Akshay

1.This isn't always the case. Tsukihime's true endings were pretty sad to the point where he had to make an alternate good ending to make people feel better. Rather than to force you into a certain ending, a lot of the times a true ending tries to show you an alternate perspective on events you have already seen. It requires information, which is shown in other routes, rather than just infodumping it in the true route. For example, in multiple route mysteries it acts as an "answer" kind of route, where everything you have learnt comes into perspective for the final twist. This doesn't make other possibilities (routes) untrue, rather they are part of the journey. They set your expectations and build up the ending. I wouldn't have enjoyed Cartagras endings so much without going over all the other ends first.
2. All of fates routes are true and cannon including the bad ends and fandiscs. There is an entire set of magic called the kaleidoscope (second true magic) that explains this.
 

Hello all, 
After many many years of rust, I've recently revived my Japanese studies and I'm looking to tutor/guide someone to help me refresh my basics. Reason being I'll be going to Japan for the first time next year.
Specifically looking for someone ranging from fresh beginners (we're going to gloss over basic grammar mostly) or intermediate (going to go over jlpt N2 grammar patterns). I will try to teach these and in the process help me de-rust. As they say, teaching is the best way of learning. We can hold voice/text sessions on discord, where I'm most active. 
I am by no means a great educator but I can show you the steps of how I approached learning Japanese. This is going to be reading-focus, as my speaking skills are bad atm, so it's good if you eventually want to read a VN.
PM me to exchange discord/contact infos and scheduling.

Extract the script and print it...could even add some screenshots for imagery.
 
I have read two VNs on my android tablet and I had issues flagging the True End for one of them, so I never got to finish it. Thus, I can't really recommend unofficial Ren'Py ports, if not for Kinetic Novels. I'd say that a tablet is quite handy though, especially for college and whatnot.
The Switch is something I can recommend especially if you're into JRPGs, but I'd say that most VNs will remain Windows only. If you have a 3DS, how about playing the text heavier interactive games, such as the Ace Attorney series? I only wish that I could be playing AAI2 on my handheld instead of on an emulator, so I understand your wish for convenience and comfort.
If you feel you are running out of titles to read in English, maybe it's time to consider learning Japanese?

The vocab might be undoubtedly higher-level, but I'm going to cast that shadow of doubt upon its status as well-written.
In a way, it somewhat reminds me of my high school English essays: the writing may appear to be sophisticated and intellectual, but it is not necessarily superior for that. The analysis of a VN's merits, qualities, and themes is merely skin-deep, covering a broad and comprehensive overview of the VN as a whole rather than delving deeply into a single element of it, and as a result, the article ends up feeling rather superficial. Certainly, the phrasing is professional, academic, and advanced, and I cannot deny a markedly erudite tone to the work, but there appears to be a certain sort of distance created between the author and the audience that lessens the impact of the recommendations. Were one to read it, they would likely feel unable to appreciate the sentiment placed within the text.
But, that's an awfully drawn-out and pretentious way to put it. If your eyes glazed over when you read that, you're probably getting the point. In simpler words, after each recommendation, I get the feeling of having read a whole bunch of nothing, because it doesn't connect with me.
Now, it's not that there should be a deeper analysis, since these are just quick reviews designed to interest the reader in the VN, and they shouldn't have any spoilers. Really, the issue is that the tone and style don't really fit this level of analysis. It would fit better if you were writing about some d e e p s h i t explored in the game, maybe a reflection on the core theme, but that'd be something for people to read after a VN, not before. These are recommendations, intended to make people want to read something, so you gotta appeal to people, and to do that, you can't have the distance between author and audience that "essay language" creates. Essay language sounds sanitized and boring, and while it's not false, it's not genuine either, because it feels like it's losing the heart of the author in order to take on some affectation of intellectualism. None of these elements are good for reaching the audience.
So, what's to be done? The solution is to be casual, simple, and straightforward. A line like "It is not a happy experience." (from the Muv-Luv portion) sounds stilted and unnatural. A simple "It hurts." flows much better, conveys feeling much better, and interests me much better. A line like "It is when one reaches Alternative, the real meat of the narrative, that Muv Luv becomes an explosion of emotion" seems weird in the same way. I'd say something like "When you get to Alternative, the real meat of the narrative, Muv-Luv starts to hit your heart hard" would work much better. Changing all of those "they"s and "one"s to "you"s would probably help too, since speaking directly to an audience will connect better than speaking to some nebulous avatar representing the audience.
In summary, I wouldn't say this article is well-written. It's higher-level in vocabulary and arrangement, but that doesn't make it well-written, because a significant part of the quality of writing is how well it does what it's supposed to do, how well it reaches the audience with its intent. This article fails to interest the audience as well as it needs to, because it fails to connect with them as well as it needs to.

