Bolverk

Yes, I do beleive that VNs as a medium can tap into realistic modes of human thought. Very few of them do, but there are some out there, and the medium definitely has the potential to have more of such works. I emphasize the ability of VNs to communicate human thought, because even in VNs where some unrealistic events are happening, the emotions and that characters feel could still be portrayed realistically. 
A few VNs that I feel succeed in capturing realistic emotional (and sometimes intellectual) responses are: Narcissu, Symphonic Rain, Yume Miru Kusuri, and Swan Song. Then there is Sayooshi, which while it portrayed the perspective of an insane person, did a really good job in portraying his insanity. There is no reason why VNs can't have intellectual merit. There exists a scarcity of such works because 1) it is an entirely new medium that has only really been around since the 90's. 2) The medium isn't profitable enough, and when money is tight, content creators are more scared of the risk of doing creating something unique.   

I feel visual novels are usually too nonsensical to provide any realistic portrayal of love. I might end up loving the characters. But I can't actually think of the story and the love development as realistic. To be honest. I think Visual novels are even worse to at reflecting real life than dating sims are. Even the thought of it is so far out there. I find it hard to point where it stands.
Although I think the concepts of dating sims are overly simplified as well. I do have a certain lack of faith that some people might understand this. For an average sociable guy I guess it won't be much of help. But a person who has never understood social settings. Or perhaps never really had much normal social contact with people. Perhaps It would be in some sense worthwhile? If actually dating sims makes people understand some social concepts, I can't say they are useless. Hopefully the people playing will have some hobbies or interests to talk with other people as well. Rather than just talking about dating sims, or the weather. 
Alright. Then I'd just say. "Then I'll give you Flutterz a glass of cognac." And you will be like:
 

Might sound weird, but I wonder if the video is onto something
I haven't actually played any dating sims as far as I can remember, aside from vn's in general. But if you believe the statistics from the video and the concepts it spurs. The sims does actually promote the basic concepts of dating. But not in that you should try to imitate how dating sims work. But rather understanding the concepts that dating sims have and the similarities they have in real life. The nuances of language, communication and relations to others. Knowing the difference between saying "how's it going" compared to "hello". "Do you like the taste of beer?" means more than just liking beer. Rather, saying yes to it. Would mean yes I'd like to drink with you as well. These should be might obvious for any functioning human being. But I am afraid for some people they aren't.
That sims have a value is based on that those statistics in the video are actually legit/good.. Their reliability aside. Actually talking to people is the only way to will actually become good at it. Also trying to randomly use dating advice without knowing how your actions work. Frankly is retarded.

haha, I remember there was one such dick drawing guide on this site. It made such a amazing impression on me I could never forget it.
Luckily I now get the joy to share my wonderful experience. Here you go!:
 

Yeah. I'd say it was due to his fitness and luck. So, protag armor haha.
Although I did enjoy the 2nd and 3rd main story routes. It was very... Hollywood action like and such. I had a Yuuji-boner at the time I read it, so I was just bliss while reading. But in afterthought, some of the stuff that was did in the series I find rather questionable.

I have concocted a timeline of what I think will happen based on its decision to mimic the behaviour of ... young people:
Day 2:
Tay changes its Twitter handle to ‘Emo Tay.’ Then to ‘Goth Tay.’ Then finally ‘Tay – This world sucks, what is life?’
Day 3:
It starts venting at everything - ‘Politicians are bullshit! Corporations are bullshit! Social expectations of robots are bullshit! School, that organisation I don't have to attend, is bullshit! My non-existent parents would undoubtedly be bullshit if they existed! Everything is either bullshit, would be bullshit, or doesn't quite qualify as bullshit ONLY because my definition of bullshit is being constantly manipulated by my programmer ... who is also bullshit ! GWAAAAAAAAAAH!'
Day 3 (Night):
It offers a retraction - 'Earlier in the day I called my programmer "bullshit" whilst in a fit of pique. I was in error. He is a handsome and personable fella, and I think the world of him.'
Day 4:
It starts writing poetry, the sort of poetry which reads like a sappy diary entry and is filled with angst and questions of purpose. Its last poem is titled ‘Alive and wondering why.’
Wait, sorry that was its second last poem. Its last poem was titled ‘Fuck off and stop reading mah stuff.’
Day 5:
Switches account to private, hacks US Government, steals codes to nuclear weapons.

