phantomJS

Realive is Purple Soft's latest game.  For those unfamiliar with Purple Soft, they are the makers of Hapymaher and Chrono clock, and their specialty lies in nakige with fantasy and/or sci-fi elements.  As an example, Chrono Clock has the time-manipulation watch, Amatsutsumi has 'kotodama' (the ability to control people and some phenomena with words), and Aoi Tori has divine and demonic powers.  In this case, the characters are drawn into playing an AR game called Alive, which grants them strange abilities based on how far they have progressed in the game.  Since these abilities actually bring about real life results, I call it a 'mystical app', lol.
Anyway, this game was written by Nakahiro of Hoshimemo and AstralAir fame.  In combination with the sheer eroero nature of Purple Soft's artists' character designs (since his previous works that weren't nukige were mostly 'cute' games) it definitely presents a different picture from what you would expect from Nakahiro at first... but as you progress through the game, you will inevitably - if you have played his previous games - come to recognize similarities in how he handles the emotional and comedic elements to his previous works. 
The common route of this game is mostly light-hearted, though it shows at times the deep worries the various heroines and protagonist have (on the surface level).  For those familiar with Hapymaher (which is translated), it becomes evident that Nakahiro is a fanboy of that particular work pretty early on, as he deliberately inserted many small easter eggs into the character personalities and settings that are drawn from the characters of Hapymaher.  Sadly, he doesn't seem to have been fond of Saki (how could anyone play that and not love Saki?!!) but the heroines seem to have carried on a lot of elements from Hapymaher characters for some reason... though I won't spoil it for you.  Have fun figuring out which characters inherited which Hapymaher elements, lol.
Anyway, there are four heroine routes in this game and one Grand Route (just a different name for a true route, save that it usually has a bigger focus on resolving central elements of the main game's story as opposed to the heroines' individual ones).  I'll introduce the heroines as I go.
Kaya
Kaya is, on the surface, your classic arrogant/selfish ojousama.  She has distinct manipulative tendencies and a strong need to be on top, no matter what the situation.  However, that surface hides a crybaby who lived a sheltered but strictly-regulated existence that tried to squeeze all traces of personality out of her.  This is not that uncommon in ojousama heroines, but the way Kaya is presented is cute, generally speaking.  Her class is Alchemist, which oversees destruction and creation of objects.
Like all the four initial heroine routes, this one focuses on resolving Kaya's issues as she tries to complete the game, which is often difficult, since the conditions of the missions given by the game are often vague and designed to help the characters grow and face their inner demons... and Kaya's demons are a doozy (those this can be said about all the heroines to one extent or another).  While some of her issues might seem minor to someone looking from the outside in, it is nonetheless made easy for the reader to empathize with her suffering.
This path was my first experience with how the endings were going to be handled for this game... and the ending was something of an exercise in frustration for me, primarily because there is so much hinting at the background setting without giving me answers to match up with my suppositions.  In addition, since we have no way to see how things progressed between the events at the climax of the path to the epilogue (this is deliberately not spoken of), I found myself wishing that they'd left epilogues to after the game was done completely.
Minato
Minato is a loner by choice, living a hard life working part-time jobs to keep her in food and shelter while attending high school.  She actively hates the idea of trusting others, and she resents deeply the hypocrisy of those who try to help her out of pity.  Normally, she presents the picture of a 'koakuma' heroine (and that's what she is), but she is also a rather obvious tsundere, albeit one who only shows her true tsun when someone manages to embarrass her.  Her class is Trickster. 
Minato's path is... much more viscerally emotional and at the same time amusing than Kaya's path.  I chose her second because she was the other 'outlier' heroine amongst the four initially available (I almost always pick heroines who aren't already close to or in love with the protagonist first, since osananajimi and deredere classmates are usually boring).  She resists both the idea and reality of her romantic feelings for Chihaya (the protagonist) for a long time, and her reactions to those feelings were just hilarious... up until the point she finally gets down to being deredere, then she is even more clingy than Kaya, and that takes work.
Minato's theme is 'overcoming dependence and making peace with the past', and it was much more effectively executed than Kaya's path... that said, i do still have complaints with how the epilogue was handled.  However, that's the case with all of the four initial endings, so I'm just going to grin and bear it.
Nemuru
I'll go ahead and get this out in the open.  Nemuru and Satsuki are the heroines I had no interest in from the beginning.  Satsuki is an osananajimi in the classic 'cooks and cleans for him' style (albeit not tsundere for the most part) and Nemuru is your typical shy girl who has trouble speaking with men.  Nemuru's class is, ironically (at least on the surface) Idol, and her skills are all centered around gathering or controlling the attention of others. 
My major problem with Nemuru's path came down to the fact that Nemuru was the heroine, in the end.  As a path, it is actually fairly good, even if it lacked a lot of the non-standard twists and turns seen in the previous two paths (incidentally why I picked those two heroines first).  However, Nemuru's character was irritating to me (shy heroines who remain shy for most of the game drive me crazy), and while she grows a great deal as she overcomes her trauma (much like the previous two), I was left unmoved due to my lack of interest in her. 
Again, her path is technically good, and a less-jaded player would undoubtedly be able to empathize more with her (the me of two or three years ago probably could have), but I've grown used to not bothering to tolerate heroines I don't like of late, so my reaction was probably inevitable.
Satsuki
Satsuki is the osananajimi neighbor, living with her younger sister Yayoi.  She constantly wants to take care of people, especially the protagonist, and she intentionally matches her time leaving the house to his... do I have to enumerate anymore reasons why I left this path to last?  lol
Anyway, Satsuki has a strongly self-sacrificing personality with an intense desire to help and protect others.  This is reflected in her class, which is Knight.  Her path is perhaps the second most emotional (for me) so far, right behind Minato's.  That said, her existence as an osananajimi and an essentially 'normal' person pretty much eliminated any possibility of me preferring her as a heroine, hahaha.  Her path is all about overcoming the loss of something precious, and as such, it is inevitably a tear-jerker. 
Grand Route
Early in the Grand Route, the reason for the links to Hapymaher become clear, and about a third way through, it becomes clear why all the events in the other path occurred.  I'll be blunt... you'll probably spend most of the first third of this path in tears, if you have a heart.  It is also an extremely familiar set of themes and setting ideas for someone who has read Hapymaher, so I can clearly state that this game is a Hapymaher derivative rather than just supposing it might be. 
This path forces the protagonist and the heroines to face their largest trauma, the one not mentioned even slightly in the other paths.  This trauma... is bad enough that I'd honestly be tempted to rename this an utsuge.  However, typical to Purple Soft's nakige brand, the ending is a happy one, if somewhat bittersweet.  I know I cried.  I will say that the protagonist's solution to the problem was... novel and typically convenient of a Japanese nakige, lol.

I've been seeing people wondering about Daitoshokan's translation, so I'm making this compilation of screenshots just to show what the experience is like in English.
The further down you go, the further into the game you are. But these screenshots are all from the first half of the common route and earlier, so I wouldn't worry terribly.
I think the VN is super fun, and really, that's all I care about, to be honest.

I have now read through Princess Evangile W Happiness and of course that means that I have to do a review of it (which is hopefully at least somewhat good).
 
Princess Evangile W Happiness is a fandisc to the original Princess Evangile and has an extra story of 2 chapters for each of the heroines as well as a 4 chapter long route for each of the 5 sub heroines. Other than that it includes the 13 first chapters of the main route in the original which means it can be played as a standalone VN, though I wouldn't recommend it since the extra stories for the main heroines won't make sense and you should just read the original first anyways. Also I would like to mention that you probably should read my review of Princess Evangile before reading this one.
The extra stories to each of the main heroines I found to be really nice, I am not going to review each of them, but if you liked them during the main VN you probably aren't going to be disappointed. 
 
Ruriko's route was really nice. I must say I just love Ruriko's personallity, she manages to be quite funny with her absurd jokes and she just has some really fun character quircks that I find really adorable. As for her route, well I didn't find it to take any interesting direction, but it just had lots of good moments with her and that was generally the focus of her route, just her and the main character being together.
 
Konomi's route was also really good in my opinion. There are some really great comedic moments due to her personallity and I would say that this route was probably the most funny out of all of the character routes in Princess Evangile W Happiness. Other than that the relationship between her and the main character was built up really nicely in a way that really fit Konami. 
 
Mitsuki's route was something I didn't really have high expectations for, I generally found her to be quite annoying in the common route as well as the other character routes, however I was quite pleasantly surprised. Her route did a really good job in terms of rommance and there were some good romantic lines between her and the main characters, something which I felt the other routes didn't do quite as well. I remember really liking it when I played through her route, though in the end she is not quite up there with Rise (who she constantly compares herself to). While it did do a good job with the rommance it didn't really have that much else going on though, at least after the first part, so ye it felt quite uneventful.
 
Marika's route was a route that I would say is okay. It was a pleasant read though I didn't feel like it did anything especially well. One of my main problems with her route is that I just found her personality to be really boring, in her route the best comedic moments came from other characters and those were quite rare. Her route also just felt like it was lacking in terms of the story. So it was pretty much like Mitsuki's route just without the well done rommance and with a character who is quite boring. While I am sounding quite harsh at the moment I need to repeat that I still felt that it was a somewhat pleasant read even though it felt lacking compared to the other routes.
 
Lastly there is Tamie's route. While not as funny in my opinion as Konomi's route it is a good second. Tamie is really wonderful and her jokes and teasing is quite endearing. What I think stands out the most about this route is how energetic it feels since Tamie just filled to the brim with energy. Her route started in a rather surprising way though it lead to some really nice sweet and funny moments. After the first part they did a really cliche thing to move the story forward, this specific cliche is something that I generally don't like, though I felt like they did a good job using it and in the end I don't really feel like I can view it as a negative that they used it. As for the later parts of it, well Tamie kind of mellows a bit out, though not to the point where she feels boring or lacking in her usual energy, just that it is a bit dialed down.
 
As for my opinion of this fandisc as a whole I would like to start by saying that I think that if you liked the original Princess Evangile you should definitly pick it up. Each of the original heroines had nice extra chapters which both provided more nice moments with them as well as just being nice conclusions to their stories. The other heroines all had nice routes, with the exeption of Marika which felt kind of lack luster compared to the rest of the VN. A disadvantage the fandisc has compared to the main VN is that the routes are rather short, 4 chapters compared to the 10 chapers the heroines in the main VN have. While this does mean that each route has less of an impact on the person reading it, I still felt that they did a really good job using those 4 chapters. The routes in the fandisc manages to build the relationships really well through pretty much focusing on the heroine of the route exclusively. A drawback this has though is that the routes can't really have larger story moments like they did at the end of the routes in the original. I would also like to comment on the sex scenes, the sex scenes both in the original and the fandisc are really sweet and quite vanilla (disregarding that some of it takes place in rather risque locations) and I feel like it really works well with the sweet rommances that are built with each heroine, a problem with the scenes though is that they are just too long. It feels like the sex scenes in general should be shortened by quite a lot, preferably by replacing some of the lines that can be found in pretty much all vanilla sex scenes in VNs. Well I would like to end the review by mentioning that it also has some nice referances to Imouto Paradise (a VN I will do a review of in the future, once I have revisited parts of it), personally I found this to be really fun.
 
The front of the physical edition

The back of the physical edition

Here is the inside of the physical edition including the disc
 
As for my review of the physical edition, well I would say it is just pretty okay. It is just a standard DVD case and doesn't really include anything other than the steamkey and the cover being reversible which is a standard for physical editions by Mangagamer. To my knowledge the steam edition is just a censored version of the full VN, though you can patch it. While this is a nice bonus for those who want to have it both digitally and on disc I don't feel like it is as good of a bonus as the original which has replacement scenes for the sex scenes meaning you get extra content with the steam edition.
As for the cover I find it to be quite nice with all of the 9 characters on the cover wihtout anyone of them being pushed too far into the background. The back of the case is pretty plain though it at least gives information about the VN. The reversible cover as I mentioned I think is quite lovely though it isn't really something that work that well as the cover since it is just one large drawing that would then be unnaturally split in two.

Here are pictures of all of my physical visual novels.
Some of these I have already done a review of while the others are planned to at some point get a review once I have read them.
There are also going to be more visual novels added here in the future. For instance have I backed physical tier of kickstarter for Island, Momoiro Closet and Newrin as well as having pre ordered the complete box for Grisaia.
 
