Seraphim

Trying to read a Japanese VN without knowing anything about the language is going to be a really time-consuming and confusing task that probably won't be very enjoyable for you. I suggest you read a localized VN instead.

Currently reading Little Busters, and I heard that your stats increase for every route you finish. Does it only influence the fighting minigame, or baseball as well? Is there any point in doing that/those minigame(s) during my first playthrough or should I just wait until the last one?

I wish more VNs would deal with adult content that way, rather than force it on you whether you like it or not. Eden was the first (and still the only) 18+ VN I've read that had no nudity/sex during the main story.

I want to start reading that so bad, but I know that if I do so now, I'm going to regret it when I'm done with all the current chapters and have to wait for the conclusion. I really wish they'd release chapter 8 along with chapter 7 this month, but I guess we'll have to wait another year for it.

I actually managed to find the answer elsewhere, but thanks anyway! Being able to switch seamlessly is pretty awesome!

While we're on the subject of Little Busters, does anyone know if there's some way to instantly switch between languages in-game? (I'm playing the English Edition on Steam.) It feels like being able to switch back and forth could be good for my Japanese reading practice, but it's a bit annoying and roundabout having to enter the game menu and then "Config" every time I want to do it. EDIT: I managed to find a solution on my own. There are a bunch of unlisted keyboard controls that don't appear in the in-game settings, apparently. Pushing L switches between English and Japanese.

Yeah, it's kinda annoying to know beforehand, but I doubt it'll reduce my opinion of the VN as a whole. I mean, I don't know any details whatsoever, so the circumstances can still have plenty of impact on me. That could've been kind of a spoiler for me if I hadn't read Clannad already. Are you referring to

If anyone wants to comment on this matter, please make sure to do it in a way that won't spoil it further.

Finished How To Date A Magical Girl yesterday. I enjoyed most of it, but you could see the main plot twist coming from a mile away. The ending was immensely unsatisfying and basically ruined the entire VN. If anyone here wants to know, this is what happens: Aaanyway... After today, I have three weeks off from work and have decided that this will be the perfect time to finally start reading Little Busters. I've been putting it off for a long time after I randomly stumbled across what I assume is a major spoiler, which I've been hoping I'd forget about eventually. Sadly, I've been unable to do so, so I figure there's no reason to wait any longer.

Most likely, but it's still really strange how they mix different pronouns. It would make more sense to consistently use "them/they" and nothing else. In my second example, they clearly identify the character as "Moe" and it shouldn't be very hard to link the pronoun later on in the sentence to the name and make the game recognize the character as a "she". Well, I guess there's not really much point in delving deeper into this, since it is the way it is regardless. I just hope NG, the VN released after Death Mark, will be better in this regard whenever it's localized.

@adamstan I have yet to find some way to change language to Japanese, but here's an example of "they" usage: This is during an investigation with a male partner, when the protagonist gets grabbed by someone and tries to determine if it's the partner or someone else. What's most weird about this whole issue is the fact that it's not consistent. As I've continued playing, I've seen characters referred to by name or "he/she" plenty of times, but then it just randomly changes to "them/they" out of nowhere. One prime example is this screenshot, where one character is referred to as "they", although her name was actually used earlier in the very same sentence:

I'm interested in reading Kimi ga Nozomu Eien, from 2001. I have no idea if the English patch is ever going to see the light of day, so I might have to put off reading until my Japanese is at an appropriate level.

Yeah, that's what it says on the store page, but there are no options in-game to change the language so I'm not sure how to go about doing that. There are barely any options at all, actually. The only stuff you can do is change volume and resolution (up to a maximum of 1920 x 1080), toggle windowed/fullscreen and remap controls. Even if I find out how to change language, there's still the issue of only being able to save at certain points, so I might be forced to replay quite a bit (since there doesn't seem to be an instant language toggle) and then replay it once again when I change back to English. Still, if I'm able to do it all without too much hassle, I'll make sure to grab a couple of screenshots somewhere. Yeah, that's my educated guess as well. It shouldn't be hard to make the game recognize which character you're with, so this seems awfully lazy to me. It actually wouldn't surprise me one bit if the developer's just copy-pasted the entire partner scripts during the investigations, so they wouldn't have to bother with unique dialogue depending on who you bring.

It's during the protagonist's narration. Like "they are crying" instead of "she is crying" or "<insert name here> is crying". It looks pretty strange.

Picked up Death Mark from Steam's summer sale. I like the art and sound production, but I really hope they up the ante with the scares soon. These "something pops up in the darkness along with a sound effect while you're scanning with the flashlight" moments are gettings pretty repetitive. The gameplay is godawful overall. Searching every inch of every room with the flashlight isn't fun in the slightest, and moving around on the map feels really clunky. It's also kinda weird how the side characters as individuals are referred to as "them/they" rather than "he/she". I'm pretty sure they're not all gender neutral, so this is most likely a case of lazy programming.