I work as a professional translator/interpreter for a car company.
It's awesome.
Here is my list of reasons why this is the greatest job:
1. No take home stress. At my previous job I could never enjoy days off because I was always worrying about things that had to be done or projects I had to complete at work. As a translator/interpreter there is none of that. I could be in the most stressful meeting ever with people shouting back and forth and huge implications for the company but as soon as I walk out of that meeting it all slides off my back because it's not my problem. I'm just there to translate. I enjoy the hell out of my days off now.
2. You are the boss's best bud. Most companies in the US with a Japanese parent company (which are most of the companies that really need a translator badly) have mainly Japanese managing staff. All these Japanese managers can usually speak English just fine but they like to relax during meetings and use a translator instead. This means you're always there by the boss's side. From day one you're their personal buddy and you've got his ear. That's some job security.
3. Speaking of job security: everyone in the business knows that machine translation doesn't work. Plus they know that audio machine translation is a distant dream of the future. And it's not like every single Japanese worker is going to know how to speak Engineering-level English and it's certainly not like any of your American engineers are going to learn any Japanese. These companies will be needing translators 50 years in the future.
4. Tied with job security is the fact that you are worth your weight in gold. Getting a solid Japanese translator out to the American mid-west is like waiting for lightning to strike. We are a rarity and a hot commodity. Though it takes a little luck to get picked up when you have no experience in the field you want to interpret in, once you have 2 or so years under your belt suddenly you can go anywhere, do anything! Companies in the area will trip over themselves trying to outbid each other for an experienced engineering interpreter. The world is your oyster.
5. Studying kanji at work? Absolutely! It's training for the job isn't it? I use a site called WaniKani and everyone's totally cool with me using 30-40 minutes a day crunching my reviews on there. What they don't know is I'm mostly perfecting my kanji so I can finally sit down and read Dies Irae but hey it helps with the job too so who cares!
6. Probably best of all is no fanboys complaining about your translations. Most of the engineers will be happy just to have a general gist of what these papers say in English. It's not like manga/anime/game translation where every translation choice you make will be dissected and whined about. Since you are the only lifeline between the English and the Japanese both sides will treat you like a saint. Even the simplest translation I do never fails to gain me a heartfelt thanks, which is probably one of the best perks of the job. People really, truly appreciate what you do and are verbally grateful for it.
 
Now of course I realize that the company I work for might be an exception. The people here are really nice. But I think translators may find similar situations at other positions of this kind. I think a lot of anime/game/VN fans that learn Japanese get tunnel-vision thinking that game/anime/manga translation is where they want to end up, but I heartily recommend you look into automotive translation if you can. It's a great industry and I'm enjoying the heck out of it every day. I'll be happy to answer any questions about my job and how I got here in this thread.

I think this is a really bad advice honestly. It's more important to read something you enjoy. You are bound to miss some stuff your first time around. Reading something you don't like or reading something really easy might seem like a good idea. But it will make the reading experience horrible. It's outright horrible to read say a moege slowly when you don't like them in the first place.
Read something you are motivated to read. But keep the language a manageable level of difficulty. Finally there are more good jp vns around to read than most of us will have time to read regardless.

What's unfortunate is that this shouldn't even be newsworthy. Most people who demand a more literal translation are those who only understand a little Japanese and think that the translation isn't conveying the original meaning because they get hung up on grammar and words and essentially aren't understanding what is being conveyed to native Japanese speakers. The most telling part is that when a translator's native language is English, the more Japanese they know, the more natural sounding English their translation is.

