Bolverk

Thanks a lot.
I'll try it and, if I don't forget, I'll rate in this thread the accuracy after finishing the VN.

A lot of things comes into play in rather hilarious ways when it comes to scores in vndb.
The biggest divide is from TL readers and people who read JP.
First the English readers.
The highest scored vns are the ones that are tl'd and recommended to beginners. Beginners usually are easily impressed and give high ratings. As you read more and more, you tend to give lower scores and be more critical. So when you start to read more obscure titles, you'd give lower scores. You might or might not have scored the more obscure titles as a beginner if you read them early.
Hard to say, as later on you choose things out of your normal reading range because you'd read everything else you wanted to read.
Now to the Japanese readers.
Although not universal, most people who for some reason decided it was a good idea to learn jp. Prbly has consumed so much weeb material they wanted more. So they usually are more picky or know very well what they enjoy. Moe loves will give 10/10 to moe stuff and wise versa for edgy or chuuni stuff. Or they might be more reading everything. Overall though I'd say they give lower scores averages.
So basically. A low score title might be just low because the readers are more strict. Or it might just be bad.
If someone has good taste and recommends it, usually it's the first.
G-senjou was the first vn I read. Loved it at the time. Years later I tried reading it in JP. I found it enjoyable. But I didn't enjoy it nearly as much the 2nd time.
As a afterthought. Afterwards I didn't bother changing my vndb score for the game. And I don't think many people do either. Even if their subjective taste change with time.

A lot of things comes into play in rather hilarious ways when it comes to scores in vndb.
The biggest divide is from TL readers and people who read JP.
First the English readers.
The highest scored vns are the ones that are tl'd and recommended to beginners. Beginners usually are easily impressed and give high ratings. As you read more and more, you tend to give lower scores and be more critical. So when you start to read more obscure titles, you'd give lower scores. You might or might not have scored the more obscure titles as a beginner if you read them early.
Hard to say, as later on you choose things out of your normal reading range because you'd read everything else you wanted to read.
Now to the Japanese readers.
Although not universal, most people who for some reason decided it was a good idea to learn jp. Prbly has consumed so much weeb material they wanted more. So they usually are more picky or know very well what they enjoy. Moe loves will give 10/10 to moe stuff and wise versa for edgy or chuuni stuff. Or they might be more reading everything. Overall though I'd say they give lower scores averages.
So basically. A low score title might be just low because the readers are more strict. Or it might just be bad.
If someone has good taste and recommends it, usually it's the first.
G-senjou was the first vn I read. Loved it at the time. Years later I tried reading it in JP. I found it enjoyable. But I didn't enjoy it nearly as much the 2nd time.
As a afterthought. Afterwards I didn't bother changing my vndb score for the game. And I don't think many people do either. Even if their subjective taste change with time.

A lot of things comes into play in rather hilarious ways when it comes to scores in vndb.
The biggest divide is from TL readers and people who read JP.
First the English readers.
The highest scored vns are the ones that are tl'd and recommended to beginners. Beginners usually are easily impressed and give high ratings. As you read more and more, you tend to give lower scores and be more critical. So when you start to read more obscure titles, you'd give lower scores. You might or might not have scored the more obscure titles as a beginner if you read them early.
Hard to say, as later on you choose things out of your normal reading range because you'd read everything else you wanted to read.
Now to the Japanese readers.
Although not universal, most people who for some reason decided it was a good idea to learn jp. Prbly has consumed so much weeb material they wanted more. So they usually are more picky or know very well what they enjoy. Moe loves will give 10/10 to moe stuff and wise versa for edgy or chuuni stuff. Or they might be more reading everything. Overall though I'd say they give lower scores averages.
So basically. A low score title might be just low because the readers are more strict. Or it might just be bad.
If someone has good taste and recommends it, usually it's the first.
G-senjou was the first vn I read. Loved it at the time. Years later I tried reading it in JP. I found it enjoyable. But I didn't enjoy it nearly as much the 2nd time.
As a afterthought. Afterwards I didn't bother changing my vndb score for the game. And I don't think many people do either. Even if their subjective taste change with time.

Similar to chrono here. Wondered how and when it would be that I stopped reading vns. I haven't really do that yet. But after 8 years or so now. I can't really get into it anymore. At the very least, before I also think my goal of reading vns was a goal in itself. Because just reading vns just felt that good and enjoyable. Now. Its fun. But I can't get into it.
Haven't really turned away from otaku culture though. Reading like 50+ vols of Light Novel's each year. Just having text honestly feels more comfortable than the game-computer elements, which I find in the way. I find that hilarious tbh. Because I remember I found books the reverse when I started with vns.
Knowing myself though. I will prbly come back to vns again when I am bored of LN's. No idea when I'll totally stop though, 10 more years? haha.

