Why should you play Chrono Belt, fans of Ayakashibito and Bullet Butlers?
This is your reason. Do you really need another?
But seriously, this fight is told entirely from Kuki's point of view, and as a result it is suitably awesome. Rather than doing it in order, I went ahead and did the Kuki-viewpoint segment first solely so I could re-experience the awesomeness that is Kuki Youkou.
Anyway, Chrono Belt isn't so much a fandisc as a true-ending crossover of both games. Basically, it happens after the ending of both games, and it is a VN that manages to standout on its own as awesome, though it is reliant on the characters from the two games for its plot.
To be blunt, this VN manages to satisfy fanboy crossover 'what-ifs' while not being ridiculous, which is a feat in and of itself. I'll leave it to you to imagine what those what-ifs are, because, as always, I refuse to spoil it for you. I will say that there are three segments: Kuki, Alfred, and - last of all - the main segment. All three are generally cool and interesting, though the last one is kind of heart-breaking or stomach-twisting at times, for fans of both games. I won't be doing a complete rundown of this VN, because it is quite simply impossible to do so without spoiling its origin-VNs.
PS: Incidentally, this is one of only a few fandisc-type VNs that I've played/read that weren't excuses for extra H-scenes (though there are extra H-scenes, lol).
This entry was written by fun2novel and edited by me. As in the previous post, I have only made grammatical and stylistic changes, as well as eliminating unnecessary spoilers. As such, the content is essentially fun2novel's review of the game.
tl;dr: If you’re a fan of the Phoenix Wright series then stop reading. There’s nothing more I can say to make you want to play Ouka Sabaki. Go play it now. The rest of you keep reading.
In the ancient Japan during the Edo period, under the firm far reaching rule of the Shogun, much of the work of keeping law and order was relegated to the magistrates of the lower towns and prefectures. Every town was responsible for the upkeep of peace and order, and policed themselves using authority delegated to them by the Shogunate. Most criminal activity that did not present a threat to the Shogunate was handled locally. The magistrates were also in charge of keeping the crimes of their town from tainting and flooding over to other towns. Each town or even a region of a city had a Magistrate assigned to it. Magistrates were the ones who carried the duty of overseeing and currying out justice, capture of criminals and prevention of crime. They had no power to tax people but they did hold the power of life and death over them. Ouka Sabaki begins when Shimei, the new young Magistrate, is assigned to oversee the Nakamachi district of Ouka Town.
Ouka Sabaki is the first visual novel by a fresh new company Irodori. For their first effort they developed a great and a very entertaining story full of fun characters and exciting moments. Unfortunately, it is impossible to talk about the game without talking about just how similar it is to Phoenix Wright. It’s not that it’s a rip off. If it was, then you could say that Kara no Shoujo is also ripping off Phoenix Wright. Instead, Ouka Sabaki takes advantage of those gameplay ideas and uses them to tell a very interesting and compelling story. Visual novels with gameplay have a huge potential to grab gamers with their awesome stories and get them invested through great and addicting gameplay. In this regard I think Ouka Sabaki does everything right.
The similarities to Phoenix Wright are astounding, structurally at least. Every chapter starts with characters just enjoying their time together. These are some of the better moments in the game because this is the only time you get to know the characters. In the second half a crime occurs, sparing the beginning of the chapter's main story. At that point, you start inquiring, gathering evidence, and asking people questions about what they know. Physical evidence is gathered by clicking on the objects on screen with the hopes to find something useful. And then there is the court room (in this case, an open-air situation where the defendant or defendants is made to kneel on white gravel to plead their case) where you ask questions, find contradictions, and present counter evidence. It is all very similar to Phoenix Wright, but this is not where Ouka Sabaki will win you over (Clephas note: The biggest difference is that the magistrate serves as prosecutor as well as the judge, and there is no jury nor means by which the average person could appeal).
What will win you over are the characters. Once again a comparison to the Phoenix Wright series is in order. The main cast in the Phoenix Wright series are all a bunch of fun and great characters, however it is the rest of the characters that make things very painful to play these games. All the non-main characters are, for a lack of a better word, absolutely stupid. They act like little children with over the top hyperactive personalities instead of acting like believable adults. There is nothing wrong with being quirky, as it gives characters a sense of charm, but in case of Phoenix Wright everyone acts like they are on a sugar high. As a result many gamers hate the gameplay outside the courtroom scenes, and many players use a walkthrough to quickly get them to the court sections of the game as these are the best moments in the game. Ouka Sabaki is a complete opposite of that. The characters have their own quirks, but they never go so far from land you barely see the horizon. Every character is charming, has a great personality, and as a reader you want to learn more about them. There is the fun and energetic childhood friend, the cutest tsundere I’ve ever seen, and even the male characters are all wonderful and great. The characters are so good you’ll be disappointed to know that the game never gives you enough time to get to know them before you are thrust into the main plot. This is really the biggest thing going against Ouka Sabaki.
