adamstan

Some people feel oppressed having to learn how to read and write, guess that should be made optional in school, not like it would have any negative effect on the people choosing not to learn it right?

In that case I think the easier solution for them would just be to scrap japanese and go over to english as their new native language or an optinal native language meaning they don't have to learn japanese at all.

I don't want to have any power either way, I want for Japanese people to choose whatever writing system they want, including Latin, Russian, Korean, whatever, instead of forcing them to learn and use the traditional system, I want them to be given a choice, which they will face everyday, and not "let's make a referendum and see what system we'll make mandatory for the next 50 years", no, it has to be a free option in every moment, and then people will start deciding what will be better and easier for their lives.
Banishing kana and kanji is out of the question for me, no, it should be OPTIONAL .

Kanji puns.
Just for that, kanji are great. The possibilities are endless, and it's amazing.

All I will add is an under-appreciated resource: Weblio example sentences. You'll often come across grammar that you can't simply look up in Tae Kim or a dictionary, either because it's some obscure wordplay or there's a complicated combination of bits of grammar. To search a very large database of translated example sentences to weed out the meaning of this grammar, copy&paste it into the search bar here, surround it in quotation marks, and press enter.

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.

I think there's a catch when it goes to expecting VNs to progress on a technical level... 2D art does not scale to technological capabilities the same way 3d graphics do, and VNs are way past the era of technical limitations of computers/consoles being the thing keeping them down in any way (unlike visual media that struggled with those for many decades). You say better sprites... But what can you do to make them better outside of working your artists to the ground? More animation? Upscaling by neural networks? These will always be controversial, to say the least. Better engines, but how much can you really streamline stuff with meaningful gains when 2D art and text are still two core elements of the experience? As long as VNs are the medium they are, there are pretty hard limits to how they can evolve when it goes to form. I mean, remember that VR JVN Sekai Project helped to crowdfund and localize? It was different... But kind of pointless, because VN formula at its core has little use for such gimmicks.
When it goes to tropes, story quality and generally getting closer to their full potential... Hard to say. Eroge scene is extremely stale right now. EVNs are in a particularly non-lucrative corner of the already-struggling indie market and are growing rather slowly. I'll have to see real change before I believe in it... But also, my near-infinite backlog and similarily gargantuan Steam wishlist suggest that we're getting enough cool things to read even as it is.

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.

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.

Whilst I'm not contradicting any of what you say, because I do not disagree, I am fairly convinced that H-Scenes as we regularly see them in VNs and sex scenes as present in Western games or shows are simply not on the same level in terms of imagery.
VNs frequently use extreme angles, exaggerated proportions, and direct shots into (often pixelised) genitals that are clearly not comparable to anything in mainstream Western media.
At least that is my impression. Does anybody have any examples to the contrary in the Western mainstream?
Whilst I doubt this is the cause for the dismissal (the presence of a few bad eggs and frequent fetishised proportions in most anime art are more likely culprits), it may still be a factor to have in mind.

I just finished it tonight.
I liked it so much more than the other Yuzusoft I read, Dracu-Riot. In fact, I liked it more than I thought I would in general.  It had a lot of really good themes related to personal growth and relationships.
Shuuji was a very solid protag that emphasized the personal growth thing very well. Thought he was gonna be a simp the whole story.
As far as the routes as a whole, I liked how they covered very different themes. I also liked all the datable heroines were basically nice girls.

 
Route rankings:
1) Tsumugi - Had the most unique storytelling. Had some nice emotional moments and development.
2) Nene - So long but quite good. Went in ways most won't be expecting.
3) Wakana- BRAVEMAN. Also generally nice and feel good. No issues, just a fun short romance.
4) Meguru- I liked how it covered the little things of making a relationship work. And it involved the OC as a whole most. Had some nice feelsy scenes. Brought down by Meguru being kinda annoying sometimes.
5) Touko - Had some interesting/funny scenes but was kinda forgettable

Main Heroine rankings:
1) Wakana- I really enjoyed her honesty. It was fun and refreshing, she knows how to have a good time but also when to be serious with real advice. I kinda wish she had at least a chapter or 2 more in her route.
2) Tsumugi - Her and Nene is pretty close. I honestly think Tsumugi wins cuz I liked her route very slightly more, and I kinda prefer her more motherly vibe.
3) Nene - Not too far behind. Obviously the main heroine with all the shilling. She had some surprising depth I enjoyed. Sometimes a bit too childish/immature for my liking which only brings her down very slightly.
4) Meguru - She had potential to be my #1 character. She had interesting depth, a usually fun-ish personality, some really nice moments in her route, and the nerd thing was nice. Unfortunatley she's easily the one to be the most annoying in comedy, both in and out of her route.
5) Touko - I sometimes like tease-y characters. But for some reason she felt even shallower than most other characters of her type. She does give good advice and I guess she had a plot reason for being how she is but her route didn't make her that interesting to me.
 
