JJ!

The route plots that I dislike the most are when really bad things happen to a heroine primarily because she met the protagonist. He takes her to a restaurant she has never heard of before and she gets serious food poisoning that damages her organs. He tells her about swimming in the secret cove and she goes there and gets a bad injury. He gives her a gift and she goes into a burning building/jumps off a balcony to try to save the gift - and it goes as poorly as would be expected. He teaches her to drive and she gets into a gruesome car accident. If she had never met the protagonist, her life wouldn't have taken the negative turns that it does in the plot. That situation is just about as far from the emotions I want to experience in my life as possible.

They are still my favorite localization company. I've purchased more than 50 titles from them and I'll continue to purchase more in the future - including Musicus. I've been looking forward to Musicus for a long time and I'm glad it finally got officially announced. I agree with some of the other posters that most people who complain are a small minority, people who don't know much about the localization process, and pirates. Same with the people who complain about JAST, NIS America, xseed, and the other localizers - the complaints are almost always very similar to each other, regardless of the specific localizer or the game or the genre.

I played my first visual novel about 15 years ago. They are certainly way easier to purchase in the West now and there are a lot more available. But nearly every time someone has the "are you a gamer?" conversation with me, I have to explain the genre to them because they have never heard of it, despite playing some games themselves. So, I don't think it will go away any time soon, but it is far from being mainstream. I don't think it will hit the mainstream in the near future.

I like H scenes. I pre-ordered Imouto Paradise 3 and I'm really looking forward to playing that soon - mostly because of the H scenes I liked from the previous games in the series. It isn't a big deal to talk about it in communities like this. I try to stay out of some of the dumber fights that always seem to break out online related to this topic. In person, though, I rarely talk about things like that. But gaming itself is like that for me. Nearly everyone I know fits into two categories - 1) they think all games are only played by children or 2) they are gamers but they only play shooters and similar genres. I like visual novels, strategy games, and role-playing games. But if I bring up any of those genres, I just get blank stares from everyone. It would be a stretch to continue those conversations to something like "oh, and in some of those games you have no interest in, there is nudity". I don't have shame - there just isn't a purpose for me to talk about it.

They haven't seemed to get less appealing to me. Dazed and Confused got it right - "That's what I love about these high school girls, man. I get older, they stay the same age."

I think this thread will cause a lot of nightmares for people.

Assuming the first letter is the protagonist, my first choice for visual novels is GxG and my second choice is BxG. I don't play the other two types. I'm a straight male, but I don't need to see guys in games. I typically turn the male voices off when that option is offered. In the games, I don't speak much to the male side characters unless I have to. When I play roleplaying games with romantic possibilities, I check online to see which option gives me more female romances to choose from and pick that option for my character. If they are equal, I'll play as a female character and go with a GxG route.

Thanks! There were several of those that I didn't know about.

I never use one for my first playthrough. If I think I can get the other routes or endings I want based on that playthrough, I don't use one for future playthroughs. If I ended up surprised at my route or ending on that first playthrough, I'll at least skim a walkthrough to see if I can see something important I hadn't thought about. I will use them if I get stuck and can't get certain routes or endings. Usually it is because the game is blocking something - have to see the bad endings before seeing the true ending, have to do one particular minor route last, etc.

I'm not sure why they capitalized the term. It is just a general description of being able to contribute money to a crowdfunding campaign after the campaign is over. There are a bunch of tools they could use to run a slacker backer campaign. Most of the ones done by other companies let existing backers add on items to their pledge. Some of them let existing backers move to a higher tier if that tier is unlimited. If they do it themselves to save money instead of using another company, then it is completely up to them what they will allow.

I started in the Peach Princess days - more than 15 years ago. The biggest difference for me has been quantity. Good years for me at the beginning had three visual novels released in English that I wanted to play. There have been several WEEKS this year when three visual novels were released in English that I wanted to play. I didn't have a backlog at all until a few years ago. Now I have more than ten purchased visual novels that I haven't played yet. Just when I think I'll start catching up, there will be a big release week or something I didn't even know I wanted will get released and look so good that I have to play it immediately. I used to be much more forgiving with what I played. The visual novel could have some very obvious flaws. It could be in genres that I didn't like very much. But I played a wide variety and was sometimes positively surprised how much I liked something that I wasn't expecting to like as much. Now if a visual novel isn't one of my favorite genres, or it has a single obvious flaw, it *might* make my backlog. If I generally don't like that particular genre at all or it has multiple obvious flaws, I ignore it and don't even think about it again. There are too many good ones to even consider ones that I don't think I'll like. Beyond that, art has become much more important to me. I look back at the art of some of the early games I liked and I wouldn't ever think of playing them now because of the art. Developer loyalty has become more important to me. If I like a visual novel by a particular developer, I'll buy their next visual novel. If I like two visual novels by a particular developer, I'll pre-order their releases or buy them day one. One thing that has stayed the same is that I do go through phases where I prefer playing certain types of games. Visual novels, RPGs, strategy games, etc. So there are times when I haven't played a visual novel for a little bit, but then I go back to playing them for months in a row.

I agree with this. It is always interesting when people talk about how similar they found Kira*Kira and Deardrops because I thought they had many more differences than similarities.

That is a LOT of characters! I'm glad this is still being made and will hopefully come out in English next year. I enjoyed the other Overdrive games that MangaGamer released.

Mine was Little My Maid, shortly after it was released in English - so probably 2005 or so. I thought a few of the plot points were interesting. The majority of the game and the girls weren't too memorable. But the number of endings blew my mind. I was used to RPGs that would sometimes give you up to three endings. I was very impressed with all the endings in Wing Commander 4 and I was talking to a friend about that. He asked if I had ever played visual novels and I hadn't heard the term before. So he made me buy some. After playing through Little My Maid the first time, I thought it was okay, but then I was looking at the screen (like a gallery) and it was clear that there were a ton of other endings. That screen showing the blank spots for the other endings is what got me hooked on visual novels.

I liked them. I had never seen a single episode of the anime series (still haven't), but I liked the characters a lot. I had a lot of fun getting to know the characters over the course of the three games. There were a few funny moments in Rinne Utopia and then a ton of funny moments in Arusu Install. Rio Reincarnation was a good way to wrap up the series.