Happiness+

I took my first steps onto the road of the otaku in 1992, when I watched the poorly dubbed (all dubs were godawful back then) Record of Lodoss War Volume 1 OVA VCR tape.  Now, I was already a heavy fantasy addict, having been introduced to the Forgotten Realms and Dragonlance in 1990, and my obsession was at its peak at the time.  When I watched Record of Lodoss War, I saw the typical 'elven maiden with human hero' romance in a new way (incidentally, this is a pretty typical romantic theme in those days, less so nowadays).  I also saw oddities that stood out as odd to me precisely because of the oddly black and white point of view enforced on one by the various D&D universes.  
Of course, I was a chuunibyou brat by that time, already, so it should surprise no one that I got obsessed.  It got ten times worse, however, when I encountered Chrono Trigger as it was played on my cousin's SNES.  Chrono Trigger is still, to this day, one of the single best rpgs ever made.  Looking back, considering all that has been done since then, it is almost TERRIFYING that someone was able to do what was done with Chrono Trigger with the limitations placed by using the SNES system.  The story, the world, and the various layers of time were put together into such a subtly complex experience that, to this day, I've yet to see any other rpg manage it.  Chrono Cross would manage to imitate some elements of this with its parallel world jumping, but Chrono Trigger's jumping around in time gave you impetus to explore how every aspect of the world could change based on how and when you did certain things.  Rumors constantly abounded that there were secret endings (such as the infamous 'vampire Chrono' or 'Save Schala' fake rumors, which some believe led to the way the Chrono Cross storyline was handled), and people - such as me - would play the game repeatedly, using all the meager saves allowed by the cartridge limitations of the time, in hopes that they might trigger those endings or find a way to discover something new.  
In all honesty, Chrono Trigger being the game that got me into jrpgs probably ruined me for life.  It set my standards to a ridiculously high level on a subconscious plane, resulting in me comparing every single jrpg experience since then to it.  Aesthetically, musically, and structurally, it was a true jrpg kamige.  It was also the game that turned jrpgs into my second otaku obsession.
During the SNES-PS2 eras, I literally bought and played EVERY jrpg that came out.  I still own them, in fact.  I played most of the PS1 and SNES era games multiple times.
However, it was also in the PS2 era (often called the 'dawn of the mainstream jrpg') that jrpg quality began to fall off drastically.  The kind of genius and artistic flair using minimal resources you saw in previous eras was lost entirely within a few years of the release of FFX (FFX being a good game that also turned VO from a curiosity to a mainstream 'thing').  Musical direction, a role differing from composition, where someone was assigned to decide the timing of using a musical score and which ones fit which dungeons, which story scenes, disappeared in the middle of the PS2 era, as VO was used to fill the gaps of emotionality.  However, this also meant that the subtlety of previous eras was lost with a swiftness that left me bewildered at the time.  
By the time the PS3 era came around, jrpgs were slowing down, due to what I now call 'flashy kusoge fatigue'.  Oh, a few sub-genres, such as the Atelier series' alchemy obsessed SOL titles and the more action-based titles continued to be prolific, but what were called 'console-style rpgs' started to vanish.  MMO elements were introduced into normal jrpgs, making progression and gameplay less interesting as a result (mostly because it seemed to have been done primarily to draw the WoW crowds into solo rpgs).  Storytelling was dying a surprisingly swift death, as tedious gameplay elements (for loot and level-obsessed completionists) began to devour higher and higher proportions of each game's overall playtime.  
There is a very good reason why people go back and play so-called 'retro' jrpgs so much.  There simply aren't that many more recent jrpgs that have that kind of flair and subtle genius.  I know for a fact that one of the best ways to get people addicted to jrpgs is still just to let them play Chrono Trigger.  
Ironically, it was VNs that saved my soul.  This was back in 2008, four years before I joined Fuwa.  I was introduced to Tsukihime by a fellow anime fansubber, and, for the first time in over three years, I had something interesting enough (story-wise) that I was given a perspective on the nature of my growing irritation and fatigue with jrpgs in general.  At the time, the JVN industry was still as vital and full of genius as the jrpg industry was in the PS1 era.  Tsukihime and a few other major classics put out near the turn of the century had created the potential for a market of story-focused VNs that had allowed more and more creative people to get into the medium.  Masada was releasing his latest version of Dies Irae, and there were literally hundreds of potentially interesting VNs for me to try.
Needless to say, I lost my mind almost as badly as when I first played Chrono Trigger.  I must have blown four grand of my meager savings on VNs within the first year, and I didn't regret a penny of it.  Yes, roughly two-thirds of what I bought was pure crap.  However, the gems I discovered gave me a taste of the potential of the medium in a way that was horribly addictive.  Moreover, after a few years of being starved of any decent new stories, even the worst VNs had something that I could find I liked about them.  
In retrospect, I have an addictive personality.  I get addicted to things easily, especially when they scratch my story bug.  People have said to me, when it came to my jrpg obsession 'if you want a good story, why don't you read a book?', to which I usually gave them a blank stare and said 'I'm already reading good books.  I just want stories in my games too.'  
Interestingly enough, there were a few bursts of true creativity in jrpgs in the years since, like Tales of Berseria and Nier: Automata, but they partially stand out due to the sheer bleakness of the genre landscape.  People praise Octopath Traveler and Dragon Quest XI with intensity, and they practically worship Bravely Default.  However, I have been shocked at how low-quality the presentation of these stories has been.  It's like an entire generation has gotten used to ineptness in presentation to the point where they can be charmed by backhanded efforts at retro-nostalgia.  Octopath has all the grind of the old SaGa Frontier games with none of the charm, the best part of each of the paths being at the beginning.  Dragon Quest XI retains the horribly grindy nature of Dragon Quest games without improving on the formula in any real way.  Moreover, locking so much content into the post-game annoys the hell out of me (I prefer new game +, obviously).  
JVNs have suffered their own decline, which is ironically due to the same demographics that inflated the medium in the first place (the dominance of the moe/charage lovers).  VNs were always destined to be a niche medium, but the over-specialization of the industry has led to an inability to adapt to changing spending habits and demographics.  Even if they wanted to regear for a new generation of consumers, most companies no longer have the access to the necessary talent to do so.
I'm fairly sure that jrpgs suffer from a similar lack.  Yes, there are some excellent composers and graphic designers in the jrpg industry, as well as access to the solid voice-acting industry of Japan and the growing one here in the US.  However, there is a severe lack of writers capable of bringing a story to life, and there is no point in a top-tier OST that has no one to properly coordinate its use.  The very fact that something like Undertale could bury so much of the commercial rpg industry, in the eyes of rpg fans, says everything about how far the industry has fallen.
So what am I getting at?  Not really anything, in truth.  I just needed to blow off some steam.  Thank you for reading.

