Over a few years now I have read some japanese VNs on the PS vita that are based on series that already had an anime before the VN. These VNs are Gochuumon wa Usagi Desu ka?? Wonderful Party!, Himouto! Umaru-chan Himouto! Ikusei Keikaku, Nisekoi: Yomeiri!?, Sakura-sou no Pet na Kanojo, and To Love-Ru Trouble Darkness: True Princess. Since I have the physical version of all of them I figured that I would do a review of them, however it has been a while since i read them so I don't think I would be able to make a proper review for each of them without rereading parts of them. As such I decided that instead I would do short reviews of each and put them all in one blog entry. By the way these titles are aimed at people who have watched the anime or read the manga.
Gochuumon wa Usagi Desu ka?? Wonderful Party! is in my opinion a good Gochuumon wa Usagi Desu Ka? VN. It does a great job at properly representing the characters as they are in the anime (haven't read the manga) and manage to execute well on the relaxed atmosphere found in the anime. The main story of the common route is that Kokoa wants to make a surprise birthday party for Chino, after this the character that interact most Kokoa (who you play in the common route) will be inspired to themselves hold a party chrismas for all of the other girls. The main thing then is how each of the girls thinks about how best to hold a party and what will make the other girls the happiest. There is also a mini game in the common route where you play as Kokoa working at Rabbit House, this is quite short but can be annoying when you just want to get into another route. I also want to mention that I prefered it to the anime as many of the jokes in the anime seems to be too slowly phased and therefore become boring while they work pretty well in the visual novel. One thing I should also mention is that it of course feels quite childish which is to be expected since the series in Gochuumon wa Usagi Desu Ka?
Himouto! Umaru-chan Himouto! Ikusei Keikaku managed to surprise me by being better than I had expected. It released before the 2nd season of the anime, but I would say that the general vibe of it is more similar to the 2nd season rather than the first season, something that I think is a good thing, btw didn't hate first season just thought the 2nd season was better. As for the common route I would say it was pretty decent and had some nice comedic moments, really liked the interactions between Taihei and Alex. As for the routes I would say those were the highlights of the VN. There are 3 different Umaru routes, one for UMR, one for her chibi form and one for her outside form as well as a route for Ebina, Kirie and Sylphinford. The routes did a good job at telling a story (mostly focusing on the relationship between siblings, not the incestious kind) and the comedy was what you would expect from Himouto Umaru (Sylphinford had some amazing comedic moments). Also after the end of the route there is an extra ending, this ending is just a few lines and a CG and tells what Umaru ended up as later, something that depends on lvling stats in the common route (just give her items that she use to lvl skills and have her use them). Again this is an annoying mini game and you probably need a guide to find out the stat combination needed for all the extra endings, but at least I think the extra endings are quite fun even though they are really short.
Nisekoi: Yomeiri!? is the first VN I ever read and where my profile picture is from. As for the VN itself I think it is really good, though it could in part be nostalgia since it is the first VN I read. The VN starts with Raku encountering a loli fox spirit named Otama who I would say works as a mascot for the VN. After the introduction you get a map of the school and of the city and then use that to choose who you want to have events with, after a few normal events with a girl you get a larger event that lasts longer and has a bit more impact and you continue with this until you get to the last event which can probably be considered her route. Each of their routes start with the girls going to the shrine connected to Otama and making a wish, Otama then fufills this wish in a way often not really expected or thought through by the one wishing it, thus creating a suituation that needs to be solved. As for the routes there are 6 in total, with 4 main routes that are romance focused one for each of the main heroines Chitoge, Kosaki, Marika and Seishirou and then extra routes unlocking after you have completed a route, one being the Ruri route (not romance but mainly about not making her hate you as Shuu involves you in things that piss her off) and the Raku route which can be considered the harem end, or rather the end where nothing happens. Chitoge's route is really emotional and something I think would fit in a nakige, Onodera's route is very nostalgic having many references to the main series while the other routes mainly focus on comedy (found most of them hilarious). As for gameplay there are a few minigames where you have to avoid being seen by someone (often the gangsters), then there are a few times where you get a few different hiragana that you need to combine to make a word that is your answer to something and lastly there is a health bar which mainly go down if a certain character gets mad at you and punches you or you eat something you shouldn't. I feel like these are the best implemented mini game systems I have seen so far in these kinds of VNs and while these unnecessary minigames that slow you down when you want to read other routes are annoying this one didn't feel all that annoying and a few times actually worked pretty well within the story. Just to end this of I wanted to say that it does a really good job using the characters to their full potential and that anyone who is a fan of Nisekoi, has a PS vita and know japanese should pick it up.
