[Is there any way I can get my hands on the Katawa Shoujo Beta?]

1 minute ago, Ryleona said:

I did find that reddit page. However, when I tried to extract the files, it said that it is missing a pt.2. 

Both part 1 and 2 are written on the same line, which might have made you think that there was only one link when there was actually two. I nearly missed it myself.
I have no idea if that's the same release as the one Fuwanyan posted, though. That one has "finalrelease" in the file name, so I'm guessing it would be the safest choice of the two.

[What are you playing?]

17 minutes ago, Stormwolf said:

  Hide contents

She even gave Wakui permission to kill him in Hana's route.

 

Spoiler

Yeah, that was pretty stupid, considering she started off saying that they need to give her a reason if they're going to kill Takuru, but when Wakui told her that they don't really have a reason to do it, she immidiately said that they can kill him if they want. It makes no sense for her to accept it based on that.

 

[What are you playing?]

Just finished Chaos;Child. I thought it was a great read overall, but although I liked the way the True Ending route was built, the conclusion to the story felt immensely dissatisfying.

Spoiler

I really don't understand why Takuru and the others decided to pin the murders on him, when they could have just said that Sakuma, one of the people actually responsible, was the culprit. It makes no sense whatsoever.
Sure, one could argue that Takuru's taped confession was an effective way to spread the video with the image to cure the Chaos Child patients, but there must have been a thousand different ways to make that happen. Wakui even said it was fine to use the video, since the Committee no longer had any interest in Shibuya or Chaos Child Syndrome.
If Takuru hadn't taken the blame, maybe he, Serika and the others could've possibly started hanging out together like somewhat normal people, rather than Takuru rotting away in captivity for the rest of his life. I mean, Serika obviously got her memories back at the end of the game without her mind breaking, so there shouldn't be anything stopping them as long as they can forgive each other.

Other than this, I thought the VN did a pretty bad job at foreshadowing. In a story like this, you always end up speculating a lot, so it's not really that strange to figure out some stuff beforehand, but I'm kinda disappointed that some of the more major plot points were so transparent. Some twists I figured out before they were revealed:

Spoiler

1. Serika was either the murderer herself, or helping the one who was.
I started thinking this during the first chapter, and as the story progressed, more fuel just kept being added to the fire to support my theory. She had a few strange reactions early on, she tended to show up or leave at important times, she pointed out things that would make progress in the case whenever Takuru missed something, and so on. The first time we learned about her broken Gero-Froggy, I immidiately thought that "this sound is going to be a vital clue at some point", and the more I started suspecting her of being the killer, the more it started to feel like that Gero-Froggy would be what revealed who she was.

2. Minamisawa Senri was still alive, but living as another person.
The first time I saw the CG of her strapped to the chair, I thought that this was possibly Rimi from Chaos;Head or Serika with long hair, but as soon as Nono mentioned something during the common route about Takuru being alone in the basement (rather than being there with Serika, like he thought), it was pretty obvious that Nono was Senri. Since Serika didn't exist as a physical person at that point in time, the only way that Nono could've known about Takuru being alone down there is if she saw it herself.

3. Uki's route was a dream.
The moment Takuru woke up in the dorm after the Yui murder scene, I figured this was something created by Uki, considering she had done something similar to Momose in order to return to the basement during the common route. It didn't take too long for weird stuff to start happening and imply this was a dream, so this is probably one of the easier twists to figure out.

4. Wakui was either involved in the killings, or had some connection to the Committee.
I guess this isn't really a case of bad foreshadowing, since there weren't any obvious hints about him like in the previous two cases, but something felt off about him and I started suspecting him from the moment he was introduced.

There were also a couple of twists I expected to come that turned out to be wrong. Namely:

Spoiler

1. The first time I saw Haida, I was pretty much fully conviced she was Ayase from Chaos;Head. The hair color was similar (I figured the length was just because she let it grow over the past years), she wore clothes that seemed sorta gothic, and she was dragging her leg (Ayase injured her leg during the earthquake). That theory went down the drain as soon as I found out she was a pyrokinetic, and her eye color and face turned out to be a mismatch when her face was shown.

2. During Kurusu's route, I thought it would be revealed at some point that the one who killed Sakuma was actually her, not Serika. We were told that Kurusu learned about Serika's secrets because that information leaked from Serika when they fought, so I figured that Kurusu learned about Sakuma being a bad guy and decided to end his life to protect the people around her. I'm kinda glad I was wrong about that, since that would have made Kurusu a murderer (although it would have been for a good cause in this case).

