Infernoplex

Ahahaha I made some screenshots from in-game (posted as an edit in my previous post) but honestly, this is not my cup of tea, I am not into raising simulations. Though I can definitvely see reasons why some people like this type of games.

Well ... I will be damned, you have brought some new wisdom upon me ... https://techraptor.net/content/e3-2016-sekai-project-recap This is ... rather interesting, I didn't know about this at all and this is literally the first time I am seeing this. Wow ... I don't know what to say anymore.

??????? What are you talking about?

I will be honest here and I will say that I didn't really check the numbers for Sakura titles before my previous comment (I know, I am a bad man for speaking out statistics without even looking at them xD) ... I do check on SteamSpy from time to time and I was quite sad seeing Tokyo Babel and some other VNs having really low sales. I know SteamSpy has a margin of error but I still use it as a kind of an indicitation on how many copies did some games manage to sell. From my memory - Nekopara Vol. 1 had the most sales compared to the other two (Vol. 0 and Vol. 2). As for Sakura titles, I don't remember their stats and I didn't really look into them at the time because I wasn't interested in how good their sales were but I trust your word on it, Winged Cloud made some serious profit on Sakura franchise. You are probably right on that statement about reasons behind Sakura Spirit's success.

Ofcourse it doesn't work on Windows 7 xD Look at the time when the game was released. You need DOSBox to run this game on Windows 7, I will try running it later Edit: Okay, I have tested it, it works, I can confirm that I can run it through DOSBox on Windows 7 64-bit and here are some screenshots from the game (English confirmed)

A little bit of googling brought me this: http://www.abandonia.com/games/181/ Screenshots are in English so I guess that's the English-language beta version xD

You make a good point. It's actually interesting why that still didn't happen. Winged Cloud essentially doesn't even have any kind of competition and that's why their ecchi VNs aren't improving in any way, they can just repeat the formula over and over again. There's nobody to compete with them. If it had a competition I believe we would be watching a totally different story. I am not going to say anything about Nekopara since I didn't play it, but if I am not mistaken, Nekopara only has 3 volumes so far and its art is way better then Sakura VN series + it has e-motion. Another thing worth mentioning is that Nekopara isn't really an OELVN. I mean it came out at the same time as the Japanese version but it isn't OELVN as far as I know. On the other hand, Winged Cloud is an English VN developer and they are just using anime-style drawings to lure the fanbase. Speaking of Nekopara, I think it outsold any Sakura title by a considerable margin. From what I have heard, it sold more than 200K copies on Steam, not counting the Denpasoft store. I don't know the exact numbers for each volume but I know Nekopara was a smash hit definitively. Pretty much that, it seems that it is working for them.

The whole cast of Bible Black was good in my opinion, not just the witch blondie you are speaking of The execution was just perfect, I like VNs of that type that have lots of bad endings and have some sense and dialog choice making that lead you to the sometimes unexpected (and sometimes expected) logical conclusions ... Yes, it's considerably easier to focus on a specialty or how I like to call it "fetish sexual content of the VN" ... Sometimes that's hardcore rape sex, sometimes that's NTR stuff, sometimes it's loli/shota stuff, sometimes it's older women, sometimes it's incest stuff, etc. There's lots of variety and some Japanese companies just keep releasing VNs with the same sexual content. You could say that "they specialize in that particular fetish".

The packaging should be on the engine-side of things. I don't see a reason why a developer would change the packaging and compressing of the VNs developed in the same engine but it could be possible that they are doing it (to prevent hackers from getting the files, I guess ... That's the whole reason we have these kind of encrypted archives in the first place) ... I didn't test any VNs by the mentioned developers so I don't know what engines are they using. The latest engine that I tried fiddling with was YU-RIS and I managed to get the scripts but just like you I can't read the files, in a meaningful way at least. From all of the developers you mentioned I am really interested into CATTLEYA, Miel and Lilith Soft. Especially CATTLEYA, they have some insanely good artists! I will need to check if I can extract and read the script files from their VNs! If I am not wrong, they are all using KiriKiri? Edit: I have just remembered, .xp3 is associated with KiriKiri, so yeah, they are definitively in KiriKiri ... I will need to check them out all.

