ciel_yuri

Frontwing will soon give more info about shipping of physical copies for their kickstarters. It will probably include another final date for shipment which they most likely will fail to deviler on.
 
Nekonyansoft has recently started talking about potentially kickstarting their physical releases. While many, myself included are a bit annoyed at VN kickstarters in general due to how FW and SP has handled things, I can see that it might be rather risky to do physical releases without one. So while it might not be the prefered way it is understandable in my opinion and whether it turns out good or bad will depend on whether or not Nekonyansoft will be able to deliver their physicals within a reasonable timeframe.
 
Jlist is currently selling Jast USA holiday box set which is a bundle of 3 VNs from Jast USA for $60.00. As for the value of these titles they mention that it has a value of at least $100.00 so it seems like a rather decent sale. The downside however is that you don't know which VNs you are going to get which could result in getting VNs you already own or that you don't care about. Personally I am not really a fan of these types of mystery boxes as I like to only collect VNs that I think seems like something I will like.
 
Here are a few titles that may be close to getting sold out or have a limited time left for pre-order.
There is a limited amount of physical copies for Clannad: Side Stories at sekaiproject, it seems to be leftovers from the original kickstarter.
On PS vita the physical edition of Muv-Luv and Muv-Luv Alternate is being sold over at ricedigital and I am pretty sure that it is a limited run.
Backerkits that are still open Alpha's Adventures, Sakura Sakura Seven Days and Venus Blood Frontier
 

The Growlanser series is one of those weird, hardly known jrpg series that died out after the ps2 era (mostly because its gameplay was too traditional, but also because the transition to 2.5D sprites failed so miserably in V and VI, along with the derivative, predictable story).  However, before its death, it produced four first-class games, three of them linked in a single chronology.  IV, also known as Wayfarer of Time, is the exception in the series as a whole, being the only entirely standalone game.
Growlanser IV's Western release was on the PSP (also playable on the Vita and PSTV) with a modified main route and an 'evil' route that you could access on NG+.  The first four Growlanser games can be said to be very attractive to those who like player agency.  This is because, depending on how you fight, how you play, and what conversation choices you make (three of the four protagonists are silent ones whose) you could not only alter your own perceptions of the main character, but you could also alter the ending and even the game flow as a whole dramatically. 
Growlanser IV isn't an exception to this, but in a way it is easier.  One reason is that you aren't required to get the highest rating on  all story missions to get access to the 'true' ending.  Rather, it uses a 'fate alteration' system which allows you to take on sidequests, take various actions in combat, and make choices in conversations that alter how the game ends, who lives, and who dies.  The 'Modified Route', which is pretty much the 'good' route, pretty much requires you to alter every possible character's fate in order to create the result of ten major characters still being alive past the turning point of the story and the end.   With some of these characters, it is as simple as saving them in a certain story battle, with others it requires making the right choices in conversations with them in order to change how they act, thus preventing their deaths.
In this way, I came out of Growlanser IV feeling that, for the first time in a long time, that player agency actually mattered.  Hell, I never thought scolding a girl about throwing things then showing her kindness would give me an opportunity to save her soul later.
The main story itself is heavy on war politics, much like all the other games in the series.  In this case, it is a war story spread across about four years (my estimate) that ends up involving the whole of the known world.  The protagonist, raised in a mercenary outfit, ends up getting involved with saving the world and the nations in it... but you rarely see him being treated like a 'chosen one' outside of a few of his own companions.  Rather, most reactions are based in that person's standpoint and affiliation, which made both the enemies and allies feel real to me in a way few jrpgs ever manage. 
This game manages to avoid the traditional pitfalls of the average jrpg.  What do I mean?  I mean that tendency toward hot-blooded idealism and dew-eyed innocence about human nature that ruin 90% of JRPGs storywise.  I mean, a king isn't interested in saving the world... he is interested in enriching his country.  Good people in the wrong position will do bad things, and bad people who can benefit from it will do good things.  The characters feel like people, and I don't feel like I'm talking to carbon copies of characters from a thousand other jrpgs like I do with most mainline jrpgs.
The battle system in this game is a combination of turn-based and real-time strategy.  Generally speaking, you start out at a certain point of the map, and your characters move in real time when you aren't making choices about their next action.  It is possible to alter their course, and you can block enemies' routes with your warriors' bodies.  Knacks (non-magic activation skills) can be used to strike hard, slow enemies' turns,or slow their chanting of magic.  Magic takes a while to chant, but in exchange you can take normal actions immediately afterward, and spells can be canceled at any time just by pressing the triangle button and going to the character in question.
Perhaps the game's biggest overt weak point gameplay-wise is the way you learn skills (passives), Knacks (instant-use attack/support/debuff/buffs), and magic.  They are learned by attaching spellstones to the characters' ring weapons (three to a weapon, with the level of the stone you can attach limited by the ring's slots) and killing enemies in battle.  The reason why this is a problem is simple... only the character who deals the fatal blow to an enemy gains ability points for their... abilities.  A warrior who can take out five enemies at once with the use of the circle strike knack is going to find it easier to learn abilities than a mage or archer that can only strike one enemy at a time (synchronize spells later on to cast area spells utilizing multiple characters... but it still can't beat the quickness of AOE knacks). 
The greatest help to the player is the fact that you can buff before going into battle using spells, thus eliminating the need to tie up magic users in buffing for the first part of a battle.  Considering that most story battles have time limits, this is an issue.  This game rewards clever use of the systems like the arena and buff spells and will seriously sodomize you if you go through the game without thinking or preparing.
Overall, Growlanser IV was the series' peak, and it saddens me greatly that the series was killed in the PS2 era.  This game is about sixty hours long for the first playthrough (successive playthroughs are easier), and it is one of the better rpg stories I've ever played, being somewhat reminiscent of Suikoden, which is funny, considering they rose to cult popularity around the same time.
 

