adamstan

Most recent things I got were Christmas gifts -- the first being a copy of Pia Carrot on PC-98, which I'm still really stoked to own since it's one of my favorite dating sims! 

And a PC-FX, which lately I've been using to play Angelique Special and having a good time with.

Yesterday I finished another route in Tenshin Ranman - this time it was Aoi's route.
It was good route - perhaps even better than Sana's. I have soft spot for childhood friends, but I think this wasn't 100% typical osananajimi route. I mean, Aoi wasn't the kind of childhood friend that would come everyday to wake him up, bring the homemade school lunch and confess her everlasting love Instead they had pretty nice friendly relationship, with healthy amount of banter. And so they struggled pretty hard to step-up to the lovers level.
The thing mentioned in the spoiler above is the story gimmick that could be seen already in various charage titles, but nevertheless they handled it pretty well. Also, when they finally overcome the difficulties, the route has quite good dose of ichaicha ❤️ - even in All-ages version. Or, dare I say, the making out in all-ages version of this route is even sweeter than the sex in the original version
So, all in all, very nice moege route.
Now I think I'll try the two mini side-routes for Mahiro and Yukari, and after that I'll tackle Ruri's route (which is recommended by various reviewers to be read last), and then finally Mikoto's route, which is exclusive to all-ages version. It seems that Mikoto is another goddess.
Also, interesting fun fact - this game seems to be the first untranslated one to be reviewed on the Joyjason's blog, and there he said that he prefers all-ages version - even though he confused the platform it was released for back then (it should say PSP, not PS2)
Judging by my experience with the game so far, I second this
I also read Micchi's and Zen's review, and my feelings about routes seem to be exactly opposite. They thought that Aoi's route was the worst, while so far it seems to be my favorite one. Hime's route that I played first wasn't bad, and the "plot/action" part about preparations for school festival was nice, but the romance part felt somewhat lacking.

Yeah, that would make nice reason for reread
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Today I finished another route in Tenshin Ranman - this time it was Sana's (little sister) route.
It was great - much better than Hime's route, at least for me. How to say it... - it had proper tension, and just the right amount of drama. And quite satisfying ending.
 
 

Are you calling me a cuck? I'm not sure I understand what you mean by that?
As for being hot or not - as someone above said really well, I prefer when characters in VNs make love instead of performing porn for the audience. I don't really use VNs as fap material (waiting 20+ hours until a sex scene kinda defeats the purpose...) - to me sex scenes in VNs are just part of the story, so I judge them solely based on whether they make sense in the context of the story or not - this one was extremely out-of-character (in my opinion), used what I believe to be a cheap writing shortcut to justify the out-of-character behavior, and ruined a great setup (again: in my opinion) for a very well-written character (you could take it in any number of directions, and I would have been fine with a lot of non-vanilla options too, such as Reina suggesting being FWBs instead of dating because she had commitment issues, to give just one example - that would introduce a lot of interesting drama into the story while still being believable; but the writer went for pure fanservice and threw just too many things into a single scene, out of frickin' nowhere).
If you actually play VNs (mainly) for porn (which is totally valid and no less legitimate than my approach), then I can totally see why you would love that scene. No need to call me names just because I have different preferences - I respect yours.
Yeah, like I said above:
I'm not depressed because of a fictional story, if that's what you're suggesting. I was just disappointed a fictional story took a turn I strongly disliked and thus I wasn't able to enjoy it anymore. Pretty normal thing that happens to everyone, I think?
I've seen bits of Chrono Clock and the entirety of Happymaher; saw nothing wrong with them. Or do you mean a different company?
Also, if you're suggesting I can't handle extreme stuff - I played Subarashiki Hibi and was fine. You know why? (spoiler for Subahibi below)
Basically, I like it when a story sticks to the genre it communicates early on. I know a lot of people love to be surprised by sudden genre changes, and that's a perfectly valid preference too. Personally, I really don't like mood whiplashes. So, if Kinkoi hadn't established itself as a moege during my first +50 hours of playing it, I wouldn't have been upset by that scene because it wouldn't be unusual for the game.
But if you meant that Purplesoft does mood whiplashes / sudden genre changes like that, then thank you for the warning, I'll try not to buy their stuff, then.
Definitely not on purpose, but thank you for pointing that out. I was kinda assuming people actually read questions? Too late to change that now, but don't worry, people on different forums made it quite clear that I'm in the minority. Not sure what I would be trying to accomplish if I was actually trying to be underhanded, though? It's a poll to tell me whether my opinion is popular or not, so why would I be trying to manipulate its results? To lie to myself? That would defeat the entire point of this thread.

