Swim Swim

I dont like the concept of true heroines, feels like other routes waste of time and have to treat them like "what if?" and of course one cant help but disappointed if not fav girl got that status

I just finished it tonight.
I liked it so much more than the other Yuzusoft I read, Dracu-Riot. In fact, I liked it more than I thought I would in general.  It had a lot of really good themes related to personal growth and relationships.
Shuuji was a very solid protag that emphasized the personal growth thing very well. Thought he was gonna be a simp the whole story.
As far as the routes as a whole, I liked how they covered very different themes. I also liked all the datable heroines were basically nice girls.

 
Route rankings:
1) Tsumugi - Had the most unique storytelling. Had some nice emotional moments and development.
2) Nene - So long but quite good. Went in ways most won't be expecting.
3) Wakana- BRAVEMAN. Also generally nice and feel good. No issues, just a fun short romance.
4) Meguru- I liked how it covered the little things of making a relationship work. And it involved the OC as a whole most. Had some nice feelsy scenes. Brought down by Meguru being kinda annoying sometimes.
5) Touko - Had some interesting/funny scenes but was kinda forgettable

Main Heroine rankings:
1) Wakana- I really enjoyed her honesty. It was fun and refreshing, she knows how to have a good time but also when to be serious with real advice. I kinda wish she had at least a chapter or 2 more in her route.
2) Tsumugi - Her and Nene is pretty close. I honestly think Tsumugi wins cuz I liked her route very slightly more, and I kinda prefer her more motherly vibe.
3) Nene - Not too far behind. Obviously the main heroine with all the shilling. She had some surprising depth I enjoyed. Sometimes a bit too childish/immature for my liking which only brings her down very slightly.
4) Meguru - She had potential to be my #1 character. She had interesting depth, a usually fun-ish personality, some really nice moments in her route, and the nerd thing was nice. Unfortunatley she's easily the one to be the most annoying in comedy, both in and out of her route.
5) Touko - I sometimes like tease-y characters. But for some reason she felt even shallower than most other characters of her type. She does give good advice and I guess she had a plot reason for being how she is but her route didn't make her that interesting to me.
 
Other notes:
-Side characters weren't too bad. Cool dad character, cool bro characters, kinda funny teacher, a few other interesting ones.
-Most of the humor was hilarious. Some of it was annoying usually Meguru being obnoxious or characters unnecessarily getting mad of Shuuji
-I actually quite liked the OST. Though mostly the slice of life theme, plus a few character themes like Nene/Tsumugi/Wakanas. And a few of the feels songs, especially Setsunakute.

Overall.. 8.5/10, Will probably round out to 9. I have a feeling no other Yuzusoft VNs will have storytelling even close to what some of the routes did though...

I first started writing this in like 2018 and I finished half of it now but I didn't do it the way I was planning back then and it's a bit of a disjointed mess. I hope it's good enough anyway.

