Lunaria's route, but it was blocked by Noel's and and Anna's routes and I didn't really have any motivation to go through these. Noel was too loli and Anna... not exactly the brightest light to phrase it carefully. And with the massive technical issues this title came with, like using the mouse interface freezing the game, skipping not working correctly, etc. I just had no motivation for a skipping session just to get to Lunaria's route.
Nevertheless, let's start with the good things. The protagonist is actually a really cool guy. Not your typical teenage brat, but a fully grown-up adult. Furthermore, the voice acting of the protagonist and also most of the other male characters is top-notch, which is a pretty rare thing, at least for non-otome VN's. It's one of the very rare VN's where I didn't switch off the protagonist voice.
Plot-wise it has a fairly interesting scenario with a mix-up of werewolves, living dolls and the Italian mafia. The werewolves are a mafia clan called Oruma Rossa and their arch enemies are a hunter-force called Luparia consisting mainly of several particular powerful and ancient silver dolls. Romeo, also a werewolf and once part of Oruma Rossa, is now a simple taxi driver living now together with Anna, a living doll. He left them in turmoil because his true love was killed and is now hunted by both Oruma Rossa and Luparia.
The VN is rather chuuni focused, with lots of fighting scenes. The writing is decent for the most part, but the pacing of the story left a lot to be desired. For example, there were too many fights without a clear resolution or consequences. A good fight isn't just about showcasing an entertaining action scene, but also about it's 'impact' on the story. Carmelo was actually a fun antagonist, but if you have to fight him for the god knows how often time, then it gets quite annoying after a while. I also didn't really get that much werewolve vibes from the story. Overall it felt more like super mafiosi vs. power dolls. The story parts I liked most were the beginning and the puppet master arc around Lunaria and Davide. Those had a fairly good pacing and interesting twists and characters.
The weaker story parts of the VN were certainly the slow pacing, rather limited plot development and some questionable antagonists. Luparia in particular felt like a bunch of lunatics led by a chuuni edge lord. Perla was almost the only character that didn't suck from them. Ourma Rossa was better, especially Valentino and Gugliemo, while Silvio was also more on the annoying side. He had some good moments towards the end though. The VN also had a tendency to throw in random H-scenes with questionable context, which was quite annoying.
Obvious technical issues aside, I didn't like that they used photographs as backgrounds. Some of the heavy edited night locations looked quite decent, but the daylight scenes looked far too pale and didn't fit at all to the colorful character sprites. At least they didn't blur the images down. Sprites and CG's were pretty decent for the age of the VN though. Music wasn't bad, but got very repetitive after a while.
Heroine ranking: Lunaria > Rebecca > Noel > Anna
Overall rating: 6.5/10 (I would have given a 7, but the technical issues were simply too annoying to ignore) 

Next one is Daitoshokan no Hitsujikai - one of the August classics. I want to keep this one short since there's actually not much to say about it.
It's a fairly decently written (club) slice of life VN with likable characters, but a rather thin plot even for a moege. Although there was some 'Shepherd' plot teased, it pretty much went nowhere. At least in the heroine routes I read and that covers the main heroine. It's possible there's an after-story though, which goes a bit deeper into that. Didn't have any motivation to go through all character routes just for that though. Routes itself weren't too long and didn't offer much, but at least didn't overstay its welcome. I played the ones of Tamamo, Maho and Tsugumi. Senri and Kana were too loli and I didn't like Nagi enough to play her route.
Character art feels a bit old-fashioned nowadays, but interface and backgrounds were pretty good. Music was okay for what it was. Overall, I expected a bit more from the title considering it was a fairly popular VN in Japan, but it was still on the okayish side.
Heroine ranking: Tamamo > Maho > Senri > Tsugumi > Kana > Nagi
Overall rating: 6.5/10

The Visual Monthly Recap video for June 2021 is out! Quite a lot of new translation reveals, surprise releases, and even a controversial announcement of an 18+ eroge going All-Ages Only in the official Western release (But it has new content).
 