On request and because I am a Kurashiki fan, I decided to play this, despite worries about the concept and the characters... and I came out finding my worries perfectly justified.
First, the protagonist Teru... in a standard chuunige, he would be the jackass that gets killed after begging for his life in the opening act after doing something totally scumbag-like.  Worse, rather than being merely a cold-blooded manipulator (which is how the Getchu page presented him), he is actually an irritable kid who thinks he is a lot smarter than he is. 
Second, the heroines... first, the punk-like Aira who overdoes her makeup and generally speaks like an airhead but has definite anger issues.  Second is Asami, another man's wife who is generally weak-spirited and only clings to her second life out of a desire not to lose what she has left (her husband and child).  Third is Mao, the protagonist's osananajimi who has a strong sense of justice, is pretty naive in general, and tends to get on the protagonist's nerves constantly (this gets worse after he dies and gets resurrected).  Mao is the true heroine of the game... and also the single most annoying character in the game, even setting aside the protagonist's issues with her.  To be blunt, she is yet another Victim A heroine presented as the true heroine of a serious game with violence...
Third, the writing... I wanted to cry at how low-quality the writing in this game is compared to Kurashiki's previous two Clock-up games.  Both Okami and Maggot showed off his skills in full, and as a result, they have a cult fanbase even amongst those who don't like the sexual themes involved in the latter or the social ones in the former.  The basic narrative quality is scaled down to the level of the protagonist, which is hugely disappointing. 
Last, though this is more of a universal complaint for all Clock-up games... too much meaningless h-scenes.  I hate Clock-up's visual style for H-scenes (there aren't any torture rape scenes in this one, outside of the bad endings which I didn't watch), and the presence of loli content made me vomit... twice.  Seriously, was that really necessary? 
The good points of this VN lie solely in the individual heroine paths, because the common route is just poorly handled and paced.  The heroine paths, on the other hand, are slightly stronger, though only Mao's has a decent epilogue (even by VN standards). 
Overall, this game felt like a really inept attempt at psychological horror.  Considering how good a job Kurashiki has done previously at this kind of thing, it startled me how huge the gap in quality was between this and his previous works... both for Light and Clock-up.  Even Sora no Baroque was better, and that is saying a lot.

