adamstan

I cried in Kotomi's route too... Good luck Fuko's route was another one that made me cry - and I really didn't expect it judging by her behavior in common route. But well - that's the point of nakige I guess In the beginning Fuuko was just some annoying little brat, but near the ending... ************************ As for my current read (Natsuzora Kanata), yesterday I entered Yuiko's route (I'm saving Chihaya's route, who seems to be central heroine, for the end). I really love the art style of this VN. Sprites use flat shading, and backgrounds have level of detail that sometimes is close to the backgrounds of sprite's VNs (Koichoco and Aokoana) - there are even some, where there are people with faces in them, like this one from festival: Characters are also likeable. The only thing that bothers me a bit is that two of three heroines seem to be lolis, at least when it comes to body shape.

Today I started reading one of the early Yuzusoft titles - Natsuzora Kanata (thanks to someone mentioning it recently on vndb forums). Since I just started, I can only say that, at least at first glance, the art looks very pretty - there are quite detailed backgrounds. Also, opening was very nice.

So, I have just finished Misa's route in Natsu no Ame, which means completing whole VN. Misa's route was truly wonderful, almost like from the different game I mean, Rikako's and Midori's routes were also pretty good, but this one really outshines them. On the surface, in the beginning it might have look like your typical moege teacher route, but it really goes beyond that. Mostly thanks to Nene (It reminded me of Language of Love a bit). I love how, especially the second part, is focused on the themes of family. Romance part is also the best among four routes - it was the only route, where first sex scene didn't jump out of nowhere There was proper build up to that moment. It was really lovely, heartwarming route - I laughed and cried a lot, even though it wasn't full-blown nakige. Epilogue was also sweet. So my ranking of routes would probably be something like Misa >>> Midori = Rikako (cannot choose which one I liked more, as their moods were quite different) > Hinako (lovely heroine, but the route itself feels unpolished, a bit disappointing, especially since I'm always keen on osananajimi routes). Graphics, music and voices were really good - no complaints from me at all. I agree with Joyjason's review, that it was nice touch to have epilogues narrated by heroines. If all routes were of the same quaility as Misa's, this VN would easily be the 9, but since the other three lacked that extra something, after all I'll settle with 8/10. Very good charage, with decent pacing, one outsdanding route, two very good ones, and one a bit weaker. So while my review isn't as enthusiastic as Joyjason's one, I'd still recommend this game to anyone who isn't allergic to a bit of SoL, or Konno Asta's writing Not bad for his first VN I think it could gain some popularity if it got decent translation, but perhaps now 800x600 resolution might put off some people... after all it's 2009 VN. But I'd love to see what Nekonyansoft could make of it

On Discord? How does that work? I'm completely unfamiliar with that platform.

Yeah. People speculate that it had to be because of some troll reporting the game, which grabbed the attention of banhammer-wielding ones... Wasn't that about Totono? I recall reading some Bokuten review which claimed that they weren't crucial. But I might be mixing things up. However I also browsed Bokuten's vndb page, and it looks like it had 15+ Japanese download edition too, so it had to work somehow And while I'm often interested in all-ages version, it is also good to have +18 patch available, especially when all-ages version is made by publisher/localizer. And results vary wildly. Nekonyan's versions are brilliant - I thoroughly enjoyed Steam versions of Sanoba Witch and Making Lovers, and didn't feel the need to add h-scenes. OTOH SolPress sucked at that, and I ended up playing adult versions of both their titles I've read - Under One Wing and Sakura Sakura.

Shit... I didn't make it in time to get it... It would be nice, at least for the weirdo like me, if, once the VN gets removed from Steam, publishers would offer all-ages version on their own storefronts along with the adult one. I actually was interested in all-ages version of Bokuten... Yeah, I know, I'm a sick pervert

Recently I finished Hinako's route in Natsu no Ame. And well - it wasn't bad, but yeah, contrary to Hinako herself, it was indeed kinda... flat? Had many nice moments, but felt a bit unfinished. So I have to agree that it's the weakest route of the game. But it had nice H-scenes Currently I'm on Misa's route, and so far it's great.

I've been doing WaniKani to learn kanji, and it seems to work for me. It also teaches some vocab along the way, so two birds with one stone (although it cannot be the only vocab resource, since the words it teaches are there mainly to reinforce the kanji readings) Tae Kim's grammar guide is quite useful. Another good one later on, to look up things that might be not found on Tae Kim is "Dictionary of Basic/Intermediate/Advanced Japanese Grammar". Also, there's ton of videos about grammar on YT. I started my learning with YesJapan's Japanese From Zero online course (there's also book version), and they have YT channel with pretty good explanations, especially for basics. I also really like videos from Misa.

Do you really seriously believe that Japanese people in general feel "opressed" by their writing system?? Or is that perhaps just your bias as foreign learner speaking?

