Seraphim

Found out today that the walkthrough for Family Project here on Fuwanovel is incorrect. I've been doing exactly what it says and finished Matsuri's route yesterday, but today when I went for Chunhua's route, I hit a dead end. Rather than the route continuing with I had to start the entire game over again with a different guide (from GameFAQs) in order to access and finish Chunhua's route.

Aqua's ending is considered canon, but I've never seen it referred to as that from an official source (if anyone has one, please post it here). There's no "One True End" tag on VNDb either. Ugh... don't remind me. I loved that VN, but the ending was immensely unsatisfying. I hope they make a continuation at some point, so I can get rid of this bitter taste in my mouth.

Oh, so that's really his name? I kinda thought someone messed up the coding somewhere so a random greeting ended up replacing his name.

I'm guessing this is one of those editing errors? The manager at the host bar is named Welcome, apparently. It's not a one time occurrence either; it's written like that every time he says or does something.

Yeah, I can imagine. Kudos to all the fan translators out there who puts up with the massive amount of work that a VN translation entails, without getting paid for it.

Yeah, I read a suggestion from someone about making an edit patch, but I doubt it'll ever happen so I'll just make do with this. My first impression of the VN is great, at least. I tend to enjoy the premise of a group of misfits banding together, and it's pretty interesting how they manage to keep everything (so far) so lighthearted despite the characters dealing with some pretty heavy issues.

Finished reading Crescendo today and I think it's one of my best VN experiences so far. It was well written for the most part and I really liked the music and art style, despite not usually being a fan of shoujo design (perhaps there's a better word for it). I only have two issues with it: Now I'm moving on to Family Project, from the same developer. I've heard people speak well of it before and the VNDb score is similar to Crescendo's, so I'm hoping I'll enjoy this as much as that.

I'd say go with the original version. The art style is more interesting than some run-of-the-mill anime design, and there are certain parts of the story that have been either shortened or removed entirely in Elite, due to them not being included in the anime and the studio apparently not wanting to spend too much time/money on additional animation. For example, one character from the original has been completely cut out. Click the spoiler below if you want to see who.

I honestly think Kanade's more at fault here, despite Rimu being the core of the problem. All of the other characters know that Rimu's a complete airhead, so Kanade shouldn't just let her carry on with her idiotic ways without saying anything. Basically, Rimu doesn't even realize what she's doing is stupid/wrong, while Kanade knows full well but decides to not do anything about it.

Finished Deardrops yesterday, and it was a bundle of disappointments that were salvaged somewhat by the true route. Here are my thoughts on the indivual routes:

Yeah, this isn't the first time I've encountered this, and it definitely won't be the last. (unfortunately) This is one of the more annoying cases, though. While other VNs tend to mention it once or twice to tease the reader, this one keeps bringing it up over and over again with the same vague wording. I seriously doubt that the reveal is amazing enough to make all this repetitive buildup feel worthwhile.

I started reading Deardrops yesterday, and the way they're trying to build suspense for the reveal of the supposedly traumatic event that ended the protagonists career, is pretty damn annoying. They've brought it up like a gazillion times by now, and every single character who talks about it is actively omitting information, simply referring to it as "what happened", "that event" and so on, in a completely illogical manner in terms of how a normal conversation would go. Oh, and this VN also has some of the character traits I dislike the most. A protagonist who just accepts whenever someone criticizes him based entirely on their own values, a heroine who's overly hostile while refusing to explain why, and another heroine who's too easy-going to take anything seriously. My first impressions are pretty bad, but I guess it can only get better from here.

Yeah, it was open in terms of

Man, I had almost managed to push that one to the back of my mind. My main issue with the ending in Tomoyo After is that it felt rushed. They were spending a lot of time building up to it, and then, after a certain event, it was over before you knew it. Several major characters that were a big part of the story were just dropped all of a sudden with barely any explanation, and we're never told what happens to them later on. By the time the credits started rolling, I was thinking to myself "Okay, let's get the true ending now", but then I found out that was it and there was nothing more for me to see. It's like the developers just realized one day that they had gone over budget and decided to wrap it all up in as swift a manner as possible. This is definitely one of the top candidates for an ending I would change if I could.

Definitely. It doesn't matter how good the rest of the VN is; if the ending sucks, it'll leave a bitter taste in my mouth that affects my overall impression of the VN. One of my more recent examples is in Rewrite.

The length is much more apparent in Hoshi Ori, since there's not much going on in the story. Just tens of hours of SoL with little variety and basically no drama whatsoever. It's a nice VN at its core, but it's way too long for its own good.

It feels pretty weird to hear spoken dialogue after having gone through both the main game and Requiem for Innocence with no character voices. I'm looking forward to finding out what Michel sounds like!

Finished Symphonic Rain yesterday, so here are some thoughts.

Yeah, pretty much. "Short", "Medium", etc serves as a decent indicator for how long the VN is, but you shouldn't focus too much on the amount of hours listed.

From the Guidelines page on VNDb: "Very rough estimate of the time required to finish all endings of the visual novel. To determine the length of a game, it's often better to ignore this time indication and instead compare it with other games you've played. It's all relative, after all."

I think that depends a lot on what type of story it is. A friend route in a run-of-the-mill SoL VN would probably feel pretty uninteresting, but it should be fine in a VN with a decent plot at its core.

Sorry for going kinda off topic in this thread, but does the VN repeat the story of the manga or is the plot unique (to whatever extent a romcom like this can have a unique story)? I liked the manga and would gladly see more of the characters' escapades whenever my Japanese has improved to the point where I can read this VN.

It is one of the VNs I was looking forward to the most a while ago, but my interest kinda cooled off after I was spoiled to all hell in one fell swoop while I was looking up info on another VN. I'm still going to buy it and read it, but it feels pretty sad to already know what I imagine is the most important event in the entire story.

Not to mention the fact that