Plk_Lesiak

Everyone should be. What Melty Quest's devs did is a bit of a Russian roulette, but at least it's a very obvious hRPG - something no one bought for anything else than porn, so they're only risking backlash from Valve if they find their content too drastic or partially back down from opening to porn. In the meantime, they have the first uncensored eroge in Steam and tons of publicity. For MangaGamer, they have much more varied catalogue and much more to lose. They can't risk just blankly updating their games to eroge versions and are in no way in a hurry. I'm glad that they're taking it slow, trusting in Valve to act consistently and in the best interest of publishers is like signing your own death sentence.

That will make EVNs look like a bootleg brand. I strongly oppose this notion. ;p ...I usually use JPVN in this context, would that be better?

Those already mentioned + chuunige, yurige, otomege, kamige, kusoge... A lot of -ges.

A recent-generation i5 you mean (7XXX, 8XXX)? I don't think there's one that wouldn't run VNs smoothly. I mean, I try to think of the most demanding ones, like Nekopara, and those can still run on a potato. There's some VR VNs in the working, but I don't think even a VR headset necessarily needs an i7 processor, those are more dependent on the graphics card (that is, you'd need at least something like GeForce GTX 1050ti to be 100% they'll run well - they won't be the most demanding VR games either).

Eeeeh, I would still say that Moege/Plotge/Nukige, or even nakige can still be useful categories (I was always the least convinces about charage meaning something). With moege being lighthearted, SoL-oriented romance VNs with multiple routes, plotge being more story-driven games where romance is not the main focus or follows a less usual formula, while nukige are porn games with little to no story and abundance of hentai scenes. They'll never be clear in their meaning, but they can be useful - after all, most genre distinctions have this problem, containing many titles that fit the popular definitions perfectly and possibly just as many strange and contradictory ones that you can't easily classify. You can have some fun and try following discussions on what kind of movie "Alien" is. Horror? Thriller? Sci-fi? All three? Which part is the most important one? That is, you might not be able to tell exactly what a moege is, but if someone tells you a VN is a "typical moege" or a "borderline nukige", I think you'll have a good idea what they are about.

MoeNovel's policy was more than just about Steam rules - after all, they went above and beyond what Valve even required with IMHHW. They wanted to market their games as highly-accessible, literally all-ages products without any connection to porn. Not sure if a better platform to sell eroge would change their mind. Plus, really, people shout a lot about censorship, but if you look closely, cases of 18+ content being actually inaccessible are rare. In most cases, it's single scenes/fragments being "permanently" removed, MoeNovel is an unfortunate outlier.

There was always a patch for Libra, at least. Plus, to be fair to MiKandi, they're still working on sorting this mess out - I think common route + Mari's route retranslation will be implemented in a few weeks. :> But yeah, it's definitely one of those games that today would get on Steam without an all-ages version.

Is there really something wrong with this description? It's both pretty hilarious and very informative. Unless Valve suddenly gets scared of fetish content (I mean, it's nothing THAT BAD in this case), this is exactly how it should work. Gives you a clear indication of what the game is about and if you're grossed out, you go back. *shrug*

I think many laptops can though, with right maintenance. Using cooling boards, avoid risky stuff like overclocking... Although I guess Narco has a point. Does anyone really need a gaming laptop? The really high-end ones are usually expensive to the point you can set up a decent gaming desktop and an efficient laptop for work for the same amount of money. Both without the annoying issues gaming laptops generate.

I agree with the option being hidden God-knows-where, but if I remember well searches and clicking links to 18+ games give proper feedback ("we've hidden an n-number of games because of your search preferences"). There will be a significant transition period, but I'd expect A LOT of people having 18+ content turned on after its over. Plus, it seems that all-ages + patch might still be a viable option, circumventing the "adult-only" categorization, but letting you place the 18+ patch as DLC directly on the platform. Less porn-centric VNs could still benefit from the full potential of Steam exposure, while the adult content DLC would be free to download for everyone interested without the current kind of cryptic BS.

Acer is considered a budget brand, but I only had positive experiences with it, more consistently than any other and the gaming models are decently priced. This one, for example, would probably match the one you mentioned with everything but refresh rate. I can't say much about Razer computers nowadays, only know that their accessories are pretty awesome still. Two years ago I would somewhat agree, but considering the output of the current generation mobile graphics cards, I don't see any reason to believe that. Plus mobile processors are absolutely up to the task for a long time now, if the laptop is build well enough to not overheat, it can be an absolutely legit gaming platform nowadays... I would go for 17,3" though, I find playing modern games on any kind of smaller screen a pretty lame experience.

