adamstan

My backlog of English VN's alone aready demands a high amount of discipline against random VN's. 
Not to mention that I'm still struggling to get my current Japanese VN Shin Koihime † Musou -Kakumei- Ryuuki no Taimou finished - it's just so ridiculous long. 

How do you decide, which of those old relics of VN development to play anyway?
It looks so incredible niche, that it's more something I'd expect to show up when clicking on "Random visual novel" in VNDB. 

All best wishes to @adamstan!
 

Happy 37th birthday to @adamstan, and I hope you'll have a good birthday there.

I love the fact that "Heroine with Jeans" is an actual tag.

Talk about coincidences, and deep roots of some tropes... After finishing Parfait, I just started playing ancient and obscure charage from 2000 (or 2003 for voiced edition) called Hachigatsu no Nostalgia ~the summer with you~ - since it's August right now  
In Parfait one of the heroines was Ema - blue haired sister-in-law, currently widow.

Imagine my surprise when I started playing Hachigatsu no Nostalgia and met Chitose - blue haired sister-in-law, currently widow 😮

 

It's worth noting, that in case of TH2 console version is the original one, while the PC version with added H-scenes arrived later.

Oh, that's interesting. I own PS3 edition, if the stories are indeed different, it might be worth giving it a go - especially since I wasn't too fond of H-scenes in PC version.

Requiring a privacy pass browser add on just to let people access the site consistently sounds like bad design.

For now it seems to be ok - forum loads instantly both on PC and phone. Thanks

Hi,
Recently I have a lots of trouble when trying to open the forums. On my laptop PC I have to reload/refresh page multiple times until it loads the forum, while on my phone it stays on the "just wait a moment" Cloudflare screen forever - it just keeps reloading that page on and on.

I'm done with the main VN, fav routes were Manaka, Ruu, Konomi and Yuma (I gotta check out the PS2 version someday, where Yuma's route was way different according to pixiv wiki), least favorite was Karin. Sasara's had problems, but saying I wasn't entertained would be a big fat lie.
I also played the FDCGR/DT1 spinoff, the whole intro is hilarious and parodies Uta at the start.
 

I forgot which VN it is, might've been Chrono clock but if there's an option to view the H-scene later seperately from the main menu thats works best for me.
In most VNs after the first one I end up skipping most of the rest since its usually just pandering to different fetishes lol

Okay, this is the most 80s thing I've found so far. :3
Edit: This is Malaysian technically, but considering the language is virtually the same, I'm not surprised Spotify mix these in auto-generated playlists. 😆
 

The exploration of Indonesian 80s music (AKA "Indonesian City Pop") has begun! Fun fact, if "love" is ridiculously overused in English song titles, "Cinta" is triply so in ID music, to the point it's kind of ridiculous. Also, Ermy Kullit's greatest hit is called "Kasih"... Which also means "love". I guess there's no reason to over-complicate things... 
 

@adamstan function 0x46328
 https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Gc42hY8MYmZJMtgrzG6PqWT6X0BBou-P2HbWnRD2jbE/

Apologies, I should have been a little more specific. I'm not saying VNs should completely move away from adult content, and there are certainly genres and individual works that benefit from such content. Rather, I'm just advocating that more VNs that focus on stories where adult content isn't necessary would be an overall positive thing. Similar to how outright censorship stifles creativity in the way you detailed, the still prevalent expectation of sexual content in many commercial VNs reinforce the opposite problem. Where romantic and sexual scenes get forced in for the marketing of an 18+ tag promising sexual content, but where it clashes with the overall focus of the story. For example, Steins;Gate, Umineko, Higurashi, etc would be objectively worse works if they had forced sexual content. There is no serious need for it in those stories. Likewise, to go with an example I used in my video, Sayooshi would be an objectively worse work without the sexual content.  
So I'm not fundamentally anti-sexual content. But I think if VNs lost the reputation of "VN = porn game", it would be overall beneficial for the medium and could attract more people (both creatives looking to work with VNs, as well as a broader audience for VNs) if that reputation for adult content weakened. 

+1000 this. All-ages version of Princess Evangile does this, and it worked great, at least for me.
Also, I wish they stopped inserting cringey, mood killing h-scenes in most random moments just to fill the quota.

@adamstan
Latest: https://github.com/0xDC00/agent/archive/refs/heads/master.zip
 


Try this script.
Note: create a new .js file inside the scripts folder and load it instead of ExecutionWatch.
globalThis._FIXED_DCODE_ = '$utf-8,|0|00,|rbx+[rbp+0x38]|4883EC28837D14000F85????????48????48????B0FEFFFF48??????????B0FEFFFF48????204C????????????4C????1848????????????48??????????78FFFFFF48'; // func 0x46328 var previousString = ''; globalThis.filters = function(s) { if (s === previousString) { console.log('>'); return null; } previousString = s; return s.replace(/\n+/g, ' '); } require('_ExecutionWatch.js'); Source: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/14k5TBc2cAed8Fcx2fb5schlPh6Ah24dmW3dJpxvNAbc/edit#gid=0&range=E18

Currently enjoying Kinkoi, but the following dialogue went completely over my head. Does anyone have any idea what it's a reference to?