Anyway, to those of you who have read Chaos;Child, I would love to hear about theories you were either right or wrong about!

[What are you playing?]

I've finally completed Shiny Days. Or rather, I've managed to complete what I can, but I'm still missing a lot of content that is pretty much impossible to get due to the maze-like routing system that requires you to pick specific combinations of a ton of choices to reach certain route points. Even after doing everything in the official guide from the publisher, I was still only at 70% completion, with 7 endings and several route points missing.
Since then, I've replayed certain parts over and over again, picking different choice combinations in hopes of making progress eventually, but I've only managed to unlock one additional ending and one route point after all that effort. I'm just clutching at straws by now, so I've decided to abandon this project before I go insane.

All in all, this was the worst VN I've ever read and I can't possibly recommend it to anyone. Not only for the terrible routing system, but also storywise and from a technical standpoint. To put it bluntly, it's a steaming pile of sh*t, and the only reason I kept going was because I have a bad habit of being unable to leave stuff unfinished.

Sidenote: Since Shiny Days is supposed to be a more lighthearted visual novel than School Days, I figured maybe Makoto (the protagonist) would be a decent human being here, but it turns out he's still the same scumbag he's always been. He raped 5-or-so different girls over the course of the story, cheated on pretty much everyone, and had no problem lying to their faces in order to cover up his detestable behavior.
The only way the story of Shiny Days could be somewhat enjoyable is if someone ran up to Makoto and punched him in the face every time he does something inappropriate.

I think I need to read something that's actually good now in order to avoid being scarred for life by this horrendous experience.

EDIT: If anyone's interested, this is what the route map looked like after doing everything in the official guide:

[What are you playing?]

I'm currently reading/watching Shiny Days. Not going into any details about what a trainwreck it is in terms of technical performance (basically, it's even worse than School Days HQ, which I referred to as Broken Mess: The Game back when I was going through it), but more importantly, the writing is just plain terrible at times.
I just finished the "Paris for Two" route. It was a pretty cute love story for the first three chapters, but then they somehow managed to mess it up completely in the final chapter.

Summary of the final chapter:

Spoiler

- Boy and Girl starts dating
- Boy sees Girl hanging out with Grownup Man and gets jealous
- Grownup Man is actually Girl's estranged father, but Boy doesn't know this
- Boy overhears Girl and Grownup Man talk about love, going back to their former relationship and whatnot
- Boy misunderstands, not knowing Grownup Man is Girl's father, and confronts Girl about it to find out what's going on
- Girl says Boy is misunderstanding, but despite knowing the issue, Girl chooses to not clarify that Grownup Man is actually Girl's father
- Boy gets mad and decides it's a good idea to rape Girl and show it to Grownup Man in order to claim Girl as Boy's property or whatever
- Girl runs off to Paris to get away from Boy
- Boy goes after Girl to Paris
- Boy and Girl meet at the airport
- Boy apologizes
- Girl immidiately forgives Boy, because Girl had not told Boy that Grownup Man was Girl's father, and that apparently made it okay for Boy to rape Girl
- Happily ever after

What the hell happened?

Anyway, due to OCD tendencies, I'll probably force myself to 100% Shiny Days, as I have with all other VN's I've read, but my expectations are pretty low by now.

[Chaos;Child Steam release next week!]

Thanks for answering!

I got a pretty in-depth answer from some guy on Reddit, and I'll go ahead and post it here in case anyone else is confused.

"Just play Chaos;Head is enough, since Noah only have additional details for characters development and better experience, the main plot is still the same. So yeah Chaos;Child only spoils the main plot, i'd recommend you just go for Chaos;Head then shift to Chaos;Child instead of waiting for Noah. Chaos;Child is just so good it's such a shame to be missed.
Chaos;Child only gives some general information on the true end. So Chaos;Head alone would be more than enough. And since Noah mostly only provides additional details for the original game without any significant change in the plot, you can always read Noah again when it's released after you read the original Chaos;Head."

On another note, Committee of Zero have made an announcement regarding the Steam release of Chaos;Child:

"Committee of Zero here. We're porting our Chaos;Child patch over to Steam, and it will have additional fixes. Also, we want to release this one on Steam as soon as possible, so don't worry about it taking a long time like the S;G 0 one."

[Chaos;Child Steam release next week!]

