Seraphim

Finished 999 today, which I've had in my backlog for years. I could see most of the plot twists coming from a mile away, but I thoroughly enjoyed myself and the remastered version was a really smooth experience overall. (I've heard that the original DS version was a bit of a pain due to lack of a flowchart and whatnot, so I guess you could say I got something out of waiting until now to play it.) In comparison, Virtue's Last Reward, which I've now started, seems to not have aged quite as well. The gameplay feels more sluggish, the text speed is horrendously slow, and the 3D models make the characters seem much less alive than the 2D ones in 999 did. It also feels pretty weird to have a silent protagonist all of a sudden, and it definitely isn't doing him any favors in terms of making an impression on me. That said, I'm still just at the beginning, and I expect the story to be quite a ride, with a lot of character development.

Have you tried restarting the game? I randomly lost all collected CGs in Hello Goodbye, but they came back after a restart. Dunno if it helps in this case, though.

This is pretty damn irrelevant, but I'll just go ahead and mention that my brain decided it would be a reasonable idea to read this to the tunes of "Last Christmas". For a second there, I figured that might mean I've failed this year's Whamageddon, but it seems remixes and covers are allowed so I'm still good to go (for now).

Thanks to a little help from a guy on Reddit, I was finally able to move on. For some stupid reason, the developer decided that you need to idle on the title screen for a full minute after finishing the true ending. If you do that, you'll trigger a scene that then unlocks the additional choices listed in the guide. None of the walkthroughs mention this, and there's no indication of it in-game, so unless you usually idle on the title screen after finishing a game, there would be no way of knowing that this is what you need to do. (Seriously, this is some Castlevania II: Simon's Quest "kneel in a corner until a tornado appears and whisks you away" level of obscurity.) I imagine most people will never realize this, so they'll end up missing what is arguably the most important puzzle piece of the story.

I don't have authority to edit the info, unfortunately. Dunno what the prerequisites are for that. Also, I have a notoriously bad memory and haven't read Himawari in a while, so someone else should confirm it before it's added.

Just finished the true ending in Majo Koi Nikki (The Witch's Love Diary), but does anyone know how to reach the second true ending? According to the guide here, here and here, which I've been following perfectly, I'm supposed to reload my earlier saves to get some extra scenes, but there are no new scenes when I do that, and I never get the choice that I'm apparently supposed to pick. I'm really lost here.

Aqua in Himawari says it quite a lot, if I remember correctly.

I would really like to not use one, but since I don't want to miss any CGs or risk getting spoiled by accidentally going in a bad route order, I always end up using walkthroughs anyway.

I think you're good to read it now, actually. I contacted NekoNyan a while back regarding how the Perfect Edition content would be accessed in-game and got this as a reply: "The plan for the extra Misaki scenes is that they will be accessible via the main menu."

'Tis a glorious day, for Sprite has announced that they will resume operations! They mention that they want to work on Aokana EXTRA2, and I assume this means the Aokana sequel might be resurrected as well. So, without further ado, let's Announcement (in Japanese)

I've picked it up as well. No idea when I'm actually going to read it, but even if I end up not doing that, I can live with -8€ on my bank account just for the sake of supporting the team.

Yeah, there's a whole bunch of errors in that walkthrough. I had to wing it on several occasions to progress.

Sounds like a mess. The VNDb score isn't very good either, so I'll sit this one out, at least for now.

Maybe we should mention the One True End tag as well. There are a lot of VNs where there are several different routes but only one of them is canon, meaning stuff that happens in other routes (like romancing other heroines) tend to only be considered "what if" scenarios. If you're into having multiple romance options, I'm thinking this might also affect your opinion of the VN, since it can make the other heroines seem somewhat irrelevant. And yeah, Kana isn't the only option in Kana Imouto, although the VN mostly revolves around her.

You just replied to a post that's seven years old and was made by someone who's been inactive on these forums for six years. (You probably didn't realize you were actually on the first page of this thread rather than the last one!)

Nothing a couple of nights in Kajou City couldn't fix.

The Steam version of Hoshimemo was in a league of its own in that regard. I wouldn't be surprised if the total number of typos exceeded the amount in all other VNs I've read put together. It was plain ridiculous, and also served as solid proof that the localization team really didn't put much effort into their work.

Oh, that's unfortunate. Hopefully, it'll at least be finished by the time Eternal Heart rolls out. (And let's keep our fingers crossed the end result is a good one.)

Ah, I read the Steam version. It had so many issues (an enormous amount of typos, grammatical errors and even untranslated text), the publisher actually started a retranslation project. Checking VNDb, it seems that new translation was finished just a few months ago. I have no idea how good it is, but I guess I'll find out when I reread the VN.

Have they fixed the translation yet? There were a ton of errors when I read it last year. I actually didn't think Hoshimemo was all that special at that time, but I've found myself appreciating it more and more since then. There's something about it that has made it stick to the back of my mind in a way that not many other VNs have managed, but I can't quite pinpoint the reason for it. In any case, I'll probably reread the entire VN once the fandisc is released.

Okay, I'm done with Maggot Baits. So was it worth it? It's hard to say, honestly. I actually thought the underlying story was pretty good once it kicked off, but all that gore and rape is quite offputting and there's so much of it. After having seen it all, I can safely say that there's really no need for it to be as extensive and graphic as it is. At least for me personally, it didn't add any value to the VN whatsoever. It felt like it was there purely for shock factor or for those people who are actually into stuff like that. A lot of the scenes were really long too, and it felt like a pain in the ass reading it all just because I didn't want to risk missing out on any story-related dialogue (which were in some of the scenes). If you're considering reading Maggot Baits and know you're easily disturbed, you should probably stay away. There's an option to decrease the level of the explicit content, but I don't know how much of a difference it actually makes. I'm pretty sure the dialogue won't be changed much (if at all) and that's plenty disturbing in and of itself.

Anything's possible as long as you look cool doing it!

I imagine it's the same thing with Himawari then. I remember them using "crimson" to the point of me considering making it a drinking game but ultimately deciding against it because I didn't want to die from alcohol poisoning.

What's the deal with pomegranates in this VN? They keep repeating it over and over and over again as a means to describe a color. Is the Japanese script this repetitive or is it a case of the English translator not being very imaginative? There are a whole bunch of other words that could be used instead, but for one reason or another, they just keep referring to everything as "pomegranate". Well, there was that one time when they went with "crimson"... but then they followed it up right away with "like a pomegranate".