This article and its author have recently caused an uproar in many discord communities, because the topic of this list seems to come up at any given moment. So, I'll try to provide some context regarding this list and be as civil as possible. My objective is not to be a bully but to give this article a fair analysis.
First of all, I must commend the quality of the writing. Whatever one might say about the content, it is without a shadow of doubt well-written.
The main issue is how the author's objectives are in conflict with each other. This is supposed to be an introductory article for beginners, members of the animanga community. However, the article is extremely lengthy, each entry worthy of being an article of its own. People have a short attention span and by the time most people are done with reading 2 or 3 entries, chances are they're already tired of reading it. If your objective is to convince, then keep it short. Or rather, cut the entry number. Perhaps a top 10 or even a top 5 would suffice.
Regarding the entries themselves and the main objective...they don't really match. Half of these titles are UNTRANSLATED, which is already going to turn away a big chunk of the community. Second, pretty much all of these titles are Long or Very Long. Trust me, hardly anyone would be willing to lay down 50 or more hours for a hobby they're not invested in yet. How about a few shorter titles, such as Narcissu or Planetarian (off the top of my mind). They are short, sweet, have no filler and leave a deep lasting impression. They also don't have Sexual Content.
You also excluded titles which are popularly known in the anime community, such as Clannad, Steins;Gate, Fate/Stay Night and Higurashi. People are more likely to find interest in reading the source material of something they already watched and liked.
And then, the exclusion of moege and gameplay eroge. Like it or not, moege are some of the best-selling games of the medium (second to doujin H-RPGs, I'd say). If the objective was to attract newcomers from a new community, there is absolutely no reason to exclude one of the most popular ""genre"" of visual novels. Gameplay eroge are the closest to videogames and might be just what newbies need to make the transition to full-fledged text-only visual novels.
I'm not going to comment on the entries themselves. After a certain point, they seem to be choosen sort of arbitrarily, merely there to fill the empty space. Honestly, anyone could've picked these titles, but that's not what's important.
If I had to comment on one of them, it would be YU-NO. YU-NO was one my favorite eroge for a period of time. It's also one of the highest rated titles of erogamescape. When you have half-truths and misinformation, others are going to believe it if it's this well-written. This is something that concerns me, as one could think of modern bloggers as the historians of old.
But to be honest, what bothers me the most is how this entry in particular is quite offensive to the medium as a whole. Not only does it ignore the hundreds of games that already existed in other platforms, such as PC-88, but it dismisses them as "cheap pornography". Just because you read two or three random nukige that JAST or whoever it was gave a bad translation 15 years ago, it doesn't make it true. Sadly, there are many great stories yet to be translated which most likely will remain so, due to engine issues and older art which isn't appealing to the modern gamer who plays everything in 4k 120FPS.
To be fair, this title is heavily overrated. The interactivity is incredibly infuriating - not only is it a verb-based game but you literally have to pixel hunt and randomly guess where you should go next. Not only that, but you can't save at will. Because of this, the player is forced to default to a walkthrough. Due to this and many other games with terrible choice systems forcing people to look for walkthroughs, we use walkthroughs even for games with good, carefully crafted systems. As for the content of the game itself, multiple route mystery wasn't anything new at the time. None of the routes really stand strong on their own, except perhaps the stepmother route, the concept of this route having been done better on other games at the time. The sci-fi aspect of the game only exists so that
- how cool is that? To finish this rant regarding YU-NO, let me tell you something interesting: one of the most important arcs, the whole emotional hook of the epilogue wasn't even written by Kanno himself. The current translation has different versions of the game mixed together, so you have the protagonist rejecting sex with a character in one line, and then deciding to go forward with it in the very next instant.
If I had to say anything else, it would be how you portray YU-NO as an important step forward for the eroge industry and explain its historical value, but you chose the cover from the remake.
 