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

 
 

With Date A Live: Rio Reincarnatio being confirmed for an english release I figured I should make a review of it.
 
Date A Live Rio Reincarnation is actually a collection of two Date A Live VNs that released on PS3 as well as a new story that I think can kind of be seen as a fandisc. The two PS3 VNs are Date A Live: Rinne Utopia and Date A Live: Arusu Install while the extra story is just called Date A Live Rio Reincarnation. For this review I will focus on each individual part on its own.
 
A quick summary of Date A Live Rinne Utopia
Date A Live Rinne Utopia takes place sometime after the first season on the anime and includes the characters introduced in the first season. Other than this there is also a new character Rinne a mysterious girl who seem to be Shido's neighboor as well as his childhood friend (they were never reunited, she was always there). Other than this there are some other odd things going on, for instance there is a huge tower in the middle of the city that only Shido finds odd and he has these dreams of a spirit appearing before him. During the common route there are of course also date events where you can choose between Kotori, Origami, Kurumi, Touka and Yoshino. After some of these date events you get into their routes and get an ending with them. After having gone through all the different endings you then unlock Rinne's route where I would say the meat of the story can be found.
 
For my opinion of it I would first like to say that I think this is a really good Date A Live VN. It takes full advantage of the setting of Date A Live and I think it does an excelent job both telling a large impactfull story while also giving lots of nice moments with each of the different heroines and pretty satisfying endings with each of the heroines. For the heroine routes there is always something going on whether there is an internal conflict for one of the girls or it is something else going on, because of this it felt like each of the routes managed to carry themselves as their own story and also make the romance between the heroine and Shido feel satisfying. For the overarching plot I think they do a good job building it up throughout the VN during the different routes and I think the story it tells is something that works perfectly within the setting of a VN. Rinne's route at the end then works as a great climax for the story with lots of epic as well as emotional moments.
 