Man, I have to say that White Album is being great so far! I'm still in the beginning of the Introductory Chapter [which was also covered in the anime version] but I'm already hooked.
I love Little Busters, but it is a VN that at the time I first read it I could not fully appreciate, not because I didn't like it, but because I didn't understand it. Since I still have the Ex routes to read blind, I decided it would be nice to read everything again knowing about the true nature of the story so I can enjoy the hints and nuances in the characters' routes.
My backlog is also packed with many VNs and books to read, but I decided to devote only one hour per day to read LB while I do other readings at the same time.

Finished Seabed two days ago and since then I'm sad because it ended but I'm also enjoying White Album 2! Also started to reread Little Busters!

Same. Actually I was interested in it even before the whole "controversy" - on the contrary, I was quite happy that original developer is releasing non-porn version for PC (and that said version also includes Japanese text).
And here's the link to the game's page, where the writer talks about all those changes:
https://laplacian.jp/yonagi/en/column/column-05/
Now, if someone would be so kind to port Hoshi Ori Yume Mirai - Converted Edition to PC I'd be really happy, since so far it isn't playable in emulators...
(It kind of runs on Vita3k, but without sound and it's rather glitchy)

I've been following the whole "controversy" on Reddit and I honestly don't see the problem. Other companies have "censored" their games to release on Steam - and I use quotation marks because many have pointed out that Cyanotype's sex scenes were NOT written by the author of the game and were taken out because the company AND said author decided to. And instead of just removing them and done, they actually wrote more content, drew new CGs and added a whole chunck of new content. The debate around the age/clothing of one of the characters is another that I don't follow - why do people care so much about having a heroine that is a child having sex with a teacher to the point of prefering to have that instead of a more mature student with THE EXACT SAME PLOT? I mean, it's literally the same thing but with way less controversy. And, again, it was done by the author who wrote the game and the company who developed it, which pretty much denies the whole "the author's original intention" that people seemed to be using a lot to attack the game and Laplacian.
The only "controversy" in this situation was that twitter account mocking those who were complaining - that I understand why it drove some people mad.
It's funny because before the whole fuss surrounding the VN I didn't even know it was a thing. Now, I'm pretty interested in buying and playing it.

Today I found some time and inspiration, and so I pasted another portion of original Japanese text into Ren'py, reaching the middle of 6th chapter
 

As a non-native English speaker I'm probably not the best to judge the translation quality, but I personally had no issues with it. And if I remember correctly, MangaGamer did re-translate all episodes from scratch for the Steam release back in the days, which took quite a while. So they certainly spent a lot of effort to get the translation right.

Quite some time since my last update, so I guess it's about time to write a few words before I forget everything.
 