In any case, it's one of the better VNs I've read lately, although there's a weird (and somewhat creepy) bug that causes face sprites to show up separated from the heads, but it doesn't happen too often. Here's an example:

(I might've added some additional text. *cough*)

I'm not familiar with this game, but usually VNs have more than one ending (except the so-called "kinetic novels"). If you're in doubt, it's best to search for a walkthrough/guide.

Yesterday I finished Konneko. It took me 62 hours, but they got stretched over almost 4 months I played all-ages PS2 version.
As for the premise - you play as Yuu Katase, who lost his parents when being few years old. Currently he lives with Kawahara sisters - his two cousins - Touka, who is about the same age as him, and her older sister Mizuha, who works as a teacher at the school they both attend, and acts as the head of the family, since the sisters are also orphans.

Touka suffers from some misterious condition, which makes her memory "reset" from time to time. This "curse" makes central background for the game, and affects each route in one way or another. The game begins when Touka gets released from the hospital after one of such "resets". Then there's Yuu's classmate, Mana Sakurai - smart but a bit strange girl, who loves to tease Yuu, but somehow they get along, and Nako Yuuki - a bit tsundere-ish girl from neighbor class, who seems to know Yuu even though he doesn't remember her.

And finally there's Nanami - bratty blonde ojousama who moves into neighbor house, and calls Yuu her "oniichan".

And finally there are two notable side characters - Kazune Tachihara (Yuu's homeroom teacher) and Miki Kirihara - Nako's best friend:

How to sum it up...
It features quite likeable cast of characters, and I found comedic parts (which there are a lot) pretty funny. Routes get a bit more serious, going into light nakige realm - I liked it. Whole VN is based on the variations of childhood friends trope - meaning that each of the five main heroines (Touka, Mana, Nako, Mizuha and Nanami) has some past connection to the MC. That's what caught my attention, since I seem to like this trope. I'd say it's executed pretty well, and there's nice variety between routes, despite all being based on this trope. PS2 version adds two side-routes for Kazune and Miki - they branch off of the Mana's and Nako's routes. While Kazune's route was rather underwhelming (and I often found her character a bit annoying, especially due to her speaking style - she was often speaking veeeeeeryyyyy sloooooowlyyyy and in a childish way), Miki's was really good, and it also featured some nice character development for Nako.
In the console version, Nanami's route is locked until you complete all other routes. I wouldn't say it's True Route, but it explains more about the "curse" I mentioned in the beginning. It's also worth mentioning, that in the PC version Nanami's ending is borderline utsuge, since credits start rolling at a rather sad point in the story, and it clashes completely with the mood of the whole game. Console version fixes that, adding pretty long-winded post-credits epilogue for Nanami.
So, we have good parts covered, now for the drawbacks.
My first gripe is about scenario - all routes except Mizuha's and Nanami's lack epilogues - they end a bit too early for my taste. Yeah, the endings are optimistic, but I'd like to see some timeskip epilogue or sth like that.
The other ones are more about technical side and production values. First - when there's music change, the previous track gets cut abruptly, with no fade out. I found it very jarring, and it made the story feel a bit "disconnected", since the scene transitions weren't as smooth as they should. Next - this VN would definitely benefit from a bit more backgrounds, since too many scenes were played over generic street background (or even black screen). And finally - only the abovementioned characters have sprites and voices. Everyone else is invisible and silent.
Considering all of the above, it's 7.5/10 - lots of good parts and lots of drawbacks, but enjoyable.
*******************************************************
Also, as usual, I skimmed through +18 PC version. And again it was huge letdown. H-scenes felt very tacked-on, and often out of character. Right after love confession in the moonlit classroom, I feel like a kiss (PS2) is much more appropriate than going straight for a blowjob (PC). Really, those scenes were just like flipping through standard hentai catalogue. Meh...
And then there's lack of proper ending for Nanami, which seals the deal.
********************************************************
EDIT: I was wrong about Nanami's true ending in PC version - it just got relegated to the "Omake" menu.
********************************************************
For my next read, I think I'm going to choose another Maruto's work - Parfait.

@adamstan
Hmm, my DCODE (x64) contain some SSE register (xmm*), what is your processor?
Tutorial (without DCODE):
Note: exit CE or CE -> open PPSSPP again to disable CE debugger.

Imho, H-scenes which are there for 'story reasons' are the worst. It essentially means their only purpose is for shock factor to illustrate brutal rape or abuse. Which in the end is just a bad excuse to appeal to fans of hardcore fetish sex. There are much better ways to convey love or drama than H-scenes, which makes them almost by definition optional and just for eye candy.

@adamstan  Sure.
https://youtu.be/ufXbuZBAjes?list=PLTZXVVG9AT6TATy_7ey3jUkE0g35t3xtk
DCODE: (please check the wiki if the code below doesn't work.)
$utf16,2|50|0000,46??????????45??????F3??????????F3??????????41