Clephas

This is enough reason to want to play it... But yeah... it's about at the same level as Ruitomo for difficulty.

Yeah, the English version is a pain... makes me wish that they'd translated one of the PC versions for the Japanese-incompetent.

Sharin doesn't really change all that much before the epilogue based on who you choose...

I've usually used the walkthrough to save at key points so that I can get back on a path as quickly as possible. I read the text I haven't read yet then skip the rest. No reason to reread the entire thing to get at the next path...

Demonbane is pretty much dominated by Al, to be honest. While it was the third Nitroplus game I played (of seven) it was only fourth in my rankings, below the three above... If you want something with characters like Comyu but without Akihito Hello, Lady (the most recent Akatsuki Works game) is a great choice. The protagonist is an arrogant bastard, but he is also capable. Eru's surface persona is pretty close to being identical to Mayuki's (and they have the same VA), for those who loved her, lol.

Jingai Makyou, Phantom, and Muramasa are my big recommendations for Nitroplus...

Generally speaking, Light, Nitroplus (pre-Sumaga), and Akatsuki Works tend to produce VNs with a really cynical undertone. They don't go for surrealistic emotionalism or unnecessarily 'convenient' outcomes, for the most part. People are people in their VNs, in all their disgusting glory (though in Dies Irae and the similar Light games, there is a tendency toward over-exaggerating certain traits for the sake of the overall story). Even Ruitomo has a seriously cynical and bitter undertone to it. A lot of it is that chuuni is a genre that throws shame to the winds... so writers can get away with not pretending people are somehow good at heart (blech). Of course, other chuuni companies, like Propeller, use chuuni to create inspiring stories or stories that show off the best in humans... but Akatsuki Works generally goes out of its way to show off the worst in people. Akihito's obsession with the 'gentle kingdom' echoes Tomo's obsession with curses and Sora's obsession with the concept of subjective evil and humanity as an earned status rather than a default one. (Tomo is Ruitomo's protag and Sora is Devils Devel Concept's protag). In a similar way, Boku ga Sadame also pursues a similar vein, with its obsessing over fate, predetermination, and the like.

Dude... it's chuuni. By definition it's pretentious. Second... you can't trust an English translation for details.

Some of the people in the city

Only people in a comyu can see the avatars.

By definition, my recommendations aren't in English, lol.

Almost forgot. VN of the Month for July 2014: AstralAir no Shiroki Towa Romantic Recommendation: Hoshi Ori Yume Mirai (just because I don't want it doesn't mean other people won't) August's releases include Sougeki no Jaeger, which is Propeller's (my second favorite company) newest game... I can't wait to play it. Too bad I have to wait fifteen days for it, lol.

Well... I finished GIB... and the only thing I can say is that, for better or for worse, this is a moege. I don't mean a charage and I don't mean a nakige... I mean a moege. While some of Whirlpool's relatively recent VNs have made attempts at having a real story (Suzukaze/Maikaze and Lunaris Filia had pretty high-quality stories), this game reminds me more of their earlier works, like Sevens. It is extremely moe-friendly and lacking any significant character depth or a strong story to serve as a backbone. The spoofs on various Western sci-fi movies and series (a 'Gray' alien with a lightsaber calling itself a Juddi made me rofl) were pretty funny, but I honestly thought 'three in a row, just when is Whirlpool going to go back to what it started with Suzukaze?' by the end of this VN. The last few games by this company were increasingly... light. So, I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised when a VN that is pretty much just a spoof on Men in Black would be full of weird jokes and silly characters... but I really had hoped there would be something interesting underneath, silly me. Still, if you want a plain apple pie moege... nobody does it better than Whirlpool. The reason? Whirlpool knows better than to fix what isn't broken when it comes to the moe aspects of their art style and characters. Their fans want cute girls, cheap romance, and slightly out-there settings, so that is what they get. The fact that two of their games strayed from the path and actually had strong plots only serves to highlight what they specialize in, looking at it from an objective point of view. Did I like this game? Hard to say... it was a bit of fun. However, I didn't feel like I'd gained anything by playing it. If I knew then what I knew now, would I have played this for VN of the Month? Probably not. I probably would have held off to when I needed some cheap laughter or uncomplicated moege romance I could be sure wouldn't make me want to puke sand.