One of the cardinal mistakes of most VN's is the severe lack of support characters and different locations, because that automatically limits the scope of the story a lot. There's just so much you can do with only character interactions between a moe blob. This is particularly puzzling since this shouldn't even be a financial problem. Usually sprites require much less effort than full CG's, especially if they aren't main characters. They also don't even need to bother their main artist with it, since they can be done by assistant artists. Similar situation for the backgrounds.
You don't really need a whole lot of event CG's for a story, just a good bunch of support characters and locations. If I want to know about the story scope of a VN, it's usually enough to just check out the character section. If the character count is less than 10, there's usually not more in it than a slice of life moege. Exceptions exist like the 9-nine series, which uses their main cast very efficiently, but those are pretty rare.

My newest Visual Novel Monthly Recap show is up for any releases or news for May 2021. Some notable highlights include a Loopers demo fantranslation, official TL announcement, among other things. See more in this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCAPqJhld30 

So, I've just finished the new Kyonyuu Fantasy 3 if with all routes. Considering that it was just released about 3 weeks ago and it's a rather long VN, that's very fast for my standards. For obvious reasons that also means that I've enjoyed it quite a bit. I was looking forward to this VN in particular for several reasons. First, KF1 - Gaiden 2 had some impressive world building with its recreation of medieval europe and its major powers. Second, I'm a bit of a history and mythology nerd and KF3's setting of the Roman Empire and the greco-roman pantheon of deities is of particular interest to me. Third, it has some significant improvements in the art department compared to its predecessors, with some rather striking character designs for a change like the ones from Athena or Zoe. Fortunately, those weren't the only improvements. Overall, pretty much every aspect was improved ranging from writing, music, art and characters.
World-Building:
The world building in this VN is particular impressive, because it didn't just cover the mortal world of the Roman Empire, but also its pantheon of gods, including the underworld and the empyrean olympus. There was quite some care about historical accuracy with roman titles and customs and they also covered the beginning of Christianity with the followers of the new church of the Holy Rood making their first appearance. There were also real rules of how the gods could interact with the mortal world. They were not free to do so and usually just had a limited time to do so, otherwise they would be tracked down by Faron (aka Charon) and brought back by force. They could also manifest themselves in ethereal or material state. It was even mentioned that Astrae was the last goddess to descend to the mortal world in the greek golden age, which even I wasn't aware of. As it was common in mythology, the gods also had some specific powers over their divine domain, like a war god being good at fighting, Apollo being capable of prophecies or love gods like Venus or Julinas being good at... well you know. 
Protagonist:
The protagonist was actually one of my biggest worries in this VN since I never really got warm with Lute or Ruin from KF1 or KF2 even if they certainly had their moments. But despite being a somewhat similar boob-obsessed character, I found Julinas surprisingly likable. And there are several reasons for that. First, while Lute was technically just a big pervert, Julinas is an actual love god, so being somewhat more horny than usual is just part of his divine domain. Second, Julinas is rooted in normality, as crazy that may sound for an underworld god. But in his life in the underworld Faron and Medusa are close and important friends and Hades and Persephone have strong parental roles in Julinas life. Neither of those characters are involved in a sexual manner with Julinas and there was also little to nothing naughty going on in the underworld anyway. And since there are long episodes in the underworld you can  see a rather normal and caring side of Julinas. And oh yeah, he has his own personal pet hell hound. 
Furthermore, while Lute or Ruin solved a lot of problems just with dumb luck, ridiculous events or by help of others, Julinas actually does a lot of stuff himself. He might be just a lowly god of the underworld, but he still IS a deity with some powers and most of his actions were somewhat comprehensible for a world of mythical powers. And last but not least, Julinas had a good chemistry with most of the heroines. As a lively trickster god, most of the heroines found him likable or at least funny from the beginning. In the case of the human heroines, it was even understandable that they looked up to him. In KF1 or KF2 the heroines often went from pure digust to worship, which was simply not believable anymore.
Story:
The story had pretty much two main arcs. The first one covers Julinas first interaction with the mortal world after being stuck in the underworld for 500 years. As the lowest god of the underworld he therefore gets his chance to get his own followers and a temple dedicated to him by helping the people of Doronium to get rid of a terrible curse. He also helps out the roman legion fending off the attacks of a minotaur army, further widening his influence in the mortal world.
The second story arc covers the conflict between the gods of the underworld and the empyrean. There's a strong rivalry between them and it's one of Julinas greatest wishes to lift Medusa's curse which was put on her by Athena as punishment. This is probably the strongest arc since most of the gods got some rather strong character development. Their personalities did reflect their mythological counter parts pretty well, with Hermes being as fast trickster god, Athena being a strict but just maiden goddess, Venus rathere easy going, Apollo being quite the looker, Mars being not a nice guy at all (Ares in particular was considered a rather dark god of bloodshed and massacre), Jupiter being the patriachic leader and brother of Hades. It was quite fascinating to see the greek pantheon come to live in a surprisingly authentic manner. That arc also had some rather heavy and touching moments regarding Medusa's curse with Julinas showing some impressive mental strength.