The vn community doesn't condone whatever you enjoy in the vns (unless machine TL's lol). And why should it? We are just a bunch of loosely connected people who enjoy a hobby.
People starting to only read vanilla vns are doubtful to create less "dangerous" people. You might develop some messed up fetishes from playing vns. And you'll get off on this. This doesn't necessarily mean you'll feel aroused from actual people. Even less to act upon them.
Sitting on my arse all day is prbly more harmful...
 
 

Finished 凍京NECRO. It's probably not much of a surprise, given how this VN is presented, but 凍京NECRO is an example of what happens when you have way more flair than substance. Luckily for Nitro+, though - the flair is really fucking cool.
This entire visual novel is just a ridiculous budget explosion. From throw-away one-time use sprites to the numerous 3D-animated fight scenes, 凍京NECRO does all it can to impress the reader with its presentation. And for what its worth, it works for the most part - the 3D is pretty iffy, and probably downright shit by western standards, but if you can look past that it is really enjoyable. The models, animations and particle effects might look decent at best, but they do make for some really cool scenes when they all come together.
The story... is really good too, for the most part. It is fun and complex, full of crazy twist and turns in each of the four routes - but things start to fall apart a bit as soon as the plot tries to go outside the box. The story deals with life and death and what they mean - or so it'd like you to think, because it never really goes much deeper than the surface level. Just like the nonsensical sci-fi, it is there just to be entertaining rather than to send some profound message. It tries to, however, especially with the true route. Now don't get me wrong, the true route is presented in one of the coolest ways I've ever seen, and it's really exciting while it is all happening - but as soon as you stop to think about it it doesn't really make all that much sense. There is also this strange meta angle that doesn't quite stick the landing either - but it's not really given too much weight just like everything else, so it doesn't really detract from the overall enjoyment.
All in all, I've enjoyed 凍京NECRO a lot - but no matter how hard Nitro+ might try, the next Muramasa it is not.

I remember getting them both from [no linking or mentioning torrent sites]
Both worked on VNR.. Honestly I doubt you will find much use for them if you don't have at least moderate experience in jp. Cool  side effect of using the dic's is that there is no time latency to dic-check the words i VNR...
 
Jichi-sama you rock! <3

Hi everyone! I want to let you know that Unhack 2 is finally out:
http://store.steampowered.com/app/444170
Unhack 2 turned out to be the most challenging project I have ever produced. I ran into production issues that caused delay after delay. Several of them were my fault, but I learned a lot from them and will carry these lessons forward. The game has mixed reviews so far, so we will see if it turns out to be well or poorly received.
Thank you !

That moment when you realize OP quotes everyone; besides you. 

Whops Thought I got all of them.
Thanks! Already have Natsu no Kusari on my list, but Dra†KoI seems cool.
What more do you need.
 

That moment when you realize OP quotes everyone; besides you. 

I heard he once transplanted a tree into another man's garden.

I was very vocal about my passion for visual novels and porn during my uni years too, so I'm actually impressed by the guts of the guy, and agree with him on the philosophical level at least. The only thing our society achieved by repressing sexuality for arbitrary reasons is more mental illness and stress. An according to Freud, all forms of art are just sublimation of our sexuality anyway, so I don't see why a drawing of sex couldn't be considered it.
...That said, you won't overturn thousands of years worth of societal imprinting with a single class, so the reaction was pretty much unavoidable. You probably could have tried to soften the presentation by obfuscating the image a little, or giving them some historical Japanese "pornographic" art like I linked earlier and introduce that as an evolution of that. Anyway, it's a complicated thing that will automatically make a lot of ppl upset if not presented well... and uh, I'm not sure if high school is the best place for it, given that our society arbitrarily restricts people your age from even consuming erotica yet... still better be a weirdo than live as a pretender!

How dare you show porn at class! Here's some traditional Japanese art for you.
(NSFW)
 
 

The actual limit is set at 20k posts, after which you will be personally visited by @Tay. He will apologize profusely for not working on improving the site enough, get shitfaced on the flask of distilled shitposting* he always carries in his right pocket, then proceed to hit on you awkwardly while setting up a portable wrock karaoke station. At this point @solidbatman will join the party, only to bow out 3 seconds later due to a flashback to an early Fuwa party back when he was admin. In his place, @Down will teleport in using a cutting-edge device he worked with CERN to create, bringing with him two magical girls from the 2d realm. He will speak with a voice of thunder and invite you to an orgy. Should you accept, you must walk three steps forward, sidle leftwards for exactly 3.5 seconds, then throw yourself onto the ground the hardest you can. If done correctly, you will transfer to @VirginSmasher's house briefly (he will call you a fag), then fall into a harem isekai anime. After that, all bets are off.
*contains Okami's pure, untainted tears, nail clippings from the man he killed (in self-defense!), and is spiced with @OriginalRen's salt