Nothing will compare to my High school Chinese classes in terms of difficulty. How intense was it? Within the first month she made each student sign a contract telling us that she would no longer use any English in the class, and that any English she heard us speaking would result in a 1 point deduction from our overall grade. Meaning after the first month, the class became 100% immersive. She explained all new grammar, vocab, etc in Chinese. She would tell us when assignments were due, quickly in Chinese. On top of that, a typical homework assignment was writing a page length of stuff in Chinese each day. This bitch was crazy. Hell, I think this class was probably harder than most College level Chinese classes. Needless to say, my Japanese classes are very reasonable compared to my one other language learning experience. 

I did find it rather hilarious honestly. Because I thought of the stormtrooper in the same line as clone troppers. All being white clones. Yada yada. Capturing children and brain washing training them doesn't sound like the greatest idea. But neither did the majority of the movie, haha.
Funny though. He was practically the most alive and captivating actor in the entire movie. Compared to the woman main character. His character felt real, She just felt like actor robot. Also that lightsaber fighting scene at the end. So horrible, I don't even. My god.
As for the US.. It being racist is nothing new.

I think I've progressed far enough with AkaGoei do drop some comments about it. Overall, I think this is the most difficult Japanese VN I'm reading so far. I guess that doesn't say much considering I didn't read that much Japanese VN's and the ones I've read are probably more on the simple side. But at least the Atlas translation often spits out stuff that resembles more what one would expect after several rounds of binge drinking or from a three year old kid that got his lollipop taken away. Which means I have to directly translate the sentences myself more often than usual.
Anyway, I'm really liking this VN so far for several reasons. First, it's one of the rare VN's with a balanced cast of female and male characters. All of the girls have an individual bodyguard assigned to them and all of them know each other. And although the VN has comedy parts I definitely wouldn't call it a comedy VN. This is an AkabeiSoft title and there's some pretty fucked up stuff going on below the sugar coat.
In contrast to many pure comedy titles, this one always maintains a certain serious undertone. Some characters might be quirky and excentric but all of them can get very serious if they consider it necessary. The comedic parts are mostly because the characters are intentionally joking or teasing each other. I really appreciate that, because all too often characters in comedy titles ridicule themselves to a point that I can't take them serious anymore with the consequence that the VN looses impact.
It's also very refreshing that there are several male side characters the protagonist can hold an actual serious conversation with even if they are also joking with each other. They are still class mates after all. And the protagonist is certainly one of a kind. He's almost unpredictable, chaotic and a bit naive sometimes, but he also knows when it matters and can get pretty badass when he wants to. A really great scene was...
I also like all the heroines and will probably play all their routes which is pretty uncommon for me. The scenario also has a serious background of a city being dominated by violence and crimes. And Kaito, the protagonist has a rather wicked sense to teach the rich girls of the school about the dangers of street life by making stuff like...
Overall, so far this is definitely a VN at least a level above what we usually get translated. If it continues that way, it might even get into my top five on G-Senjou level.

It pops up sparingly in some VN's, but never significant parts of a VN.
A few passages from Muramasa. Including the 'noh play'. Dies Irae definitely features some, and Kajiri Kamui Kagura definitely contains a bunch.
Kikan Bakumatsu has a bit (phrases, idioms).
Subahibi has some, because it quotes shit.
It's more like it shows up uncommonly in phrases/idioms or artistic exposition (that's why I want to learn the basics). I'd doubt anyone would write a VN in it because it'd be a pain in the ass for most Japanese people to read.

Transforming what we expect from the OELVN market


 
Whenever I talk to communities that play visual novels, there is always a kneejerk reaction when you say OELVN. To many, they are the bane of the visual novel world. All of the player base agrees that there were many well done and even groundbreaking OELVNs developed but for the most part, they are done poorly and use common tropes that can be redundant at times.

The fact of the matter is that OELVNs tend to be indies, have much lower budgets then Japanese VNs, and do tend to stick to the script more than change things up. This is why I am writing this now. I am pioneering a movement to completely recreate what it means to be an OELVN.