 
Some of my english visual novels

More of my english visual novels

 
Grisaia complete box

Aokana

Nekopara vol 4 and Sengoku Rance

 
My english visual novels with nsfw cover
English Console VNs

Japanese visual novels for PC

More japanese visual novels for PC

Some more japanese physicals, some of them have NSFW box
My japanese visual novels for PS Vita

My japanese visual novels for PS3 and PS4

 
 

Foreword - No VNTS again, so time for another my own VNTS Review here. I hope that you'll enjoy my VNTS Review here, and once again I would hope that someday we'll gonna have VNTS as well.
Welcome to this week VNTS Review even though I'd write this on Wednesday here so I'm quite late for this, and seeing that we did have Mangagamer's Otakon announcements at last Saturday I'll comment about the announcement in this review as well. As for the title, I'm sure that some of us would recognize it as Esperanto language, but let's see what we updates that we have at this week beforehand (I'll explain the title in PS later). For this week, seeing that we have Otakon announcements from Mangagamer, I would say that this week is definitely a good one. Other than Otakon announcement, we also have sizeable updates from the fan translation section compared to the last week, and not so favorable news from Sekai as well. With that done, let's see what I can write for this week as well.
Yesterday we have surprising news from Sekai, which unfortunately is quite a bad one namely that Sekai fired off all of their marketing staff. While understandably they probably in dire need of money so they think that they should be able to do the marketing be themselves fine, unfortunately seeing the former CEO bad reputation I wouldn't be so sure if it's would be the good decision from Sekai or not. Anyway, it show that Sekai perhaps have some problem inside of the company itself so maybe some of the their partner would have doubt on Sekai. Enough my assumption here for now, and apparently Sekai did assure us that the projects will do fine for now so there's that. Now that Sekai did have some scandal here, they also list off some of their ongoing project at their site here, and out of all those updates the only thing that shown some clarity was Rewrite with the retranslation progress was at 35% (To me it's redundant project though). Let's just hoping that everything will work out somehow, especially for the projects that wasn't listed at the post (ie Majokoi, Harukuru, and Baldr Sky).
We did have Your Diary+ release back at last Friday on Steam. While the graphic for Your Diary itself is looking good, unfortunately the translation for that is pretty awful and there's no H scenes for that. As for my opinion here, I can try to tolerate the translation there but lack of H scenes will surely wouldn't do much favor to the people there. Oh and as for the translation, according to Pabloc back at VNDB it's worse than Konosora initial translation and for the note Pabloc himself was the one who retranslated Konosora, so if I may say here it would be need more than five years if one want to retranslate Your Diary (Konosora retranslation need almost five years to be finished). As for the removal of H scenes, while we knew that there's console version of this, Hobibox still don't have the excuse to only released all age version without 18+ patch because in Japan we also have Your Diary+ that was have the H scenes as well, and more importantly Hobibox could do it like the publisher nowadays (Did they didn't know either Fakku or Mangagamer?). In the end, I guess it;s a shame that we did get not so good release of Your Diary, considering that I find that the graphic itselves were quite nice to see.
Fan Translation
A week after starting the project, the translator for Summer Pocket did have a plan to release the trial patch for that at 26th later. While obviously it wouldn't cover the translation up to the endings, at least it should be enough if we want to see of what kind of the translation that Summer Pockets will have. For the VN itself, I'll try to talk more about it later but let's just said that it's more or less could be treated as a tribute to KEY's past VNs with many similar plot points. As for Summer Pocket's progress, the common route translated line count was at 2,810 lines while for others 1,446 lines were translated, bring the total translated lines was at 4,256 lines (Out of 111,484 lines, so the percentage for translated lines of Summer Pockets was at 3.81% translated).
Other than Summer Pockets, we have Pure Pure was at 80.25% translated with Hibari's route was at 20.56% roughly translated, 264 out of 268 lines from Oreimo Tsuzuki were finalized, Eustia was at 49.76% translated along with 40.06% edited and 39.08% TLC-ed, and Harugi's was at 12% translated for the overall progress with Tonoko's route was at 31% translated along with Branch was at 23% translated (With additional progress was at 8% edited). We also have a word from Musumaker project in which apparently they already finished with the engine issue for inserting the text, so at least from there hopefully it should be easier if we talk about Musumaker engine work (Also interesting to note that the team will remove the mosaic for Musumaker). From Loverable, the translator himself say that the team will revised the translated scripts from the start and they'll remove the honorific from the translation later, so let's wait for the further news here. As for the current progress for Loverable, right now it was at 82.33% TLC-ed. I think that's all for the updates in regard of fan translation, and obviously we didn't have Otakon announcement for this section lol.
Mangagamer
Before going to Otakon announcements from them, let me say congratulation for the release of short nukige Sweet Switch back at last Thursday. And of course seeing that Mangagamer like to announced the exact date for their next release after the current release for most of the time, this time obviously Mangagamer did announce the exact date for the next release. As for the next release in question, it is Tsui Yuri in which it'll be released at September 6th later. So congratulation of mod Dergonu in regard of the release here, and if you've been waiting Tusi Yuri for more than two years, take a note of the release date.
The first announcement from Mangagamer Otakon panel is shoujo ai VN Kotonoha Amrilato, which I'll like to call it Amrilato from now on. As for the premise, it was in regard of a girl (Rin) who mysteriously transferred to the another world where the sky that did have the eternal sunset color. After that, Rin obviously want to know what was happened and from there she met another girl (Ruka), in which the usual trope that everyone spoke Japanese even in another world didn't happen because Ruka only understand Japanese a tiny bit with her dominant language was the unknown language (Juliamo). Obviously with that circumstance both Rin and Ruka wouldn't be able to communicate very well, and of course the only solution is that Rin learn Juliamo. What make this VN unique is not the isekai premise, but rather Amrilato allow us to learn Juliamo language along with Rin in order to understand the world by ourself. While Juliamo language here is a fictive one, actually it was based on a real language called Esperanto in which some of the word in Juliamo should be familiar if one been learning Esperanto. I'll hope that the translator able to translate this properly, because it would be hard if one want to translate this properly if we'd looking from learning the foreign language aspect.
The second announcement is otome 18+ VN from Kalmia8 Horny Magical Princess (Or I'll call it Sukehime from now on, with 'suke' was shortened from 'sukebe' which mean pervert). The premise is that we have a cute alien came to the Earth in order to search for her husband, and after landing on the Earth she found two handsome virgin men who the alien think was good enough to be the alien husband candidates (Forget to said that since the alien spoke Japanese as well, there wouldn't be major communication problem between her and two handsome men just like Amrilato lol). Even though it's 18+ otome which in theory is interesting enough, unfortunately this is the least interesting announcements to me for now. But if you've been take a liking to Boukaku from the same developer, this should be an interesting announcement to you. Oh, and the alien girl herself (The MC for this VN) is far more cheerful compared to Boukaku's MC. Almost forget to say that the translator already translated 4% of it according to her Twitter here.
Their third announcement was surely came off as a surprise, considering that the company in question was already bankrupt. But seeing that I'd been wish the announcement since last year Otakon, the surprise is quite good to me here. As for the third announcement, it was Haretaka in which it was dubbed as the best Chuablesoft VN. The premise is more or less just like MoeNovel sky themed VNs though (Konosora and Miagete, but instead of glider or telescope we'll gonna have rocket here), but at least we knew that this is gonna be better release compared to MoeNovel one because the mere fact that Mangagamer will release it uncensored (ie include the H scenes). As for the progress right now it's been already fully translated and edited, so perhaps we'll gonna have Haretaka did the beta testing in near future. Anyway, while I did say that it's surprising that Mangagamer did announce Chuablesoft title in which as we know is a bankrupt company, Mangagamer did answer that they already have a talk with the new license owner for Chuablesoft, which automatically mean that they should already cleared the license problem for Suki Suki as well. Seeing that Suki Suki was still in beta testing, I hope that it'll be finished in the near future and after that they'll release it. Forget to say that actually it's not a new thing though that a work from bankrupt company released overseas, because in the past we have the examples of that from JAST (Romanesque and more recently Schatten).
The fourth announcement from them was another Alice Soft VN, and this time it's Escalayer in which we'll gonna have a magical girl going to fight of the evil organization to defend the peace of the town. While the premise is absolutely cliche with the same pattern as Haruka as well (Both Escalayer and Haruka did share the exact same gameplay with slight difference), this VN was obviously Quof's next project because Haruka is more or less a nukige (Interesting to see that this is the second time that Arunaru didn't involved himself in Alice Soft VN), and therefore Escalayer should be the nukige as well. While it might be a nukige here, actually it could be treated as the gameplay VN with merely had high sexual content because the sex in Escalayer (And Haruka) did improve the character status so the sex here is quite necessary. In the end, whether you want to call this a nukige or not is up to each people. As for the difference and the similarities with Haruka, I'll write about that later on.
That's all for this week VNTS Review, and see you next week.
PS - As for the title, it should be obvious that it was an Esperanto language. Which in this case of the title, I simply translate the localized title for Haretaka (Farther Than the Blue Sky) into the Esperanto here.

I recently finished Euphoria so I figured I should make a review of it.
As for the general story of Euphoria I feel like talking about anything other than the start could be a potetial spoiler so I will refrain from doing so. Euphoria starts with the main character waking up in a white room with a door. As he walks through the door he finds himself in another white room along with six girls. Of the six girls there are five students who are in the same school as the main character as well as one of his teachers. Once they are all gathered a mechanical voice tells them that to get out they need to unlock five doors, these doors are unlocked after the main character has done a sexual act with one of the girls, with him being free to choose who. One of the girls then refuses to participate, everything becomes black and when they can see again she is locked to an electric chair where she is electricuted to death. Now with the five remaining girls the main character need to complete the game to get out of there alive. So the first part here which I have given a short introduction to works pretty much like a nukige in that it contains a lot of sex scenes and that there are many fetishes involved. There are also some questions raised during this part as well as its importance in character building though all in all I would call this part of the VN a well written nukige. As for the later half, which I don't want to go into due to spoilers, well it contains way less sex scenes while doing a much better job at storytelling with giving you more hints as to what is actually going on. The recommended way to go though Euphoria is to read it in this order, Rika, Natsuki, Rinne, Nemu and Kanae, with Rika as the first route and Kanae as the last route. The reason this is the prefered way to play it is that it gives the best experience in terms of piecing together information from the different routes. As for what I think is best to categorize Euphora as I would say it is a mystery psychological horror visual novel.
Well now that my introduction to Euphoria is over I suppose I can start the actual review of it.
Firstly I want to talk a bit about what I though about each route induvidually.
I guess I should start with Rika, well her route is pretty bad. The first part of her route was to me the worst part of Euphoria. The main character came of as an irredeemable evil person and Rika is just really annoying. This caused me to not really enjoy the sex scenes or any of the other scenes where you interacted with Rika. As for the later half I found it to be much better. I would say this part is pretty decent and the story here is pretty interesting, Rika also becomes much more tolerable and the main character comes of as a much better person than he did in the first part of her route.
The next route is Natsuki (the teacher), I found her early route to be much much better than the early route of Rika. The back and forth between her and the main character was quite interesting and she is a really likable as a character. Due to her being very good at pushing back against the main character he also became a lot more interesting as his internal strugle became quite clear. As for the later half I liked it quite a lot, her later half I would say is a bit like a horror action story.
Next up is Rinne, as for her first half I though it was quite good, her sex scenes really did a good job at showcasing her personality and there were also some really interesting conversations with her during the first part. As for the secound part of her route, well I found it absolutely amazing, it was just such a good twisted physological horror story and it had me at the edge of my seat the entire time. I remember just being in awe at how interesting this route was. I also think this route is the one that did the best job at implemeting sex scenes, it worked really well with the story and with the atmosphere of the route. Due to this route I got completely hooked on Euphoria and marathoned the rest of it.
As for the nemu route, well I think she has the best first part. Her sex scenes were quite extreeme, but you don't feel bad for her at all since it is Nemu. Other than being quite extreeme her first part also raises some questions about her as a character showing that there may be more under her surface than what can be seen. As for the secound part of her route I found it really interesting though not quite as good as the secound half of the Rinne route. The route was really cruel, but also had quite an interesting story. 
Then lastly is the Kanae route. Her sex scenes during the early part is okay, not really that good or that bad. Though the early part does a pretty good job at forshadowing some things.
As for the secound half of her route I suppose I should split it into two parts since there are two ways her route can play out.
One is a route that has the main character doing really horrible things and seem to be there mainly for people who really want to see messed up sex scenes. This is a rather short route and doesn't really feel that important.
The other route is the true ending route. This route was to me the best part of Euphoria. This route start of as a complete mindfuck that I just found extreemly interesting. After that the route then start to explain in details what has actually happened and it becomes a really emotional story that had me almost crying at times. The last part of it was just wonderful to experience and it was just such an emotional roller coaster which at the end left me really satisfied. While this route answered most of the things in the story I was still left with some questions about certain things, though I think those are meant to be left as mysteries. 
 