Hey guys, I just finished playing Eiyuu Senki Gold, which is the first untranslated VN I've read all the way through and I liked it a lot, and on this occasion I'd like to thank my friends and family, as well as my now complete harem of gender-bent historical waifus, without them I wouldn't have made it that far.
Seriously though, it was really gratifying and I'm gonna keep at it, actually I got Kami no Rhapsody and am now proceeding to get mind raped by the exposition scene (Sorry about that, mr. Narrator, I might have to do some research on that one, I don't understand shit)

Ren for Prez @OriginalRen
Credits to nosebleed for making this poster 
 

@Asonn said I should post this shit so here it goes.
 

Kaguya's 4k post count thread is a 7/10 thread. It has great moments, yes, but overall it isn't all that impressive. IMHO it does not deserve very high a place in the hallmark of post count threads.
Have some Sakurider:
 

You are not using the regex in ITH but in TA. ^^
You probably have a "Plugins" folder in your TA main directory. You can probably also find a "Replacements" folder in there in which a "names.txt" text files exists. This is used for regular expressions. Normally, it's used to substitute kanji names with romaji (hence the name), but you can use it for any substitution purpose really, which also includes simply the removing of garbage characters.
Every line in the names.txt is a regular expression with the regex first, then a tab, then the substitution. In my very simple examples here, the substitution would simply be nothing.
If you haven't installed TAplugin, you can also use the build-in substitution function of the core TA. It's essentially the same, but this time the file is located in the "dictionaries" folder as "UserDict.txt" and you can even use a GUI menu in TA itself to edit it (Tools --> Substitutions...").
The difference between names.txt and UserDict.txt is when and how it's applied. All UserDict expressions are read into memory at the time you open TA. If you have too much expressions in your file, TA needs longer to start up. But that also means that the UserDict.txt  substitutions are way faster than the ones you define in names.txt.
UserDict substitutions are applied before TA does anything else with the clipboard string. That means you won't notice it. (Before silly me knew about this feature, I always wondered why TA does some black magic with certain phrases. I later noticed I unknowingly installed a predefined UserDict ^^).
TAplugin substitutions can be computed before parsing or before translating. That means that the "Original Text" window will always contain the unaltered string (except you also use UserDict, be aware of that) while the translations will always be computed after applying the regex (obviously). You can choose whether to do the substitution before or after parsing the string with Mecab and JParser. The option is in your Taskbar Tray, search for the TAplugin icon.
I usually use names.txt because I like to have the option to (de-)activate specific regular expressions on the fly. You can deactivate everything by commenting out the line with an * and saving the text file with your editor of choice. Since the UserDict file is loaded into memory when TA initializes itself and not every time the clipboard updates, you can only deactivate substitutions as a whole during runtime.
By the way, VNR also has this feature. But it's a little bit clunkier here because the expressions are not saved in a text file but on the VNR server. TAHelper also uses a text file for substitutions. I don't think anyone uses this tool anymore though.

Mm the two pillars of time-consuming. Action info-dumps and alt-history. I have gotten in to them once or twice with Muramasa and Bakumatsu, but not interested enough to want to do them again soon. They are satisfyingly interesting though.
---
Reread a bit of Kami no ue no Mahoutsukai.
It's a mystery, but on top of that it's a case where the it's more about the characters making interesting speeches and taking interesting action and the whole layout of the story to be baffling uncommon, rather than trying to have the drama be realistic.
It's a story which makes sense against it's own rules, even though it's hard to relate it to reality.
Because of the strong prose and dialogue in important scenes, it'd be considerably difficult to translate. I don't even want to try translating it, since for so much of it, it's not just what they say, it's how they say it which is cool.