The Uso series is the original series of kinetic novels made by Campus based in a school campus where magic and mundane exist in parallel.  The protagonist of the Uso series, Sakurai Souichirou, is the head of the Cat's Hand Club, which is a jack-of-all-trades club that will take on just about any request, as long as the individual is willing to pay the price.  However, that is merely the open face of the club, which has the purpose of gathering magical energy from the emotions of those whose requests he fulfills in order to power the magical artifact implanted in his body.  This magical artifact is the Redline, a powerful tool that lets the person who is melded with it see the lies of others (portrayed as red text in the game's text boxes).  Despite this ability, Souichi isn't cynical and is generally a good and straightforward person, though, in his own words, that is only because he met the right people.  The main Uso series is made up of four kinetic novels, each following the path of an individual heroine (a similar setup to Tiny Dungeon, though the details differ).  It begins in 'Spring', continues with 'Summer' and 'Fall', and concludes with 'Winter'. 
Haru Uso
The spring-themed game of the Uso series follows the serial liar and school idol Himeno Satsuki as she essentially pushes Souichi into forming a relationship with her.  This game is a bit heavier on the H content than the three games that come after, though some of that is because Satsuki has a pretty forceful personality under her pleasant atmosphere.  The conflict in this story begins when Satsuki confesses her love for Souichirou (in the first scene) and moves on from there.  The formation of their romantic relationship is sweet and frequently amusing, though it is mostly ecchi because of how it begins.  While I normally don't like the trope used here, it is used in the least awkward fashion I've ever encountered in an SOL VN, so I was willing to overlook it. 
There is some serious drama, but this is immediately after Souichi starts to realize his feelings for Satsuki are real... and the drama will definitely come as a surprise if you haven't been paying close attention with an eye for mild mindfucks.  It all comes to a happy end in the end, but it can be a bit wrenching emotionally at a few points if you've gotten to like the couple in question along the way (which I did).
After Story 1
After Story 1 was present with the original game and is pretty extensive for an after story, mostly focusing on a much milder set of trials and tribulations that you'd see in any charage.  That said, since you already saw the more dramatic scenes immediately before, it comes off as cute rather than boring, since it is impossible to shake the feeling that 'they'll be all right no matter what' after the ending of the main path.
After Story 2
Drawn from Full Uso, this is based a few months after the end of the story, when the two have begun to live together and have settled in.  Satsuki is starting to come into her own and has grown as a person, and Souichirou is feeling his way out of some of his more extreme donkan habits (yes, he is donkan).  As in the previous after story, this one comes across as cute in comparison to the main story, and it mostly leaves you smiling at the lovers as they survive the trials any established couple is prone to.
Natsu Uso
Natsu Uso focuses on Izumi Aoi, a member of the student council who, even in Haru Uso, is rather obviously a deredere heroine hiding under a tsundere mask.  That said, as is indicated from certain scenes in the previous game, the past between her and Souichirou is complicated and painful for them both, and it becomes central to the background conflict of her story.  Aoi is pretty much the perfect tsundere heroine, but this is not because of her personality alone.  More, this is because of how Souichirou's Redline underlines precisely when she's telling the truth and when she's lying.  It's an experience worth having even if you aren't particularly into tsunderes, lol.
Anyway, due to a certain event, Souichirou and Aoi end up forced together by circumstance and Souichi's inability to be dishonest.  While both of them have serious hangups about the past, the fact is that Aoi is rather blatantly in love with him from the start, so don't expect this to be so much about relationship development as untangling the complex emotions the two hold for another and growing beyond them.  The ending is pretty touching, and worth a smile or two.
After story 1
Natsu Uso's After Story 1 is a lot more focused on ichaicha than Haru Uso's in the first half... not to mention having some really heavy h-scenes.  Basically, for those accustomed to the tangled emotions that made up the atmosphere between the two in the path itself, this is a time when they are more open with each other.  Aoi adorable-ness is more extreme here  (which looks impossible until you've actually experienced it), and she gets really clingy (which is part of the adorable-ness). 
However, if you've come to know Souichirou by this point, you know he always puts what is best for others first.  This is what causes the minor tribulations that make up the second half, though these aren't relationship troubles but rather troubles relating to Aoi growing as a person.
After Story 2
Similar to Haru Uso's second after story, this one occurs in the school year after the original game.  Aoi has taken up a place of responsibility, with Souichirou by her side.  Settling in to their new rhythm, one of the issues that has plagued Aoi since before she met Souicirou rears its head once again.  The resolution is pretty quick and not dramatic, but it is nice to see Aoi still following her chosen path. 
