adamstan

Yesterday I finished To Heart PSE It was nice, but uneven. I've written my impressions from first seven routes in earlier posts. So at first let's look at remaining three routes. Kotone's route was nice. Not anything spectacular, or especially romantic - for most of the time it was another of "friendship" routes - but it had some good scenes near the ending, and all in all was good and felt pretty satisfying. Rio's route was much better than I expected from reading reviews. First impression wasn't great, but she grew up on me (much like she did on MC). Also, it was interesting because here whole setup was reversed - she suddenly confesses to MC right at the beginning, while he's all "Eh? But I don't know a single thing about you! Let's start as friends and get to know each other" - and so they start to slowly build their relationship. Nice And the last one - Serika's younger sister, Ayaka. Her mini-route is exclusive to PSE version. I'd say she's definitely one of the best girls in the game, but her route didn't live up to her character. It was nice, but something was lacking - the ending felt too rushed. Still, not bad, and I absolutely loved 膝枕(lap-pillow) scenes So, to sum it up, if I had to rank routes, it would end up something like this (I will rate them in groups): First place - Multi, Tomoko and Lemmy Second place - Serika, Akari and Shiho Third place - Kotone, Rio and Ayaka Fourth place - Aoi - the only route that felt utterly disappointing for me. I liked Aoi as a character when I met her in Akari's route, but her own route bored me to death. Art and music were nice, as well as voice acting. All in all - nice old high-school moege. Took me pretty long time to finish (I read it in Japanese, so it was much slower), but I don't regret it. 7.5/10 Now I'm reading Yukizakura fan-disc - Saki no LoveLove Honeymoon - and after that I think I'll try Hitotsuba.

All heroines from Kazoku Keikaku (except for Matsuri) are adults or young adults, and they don't have watermelons attached to their chests Shizuku from Koi Iro Chu! Lips is on the bigger side, but still normal (vndb character page says D-cup). Misato from Yukizakura would fit the bill too. Adult heroines from Crescendo and YU-NO have pretty normal bodies as well.

Well, since Akari's route was part of the main game, not the FD, there's possibility that they'll reuse old shitty translation for common route...

So, that's how it would look like without smoothing, in all its pixel glory: What do you think, guys? I actually like it, and will probably make it default style, with smoothed images as an option.

I'm not @Palas, but I'm backing it up too It's seriously good.

It's pretty refreshing to see adult protagonist. I think the last one of this kind that I've read (and the only one, I think) was Kazoku Keikaku? (well, possibly AIR and Clannad After Story could qualify too. And Planetarian, but it was short)

Great news indeed! I'm looking forward to it.

Thanks. Criticism is much needed for any project. Actually I agree with some of your points. I agree, and I didn't do that. It is wrong to say that these games have nothing to do with Sakura no Kisetsu or Tiare, as they all SHARE many of the assets (backgrounds and tachie) done by the same artists. Looking just at the screenshots one could even be forgiven to think that they all have same setting. So in some way, those pictures are kind of "unused assets" - they definitely come from the same "pool". If they were completely unrelated I would have never used them. And I haven't added that much - just few backgrounds from residential districts, so scenes outside girls' houses would hapen truly outside the house, and not on one generic street background used over and over, and train station. All those just appear briefly in few scenes. Do you feel that way? If so, thats exactly opposite of what I aimed for I wanted to do as little smoothing etc as possible, and to preserve original pixel art character. I explicitly wanted to avoid the "Memorial Edition look". Seems that I've failed at that... Using original versions or adding them as an option is certainly a possibility I will look into. Actually I'm not fully satisfied with current look either. I actually played DOS version, and I ejoyed it, indeed. I am used to adventure games. But in this case that system often felt as a chore and distraction - having to click "talk" > "look" > "think" many times while figuring correct order just to read whole scene isn't good for VN. Especially since anyways you HAVE to read it all to progress to next scene. So I was just curious, if it would be possible to remake it in a "modern VN" format. I just don't think that actually the gameplay system should be considered main feature of this VN, or what makes it unique. I liked it because of the characters, story, art and music. The system, well... it just was there... Also, currently Asenheims web version is playable for free directly from JAST site (including original and Memorial Edition gfx) - so anyone can still enjoy it in close to original form too. I'd like to do it if possible as well. Unfortunately, AFAIK it isn't possible for me to insert new translation into DOS or PC98 version. While there's a tool to decompile scripts, I'm not aware of a recompiler. And coding all that adv-gameplay system with ren'py would be suicidal mission, at least for me... I'm sorry that you feel like my project is disrespectful towards the original, as I feel exactly opposite, but well, there's nothing we can do about this... Anyway, thanks again for your feedback. But certainly, I shouldn't call it a port - it's more of a remake. Will update text in signature...

Are you sure it's from VN and not from some hentai video?

So, I started slooow work on the text - as you can see, last progress meter in my signature went up from 0%. It will take some time, that's for sure. I think I can handle first pass*, but I will definitely need TLC and editor for this project to make it into something readable. *I'm not retranslating everything from scratch, but rather fixing JAST's translation and filling in the blanks. However that's for now - nobody knows how will it end

There's also Corona Blossom. ?

What? Whoa, that might be a bit too much for me. Well, need to brace myself too, 'cause I really want to read this.