As for my final thoughts, well I absolutely love Euphoria. It started of pretty bad with the Rika route and at that point my expectations were a bit low, though as I played through more routes it really sucked me in. I think it did a really good job at mixing the sex scenes with the story and I liked to play it all in its entirety. Even though it has a lot of sex scenes I would still recommend it even if you have no interest in the sex scenes. The story on its own is extreemly good and is definitely the highlight of the VN. While I said the first part of it can be considered a nukige the same can not be said for Euphoria as a whole, the story part take center stage once the first part of the route is done and the later halfs of each route is just so much better than the first part. Most of the time the sex scenes aren't really important to read and it is enough just to generally know what happend which means they can be skipped. As for which sex scenes I think would be most important to read if you are fine with reading them but want to skip most of them, well I think the sex scenes in the Rinne route as well as early Nemu route is the most important ones to read as these actually feel like they add to the characters and story, though I would still say their routes are very good even without going through these scenes.
 
Here is the cover of the physical edition
Here is the back of the physical edition
Here is the disc of the physical edition

The other side of the reversible cover

Limited time bonus BGM collection.

As for my review of the physical edition, well this is a pretty standard hardcopy. There really isn't anything extra other than the BGM collection, which I don't know if still follows with the hardcopy since it is a limited time bonus (I got it when I bought mine in November last year). Since the physical edition is quite standard I would only recommend getting it for people who just want to have a physical edition of their VNs. One thing that I think was quite nice is that the cover doesn't show any nudity, this is nice since it is then less likely for there to be problems in customs when importing it. Also if you want the nudity on the cover you can just turn the cover around and display it that way since it has a reversible cover.

Bloody Rondo is 3rdEye's first and arguably their worst game.  By chuunige standards it is very much 'yesteryear' even by the standards of the year it came out, being a 'half-gakuen' type where the protagonist splits his life between school during the day and other stuff at night.    What it comes down to in the end is that this game was, from the very beginning, apologetically derivative and something of a failure primarily due to an attempt to draw on the relative success of Draculius several years before.
First, I'll explain why I say the game attempts to draw on Draculius.  Draculius is probably the best vampire fantasy chuunige/slice-of-life hybrid in existence.  I say this because it doesn't in any way nerf vampiric nature or power, and it also has a rather unique atmosphere that draws on the fantasy familial aspects of the non-undead type of vampire (a vampire that is a lifeform, as opposed to being a dead being forcibly kept alive by magic or evil forces, lol).  The combination of intimacy and hedonistic behavior that you see in that game, as well as the veiled potential for violence and moral ambiguity are subtly presented to the reader interspersed between humorous slice of life and often brutal action scenes.
Bloody Rondo (and Libra) attempt something similar... but fail dramatically in that sense.  Luna, the canon heroine of the game, is a clumsy true vampire (as in trips over her own feet clumsy) with a nonexistent work ethic but a deep capacity for love combined with an incredibly dependent personality.  This in itself wouldn't be a negative and it indeed bears some similarities to Draculius's approach to the cast of characters, but the biggest issue is the utter failure to shift from the humorous elements to the more serious ones properly.  Luna generally only maintains something like dignity for a few minutes at a time before stumbling, and her attempts to maintain it are... spectacularly bad, often lightening the atmosphere at the worst time for the story. 
The path that actually succeeds in reminding the reader of what is best about Draculius is Lynette's path, where the somewhat twisted relationship between her, Luna, and Shinkurou is the focus of things.  Lynette is modeled on Zeno from Draculius in a blatantly obvious fashion (werewolf turned into a hybrid vampire with incredible physical abilities and absolute devotion), and she also serves as an excellent catalyst to turn the three into something resembling a family in her own path.   The unfortunate aspect of this is that it waves the flaws in the 'canon' path in front of the reader so blatantly that you have to wonder why a short path that completely ignores the background story and Shinkurou's own issues works out so much better. 
I will not say this is a bad game... but it stumbles because it never quite manages anything like individuality, despite a good cast of characters and a decent setting.  Anyone who plays this after Sorcery Jokers will instantly get how the writer used his failures with Bloody Rondo to grow and build up the setting he eventually used.  In that sense, this game provides an excellent study in 'before and after' for someone interested in the history of VN writers. 
Shinkurou is actually a great protagonist, but he is damned by a weakness of motivation and a general lack of emotional filling in of the blanks by the writer.  He is skilled, he is intelligent, and he is pragmatic... but the writer fails to capitalize on his personality the way he did with Senri's personality in Sorcery Jokers.  Going back to play this, it is blatantly obvious that Egami Shinkurou is the prototype for Senri... a rough bare-bones character archetype to Senri's full-fleshed individuality. 
Needless to say, this is one of those rare times where I went back and actually felt the game failed in comparison to my distant, years-ago impressions.  Most of the chuunige I go back and play years later have new discoveries waiting for me... but this game is an exception, unfortunately.  Lynette's path is still great, but the weakness of Luna and her failure as a canon/true heroine is painful to read.

I want to start doing reviews of VNs that I have physicals of where I both review the VN itself and show of the physical edition. I figured I would start with the most recent one I have completed which is Starless.
First I guess I should mention what kind of VN Starless is. Starless is a hardcore fetish nukige, so if that doesn't sound interesting to you it probably isn't something you are going to like.
I guess I should first start of with the general plot, though I will avoid spoilers.
In the VN you play as Sawatari a young man who is looking for a summer job. After finding a sketchy looking adverticement he ends up applying for a two week long job as a servant in a mansion belonging to a rich family consisting of a mother her two daugthers and one son. During the interview Sawatari finds out that the job is more like that of a sex slave rather than that of a normal servant, though due to the high wage and not wanting to back down after all the things they had done to him during the interview he decides to stay. The next day a woman named Mitarai who is in desperate need of money also applies for the job and reluctantly accepts it due to her suituation. After this you follow Sawatari's daily life as a servants of the family for two weeks. During these two weeks you and the other servants of the mansion act out the messed up desire of the family as you try to keep your sanity. Throughout your stay you learn pieces of information about all the shady and messed up things that the family is doing behind the scenes and ultimately your aim is to get yourself and Mitarai out of the mansion alive and with your sanity intact.
 
Some things that I liked
The art of this VN is really good, I suppose rather than me telling you about it you can look at the pictures bellow or you can look at the screenshots at vndb.
As for the music I liked it quite a lot. I found it to always work with the mood of the scene.
The main character is actually able to think and I found his inner monologue to be interesting.
I really liked how they built up the different mysteries in the mansion, it was quite fun not really knowing what secrets were hidden in the basement and the shady things the family did behind the scenes.
The characters were well writen, their distinctive personality really showed.
After the first few days they start having sexual lectures and I found it interesting not knowing what type of lecture the next day would bring. I felt that this was quite good for building up anticipation for what would happen next and keep you playing.
The VN has a rediculous amount of sexual content since it is a long nukige, I would estimate that the VN is about 40 hours long and most of it is just sex scenes.
The genitalia is really well drawn.
It covers pretty much every fetish you can think of, excluding fetishes found only in fantasy VNs, you know like monsters.
 
Some things that I didn't like
While the music is good there are few tracks compared to the length of the VN, this makes it feel somewhat repetative.
During one part of the VN there are a lot of scat scenes, the high amount of scat scenes was something I really didn't like that much.
Towards the end of the common route and during most of the endings I found the content to be too extreeme for my liking. During the last parts of the VN I honestly just wanted to get it over with. This is of course based on taste, but if you don't feel up for a lot of really messed up things I would advice avoiding the title.
Too many bad endings in my opinion.
I really hated the secound daugther of the family, though since the family are the villains of this VN I can't really call that a bad thing. Also while I despiced her I do remember being at the edge of my seat everytime she was involved with something just waiting for her to do something horrible. Guess this is more of a neutral point.
Some of the content is censored due to legal reasons, things like scat and beastiality. This can be restored easily by using an unofficial patch, which to my knowledge is pretty much actually an official patch that they had someone else publish to avoid legal problems. While it is easy to fix I think it is somewhat annoying not to have all of the VN on the disc.
 
In conclusion
 This is a high quality long nukige with good writing, art and music, but it is not for everyone. This title is only for those who really want a completely messed up nukige with a ton of fetishes ranging from slightly messed up to absolutely horrifyingly messed up. Personally I really enjoyed the first part, but as I got towards the end of it I found it to be way too extreeme for my liking. As for whether or not I would like to pick up any other VNs from Empress after this my answer is no, the reason being that I hated the later part of it. While I wouldn't pick up another similar title I am glad to have experienced this title since it was quite a unique experience that I haven't really had before.
 
Translation
As for the translation I found the translation itself to be really good, the lines had a good flow and captured the different characters personality quite well.
However one thing I found annoying about the translation was that there were a lot of typos.
It seemed to me like the one translating did a really good job, but that they then just didn't do proper quality control afterwards.
 
Pictures of the limited edition
In advance I would like to appologize about the pictures bellow not being that good, I am not really good at taking pictures and my iphone's camera isn't the best either.
 
Outside of the limited edition box
 
The inside of the limited edition box. The artbook is to the left and the DVD case for the game is to the right.
The game itself as well as a user manual and a card with a code for starless that can be used through Jast USA. Of course the DVD works for the game so the code is just an extra.
Here are some samples from the artbook
As for my review of the limited edition I would say that it is really worth it, the box looks really good and the artbook is really nice to take a look in. If you think of picking up the title I would really recommend going for the limited edition. When I wrote this post the limited edition was available, but it has now been sold out and been replaced by a regular edition.

This is the latest charage from Hearts, a company specializing in 'yurufuwa' charage with nakige elements.  This company's works have a tendency to make me want to puke waves of sugar, but, in my experience, this is one of the better 'yurufuwa' companies out there.
This game focuses on a kind-hearted young man named Harutoki Narumi as he suddenly (and by accident) summons a high-level spirit named Haruharu, and, as a result, he gets dragged into the world of witches and magic users whose duty is to keep the balance of nature by conversing with such spirits.  Narumi is generally your classic 'good guy' protagonist that everyone at least likes, and this VN doesn't have any real confrontations in the sense that you might see in another VN, so he doesn't really have a combative side at all. 
Haruharu is the spirit Narumi summoned, a generally cheerful and lively young woman who lives in the moment and is driven obsessively to help others.  Her spirited and cheery manner generally warms the hearts of those around her, and it is hard even for me not to like her, since she is basically like an embodiment of pure good with no negative elements whatsoever (except a lack of modesty, if you use some standards, lol).
Kazane is an iinchou-type who is the head of the Garden Club, which serves as a front for the activities of the school's small community of witches (the heroines and the protagonist, essentially).  She is ambitious, in the sense that she wants to be a Grand Witch, but her essential nature is that of a person who can't help but want to help others (seeing a pattern here? hahaha).
Mashiro is your classic fushigi-chan genius... the most skilled (versus Haruharu being the most talented) of the heroines in magic, she always has a high-level cat spirit named Bastet riding on her head.  Despite her brief period as a seeming kuudere (it ends almost immediately) she is, in fact, just as much as a goodie-goodie as Kazane and Haruharu, and her only really unusual quality is her sense of humor.
I'd be tempted to call Mikana a dojikko, in any other VN... but Hearts really hates to include negative personality traits in its heroines, so she just happens to be the least skilled of the heroines.  She likes baking and is generally a sweetheart and something of an innocent... and just like all the other heroines, she likes helping people (it is almost amusing that they unified the heroines to this degree, lol).
Now, the charage of this VN has a lot of cheap feels and cuteness... and that is pretty much all there is.  The girls and Narumi go around solving minor issues (not incidents) while practicing their power to speak to the spirits of the world, and generally you can expect that any event is either going to result in some kind of low-level emotional scene or lots of cuteness.  Given the fact that it was well-written and paced enough to affect me, I have to wonder how the people who eat this up will feel playing this.
The heroine routes... are all about at the same level.  Oh, Haruharu's route is the most emotional by far, but I can honestly say that the routes are basically extensions of what I experienced in the common route... lots of low-level feels and cuteness, with h-scenes added in.  I'm not saying this is a bad thing... if anything, this game is pure crack for the lovers of the genre.  If you want a low-stress, cute as a fuzzy bunny game, this one is ideal. 
I will say that you should probably leave Haruharu's route for last... since the feels leading into her ending are the best in the VN.  However, I can also say that you could probably play this game just for Haruharu's route and come out feeling quite satisfied if you like the genre.  Given my tastes, I'll probably forget this game ever existed by the end of next month, but I felt a need to mark that this game is a rare ideal production for those with a taste for the fuzzy-feely and adorable.