A quick summary of Date A Live Arusu Install
Date A Live Arusu Install takes place sometime after the second season on the anime and as such also includes Miku and the Yamai twins. The main setup of the story in Arusu Install is that Ratatoskr has made a new dating sim for Shido to practise on which is a fulldive experience that has a recreation of the city they live in as well as the people living there. There Shido is supposed to go on dates with AI's with the same personality and looks as the spirits. However early in the game he meets an odd girl called Arusu, that he has never seen before and shouldn't exist in the game, she ask him what love is as she is curious about it and don't understand it. As this happens Kotori who has been talking to Shido when he was in the game loses contact with him and the people on the outside are unable to get him out of there, meaning he is stuck within the game. This then makes all of the girls hook themselves up to the machine to enter the game so that they can save Shido. This means that they are all stuck in a replica of their city going to the same school and living in the same house. So this means that it is essentially as if they were in the real world other than the fact that side characters are npc, they are forced into roles that fit a dating sim and there is Arusu using her powers to make special date events that happens in the dream of Shido and the heroine that puts them in special suituations with the aim being for them to get closer so she can learn what love is.
 
As for my review of Date A Live Arusu Install I guess I should start with the begining. I think that the way they use the setting of Date A Live to set up the story is really cool. Referencing my little Shido with the fulldive machine is really fun and I think it is a really smart way of getting the characters into suituations they otherwise wouldn't be. Other than this it also sets up a nice overarching mystery with Arusu and them being stuck in the game. Also because of the game's setting there are lots of things that are able to happen that wouldn't otherwise make sense and this is used to make lots of different scenarios with the girls. This I would say works well as fanservice for the girls not necessarily sexual fanservice, but more so seeing them in lots of different suituation like magical girl Kotori or shrine maid Origami which also provides some nice interesting artwork. A problem with this though is that these scenarios don't really do any job with building a good emotional story for the girls or get you connected to them, it just feels like pure fanservice with no substance. This made the routes for the individual heroines seem quite hollow, something that really hurt my enjoyment as this is the majority of the VN. The true route I feel does a good job on the emotional side and just in general having a pretty good and satisfactory story. So overall I would say that the setup and the true route are really good, but that it suffers from the other routes feeling empty only offering hollow fanservice that mainly just show different suitations with the characters in what seem like what if scenarios, though they do have good art and I would say some are quite enjoyable (magical girl Kotori is one that comes to mind). 
 
Date A Live Rio Reincarnation works pretty much like a fandisc for both of the previous VNs. I don't think I can really go much into it without spoiling things from the other VNs, but what I can say is that they meet a small girl named Rio who looks for the most important thing (she doesn't know what it is just that she is looking for it). As for the content of Rio Reincarnation it features a few nice scenes with the heroines as well as give a bit more of a proper ending for each of the VNs. I very much liked this addition as I really liked the different endings in it as well as the story it told in general being interesting.
 
Just some quick remarks about the visuals, the visuals are really nice looking, which is to be expected as the artist is Tsunako, the artist behind the Neptunia series and Fairy Fencer F as well as being the illustrator for the original Date A Live light novel. However I found some rather annoying problems with the PS4 CGs. While most of them were as they should be, some of the CG variations had parts of the art that had been missplaced by a pixel or two or there being a difference in colour between two parts of the CG put together. Under are two examples with some red circles added just to show the area you need to look at. While these aren't really that noticeable I found it annoying as I like to screenshot all of the different CGs and have them on my PC to look at later and I don't want them to have these kinds of flaws.

 
 
Cover of the limited edition

 
Back of the limited edition

 
Cover of regular edition

Everything included with the limited edition

 
Cover of limited PS4 edition and regular PS vita edition

 
 

Over a few years now I have read some japanese VNs on the PS vita that are based on series that already had an anime before the VN. These VNs are Gochuumon wa Usagi Desu ka?? Wonderful Party!, Himouto! Umaru-chan Himouto! Ikusei Keikaku, Nisekoi: Yomeiri!?, Sakura-sou no Pet na Kanojo, and To Love-Ru Trouble Darkness: True Princess. Since I have the physical version of all of them I figured that I would do a review of them, however it has been a while since i read them so I don't think I would be able to make a proper review for each of them without rereading parts of them. As such I decided that instead I would do short reviews of each and put them all in one blog entry. By the way these titles are aimed at people who have watched the anime or read the manga.
 