Aaaand - done. All scripts put together and ready for retranslation and editing:

Ekhemmm... As for me - I did read Princess Evangile twice - second time it was to check out All-ages version. I loved it, and whole experience was like coming home, or meeting old friends again. Some day I may revisit it again. And I think that I actually prefer all-ages version. I absolutely loved "morning/cuddling after" CGs for Chiho and Ayaka that were added in this version. I also read Kotori's route in Konosora twice - when I played the game for the first time, I dropped it at Ageha's route, waiting for retranslation, so when the patch came out I read whole thing again. I enjoyed it all the same (or even more because of better TL ). I actually plan to read Konosora for the third time, but this time it will be Japanese all ages version - Cruise Sign.

How do you define "older"? Older than the protagonist? in her 30s? 40s? Well, from the ones I've read: - Masumi in Kazoku Keikaku (Family Project) - Margit in Majikoi S - Misato in Yukizakura - Ayame and Kaori in Crescendo - Ayumi, Kaori, Mitsuki and Eriko in YU-NO - Nanako in Sakura Sakura - most of the heroines in Mugen Yasoukyoku (Nocturnal Illusion) - Mistress, Miwako, Maya, Sari and Yukina - Ayame from Konosora could perhaps qualify too (she's few years older than the protagonist)

And another one (this time not anime-related) - Keyakizaka46's sad song: Enjoy

Little progress report about this preparation work - I've done seven chapters so far (in terms of line count, that would be about 45-50%). While doing this, I'm still discovering some new mistranslations/rewrites. The one pictured above will probably require reordering of dialogues - if Meimi is currently chatting with Kyouko, it makes no sense for Kyouko to approach MC the very next second, so I'll have to move that bit somewhere earlier. (Or insert universal "............................................." line inbetween ) *Originally all of this were responses for Look/Talk commands, so the order was dependent on player's choices. While doing my port, I decided on the order of these scenes relying only on translated script - thus some incosistencies are inevitably coming out when attempting retranslation.

I think I didn't have such long break during a VN - mostly about a week. I might have had longer breaks, but it was after finishing current VN. But I know what you mean about alternating between different hobbies, as I have similar "problem" Actually currently it's the other way around - I got swept away by anime, VNs and learning Japanese, and so sometimes I start to feel bad about neglecting my other hobbies. Days are definitely too short!

+1 for WaniKani for kanji learning My first 'textbook' was online version of Japanese From Zero - it's pretty good, if a bit slow. As I was complete beginner, their aproach of gradually replacing romaji with kana was actually pretty easy way to learn kana. I found accompanying videos helpful as well. After completing JFZ, I devoted myself mostly to WaniKani, while also continuing to learn about grammar from various resources - like aforementioned TaeKim or "Dictionary of basic Japanese Grammar". I'd also like to recommend videos made by Misa from JapaneseAmmo - I really like her grammar explanations. https://www.japaneseammo.com/ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBSyd8tXJoEJKIXfrwkPdbA In the autumn I plan to enroll in Japanese course, to have more structured learning approach, and to practice speaking.

I feel weird writing third post in a row, but whatever... Yesterday I finished watching Lovely★Complex. It was great - my first thought was "a bit like Toradora! but reversed" But that's only when it comes to characters' height - and inital premise. Comedic parts were really funny, at least for me, and romance aspect was interesting as well - about difficult transition from friends to lovers. Beginning was hilarious, it sagged a bit in the middle, but then regained traction around ep 16-17, and ran towards quite satisfying ending. Art was, well, wouldn't call it beautiful, but it worked. 8/10, very enjoyable.

True Same, when recently learned word pops up in VN or anime

I cannot view this video now, however - because of such sometimes random parsing I decided to turn off words coloring and hiragana when using chiitrans as a parser - so weirdly parsed words wouldn't distract me. Now I just read, and when I encounter unknown word, I then hover the pointer over it to look it up - and if it turns out to be misparsed, I then use chiitrans' manual reparsing feature - highlight and press space. But, like you say - that requires some basic grammar knowledge, and vocab as well. Chiitrans mostly trips up on slang (confusing particles, casual sentence endings, ない slurred as　ねー etc) or when there's extensive kana usage. Haven't used other parsers, so cannot speak about them. To clarify - I'm using only "show original text" option - I don't use translation features, beyond simple looking up of single words.

I think I've seen this in some of the romance VNs I've read, but cannot put my finger on it now. Or maybe it was some anime? I definitely recognize this pattern, and certainly haven't experienced it IRL... But yeah, I might be confusing VNs and anime.

I exported dialogues from my current ren'py version, and started to line up original lines in the same order - as a preparation for retranslation. (So I'm basically rearranging the spreadsheet containing JP and EN lines side by side that you've seen earlier in this thread)

I agree that dismissing solely because of the original language would be silly. However - it's not only language and production values that separate them. I can speak only for myself, but currently I'm interested in VNs as a part of japanese pop-culture, together with anime, music etc - not as much in the medium/genre itself. So while I'm not completely dismissing EVNs, I'm just not attracted to them that much. Of course, many EVN developers try to imitate JVNs, but most of the times results are cringeworthy - with Katawa Shoujo being noble exception (and guess what - this EVN is in the top of my list, with the score of 8.5, just below KEY classics ). So - it's not that I totally dismiss EVNs - I just tend to prefer JVNs, and my backlog is already horribly long...