Completed Hanachirasu.
In many ways I think this is pre-taste to what to come if I read muramasa. Considering hanachirasu and muramasa is written by the same dude. Narahara
Really good vn honestly. I played this one before about a year or two ago. But I couldn't get into it. The damn combat and info-dumps took forever to read. The pace felt so damn odd. I just couldn't get into it. So I ended up stalling it.
In meantime I read the Book of Five Rings. Surprising how many of the similarities with it and hanachirasu. Some of the info-dumps reads like just out of the book. I recommend to read the book if you feel like reading hanachirasu. Perhaps muramasa as well, as he wrote the script in that vn as well.
When I started reading hanachirasu again now it was a lot more enjoyable. Rather than the standard template of fighting scenes. What movements the characters do and fight is described.
The game gives you info-dumps on martial art swordplay. How it works, the different styles and how they fight. I honestly found this really refreshing. You put yourself into the system the different attacks. And you feel a lot more depth into the combat. Because you know what kind of movements the characters would do. This is makes the combat feel more like a actual martial art. I liked that realistic element. But it does make it somewhat tiresome to read at times.
There is also the alt-history info-dumps.. I am not entirely satisfied in how well understood the details. So many prefectures, cites, dates etc that has some meaning. But I don't know the importance because I am not native, nor have I studied the history/geography of Japan. I have rather mixed feelings over that. I could have googled all the stuff and read myself up on most of it, but it would take a while. So i didn't bother at the time. There is a time when the time put in isn't really worth it in terms of depth. 
Still I found the setting enjoyable. With the difference in how Japan lost. And how the culture and such was affected. Interesting and fun. I found the setting rather silly when I read about it in the synopsis on vndb. But after reading the alt-history dump I felt it was rather nicely done and interesting. So I suppose the end result is close enough.
So in terms of writing, in the end it's rather more descriptive. Goes more into details than you would normally expect. But that's more a choice of style than anything. Nothing intrinsic bad about it. But you have to be aware of what it is.
More standard stuff about the vn. It has good art, music is quite good. Writing and comedy has it's own style, and it's good. Protag is an awesome asshole. Ending gave me feels, straight uguu in the stomach and made me sore in the throat. Goood stuff.

A lot of OELVN's have some side gameplay element. Unless it's well-integrated or unobtrusive that's a turn off for me, OELVN or JPVN.
 
This is because the JPVN's we know about are commercial releases, because of that, there's almost always a certain standard of conformity. If you go to japanese doujin games you get a similar increase in breath of possible story types and style choices.
There are many different kinds of stories and some just don't interest me. Romcom's, school slice of life, punky cyberpunk, intrigue, modern world historical, pure mecha are all out.
It's hard to tell whether a story is good. The best way is by reliable word of mouth, so you know that the work will either have something you'd enjoy, something good you'd appreciate, or something good to appreciate.
The best I can do when I see an advertisement in a genre I'm interested in, is to look for hints that the author has an idea of what they're doing. Example: Elisa the Innkeeper
If a story is a type that interests me, and I see a sign that author looks like they have a handle on the story, then I would consider reading the story or supporting the kickstarter. Or just general positive reception from people who aren't blindly fanboying. Such is the case for One Thousand Lies, which I have firmly backlog'd.
 

Completed Hanachirasu.
In many ways I think this is pre-taste to what to come if I read muramasa. Considering hanachirasu and muramasa is written by the same dude. Narahara
Really good vn honestly. I played this one before about a year or two ago. But I couldn't get into it. The damn combat and info-dumps took forever to read. The pace felt so damn odd. I just couldn't get into it. So I ended up stalling it.
In meantime I read the Book of Five Rings. Surprising how many of the similarities with it and hanachirasu. Some of the info-dumps reads like just out of the book. I recommend to read the book if you feel like reading hanachirasu. Perhaps muramasa as well, as he wrote the script in that vn as well.
When I started reading hanachirasu again now it was a lot more enjoyable. Rather than the standard template of fighting scenes. What movements the characters do and fight is described.
The game gives you info-dumps on martial art swordplay. How it works, the different styles and how they fight. I honestly found this really refreshing. You put yourself into the system the different attacks. And you feel a lot more depth into the combat. Because you know what kind of movements the characters would do. This is makes the combat feel more like a actual martial art. I liked that realistic element. But it does make it somewhat tiresome to read at times.
There is also the alt-history info-dumps.. I am not entirely satisfied in how well understood the details. So many prefectures, cites, dates etc that has some meaning. But I don't know the importance because I am not native, nor have I studied the history/geography of Japan. I have rather mixed feelings over that. I could have googled all the stuff and read myself up on most of it, but it would take a while. So i didn't bother at the time. There is a time when the time put in isn't really worth it in terms of depth. 
Still I found the setting enjoyable. With the difference in how Japan lost. And how the culture and such was affected. Interesting and fun. I found the setting rather silly when I read about it in the synopsis on vndb. But after reading the alt-history dump I felt it was rather nicely done and interesting. So I suppose the end result is close enough.
So in terms of writing, in the end it's rather more descriptive. Goes more into details than you would normally expect. But that's more a choice of style than anything. Nothing intrinsic bad about it. But you have to be aware of what it is.
More standard stuff about the vn. It has good art, music is quite good. Writing and comedy has it's own style, and it's good. Protag is an awesome asshole. Ending gave me feels, straight uguu in the stomach and made me sore in the throat. Goood stuff.