Sound:
It was quite refreshing to not having to endure the same music of 5+ years of rehashed KF music again. To fit the vibes of the antique rome, they fortunately used some new soundtracks. Most of them at least decent and some of them even great like the olympian theme or the theme from Venus. I might even listen to those independently. Oh and did I mention that almost every major character and not just the heroines have their own theme music? It really gave the characters more personality and added more vocal diversity to the game.
I was also surprised that several of the male main characters got better voice actors. Like Jupiter having a voice actor from Silverio Vendetta and his patriarchic voice was pretty impressive. Some recurring ones also seem to have improved their performance like Hades and some particular bad ones were just left out. Minor characters might still sound a bit cheap but the main character case was definitely solid or better.
Graphics:
The good news is that most of the heroines and the major character were rather wel drawn. H-scenes in particular were a massive improvement compared to the older KF titles, even if Gaiden 1 & 2 already had some improvements for the newer heroines. And we're talking about like 150 H-CG's here. It's also impressive how much character sprites they have in this VN. With all the major characters and the support cast put together, we get over 50 sprites. That's just massive and blows most other titles out of the water.
However, the bad news is that some of the minor character sprites look almost worse than in the former titles. I've no idea why Japanese VN developers have a problem with the eyes of minor characters, but they somehow love to hide or leave them out completely. While that's a bit odd I can usually live with that. But the latest fashion seems to be to make them black,... which makes them look like they got infected with the T-virus and are about to turn into zombies and attack you. So that makes them stand out even more than if they'd just have drawn their eyes like normal. Fortunately it's just the minor characters.
Flaws:
Besides the aforementioned T-virus sprites, this is still a KF title. So even if the writing is improved, it's still simple and can occasionally get rather cheesy. And although they managed to embed this type of protagonist extremely well into the world, he's still a horndog on many occasions, which can be certainly annoying. And while the B-movie feeling isn't as strong as in previous titles, it's still there. The H-scenes also have a tendency to come in avalanches which can get a bit overwhelming. Hours of pure story are often followed by multiple H-scenes for several heroines, especially in the first human arc. I don't really understand why they can't just use an optional character event selection like Koihime Musou and other VN's are doing it rather successfully. 
The human heroines were also a bit left out in the rain after their arc and didn't get much more development. Medusa or Persephone which were technically just side heroines had way more screen time than most of the main heroines which felt a bit odd. Paia was also rather annoying, especially at the beginning. Nevertheless, this is still mostly nitpicking.
Conclusion:
Overall this was a quite impressive VN, especially considering that this tackles both story and ero rather sucessfully and also offers lots of content for both. Ironically, it's probably also one of the most sophisticated VN's I've read so far, since the writer did not only put a lot of effort into the research of the historic and mythologic backgrounds of the world and characters, but also managed to combine them into a very entertaining story.
Heroine ranking: Athena = Ajura > Venus > Zoe > Destra & Eskelda > Farnelia > Constancia >> Paia
I left out Medusa and Persephone from the ranking, even if they were some of the best characters. But they were more like family, so it felt weird to mix them into a dating ranking.
Overall rating: 8/10

Finished some VN's so I guess it's time to write a few words about them.