I guess I'm late to the party, but I finally read ~150 hours of Higurashi. I had somehow missed the news that this also got a graphic update from PS3, so I ignored that for quite a while, since I didn't want to be emotionally scarred by Ryuukishi07's drawing skills.
That said I enjoyed the ride quite a bit, at least for the most part. Higurashi is widely considered as *the* classic horror and mystery VN, which I think isn't really accurate. I'd say Higurashi is first and foremost a VN about friendship. And it might well be the best VN I've read about that theme so far. Actually, it frequently reminded me of Steven King's It, which also has a group of friends trying to fend of an ancient evil and which is also a personal favorite of mine (both movies actually - I didn't read the book).
Along with the friendship goes a lot of slice of life and comedy, which somehow hit a nerve with me. I found the slice of life very entertaining and the comedy freaking hilarious for the most part. Mostly because Ryuukishi07 found a good balance of when he could get a bit over the top and when to get serious. Especially the gaming sessions reminded me of my own youth, even if I didn't cheat that much. I swear! 
It also has to said that with the graphics update, the VN felt extremely polished. The art style did fit perfectly and the music and voice acting were also top notch for the most part. Ryuukishi07 also has a talent to create powerful scenes by choosing the right music and sound effects to emphasize his writing. This applies for both comedic and serious scenes. On the other hand, he also a tendency of not finding an end. Actually, for people who want to read this mostly for the thrills, this might actually be a rather boring experience, due to the excessive slice of life and comedy. I personally enjoyed it a lot, so I wasn't really bothered by it.
The actual plot is a bit of a mixed bag and I want to split this into two parts.
The first part is the world building, which is imho one of the biggest strengths of the VN. The whole history of the village and the aftermath of the damn conflict on the different characters is really well written. Especially the two Mion/Shion episodes 2 and 5 shine brightly in that regard, finding the almost perfect balance between slice of life, comedy, drama, world building and horror.
The second part is the actual main plot about the repeating Watanagashi murders, and that's the part I wasn't completely satisfied with. First, it takes literally 6 episodes (!!!) until this part actually progresses. Until then, you just get some hints about what could go on, and tons of unrelated side stories. The VN in structured into 4 question and 4 answer arcs, but it's actully more like 6 question arcs and 2 answer arcs. The individual endings also felt a bit lackluster since having one of the characters go nuts for no reason wasn't really that interesting, especially if it's repeated in a similar manner half a dozen times. It's probably best to see episodes 1 - 6 as character routes and the final two episodes as true route, though episodes 5, 6 and part of 7 from the answer arcs felt like they could have easily merged with their equivalent question arcs to get a better pacing and progress.
The final episode which should have been the great show-down was also unfortunately more a huge let-down. The hints in the previous episodes weren't particular difficult to follow, even if you ignore the somewhat obsessive hint sections of each episode, so I wouldn't exactly say I was surprised by the final resolution. However, it was probaby the most boring story resolution he could come up with, bundled with the worst writing of the whole VN. Honestly, you expect a show-down with a great ancient evil and what you get is instead:
Seriously, did he play too much Resident Evil at that time? The only well written parts in episode 8 were the orphanage scenes. Though it already started in the second half of the previous episode with Satoko's overdramatized story arc. And as well as most characters were written, Ryu really has to work on the quality of his antagonists.
Nevertheless, despite its flaws this was overall a very well written story, I enjoyed quite a bit.
Character ranking: I loved the whole group of friends, though Rika, Mion and Hanyu maybe a bit more than the others.
Overall rating. 7.5/10 (Could have easily been an 8+ rating with a better story resolution)

@adamstan watching the OP be like

I just started Tenshin Ranman Happy GO Lucky PC. It looks very nice, has the distinctive Yuzusoft's art style, and seems to be nice charage. UI in this version is indeed updated, and seems to be the same as in, for example, PARQUET, with flowchart, lots of skipping and rewinding options etc
I just completed the prologue, and during the OP sequence I encountered one weird bug - videos are flipped in both axes - meaning they're upside down and mirrored 😕 I haven't found the patch online - perhaps it hasn't been released yet. Video files themselves are packed into KiriKiri's *.xp3 archives, so fixing that would probably involve unpacking, unflipping them in some video editor, re-encoding and repacking... 面倒くさい... 😕