-
There have been some arguments as to what the definition of a visual novel should be, and that's well and good. But let's look at it from the other direction: what works should our definition of visual novels include?
Let us begin our journey with a silly, myopic statement I will nevertheless repeat until @Palas finally calls a hit on me: Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney is not a visual novel.
Okay, bullets fired, I feel better already. But why am I trying to define the boundaries of the visual novel category to exclude the pretty good adventure game series Ace Attorney, and what kinds of criteria am I using? Furthermore, why would anyone disagree with me when I am obviously right?
...Okay, let's back up a bit. Why do I care so much about categories at all?
Categories
Categories are useful because they allow us to make predictions about something assigned to that category. In the visual novel community, there are there are several important predictions to make:
1. I am likely to enjoy this work if it executes its aesthetic well
2. I would consider a person who reads/plays/likes this more a part of the community than one that does not
3. I would probably enjoy talking to someone who reads this work {about visual novels}
We can see straight away that different parts of this would be important to different people. If you want to be part of a close-knit community, getting 2 and 3 right matters a lot. If you can find the visual novels you enjoy without community assistance, 1 matters little.
The VN category helps us determine what things are acceptable to discuss, and what things are not our (main) concern. Similarly, the category helps us determine what people will be in our community, and what people will not. It's generally more entertaining to discuss things you care about, and it's better when the people you discuss with are more in tune with you. As such, there are real stakes, and real reasons to want to avoid being maximally inclusive.
But what draws people to VNs, and what does that draw mean for their desired definition of the VN category? Let me attempt a list of categories:
Archetypes of attraction to VNs
Weebs
The Weeb likes some part of Japanese culture. The Weeb is very skeptical and/or dismissive of visual novels not made in Japan, though the Weeb might make an exception for things made in Korea or China (Indonesia is probably too Western, however). If we asked the Weeb, the main problem with the visual novel category right now would be that too many people see fit to include a flood of shitty EVNs. The Weeb might grudgingly accept Katawa Shoujo depending on the Weeb's other preferences.
Moefuck
The Moefuck reads visual novels because they really like cute girls or boys. Often personal aesthetics play a big part here and specific preferences are hard to predict, for example certain Moefucks may reject an entire artist or company due to the artstyle in their works being unacceptable. The Moefuck cluster is often seen as an amorphous, rainbow-vomiting blob ruining visual novels by the more seriously afflicted storycucks, but in truth there is more variation in it than they may expect. Moefucks are not necessarily hostile to works with serious stories, they just prefer those stories to also have cute girls.
Storycucks
The Storycuck wants to experience good stories, and finds VNs to be a source of such stories. In terminal cases, the Storycuck may not be able to deal with the large amount of filler in many visual novels and bounce right out into the community periphery after initially being hooked by some particularly well-paced VN. The perfectly horrible case is the Storycuck that is too distracted to watch shows, unable to get into books due to lack of visual stimulus, yet also unable to deal with SoL content. Is there any being more cursed? Anyway, I digress. The Storycuck doesn't really care that much about medium conventions like moe or superficial presentation style or whatever: they want a compelling narrative. If we ask a Storycuck, one problem with the visual novel category right now is that it doesn't admit other related genres like walking simulators, or things like Actual Sunlight and To The Moon. Their perspective on more extreme extensions like Phoenix Wright or even JRPGs will depend on their evaluation of gameplay.
Degenerate Fappers
These gender-neutral guys just wanna have fun, in a way that generally requires at least one hand to be free for use. You're unlikely to actually see pure Fappers in the community as they don't really have stories to discuss. I'd try the f95zone or whatever if I were looking. In mixes with other types, this manifests as disinterest in anything that does not have porn. In their eyes, if it's got no ero, it has no place calling itself a VN — after all, if it can't be fapped to, there's no point in reading it!
Ero-JRPG fanboys
So now you're thinking to yourself - these guys (still gender-neutral) have got to have a lot of overlap with the Degenerate Fappers. I agree, but I think it's worth separating out the two. The Degenerate Fappers don't really have a need for the visual novel category because of their DF association — they'll be arguing mostly from another type's perspective, with a modifier of Horny — but the Ero-JRPG fanboys have a lot to lose if their objects of passion are cut out of the VN category. Why? Because the wider JRPG community often has a serious intolerance of porn in their games. There _are_ places that specify in just Ero-JRPGs [nekohen], but there aren't that many games in the category, and focus for some may be less on the story contents (often machine translated!) and more on the gameplay (ui only patches!) and porn. This leads to wishing to classify Ero-JRPGs like Toushin Toshi II, Evenicle, etc. as VNs despite them being basically equivalent to your average JRPG if one ignores the sex scenes. The pure Ero-JRPG fanboy doesn't really like to read for long stretches without interaction, and if it could remove something from the definition, it would probably pick first choice-free visual novels, then extensionally VNs with few enough choices to be bothersome.
Autists
The motivation of the Autist when it comes to the visual novel category is that it be clear and defined by a definition that is as Not Bullshit as possible. This is a meta-motivation that may cause people to go against the naive interests of their other types. For example, observe the Storycuck Zaka's high Autism interaction as he proclaims walking simulators should not be considered VNs, despite him having liked Gone Home quite a bit and being interested in more of the genre. The Autist's greatest gripe is when people goddamn try to shove things in the FUCKING category that obviously don't fit PLEASE STOP IT DAMN YOU.
VN Evangelists
The VN Evangelist wants to spread the word of visual novels by any means possible, and is not afraid to butt heads with some stuffy Autist if they have to. They can and will use imprecise language like "it's like playing an anime, man", wide definitions (expect Phoenix Wright to be on their list of 'VNs' to play for beginners), and such villainy to attempt to get more people into visual novels. A community member in favor of more exclusion may cringe at their methods and predict that they will overwhelmingly attract annoying orbitals who will finish DDLC or whatever and then fuck up discussion with their terrible, uninformed opinions. The Evangelist will tell said member to loosen the fuck up and not be so elitist, and who knows maybe DDLC-kun will be a productive member of the community one day NOT THAT THEY AREN'T ALREADY BUT ANYWAY. And so on. The VN Evangelist wishes more things were on vndb in general so it could have more arguments to get people to try other 'VNs' out.
Artistes
The Artiste is probably making a VN. Or two. It's got culture up to here. VNs are a medium, but it's so boring if you just take the conventions for granted, right? They want to break and remake in a Shivan storm of creation, never settling for the mediocrity of the established form. They resent criteria that restrict their medium-busting ambitions, and would like for you to abandon your silly notions of traditional presentation methods. The Artiste wants you to fucking chill out on insisting on any definition, but okay can we have like, The Walking Dead in the category please? (Zaka: No.) Oh and Actual Sunlight should definitely be in the category. (Zaka: Sure)
Incredibly half-arsed conclusion
Speaking as a person who is a Storycuck and Autist, but has low amounts of Weeb, Moefuck, and Horny, I think we should have a somewhat restrictive definition of visual novels, but we should welcome diverse artstyles and embrace EVNs. As I don't value gameplay highly, I consider the _choiceless visual novel_ the best way to ground the category, even though this is arguably ahistorical. Choices are fine, intrusive gameplay only good if it serves the narrative, and things that are OBVIOUSLY JRPGs FOR CHRIST'S SAKE should frankly just be taken out of VNDB right this minute. That said if something is very close to a VN and also story heavy and honestly it kind of reads like a VN? fuck it IS a VN fuck you include Actual Sunlight actually... then uhh yeah... Maybe we can compromise my ideals.
—But your reasons for being into VNs may be very different. And this is why we must fight. I can only hope I will one day prevail, or at least see Actual Sunlight (kino) included on VNDB. Until then, I will attempt to appeal to the Autism in both of us to at least get a sensible — if fragile — boundary established.