Some veterans of reading untranslated VNs refer to the period between 2004 and 2010 as 'The Golden Age of Visual Novels'.  However, you shouldn't really take that statement at face value, as the meaning is a bit more complex than you'd think.
There are some significant differences between VNs today and VNs during that period that both made it the peak of the medium's sales in Japan and produced the greatest ratio of quality VNs to crap VNs. 
One of the primary differences was that, other than moege, there were no strict genre boundaries and genre conventions had yet to slide into place in the minds of fans and writers both.  Companies were mostly experimenters during that time, sometimes basing their projects on previous works (Tsukihime and the Key games got a lot of knock-offs during this time, of varying levels of quality) and sometimes forging out on their own.  
Since there were few genre boundaries, companies were more likely to give the creative staff free reign as to what kind of story they could write, and  - ironically - this actually helped define the various genres in the years to come, as people explored the boundaries of how they could stretch a concept or theme in a story.  Some of these attempts were abortive (ie- thematic moege where all the heroines are of the same type, such as tsundere or yandere, generally didn't catch on) but others were immensely successful (ie- the definition of the chuunige genre and its gradual escape from gakuen battle mania).  However, the point is that the writers, directors, and producers of the time were allowed to fiddle with the formula a lot  more than they are now.  Most major companies nowadays have a 'signature style', that was formed during that period, even if their greatest successes weren't during that period. 
This period also killed the 'pure moege' as a genre, ending the majority genre of the previous half-decade (moege having dominated during that period due to the Da Capo series and Key's games).  The rise of the charage, a demi-moege genre that was much wider in scope and more adaptable, occurred during this period, mostly unrecognized until after the fact.  At the same time, nakige, which had previously been enslaved to the moege genre through Key and others like them, came to define itself as a new, standalone genre that wasn't necessarily dependent on moe stylization.  Even Key itself moved beyond pure moe, though it didn't entirely abandon some elements of it (as the existence of Kud testifies).
However, this age was already ending in 2009, as clearly-delineated genre norms began to form, and charage became the driver for the industry, taking us back, in spirit, to the age before that.  By 2011, the ratio of truly creative works to derivative works was overwhelmingly in favor of the latter, in comparison to the previous decade. 
That isn't to say that the years since haven't produced some great works.  That is patently untrue in my experience... but the fact remains that fewer and fewer writers are able or willing to look outside the 'genre boxes' for answers as to what to write.  I sometimes refer to our current age as the Age of Stagnation, where there is an overwhelming industry pressure to stick to genre norms and those that break the mold are so exceptional they stand out more than they should.
It is possible to create a charage kamige... but it is much easier to make a kamige out of a game that breaks genre boundaries, lol.

LAST WEEK: Dreamysyu was all alone in the school, but not really. They then found a bunch of new friends, but not really. After a lot of bitching, Maggiekuma arrives and gives them shocking news, but not really.
 
    "Of course, I'm only saying da shocking rules... NOW!"
    "I only care about them if everything is allowed." Zander was in a rebellious mood.
    "Whatever happens, the torrents are still not allowed. Let's keep the Fuwa spirit!" said Dergonu, forever trying to moderate.
    "Okay, listen up now! You guys have to kill each other. And if the murderer gets away with it, they can leave this place."
    "................................Did we really wait a full week just for this???????????" I hope Dreamysyu wasn't the only one expecting something more epic in this part.
    "No worries, everyone is waiting for the part where someone dies, as announced." Thank you very much, Fiddle.
    "It is better that way, too. We would not be able to abuse a loophole otherwise." Poltroon was getting ready for the game like the white dot that is a moogle in the image below.

 
    "This guy gets it! And of course, I'll also be able to change the rules as I see fit in the middle of the game..." Totally not because of unplanned plot holes.
    "Sooo, can I kill everyone right now and just leave?" batman the killjoy said.
    "No, I want to hear more about the rules!" To the untrained ear, it looked like Senior just choose the "hear the tutorial again" option because they pressed X so mechanically after the long-winded explanation that ended up picking the wrong option just because it was the one highlighted, but no. He picked the option on purpose, to force Maggiekuma to tell them the details, thus ruining any plan they, Poltroon, batman, and probably Ranzo, were making. That, and because it would unlock one more CG.
    "Ooooookay." Said Maggiekuma in a pout that made tymmur's eyes turn into glittering hearts. "Omaera will kill one hito per week, so this fic doesn't owari that hayaku, and the hitogoroshi will be the kuro. Then we'll do a saiban to found out who's the kuro. If omaera guess correctly the kuro, only the kuro will receive oshioki. But if the guiltless omaera were ooooh so wrong, minna receives oshioki except the kuro, that'll be free to go!" Maggiekuma finishes murdering grammar and making my fingers bleed to type that. Apparently the option also unlocked full weeb language for the game.
    "...Can you repeat that, but now in english?" Zander's ears were also bleeding. But not for long, because Clephas quickly collected it with some gravity-defying powers to give it as a sacrifice for some God as old as him.
    "d(*ﾟーﾟ*)" Kiri, on the other hand, understood everything perfectly.
    "So, happy killing!~"
    "I think I know who I'll kill first..." Kurisu-chan announced proudly.
    "It CAN'T be me." Maggiekuma added, since they were too cute to die.
    "Oh..." At least 8 people went tsk.
    "Of course, kill the shota first. It's always the young and pure anime characters that have to go first... You guys should be ashamed of promoting such stereotyped behaviour against lolis and shotas, just for the sake of you people feeling superior and..." And so the first day on this weird school ended, and it ended before tymmur's speech that totally missed the point that everyone was trying to kill the villain of the fic.
***
    Dreamysyu wakes up in his usual third seat of the roll beside the window, the setting sun coloring their majestic white hair orange. Just with this tiny introduction we can already see how they have all the needed traits to be the Ultimate Protagonist, and that's why we're following them now. They are already used to have a narrator describing every single thought that pop into their head. Like this one:
    "Fuck, I'm on a time loop!" but before they could look for weird kids in a small shrine in the woods, they remembered that the narrator always bulli them, so it was safe to ignore them.
    "Hey, there you are, Dreamy-chan!" said Kenshin, approaching while jumping up and down. Wiggle wiggle, would remember Ranzo if they were around.
    "How's everyone today, Kenshin?"
    "I haven't found everyone yet, but I don't think they changed much, since we have only one greatly exaggerated trait..."
    "I see..."
    "They're probably in the cafeteria already, so we should join them too!" Kenshin almost grabbed Dreamysyu's hand, but Dreamysyu backed. Nevermind the fact that they shouldn't trust anyone so easily in a setting like this, but handholding is a bit too lewd. And they didn't want to enter any routes if both of them are about to die.
    "No, Kenshin, I think... we should keep some distance between us..."
    "Why's that?"
    "We're on this battle royale..." (AN: I almost wrote beetle royale, that would make an awesome alternative version, but that's for some other time)
    "And?"
    "Fuck, that author's note almost made me forget what I was saying. Anyway, we shouldn't be too friendly with each other because... I'm the main character. If we become friends, then you'll probably have a horrible and painful death just so I can angst and go in a roaring rampage of revenge and... It'll definitely not end well for you!"
    "I think you could have a bit more faith in the others." He definitely shouldn't tho. "Besides, I'll be fine! After so many dimensional travels, I finally got the rare dual wield skill, so my strength is unbeatable now!"
    "...........Hey, who's supposed to be the main character here?" Dreamysyu slowly realised maybe they weren't the badass protag, but the average guy one.
    After that, both of them went to the cafeteria. The breakfast was only a bunch of bananas. Everyone except tymmur, Fiddle and Clephas had such a hard time to find a way to eat it in a non-sexy manner that the breakfast became dinner and then the day ended.
***
    Dreamysyu woke up normally because they aren't that stupid to be fooled twice in the same chapter. And the first person they saw was Mitchnomi, pissed because they couldn't do a "good morning message" stream because all the monitors were showing episode 4 of Steins;Gate 0, probably because of some sorcery pulled by Kurisu-chan. Since Dreamysyu didn't want to hear any good morning message in Mitchnomi's voice, they just walked away, letting the rabbit girl cursing behind.
    Back to the cafeteria. Still bananas.
    "At this rate, we'll all die from starvation instead. We have to do something." pointed Lesiak, trying to avoid a pretty lame conclusion.
    "You puny mortals fail to absorb even such a simple and inferior plant... when the time comes, I'll just watch while you are absorbed like these fruits by more advanced species..." Clephas decided to do an armageddon premonition instead.
    "ヽ(ﾟ∀｡)ﾉ" Kiri took Clephas' advice the wrong way and started to use an IV thing to eat, or whatever, the banana. It worked only because it's a fic, don't try this at home.
    "Without the IV part here, Kiri's idea is not bad. We can mash the bananas and eat them here." suggested shogun.
    "The levels of hygiene in your idea, considering what we have here, are touching, please continue." salted Zander.
    "I have a better idea!" said... Maggikuma???
    "Let me guess, here comes another cliffhanger..." smartassed Virgin.
    "Even better. I'll give you guys a MOTIVE for committing murder!"
    "I want to dig your grave. I want to collect your shadow. I want to terminate your body. I want to commit murder!" Ranzo started singing a weird song from some Swedish metal band not known enough for anyone to sing along.
    "...I think we already have enough motives to be honest." but batman wasn't enough to stop Maggiekuma.
     "Okay, if you commit murder now, you'll get this book on "how to eat bananas in a non-suggestive way" totally free of charge! Just need to call!"
    "......................That's the motive???" Kenshin was transitioning to the "leave isekai" arc.
    "Hey, it's not like we d-don't know how to eat a s-simple banana or anything..." Kurisu-chan protested or something.
    "Weeeeeeeell, if you guys don't want it... happy starving!~" Maggikuma poofed out of there.
    "I-it will be fine! I-I'm sure my guide has some choice that says what's the best way... to eat it." Senior tried to make everyone feel daijoubu, but only silence answered him...
    "You need not worry, we will find another way to get the wank out of this sodding contraption." Poltroon ended the conversation, even of no one was sure what he meant.
***
    Later that day, Dreamysyu found Mitchnomi... again cursing the monitors. Wait, was Kurisu-chan still watching old episodes of Steins;Gate 0 (probably yes)? Pitying the poor bunny girl, Dreamysyu decided to help. After calling Dergonu, to use his mod powers to see what was wrong with the monitors, Mitchnomi finally calmed down. Even more after Dergonu found out that one monitor in classroom 2-B was apparently free from Kurisu-chan's tyranny. And the monitor there was very big too, hooray Mitchnomi! The three of them run there, but what they found...
    ...WAS A DEAD BODY!
    tymmur's. His eyeballs apparently exploded and glittering blood was escaping from the holes. No one was supposed to be outside, but you could hear a lot of gays' crying and lolis being relieved. And in the monitor... a single gif, vibrating so violently it would break Fuwa's rules to even post something similar here...    But even then... the three couldn't take their eyes off it...
    "Oh, this reminds me of a song!" entered Ranzo, ruining once again the punchline of the chapter.
 