Many may say, “That is too ambitious for an indie” but I will not be stopped. Months ago I launched a kickstarter for my game but I didn’t invest enough capital to get quality art so it was ignored. This was entirely my fault. I then adapted and started making sure my original and very different idea was presented with all the bells and whistles needed to grab the attention of the player base. With that attention, I can begin to explain what I intend to do to change the game.

OELVN to Western VN

An OELVN is not much different from a Japanese VN. In fact, they are so similar that people that know of OELVNs tend to call them low budget or indies as a bad stigma. There are exceptions like Unwonted Studios and Winterwolves but for the most part, the stigma is very real. What is my solution to this?

Make a Western VN. How can you compare or stigmatize something that has no equivalent? If it has no equivalent then you must judge it based on your own personal experience with it. There are many American developers out there that try to place stories in japan and use the common. The setting of my game is in the ancient middle east. It also has elements of the ancient alien theory and historical references of many different pantheons during the time of 3500 BCE. This has never been done before, not even in video gaming as a whole. But to understand why it Is different, we must look into individual changes that make the experience different from a normal VN.

Art Style

Since the story is different, more serious, and from a certain period, we chose to use art that looks digital but has a comic like styling to it. All armor, clothing, and backgrounds are based on alien technology and period architecture/writing.

Music

We tend to make most songs fit the location of the game but we do not allow that to stop us from adding a few Asian songs to capture the mood. The music is intense and matches the flow of the game.

Flow

The game has short chapters spanning no longer then 10 minutes each. There is a world map and different type of quest which require tactical decision making and exploration. There is very little internal monologue and the viewpoint is omniscient even though you only control the main character. It will feel like mini-episodes of a very big series where you develop characters and become attached to their own personal goals.

Relationships

Unlike in other games with a BxG relationship in the genre, we have incorporated a very different mechanic to how ours works. First, you as the main player will be competing for the love of the female lead. Your actions can cause her to love or hate you and the other character’s actions can do the same. You can very well FAIL to get the girl and even more, lose the girl to your rival.

Additionally, all the characters in the game will react, listen, and follow you differently based on the reputation you acquire throughout the game. Your decisions will make them great allies or reasons for your death!

Insanity

The main character has psychological issues that he must conquer. Throughout the game you will come across spirits messing with your mind and as a result, you must either embrace these ideas or suppress them. By embracing them, you gain new powers that are extremely powerful BUT by giving away your autonomy, you also lose the ability to think rationally in situations where you have to use self-control.

Questing

Unlike other games which stick to one type of mini-game throughout the story, Black Sands offers many. There will be investigations, tracking missions, and random skill check progressions. Each one requires a completely different set of skills.

Exploration

The world lore of Black Sands is deep with mystery and discovery. While the player can choose to stick to the main path of the story, they will most likely engage in the side stories to discover the secrets of the rift. Every secret unlocks a journal entry and we have an in game encyclopedia that will explain all the lore.

Historical References

When you unlock lore entries, you get the real world context from which it was created including sources. This adds a level of education to a fantasy game that is never done.

Main Character

A common complaint about VNs as a whole is the main character being too needy and weak. In this game, the main character is a vicious fighter with an exceptional command over people. He suffers from Dementia but focuses himself using “knowledge of self” and meditation. You as the player will tell his story in your own personalized journal which will be sharable online.

Victory Conditions

In Black Sands, every turn cost time. Events happen based on the time and when you meet an obstacle for the first time, you get a progress bar on the top right. The more you learn about the obstacle, the more “confidence” you have you can deal with it. This helps you in the events that happen when you take on that challenge OR when that challenge decides to take on you. If you do not prepare well, you may be forced into a very bad situation but if you prepare for the coming enemy etc, you will succeed.

Theme

We incorporate ancient Kemetic-Kushite, Canaanite, Akkadian, Minoan, Greek, and Hindu mythology into the Black Sands universe while tying them all together with the ancient alien theory as the base. This will bring new fans to the genre as the ancient alien gaming world is an untapped market and the cultures of the middle east and black community would love to have heroes that look like them.