Sakura-sou no Pet na Kanojo is something I am a bit more mixed about. On one hand it does a pretty good job with the characters, comedy and story and on the other hand the art is kind of plain (colours are pretty bland) and the gameplay system is really annoying (the most annoying I have seen so far) which I think is somewhat detremental when doing the different routes. The general story is about the people at Sakurasou starting to work together on a game for a game competition. How this plays out in the VN is that you spend time working with them and depending on who you work with you end in their route, though you also need to ensure that all of them manages to get their required tasks done and I found it to be a bit more complex than it sounds. Other than that there are lots of scenes with the different people at Sakurasou as well as a new character that was the one who got them to enter the competition. As I mentioned I found the comedy to be well executed and the characters to be handled well so these scenes are pretty fun. As for the endings there are only endings with Shiina and Aoyama, though there are 3 variations for each of them which I think just depend on how many times you cleared an ending with them (bad type first time, better 2nd time and the best the 3rd time). They have also built in a stupid new game+ thing making it so you have to complete it from scratch to get the better endings, other than that there is an event for each character that includes a CG that requires you to go through each of the 6 routes twice meaning you have to go through it and the stupid gameplay system at least 12 times in total if you want to have all the CGs. In conclusion I would say it is a pretty good VN though it is held back by plain art with bland colours and a stupid system forcing you to go through the VN 12 times to get all the scenes while you navigate a semi difficult annoying system for each route.
To Love-Ru Trouble Darkness: True Princess is the only of these titles that I found to really be a disappointment. There is a wide variety in how good the routes are, some I would say are actually somewhat good while others are quite bad (especially Yami's route). While there is a lot of VN original content some of the scenes feel like pretty much a copy of things in the manga/anime just toned down due to it being on PS vita. The general plot is that that Rito loses his memory due to one of Lala's machines, then he spends time with the different girls and at the end of it he regains his memory after having gotten close with a girl and happy end. Other than some routes being generally poorly written and lending too much from the source matterial I would say a huge problem is the limitation it has being on the vita. Since To Love Ru generally rely on perverted comedy it can't really do as good of a job with it due to Sony even before their recent censorship crusade not really accepting anything as lewd as things found in the manga and anime. Other than this there are also some really annoying technical problem, for one all of the art has been compressed which is quite clear when comparing it to other vita titles, this makes it look much worse than it should have (art quality is pretty good), also one really annoying problem is that it seems it has memory problems, as you get close to having done all the scenes it just goes black everytime you try to save regardless of savefile and refuses to save after the VN is complete. This is a problem I found other people also had when I googled the problem in japanese though I didn't find a solution, as such I have everything other than the ending CGs of the Nemesis route (at her ending part but won't save after the credits) when I have the memory card in and without the memory card I have done the Nemesis route so I could get all CGs, even though I don't have them all in the same place.
Frontwing have just made an update on their Grisaia phantom trigger kickstarter where they said that they have started shipping and that due to the amount of items it will take about 1 month until everything is shipped out. So it seems they are finally able to deliver on their physical items after such a long time.
Also their kickstarter for Island is now done and it managed to raise $69,301 with a goal of $50,000.
Loca-Love kickstarter is now also done and managed to raise $33,251 with a goal of $30,000. Backerkit is now open and it costs $44.