Other notes:
-Side characters weren't too bad. Cool dad character, cool bro characters, kinda funny teacher, a few other interesting ones.
-Most of the humor was hilarious. Some of it was annoying usually Meguru being obnoxious or characters unnecessarily getting mad of Shuuji
-I actually quite liked the OST. Though mostly the slice of life theme, plus a few character themes like Nene/Tsumugi/Wakanas. And a few of the feels songs, especially Setsunakute.

Overall.. 8.5/10, Will probably round out to 9. I have a feeling no other Yuzusoft VNs will have storytelling even close to what some of the routes did though...

What bothers me is when people dismiss VNs because of H-scenes, but then they will turn around and talk about how Game of Thrones and many other TV shows which frequently show sex scenes are their favorite shows. Especially when it comes to 18+ ploge, the amount of sex scenes they typically have is fairly comparable to the amount of sex scenes in many western dramas. So not that much. Therefore I see it as no reason to dismiss them for that alone.

Yes. Cruise Sign works flawlessly with it.

Maybe I'll give Cruise Sign a go then, because this doesn't seem to be working no matter what I do.

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.

Welp, just like wanting people to stop throwing Unity asset packs on Steam as original games... Shovelware will be Shovelware. Quite likely the only reason you don't get fed up with miserable-quality crap made by Japanese people is that it doesn't show up in the storefronts/sites you use.

yes i meant that, i forget the name
 
i think i will still localize it as masamune as it is far better than muramasa.
also i need someone to photoshop in sephiroth in place of the main character 
 
i need help btw, i cant get past the menu of this game!!
maybe i should not have downloaded this off some shady hentai site 

Currently starting january 27. Pretty interesting so far but I'm having the feeling I should have went for other route. I mean, Mai's one is great but I really wanted to check on Ayu better.

Currently playing Kanon. Really fun so far, been loving it.

I'm somewhere past the middle of Natsu no Ame 's common route. It's good - unless you dislike Konno Asta's style of course Rikako and her story in common route share some similarities with Kotori from IMHHW, but they're different enough.
It also uses the trope which seems to be Asta's trademark, reappearing in IMHHW, ASFOS and ATRI
 
On the technical side - VN seems to work pretty well with all major text hooking tools (I'm using AGTH for it), but there's one tiny problem - characters/words with furigana are rendered in separate thread/stream, so they are missing from the main hooked text.

mine says 37 hours, so I get your struggle

Yeah, there's more focus on ATRI's "internals" (and her past) later on, with some interesting twists as well. But still, at it's core it's nakige and the setting is just that - the setting I still think that it's best to treat is as a fairytale, that just happens to use technology instead of magic
ところで
I just finished True Ending, and I'm in tears
This VN is nakige that seems to be very good at tugging at my heartstrings. It was great read, and while I recognized tropes from many other works, it just all worked well together. Judging by the length and unknown publisher, I seriously didn't expect it to be that good. Some of the ATRI's backstory reminded me a bit of Tanaka Romero's writing. Obviously there are also many KEY influences - it's almost unavoidable when you're making nakige
All in all, it was great, I can rate it on the same level as Kanon or Summer Pockets with confidence - so it's 8.5/10 from me.

Yeah, there's more focus on ATRI's "internals" (and her past) later on, with some interesting twists as well. But still, at it's core it's nakige and the setting is just that - the setting I still think that it's best to treat is as a fairytale, that just happens to use technology instead of magic
ところで
I just finished True Ending, and I'm in tears
This VN is nakige that seems to be very good at tugging at my heartstrings. It was great read, and while I recognized tropes from many other works, it just all worked well together. Judging by the length and unknown publisher, I seriously didn't expect it to be that good. Some of the ATRI's backstory reminded me a bit of Tanaka Romero's writing. Obviously there are also many KEY influences - it's almost unavoidable when you're making nakige
All in all, it was great, I can rate it on the same level as Kanon or Summer Pockets with confidence - so it's 8.5/10 from me.