For those who want to know my thoughts on those paths of Hoshi Ori Yume Mirai that I did complete... I'll just give you my assessment. First, the game itself uses high-quality visuals, albeit in a slightly more 'mature' style than is the norm, which distinguishes it from moege. The eye style is identical to that used in Lovesick Puppies and an evolution of the one used in Yurikago yori Tenshi Made (a slightly more metallic look to the iris and more distinct pupils). The music is good... albeit lacking in any stand-out tracks. First, understand that if it weren't for the fact that my tolerance for romance is about 20% of the average moege (in other words, if more than 20% of an average-length moege is romance, I start getting bored), which means that Hoshi Ori was way above my tolerance, with more than 60% of the game being romance. Nonetheless, I played through Yukimura's and Rikka's paths. I was impressed with the length and detail of the after stories, though they were as packed with romantic episodes as the main game, which made them stressful for me. If you were to ask me whether I liked the characters... the only heroines I liked in the game were the two I picked out and maybe Sora, the others being slightly outside of my psychological strike zone. If I had to use a word for the heroine paths... it would be 微笑ましい. The heroines are good girls, for the most part, and if it weren't for how boring I find drawn-out (normal) romantic developments, I could have enjoyed it more. Now for a slighly less subjective outlook... do I think other people would like this game? The answer is yes. For those who enjoy romance stories with young people making up the cast, this is a great choice. The fact that I despise this kind of thing doesn't make it drivel... in fact, it is just the reverse. This isn't puerile, ridiculous, or idiotic like a lot of American romance stories are (having helped write several during my early career, I should know), but it is most definitely 'young' romance. The characters are mostly struggling with problems unique to youths and the entire story is definitely most relevant to a young person, at least for the main route (the after-story being a different bag of tricks altogether). For those who use Konosora as a reference point for seishun romance, you should know that this is several levels of quality higher, but far more focused on the romantic aspects. The fact that what makes this game a possible kamige are the reasons why I can't stand it is just an overwhelming irony, lol.

Do you want Clephas' recommendations? lol

Decay, don't restart the manwhore conversation. We've had enough of that one...

It does have a lot of fighting... but if you don't feel like screwing with that, just use a complete save at lvl 99 and do the lowest difficulty.

I figured I'd write out an apology to those who are interested in Hoshi Ori Yume Mirai... to be blunt, I couldn't engross myself in it. To be clear, this game is relatively high quality... but I can't get into it for the same reason I didn't enjoy many other seishun-romance... it relies too much on the old romantic tropes, I've yet to come upon a scene that I didn't predict in advance, and it plays to me like one long deja-vu moment. Understand, tropes themselves aren't a problem... I just don't enjoy seishun romance in the first place. It reminds me of the reasons why I didn't enjoy Konosora, despite the game itself being relatively high quality. The fact that Hoshi Ori is also a pretty long game makes it unbearable for me (if this were a shorter game, I'd just have played it through and moved on). So, I'll be dropping this game and shoving it into my backlog, along with a lot of similar games, lol. For those who wanted my thoughts on it, I'll say that the characters aren't the problem, nor are the visual aspects. I simply can't take the excessive focus on the romantic aspects. If this game were humorous or seriously emotionally moving (aside from romance) I would have continued... but it isn't.

tbh... I'm pretty much at my limit for Hoshi Ori right now... I can see that it is a fairly high quality seishun-romance, but it is '王道すぎる'. When you can predict the entire game down to the details before you actually enter the heroine routes, and then you find that things go exactly as you thought they would... it gets a bit depressing. It's been a while since I hit a VN that put me to sleep this fast, while not being a technical disaster.