Aki Uso
To be frank, the heroine of this story, Eris R Renford, has a wildly different story from the other heroines.  As such, the path's drama is a bit more serious than in the first two games and her issues are mostly on her side, rather than involving her personal relationship with Souichirou exclusively (though that does come into play).  Since it is treated as a spoiler and not stated in the previous two games, I won't reveal the core reasons for the conflict in this story.
Eris is a heavy gamer, a wannabe NEET, and a generally lazy person on all levels.  If Sou didn't kick her out of bed she would sleep all day; if Sou didn't feed her real food, she'd probably eat nothing but ramen and takeout; and if Sou didn't teach her, she probably would have dropped out of school long ago.  In other words, she is completely dependent on Souichirou, which makes her the butt of numerous jokes both in her own path and in the other games. 
Her path/game is worth going through twice, if only to use a certain function that pops up on the second playthrough to lead you through the mindfuck hidden inside the dialogue. 
After Story 1
The first after story covers the growth of Eris after the turning point of the main game, along with a number of humorous and H scenes.  Since there is pretty much nothing I can say about this without spoiling the main game, I'll just say that it was this after story that made me want a second after story for Eris, lol.
After Story 2
For anyone who was expecting this after story to be full of drama based on the ending of the previous one, I have to inform you that, unfortunately, the events that followed the end of the after story 1 were spoken about in a short summary at the beginning (from the sound of it, they could have made a whole new VN out of them), and instead this is just another bit of SOL, which I found somewhat disappointing... though the Uso series characters are generally fun to read about.  Still, it does close out Eris's story, even if it didn't fulfill my desires, lol.
Fuyu Uso
Fuyu Uso follows Teidou Setsuka, the daughter of a powerful (not just wealthy) family and the Student Council President of the mammoth school they are attending.  She is beautiful, brilliant, and incisive.  From the very beginning (Haru Uso) she has been openly pursuing Souichirou, though Souichirou is perpetually suspicious of her reasons and wary of her in general.
This is, by far, the darkest of the four paths.  Teidou Setsuka's personality is the hardest to read from surface cues of all the heroines (even Satsuki, who is a mistress of lies), and she is so capable she doesn't even really provide an opening to read her.  I'm going to say that, like Aki Uso and Haru Uso, there is a mindfuck built into this story, though it is one (just like those) that you can figure out if you pay close attention to what is going on and the various cues you should have learned to pick up in the previous games. 
However, this story is, as I said, much darker than the others, which were essentially straight-out romances involving simple deredere heroines with various issues.  Setsuka is... scary.  I say this from the point of view of a guy who likes his VN heroines scary.  I'd say that she is on my list of top 5 scariest heroines that aren't yangire (yangire heroines being scary because they are unpredictably homicidal). 
Damn, it is hard not to spoil this one, lol.  Thankfully, this isn't the main company (Light) so this isn't a bad end path, hahaha.
After Story 1
I'm going to start this by saying that, of the after-stories so far, this one shows the heroine's personal growth the most.  For better or worse, Setsuka is pretty twisted up inside, and this covers her growth after the dramatic end of the main path (along with a number of really hot h-scenes).  In a way, Setsuka's growth in this after story is as dramatic as the other heroines' growth in their own paths, and in a crappy charage, this would probably have been enough for a path on its own, hahaha.
After Story 2
This is the shortest of the second after stories by far, probably because Setsuka's issues were resolved so completely in the original path and the first after story.  It follows Setsuka and Souichirou after she has graduated, and it lightly touches on the aftermath of the original path (considering what happened, that isn't surprising).   There really isn't much to it, but it was nice to see a less yandere-ish Setsuka, lol.
Hare Uso
Hare Uso is the harem story added for those who bought each of the original four games separately before this month.  Essentially, all the events (including the sex) happened in each of the games, but Souichirou never chose any of them as his lover.  Just to be clear, given that Souichirou ends up forced into the sexual situations in all four games (through different means), this is not as unrealistic as it might sound.  Moreover, I was laughing throughout much of its hour long length.  Harem paths with serious protagonists are always hilarious...
Overall
Overall, playing the Uso series altogether is like playing the best of the best of plotge/charage hybrids.  It is amusing at times, heart-warming at others, and it brings tears out at the right times.  The heroines are interesting and unique, presented in a first-class fashion, and generally given a depth of character development that has been lacking in recent years.  By handling each path as a separate game with an intensive focus, Campus made the heroines feel like real people, rather than props or sex dolls (which is what most charage heroines end up being).  While the series has its flaws, it is definitely worth playing as a whole.