9-nine-:Episode 4 was the grand finale of the 9-nine- series. This part felt significantly darker than the previous entries. It's impressive how some characters that might appear all nice and friendly on the outside, can reveal a pitch black darkness inside of them. Even the protagonist himself could get pretty scary when driven into a corner. The writer could without any doubt also write a pure horror VN.
That said, the romance part with Noa was probably the weakest of the four and also felt a bit forced, considering Kakeru kept his memories that time. I think it would have been better, to move the final clash into a fifth episode. There also wasn't that much mystery this time, since the fronts where mostly clear and there was a bit too much branch hopping for my taste. Nevertheless, the physical and psychological duel was pretty intense. Overall, it was a pretty cool finale, but I wouldn't rate it quite as high as others.
Overall rating: 7.5/10

I also finished Kami no Rhapsody. This was one is a bit hard to rate. Plot-wise it was certainly the weakest Eushully title I've played so far. Technically the whole story consists of doing trials to prove that you're the most worthy candidate to become the successor of the 'Divine Enforcer'. Naturally, there are also competitors who also want to claim that position and whom you have fight on certain occasions. Overall, not a bad story setup, if it would be just for the prologue until the real story starts. However, the 'prologue' is about... 9 from 10 chapters and then the game is over after some final boss fights. A whole crowd of characters join your party pretty soon, which didn't really make sense. So this felt more like a game with light VN elements comparable to Huniepop, but with much higher production values. It did have a lot of character events though, even if most of them were just slice of life and H-scenes. Characters and mood were also rather fluffy and nice with a clear emphasis on moe.
So, while the story certainly was nothing to write home about, the gameplay was actually pretty decent. I REALLY appreciate that they pretty much got rid of grinding in this game. Each map had just a limited amount of skill medals and ability runes you could get from it. That means that it usually didn't make sense to play a map several times. In addition to that, the maps were usually not too big and could be finished in a reasonable time of ~10 - 20 minutes. There were still a lot of maps, so gameplay still took up a considerable amount of time. but there was a better feeling of 'progress'. The gameplay itself was fairly addictive. Your characters fight on a small hex map against enemy units with 2 - 5 tiles of movement speed depending on the character. Units also have a zone of control and flank and rear attacks do more damage. Mana can be used for spells or to deploy more allied characters. This made spell casters usually a bit weaker in comparison, since mana was often too valuable for spells.
Overall, the title felt a bit like they ran out of development time and had to release it while the writers just got finished with the character events and didn't have much time for the main story yet. Its saving grace is the decent gameplay, high production values and some likable characters. I could recommend it for the gameplay, but not for the story.
Heroine ranking: Mistoria > Forzasleyn > Elgamisera > Lavirie = Nekol = Noelia = Patra > Others
Overall rating: 6.5/10

The last one is Psychedelica of the Ashen Hawk - an otome VN. The predecessor Psychedelica of the Black Butterfly had an interesting story premise, nice visuals and music, but unfortunately the writing was pretty poor. However, since I bought them in a bundle, I wanted to at least give the successor a try. A gothic romance in a medieval setting - what could go wrong?
Well, it could be written by that writer again, to name one. Granted, it was 'slightly' improved and there weren't that much filler episodes to finish this time around in order to progress the story. However, the writer still has a 'special talent' to take an interesting story premise and write it in the most boring way possible. Music and visuals also felt like a step down. The protagonist 'girl' was also cross-dressing and looked like a guy which make the whole thing feel a bit like Shonen-Ai. It wasn't particular romantic anyway, but still felt a bit awkward.
I actually wanted to get on the route of Hugh since he was kind of mysterious, but somehow ended up in a route of two others mass murdering half of the town. No clue how I got there and it was probably a bad end, but after hours of dreadful boredom, it felt like the perfect ending to me.
Overall rating: 5/10

I've been working on a tool that  incorporates texthooker, translation, OCR, script matching, and popup dictionary.
I have only shared it on the learn japanese subreddit and language learning discords. 


