Seraphim

Wow, so they delayed the game for almost two years because of this bug and now it turns out they haven't actually fixed it? Kinda seems like there must have been other issues at play which they haven't mentioned, or else it really shouldn't have taken this long. Oh well, I'm glad they've sorted everything out so this game can finally see the light of day (as long as there aren't any other hiccups before August).

It's a machine translation by SakuraGame, so even without reading any of it myself, I think it's safe to say that it's utter garbage. There's no other translation available though, so if you feel like you absolutely must read it in English, this is your only option.

I went with Hentai Prison, Sayonara o Oshiete and Akeiro Kaikitan. I sincerely doubt Mangagamer will pick up Akeiro, considering the fact that Sekai have been the ones localizing other Silky's titles, but one can dream. I had a hard time deciding between Hentai Prison and Nukitashi, but the former seems a bit more interesting so that's what I ended up choosing.

I mean, I get your disappointment, but you can't really expect much from someone who has made 65 "translations" since September. I doubt there's even a semblance of editing in any of these releases, so you're probably better off pretending like they don't even exist.

Well, the VN itself is great, but it hits hard and most of the bad stuff happening is because of Haruki's inability to commit to one girl for most of the VN. He seems a lot more human than your average VN protagonist, which is probably the main reason why his actions throughout the story made me start to dislike him so much. Makoto from School Days is, as I've already mentioned, a whole lot worse, but he's such un unbearable bastard all the time that you can't even take him seriously. It had been sitting in my backlog for ages by the time I finally got started on it. I knew it was supposed to be good, but I was under the impression that this was just comedy/romance through and through, so it kinda hit me out of left field when I realized there's actually some drama and serious topics here as well. It turned out to be one of my best reads of the year, so I highly recommend you give it a go!

I don't think I can decide on one, but the top 3 for this year are probably Kakei Kyoutarou from Daitoshokan no Hitsujikai, Niimi Kakeru from 9-nine, or Narita Shinri from Hello Lady (whenever he's not sexually harrassing people out of nowhere). Might as well list the worst protagonist while I'm at it, and there's no competition whatsoever there. It's Kitahara Haruki from White Album 2. I think the only VN protagonist I dislike more is Itou Makoto from School Days, but he's in a league of his own and I haven't read that VN in years now so it doesn't qualify here.

You can try downloading saves from here. I don't know if they work for the English localization, though.

I actually haven't experienced this issue in a long while now, so it seems to somehow have solved itself one way or another. Unfortunately, that also means that I to this day don't have any idea what actually caused it. Maybe it was just some bug related to Windows that was eventually fixed in an update. If that's the case, you'll probably be fine as well in the near future (since you also seem to recall not having this issue before), but I can understand your current frustration considering how much time I wasted trying to remedy my own situation at the time of writing the original post.

Until a couple of hours ago, I had no idea that Oshtor is the main character in this game. I was already looking forward to it, but now I'm suddenly a lot more psyched! Kinda got my hands full with Gore Screaming Show, Clockwork Ley-Line and God of War right now though, so I'll have to put off getting started on this for a while.

Maybe it's because the character art is by Hamashima Shigeo, known for Euphoria and Maggot Baits, among others?

I'm a little torn over Koichoco. On one hand, it'd be nice to get another previously untranslated work rather than one with an already decent fan translation, but then there's the fact that Sprite getting some more exposure and income improves the chances of them doing new stuff. I'd very much like to see a new VN from them that isn't related to Aokana, which I definitely enjoyed, but not to the point of wanting even more content for it instead of a new IP. (But hey, I'll take anything I can get.)

I'll just go ahead and post the trailer here. I like the ambience in the trailer, so I'm looking forward to seeing how this will turn out!

Glad to see they revoked the ban, but it really goes to show how unreliable and inconsistent their process of elimination is. They are in dire need of some clearer guidelines to follow.

Here's another one from the same thread: I don't remember how they phrased it in the fan TL, but this seems kinda awkward. I'll probably wait for the CoZ patch. They've done a splendid job with their other projects, so it'll definitely be worth it.

Kudos to JAST for knowing how to show appreciation for their established fanbase! A lot of publishers won't even give a discount for owners of the original game when they release a remaster or port.

She does Misaki in Chrono Clock as well, which I'm currently reading. I'm a big fan of her work, but I'm not very fond of Karen in particular, because I think her voice sounds a bit too artificial/strained there. Other than that, I most recently heard her as Momoko in Koikari, which I enjoyed a lot.

My feelings exactly! I like Misa as a character, but her route feels like it's lacking something, so it ended up being my least favorite one.

Yeah, Sora's great! She's my favorite aside from Rikka. I still find this kissing CG (that I think I've already posted here at some point) of her hilariously awkward, but I can't quite remember if it was from the first kiss scene you mentioned.

There's not really any recommended order from what I can remember, so just go with whatever strikes your fancy. At some point in the future when I feel like rereading this VN in the form of Perfect Edition (only read the original so far), I'm probably saving Rikka for last, since she's the heroine I liked the most (and a lot of others seem to do as well).

What about this one then? It's the only other VN I can find fitting your criteria.

Is this it?

Seems like the limit is a bit unclear. A 5000 character limit was listed on their website, but I just noticed another note on a different part of it, saying "With the DeepL API Free plan, you can translate up to 500,000 characters per month for free." So maybe it's 500k a month and you can also only use 5k characters within a certain amount of time (which doesn't seem to be specified), so if you break either of those limits, it won't work anymore until the timer resets.

There's a limit of 5000 characters a day. If you want more than that, you're going to have to pay their monthly rate of €8.99 (or €5.99 if you sign up for a year). If you use it a lot, it seems like a pretty decent price.

Did they actually announce a release of the 18+ version of Parfait as well? I noticed that both 15+ and 18+ are listed on VNDb, but I wouldn't be surprised if the all ages version is the only one we get, considering how adamant they were about censoring the English localization of Baldr Sky - a game that didn't even have an all ages release in Japan in the first place.

I was a bit excited for this, but then I was put off after reading this: "The script has been drastically rewritten compared to the original PC-98 release. This includes extensive revisions to the scenario, removing and cutting short some H-scenes, altering characters' personalities and physical parameters and changing endings. A lot of potentially sensitive lines were removed or softened, with the stated reason being to fit the ethics of the time and for removal of "ethically problematic parts". Examples include heavily cutting down on sexual jokes and alcohol references, and changing the endings for the heroines to be more light-hearted than the original." I wouldn't mind them cutting out h-scenes, but it seems like this release is quite heavily censored/altered in other regards as well, even in the 18+ version. I haven't played the original game so I wouldn't really know what it's supposed to be like and thus most likely wouldn't realize what has actually been censored/altered, but just the knowledge that it has happened kinda annoys me and makes me not want to buy the product.