Dharker are generally shit peddlers, but I think the significance of this has little to do with the game itself. Or, at least, the quality of it. ;p

So, Dharker apparently got final thumbs up to publish their new eroge with all content intact. It's hard to say how explicit it will actually be, but if it follows the first game closely, it's going to at least contain a bunch of fully-explicit f/f sex scenes - and considering that some of the heroines are bisexual (two of them, if I remember well) and the screenshots, we might even get some straight hentai too. If that's true... Well, this would be unlike anything Steam even considered allowing in the past.

Welcome to Fuwanovel! I hope you'll enjoy the more active side of being on our humble forums.

Maybe not that, but if someone has limited resistance to "dreadful", it could be considered a serious health hazard. ;p

My GF told me that she got sick of that previous Albedo wallpaper, so I had to look for a new one... After a long search, I've settled for this - I don't think it's as good, but still pretty close. The old went to the start screen, I like it too much to forsake it all together. :3

Well, admittedly, I probably wouldn't do it if I actually had to buy these games and go through them myself. Let's plays make them both more fun and more convenient to go through while doing all kinds of other stuff. I wouldn't really want to read Eden* or Planetarian while working out or taking a dump and I couldn't read them while doing any kind of work simultaneously, but I have no such problems or limitations with Time Tenshi. Plus I transform all that waste-matter-EVNs into Shovelware Adventures and those are always fun to write (+ the /eroge subreddit seems to appreciate them).

Happy Birthday to @Funyarinpa! I hope you have a good year before you - you'll own this college you're going to in no time I'm sure.

Just going through let's plays of Time Tenshi games, while working on various stuff (including an MLP convention panel on fan porn - I'll bring photos! :3 ...Of the panel, I mean, not the porn. ) and I have to say, I have a strange kind of respect for devs that keep their ecchi VNs strictly in the fanservice territories, without going into actual porn despite how easy it is to sneak it in nowadays. There's something... Pure in the absurd trashiness of classic fanservice VNs, especially when everyone around already moved into fully-fledged eroge. For Silver Cow Studios time pretty much stopped in the era of Winged Cloud's initial releases and there's something borderline-admirable in that. Plus, well, Time Tenshi is still like half a tier better than most Sakura games - I mean, it has an actual plot and follows it consistently, rather than forgetting about it every 10 mins to showcase random fanservice CGs. I'm positively surprised by it, even if it's still pretty much trash.

Heh, I guess I can still write in Polish properly, as I wrote a pretty lenghty academic paper last month, but I know the pain. Funnily enough, because I watch, read and write stuff in English every day and basically stop consuming any kind of local media, my spoken Polish is a mess, as I constantly mix in "false friend" words in their English meaning or stagger to find a Polish equivalent of an English word I would use to describe something. The more abstract/advanced the conversation, the more this problem shows up. And well, maybe you should try writing in English anyways? It's good training and you'll have a much easier time to find literary communities to share and discuss your stuff with. Good luck either way!

Nah, I might play a few rounds of Close Combat or Darkest Dungeon in the coming weeks (literally last two non-VNs I've left there), but nothing beyond that. I'll be busy AF anyways. :] Just remember to avoid certain popular romance scenarios... Or at least check the consent laws in your state first.

Confession: I've just, most likely, won my last battle with MMO's and other timesink multiplayer games, deleting WoW and all the other, similar life-stealers that I theoretically didn't touch any more, but they still lingered on my hard disk. Since Battle for Azeroth went live, my productivity got abysmal even though I theoretically kept playing it pretty limited after the first week and there were other factors involved (a lot of family drama, putting actual effort in some other things, like working out regularly for the first time in my life). I just knew I couldn't keep up with giving this game an hour or two of my every day without jeopardizing things that are actually important to me (and I see very little point in playing it from time to time). Hopefully, I'll be at least be able to get back to my Japanese studies in this newly-recovered time every morning and sort out my work schedule a bit better. As much as I was happy with my achievements in July, I was seriously, seriously disappointed with myself later on and while I have some super-annoying events ahead of me, I really hope that I can end this summer with a decent record and proper motivation moving forward. TL;DR: My quarter-life crisis and personal crusade against timesink video games came to a conclusion of sorts. And no, I don't consider VNs time sinks. Some of them may be long as fuck, but they're stories to read, not sandboxes to tinker with and grind in for an unlimited amount of time. I can control my VN consumption, but I was never anywhere close to controlling my habits with RPGs, strategy games and sims. I seriously hope I don't touch another Total War game in my life. They're poison to me. :s