Website: https://game2text.com/
More information:
Texthooker is a wrapper around Textractor, but I wrote my own text processing. (Textractor only works on Windows so text hooking is only available on the windows release).
Translation is provided by three online services: DeepL, Papago, and Google Translate. Translation services like DeepL may be limited for a single IP address.
OCR is provided locally by Tesseract or online by OCR Space. It's helpful when you can't hook a game or when the hook doesn't work sometimes. You can improve OCR within the app by applying image filters. 
Script matching is a technique that automatically matches the OCR result to your game script to find the correct line. So far it has been very promising for games like Persona 4, Pokemon Dungeons, Nier Automata provided you have a clean game script.
Popup dictionary is a browser extension such as Yomichan or Rikaichan you can use with your browser.  Since the app runs in your browser, you can use whatever popup dictionary you are already using.
There are other language learning related features like Anki integration, but I suppose this app could be helpful for people who are just looking to translate their game. 
If you prefer to use another translation aggregator or service, you can simply enable output-to-clipboard in the app and have chiitrans to translate your clipboard or manually paste it in your browser.
 

Finished some VN's so I guess it's time to write a few words about them.

9-nine-:Episode 4 was the grand finale of the 9-nine- series. This part felt significantly darker than the previous entries. It's impressive how some characters that might appear all nice and friendly on the outside, can reveal a pitch black darkness inside of them. Even the protagonist himself could get pretty scary when driven into a corner. The writer could without any doubt also write a pure horror VN.
That said, the romance part with Noa was probably the weakest of the four and also felt a bit forced, considering Kakeru kept his memories that time. I think it would have been better, to move the final clash into a fifth episode. There also wasn't that much mystery this time, since the fronts where mostly clear and there was a bit too much branch hopping for my taste. Nevertheless, the physical and psychological duel was pretty intense. Overall, it was a pretty cool finale, but I wouldn't rate it quite as high as others.
Overall rating: 7.5/10

I also finished Kami no Rhapsody. This was one is a bit hard to rate. Plot-wise it was certainly the weakest Eushully title I've played so far. Technically the whole story consists of doing trials to prove that you're the most worthy candidate to become the successor of the 'Divine Enforcer'. Naturally, there are also competitors who also want to claim that position and whom you have fight on certain occasions. Overall, not a bad story setup, if it would be just for the prologue until the real story starts. However, the 'prologue' is about... 9 from 10 chapters and then the game is over after some final boss fights. A whole crowd of characters join your party pretty soon, which didn't really make sense. So this felt more like a game with light VN elements comparable to Huniepop, but with much higher production values. It did have a lot of character events though, even if most of them were just slice of life and H-scenes. Characters and mood were also rather fluffy and nice with a clear emphasis on moe.
So, while the story certainly was nothing to write home about, the gameplay was actually pretty decent. I REALLY appreciate that they pretty much got rid of grinding in this game. Each map had just a limited amount of skill medals and ability runes you could get from it. That means that it usually didn't make sense to play a map several times. In addition to that, the maps were usually not too big and could be finished in a reasonable time of ~10 - 20 minutes. There were still a lot of maps, so gameplay still took up a considerable amount of time. but there was a better feeling of 'progress'. The gameplay itself was fairly addictive. Your characters fight on a small hex map against enemy units with 2 - 5 tiles of movement speed depending on the character. Units also have a zone of control and flank and rear attacks do more damage. Mana can be used for spells or to deploy more allied characters. This made spell casters usually a bit weaker in comparison, since mana was often too valuable for spells.
Overall, the title felt a bit like they ran out of development time and had to release it while the writers just got finished with the character events and didn't have much time for the main story yet. Its saving grace is the decent gameplay, high production values and some likable characters. I could recommend it for the gameplay, but not for the story.
Heroine ranking: Mistoria > Forzasleyn > Elgamisera > Lavirie = Nekol = Noelia = Patra > Others
Overall rating: 6.5/10

The last one is Psychedelica of the Ashen Hawk - an otome VN. The predecessor Psychedelica of the Black Butterfly had an interesting story premise, nice visuals and music, but unfortunately the writing was pretty poor. However, since I bought them in a bundle, I wanted to at least give the successor a try. A gothic romance in a medieval setting - what could go wrong?
Well, it could be written by that writer again, to name one. Granted, it was 'slightly' improved and there weren't that much filler episodes to finish this time around in order to progress the story. However, the writer still has a 'special talent' to take an interesting story premise and write it in the most boring way possible. Music and visuals also felt like a step down. The protagonist 'girl' was also cross-dressing and looked like a guy which make the whole thing feel a bit like Shonen-Ai. It wasn't particular romantic anyway, but still felt a bit awkward.
I actually wanted to get on the route of Hugh since he was kind of mysterious, but somehow ended up in a route of two others mass murdering half of the town. No clue how I got there and it was probably a bad end, but after hours of dreadful boredom, it felt like the perfect ending to me.
Overall rating: 5/10

Finished some VN's so I guess it's time to write a few words about them.