This is generally the case for me as well. There are a few I tend to recognize whenever I hear them, though. The ones I can think of off the top of my head are: Kadowaki Mai, who does Illya in Fate Tanaka Ryouko, who does Yumiko in Grisaia Taguchi Hiroko, who does Amane in Grisaia Konishi Katsuyuki, who does Sakuya in Rewrite (I most recently recognized his voice in Yakuza 0) (The characters I listed above are the ones I most strongly associate those voice actors with.)

Already tried that, but it didn't work either. The only other thing I can think of is the "enter storehouse, leave immidiately, get silver medal from well, return to storehouse" path, but I should have already gotten that when I progressed through the story before, unless it somehow got bugged. I could give it another go, but I can't pick up the silver medal from the well right now because I've already got that and all the other items in my inventory after finishing the game. Since there (to my knowledge) is no way to discard items, I guess I'll have to go through Mio's entire route once more, lose the silver medal by using it at the end there and then replay Mitsuki's/Eriko's route yet again. The routes in this VN are a real pain in the ass.

Since this is a progression issue rather than a technical one, I'm posting this in the VN Talk forum. If any moderator decides that it's not the right place for it, feel free to move the post to the Technical FAQs board or wherever. Anyway... I finished the true ending of YU-NO today, but I'm stuck at 99% completion and can't figure out what to do. I've been following the walkthrough here on the Fuwanovel forums, but there are a ton of errors in it so I had to read between the lines quite a bit and I've been unable to reach 100% this way. The part I'm missing is one of the alternate routes when you're at the mansion storehouse with Mitsuki. If I go to the well right away without entering the storehouse, I reach the Mitsuki h scene. If I enter the storehouse and leave right away, I run into Mitsuki, she leaves for a while, comes back and then I end up on the street outside the mansion. If I enter the storehouse and get locked inside, night comes and I discover the machine inside the storehouse. Here's a screenshot I've color-coded to make it easier to distinguish the different paths: Purple is my current location (outside the storehouse), blue is the Mitsuki h scene, green is when I get locked inside the storehouse, yellow is when I enter the storehouse but leave right away, and red is the route I'm missing. It seems pretty obvious that the red path is an alternate version of the "enter storehouse, leave right away" route, but I haven't been able to find any other way than the yellow one to progress down that path. Does anyone here know what I'm supposed to do? I've already wasted a couple of hours trying to solve this and it's getting pretty annoying by now.

The walkthrough is wrong one way or another, apparently. Later on when I was told to load the save mentioned above, the guide used the Mansion entrance, which I was asked to save before going to, as a starting point. In other words, I'm guessing you're supposed to save after going to the Mansion entrance (as is also suggested by the line order of the guide), rather than "before going to the mansion entrance", like it actually says. That's what I'm going with, at least. I hope I've interpreted this right and that I haven't screwed up the rest of the playthrough in some way by presuming this is what the guide is telling me to do.

Bah, I just had to replay quite a bit of YU-NO because the Fuwanovel walkthrough for some reason has a save indicator after a choice you're supposed to save before. I guess I'll have to stay more ahead in the guide from now on (rather than read one line at a time, like I usually do) in order to avoid running into this issue again. I really wish this VN had more than one save slot.

I'm not entirely sure, but I don't think there are any autosaves. After I progressed a bit, a "System" option, with a "Save" option within, appeared in the dialogue window. It seems to disappear whenever there's another character on screen, though.

Rather than wait for the remake that is supposed to be released in English this fall, I've decided to start reading the original YU-NO. Is the ability to save unlocked later on? I'm at the beginning of the prologue where you meet the redhead and get the first choice in the game, and I can't find a save option anywhere. There is no right-click menu, and the bar at the top only consists of "Quit Game" and a few display options.

Finished d2b VS Deardrops -Cross the Future- a few minutes ago. I couldn't care less about what happens to the members of Deardrops, considering how disappointed I was with that VN, but I decided to read d2b VS Deardrops because I've seen several people refer to it as a satisfying end to the KiraKira story. It wasn't.

I haven't watched the anime, but I know they've cut some stuff from the story in it. If you want the complete experience, you should really read the VN.

Since there are so many choices in the game, I can't really narrow it down to a single cause. I first tried doing Chunhua's route over again from Save 1 (specified in the Fuwanovel walkthrough) but with the choices from fredward666's GameFAQs guide, but that ended up putting me on Masumi's route instead. After that, I replayed the game in its entirety and followed fredward666's guide for the common route as well, and that properly led me to Chunhua's route and made me eventually reach her ending. I saw several scenes with her that never happened when I used the Fuwanovel guide, and the story continued on at the point where it should, rather than give me the bad ending I got by following the Fuwa guide. In other words, to be absolutely sure to reach Chunhua's ending, you should pick the choices listed in fredward666's guide for both the common route and Chunhua's route. I doubt the save points in the Fuwanovel walkthrough would still be applicable if you go with these other choices though, so you'd have to consider this a completely separate playthrough.