Valduran

Hmm, can't manage to get KrkExtract to repack the Gusha no Kyouben scripts without the engine (Kirikiri Z) throwing an error when any line modified by a patched file is reached. Even just repacking the script files without decrypting or altering them still results in this: GARBro can successfully extract/repack the .ks files without causing an error using the Teakamamire no Fukushuu encryption...but I can't manage to decrypt the .ks text without KrkrExtract, and GARBro throws a "being used by another process" error when I try to tell it to repack the decrypted .ks files KrkrExtract gave me. EDIT: Looks like ALL of my Akabeisoft3 games result in the same problem--even the ones that GARBro supposedly supports. EDIT2: Turns out that just tossing Krkrextract de-compiled .ks files into the "temp" dir does the trick for now. So will just focus on translating and worry about getting it to repack down the line.

I was thinking about skipping this when I read the Soleil series (charage has to be kamige level in order for me to want to touch it). Is there anything in it that the later games actually lean heavily on or mostly just minor tie-ins?

And yet, sounds pretty interesting. And I'd never heard of it. +1 Large-scale Fantasy series, GET!

I was also shocked at how bad Koiken Otome was in that regard, but then... it didn't take me long to realize it was just a bad story in general, I only kept reading long enough to confirm my suspicion the that story was definitely going nowhere fast. The art budget was decent enough that I'm kinda surprised they are able to keep producing titles without improving their writing quality. I'd expect them to be bankrupt by now.

Yeah lol. There's generally no curing a story junkie. I am one too, and its the most unchanging aspect of my personality. With VNs unfortunately there's just so much rehashed junk that its definitely easy to see how burnout can happen. Hence my honest amazement that this is your first time experiencing burnout in 7 years. I don't think its really a problem if you don't continue the VN of the Month tradition though. I just come here to see someone talking about relevant and new VNs rather than only the rare (and generally old) titles that have made it into English. Just speaking for myself I wouldn't sweat it too much if you started skipping titles which seemed highly unlikely to be interesting to you.

I know the feeling, but imo, no slump lasts forever. Its honestly more surprising that you HAVEN'T had a slump up until now, so isn't it more likely that you are just in shock over the fact that its even possible for you to not want to play VNs? lol. When something is such a huge part of your life there will always be something about it that calls you back to it in the end unless you literally grow out of it. But growing out of it is a completely different thing than burnout, and requires an actual change of who you are. Suddenly finding you don't have a desire to do it anymore with no real explanation is almost certainly just burnout. (Speaking as someone who goes hardcore on literally everything I do and am as intimately familiar with burnout as its possible for a human to be :P)

Interesting, haha. Sounds oddly similar to a villain-protagonist I write. Getting around to reading that one pretty soon here most likely so it'll be interesting to see if he can hold up to my standards. ^^ Out of curiousity, did you first read it pretty close to when you first started getting into native language VNs?

Awesome, another solid-sounding Akatsuki Works title to look forward to! Moreso due to that last comment. Words cannot describe how sad it makes me that real men are almost impossible to find as protagonists in VNs lol.

But the great Clephas doesn't strike me as someone to dismiss a title purely out of genre-bias... :X I don't like Mystery at all either. And hated every minute of having to follow a walkthrough for the detective bits. But KnS2 was worth it; the mature tone and proper care taken to make sure you cared about the mystery which was unfolding made it much more like a regular story with a mystery at its center rather than yet another example of the "Mystery Formula". It's also not horror by any definition. Just very brutal. Honestly pretty surprised you aren't more familiar with it since its very well regarded.

Speaking of Mystery, have you really not played the Kara no Shoujo series? (don't see ratings for em from you on VNDB) The first one was a bit on the slow and boring side imo, but if you stick with it I really think KnS2 deserves to be considered a VN that everyone with the stomach* for it should give a fair chance. It's really interesting from start to finish with a great sense of a period of Japanese history we don't get to see too much, along with good usage of the contrast between old-fashioned rural life and the modernizing urban society. Also, its a rare VN that actually feels entirely like a story for adults beyond the fact that it has sex scenes lol. The prequel, Cartagra was slightly more enjoyable for me than the first KnS but less refined all around. Certainly worth reading as well though. *The gore is probably not to be taken lightly (though I'm desensitized so I wouldn't be able to say how disturbing it is), and the true ending to the sequel is truly a massive gutpunch.