9-nine-:Episode 4 was the grand finale of the 9-nine- series. This part felt significantly darker than the previous entries. It's impressive how some characters that might appear all nice and friendly on the outside, can reveal a pitch black darkness inside of them. Even the protagonist himself could get pretty scary when driven into a corner. The writer could without any doubt also write a pure horror VN.
That said, the romance part with Noa was probably the weakest of the four and also felt a bit forced, considering Kakeru kept his memories that time. I think it would have been better, to move the final clash into a fifth episode. There also wasn't that much mystery this time, since the fronts where mostly clear and there was a bit too much branch hopping for my taste. Nevertheless, the physical and psychological duel was pretty intense. Overall, it was a pretty cool finale, but I wouldn't rate it quite as high as others.
Overall rating: 7.5/10

I also finished Kami no Rhapsody. This was one is a bit hard to rate. Plot-wise it was certainly the weakest Eushully title I've played so far. Technically the whole story consists of doing trials to prove that you're the most worthy candidate to become the successor of the 'Divine Enforcer'. Naturally, there are also competitors who also want to claim that position and whom you have fight on certain occasions. Overall, not a bad story setup, if it would be just for the prologue until the real story starts. However, the 'prologue' is about... 9 from 10 chapters and then the game is over after some final boss fights. A whole crowd of characters join your party pretty soon, which didn't really make sense. So this felt more like a game with light VN elements comparable to Huniepop, but with much higher production values. It did have a lot of character events though, even if most of them were just slice of life and H-scenes. Characters and mood were also rather fluffy and nice with a clear emphasis on moe.
So, while the story certainly was nothing to write home about, the gameplay was actually pretty decent. I REALLY appreciate that they pretty much got rid of grinding in this game. Each map had just a limited amount of skill medals and ability runes you could get from it. That means that it usually didn't make sense to play a map several times. In addition to that, the maps were usually not too big and could be finished in a reasonable time of ~10 - 20 minutes. There were still a lot of maps, so gameplay still took up a considerable amount of time. but there was a better feeling of 'progress'. The gameplay itself was fairly addictive. Your characters fight on a small hex map against enemy units with 2 - 5 tiles of movement speed depending on the character. Units also have a zone of control and flank and rear attacks do more damage. Mana can be used for spells or to deploy more allied characters. This made spell casters usually a bit weaker in comparison, since mana was often too valuable for spells.
Overall, the title felt a bit like they ran out of development time and had to release it while the writers just got finished with the character events and didn't have much time for the main story yet. Its saving grace is the decent gameplay, high production values and some likable characters. I could recommend it for the gameplay, but not for the story.
Heroine ranking: Mistoria > Forzasleyn > Elgamisera > Lavirie = Nekol = Noelia = Patra > Others
Overall rating: 6.5/10

The last one is Psychedelica of the Ashen Hawk - an otome VN. The predecessor Psychedelica of the Black Butterfly had an interesting story premise, nice visuals and music, but unfortunately the writing was pretty poor. However, since I bought them in a bundle, I wanted to at least give the successor a try. A gothic romance in a medieval setting - what could go wrong?
Well, it could be written by that writer again, to name one. Granted, it was 'slightly' improved and there weren't that much filler episodes to finish this time around in order to progress the story. However, the writer still has a 'special talent' to take an interesting story premise and write it in the most boring way possible. Music and visuals also felt like a step down. The protagonist 'girl' was also cross-dressing and looked like a guy which make the whole thing feel a bit like Shonen-Ai. It wasn't particular romantic anyway, but still felt a bit awkward.
I actually wanted to get on the route of Hugh since he was kind of mysterious, but somehow ended up in a route of two others mass murdering half of the town. No clue how I got there and it was probably a bad end, but after hours of dreadful boredom, it felt like the perfect ending to me.
Overall rating: 5/10

I'd also recommend it. It's one of the best mixtures of slice-of-life, romance, mystery and chuuni I've read so far.