…And you probably know about it already if you know me, but anyway, my own #brand is Memeshii Translations apparently. Since you’re here, have some information on the experience of working with the paltry tools available:
*The linecount had to be the exact same or the insertion tool would crash with an unhandled exception.
*Some lines had a linebreak in the original; these were joined together engine wise so they had to be line broken no matter what. Usually this wasn’t a problem, but some lines ended up short in english but still needed a linebreak so they look wonky, and the second line in-game had two lines that wanted to be long and couldn’t be split so it was kind of hell to fit.
*Weeb quotes 「」 had to be used or the engine wouldn’t read it as a spoken line.
*One line was turned from speech to narration for flow reasons (it was like suu haa or some shit) by removing the speechtag annotation in front.
*There was no manual linebreak code I could use (mandated ones were just CRLF linebreak, and could only been used for that specific line). However, the engine does automatically line-break on a character level, and seems to be more or less monospace. So I ended up doing some of the line-breaking in this truly kami manner, checking it manually ingame over like 5 iterations:
す＠ is Sumire; あ＠ is Azami
*The extracted yscfg.ybn file had the window title at the end in plaintext. But the title seemed to be read in 2 char blocks or something which meant the title ended up as either “The world ends tomorrowA” or “The world ends tomorrowb” after insertion. I fixed this by adding a space after the name.
*The nametags were in a different script than the scenario but they were just text strings, so I could just edit them
*Same for the exit message when pressing the cross at the top right
*Since we used the “spoken line” format I had to convert this to the japanese quotation brackets. Kotlin code for you to meme at:
oh, java strings are immutable, fuck… fiiine I’ll your it your goddamn way
This is probably half the reason why any in-line quotes ingame are single quotes; I actually edited a pair of doubles because I couldn’t be arsed to clean up the script after the fixer code worked on it… or something.
Okay since you read this far some stats; I used Mediafire for the release because it gives download counts. It seems to update daily or something. First update was 63 downloads. Second was 89. I had 66 pageviews the blog release post on feb 14 and have 178 so far for feb 15. 89/244 gives us a ~36% download rate per view, not too bad. The About page seems to have gotten like, 8 views. The dedicated asuowa tl page has 7.
So uhh I guess I have to tl more shinimasu now.
fuck
 