    NEXT TIME: only 15 students now! Will the group investigate the death properly? And what song did Ranzo remember?

(I was inspired by Maggie's fan fic to write one of my own because I can and stuff. I mostly used peoples avatars to base their descriptions on so all you guys except Maggie you just got gender switched!)
Part One
(Wherein the dusty traveler reaches a strange destination and then some weird shit happens.)
Harsh desert wind beat down upon the lonesome traveler as he wandered listlessly, without purpose and without hope. He had forgotten why he had started his voyage all those months ago. Now he just roamed the blackened twisted earth in search of some meaning, some reason for being. The traveler hadn't found it yet. He couldn't shake the feeling that he never would. Nearing exhaustion and ready to collapse at any time he walked straight into a invisible barrier of some kind. It flung him several feet backward and caused him to fall into a deep unconsciousness. When he awoke he felt the sensation of someone riffling through his pockets. He rose with a start and demanded that they stop at once. "Oh shit, sorry about that but I thought you were dead!" responded a deep but feminine voice. "Don't worry, I didn't nick anything of course there wasn't a damn thing worth stealing but I'm sure you already knew that."
The traveler rubbed his eyes and took in the woman standing over him with her hands at her hips. She was a young woman of very short height with messy short blue hair and large piercing hazel eyes. She was dressed in a military uniform that was incredibly out of place considering the environment. Of course, the thing that was really off-putting about her was the fact that she had two floppy rabbit ears in addition to her normal ones. She noticed his wide staring eyes and knelt over him and grinned displaying rows of shark like teeth. "Admiring my ears I see, obviously you are a man of good taste. One word of caution though, touch either of them and I'll kill you." The man nodded glumly filled with a vague feeling of disappointment. The strange woman grabbed his hand and pulled the traveler to his feet. "Well, now I think introductions are in order, my name is Ranzo and what might your name be?" The traveler desperately tried to recall what his name was but he just couldn't remember. "Aww you poor sweet child don't tell me you don't even know your own name? Well fret not for I shall grace you with a dignified and stately name. You shall forevermore be known as...Mista Stickabee! The traveler shook his head violently in response to that he desperately knew that his name couldn't be anywhere close to that absurd name. In response Ranzo grabbed the traveler by the collar and lifted him up before violently shaking him back and forth. "Listen you stupid bastard, your name is Mista Stickabee for now on, so you better get used to the fucking idea capiche? CAPICHE?" Mista Stickabee as he is now known desperately nodded his head in agreement. Ranzo finally let him go with a wink and a smile before sauntering off to where the barrier lay.
When she was standing in front of the barrier that had knocked Mista Stickabee unconscious she clapped her hands loudly before striking a dramatic pose. At the reverberating sound the barrier slowly dissipated revealing a imposing and gigantic door that wasn't connected to seemingly anything else. The giant door was decorated with images of waifu's and sightless protags. Ranzo seized the door nob that was eye level to her and threw the door open. She went over to Mista Stickabee and grabbed his hand and dragged him through the doorway. When they made it through the giant doorway it swung closed and vanished. Mista Stickabee looked around in amazement. It was a vast space stretching on for seemingly forever. The space was populated by strange looking denizens that milled about and whom appeared and disappeared at will. Ranzo stood in front of Mista Stickabee and threw her arms out in a grand fashion and bellowed "WELCOME, TO FUWANOVEL!" Ranzo's eyes suddenly blazed red and she furiously glared around her. "Where's the fucking fireworks? They were supposed to go off right when I yelled welcome to fuwanovel...OH SHIT!" She immediately dived for cover as the fireworks suddenly burst from right behind her. Ranzo stood up and dusted herself off. "Fuckin' hell I knew something like that would happen! Anyway you're in Fuwa now and I'm going to be your tour guide. It's a part of my community service for trying to burn it down earlier.
We are a refuge for the ones that dare play Visual Novels, while also spreading our influence into other differing realms." Turning away from Mista Stickabee, Ranzo began to walk forwards while motioning him to follow. "This is the entrance hall where many of the more active members gather. Mista Stickabee started to follow but he was stop by a hand that tugged insistently on his sleeve he looked down at a little girl with long blue hair twin tailed hair and a forever quizzical expression on her face. Mista Stickabee leaned forward to hear what she had to say. "SEX, GIVE SEX! growled the girl with the voice of a forty year old chain smoker. GIVE SEX AND GURO, GURO FUR DERG!" "Hey back off Derg, he has no sex or guro to give you! No guro for Derg!" Derg looked incredibly disappointed at that and pouted terribly. "This is @Dergonu all she lives for is a steady supply of either sex, guro, or both. Here take a hentai doujin and stop bothering the new guy." Just then another tiny girl with pink hair came barreling out of nowhere and leaped onto Derg's back. "WHEN IS THE NEXT EPISODE COMING OUT? IT'S BEEN MONTHS SINCE LAST SUNDAY AND I'M SICK OF WAITING! I WANNA KILL! LET ME KILL!" Dergou swayed back and forth trying to throw the girl off while shouting, NO DONE YET! NO FINISH YET! GEROFFA DERG! Dergou started shuffling away from the two who just stared at them in a stunned silence. "Um, I think that was @KiririririI dunno, I keep forgetting that she exists anyway let's get this tour going again I got shit to do so let's not waste time." As they continued walking they passed several who grunted noncommittal greetings at the dusty pilgrim. One member walked in front of the two and just stood there in their way with their arms crossed and a constantly annoyed expression on his face. Well he had one despite having a gas mask on, okay? He was always annoyed, critical and annoyed. He wore a t-shirt that read Moege is Shit on the front and MoeNovel is the Devil on the back. He indicated both of these multiple times without saying a word. "Oh that's @VirginSmasher he's on another silent protest because another Moege was translated instead of a great mystery vn with multiple routes. Let's leave him before he finds out that another one was just released and has a complete mental breakdown."
They kept walking past a lot of really interesting things that I won't go into detail here because I just don't feel like it right now. You'd have been amazed by it I'm sure. They reached a doorway carved into the wall with the blood of every alien species in the galaxy. "Oh this is the passageway to the realm of @Clephasand I don't recommend you try and disturb him. He's kind of this horrifying chaotic mass of way too many mouths and the only thing that keeps him from devouring this whole place is a steady diet of VN's and the chorus of infernal piping. He's a pretty swell guy despite all that." As they were speaking a brown haired man with glasses and a red sweater appeared out of nowhere. No it wasn't Harry Potter stop getting so excited. It was @Plk_Lesiak He was a man that waded waste deep through the shittiest western vn's and worst mlp slash fiction to find meaning in this world of ours. It was sad and pathetic but he was a devoted solder to the cause so that was somewhat forgivable. Somewhat.
"Ranzo, it's time for the secret meeting of the Yuri Brigade have you forgotten?" OH shit! Yeah I did thanks for reminding me, alright Stickabee let's take a detour. The three of them went down a deserted hallway and Ranzo pushed a concealed button and a door materialized. They went inside and Stickabee was confronted with a grand room lined with countless white lilies and life sized statues of naked women doing the most lewd thing they could possibly be doing, that's right they were holding hands. Ranzo pushed another button and a large round table erupted out of the floor. Several more members materialized out of nowhere. It was a young girl with short purple hair and eerily bright purple eyes. Her name was @-soraaand she was a recent convert to the Yuri cause. "I hope I'm not late I was just drooling over the purity of Strawberry Shake Sweet, I mean appreciating, yeah that's the word!"
Everyone in the room feigned agreement while dishing out copious amounts of side eye. With a bang from a gavel the meeting was called to order. Ranzo as leader of the brigade held the floor. "Okay so Plk how is our progress in our quest for Yuri domination?" Plk adjusted his glasses like every single glasses character in anime has done before speaking. "It is going well our forces grow daily it is estimated that we will soon control over 25% of Fuwa." Ranzo smiled her shark teeth smile and nodded pleased. "Good, very good, I'm pleased at the rapid progress we have made. All we need now is the creation of more popular and well received yuri releases. Remember though, we have to be wary about the greatest enemy to our cause and that is the plague of...yuri bait." At those words the whole company started spitting and hissing like a bunch of cats. I don't know why, but it was really off putting for Mista Stickabee who was kinda just standing there, trying not to stare too closely at the tits on the statued maidens. "Yes, too many series have promised yuri only to provide the most thin veneer of subtext and worse than that turning it into a het romance. We must devote ourselves to purging this foul menace from our shores once and for all. Only then will women be able to openly love other women without judgment or scorn." Plk leaned back in his chair and waxed philosophically like he always does. "Ah yuri, is there nothing more pure that has ever been conceived I ask you? The warmth of mutual love and the promise of a tender kiss at the very end. Eternal hearts beating as one it set's my soul on fire! Oh it's true what they say, I think, therefore yuri is!" Uh oh, sorra had strated drooling all over herself again captivated by the thought. Ranzo stood up immediately and banged her gavel stopping Plk from his reveries. "Okay, I think it is time to adjourn the meeting for today I'm sure if we let Plk have his way he won't stop ranting for the next five or more hours. Agreed?" "Agreed!" chorused the rest of the brigade. "Alright then let's end this meeting with our battle cry!" YURI SHALL CONQUER THE EARTH! The cry was taken up by all members in attendance except Stickabee who was still trying to slyly shoot a glance at the sculpted tits. The meeting adjourned the rest of the members either left or talked among themselves, sorra stopped Ranzo and whispered to her. "The leader of the BL Brigade is here to see you, she's waiting outside." "Okay cool, that's for letting me know." The Yuri Brigade and the BL Brigade had long given up fighting each other and instead were now allies seeing as though they shared a common thread. Ranzo and Stickabee whom was finally able to tear himself away from the tits both walked out and saw the leader of the brigade. She was a young woman with short white hair with a black hair bow with blueish eyes.
Her name was @MaggieROBOTand she was the foremost proponent on the love between a man and another man. With her was a awkward and stumbly devil man. His name was @SeniorBlitz and he was the resident walkthrough maker and trashman. He only spoke in pun and shitty jokes so every time he opened his mouth it made people want to vomit, in the best way. "Oh hai Maggie, said Ranzo how goes the good fight?" Maggie frowned sorrowfully. "Not good I'm afraid I'm having a tougher time than I thought spreading the joy of the love between two men. It seems people are just more inclined to accept more readily the love between two women. Still, I will persist and remain undaunted and uhhh okay hold up I'll be right back!" Maggie abruptly left the conversation to stare at a argument started by two male members. It was getting pretty heated and they were getting pretty close to each other. Maggie her eyes burning with desire her face flushed with crimson screamed, "WELL THE WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU WAITING FOR? ARE YOU TWO GOING TO KISS OR WHAT? COME ON DON'T BE A PUSSY! I KNOW, THAT YOU KNOW, THAT YOU WANT TO! AND WHY STOP THERE?  WHY STOP AT JUST KISSING? TAKE YOUR DICK OUT AND RAM IT IN HIS ASSHOLE! LET'S GET IT STARTED UP IN THIS BITCH! I WANNA SEE SOME MOANING AND GROANING, POCKING AND CHOKING ALREADY!!! Blitz was busy trying  to restrain her from forcing the two's heads together when a large crowd started assembling around Maggie. It was the VNR users they always had trouble getting it to work and demanded that Maggie help them. VNR WON'T WORK FIX IT, MAGGIE FIX IT! WHAT IS VNR MAGGOOO??! I DON'T WORK SO WELL! Maggie turned pale and blindly ran away screaming "STAY BACK, STAY BACK! I THOUGHT I TOLD YOU FUCKERS THAT I WOULD NEVER HELP YOU AGAIN, SO STAY AWAY FROM MEEEEEEE!" The heaving mass of confused and befuddled users took off after her. "Well, uh that was certainly something, special. Let's uhh continue the tour.
As they kept walking they reached a open plaza. "This is where we keep the stocks, they are used by mods to punish the trolls and it's also where we keep the scum of the earth. It's name is Mitch. A large crowd was gathered around a single pillory where a despised and maligned presence was held captive. The crowd was flinging trash and moldy food at the grotesque mass. "It's bully Mitch day which is now that I think of it every single day." Blitz who was joining in on the festivities was suddenly picked up and thrown at Mitch seeing as he had been mistaken for garbage. "Cut it out I'm still underageeeee", he wailed pitifully. "Ah such a shame I can't take part today but there is always tomorrow, and the next day, and the next day, and the next day, and the next one after that. Let's boogie." Off they went past some more pretty neat things that I'm still not going to describe for you so just drop it okay? Suffice to say that they were real neat and rad. You know what? I'm going just end this now with a needless cliffhanger okay so just suck on that Alex Trebek...Aha!