The kickstarter for Venus Blood Frontier ended up with ¥23,606,140 with a goal of ¥16,665,000. While the kickstarter is over it is stil possible to pledge for certain rewards through paypal and they plan to open a backerkit that non backers can use which will act as a pre-order store. While the VN doesn't really interest me I am quite glad that it ended succesfully since they seem to have done a lot of things well regarding their kickstarter such as focusing more on translation quality than they initially planned which raised the amount they needed by a lot.
Jlist has now opened up pre-order for the physical copy of Sweet Pool. Not really something I am interested in, but I guess people who are into BL are pretty excited considering its high rating.
The latest update from the Koropokkur in love kickstarter says that they have shipped out the physical editions to the backers now. I find it quite funny how quickly Mangagamer managed to get physicals out compared to other kickstarters that often use a year or two extra (sometimes even longer).
A Clockwork Ley-Line is getting its engine changed, while this seems to mean that it will be easier to work with it also means that it is going to take a real long time until they produce any physical copies for any of the VNs.
The kickstarter for Seven days is now done and it managed to raise $34,323 with a goal of $20,000.
Fatal Twelve physical copies are being shipped to those who pledged for the reward on kickstarter.
Here are a few titles that may be close to getting sold out or have a limited time left for pre-order.
Eroge sex and games makes sexy games is on back order on Mangagamer, but is available from Jlist and Rightstufanime, though I am not sure how many they have in stock or whether there will be reprints.
Kara no Shoujo is on back order on Mangagamer, but is available from Jlist and Rightstufanime, though I am not sure how many they have in stock or whether there will be reprints.
Nekopara volume 2 and volume 3 are said to be limited on Denpasoft, not sure how much stock they have left but will put it here on the list anyways since it can sell out at any time.
Physicals for Love's Sweet Garnish seems to be sold out.
Physicals for Hard Work might be sold out once pre-order period ends. Based on Love's... they may have a system where they only print as many copies as people who pre-order them, not sure though.
There is also a limited amount of physical copies for Clannad: Side Stories at sekaiproject, it seems to be leftovers from the original kickstarter.
On PS vita the physical edition of Muv-Luv and Muv-Luv Alternate is being sold over at ricedigital and I am pretty sure that it is a limited run.
As for backerkits that are still open there are Alpha's Adventures, Loca-Love My Cute Roommate and Sakura Sakura
From Frontwing there are two kickstarters for physical copies one for the physical copy of Island which has already been released digitally on steam and one for the first part of their new episodic title Loca-Love which haven't been released in Japan yet. The Island Kickstarter is already funded and to me it seems like it has some pretty decent prices for the physicals with 50US$ for the regular edition and 80US$ for the deluxe edition which is a large box with soundtrack and theme song CDs and an artbook, Island itself is 30-50 hours long acording to vndb by the way. The Kickstarter for the first part of Loca-Love is currently at about 60% funded at the end of September with 13 days to go. As for my thoughts on the kickstarter for Loca-Love, well I think it has been poorly thought out. Since it is just the first part it is rather short (roughly 8 hours acording to the kickstarter) the price for the physical edition which is 50US$ is rather high. There is also a deluxe edition for 80US$ (going by earlybird price, if that sells out the actual price is 85US$) which has an artbook, tapestry, keyholder set, printed shikishi and the name in the credits and while it does have a lot of cool extras it just feels too much to pay for something so short. So the price for the physical for the first part of Loca-Love is pretty much the same as the price of Island which is way longer. I also don't think it helps them much that they made the kickstarter under a new creator name (Loca-Love) which means that it is less likely that people who backed their other kickstarters will find it.