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While two weeks ago we’ve mostly covered the beginnings of Winged Cloud’s presence on the EVN market (well, ignoring the "otome period", but Pyrite Heart might be worth a separate look, along with The Guardian’s Spell crowdfunding debacle), this time we’re taking look at a transitional period – one in which Inma still didn’t make explicit art, acting as the sole “all-ages” artist for the company, while Wanaca was already focusing exclusively on hentai titles, including the 100+ CG behemoth that is Sakura Dungeon. It’s also a time that brought something we could describe as a pretty obvious drop in quality – the new non-porn titles definitely looked like low-effort cash-ins, with mostly linear storytelling, no voice-acting and underwhelming CG counts. Sakura Beach 2, put together in only a few months and obviously reusing a lot of visual assets from the first game, was especially emblematic, foreshadowing the switch to mass-production of cheaper, shorter titles, that fully dominated the studios output a year later, after the release of Sakura Nova, the last arguably ambitious Sakura game. But, ignoring for a moment our knowledge of what the future held for the franchise, how these late Sakura ecchi VNs hold out today?
 
Sakura Beach 1 & Sakura Beach 2

It might be just my personal taste, but I can somewhat accept a harem scenario if the protagonist earns it in some way – by being a really good person that helps the heroines in a substantial manner, or even being a shitty one but defying expectations and doing something exceptional when it truly mattered. Starting with a harem, however, feels like the laziest setup imaginable and I pretty much abhorred every instance when it showed up its ugly head in the Sakura series (of course, in short nukige such as Sakura Christmas Party the only thing that mattered was giving a justification for inserting a variety of porn scenes, so complaining about dumb plot is a bit of superficial – thankfully, I’m also making a series all about pointless nit-picking :3). Inma’s debut as a Winged Cloud’s character artist, Sakura Beach and its sequel, Sakura Beach 2 already had a pretty rough start with me because of this "storytelling technique", while the apparently short development cycle for both games also did little to encourage any kind of optimism from me when I decided to approach them.
Read the full article at evnchronicles.blogspot.com

Before I go visit my remaining grandparents this weekend (my grandmother on my father's side and grandfather on my mother's side are both in extremely frail condition right now, so we are taking time to show my sister's kid to them), I thought I would give my thoughts on modern VN trends.
Charage aren't going anywhere
Though I frequently bash the industry for over-saturating the market with moege/charage/SOL, the fact is that the demand for this type of VN is never going to go away as long as the Japanese eroge VN market exists.  Why?  Because it is the single easiest way to present the formation of relationships of young people into a sexual one.  While the genre isn't that attractive for people in their late teens or early to mid-twenties (incidentally the reason this market is declining), the majority of any older generation is always going to prefer this.  The lesser numbers of young people in Japan compared to my generation and the lower relative amounts of income are the main reasons for the current contraction of the genre.
Good Writers don't go into VNs anymore
This is a truth that few of the plotge addicts like me want to admit.  Most of the best writers in the VN industry are getting into middle age or later now (or have already left it), and the new and upcoming writers are mostly up and coming LN writers who have a far looser grasp on how to write/narrate and (more importantly) complete a story.  This doesn't mean they won't evolve their styles to match the new medium eventually, but whenever I've read a VN written by one of these newbies, the plot holes and poor handling of the endings of their games stand out painfully.
Chuunige are in decline
I absolutely hate to say this.  However, it needs to be said.  Trends in the last nine years in chuunige have tended to result in far too much side-story exploitation and sequelitis.  There is also a distinct lack of innovation, and when innovation does come, it tends to come with a huge drop in quality in the final product (Sora no Baroque).   Fans of the genre are getting older, and some companies (such as Light) have been putting their games in non-ero form on consoles to try to grasp the hearts of younger VN lovers (this has actually succeeded to an extent), but the fact is that it takes a much longer time for a chuunige company to  make back its investment after a release.  This is exacerbated by economic issues in Japan, and the fact that these companies mostly suck at advertising (like many niche genre companies, they only put it up in places where those already 'in the know' will find them).
VN Trends are always years behind the rest of Otaku-dom
VN communities in Japan are insular.  Even moreso than they are in the US.  When rom-com anime vanished for the most part at the end of the last decade, it was replaced with cheap action-fantasy (shallow, weaker stories for the most part, with more emphasis put on 'cool' elements) and moeblob.  The glut of such anime is reaching its peak right now... and that influence is starting to overflow (interpreted through the lens of the hyper-conservative VN community, of course) into our side of things.  That said, this is a trend that is unlikely to take hold, because it requires a modicum of writing skill that doesn't involve dialogue, and most VN writers just don't have that.  Instead, VN companies that have been around for a while have been 'testing the waters' by making games that step out of their usual niches, hoping to diversify to deal with the changing trends.  Light went with going down a much darker path than usual with its most recent game, and Navel actually put up a half-assed plotge last month.  These, along with many other incidences in the last two years, make me wonder just what the market will look like five years from now. 