Understandable decision. Having to rely on the erratic Steamquisition to sell your titles can certainly be quite frustrating. And unlike MangaGamer or Sekai they don't have their own established shop site. Though it's nice to hear that they still want to translate some rare hand picked titles in future. The market is a bit oversaturated anyway, so getting some rare pearls instead of just a bunch of mediocrity doesn't sound too bad.

> moege
> bad
I don't see the contradiction

This is just another case that proves visual novels don't belong on Steam at all and the reason I will no longer buy any visual novel off of Steam.
Also the cut content is the prologue, common route and 3 character routes, you jump straight into Himeguri Taruhi route.  This is worse censorship then If My Heart Had Wings or any MoeNovel title.

Once again good video there, although you did miss Sakuramori release though. About Genesis, well it surely would have a lot of sex scenes seeing that even VNDB categorized it as nukige, so yeah I'll pass it. As for Alka, rather than both of Miagete FD and Kud Wafter my focus is on whether they can keep their pace for Reflection Blue later or not, but of course the new projects are always welcome. For Saya no Uta, I can't comment on that other than JAST should do some checking before distributing the hardcopy. Speaking about hardcopy, I did remember Aokana hardcopy KS and actually Switch release here is actually one of their promise back at KS, so nice to see that Nekonyan can fulfill another of their obligation (Recently they did post at their KS update in that they already have the sample for the box). No much to say for Majikoi A series, but at least only two games left to have all of Majikoi games to be translated (With the assumption that there'll be no more Majikoi project, although apparently we'll have another one).
In the end, I can say that April as quite a nice month with two big VNs releases (To me), Makeover and Sakuramori. And seeing that they (Nekonyan) already almost complete with Hello Lady, I guess we may have the release for that in this year as well although it's more or less just my wishful thinking though.

This has been pretty alright so far. The story is pretty cool and I like the protagonist and his clear, understandable motivation. However, I am feeling a bit of tonal whiplash with the girls. The cute girls aspect keeps getting in the way of the plot every now and then.
Furthermore, after the common route is over, there is a unique problem: 
If that makes any sense, great. If not, why did I bother writing this down? 