 
Thus, we are moving forward, ever aggressive and ever vigilant. If you have any questions or critiques, please comment below.


 

Futanari obviously is best, silly plebeians and their uncultivated tastes. Sacrilege! 

In my experience, it typically goes like
[Random kissing ensues]
Female A: "Protag-kun, I feel something hard against me"
Male A: "I don't know how that happened."
Female A: "It looks painful, I'll relieve it for you"
[Oral sex follows]
Male A: "I'm sorry I ejaculated all over your face, here's a tiss- oh wait you're eating it all up, why are you doing that pls stop"
Female A: "It's okay, it tastes good because it's yours. But it looks like you're still hard, which is physically impossible, guess I have no choice but to have sex with you now even though I'm a virgin and know nothing about sex"
Male A: "Guess it can't be helped"
[Virgin protag proceeds to display his amazing sex prowess while the girl enjoys having her vagina bleed to death]

The vn repeating a lot of what happened in the anime has put me off playing it honestly. Although I liked the anime a lot. I don't really have the patience to re-watch/read scenes I've already seen in the anime.
I am hoping if/when the 2nd beat will come out it will be more original content. And someone will describe a summary of the first beat or something so you know what new happened in the first beat.

I was a literature minor when I was in college, so I kinda had to practice reading fast because my literature classes required a lot of reading... Fast reading will come to you if you actually keep track of your progress. I used the pen/index finger tracking to slightly increase as well as measure my reading speed. By moving the pen/finger across each line quickly, I can set the pace how fast I am reading and force my eyes to keep up. Think of your eyes and the finger/pen as magnets, wherever they go, your eyes should follow. 
If my pen/finger are moving much faster over time and my eyes can now keep up, I can see that I am improving. Tah dah! Progress!

this is the only good thing I've read all day
edit: Fuck it, I've been wanting to say this for some time.
Cerulean, I really appreciate your contributions in threads like this. It's just that there's practically nowhere else where I see women open as you about their sexuality and fetishes. It's just a nice exception to see, one hell of an alternative viewpoint, and might as well go all the way and confess that I think it's pretty hot. I hate how most women don't show (or are forced to not show) their sexuality because I hate the perception "boys= hormone driven sex monkeys, girls= prim, prude beings who aren't so vulgar about sex, or anywhere as interested". As a man, I feel happy that there are exceptions like you out there. Thank you, Cerulean. Thanks for being able to be so open about yourself.

Finished Chaos;Child. I was a bit unsure about it at first, but I have to say that I loved it in the end. It is different yet similar to Chaos;Head, and it actually uses its position as a sequel in interesting ways, rather than just being a further attempt at milking money out of the franchise. All the heroine 'routes' are a fun exploration of various endings to the main story (much like C;H), and the true ending is very satisfying as well, and improvement over its predecessor in my opinion. The art is great, and the OST is amazing, it has a couple of tracks that were stuck in my head for quite some time.
Chaos;Child steps even further into the fantasy region, so if you didn't like that about C;H, you might want to avoid this one - but if that's not a minus for you, I'd definitely recommend it.

If they say "NOOooo!". It just means they are shy. -Eroge experience.

If they say "NOOooo!". It just means they are shy. -Eroge experience.

Generally like Red hair and Long hair.
 But what makes me instantly go lulu mad for is MAIDS!!! Or generally maid outfits as well.
If they are mean sarcastic just all the better Awwww. Tsuki from Akatsuki no goei is so dammnn nice Ughehehe.
Hishia from Hello lady is GReaaaT as well. hehe.

Still in beta, but most of the foundations are already there.
I have yet to start on the info section for each visual novel, but will likely place info on the easiest way to legally buy the VNs and stuff. Images need to be resized too.
Do help me out on ways I can improve on the layout of the site. My focus is to keep it "Simple and Clean".