Gochuumon wa Usagi Desu ka?? Wonderful Party! is in my opinion a good Gochuumon wa Usagi Desu Ka? VN. It does a great job at properly representing the characters as they are in the anime (haven't read the manga) and manage to execute well on the relaxed atmosphere found in the anime. The main story of the common route is that Kokoa wants to make a surprise birthday party for Chino, after this the character that interact most Kokoa (who you play in the common route) will be inspired to themselves hold a party chrismas for all of the other girls. The main thing then is how each of the girls thinks about how best to hold a party and what will make the other girls the happiest. There is also a mini game in the common route where you play as Kokoa working at Rabbit House, this is quite short but can be annoying when you just want to get into another route. I also want to mention that I prefered it to the anime as many of the jokes in the anime seems to be too slowly phased and therefore become boring while they work pretty well in the visual novel. One thing I should also mention is that it of course feels quite childish which is to be expected since the series in Gochuumon wa Usagi Desu Ka?
 
Himouto! Umaru-chan Himouto! Ikusei Keikaku managed to surprise me by being better than I had expected. It released before the 2nd season of the anime, but I would say that the general vibe of it is more similar to the 2nd season rather than the first season, something that I think is a good thing, btw didn't hate first season just thought the 2nd season was better. As for the common route I would say it was pretty decent and had some nice comedic moments, really liked the interactions between Taihei and Alex. As for the routes I would say those were the highlights of the VN. There are 3 different Umaru routes, one for UMR, one for her chibi form and one for her outside form as well as a route for Ebina, Kirie and Sylphinford. The routes did a good job at telling a story (mostly focusing on the relationship between siblings, not the incestious kind) and the comedy was what you would expect from Himouto Umaru (Sylphinford had some amazing comedic moments). Also after the end of the route there is an extra ending, this ending is just a few lines and a CG and tells what Umaru ended up as later, something that depends on lvling stats in the common route (just give her items that she use to lvl skills and have her use them). Again this is an annoying mini game and you probably need a guide to find out the stat combination needed for all the extra endings, but at least I think the extra endings are quite fun even though they are really short.
 
Nisekoi: Yomeiri!? is the first VN I ever read and where my profile picture is from. As for the VN itself I think it is really good, though it could in part be nostalgia since it is the first VN I read. The VN starts with Raku encountering a loli fox spirit named Otama who I would say works as a mascot for the VN. After the introduction you get a map of the school and of the city and then use that to choose who you want to have events with, after a few normal events with a girl you get a larger event that lasts longer and has a bit more impact and you continue with this until you get to the last event which can probably be considered her route. Each of their routes start with the girls going to the shrine connected to Otama and making a wish, Otama then fufills this wish in a way often not really expected or thought through by the one wishing it, thus creating a suituation that needs to be solved. As for the routes there are 6 in total, with 4 main routes that are romance focused one for each of the main heroines Chitoge, Kosaki, Marika and Seishirou and then extra routes unlocking after you have completed a route, one being the Ruri route (not romance but mainly about not making her hate you as Shuu involves you in things that piss her off) and the Raku route which can be considered the harem end, or rather the end where nothing happens. Chitoge's route is really emotional and something I think would fit in a nakige, Onodera's route is very nostalgic having many references to the main series while the other routes mainly focus on comedy (found most of them hilarious). As for gameplay there are a few minigames where you have to avoid being seen by someone (often the gangsters), then there are a few times where you get a few different hiragana that you need to combine to make a word that is your answer to something and lastly there is a health bar which mainly go down if a certain character gets mad at you and punches you or you eat something you shouldn't. I feel like these are the best implemented mini game systems I have seen so far in these kinds of VNs and while these unnecessary minigames that slow you down when you want to read other routes are annoying this one didn't feel all that annoying and a few times actually worked pretty well within the story. Just to end this of I wanted to say that it does a really good job using the characters to their full potential and that anyone who is a fan of Nisekoi, has a PS vita and know japanese should pick it up.
 