Winged Cloud’s early hentai VNs appeared at the moment of company’s greatest creativity (obviously, speaking in the relative terms) and during what could be described as a slow improvement in the overall quality of their titles. The two latest ones, however, came as a syndrome of an exact opposite tendency, one which becomes very clear when we look at pretty much any of the Sakura releases after Nova – the whole formula becoming increasingly stale and cynical, and WC’s games turning into little more than low-effort cash grabs, feeding on the loyal fans of the series. Still, while they might represent the lowest moment in Winged Clouds' history, did these games at least keep some of the entertainment value you would hope for in a trashy fanservice VN? Spoiler: Not really… Sakura Agent A prime argument for my thesis that if you don’t want to put actual resources into creating an interesting setting, you’ll be better off just sticking to high-school SoL drama – at least then your laziness and corner-cutting won’t be completely obvious. While Sakura Space managed to make the theme of space mercenaries unbearably unexciting and generic, Agent achieved something maybe even harder – making an alien invasion and a secret agency fighting it completely dull and laughable (not to be confused with “funny”), mostly by never showing anything but fanservice and presenting the whole plot through WCs typical, cliched and bland narration. Beyond that, the game offers a protagonist with no presence or charisma whatsoever (but who was, I guess, meant to be a badass), no routes, unconvincing heroines, distinct lack of humour and Sakura Maid’s levels of random fanservice (including a hentai scene with a kidnapped heroine in the middle of an enemy base and possibly the dumbest tentacle sex scene in the history of VNs). As a result, Agent is one of the saddest entries in the whole Sakura series, in which WCs attempts to give context to the porn CGs does not add any kind of appeal to them, but rather makes you cringe from how bland and stupid the whole setup is. Also unlike some of the Sakura games that preceded it, like Fantasy, Nova or Dungeon, it simply feels cheap, missing the visual flair and assets necessary to communicate its theme and storyline properly. In the end, it's a highly unfulfilling experience – find the pics online, save your time and money. Final rating: Smelly Poo Sakura Magical Girls The first example of Winged Cloud reusing a whole theme in something that isn’t a direct sequel (if anyone needs a reminder – Sakura Angels was a magical girl story with no actual angels involved) might suggest the studio running out of ideas, but is definitely a proof of it running out of creative powers. With two main heroines so shallow and similar to each other it’s seriously hard to differentiate between them, and a third one only remarkable by being their vague opposite (and whose darker philosophy is strangely also reflected by being black – though, as bad as it sounds, it’s at least a piece of visual variety previously rather absent from the Sakura franchise and I wouldn’t mind it becoming more common), this game already missed out on the most important part of the ecchi formula – appealing female cast. Without it, there was already little Magical Girls could do to stay memorable, but it didn’t make itself any favours by also being short and linear. And while it might only be my impression, even Wanaca’s visual designs are among the poorest in the whole series, with magical girl outfits looking like a random, overly colourful mess (and this is made even worse by the ability to contrast them with relatively good-looking sprites from Sakura Angel). The aforementioned “dark magical girl”, Ayame, might be the closest thing to an actual “positive” here, but in the end, she is also way too over-the-top and one-dimensional to hold any serious appeal beyond hentai scenes. With a bland, "delinquent" protagonist and nonsensical plot added to the mix, it's another thoroughly skippable Sakura game, which only makes the cliffhanger ending, signalizing a possible sequel, laughable. Of all VNs in the series, this is probably the last one I would like to see continued and I wholeheartedly recommend avoiding it at all cost. Final rating: Smelly Poo ---------------------------------- There’s no escaping from one simple fact – the latest straight hentai games by Winged Cloud are terrible. And they’re not terrible in the meaning that would apply to pretty much all Sakura games, with their thin plot, pretty much just pretext for fanservice and h-scenes, poor writing, short length etc. They’re simply devoid of any kind of entertainment value that usually accompanies WCs stream of anime boobs – the bare minimum of characterization and humour that make these VNs more appealing than just writing “Wanaca91” in a Google search or browning random anime fanart. And this time, even Winged Cloud’s fans seem to agree with me in that assessment – both games received relatively poor reviews on Steam and VNDB, and most likely had their role in the company’s move towards hiring a new scenario writer and focusing on yuri content. Will the het-porn formula come back in the upcoming Sakura titles? I have no doubts about it, but hopefully in a much, much better style – at least within the WCs scale of being “good”. After all, no miracles will happen within the world of trashiest Western eroge, even when magical girls are involved. PS This time too, my special thanks go to Bosskwar, whose videos made preparing this post much less painful then it would otherwise be.

Hey, isn't it a nice day for some thread necromancy? That poor all-ages version of Maidens of Michael, previously murdered by Valve, reincarnated today on GoG. I'm really surprised they took it after all, considering what the Steam drama was most likely about (loli porn), but I'm really happy about it. Will definitely grab it at some point in the future. :3

Happy Birthday To You @Kenshin_sama!