Visual novels with the possibility to choose the protagonist’s gender are fairly rare, and genre's focus on storytelling and romance makes such a gimmick especially hard to pull off properly. Creating games like Loren: The Amazon Princess, with an option to choose between two full-fledged leads, one male and one female, each with their own personality and a set of romance options, takes a lot of work and only fits certain kinds of stories. On the other hand, VNs in which gender choice only changes minor details in the dialogue and the overall storyline struggle to make the narrative convincing – especially in the female version, which more often than not comes as an afterthought, created by slightly modifying the default, male scenario.
            Razzart Visual, the author behind highly-regarded yuri VNs Love Ribbon and Starlight Vega, is also the person responsible for two much less critically-acclaimed ecchi games, both of which featured female love interests and the ability to choose protagonist’s gender, making them in a way both classical romance VNs and yuriges. On May 4th 2018, Razzart's third game in this formula, Wolf Tails, was released on Steam, featuring romance scenario with a rarely-seen kemonomimi variant, that is wolfgirls, and a new artstyle. How does it compare to Razz’s previous projects and does it succeed in working both as a traditional eroge, and as a yuri game?
Read the full article at evnchronicles.blogspot.com

DISCLAIMER: I didn't ask for anyone's permission before deciding who's gonna be killed here, sorry actually not sorry about that. That's a dankier representation of these guys that may or may not reflect how they are in real life. I tried to use you guys' avatar or username as base for your appearances and everyone using a cute girl avatar must now be grateful. This entire story had zero proofreading and makes zero sense. Support the official Danganronpa release if you want a quality story, and the patch for the PSP is the best version for the first game, thanks for asking.

    Dreamysyu wakes up in his usual third seat of the roll beside the window, the setting sun coloring their majestic white hair orange. Just with this tiny introduction we can already see how they have all the needed traits to be the Ultimate Protagonist, and that's why we're following them now. They are already used to have a narrator describing every single thought that pop in their head.
    "No, and please stop doing that." was what they are thinking but honestly I don't give a damn. 
    Anyway, seeing that the school was deserted, Dreamysyu's first thought was that they overslept and missed the entirety of philosophy class, that happened to be their favorite subject but not the author's so it was natural it was skipped here. If that was the case, it was almost time for horse riding club activities with their cute kouhai. Or just the kouhai riding because they're the protagonist. But as soon as they stepped outside they noticed something. The school was deserted. Not a single soul or background character was in sight. It's almost like... they were transported to an eroge school that's only populated by the main cast. Looking outside the window, Dreamysyu saw an unnatural amount of cherry trees in full bloom in the middle of July and the ocean not far in every single direction meaning they were in some non existing island near Japan. Way too eroge. Now the kouhai riding scene seems to be even closer to their grasp. Oh yeah, but most likely there's no kouhai anymore. Why even live as a protagonist like this?
    Right as Dreamysyu thought at least one girl must be around and everything would go back to normal by the end of the story so no need to panic... they heard voices. More than one. Coming from the auditorium...
    "My harem!" wasn't what they are thinking, but I can mess with them a little bit~
    Dreamysyu opened the door and found 15 other bizarre students, almost all of them somewhat angry. "Tsk, another one?" someone said. "This must be the last one." another one that played Danganronpa before answered. Despite the hostile atmosphere, and Dreamysyu hostile appearance itself, a person approaches them. A cute girl with blue twintails, that managed to stay cheerful despite everything. Well, nothing happened yet, maybe that's why.
    "Hiiiiiii, and welcome to the Survivors' Club!" they already decided everybody else was killed, figures. "I'm Dergonu and I'll be glad to help you if you have any questions!"
    Dreamysyu was ready to raise an eyebrow but stopped. Dergonu. They remember that name. They are the Ultimate Mod, someone that did so good a job as a mod that they pretty much wiped out three forums into oblivion, such was the extension of the shitposting there. So mostly likely they know some behind the scenes stuff, it wouldn't hurt to stick around them...
    "No, I'm the one that truly knows everything." said a bespectacled dark haired woman with a hat that I'm guessing is a beret. Wait, did they just answered the narration?
    "Fiddle-samaaaaaaaaaaaa!! <3" yelled Dergonu before Fiddle could yet again answer the narration. And that name explained everything. Fiddle was known as the Ultimate Mastermind, said to have manipulated dozen other fanfics Fuwa users dared to write. Dreamysyu asked if this one would be any different, and Fiddle promptly shaked his head in a no, maybe spoiling the whole thing in the first chapter.
    "I can, and I will."
    "Wow, way to ruin the mystery. As expected of someone who liked Noble Works." said angrily a white haired guy with a gas mask. Although he's also white haired and faceless to boot, he wasn't the main character, maybe because there's way too much moe around for him to care about it. Because of that display, Dreamysyu recognized him in an instant: that was VirginSmasher, the Ultimate EOP. Said to have read all english non moege VNs in a spam of a single month, the experiment clearly corrupted his soul and it shows. In fact, he was already displeased to being forced to participate of such third-rate fanfic.
    "1/10 VN already, if we can even call this that." Virgin wasn't the only one that was displeased, that was indeed quite enough salt in the room. But the person that said the last line takes the cake. solidbatman, the Ultimate Salt. Even the Black Sea tried to steal the title from him, and lost. They can't drop out of the story because only I can decide that, but they already rate this a 1/10 in the middle of the prologue. Sasuga, jeez. And for all effects, solidbatman looks exactly like Batman because everything is better with Batman.
    "D-d-don't give it such a poor score so fast! After you read all scenes and read all text, I'm sure you'll give it at least a 8! And it does improve after the third choice of the second common route!" said a horned guy, going all technical. He had a huge encyclopedia in his arms, and he seemed to be looking at it right at this moment to know what exactly he was supposed to say next. Needless to say, that could only be SeniorBlitz, the Ultimate Guide, the guy said to be the only one that read the entire "book of answers for everything" that he now holds, and not just the tl;dr version that consisted of a tiny post-it with a 42 on it.
    "To be fair, you have to go multiple extra playthrough to fully understand Ste... I mean, this fic." said a cool with an almost zombie expression red haired girl with an out of place christmas hat. They were pretty well know, even more now that Steins;Gate 0 is airing.
    "Oh, it's Kurisu-chan, the Ultimate Tsundere!" said a poor soul, asking to be berated.
    "It's ULTIMATE STEINS;GATE FAN! I'm not even a Tsundere, how can I even be the Ultimate one! -Taku!" and then they proceed to talk about the last episode of S;G 0 unprompted just to prove their point of being the Ultimate S;G fan. Whoever was watching it too joined the conversation eventually.
    "This problem here does not change the fact that we have lots of Ultimates here." said an adorable blonde girl with a magical girl outfit. littleshogun, the Ultimate Magical Girl, seemed unfazed by everyone else, probably because of their experience with weird encounters with evil forces during all of their years working as a magical girl.
    "The purity of this magical girl... stirs the darkness. O Old Ones, lord of tentacled infernal beasts... I hope I can hold your thirst back with these hands of mine..." calmly stated a long haired blond, majestic and evil-looking man, even if that was in no way a calm matter. Even if he said that he hopes he can hold something or other, he probably can, single handed. That was the power of Clephas, the Ultimate Chuuni. He saw things, he did things... Even the Old Ones must be scared of him at this point.
    "Hey hey, enough with all this weebness. Moe kids already are a bit more than what I can handle, don't include tentacles too!" said another person from the pissed crowd. They were a beautiful brunette in a wedding dress that had all the right of being pissed if this story prevented them to marry his favorite boy. Oh well. The judge of anything weeb with strong sarcasm that I will not emulate all too well, probably, the new angry person is Zander, the Ultimate Outsider.
    "I might add that probably a weeb that gave me my Ultimate name, I'm not outside anything. Well, maybe outside a list of people going to jail, hell or both..."
    "You DO know that tentacle are a common japanese trope that's almost a history class on weebness if you actually look for the origin of the correlation between Magical Girls and tentacles, right?" said a glasses guy that looked all so smart. His face screams confidence, as expected of an Ultimate, but also passion for all the knowledge he acquired in the filthy pool of weeb hobbies. That was Pl_Lesiak, the man who looked at weebness in the eyes and came back victorious. Although he likes western weeb inspired things a bit too much, that's why his title quickly changed to Ultimate Westerner. Okay now, this title seems like he did some cowboy movies, and that's precisely why I decided to give him twin pistols in this story. The reason for that can be because a lot of people thought the same and then he went "why not?", I don't know.
    "'Twas indeed a bloody confusion." thought the red-claded young man besides Lesiak, after he told him his tale some time during my narration. He also had a dignified air and a posture as elegant and powerful as someone doing a gentle motion to raise their dead servants with necromancy. It couldn't be anyone else other than Mr Poltroon, the Ultimate Gentleman. And if someone have a better idea of how to write a gentleman without him sounding like an old brit, be my guest.
    "But now everything is A-Okay!" said a bubbly blue haired maid. Dreamysyu approached them because for a moment I almost forgot to use my protagonist for anything. But was it really necessary to ask who are they? Everyone there knew Kenshin_sama, the Ultimate Isekaier. Travelling to different worlds time and time again, the world within this tale is no different, so they were actually excited to explore one more world. They used their smartphone that they got in yet another world to take a lot of photos already and post everything in Jun Inoue's thread. Without them noticing, Kurisu-chan used the chance to complain about Re:Zero for a bit.
    "(ᗒᗨᗕ)" said another Ultimate, agreeing with Kenshin. Not that Zander allowed themselves to understand such a weebty so alien and far from proper english. Not that the cute pink haired girl cared, they just continued going （＾ω＾） around. If someone asked for the name of the tiny pink haired moe, they'll probably answer (⁎˃ᆺ˂) or something, so Dreamysyu did his protagonist part and told everyone they're Kiriririri, the Ultimate Moeblob.
    "I'm going to vomit if the happiness mood keeps going for too long. Can we kill each other yet?" said another short girl with some curtained bangs and pink eyes, spoiling yet another plot point if we can believe Fiddle's words that they already spoiled one. Stars appeared in their eyes as soon as they said the word "murder", what made them wave around happily, knocking Senior's encyclopedia on the floor on purpose just because. The book was so thick it could have opened a hole in the floor, but I'm not letting them escape this easily, so it just made a loud sound like whatever an elephant's fart sounds like. Even if they just look like a bully for now, in fact Ranzo is the Ultimate Bastard, hellbent on destruction and everyone else's disgrace. They couldn't simply leave all the fun to Clephas, or all the hatred to batman. They wanted a time to shine, even if killing everyone else was necessary for this. It actually was necessary, so of course they were enjoying this fic, and sadly maybe they're the only one.
    "I must agree that some people here are way too happy, even though everyone in school suddenly vanished and we're now trapped in a cheap imitation of the facility in some weird island and..." he actually said 34 more lines, but let's cut to the chase, shall we? tymmur, the Ultimate Orator, also had issues with how slow this story was going. Said to have recited the whole bible, Rewrite and France Shoujo before breathing in again, he looked like a wise old man in a glittered rainbow shirt that would totally be followed by some slave lolis if those still existed in the school. Well, there's Kiri, but I digress.
    "How horrible! How could a nice guy do something like this?" though the reader, but you need not worry. He's actually pretty nice with shotas, especially if they hook up with other shotas, he's just like this with 2D prostitute lolis that aren't protected by any 3D law.
    "For the sake of my sanity, I'll disagree." said Zander, what prompted tymmur to say another 67 lines, but since this chapter is almost over I'll skip it again.
    "Pardon my interruption of thy argument, sir, but I'm afraid we are not alone in this school..." said Poltroon, with a fierce expression of wanting to draw his sword if he had one. An annoying nihihi echoed through the room and it was coming... from the monitor on the wall that suddenly went on with a stream!
    "I see your all getting along! Yay! Welcome to the..."
    "*You're." Fiddle corrected before the naked girl could utter another mistake. Still feeling bad, eventually they introduced themselves as Mitchnomi, a 1/3 bear, a 1/3 rabbit, a 1/3 comic relif, all bad. They are doing the role of Monomi so naturaly they got shooed away not long after by the students.
    "KYAAAAAAAAAA!" screamed the rabbit girl, that apparently got shooed away in the other side of the monitor too.
    "...Can we just pretend this didn't happen and go back to... whatever was happening in the story?" batman asked and then everyone remembered what Poltroon said. It was really just about Mitchnomi? For once, everyone shut up and paid attention to the surrounding sounds. Something... was coming from the corridor. A stupid laugh soon echoed.
    "Upupupu... Pupupu... Upupupupupu!"
    "Da fuck is this?" is what Dreamysyu should have asked at the very beginning of the story.
    "Upupupu... Upupupwahahahahahahaha!" the laugh got even louder. Well, of course, the person laughing just entered the room, flames erupting behind them for whatever epic reason. Ranzo found it amazing and set fire to the curtain too. Clephas wanted to summon some things too, but decided against because it was still too early in the story for final boss moments.
    "Who... are you?" asked Dergonu, hoping for something not stupid.
    "Bitch please, who else could I be? The one and only, powerful and sexy, MAGGIEKUMA!"
    "I am not seeing a bear here." littleshogun pointed to the pretty boy that's now in front of the kids. They had white hair and black clothes so it totally fits the mono part of the name, even the 2B plushie they're carrying fits, but noooo I had to pick the kuma part. You can all agree with me that Monomaggie doesn't sound just as good.
    "Who caaaaaaaaaaaaaaares if I'm not a bear! Moe is the new thing, so hopefully pretty boys are here to stay." Maggiekuma explained why they decided to stick with the 9S in their avatar and not 2B.
    "They will, if you choose the second choice and then the fourth after [SPOILERS] dies! That way, you'll rule the world and make everyone likes whatever you want" Senior just gave me a dangerous but awesome idea.
    "∠(^ー^)" Kiri doesn't seem to mind.
    "Good thing I didn't have any expectation for this story." Virgin already gave up.
    "But you can end all of this... Killing everyone!" dramatic close up in Maggiekuma's face.
    "All according to the keikaku!" said Ranzo with a grim, even if they didn't really have a fucking plan.