The main issues, as pointed out by many others, is that this article is overly ambitious. You have only started reading VNs approximately a year ago and you have only read about 20 titles or less, yet decided to create a recommendation list of a higher number. You recommend titles that you haven't read and can't read (japanese). While there is some original content (SubaHibi and Danganronpa reviews), the description of the remaining entries is a mixture of opinions held by different people. If I wanted to read Conjueror's Sakura no Uta review or kastel's rants, I could do it, they already exist in other places. You could very well have started with a smaller project, publishing reviews of titles you have read with your one and only opinion.
I know I might have been quite harsh, but I'm honestly tired of this topic being brought up every couple hours, no matter where I hang out. That and I'm not sure if you're really interested in the advice of others or if this is just to show off, but so be it. I gave my two cents, and I hope to not have to comment on this further.
 
Good luck.

This is the show that made me fall in love with magical girls. 
Can't wait.

I like to use "esteemed Fuwanovel poster-sama" and bow until my head touches the desk. Did I mention I have a shrine of everyone's avatars?

@Dreamysyu @Plk_Lesiak
Thank's!
It's been a fun year at Fuwa.

3kyu furendo. Here's one for you. Happy Halloween.
 

...Why is noone mentioning School Days? Isn't that the usual automatic suggestion, the poster child of English-translated Yandere? The gore is minimal, as well. Perhaps it's because not everyone likes that game. I personally love it, despite being frustrated at the design.

I spent a while in a Yandere phase. The only good Yanderes game I found and managed to actually personally play were in School Days and Cross Channel, neither of which have extremely explicit gore. School Days is easier to get into and the Yandere(s) are main characters; Cross Channel might have the most awesome and wonderful Yandere but she only plays a relatively small part of a game that's focused on much different things.

Don't play the game literally titled "Yandere". It is the worst VN I have ever made the mistake to play; It's so bad it'll make you like Yanderes less.
 

I have an announcement. The third title in my series of unconnected fan cases has released! Two in one year. I can scarcely believe it! You better not believe it either. It's a scam, it must be!
For this scam, I have used an online case maker specifically for creating Ace Attorney cons. Be scammed.
Features:
Lies Tricks. Gimmicks. Verdicts. And so, if you're looking for any of those things, you can probably find them in any other Ace Attorney trial. But you can play mine, instead. I even made a tutorial for people such as yourself who don't know how these newfangled online case things work (you are one of such people, right? If you aren't, why aren't you playing my case yet!?)
What are you waiting for? For me to post the link? Good point. Go over to this entirely different thread and play it now! All you need is to click the link under the section designated: "Link:"
Ace Attorney Online is the website, forum, community, and free online case maker I used to create this fan case.
If you have any criticism, opinions, want to complain about the fact that I reused this entire section twice in a row, or just want to flame me, please leave your comments on either this thread or the other one I linked to.
Thanks for playing! ...If you do play, that is.
 

Just seen this on Reddit. It looks like they're going to be including full English voice acting for free to existing Steam owners of Umineko (if successfully funded), as well as PS3 graphics and some new content. 
https://www.umineko.us
Looks like it's been delayed, though :(.