Well then. But yeah, it's nice that you've already voted on practically everything that might be interesting to me, gives me a more firm idea on stories that aren't really getting proper ratings due to lack of western audience.

Yep, for sure. But alas it's gonna be a (long) while. My backlog is absurdly huge on account of only just having developed my reading ability to the level of Native-Language VNs--also saving Light for later since they are the company I am looking forward to most. I haven't even read Dies Irae yet, sadly. We'll see whether or not I even get to it before the localization is released. That'll be an interesting race lol. ...I wonder how long its going to take me to catch up to how much you've read for that matter. You've cited the number you've read as somewhere around 600 I believe, and while I probably plan to skip many of the charage and more slice-of-life romance stuff that you've read over the years I'm sure that still leaves me with a fair few hundred to go on. ^^ At any rate, your blog is adding titles to my backlog faster than I can read them atm lol. But in a way that's a good thing.

That's what I like to hear lol. The "immersion high" (and the unfortunate period of coming down off it) is an experience that is truly unique to VNs, and the best sign of a great one imo . Definitely looking forward to reading it for myself.

I have to agree with Sanah, there's already enough devs making Non-ero RPGs and SRPGs, its nice to have the option for GOOD games which don't have any sort of content restriction or censorship. At the same time, there is definitely the question of whether or not they could be making more money and thus higher quality games if they dropped the H and go for steam sales or something, but I'm not really sure that's a no-brainer.

Plenty of other bloggers playing Berseria, you are the only one playing hot new VNs as they come; and since its a Light story we are talking about here, definitely deserves the attention.

Hmm yeah. It's certainly true in that sense that VNs as a medium are hard to compare with text-only mediums, but maybe Anime and Manga less so? That aside, I guess more what I'm referring to when I talk about quality writing isn't so much the ability to put pretty words on a page but the ability to craft brilliant story from start to finish using ideas in a way that stands head and shoulders above the crowd--that is the ability to "own" an idea rather than just "use" it. To give the reader's imagination an experience that they associate more with your name as a creator than they do with the genre that spawned it. To allow them to meet characters who come alive in ways that they'll not be likely to forget. Very few mainstream LN and anime writers seem to do this (Urobuchi Gen is one of the few that comes to mind). I can't speak for LNs as a whole because I haven't really explored heavily in that direction, so in this case I'm more or less judging based on the ideas contained in LNs that end up getting anime adaptations--which is far more than the number of VNs that get adaptations. Most of what I see is regurgitated variations on the same ideas that weren't all that great to begin with (admittedly for that reason I'm not really one to touch charage in VNs either lol). In short, I guess I personally judge genius based primarily on "quality and coherence of ideas", which are concepts that kinda transcend medium. So I guess my question more accurately would be phrased as: "Are VN writers/directors often better story-craftsmen as a whole than their counterparts in the LN or Anime industries? Or are we hardcore VN fans just more forgiving of mediocre writing due to the more engaging nature of the medium with all of it's elements combined?" I personally think VNs are utterly brilliant as an art form, but I'm curious to know just how much of that should be credited to "brilliant creative masterminds" as opposed to just my general appreciation for the medium as a whole with it's triple-impact combination of Prose, Audio, and Visuals and the oft-times more mature nature of the ideas contained within.

Nice list. I'm still holding off on reading the works of a lot of those guys due to my reading skills not being entirely up to snuff, but I'm absolutely looking forward to the day that I can. One thing I haven't seen you comment on (though maybe you have somewhere) is how you feel about the general level of VN writers vs. that of mainstream writers (Anime/LN/etc). One of the main reasons I personally got into VNs is that I was shocked to find so much awesome content that you'll never find in the general anime world due to mainstream writers lacking either the guts or inspiration to tell genuinely bold and unique stories with more mature elements. But having said that, I'm not yet qualified to judge whether VN writers are actually "better" or just happen to use ideas that appeal to me much more than mainstream anime/LN stuff. What do you think? Is the VN world a place for unrecognized geniuses to foster their talent unrestricted by mainstream constraints, or just a mediocre field that happens to have ideas you can't generally find elsewhere?