Hmmm, true, there is actually space for that in the Bible Black's story, it could be expanded, I can definitively see a way to improve it with more character development and maybe more ****** up situations, I can definitively see a potential in that ... But alas, as you said, there's little chance of it ever happening ...

There was no need for an extended epilogue in my opinion. That VN was perfectly fine where it left off, anything after the so-called "good ending" would just be needless and not fitting in the original flow of things. With the sequel they released they just managed to anger me with the awful voice actors and totally wrong storyline. I don't even consider the so-called sequel as a "Bible Black", it's more of a bad fan-fiction doujin in my opinion. As for a remake, I don't think it's really necessary, the original art in Bible Black still looks good to me, now after I have played some more VNs from that period I definitively see Bible Black as a much better looking VN compared to many G-Collection translated bishoujo VNs. But if we compare it to today's standards, I definitively see what you mean, maybe Empress should give us a remake with the new art style Sei Shoujo developed, I like it very much so I would gladly pay for a remake if it were to be released or kickstarted for that matter.

Ahahaha, what a coincidence then It's a shame though that the so-called "sequel" sucked quite badly.

Yup, my thoughts exactly, I think the VN market will shrink in the next 5 years due to oversaturation and bad quality VNs ... Ofcourse, we will still have new releases but it will be significantly less and many of those releases will probably be of a lower quality. I didn't play Sakura Dungeon but I have heard it introduced some fun gameplay elements, I guess it's better than the usual Sakura stuff. Weren't they always in the VN market just after the money? xD I had an impression since like the 4th Sakura VN that they are just milking the stuff into oblivion. It isn't bad the first time you play it but if it repeats itself too much then it becomes boring and monotone. Funny thing is, and I will be honest here - Sakura VNs were the first OELVN that I tried to play and the only reason I bought one of those is because I was actually in love with the art itself, rarely do I see OELVNs with decent art, this one was actually quite good looking, it's a shame for the artist though, such a waste of a potential Hmmm, I don't think that analogy works in this case, I don't think Sakura VNs are controversial at all, the point is that Winged Cloud doesn't bother to improve the series in any way and when they make a one step forward (Sakura Dungeon), after that they make at least three steps back (Sakura Maid) ... So it's not about controversy, it's about Winged Cloud milking the series until it goes dry like a cash cow.

An interesting topic, in my opinion Whenever I think about this question, I always get back to "Why did I start reading visual novels in the first place?" ... Back in 2010 I didn't know what VNs were and I stumbled upon one randomly browsing on the Internet, looking for some games. And then on one of the pirate sites I saw a VN that looked like some hentai bondage anime and was genuinely interested in what it was all about so I decided to check it out. At that time I was already a casual anime fan and I liked anything that was presented in anime-style 2D drawing. And, oh boy, am I glad I did decide to try that VN out! Looking back on it now, I think that VN left a major impact on me due to the circumstances in which I was at that point of time. I was still in Middle School and puberty was hitting me hard. I was thinking a lot about sex and being an idiot that I was at that time, by chance I was looking at some PUA stuff and later on I even decided to check out the occult mumbo-jumbo to see if there's anything that could help me score some chicks. Needless to say, all of that was in vain and I wasn't really into trying to even test some of the given solutions provided by either the PUA manuals or the occult mumbo-jumbo bullshit. But I still found it interesting to read even though I knew it doesn't help my cause in any way. And all of that kind of left me in a perfect state to go through Bible Black. I never heard of Bible Black before that. I didn't even watch the H-anime of it even though I was into hentai porn at that time. The name of the VN just screamed to me "Play me!". I mean, it sounds very occult. It's Bible, but Black Bible which kind of sounds like an occult version of the Holy Book which kind of interested me a lot. I thought it was going to be some short flash hentai game (in that period of time I saw a lot of flash hentai games). But contrary to my expectation, it came in a format of a visual novel and I wasn't a heavy reader at that time so it kind of surprised me but I decided to go through it anyway. Fast-forward to today - I think Bible Black is certainly one of the best visual novels that I have read so far (which isn't a lot by the way xD I think I read like 30 VNs at max, and there's like more than 100 in my wishlist, not mentioning the popular mainsteam VNs that I still haven't read). The story and the setting was just P-E-R-F-E-C-T to my case! I genuinely liked it for what it was, I still think Sei Shoujo made a masterpiece with that one even though it's widely regarded in the community as a plot-less nukige. To get back on the topic of the thread, and why I have said all of this - Between the good story and good hentai sex (and/or ecchi scenes), my preference is always somewhere in the middle, it would be a perfect solution if it were in proportions of 50%/50%. Or in best case scenario - If the sex scenes are overpowering the story, they are somewhat meaningful and a part of the plot and they don't destroy the immersion in any way. And that's only if we are talking about nukige or fetish-sex oriented VNs. So yeah, for me it depends on that aspect mostly. But if the VN is not aiming to be a nukige - Then by all means it must provide a rather good story, scenario, characters and setting to make it entertaining to read through. Usually in this kind of VNs I don't find sex scenes interesting at all so I wouldn't even feel bad if they were somehow cut out (they could even imply in text that "it happened", no need for CGs and unnecesary stupid lines for sex scenes). For that reason, some of the early bishoujo titles that I have read didn't manage to amaze me like Bible Black did. They lacked in delivering that impact due to them being slow and at some points rather boring to read through. That's why it's harder to create a good story-wise VN than a nukige. And it's hard to create a nukige with a decent plot. And with nukiges you even have many different tastes so it's hard to cater to everybody when developing one.