It took me years to figure out why I found romance in movies and anime unfulfilling no matter how well fleshed out the courtship, confession, and couple evolution was until I encountered H scenes in VNs. It's the ultimate consummation of a real human relationship and pretending it doesn't exist when it is literally the reason we exist as a species and a story ending without you seeing it will be low level depressing and frustrating. Once I've gotten to love a heroine, I only feel satisfied if I get to H her in the story, and then I can put that story and heroine to bed (heh) and feel fully satisfied. Most western audiences wouldn't understand though, even though most of us will end up fucking someone in our lives, but that's more a function of the long-standing censorship and shame our culture has associated with sex.

Recommend seeing a doctor.
It is normal for males to crave for young and clean girls.

I often thought about it. I feel like in many aspects (relationships included) I haven't grown up, whatever that means. I have quite weird (?) memory, as I'm still remembering school days like it was maybe a year ago, not over 20. Also, never being in a romantic relationship, I kind of didn't have the opportunity to "progress", I'm still at level 0. I often still feel like that shy 17-18 yo I was back then. So while I'm mostly not attracted to actual high-schoolers for various reasons, I can relate pretty easily to characters in JVN high-school settings.
Also, because I've been kind of "frozen" for the last 20 years, I have somewhat skewed age perception. By that I mean, that when I think a girl is just a few years younger than me, she turns out to actually be 18-19, when I think she's roughly my age, she's often actually in her mid 20s, and when I look at girls that actually are my age, I often feel like they are much older than me
Back to VNs - while, like I said above, I can relate to high-school characters, I also can appreciate adult settings. I loved The Language of Love.

It would be weird if they weren't.  I've yet to meet a heterosexual man, regardless of age (unless they were impotent), who didn't have an interest in 18 year old girls, even if he didn't have any intention of doing anything about it.  Males are predisposed toward it.   
Moreover, eroge girls are eternally young and far more attractive than filthy 3D females.  *smiles innocently*

There's not a single ending in Bokuten that I'd put the label "despair" on, to be honest. Well, there's one that I consider more sad than the rest, but as for the others, the word "bittersweet" is much more suitable. The endings really just show that things don't always conveniently fall into place to make that rose-tinted, "happily ever after" scenario.

My viewpoint on Bokuten only varies slightly from yours... in my mind, an utsuge just serves a different purpose and provides for a different set of needs than a charage, a chuunige, or a nakige.  Whether this need is present in the individual who reads it is what is important when it comes to enjoying it.  As an example, I don't want romance or marriage in my life, so I don't enjoy charage as much as many others do.  However, I like to dream of the impossible and I enjoy over the top concepts, so I enjoy chuunige.  I need to have artificial catharsis to lance the boils of stress that build up inside me over time, so I enjoy utsuge and nakige.
Kirinokojima, the protagonist of Bokuten, is the ideal perspective to tell this kind of a story.  His self-hatred (not self-pity) and distrust for romance and love make perfect sense within the context of the story.  He also happens not to be incorrect about the nature of romance, though his view is only one aspect of it. 
Yes, this story has a strong theme and is a serious internal discussion of the nature of romantic love and love in general.  However, that doesn't change the fact that this is an utsuge.

First of all, watch your language, that's the second time you've done this in this thread. If you want to actually explain your point, go ahead, but if you're just here to insult people, you might as well just refrain from posting.
To reiterate my point, Harukaze wanting to create an all-ages brand does not change what they have already released in the past under their current label. So, them releasing an old IP, Noratoto, in the west 18+ would not change anything. It's exactly the same game, and anyone actually googling the game will find the 18+ content anyways. It's an eroge, after all. In other words, their all-ages re-brand and their release of Noratoto could absolutely have been separate things, done under the two different brands. And since it has already been stated directly by their partners that the reason for the censored release was voice license costs, it's very obvious that this was just a move done to save money, not specifically a move done tactically along with this re-branding.

The decision to throw out the H-scenes here is really irritating. I mean they offer the title dirt cheap for about 15 bucks and people will still be unhappy because of it. If they would have included the H-scenes they could easily sell it for 2 - 3 times as much and probably still sell more copies of it.
But I guess it's the same problem like in Moenovels's case: they hired a translation studio that doesn't do adult scenes. Couldn't they just hire a freelance translator instead of Frognation Ltd.?! The title would have certainly sold good enough to offer the translator a fair payment. And considering the apparently not exactly tremendous salaries the competition seems to offer, it shouldn't have been difficult to find one. Not to mention that I doubt that Frognation Ltd. was such a cheap alternative.
Can't they just a hire a freelance translator for an H-scene DLC?! They could at least offer a compromise and say that if the title sells good enough, they'll consider it.