Steam page:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/970570/CHAOSCHILD/

With that said, I figure I’ll take this opportunity to ask for some clarification!

I’ve been looking forward to reading Chaos;Child ever since Committee of Zero released their patch at the end of June last year, but I’ve been putting it off in order to read Chaos;Head Noah first, since Chaos;Child apparently spoils that.
I’m growing more and more restless, since it might take a long time for Noah to be translated and I’m really hyped for Chaos;Child, so I’m currently considering reading the original Chaos;Head instead.
What I’d like to know is: Are there any vital plot-related differences between Chaos;Head and Chaos;Head Noah, or is Noah just meant to bring some extra content for the fans of the original? I heard that Noah has a revamped True Ending and changes to the story, among other things.
If I read the original Chaos;Head and then Chaos;Child, will Child spoil anything from Noah that isn’t in the original (like the revamped True Ending, for example)?

[What are you playing?]

I'm going through Shiny Days right now, and it's even more of a technical disaster than School Days HQ. The first freeze happened within less than half a minute from starting, and it was just downhill from there.
After a ton of crashes and freezes, I began troubleshooting like a madman for hours on end. I tried a billion-or-so different fixes in Windows 10, like playing in Windowed mode, different compatibility modes, closing all other programs and so on, and then I gave up and figured I'd try playing it in Windows 7 instead. Problem was, I didn't have Windows 7 installed anywhere, and getting that taken care of turned out to be easier said than done.
I decided to install it on Boot Camp on my MacBook, but then I ran into all sorts of trouble with that instead. I had to pick up old Boot Camp files because the newer ones were incompatible with Windows 7 on my machine, and when I finally managed to install and get into the OS, no devices worked. No USB ports, no network, etc, so there was no way for me to install the game.
Defeated, I moved on to install Windows 7 on a USB drive so I could use it on my PC, but after a gazillion BSOD's and whatnot, I accepted that this apparently wouldn't work either, hung my head, sighed and turned to my last resort: An old computer I haven't used in forever.
I had to make some hardware changes first, but then I was finally able to install Windows 7 and start Shiny Days again... only to see it freeze within a couple of minutes. I gave it one final attempt by switching to Windowed mode, and apparently the combination of that + Windows 7 seems to have done the trick. ~2 hours and no crashes or freezes yet.

This has been a battle, let me tell you. I have never before fought this hard to make a visual novel or game run on my computer, and it feels kinda weird that it was for Shiny Days of all things. I guess I'll blame my OCD tendencies.

[Your once in a lifetime VN]

Grisaia no Kajitsu, without a doubt. I had actually read a few visual novels before, like Danganronpa and Phoenix Wright, but I didn't think of them as such at the time because I had no real knowledge about the medium. I actually experienced my first visual novel, which I have now forgotten the name of, sometime in the late 90's, but I didn't even realize it until recently because at the time I just thought of it as some random porn game.

Gaming has always meant a lot to me, but over the years as I've grown older and had to take on more responsibilities in life, I've become less and less inclined to waste time (I don't really like that term, but whatever) on gameplay-heavy games. I now prefer games that prioritize the story, and I've even started playing almost everything on Easy difficulty just to be able to experience that story without any hassle. That, in turn, made me take a real interest in visual novels, since they are so focused on that story element I'm seeking.

That spark ignited, I started picking up on people mentioning this visual novel called Grisaia no Kajitsu, or The Fruit of Grisaia, time and time again on some of the gaming websites and forums I frequent, and that made me more and more curious. Said and done, in early March 2018, I picked up Grisaia no Kajitsu and was hooked more or less immidiately. It was both fun, exciting and sad, and the story connected with me on a deeper level than anything I had ever experienced in a game or movie before.
Despite having read/played those other visual novels I mentioned earlier, I consider Grisaia no Kajitsu to be my first, because it was the first time I looked at something as such, and it opened my eyes to the medium and made me fall in love with it.

I've read a ton of visual novels since then and might even consider a few of them better than Grisaia no Kajitsu, but I think it will always hold a special place in my heart for taking my life in this direction.

[Clephas List: VNs with a Unique/Capable protagonist]

Daiteikoku is 35% translated with no further progress (afaik) since 2012, so you should probably remove it from the Translated list.

[Anybody knows Koichoco ?]

The heroine in the initial, forced route is kinda controversial. I grew to dislike her over time, but it's still a great VN that I'll probably reread someday.