In March I've brought you two interviews with notable yuri and otome OELVN developers, talking with Nami and Reine Works' founder, Jackie M. Today, however, we're venturing into the world of very, very traditional romance (with equally high levels of cuteness), as my guest is ds-sans, the author of a lovely freeware VN Sounds of Her Love (be sure to check my review of that game) and the upcoming commercial title Chemically Bonded. I encourage you to join us as we discuss the place of all-ages romance in the VN scene, the role of voice acting in OELVNs and more.

Plk_Lesiak: Welcome and thank you for accepting my invitation! While many people in the VN community might recognize your nick, they probably don’t know much beyond that. Could you tell us a bit about yourself?
ds-sans: I wouldn't really say that I'm that interesting. I'm currently an undergraduate student at university in the UK studying geography, with an interest in anime and related media in my spare time. (Although, that's died down in recent years.) If I were to describe my current background, it'd be fairly cliché, just like the stories of my VNs. I started developing VNs in 2015, while I was 16, but really showed an interest in January 2014. I didn't make it that far though and only really came back to it to prove that I could do something if I tried.
PL: Sooo... Where did the "ds-sans" label come from?
ds: In all honesty, I don't think the name really means anything. From what I remember, I think I honestly scrambled a few letters together from a car's registration plate, but this was a good 4 years ago. To clarify though, it has nothing to do with Japanese honorifics at least. I'd only started getting into anime a few months prior and still had no clue as to their usage.
The story itself isn't that special, but the name stuck and at this point, I feel that it's too late to change it.
PL: You create rather tame, cute romances in a market that seem to reward ecchi and h-content over anything else. Why this formula?
ds: Pure romance novels have always been very diverse in the EVN industry, in my opinion. From what I've personally seen, many of the tamer romance titles are either a lot more Western in style or are low-scale non-commercial in nature and target a different audience. As far as I'm aware, there are relatively few commercial B x G titles with no 18+ content which take significant influence from Japanese VNs.
Reading Clannad was really influential in my decision to focus on cute romance stories as I wanted to emphasize emotional connections between people over physical. If I were to add scenes like that into the stories, they'd need to supplement that motive as opposed to attracting more sales or getting people off. Katawa Shoujo is a good example of a VN which does h-scenes in this way. It's the formula which my inspiration is driven from, but it's not as if I'm not open to expanding into different genres for different audiences in the future.
Read the full article at evnchronicles.blogspot.com

Get it? Because it's not boring? Right?  
 
Listen, it took me about 20 minutes to come up with that one. So anyway, in case you haven't figured it out, I will be talking about Horizon Zero Dawn. A new ip from the developers Guerilla Games, best known for the Killzone series. Horizon Zero Dawn isn't just another success story to place on top of the already pile of success stories out there. No, no, no, no, no, no, no it is not. Horizon Zero Dawn is a beacon of hope to any company thinking of taking a risk with a new ip. Before it was released, Horizon Zero Dawn already was garnering interest from its audience because of it's sort of mix between Brave, Turok:Dinosaur Hunter, and Terminator.
 