My theory is that it has to do something with the missing fonts ... May I know which two VNs you were trying out? I have the same problem and I can't figure what's going on and I am inclined to believe it's probably font-related but I can't figure out how to find out which font is missing.

They cater to a very specific demographic. I have looked into the matter a little bit more and apparently the whole Sakura series VNs have cultivated a kind of a cult-type fanbase and they are an essential part of the gear machine that drives the production of these VNs. So, yeah, there are people who enjoy these type of VNs but from what I am gathering, it seems that it's considerably smaller fanbase then it used to be. Winged Cloud still sells these very well but the sales are getting smaller and smaller which is kind of natural in my opinion considering how Winged Cloud just keeps spamming these Sakura titles like on a lean-production.

My very first read VN xD It's basically what got me into VNs ... I have yet to find a VN similiar to it, that has somewhat interesting plot + fetish sex/hardcore stuff, Sei Shoujo is a genius in my opinion

I've edited the post once I realised the mistake xD Yup, that's the one I've played ...

I did ... and I want to forget about it. I think they are called AJTilley now. Edit: It's vice-versa, they were called AJTilley, now they are Dharker Studio, just checked now, I mixed it up in my mind.

They surely aren't wasting time: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=768202390 I'd spam this with "No Thanks/Not Interested" but I am afraid I'd be in a huge minority, so I ain't even gonna bother. The description is mind-boggling though: Good luck ladies and gentlemen, and enjoy your Sakura

That's actually interesting, definitively something to look forward to

That's the problem I am also trying to fix. Did you try switching the encoding to SHIFT-JIS? And using Notepad++?

Unrelated but I have an idea what MangaGamer could try to pickup in the following year (or perhaps the year after xD): Shinsou Noise ~Jushin Tantei no Jikenbo~ From the looks of it, I can definitively see some high quality and the developer of it is a new company called Azurite (which is a collaboration between Liar-soft and Silky's Plus and we all know MangaGamer is partnered with Liar-soft) ... Everything becomes more interesting when we see who else is working on the project: Staff: Scenario - Myougaya Jinroku (Worked on Cannonball, Forest and from what I see on VNDB, Psycho-Pass) - Nogi Funasato (Gahktun, Sona-nyl, Kindred Spirits on the Roof and a bunch of others) - Unabara Nozomu Character Design and Artist: - Hamashima Shigeo (Eroge, euphoria, No Thank You!, Maggot Baits, etc.) Definitively looks like something I see MangaGamer picking up sometime in the future, all the names just scream MangaGamer to me.

I like this kind of threads, it's insightful, I always learn something new from these lists and discussions xD I checked all of these titles on VNDB and some seem to be just pure nukige (5th and 10th on this list gave me those nukige vibes) ... Other titles are interesting and the mentioned Inochi no Spare would probably be the first title that I would read (if only I knew Japanese xD) ... I am more into dark or depressing stories. Utsuge is my cup of tea definitively.