Unfortunately, after reading Ayame's route, I'm going to drop If You Love Me, Than Say So/SukiSuki.  I loved Ayame, her innocent and curious remarks and love of fast good and gaming made for some great interactions. She definitely had that 'weirdo' vibe I like without being too over the top and had a pretty good explanation for why she's the way she is. And is just generally a sweet girl.
Sadly I didn't really like... just about anything else. A lot of the humor (outside Ayame) sucked. Yuki and Aoi basically bullying the MC almost all the time was insanely grating. Mahiru being a typical loli tsundere with immature physical hitting wasn't good either.
The route structure in general is just kinda dumb. The common route skit system is nice for getting certain interactions with characters you want. However, the fact you need a certain amount of points to do a proper "Confession" for a girl who clearly likes you is kinda weird. The main routes have two branches with another "Confession" part that deals with drama. Apparently these ending branches eventually reach them same conclusion anyway but just with different paths and slightly different takes. There's a "Cupid Flower" version of each main route but all it does is put more romance slice of life scenes before the original confession. In theory that's fine but you can ONLY do it after seeing the main ending of the route. To me it makes more sense to have these available before the main route ending somehow since the tonal shift is too weird after seeing the drama then going back just to see slice of life only to realize the Cupid Flower version of the route still has the same endings anyway.
Speaking of Cupid Flowers, I'm not really a fan of how the "random supernatural" was included. This setting easily could without QP and love fairy shit. And doesn't help QP is annoying as hell and part of the bad humor. To me a lot of the stuff could have happened without this stuff being included but I guess they needed a way for this to stick out compared to typical moege. Just felt like they wanted a way to have some KEY-lite nakige supernatural shit when they felt like.
Speaking of KEY, Ayame's route is supposed to be one of the weaker ones. While her 'drama' was interesting, I thought the way it was resolved in both of her endings was way too rushed and had way too much supernatural. It pretty much reminded me of a typical KEY true ending but happening way too quickly. Apparently almost every route is better, but considering I didn't like the other 2 main girls, I didn't bother even if they supposedly have better stories (but I'm going to assume the structure is similar).
Speaking of routes, apparently Chiho and especially Rinka have pretty good routes. However, you have this super long ass common route, and they don't even appear until you finish 1-2 of the main routes! How am I supposed to care about them until you force them after others with no screentime? I'm already forcing myself through a drawn out game with shitty humor.  Doesn't help likable characters like Eri and Maya get plenty of common route screentime and don't get routes.
Overall, I did not like this VN much at all, but I loved Ayame and her interactions so much that alone got me to continue reading this VN, to the point I started skimming a lot of non-Ayame dialogue. I had no expectations, but was still pretty disappointed. Damn, what a shame. 4/10

Today I found some time and inspiration, and so I pasted another portion of original Japanese text into Ren'py, reaching the middle of 6th chapter
 

Today I found some time and inspiration, and so I pasted another portion of original Japanese text into Ren'py, reaching the middle of 6th chapter
 

That's tough question I haven't taken any of the JLPT tests, but I estimate I'm somewhere between N4 and N3 levels. I often had to look up unknown words, but I think I understood most of the text, and I enjoyed it. FWIW, I think from the titles listed, I found Natsuzora Kanata to be relatively easy - compared to other untranslated VNs I've read. I think the most important thing is to be familiar with grammar, so you get the sentences structure, and eventually just look up unknown words.

Translated / in English:
World End Syndrome - while it's console-only, it is translated, and can be also played on PC via Switch emulators. Key's AIR also takes place in a small town. Yukizakura also should work - it's rural setting, but in winter. And Katawa Shoujo perhaps?
As for untranslated ones that I read and enjoyed - Himawari no Kyoukai to Nagai Natsuyasumi and Natsuzora Kanata. Especially the latter has setting very similar to Summer Pockets.
Then there's also yet-untranslated Umikana's sequel - Ano Hi no Tabibito, Fureau Mirai.

I have very fond memories of Katawa Shoujo, even though it wasn't my first VN. I remember great, often very soothing music and kind of comfy (?) atmosphere. Also, the characters were quite memorable and well written. For some weird reasons some switch got flipped in my memory, and in my head I remembered the voices of the characters even though the game was unvoiced
For me this is one of the true gems, not only for OELVN, but among VNs in general.
This, together with The Language of Love is one of the very few OELVNs (perhaps even the only ones) that managed to convincingly pull off the japanese setting. I even remember some people on the forums believing that KS was translated JVN
My favorite routes and heroines were Lily and Hanako.

The creation and release of Katawa Shoujo is still I think one of the proudest moments of the Western VN scene so I think it deserves a topic celebrating it's 10th anniversary. I also know that a lot of people who eventually became active on here got their start with Katawa Shoujo (I could be wrong, but I believe our esteemed Admin @Tay even falls into this category). In any case, it's definitely among my favorite VNs and I'd love to hear everyone's thoughts and memories of it. On that note, years ago @Palas made an excellent post about it and I'd like to share that here: Katawa Shoujo Analysis – A Hurricane and a Mountain 

Yes, I'm definitely going to pick up Hello Lady as well. And it seems that NekoNyan's edition will also include Japanese text, so that's nice
Yesterday I finished first route in And.
I loved it, and I think anyone who liked Nine would also like And. It's like Nine, but with group of childhood friends - there's also a bit of Little Busters' mood there. I'm looking forward to other routes
Apart from childhood friends theme, the other difference is that And is (even) less focused on romance than Nine.
As for sex scenes, it seems that, at least for Riko's route that I finished, console version just skips the sex scene itself, but the scenario isn't rewritten, and so characters are having sex, just off screen. BTW in the PC version of And H-scenes are marked by the momentary blackout and textbox changing color from blue to pink - and then another blackout at the end. So the all-ages version just skips the part between the two blackouts