 
Hey, I'd watch that. And now here we are one year later with the game selling over 7 million copies and a new DLC, The Frozen Wilds, proving that despite what EA loves to shove down our throats that singleplayer focused games aren't dying and don't sell well. Now games with multiplayer do sell better as well of games with a connection to a previous universe, such as Call of Duty games, Black Ops, Doom, Gears of War, etc, etc. Horizon is none of these. All it has going for it is its characters, settings, game play, and story. And it succeeds on all.
 
You play a young, redhead girl named Aloy. No, that's not how you pronounce that name. Look at how it's spelt, imagine how it's pronounced based on that and then forget about it. That's how you pronounce her name. An outcast raised by her guardian to pass a trial she will face when she comes of age so she can finally be accepted as one of the tribe. Aloy being an outcast shapes her actions in the game. As an adult she doesn't go insane with talking with herself to be annoying but just enough to be informative. She also has some nice idle animation and even non idle ones, such as placing her hands just over tall grass so they can skim on her fingertips. Holding out her hands to feel the rain or snow. Little touches of this helps the gamers be immersed with the character and the world. Of course it does help that this is one of the best looking games in recent memory.


I got Horizon and it's DLC while it was on sale, luckily and was very surprised on how immersed I found myself in the game. The mechanics work well in the game and are effective in your journey to avenge your tribe. Speaking of, I kind of feel they lost an opportunity here for some interesting conflict. You see, early on, Her tribe is attacked and a large portion of them are killed. Aloy was just freed from being an outcast literally less than 5 minutes ago, and being an outcast means that no one from the tribe can have contact with you, or accept you as their own. So she, aside from her guardian, Rost, had been living on their own with their wits to help them survive. Now, as they are attacked, Aloy then gets a personal reason to go after the attackers. I felt like this is a missed opportunity for Aloy to have a personal struggle with the whole thing. Like now that she's seen as someone who's useful to the tribe while before everyone treated her like she didn't even exist. She only took the trial so she could find answers about her mother. Just imagining her fighting the tribe that abandoned her and looking past her rooted feelings on the matter would've been interesting to experience.
 
So, besides hunting with your bow and setting traps, Aloy has another tool in her arsenal, a kind of like bluetooth headset. This allows her to basically go into batman mode and get more information on the world around her. Except the drawback is she can't run while having it on and it also has a very limited range. This works well because one, it's mostly an open world stealth game and two, it allows you to not rely heavily on it. HOWEVER, there are times for sidequests where you must use it to track an item or person or a target. This is when the thing becomes way to simplified. It's basically turn on your bluetooth, point at the glowy bit and then press R1 to make a trail to follow. Sometimes reach the end of the trail and press R1 again. Felt like this tool should've been a tad more complex, like having filters for chemicals, heat, or unique properties that you need to manually cycle through until finding the right one. Something, ANYTHING other than "point at the thing and press a button."
 
Speaking of press the button, I've gotten to a point with some kind of ancient underground facility and as I approach a control panel for a bridge, Aloy says aloud "How do I get that to activate." Yes, quiet the conundrum here, Aloy. What do we do? Perhaps we find a machine with some kind of pass for the internal workings of the facility? Maybe we play a quick hacking mini-game that's time based to get passed this? Nope! Just hold triangle next to the thing and that'll sort everything out. Again, I wish there was a bit more complexity to the mechanics to the game. I mean, FFS, I need several different bows to fire different elemental arrows, for some reason. Make the one thing that seems like it would be complex complex! AND LET ME PICK UP RESOURCES I'VE USED! Like wire traps or arrows that missed. You can place wire traps that are explosive or shock the enemies that you can't pick up when you want to move them. If you place them in a spot the enemy isn't nearby anymore, you have to adjust yourself so they charge through the trap. Or, if you realize you don't want to fight the enemy anymore, you cant just leave. Otherwise you waste a tripe wire or two since you can't pick them back up.
 
But anyways, small gripes in an otherwise great game. Certainly pick it up when you get the chance. On sale or full price, you can go wrong with this unique experience.

Oh, right. You fight robotic dinosaurs.