Moving on to Sekai Project or rather Denpasoft they have opened up pre-orders for physical edition for two new titles this week those two being Love's Sweet Garnish (vndb) and Hard Work (vndb). While I don't find any of these titles particulary interesting I do like that they have started to focus a lot of releasing physical editions through Denpasoft and not relying on Kickstarter for all of their physicals (if only they now can get better at quality control). While it does interest me that they have gone with this direction I am rather surprised by the titles they have picked. Both of them are short meaning that the extra price for the physical itself and shipping will be quite large compared to the original price and thus make buying them less attractive. Considering that MG only does physicals for titles that sell well I wonder how Denpasoft is going to be able to not lose any money on releasing physicals for these two titles. At the end I also wanted to mention that based on a tweet from Denpasoft it seems like they plan on focusing more on their physicals so I think it will be interesting to see how things turn out with them regarding physical releases.
Venus Blood Frontier Kickstarter has now opened for those interested, the price for the physical edition tier is 66US$ though it is only all ages so physicals for this might not be the best. From the looks of it they plan on putting in a lot of effort into making it a good localization, while it isn't really a title that appeal to me I really hope it succeed. Considering that they seems to be doing things right with the kickstarter I think it would give some really nice feedback to the japanese developers of what we want from a localization if this gets funded.
Another Kickstarter is the one for Seven Days which is from Fruitbait Factory. This has a physical edition available for 60US$ that include a visual book and one with a larger box and a dakimakura for 150US$.
From Nekonyan there is the confirmation that there is going to be a physical release of Aokana. I know this was technically confirmed last month, but I wanted to mention it since it was the 31st and since this is the first blog entry I make meaning I don't have any for August.
Then for some kickstarter updates, Memory's Dogma has promised free physical copy of Code:02 and Code:03 to those who haven't requested a refund, Shining Song Starnova has now finished the design of the box for their physical release and A light in the dark physicals are currently getting printed.
Here are a few titles that may be close to getting sold out or have a limited time left for pre-order.
Princess Evangile limited edition went out of print this month.
Eroge sex and games makes sexy games only have two copies left on Mangagamer, but is available from Jlist and Rightstufanime, though I am not sure how many they have in stock or whether there will be reprints.
Kara no Shoujo only has one copie left on Mangagamer, but is available from Jlist and Rightstufanime, though I am not sure how many they have in stock or whether there will be reprints.
Nekopara volume 2 and volume 3 are said to be limited on Denpasoft, not sure how much stock they have left but will put it here on the list anyways since it can sell out at any time.
There is also a limited amount of physical copies for Clannad: Side Stories at sekaiproject, it seems to be leftovers from the original kickstarter.
On PS vita the physical edition of Muv-Luv and Muv-Luv Alternate is being sold over at ricedigital and I am pretty sure that it is a limited run.
As for backerkits that are still open there are A Light in the Dark, Alpha's Adventures and Sakura Sakura
New kickstarters, Island, Loca-Love, Venus Blood Frontier and Seven days
I have now read through Princess Evangile W Happiness and of course that means that I have to do a review of it (which is hopefully at least somewhat good).
Princess Evangile W Happiness is a fandisc to the original Princess Evangile and has an extra story of 2 chapters for each of the heroines as well as a 4 chapter long route for each of the 5 sub heroines. Other than that it includes the 13 first chapters of the main route in the original which means it can be played as a standalone VN, though I wouldn't recommend it since the extra stories for the main heroines won't make sense and you should just read the original first anyways. Also I would like to mention that you probably should read my review of Princess Evangile before reading this one.
The extra stories to each of the main heroines I found to be really nice, I am not going to review each of them, but if you liked them during the main VN you probably aren't going to be disappointed.
Ruriko's route was really nice. I must say I just love Ruriko's personallity, she manages to be quite funny with her absurd jokes and she just has some really fun character quircks that I find really adorable. As for her route, well I didn't find it to take any interesting direction, but it just had lots of good moments with her and that was generally the focus of her route, just her and the main character being together.
Konomi's route was also really good in my opinion. There are some really great comedic moments due to her personallity and I would say that this route was probably the most funny out of all of the character routes in Princess Evangile W Happiness. Other than that the relationship between her and the main character was built up really nicely in a way that really fit Konami.