Sakura-sou no Pet na Kanojo is something I am a bit more mixed about. On one hand it does a pretty good job with the characters, comedy and story and on the other hand the art is kind of plain (colours are pretty bland) and the gameplay system is really annoying (the most annoying I have seen so far) which I think is somewhat detremental when doing the different routes. The general story is about the people at Sakurasou starting to work together on a game for a game competition. How this plays out in the VN is that you spend time working with them and depending on who you work with you end in their route, though you also need to ensure that all of them manages to get their required tasks done and I found it to be a bit more complex than it sounds. Other than that there are lots of scenes with the different people at Sakurasou as well as a new character that was the one who got them to enter the competition. As I mentioned I found the comedy to be well executed and the characters to be handled well so these scenes are pretty fun. As for the endings there are only endings with Shiina and Aoyama, though there are 3 variations for each of them which I think just depend on how many times you cleared an ending with them (bad type first time, better 2nd time and the best the 3rd time). They have also built in a stupid new game+ thing making it so you have to complete it from scratch to get the better endings, other than that there is an event for each character that includes a CG that requires you to go through each of the 6 routes twice meaning you have to go through it and the stupid gameplay system at least 12 times in total if you want to have all the CGs. In conclusion I would say it is a pretty good VN though it is held back by plain art with bland colours and a stupid system forcing you to go through the VN 12 times to get all the scenes while you navigate a semi difficult annoying system for each route.
 
To Love-Ru Trouble Darkness: True Princess is the only of these titles that I found to really be a disappointment. There is a wide variety in how good the routes are, some I would say are actually somewhat good while others are quite bad (especially Yami's route). While there is a lot of VN original content some of the scenes feel like pretty much a copy of things in the manga/anime just toned down due to it being on PS vita. The general plot is that that Rito loses his memory due to one of Lala's machines, then he spends time with the different girls and at the end of it he regains his memory after having gotten close with a girl and happy end. Other than some routes being generally poorly written and lending too much from the source matterial I would say a huge problem is the limitation it has being on the vita. Since To Love Ru generally rely on perverted comedy it can't really do as good of a job with it due to Sony even before their recent censorship crusade not really accepting anything as lewd as things found in the manga and anime. Other than this there are also some really annoying technical problem, for one all of the art has been compressed which is quite clear when comparing it to other vita titles, this makes it look much worse than it should have (art quality is pretty good), also one really annoying problem is that it seems it has memory problems, as you get close to having done all the scenes it just goes black everytime you try to save regardless of savefile and refuses to save after the VN is complete. This is a problem I found other people also had when I googled the problem in japanese though I didn't find a solution, as such I have  everything other than the ending CGs of the Nemesis route (at her ending part but won't save after the credits) when I have the memory card in and without the memory card I have done the Nemesis route so I could get all CGs, even though I don't have them all in the same place.
 
