adamstan

Yeah, looking at their catalog, the other good ones were Kazoku Keikaku and Yukizakura (and, for me at least, Heart de Roommate, although that one seems to be of "love it or hate it" kind ) - the rest were mostly nukiges. Ah, Kana Imouto is supposedly good too, but I don't have the courage to read it...

Yeah, totally. Not only for its age, it's just good The only thing I wish for are longer epilogues/afterstories, but nevertheless great VN and I'm glad I read it. And she's so cute... As for Yuka, surprisingly one of the most emotional moments for me was Also, what was really great about this route is how it managed to kind of align my view of Yuka with protagonists'. They made sure that her first impression isn't great, so I saw her similarly to MC, and then my approach evolved together with his. That's some good character writing.

I started with her, then went with Meguru and Touko, Nene and Wakana still left. Tsumugi's route was good, but then each next route I read was even better - I was really surprised first by great Meguru's route, and then even greater Touko's. I'll comment more once I finish them all, but I retract my earlier comment about Sanoba being "bland".

And it looks like it's big obstacle, as nobody on vndb voted on it yet.

I didn't consider Miyu's ending "pure" utsuge. But indeed, it's at least "very sad nakige". Now, after I read some other VNs, I'd compare it to AIR ending. Also very sad, but not thouroughly depressing. And yeah, it got me by surprise, just like it got you. For me it was the weakest one. Didn't dislike it, but it ranked somewhat lower than the rest. IMO the best route was Yuka's, while my best girl was probably Kyoko. And the song in Kaho's route was beautiful... loved it.

I also started with Kaho/Kyoko route. It is nice as an introduction into the game. From these two I slightly preferred Kyoko Those two routes are most light-hearted, typical high-school romance stories. Remaining routes are much heavier. I think Yuka's was the best.

Maybe it's just the case of confusing word definitions, but for me cuteness is just another form of beauty As we are talking about waifus, I feel like かわいい and きれい aren't mutually exclusive. One is possible without the other ("cute but not pretty" and "pretty but not cute"), but they can also come together. And yeah, possibly cuteness is more connected with behaviour than just with appearance. Nevertheless beautiful girl can act (and thus be) cute.

Sanoba is nice, but so far (just finished common and entered Tsumugi's route) it fails to move me emotionally - it feels a little bland, I can't connect with characters as much as I did in some other moeges I've read. So far the most entertaining bits for me were comedic scenes, especially chibi/SD ones. They were cuuuute But I'm not dropping it, as I feel it has potential. As for Crescendo, I'd like to also mention music in it - it did really great job at creating the mood.

Yes, good comparison. Yes, I liked them too, but for a short time their eyes looked strange to me. But, like I said, it was just a matter of getting used to that style - it isn't bad.

I managed to play it in fullscreen mode - my laptop has some additional keyboard shortcuts to enable scaling in fullscreen mode. I suppose most graphic drivers and monitors have such settings, so just try to mess with them after entering fullscreen with alt-enter shortcut. You need to find setting for upscaling while keeping aspect ratio. I played all old 640x480 VNs (like Yukizakura, Kazoku Keikaku, Heart de Roommate etc) that way.

Yes, yes, yes So, if Chuablesoft's titles are finally getting released, that means there's hope for Byakko too Great news, indeed. Would be nice if it was on Steam too, but OTOH MG version will be DRM-free which is nice in its own way.

Crescendo is a bit unusual appearance-wise - it's NVL, features third-person narration, and character designs need some getting used too, but it's good. Also, in my experience, for some strange reasons, characters in-game looked to me better than on screenshots.

Steam version seems to be patched too, as I didn't get any errors/crashes so far.

Ah, yeah, S;G too. There's also Harmonia and Planetarian.

I was going to recommend Kazoku Keikaku, but I see you're playing it already. From the ones I own and you haven't read, there's Eve:Burst Error, Enigma and Nocturnal Illusion.

According to @Decay, who was editing Sanoba, h-scenes, while numerous, are kind-of-optional, and +17 version is perfectly playable as well. I'm reading it now (the +17/AA version), and it doesn't seem too nukigey to me. I have to say that prologue, and first half of second chapter felt rather slow and bland, but once Meguru appeared, the game picked up pace, and now I'm starting to enjoy it.

Im slowly going through "Kimagure Orange Road". I never thought I'd say it, but the protagonist's spinelessness starts to annoy me, and that's telling something, considering I was okay with Hatsukoi's Yuuma or Maison Ikkoku Godai Seriously, Kasuga is so bad that compared to him Godai looks almost like overly manly man But the girls save this show - especially Madoka, but Hikaru and protag's sisters Kurumi and Manami are nice too. I hope that he will improve himself earlier than by the end of the series

Yay! Finally we know release date for Sakura Sakura - it should be available on Steam next monday I have pretty high hopes for this title - wonder how will it turn out.

As for the version that I played (I think it was about a year ago), if I remeber correctly, it had h-scenes, but no voice acting, voiced OP song or additional routes. And it still had bugs/scripting issues with incorrect date during routes.

Ah, I read it. I think it was one of the first VNs I read after flash h-dating sims It had some good moments (Chinatsu and Yui endings), but routes have really ridiculous plot holes (especially Megumi and Shiro), and the way it tries to mimic japanese VNs is just cringey, because it's poorly executed. Complete opposite of this was, say, Katawa Shoujo - although it was unvoiced OELVN, in my memories of it I hear japanese voice acting So it can be done properly, but NOBY is just really badly written While I rated it a little higher than @Decay (I gave it ~5/10), his review is spot-on: https://fuwanovel.net/reviews/2016/01/29/no-one-but-you/

I just started Sanoba Witch. For now I have to say that dual-language option (with both EN and JP text visble simultaneously) is great feature, although it probably slows me down greatly, as I'm trying to read original text along with translation

This! From the VNs I read, there were a few that managed something like that. The ones that come to mind are Koi Iro Chu! Lips, Princess Evangile, some scenes in Crescendo and KonoSora. Also scenes in Katawa Shoujo were good IMO. The abovementioned examples fit your description - while they couldn't completely break free from hentai cliches (is it even possible for h-scene?), the atmosphere was different, it wasn't all about porn for the sake of porn.

Looks like it might be fun

It looks like today new patch for Ever17 has been released.

That's because the patch is unfinished - it is internal beta for the translation team, which was leaked by one of the editors, when group's main hacker/coder couldn't do anything for the few years. There was actually some editing and TLC done after this version was made (and those pictures were translated too), but they were never compiled into the working patch The patch that we have was released in 2016, but it was actually made around 2013. https://www.reddit.com/r/visualnovels/comments/4te0e4/yoake_brighter_than_the_dawning_blue_100/ Right, but for a charage it's very good IMO. From what I've read, the anime wasn't good It works, I have no complaints at all.