Mitsuki's route was something I didn't really have high expectations for, I generally found her to be quite annoying in the common route as well as the other character routes, however I was quite pleasantly surprised. Her route did a really good job in terms of rommance and there were some good romantic lines between her and the main characters, something which I felt the other routes didn't do quite as well. I remember really liking it when I played through her route, though in the end she is not quite up there with Rise (who she constantly compares herself to). While it did do a good job with the rommance it didn't really have that much else going on though, at least after the first part, so ye it felt quite uneventful.
Marika's route was a route that I would say is okay. It was a pleasant read though I didn't feel like it did anything especially well. One of my main problems with her route is that I just found her personality to be really boring, in her route the best comedic moments came from other characters and those were quite rare. Her route also just felt like it was lacking in terms of the story. So it was pretty much like Mitsuki's route just without the well done rommance and with a character who is quite boring. While I am sounding quite harsh at the moment I need to repeat that I still felt that it was a somewhat pleasant read even though it felt lacking compared to the other routes.
Lastly there is Tamie's route. While not as funny in my opinion as Konomi's route it is a good second. Tamie is really wonderful and her jokes and teasing is quite endearing. What I think stands out the most about this route is how energetic it feels since Tamie just filled to the brim with energy. Her route started in a rather surprising way though it lead to some really nice sweet and funny moments. After the first part they did a really cliche thing to move the story forward, this specific cliche is something that I generally don't like, though I felt like they did a good job using it and in the end I don't really feel like I can view it as a negative that they used it. As for the later parts of it, well Tamie kind of mellows a bit out, though not to the point where she feels boring or lacking in her usual energy, just that it is a bit dialed down.
As for my opinion of this fandisc as a whole I would like to start by saying that I think that if you liked the original Princess Evangile you should definitly pick it up. Each of the original heroines had nice extra chapters which both provided more nice moments with them as well as just being nice conclusions to their stories. The other heroines all had nice routes, with the exeption of Marika which felt kind of lack luster compared to the rest of the VN. A disadvantage the fandisc has compared to the main VN is that the routes are rather short, 4 chapters compared to the 10 chapers the heroines in the main VN have. While this does mean that each route has less of an impact on the person reading it, I still felt that they did a really good job using those 4 chapters. The routes in the fandisc manages to build the relationships really well through pretty much focusing on the heroine of the route exclusively. A drawback this has though is that the routes can't really have larger story moments like they did at the end of the routes in the original. I would also like to comment on the sex scenes, the sex scenes both in the original and the fandisc are really sweet and quite vanilla (disregarding that some of it takes place in rather risque locations) and I feel like it really works well with the sweet rommances that are built with each heroine, a problem with the scenes though is that they are just too long. It feels like the sex scenes in general should be shortened by quite a lot, preferably by replacing some of the lines that can be found in pretty much all vanilla sex scenes in VNs. Well I would like to end the review by mentioning that it also has some nice referances to Imouto Paradise (a VN I will do a review of in the future, once I have revisited parts of it), personally I found this to be really fun.
The front of the physical edition
The back of the physical edition
Here is the inside of the physical edition including the disc
As for my review of the physical edition, well I would say it is just pretty okay. It is just a standard DVD case and doesn't really include anything other than the steamkey and the cover being reversible which is a standard for physical editions by Mangagamer. To my knowledge the steam edition is just a censored version of the full VN, though you can patch it. While this is a nice bonus for those who want to have it both digitally and on disc I don't feel like it is as good of a bonus as the original which has replacement scenes for the sex scenes meaning you get extra content with the steam edition.
As for the cover I find it to be quite nice with all of the 9 characters on the cover wihtout anyone of them being pushed too far into the background. The back of the case is pretty plain though it at least gives information about the VN. The reversible cover as I mentioned I think is quite lovely though it isn't really something that work that well as the cover since it is just one large drawing that would then be unnaturally split in two.