I'm going to give game a try:)

I would say 9-nine- is a pretty good game. It starts off pretty slow and pretty unremarkably, but things really pick up from episode 3 and episode 4 is a really great finale. I did a brief review of the tetralogy that you can find here.

I'm enjoying Island a lot more than I thought it would. I think that's the particular VN formula I enjoy the most- charamoeges with beautiful scenery that more importantly ultimately builds up to a greater plot. Probably why Rewrite is one of my top VNs.
Island really keeps you guessing though. Is all the scientific hypothesis jargon really true, or is it all just some grand delusions from a bunch of wishful islander kids?

 
The heroines are all great. Going off of my 5yearold Grisaia memories, Frontwing was always good at making heroines with top-notch-common-route-bantering-prowess-but-with-fundamentally-flawed-personal-issues-that-will-be-explored-in-their-routes:

 

Karen, who longs to leave the island and its outdated traditions.
 

Sara, who longs to uphold tradition and save the island.


Rinne, who believes she and Setsuna are the same Rinne and Setsuna of legend.
 
Btw, devs were generous enough to give her a whopping 1 CG without her hat:

I CANT HELP IT! YOU LOOK SO GOOD WITHOUT THE HAT!

Rinne is obviously my best gal, and so I bawled absolutely hard at her ending. Now, I would've been fine if things ended the way they did, but hoh boy, Island gains massive bonus points for:
 

Yeah, Yamato's domination in H-scenes were kinda iffy and sometimes he felt like a rapist which is off-putting, I forgot that side of him lol. 
I guess I just like sly characters in general though. Just kinda wished Shaon had more personality traits or something that made him stand out

I finished Musicus last night and I figure I should write something about it.

First off, for any of you who want to know, I can give a clear answer regarding that spoiler you were discussing earlier on in the thread.

The story as a whole is kind of what you're expecting, with a band starting from nothing and gradually moving forward to bigger venues, and while that part didn't really interest me that much since it's been done several times before, I realize it's a mandatory part of a VN such as this and it works out well thanks to a great cast of characters. They (along with the awesome soundtrack) are what really makes Musicus worthwhile, with all their individual quirks, banter and whatnot.

If I were to list any cons, these are the ones that I can think of off the top of my head:

1. No cameos from the characters of KiraKira or Deardrops. I was sure that this, being Overdrive's last VN, would bring them all together in the end, but that never happens. Kirari is briefly mentioned in dialogue, but other than that, there's nothing at all.
2. Romance is almost non-existent in all routes. They either contain little or none of it, or the route ends basically as soon as the protagonist and the girl gets together. I kinda expected it, based on previous titles and this being a music VN first and all, but I was hoping they'd focus a little more on it than in Deardrops and KiraKira.
3. A bit heavy on the drama side in one particular route. (Yes, the one I've mentioned before.) It felt a bit forced, like they really wanted to push sadness on us so they just went all out.

Musicus is no masterpiece by any means, but when it shines, it's great, and it's definitely a suitable sendoff for Overdrive. To be honest, I felt a bit empty inside once I saw the credits rolling, knowing the only way I'll get to experience this from now on is by replaying one of their older titles.

Yeah, and that's mostly what it is, but the route I mentioned stands out from the rest. I've read all of Overdrive's other VNs, and this route is quite possibly the darkest thing they've written, even compared to Bokuten.

If anyone here wants to know what happens in the route without having to read it themselves, I can try doing a summary. There will be heavy spoilers, obviously.
 
I doubt this summary alone does it justice, since the writing and music are what truly gives this route its dark ambience. In any case, despite how depressing this part of the game may be, I still don't feel like marking the censored version of Musicus as "adult" is the right call, considering the fact that there are other games and VNs out there that were given a pass despite their disturbing content.

There's one route that's pretty damn depressing due to a bunch of bad stuff happening, but I still wouldn't really say it warrants the game being marked as "adult". That said, I have yet to finish Mikazuki's route, which I assume is supposed to be the main one, so there might still be more to come.

If they bring over Hoshizora e Kakaru Hashi, it'll be the first time that a VN gets translated which I've already read in Japanese.