Seraphim

I really wish more VNs had background art with character faces. As I mentioned earlier, I'm currently reading SakuSaku, and it's another case where background characters are just faceless blobs, completely devoid of any personality and emotion. Here's an example: To me, they basically just seem like cardboard cutouts in some cheap play, rather than give off the impression that they're actual people. I mean, compare it to some backgrounds in Aokana: The difference is like night and day. It does wonders for the ambience of the scene, and it seems like such an easy thing to do, I don't understand why it isn't more common.

Been interested in that one for a while now, so I might give it a go when I'm done with SakuSaku and Zero Time Dilemma, which I'm alternating between right now! Was Language of Love the VN where one of the characters is complaining about their age although they're only like 22? I seem to recall someone here mentioning that, but I might have it confused with some other VN. In any case, stuff like that makes me feel like some kind of ancient relic.

The thing that hit me hardest was probably when

Just out of curiosity, what happened to the characters in the ending you got? There are several variations for each of them.

That was pretty much my exact reaction when I found it. At first, I thought the high rating might be because of the joke/meme reviews that commonly plague Steam, but I decided to give it a go anyways since it was pretty cheap. Long story short, I think it deserves the praise it has received. At its core, it's basically just a slice of life drama (like you said), but it's presented in such a brilliant and impactful way that I played through the entire VN, all routes included, in a single sitting (totaling maybe 10 hours), simply because I couldn't manage to put it down. I honestly can't think of any Japanese VNs to compare it to off the top of my head, because this felt much more real to me than those usually do; probably in part due to the fact that some of stuff is based on the developer's personal experiences, and coincides with my own on several occasions.

Have you read Acting Lessons? If you're not averse to VNs in 3D, I highly recommend it. I stumbled over it by chance during my Christmas vacation and it turned out to be one of my best VN experiences of the year, just out of the blue like that. It's really well written, with great humor and one of the most awesome best friend characters I've ever seen. It can get quite dark and emotional at times though, so you might want to make sure you're in the right state of mind before you start reading.

I actually just got started on this one. Haven't made much of an impression on me yet, other than that one of the heroines has a personality trait I'm not a big fan of; namely an irrational fear of physical contact with the opposite sex. I assume there's some reason behind it that I will learn about later on, but for now, it's mostly annoying how she instantly breaks down in tears at the slightest touch. EDIT: Forgot to mention the fact that the protagonist's sister (full, not half) is apparently a heroine. Incest isn't really my cup of tea, so I dunno how much enjoyment I'll get out of that route. If the developer really felt the need to go down the road of love within the family, I would have preferred if the stepmom had a route rather than the sister.

There's not a single ending in Bokuten that I'd put the label "despair" on, to be honest. Well, there's one that I consider more sad than the rest, but as for the others, the word "bittersweet" is much more suitable. The endings really just show that things don't always conveniently fall into place to make that rose-tinted, "happily ever after" scenario.

Oh, really? I just figured it was a continuation, since the VNDb description mentions the story takes place after If Fragmentation Dream isn't actually canon, I'm much less interested in it.

Yeah, Yayoi's route was my least favorite one, mostly due to Well, it was nagging at the back of my mind and I would have preferred to have it revealed later on because of that, but it's not like it ruined my impression of the VN or anything. I tend to overanalyze a lot whenever I'm reading mystery stories, which quite often leads to me figuring out plot twists far in advance, although I've also been completely off the mark in some cases. One example of the latter is that I briefly suspected that In any case, I liked Hapymaher more than expected, and now I really wish I could move on to read Fragmentation Dream, since it apparently continues where the true ending of the original left off. I've been studying Japanese for a while, but I'm nowhere near good enough to actually read anything, unfortunately. Maybe I should consider making it my first text hooking experience?

I just finished the true route, because I wasn't able to put it off once I went through Alice's normal route. I did the first three routes in the same order mentioned above (Saki->Yayoi->Keiko), but now I'm kinda questioning if that was really the best way to do it.