That's exactly the reason why I'm so irritated that they're selling the game so cheap. I'm pretty sure that they could sell more copies for even 2 - 3 times that price if they'd just have included the H-scenes. I mean, how expensive are those voice royalties just for the H-scenses? Greater than the whole rest of the voices + the entire translation + the whole management cost to localize the title? Seriously?! I mean, do they have the British queen doing an H-scene or what? 

Nah, I read it but I just don't buy it. Harukaze itself obviously doesn't care about all ages at all and I don't really get why their rebrand Tokyotoon should, except for the translation studio not willing to deal with adult content. Besides that, they can always do the same like Sekai Project and stay 'totally' all ages by cheating in the porn through another brand.

And... I'm done with the true ending. Dear God...
I'll share my complete thoughts on a different occasion, but my general impressions are that as a piece of storytelling, I've enjoyed it slightly less than euphoria. It's generally better-written and more cohesive (no incomprehensible weirdness or obvious plotholes), but also so utterly relentless in its fanservice that it absolutely killed the pacing even in the most dramatic and interesting moments. Also, many of the scenes are just such hollow fanservice... There's a whole witch character that serves no other function beyond being abused in arbitrally-placed scenes. There's also a whole side-arc branching from the first chapter that is nothing but literal hours of unrelated futanari porn. Why isn't it just a bonus scenario? It absolutely murders the flow of the story. You can say that's the point of the whole experience, but after a while it just stops being a good excuse when the game also tries to tell a story. It's one thing to have tons of h-scenes, it's another inserting one literally every 5-8 minutes, no matter what's going on in the plot. It's mind-numbing through its sheer intensity, and I imagine it could be so even for some people that get off from guro. And with just how much time is spend on plain porn, the core story... Is actually quite short and simple.
On the other hand, I have to once more applaud the quality of the writing, including h-scenes. If I ever felt sick from something, it was the descriptions rather than visuals. The latter, for the most part, really did little for me... I think after euphoria I just stopped reacting to this kind of extreme porn whatsoever. Plus there were like three scenes that could be vaguely described as romantic, and I think I was just too numb from the guro imagery by that point to enjoy those in any real way.
In summary, if I had some hesitation in calling euphoria a nukige, I have no doubt in this case. It you're looking for an ultra-violent porn game, it's definitely extremely high-quality and full of content. If you're looking for a dark story, maybe just go for a chuunige... 6/10
PS The first ending is my headcanon, a lot more fun than the true one.

I can only really guess at what it isn't... it probably isn't the Trinoline FD or Sonokemo.  My reasoning is that those two are the IPs most likely to have been caught up in issues with creditors when Minori went under...
Incidentally, I'm glad Minori is gone... their protagonists were almost universally idiots who reminded me of Shinji from Evangelion (hetare+nibui+constantly saying the wrong thing at exactly the wrong time).  Shinji-type protagonists go beyond irritating into actively making me want to smash something (Soreyori no Prologue was particularly bad about that, since the protag completely misses why he is breaking the heroine's heart in the beginning of the game). 
The only game I liked without reservation by the company was Eden, lol. 

Hot on the heels after fixing payment issues, been a long wait for this lol
 

I personally want the h-scenes in because of sheer paranoia. I don't read eroge because of the ero part, I don't really enjoy them to be honest. Most of them feel shoe-horned in just like you said, but I would rather sit through them, then have the publisher cut them out because they deem them inappropriate. I lively through to bullshit already, in Germany for years every fucking movie and videogame had to be cut because of the violence. So I would rather have everything in even if I don't enjoy it. I can always skip if I feel like it. But having it cut out and not knowing what I miss, feels terrible at least for me.
But lately I have come around to accepting the Japanese All Age versions of eroge (made by the developers of the 18+ version), at least in that case I can expect that they put thought into replacing those scenes and making sure that everything makes sense afterward. But I will remain critical of All Age version that are produced by western publisher just because they don't want the h-scenes.

Speak for yourself.

One thing to note about this is that in Japan, console versions are always made AFTER the PC release, and often serves as a secondary platform to play the games on, after people have already read the 18+ version on PC. With the all-ages version being the only version available in the west, western consumers don't have that choice. So, the "place" the console version has in Japan is somewhat different compared to the western one.