For me, the life and death drama of the first arc, and the realistic way people went a bit bugfuck in that situation, were what made the series great... that and I lapped up Kirito's despair like honey. 他人の不幸は蜜の味

Mmm... I've read a few. Problem is, when it comes to novels... I want to read real novels. When I started to read Japanese literature, I ended up reading classic works of the last century, rather than otaku-related stuff... I'm a bibliophile (with a preference for hard sci-fi and high fantasy, but who can and will read anything that is even remotely interesting given the opportunity), so I have a habit of finding the thickest book in the store and just picking it off the shelves... Edit: My evasion of LNs comes from my bad experience with the Crest of the Stars series books... the translations were so bad that I literally pulled my hair out halfway through. Turning a hard sci-fi series into what reads like a five-year old's attempt to imitate his inner city cousin's way of talking must have actually taken creative effort... I later read the Japanese version (which was a dozen times better), but the trauma still remains.

Mmm... a lot of it is that reading in general is second-nature to me. I go a little crazy if I'm not reading something at least two hours a day... it is why I made such an easy transition to VNs from anime. However, for the moege... I'll agree, way too much of it is banal. I'm not really enjoying the one I'm playing right now, even though I can see that it is technically a relatively high-quality VN, for a game that is basically seishun-romance. The problem is that the developments are way too obvious (I knew how one heroine's path was going to go before the common route was over, and so far it hasn't betrayed my expectations, unfortunately), and thus things are getting a bit too... well boring for my taste.

People's views on this anime are split wildly. Since my reasons for liking it seem to be significantly different from other fans of the series, they won't serve as a good reference, but I'll still recommend it to anyone who asks, though I do wish they'd just ended it after the first arc, with no second one or new season.

In another month and a half, we'll hit the one year anniversary of my VN of the Month thread. tbh, the activities related to that thread take up a ridiculous amount of my time, considering I used to just cherry pick one or two interesting games and shove the rest into my backlog. I have to make time to play them, consider what I think of them, and then write down what I think of them. That thread has eaten up well over a thousand hours of my time over the past year, and I'm curious as to whether people want me to continue. A big downside for me is that I've hit a lot of kusoge over the past year that I normally would have avoided on principle or because of obvious clashes with my pet peeves. However, when I considered how I could contribute to Fuwa without actually becoming staff, this was pretty much the only way I thought might work. People who lurk in the irc channel know I bitch and moan a lot about moege in general and the ones I'm playing at a given moment in particular. On the other hand, giving so many games I normally wouldn't have touched a chance has let me find some hidden gems (though relatively few of those) and get a better perspective on VNs in general. This has been a huge positive for me, letting me consider the games I'm playing more objectively than I would otherwise have been able to. I do find myself with less and less patience for certain things that are common to all moege (ichaicha and pointless scenes), and I've frequently found myself on the verge of exploding as a result. It is really, really hard not to just skip slice of life scenes in a VN I already know is a kusoge out of a sense of duty toward those few people who read my posts. I also split my assessments of chuuni and moege/charage because I knew I'd never be fully objective on any chuuni game, and I spent a great deal of time worrying about whether I should expand my comments from a mini-review meant to just give you an idea of what to expect and what not to expect to a full review, complete with a number of spoiler boxes you won't be able to resist opening. All in all, it's been an interesting experiment so far... but I'm honestly unsure if i want to continue it after the one-year mark, simply because I'm not getting much feedback at all, and I'm not nearly enough of a narcissist to believe everyone agrees with me or thinks I'm wonderful. To be blunt, do you want me to keep on soldiering up the endless mountain, or do you want me to abandon my (probably ultimately futile) efforts to climb toward the pinnacle of VN-fanboyism? I might or might not take any advice given in this thread, and there is a good chance I'll just outright ignore the results of the poll, depending on my mood. However, at the same time, I'd like to know just what people think of my little thread/column. When college starts up again in a few weeks, my workload is going to expand greatly, so this is going to go back to being a huge burden on me, time-wise. So... tell me what you think and vote in my poll.

Denpa in general isn't all that good a genre... it is too all over the place, and the writers frequently use this as an excuse for shoddy scenario design and cutting corners. Like dating sims, it is mostly a dead genre. Occasionally new ones come out, but they are relatively rare in PC VNs... The fad's biggest jump was between 1998-2005 (in both anime and VNs), and it died with surprising rapidity after.