A question for someone (@Dreamysyu perhaps?) who has finished Hapymaher: I'm done with Saki's, Yayoi's and Keiko's routes and got started on Alice's a couple of hours ago, but I noticed in the guide I'm following that she has two endings; one of which is labeled "True Ending". Is this the actual true ending of the VN or is it just referring to the true ending of Alice's route? Maia's route is listed after Alice's in the walkthrough, which makes me a bit uncertain, since true routes tend to come last.

According to this tweet, it seems like the first one has been sent out and the second one will be released soon. (And both will come to Steam as soon as they have been approved.)

@Dreamysyu Thanks for the headsup! I'm following a walkthrough with a suggested playing order and save slots though, so I will probably not have to worry about that. @Ruberick Sounds like a worthwhile experience then! I'll probably give it a go once I'm done with Hapymaher!

There's even a CG with a panty shot of two of the girls when they were like 8 years old. I mean, seriously... I'm honestly not that surprised that this didn't make it to Steam.

Agreed. It stood out for me in YU-NO as well. Any idea if the remake has seen any improvement in that regard? I know it's an all ages release, but I'm not sure if they've done anything about the pantyshots while they were at it.

I don't think I'll ever get why some developers feel the need to add weird upskirt shots in scenes where it's completely uncalled for. I just saw a godawful example in Hapymaher. If anyone's interested, this is the one: (note that it can be considered a spoiler, but I don't think it says much for someone who isn't reading the VN) It's one of the most serious moments in the VN so far, but this CG really ruins the atmosphere and the impact that the scene is supposed to have.

Yeah, there are plenty of funny and weird things happening in Hapymaher, but the underlying story is pretty serious so things can get kinda depressing at times. I'm still only near the end (I think) of the first heroine route, though. In any case, I think it's probably just a good thing if Chrono Clock is a bit more lighthearted, as a contrast to all the sad and/or intense VNs I've read lately.

Anyone got any input to share on Chrono Clock? I'm currently reading Hapymaher and think it's one of the more entertaining VNs I've read lately, so I figured I'd look into something else from the same studio. I dunno if I had Chrono Clock confused with some other title or something, because I've been under the impression that it's mediocre at best, but it turns out it actually has the same rating as Hapymaher on VNDb. The story seems pretty interesting based on the description there.

Just finished it. There are two new scenes from what I can tell, but for some weird reason, you access them in entirely different ways. There's no info whatsoever in-game about what the new content is and how to access it, and the scene gallery in the Extra menu doesn't tell you which scenes are a part of Perfect Edition either. The only reason I was able to tell was because I checked the Extra gallery first thing after installing the patch, and at that time, there were two locked h-scenes. There's no indication that they're part of Perfect Edition once you've unlocked them, so unless you remember exactly which h-scenes are old, you might not even realize there's new content there. The first scene was actually added to Misaki's route, right before the match with Saki. It's just a short scene with some of the worst h-scene CGs I've ever seen. Clarification: The other one (that Freestyle mentioned) isn't part of the regular story. It became accessible in the Extra gallery once I finished that first new scene and skipped through the rest of Misaki's route. All in all, this patch didn't add much value to the game. There were a few funny moments tied to those new h-scenes, but that's all. It was maybe 10-15 minutes of new content in total. There's absolutely no reason to play this if you disliked Misaki's route, and it's barely worth skipping through all the previously read content even if you did.

The Perfect Edition patch has now been released! If you're playing the Steam version, you have to reinstall the 18+ patch (from here) once your update is finished. If you're playing the non-Steam version, you can download the Perfect Edition patch here.

Well, fine, if you want to nitpick. I don't get the point of starting a discussion about something like this, though.

I think you should spoiler mark this. But yes, I know what you mean. The author seems pretty cynical, honestly. Not all love stories end happily, but