Okay, I'm out. I know that I am unable to convince anyone. But I'm happy that you have no power over Japan

No, that's not it. I really find kana-only texts harder to read - especially since they don't contain spaces. Parsing anything beyond simplest sentences becomes nightmare. Is that character a particle? A part of the previous word? A part of the next one? A word on its own? Etc etc. Incidentally, the only people who seem to raise such doubts are the ones who don't know them and don't want to learn So it seems they aren't going away anytime soon They seem useless only from outside. Once you get familiar with them - and with Japanese in general - their usefulness becomes obvious. And actually, it seem to be the case with most of the hard to learn things - students keep saying all the time "Why do I have to learn all this useless shit!?" about almost anything. And, general consensus seems to be that getting rid of current Japanese writing system would create more problems than it would solve.

In the beginning every JP learner moans that we should get rid of kanji, (and, as shown above, some would want to axe kana as well ), but afterwards most start to appreciate them. They actually make texts easier to read (provided you know the words of course) - longer kana-only texts are very tedious to read, since they are difficult to parse. And then there's an awful lot of homophones.

Technically I bough those back in March, but due to corona problems, they arrived this friday. First two volumes of よつばと！

Yesterday I finished Midori's route in Natsu no Ame. It had very different tone compared to Rikako's route - it was much more lighthearted. I'd compare its mood to Making Lovers. For now, I think Midori might be my favorite character from this VN First h-scene happened totally out of the blue, but well, it wasn't something that couldn't happen at all, so I won't complain too much And scenes themselves, while fairly generic, had some nice dialogues in them, so all in all they were nice. By that I mean, there was some love there, not just technical descriptions of fucking coupled with moans and slurps (although those were present as well) Also, I really liked kissing CG before third scene. BTW now that I browsed through CG gallery, it seems that Rikako is the only one with four h-scenes - other heroines have three. And perhaps that fourth one was the one too many? Because, while reading Midori's route, I didn't have that feeling of h-content being forced / squeezed in, or at least not as much as in Rikako's route. Maybe they had better lead-ins (apart from the first one ) Now I'm reading Hinako's (osananajimi) route. It's again more serious mood than Midori's. Some people said it was boring - let's see how will it turn out for me.

Yesterday I started Ageha's Midori's route in Natsu no Ame. I'm still at the beginning, but I'm already liking her very much. She brings that nice feeling - she's great friend and it feels good just to be around her. When reading yesterday I found myself smiling most of the time

It's quite hard to decide. If the protagonist is decently written, I kind of don't notice him too much. It's the bad ones that tend to stick out I agree that Clannad's Tomoya was a good one. I also liked Aoi from Konosora, Shingo from Mashiro Iro Symphony and Subaru from Amber Quartz, but I tend to focus more on heroines Ah, another good one would be Hisao from Katawa Shoujo I think.

Yesterday I finished first route in Natsu no Ame. It was Rikako's route. My impressions after that first route are good - it featured some nice character development, a twist or two, and lots of emotional moments. However, I feel like this VN is hindered by being an eroge - H-scenes are, to quote Joyjason's otherwise glowing and enthusiastic review kind of a double-edged sword here. They were not bad, but sometimes their placement felt a bit awkward, and in other places it felt like a story has been bent just to make a room for a sex scene. Also, there was one completely unnecessary pantyshot CG of Tomomi (MC's little sister, who isn't a heroine) It gave me YU-NO flashbacks It might sound like a heresy, but I'd love to see non-porn version of this VN, preferably in NekoNyansoft's format It seems like Rikako is kind of main heroine here - she's for Natsu no Ame what Kotori was for Konosora. Let's see how the remaining three routes turn out

Recently Akina Nakamori comes up often on the radio I'm listening to Today I recorded instrumental cover of her song "Jukkai (1984)"

Yeah. And it gets tiresome after a while. I disliked most of the WagaHigh's HCGs because of that (and weird nipples). For the contrary examples, some HCGs from Aokana come to mind - some of the Misaki's scenes use angles that don't show genitals at all. It actually feels pretty refreshing.

Yes. Cruise Sign works flawlessly with it.

It's a sign to read Cruise Sign :-D

No idea why it does that. I read console version with emulator and didn't have any problems. But I don't remember any problems with running PC version either. If it was locale problem it should crash with error message, not freeze. Still I consider PS3 version to be superior. Akari's route is much better than pretty lame Himegi sisters threesome scene it replaced. Replacement scenes in other routes are also cute.

With KEY, considering they have a lot of choices (and inside of that, lot of not obvious ones) it's usually the best to use walkthrough There is even one right here on the forums So you'd have to check if any of your saves are close to the branching points. Or start from the beginning and skip already-read text.

Did you start with Mai's route? That's interesting choice, I wouldn't have thought of that I started with Nayuki, and finished with Ayu. The reasons (let me quote from my "review") Also, those two were my favorite routes. As for my impressions of h-scenes:

The scene near the end of Mai's arc is perhaps the only one that made at least some sense, so you might check it out, but you also won't miss much without it. Others are pure fan(dis)service At which point in the story are you now? (You might put in in the spoiler tag).