Front cover of the five VNs

 
Back cover of the five VNs

 

This is an opinion that has been a long time in forming, but I am coming around to an opinion that the more simplistic viewpoints I've possessed on the differences between American approaches to storytelling and Japanese ones are somewhat off the mark. Note:  This is a rant, it should be treated as a rant, and if it doesn't make sense to you, that is because it is my brain leaking into text on this blog.
First, my original opinion:
To put it simply, it was my belief that the Japanese had a tendency to go for emotional surrealism (in other words, emotional bombardment) and visual excess (exaggeration) to tell their stories.  In opposition, Americans tend to go for the 'gritty and realistic', with straight out bullet to the head realism.  This was a generalization that, while based on my experiences with Japanese video games that told a story (both VNs and jrpgs) and Western games that more or less tried to do the same (Isometric RPGs, Bethesda-style games, etc), was never meant to be an absolute statement but just a general opinion of the tendencies I'd encountered.
Second, my new opinion: 
First, I've come to the conclusion that American gaming companies don't know how to tell a story anymore (since Bioware has gone crappy, Obsidian is about to get absorbed/has been absorbed by a company that has no idea of what it is doing, and the Witcher was made by Polish people).  Second, the Japanese seem to suffer from a similar malaise... and the source is, quite ironically, fairly similar in the cases of mainstream games.
It is the disease I call the 'MMO virus'.  Yes, you who actually read my blog know my opinion on online multiplayer games and what they have done to erode storytelling games in general, but my recent conclusion is that this erosion has actually reached a critical point in the last five years.  Rebellions against the progression of this disease have occurred (Tales of Berseria, Xenoblade Chronicles 2, and Nier: Automata come to mind for the Japanese, and Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire for America), but these have been relatively minor upthrusts against the toxins released by the cloud of mission-based 'stories' you see in games nowadays.  Bethesda has also contributed to this plague (fetch quests and hunt the monster quests  being a common plague for them as well), and it seems like every time I turn around, I see another game trying to tell its story through an obvious mission or quest system is sitting right there.  Sure, the systems had their roots in D&D games, but the way they've developed is the result of the plague that infected the world using games like WoW as its vector.
I first began to see signs of this disease back in the PS2 era, though it was mostly limited to 'high end' games at the time, like Final Fantasy (XII having essentially repurposed and altered XI's MMO battle system for a single-player model), I was honestly horrified to see how easy it was to let myself get led around by the nose from objective to objective in hopes that I'd find the story in there somewhere.  The problem was, once the objectives became my reason for playing (as was inevitable, because that is the tactic they use to draw you in), I increasingly realized that I couldn't enjoy what story was being told, because I was impatient to get to the next objective, even though I didn't find any of that searching for objectives to be fun in the least.
VNs suffer from a different set of problems.  While jrpgs and western games suffer from the simple fact that the current generation of makers grew up obsessing over pathetic attempts to graft stories onto multiplayer games, VNs suffer from the fact that the best and brightest of their creators are... getting old.  Hell, some of them even died in between projects.  Worse, no one of equal capability has replaced them, leading to an unfortunate confluence of near-universal incompetence and corporate inability to grasp the reasons for failure and fix it. 
No, I'm not saying that all new VNs suck.  Hell, if they all sucked, I wouldn't still be trying to go back and play them, like the burnt-out junkie I am.  No, my issue is that there is a sudden dearth of developed talent within the world of VNs that has gotten horrible in the last five years.  Most of the major names are retired, have moved on to 'greater' things, or are dead.  Shumon Yuu is silent, Hino Wataru seems to have gone underground, Masada is probably off in his own little world, Fujisaki Ryuuta is circling in place, Kurashiki Tatsuya is off indulging his inner sadist with half-assed games, Kazuki Fumi can't seem to stick with one thing long enough to make it great since Akeiro Kaikitan, and Agobarrier is three years dead.  That isn't even mentioning all the formerly major names that have just decided to retire without telling anyone or got hired away by mainstream video game companies. 
What is replacing them are primarily LN writers... who, unfortunately, tend to write like middle school street kids on crack (and not in a good way).  They often have great ideas, but they are fuzzy about execution and lacking in technique.  As a result, you get a bunch of third-rate one-off VNs that no one really likes.
Artists aren't a problem.  There will always be plenty of skilled otaku artists who can draw h-scenes.  The issue is and always will be writers... because it is the writer that decides whether a VN will become remembered for years to come or be dropped back into the dung at the bottom of the latrine.