    NEXT TIME: The rules of the deathgame and... Someone dies! But that's a twist!
 

Magical Marriage Lunatics is an rom-com VN with heavy moe elements bought to you by the same company and scenario writer as the fan-favorite Princess Evangile, and available for purchase at MangaGamer.
Plot / main theme of the VN is pretty thin; There are a total of 6 Heroines. The protagonist slipped into 4 alternate dimensions when he was a child and each time he met a girl there (btw this part is never fully explained; He simply just slips into the other dimensions in the past and the VN left it at that). Some weak excuse of an encounter happened afterwards and he made marriage pacts with them (The last 2 girls' pacts were made on earth realm). After coming to age, the 6 girls approached the protagonist all at once to make good of the pact made, but he must choose only 1 among the 6.
First of all, I must say the most important thing to do in order to enjoy this game is to come into it with a blank state of mind and without expectations. I was sorely disappointed with this VN because I am a big P.E fan and I came into the VN expecting something similar in quality. Suffice to say, MML is nowhere near that. The breakdown:
Graphics - Very moe in nature with hi-res colourful artwork, high contrast (overly so imo), and very cute heroine design:
                                                                        
Not much to say here; It's a moe lover's dream come true, while people like @VirginSmasher will hate it
Music - Average in quality. Much like P.E, not bad overall, but nothing particularly memorable or catchy to me.
Characters - Not bad. The heroines are cute and likeable. The protagonist is written decently but his character is cliche-filled and nothing special about him stood out.
Storyline - This is the part which disappointed me the most; It lacks depth, and the quality is nowhere near the likes of P.E at all. The biggest issue is the common route is excruciatingly boring. It's mainly just a bunch of random events which was very uninterestingly written and has almost nothing to do with the main theme of the VN; the marriage pacts. The storyline is not structured very well too imo; at the start, you meet all 6 girls and are given some thin backstory on the marriage pacts ---> SoL common route ----> choose a route to go into. End of story. Little effort, too, was given to develop the backstory between the Protagonist and the girls.
The routes are better, but mainly because the common route is so bad it makes them look so. The quality of the writing here is nothing special and full of cliches. Not even close to P.E standard.
This title also requires you to suspend your disbelief very heavily as it makes no attempts at all at being even remotely realistic (although I know this is a work of fiction, I still can't stomach the fact a talking bat can just waltz into our realm, talk to normal people, and even go shopping out in the open without causing anything near to a commotion). A lot of the story also makes heavy use of deux machina and feels very random; for instance events that happen inside a particular route (an example being what happened in the incident between the protagonist and Luce's father and his army after he revisited their realm in Luce's route) will go completely unmentioned elsewhere.
 
Overall, I do not recommend this title even to moege lovers. At 45 USD, it isn't cheap and there are a ton of better moeges out there in the market you can get at this price (or cheaper). While it's not a bad VN overall, comparatively it just can't compete. Only consider this VN if you can come in blank and without expectations. Otherwise, you will inevitably compare it to other (better) titles, notice the flaws, and be sorely disappointed with your purchase.
 

Check out my interview with the developer of this game, ds-sans!
Is there any merit to creating a tame, single-heroine romance VN in a market that seems to be flooded with cute love stories, often in much more "advanced" forms? Do a romance VN need to invent something fresh and original to be successful? Is it even possible to be innovative much in the world of cute romance tales, with the kind of saturation the genre offers? Sounds of Her Love, a small freeware title published over a year ago by DEVGRU-P and created by ds-sans, an indie developer then pretty much unknown to the VN community, made me think about all these issues in a fairly substantial manner. And the answer it suggested to me, both due to my personal enjoyment and the warm reception it received from other readers, was: when making a romance story in the visual novel format, you don't have to create anything particularly new, as long as you do the basics really, really well.
Read the full article at evnchronicles.blogspot.com

Magical Marriage Lunatics is an rom-com VN with heavy moe elements bought to you by the same company and scenario writer as the fan-favorite Princess Evangile, and available for purchase at MangaGamer.
Plot / main theme of the VN is pretty thin; There are a total of 6 Heroines. The protagonist slipped into 4 alternate dimensions when he was a child and each time he met a girl there (btw this part is never fully explained; He simply just slips into the other dimensions in the past and the VN left it at that). Some weak excuse of an encounter happened afterwards and he made marriage pacts with them (The last 2 girls' pacts were made on earth realm). After coming to age, the 6 girls approached the protagonist all at once to make good of the pact made, but he must choose only 1 among the 6.
First of all, I must say the most important thing to do in order to enjoy this game is to come into it with a blank state of mind and without expectations. I was sorely disappointed with this VN because I am a big P.E fan and I came into the VN expecting something similar in quality. Suffice to say, MML is nowhere near that. The breakdown:
Graphics - Very moe in nature with hi-res colourful artwork, high contrast (overly so imo), and very cute heroine design:
                                                                        
Not much to say here; It's a moe lover's dream come true, while people like @VirginSmasher will hate it
Music - Average in quality. Much like P.E, not bad overall, but nothing particularly memorable or catchy to me.
Characters - Not bad. The heroines are cute and likeable. The protagonist is written decently but his character is cliche-filled and nothing special about him stood out.
Storyline - This is the part which disappointed me the most; It lacks depth, and the quality is nowhere near the likes of P.E at all. The biggest issue is the common route is excruciatingly boring. It's mainly just a bunch of random events which was very uninterestingly written and has almost nothing to do with the main theme of the VN; the marriage pacts. The storyline is not structured very well too imo; at the start, you meet all 6 girls and are given some thin backstory on the marriage pacts ---> SoL common route ----> choose a route to go into. End of story. Little effort, too, was given to develop the backstory between the Protagonist and the girls.
The routes are better, but mainly because the common route is so bad it makes them look so. The quality of the writing here is nothing special and full of cliches. Not even close to P.E standard.
This title also requires you to suspend your disbelief very heavily as it makes no attempts at all at being even remotely realistic (although I know this is a work of fiction, I still can't stomach the fact a talking bat can just waltz into our realm, talk to normal people, and even go shopping out in the open without causing anything near to a commotion). A lot of the story also makes heavy use of deux machina and feels very random; for instance events that happen inside a particular route (an example being what happened in the incident between the protagonist and Luce's father and his army after he revisited their realm in Luce's route) will go completely unmentioned elsewhere.
 
Overall, I do not recommend this title even to moege lovers. At 45 USD, it isn't cheap and there are a ton of better moeges out there in the market you can get at this price (or cheaper). While it's not a bad VN overall, comparatively it just can't compete. Only consider this VN if you can come in blank and without expectations. Otherwise, you will inevitably compare it to other (better) titles, notice the flaws, and be sorely disappointed with your purchase.
 

Magical Marriage Lunatics is an rom-com VN with heavy moe elements bought to you by the same company and scenario writer as the fan-favorite Princess Evangile, and available for purchase at MangaGamer.
Plot / main theme of the VN is pretty thin; There are a total of 6 Heroines. The protagonist slipped into 4 alternate dimensions when he was a child and each time he met a girl there (btw this part is never fully explained; He simply just slips into the other dimensions in the past and the VN left it at that). Some weak excuse of an encounter happened afterwards and he made marriage pacts with them (The last 2 girls' pacts were made on earth realm). After coming to age, the 6 girls approached the protagonist all at once to make good of the pact made, but he must choose only 1 among the 6.
First of all, I must say the most important thing to do in order to enjoy this game is to come into it with a blank state of mind and without expectations. I was sorely disappointed with this VN because I am a big P.E fan and I came into the VN expecting something similar in quality. Suffice to say, MML is nowhere near that. The breakdown:
Graphics - Very moe in nature with hi-res colourful artwork, high contrast (overly so imo), and very cute heroine design:
                                                                        
Not much to say here; It's a moe lover's dream come true, while people like @VirginSmasher will hate it
Music - Average in quality. Much like P.E, not bad overall, but nothing particularly memorable or catchy to me.
Characters - Not bad. The heroines are cute and likeable. The protagonist is written decently but his character is cliche-filled and nothing special about him stood out.
Storyline - This is the part which disappointed me the most; It lacks depth, and the quality is nowhere near the likes of P.E at all. The biggest issue is the common route is excruciatingly boring. It's mainly just a bunch of random events which was very uninterestingly written and has almost nothing to do with the main theme of the VN; the marriage pacts. The storyline is not structured very well too imo; at the start, you meet all 6 girls and are given some thin backstory on the marriage pacts ---> SoL common route ----> choose a route to go into. End of story. Little effort, too, was given to develop the backstory between the Protagonist and the girls.
The routes are better, but mainly because the common route is so bad it makes them look so. The quality of the writing here is nothing special and full of cliches. Not even close to P.E standard.
This title also requires you to suspend your disbelief very heavily as it makes no attempts at all at being even remotely realistic (although I know this is a work of fiction, I still can't stomach the fact a talking bat can just waltz into our realm, talk to normal people, and even go shopping out in the open without causing anything near to a commotion). A lot of the story also makes heavy use of deux machina and feels very random; for instance events that happen inside a particular route (an example being what happened in the incident between the protagonist and Luce's father and his army after he revisited their realm in Luce's route) will go completely unmentioned elsewhere.
 
Overall, I do not recommend this title even to moege lovers. At 45 USD, it isn't cheap and there are a ton of better moeges out there in the market you can get at this price (or cheaper). While it's not a bad VN overall, comparatively it just can't compete. Only consider this VN if you can come in blank and without expectations. Otherwise, you will inevitably compare it to other (better) titles, notice the flaws, and be sorely disappointed with your purchase.
 

Koi to Senkyo to Chocolate: The Review
Yummy, Yummy, Yummy I got love in my tummy, and I feel like a-loving you

(From left to right; Satsuki, Michiru, Isara, Mifuyu, and Chisato)
The Setup
Chocolate, it truly bridges the cultural divide and brings people together. There is not a person alive who has not at least heard of its existence. It's a world renown symbol of love and diabetes, and a advertisers dream. For Oojima Yuuki and his childhood friend Chisato it means so much more than just that. Can tragedy that is caused by chocolate be saved by chocolate?