Well who knows in regard of Comyu there, although if anything else at least one should have easier time to understand Hello Lady if the problem in Comyu is indeed because of Ixrec because Hello Lady here has different translator, and yes Hello Lady will be released by Nekonyan at January later if all goes well.
For the artifacts, perhaps Kazuki Fumi here may be inspired by And seeing that the writer here is quite experienced with writing chuunige, and two of their (Yes there's two writer that write And here) other works are the aforementioned Comyu and Hello Lady. The writer also continuing the usage of literature theme naming in Hello Lady, although as for what's the literature I'll leave it to you to find out. If anything else, at least you can play Hello Lady Steam version later if you prefer to read it without the sex scenes.

Yeah, because those are not just CGs but whole scenes. And it could also pose licensing problem, since PSP version has different voice for Himeo (and much better one actually ). That's why I suggested separate edition, like with Princess Evangile.
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As for my current read -  '&' - Sora no Mukou de Sakimasu you ni -
Yesterday I reached the OP, and I think this was the end of common route. So far this VN is great. I see lots of parallels to Nine, and I wonder if Nine's writer was inspired by it, or if both games have common source so to speak.
Also yesterday I encountered kind-of easter egg - when Kuichirou was giving names to the "artifacts", for some he used names taken either from mythology or fantasy.
For example, four of those names were taken from Tolkien's books:

Today I started PS3 version of '&' - Sora no Mukou de Sakimasu you ni - .
I played for 3 hours so far (I'm still in the prologue), but I'm loving what I've seen up to now. It looks beautiful, the music is great and characters are, how to say it... it's all engaging right from the start, at least for me.
Initially I chose this game because of "reuniting childhood friends with a bit of supernatural thrown in" premise - a bit like Amber Quartz which I loved. According to vndb's plot summary it also seems to feature some kind of "artifacts", so that brings 9 -nine- to mind. Nice combo, if you like such things, that is
As for the minor things - I really like the look of font this VN uses.
And group of friends in flashbacks! (It's right from the prologue, so it shouldn't be that big of a spoiler)


 

Reading Sousaku Kanojo, https://vndb.org/v31136
I actually wrote a long review for this but I accidentally deleted it and it is now lost in history, and I don't want to type it again since i'm lazy and there are a lot of reviews for it out there considering it is a hyped game i guess with its production values. It was enjoyable but ironically for a game about "creators" or writers and the author making fun of cliche otaku developments, they do the same cliche otaku developments in the routes. 
The aspect that makes this vn for me good is Kiriha, which should have been the main heroine since there was a lot of Kiriha content in the common route even moreso than Ayase the main heroine. A lot of things happen to the mc due to kiriha and kiriha is in turn changed which is good but bad for the main heroine Ayase since she's a bit overshadowed and if you headover to vndb reviews a lot of them just tell you to read Kiriha's route which is what I would say too. She's a modern tsundere and sometimes an asshole but a cold and pragmatic person which is not the kind of tsundere you usually see in charages. Usually in charages, tsunderes are emotionally driven but Kiriha is pragmatic and calculating in achieving dream, this aspect isn't totally lost in her route too.
Also the game really likes to shove the word "creator" on you. It's always "This is what a creater will do" or "as a creator" and the plot does sometimes touch upon the theme it is trying to say which is "How much are you willing to sacrifice to be a creator" which is a weird theme to be trying to do since it is out of place in this rather happy go lucky but sometimes melodramatic vn. Meikei no Lupercalia did that sacrifice thing a lot better since the game really took it seriously and built on it but it felt kinda cheap in Sousaku no Kanojo where the serious stuff it's trying to do is not given too much attention making it look like the writer trying to make a story that is out of his depth.
I say a lof of shit about sousaku but I did enjoy it a lot it has a strong common route, and entertaining cast of heroines, but this is just a high quality (production-wise) charage, there's no tragic depth here or something. There is tragedy but it felt cheap.