[Kira Kira true ending question. SPOILERS]

I realize this is a really old topic, but I just finished Kira Kira (all routes) and since I have nothing better to do, I thought I'd clarify what happened.

Normal Ending: Maejima talks to Kirari outside her house but is basically only told that she's been offered a new, better paying job that she will do in order to pay off the debt. The fire happens sometime shortly after that, but we aren't told exactly when.

True Ending: Maejima talks to Kirari outside her house and is told about the fact that it's a prostitution job and that she's going to start the next day. However, she gets her period (or at least says she does, but it's probably true considering she doesn't really have any reason to lie about it since she's already decided to start working) and tells the new "employer", resulting in her not having to start work until five days later. On the day she's supposed to start, her father tries to commit suicide, making her miss her first work day to be with him in the hospital. Her father then dies after cutting his wrist there, and after that the family manages to settle the debt and receive welfare, meaning Kirari never had to work as a prostitute.

Conclusion: I assume she got her period in both routes and thus were able to postpone working for another five days, so whether or not she ever worked as a prostitute in the Normal Ending really depends on how soon after her and Maejima's talk the fire happens. If it was within those five days, it would probably mean she never got the chance to work in the Normal Ending either. The stuff her mother says about not thinking badly of Kirari and whatnot might just be an apology because Kirari decided not to tell Maejima about what her new job entails.

Anyway, I thought the whole thing was pretty stupid. They could have easily solved it all by doing what they later did after Kirari's father died, or by talking to Sarina, but they decided against either of those out of pride. It is utterly ridiculous that they figure turning Kirari into a prostitute is less shameful than asking a friend for help or turning to the welfare system.

[Your Tips to Finishing VN's]

4 hours ago, Jartse said:

2. do not look for your next vn until you are nearly finishing the current

I've realized that this is extremely important, at least for me. It hasn't made me stop reading a VN, but it has taken away a lot of the enjoyment because I start looking forward to the next one.
Most recently, this happened with Ever17. I liked it a lot at first, but then I read a bit about Swan Song and wanted to find out for myself why people consider it depressing/disgusting/whatever, so I started thinking "I want to finish Ever17 as soon as possible so I can start reading Swan Song" and that made me unable to enjoy Ever17 as much as I should have.

[How do you rate your VNs?]

I rate every game I finish on howlongtobeat.com, and when it comes to visual novels, I rate every ending I get. In other words, I have a ton of ratings for VN's with many endings, like Fate. This helps me keep track of which endings I actually enjoyed the most, in case I want to reread a specific one sometime.

[Need help deciding what to read next...]

5 hours ago, Mclovin1985 said:

Don't get why people don't like her and protag together? Or just don't like her in general.

I haven't watched the anime, but here's my opinion of her from the VN (with some spoilers from it, so don't read if you want to avoid them):

Spoiler

During Chisato's initial route, I actually kinda liked her, despite her being a bit overly possessive/jealous, but as I went through the other routes, I grew to dislike her more and more. I mean, I get that she likes Yuuki and therefore doesn't like seeing him hanging out with other girls, but the fact that she's so consumed by her own selfishness that she goes out of her way to actively sabotage Yuuki's relationships with other girls (she even admits doing this during at least one of the routes), despite knowing he has no romantic interest in her, really annoyed me.

During the Isara route, she even goes as far as to hit Yuuki and says she hates guys like him, simply because she can't cope with the fact that he happened to choose another girl. Overall, he got way more crap than he deserved during that route, what with almost all of his friends abandoning him after the campaign started going south. Then, as soon as Yuuki and Isara managed to come up with the idea to turn things around, all those so called "friends" came crawling back again. The entire downward spiral was, of course, initiated by Chisato abandoning the club due to a fit of jealousy. The other members are certainly also at fault for leaving one by one after that, but I doubt we would've seen that entire chain of events if Chisato hadn't gone berserk. As mentioned during the route, they might've even been able to come up with a better solution to the discrimination problem if they had stuck together, and maybe even win the election in the end.

Going back to the original topic, I've only read If My Heart Had Wings and Koichoco out of the ones you mentioned, but I enjoyed IMHHW the most out of those two. In fact, it's on my top 5 VN list. It has some very lovable characters and an amazing soundtrack, among other things. I wish there was a bit more drama, but I didn't expect there to be much of that in the first place so I can't really say I'm disappointed.

If you're going to pick IMHHW, just make sure to, like adamstan mentioned, grab the retranslation patch, since the original localization by Moenovel is a complete disaster.