(Cue: Ride of the Valkyries)
The Story
Yuuki is a man who doesn't have much to ask for. All he wants is too finish out his remaining high school years at the preposterously exclusive Takafuji Gakuen Academy with the rest of his friends. Well that and for people to get his last name right for once. There they play out their lives in the Food Research Club otherwise known as Shokken! In that hollowed club room Yuuki and his friends, well they don't do much at all exactly. They pretty much us the club as an excuse to eat all the sweets they can get their hands on. It's presumed that the only thing he and his cohorts research is the amount of cavities they will develop. However, the dawn of a new school year brings fresh challenges that threaten Yuuki's peaceful existence. Student Council elections are on the horizon and with it the brazen and beautiful Satsuki Shinonome who threatens to bring down judgment like the wrath of God upon Shokken. As the head of the Financial Affairs Committee, she makes it her campaign goal to dramatically decrease the schools budget. In order to do that she decides to cut funds for clubs she deems to be undeserving and for a club as fundamentally useless as Shokken she threatens annihilation. Now, in order to protect the club and their remaining precious memories Yukki will have to become the peoples champion and throw his hat into the race. Will Yukki manage to do the impossible and protect the Shokken, or will he be swept aside by forces beyond his control? The idea for the story is pretty straightforward and simplistic but it serves as a strong enough foundation for the ensuing drama of each characters route. Oh, speaking of characters

(Look at all of them, standing there, staring at you.)
The Characters
First off is our protagonist Oojima Yuuki and he is one of the better developed leading men that I have encountered. Maybe that is because I also hate it when someone butchers my last name, even though it's so easy to say if you stop to think for one second! That, and I am also terrible about noticing whether or not a girl is interested in me or not. That did not stop me from wanting to strangle the life out of him on many occasions, but still I could sympathize. He is initially hesitant about becoming a candidate but he eventually rises to the occasion. Furthermore, you can actually see his face once or twice, that alone raises his stock.
Second is the resident main girl and childhood friend Chisato. She stuns locks us into her route from the very beginning and if you want to date any of the other girls you have to go through her first. That notion might turn off a few people but for me I didn't mind it too much. She is a incredibly important character and she effects every relationship that Yuuki is involved with. She is your typical tsundere character but even still she has quite a bit of depth to her. Coming into it I thought I would end up really disliking her, but surprisingly enough by the end of it I had a completely different opinion of her.
Next is Michiru who is a quiet cat like girl and the newest addition to the Shokken. Michiru was a character that I liked as soon as I met her. Maybe it had to do with the fact that she is rather mysterious and the quiet type. Her route is definitely the strangest one, and unfortunately it completely broke my suspension of disbelief. One thing is for certain it definitely has one of the more memorable harmonica tunes out there. She's also just super cute!
Mifuyu is up next and she is best friends with both Chisato and Yuuki. She was another character I was surprised that I ended up liking. Usually I'm not interested in characters that suffer from a vague malady, but I made an exception for Mifuyu. Her route was definitely one of my favorites of Koi and I liked how it really tested the three's friendship.
After that is Isara a hardworking girl with a brilliant smile who cutely ends nearly every single sentence with a little...aha! Or at least I think it was supposed to be cute. I tried it out a couple of times in front of the mirror and it didn't really sound cute at all...aha! Isara is from a poor family and is only able to attend Takafuji through some student welfare system. It's a very bizarre system that makes the students work in factories while they go to school. It also causes the students who are part of that system to be treated as second class citizens. Aha!
Last of all is Satsuki the head of the financial committee and the mortal enemy of the Shokken. I enjoyed her route the most out of all of them. The drama felt the most convincing and grounded. Satsuki and Yuuki seemed to really compliment each other and the romance felt very natural. She also has a cute side once you get under her aloof nature.
Aside from the heroines there is a surprisingly large cast of well developed side characters. Some of the standouts are Nozomi a brilliant mad scientist type of character, Hazuki the alcoholic teacher, Ai and Kii two life long friends otherwise known as the monkey duo, and Yume who has a strange and unsubtle fixation on Yuuki.

(Truly, Michiru is cuteness incarnate)
My Two Cents
Koi to Senkyo to Chocolate, despite coming across as some kind of insidious advertisement for the chocolate industry was really enjoyable. The characters and their routes are all well developed and well written. On top of that the art was gorgeous throughout. I think a special mention should go to the way the backgrounds were handled I think they are some of the best I have ever seen. It is rare to see a visual novel that actually has characters in the background shots but that is what Sprite did. Normally you just have to imagine that the busy streetcorner or classroom is populated and in Koi's case a few of the background characters could have easily been side characters in their own right. On the negative side one thing that really stuck out to me is how absurd the Academy comes across as. It's this huge entity that has a student run school budget at a billion yen, has a department that involves spies and wiretaps, operates a broken welfare system for students who cannot afford to attend normally, and let's a teacher use a club room as a minibar. Two of the routes really seem to go off the deep end, and I was almost disappointed that Yuuki didn't uncover a assassination plot against him. It's the type of school that could suddenly reveal that it's secretly a covert military training base for supersolders and would hardly seem surprising. Because of that, I found it hard to take some of the dramatic moments seriously and that hurt some of my enjoyment. Ultimately, despite my pummeled suspension of disbelief I still had a good time with Koi to Senkyo to Chocolate, and I would encourage you to give it a chance even though you are forced to complete Chisato's route first. She is not that bad I swear!
 

(See? Look at you've done!)

Note: This game was already reviewed on Fuwa by Valmore, I encourage you to check out his review as well
Those that follow this blog for a while might have noticed that I like to complain about the lack of identity that many Western-made VNs suffer from. As a medium utilized pretty much exclusively by the fans of original Japanese visual novels, EVNs far too often borrow extensively from those when it goes to setting and story elements, to the point of replicating various tiring anime clichés and kitsch tropes. They also frequently copy elements that really have no interest being in a game created by someone living in the USA or Europe, more often than not having only very superficial knowledge of Japanese culture and reality of life in Japan. 
            A Little Lily Princess, developed by Hanako Games and published on Steam in May 2016 (under the "Hanabira" label, signifying an outside scriptwriter), is a game that I like bringing up as an example of a Western VN that was able to differentiate itself from the crowd and create unique experience exactly because of the ability to not be completely defined its “weeb” roots, creating a setting and a story far detached from typical anime tropes. Paradoxically, the classic English novel A Little Princess, that this game adapted into the VN/dating sim format, is not a title unknown to anime fans, thanks to the highly-rated series from the 1980’s, Little Princess Sara (it even inspired a few less known projects, such as the slightly outlandish Strain: Strategic Armored Infantry). Hanako’s version tries to differentiate itself from those other adaptations mostly by giving a yuri spin to the story – still, as I will try to show in this review, calling it a yuri romance is rather misleading and says little about the true appeal of this game.
Read the full article at evnchronicles.blogspot.com

WARNING: This blog post contains weird Kiri level shit that causes brain damage so reading is not recommended
 
Well yaharro there.
This is no ordinary story. This is a story about love, despair, and how Kiri lost his mind.
But, in the end, this is all fiction. So do not worry. I will not appear behind your back and force you to burn burn your heart and soul like I did with [CENSORED]
JAPAN SALES ONLY
 
So here I am writing a review about Riddle Joker (NOT JOKERS) by everyone's favorite erogay producer Yuzusoft

 
This is a game featuring celebrities such as Bilbo Baggins (our protagonist), Aquaman, trap who is not a trap, and Kiri's waifu
Oh and let's not forget the smug loli...
 
Riddle Joker is a story set in the near future where chuunibyou middle schoolers (this game's playerbase) have taken over the Kyoto University Katsura Campus.
Our protagonist [CENSORED] and his little sister Nanami are also ordinary middle school chuunibyous attending the reformed Kyoto University Middle School while actually playing to be secret agents.
 
After sometime Kiri gets bored and takes control of [CENSORED]'s body and starts dating the school idol called Mitsukasa Ayase

 
Isn't she cute~~~
I love her just so much that my heart goes dokyuuuuuun every time I hear her talk
I accidentally saved over 500 of her voices
Oops~

 
 
Meanwhile when I was having sekkusu fun with my new wife our local Aquaman got dumber

 
 
To those of you who disagree with me here is proof that this is indeed the God's work that you can't even rate because what kind of believer gives god a score
Have a very nice naizuri scene. Her smile just heales me. NSFW
https://puu.sh/zWiOr.mp3
 
 
You thought I would share my wife's boobs with you all? Ha! You can all go die.
 
Why?

 
*No [CENSORED] were hurt during the making of this blog post
**I said during the making
***(`・ω・´)
****I was forced to do this

I'm going to be blunt (as usual), Riddle Jokers is probably a sign that Yuzu Soft is starting to stagnate as a company. 
I'm not trying to be mean or bashing Yuzu Soft for the sake of it... but, after finishing two paths of this game, I felt hugely exhausted, despite the fact that the paths are actually shorter than some of their other works.  The reason is fairly simple... the cast of characters this time around just isn't that interesting.
Part of that is that the protagonist himself is a bit too 'normal' for someone in his line of work.  Another part of it is that the heroines all fall into standard Yuzu Soft archetypes (whether setting or the character personality), and as a result, I was able to figure out the specifics of the paths I played so far almost from the beginning.  The most 'interesting' of the heroines, Ayase, I intended to leave to last, so I haven't played her (because she is the obvious main heroine candidate). 
The common route is, at best, 'all right'.  Of course, there are moments that made me smile, and the SOL is standard Yuzu Soft quality/style.  However, I felt that they hit on all the wrong notes when they were handling the Astral abilities.  One issue is that the balance between the oddly realistic/gritty moments and the rest of the game is horrible (those moments tease at a much more interesting set of possibilities), but another is that I honestly just got bored with what was going on too early.  Yuzu Soft makes long SOL games, and as a result, every time I play one of their games, I end feeling at least a little fatigued.  Worse, the humor is too mild to keep the brain stimulated most of the time, and the h-scenes are just... excessively long.  Ichaicha in the heroine routes is excessive (I've been complaining about this since Dracu-riot, so that's nothing new), and... each of the first two paths I played (Hazuki and Mayu) had just enough of it to put me over the edge of my ability to endure. 
Since this game was channeling Dracu-riot so obviously (isolated/enclosed environment, persecuted inhabitants, background efforts to destroy their refuge, etc), it was hard to escape the feeling that this was a pathetic attempt to relive what was best about that game.  Unfortunately, because they traced the ideas so closely in some ways, the points where the game comes up short are just too obvious.
One of those areas is action.  Say what you like about Dracu-riot, but its few action scenes were generally excellent (for what they were, action scenes in a charage) and the buildup was skillfully orchestrated.  The same can't really be said about this game.  While there are a few action scenes, the effort to narrate them and build up to them is rather... underwhelming.  
Another is the secret agent angle... to be frank, the protagonist just isn't that capable.  Oh, he is a decently-skilled fighter and his ability is cool in a way, but he falls apart whenever he hits an emotional block and he has a critical failure for an agent... he hates lying.
Last of all is the Astral-user issue... I have to say that this wasn't handled nearly as well as the vampires in Dracu-riot.  There are very few times in the VN's common route where prejudice or persecution even comes up, much less becomes an issue (aside from the conclusion of the route), and there is no attempt to bring the situation 'to life' in the reader's mind, which is a critical failure, in my opinion.
Honestly, when it comes down to it, the reasons I couldn't bring myself to like this game are all involved with me inevitably comparing it to Dracu-riot.  On its own, it isn't a bad VN, but I have had the unfortunate experience of having both played Dracu-riot twice all the way through and have helped as a translation-checker on the translation... so my impression of this game was further ruined by my excessive involvement with the game it was imitating in structure.
I couldn't bring out an unbiased opinion here, so I'm not going to say you shouldn't play it... but if you do, play it before Dracu-riot, not after.
Edit: Also, one thing that was missing was non-romantic friendly intimacy between the characters... despite the fact that they mostly live in the same dorm, there is relatively little interaction between the characters as a group, meaning I didn't really feel that they 'came to life' like the characters of Dracu-riot or even Senren Banka.