This sounds really strange, especially from someone who prefers story driven visual novels over the slow and often boring (in my opinion) charage and slice-of-life visual novels. It just goes to show you how good characters and good writing can go a long way. However, if you don’t mind that, then what’s waiting you is one hell of a ride of trust, betrayals, twists and turns, and some interesting but not over the top drama. The story never forgets about humor either, and there are some very funny situations. These moments help the reader to get comfortable with the game before the plot starts showing up and things heat up.
The game is almost completely linear. There is mostly just one single path through the main story. Obviously the writers were focused on telling a story rather than making an eroge. This is also were the game fails. The writers didn’t plan on having h-scenes from the start so, throughout the game, from the beginning to the grand end there are no h-scenes. Somewhere in the middle if you make the wrong choice you will be treated to an h-scene, but it feels too forced and out of place. After completing the game, you can go back and get endings (including h-scenes) for each girl if you so desire. However, these are the least interesting moments of the game, and besides, once you’re get the grand end, you have witnessed the best parts of the game. So, there’s just no incentive to go for 100% in my opinion.
On the presentation side, the graphics look really good. Characters are drawn well with great smooth lines and good use of colors. Character design is great as well. The voices all sound very familiar and could be professional anime voice actors (I did not check the facts myself, so it is all just based on my ears, lol). The music is of high quality and has a very oriental style and sounds as if it was performed by a live orchestra. But only few tracks are memorable, it’s still very good music and fits the game perfectly.
Overall Ouka Sabaki is a great visual novel and really entertaining. It’s hard to fault it for keeping most of the focus on the plot but it would have been great if it explored the characters and had a few more comedic scenes. If they ever make a sequel I’ll be sure to be there because I know I wouldn’t want to miss it.
VN of the Month, February 2017
There was never any real contest, this time around... Suisei Ginka is VN of the Month, February 2017.
First, I should explain why I felt a need to make a title like that... though it is really quite simple. Out of Lump of Sugar's last five VNs, three were complete kusoge. Only one of them was something worth remembering (Sekai to Sekai no Mannaka de) and the others were just downright rotten, due to their use of really stupid gimmicky progression systems (flowcharts with tons of scene-locks and going back and forth, Magical Charming's half-assed 'gameplay' etc etc) that ruined the games even apart from the actual quality of the stories and characters... which was generally pretty poor. This VN, however, brings back at least some of the magic of what made me like Lump of Sugar in the first place... 'soft' moe fantasy that has enough emotional depth to make me actually care about the moe-moe characters. While it isn't a nakige like Mannaka was (it is a light fantasy romance in the style that was popular back around 2005-2009), it is nonetheless a good read... for people who actually like this type of game. The fact that this is what I hoped for out of this company enhanced my enjoyment somewhat, but the general concept - which was weird enough to capture my interest - is what kept me reading... and the fact that the girls hit good moe points without being tedious about it (repetitiveness, endless dating, etc.). The fact that the events in this VN are presented in such a way as to make you actually care about the struggles of the characters that I would normally call trivial is one of the signs of a really good VN design, and I only rarely wanted to hurry things along (to be honest, Sera's route was kind of frustrating at times due to her... inability to deal with her own emotions, though it wasn't nearly as bad as some of the moege I've played in the past). So far, I've played the common route and Sera's route... and unfortunately, my plans require me to move on to Hatsuru (mostly because my back injury leaves me in a state where I don't have the presence of mind to do a lot of work through the pain meds) before I find out whether I have to have surgery, lol. If nothing else, I'll have something to look forward to when I've returned back to a level of health where a painkiller haze isn't interfering with my concentration. Sera's route... to be honest, it is hard to know how different it will be from the others, but is basic theme is personal growth and moving on with life. The ending's epilogue is pretty nice... especially since it is based at least several years after the end of the main story of her path. As I said above, there are some irritating aspects about the formative stages of their relationship, primarily driven by Sera's inability to handle her own emotions, but in the end, it isn't that bad. Edit: Oh, and if you are wondering why I don't give an outline of the basic plot/beginning of the story... its because this is one of those VNs that is way too easily spoiled by any summary at all. I'll be straight-up about this... if you decide to play this game, the vndb summary isn't going to be a problem (it is badly translated and doesn't give you any real info), but you should probably avoid checking out the information on purchase sites like Getchu, as they are pretty spoiler-heavy and this is a VN that is a better experience without the spoilers. It is weird enough that it is just more fun to sit back and read it as is, without a lot of pre-knowledge.
I'll be blunt... I got this for free a while back from my supplier, and ever since then, I've kept it shelved, simply because the description makes it sound like a nukige. Fortunately, it isn't one... in fact, it is pretty far from that.
Basically, it is a propaganda piece, speaking on the issue of rewriting the part of the Japanese constitution that prevents them from fighting except in a case where they were attacked first. The heroines and other characters line up behind either the ones who want to change the constitution or those who want to keep it the way it is. To be honest, this was such a blatantly political story that I almost tossed it back into the abyss of my account so I could forget I'd ever seen it.
The romance in this VN isn't terribly strong... mostly because the pacing is so fractured that you can't help but wonder why they bothered in the first place. It isn't that the actual writing is bad... it is just that the attempt to graft a standard charage onto a political debate story weakened the overall storytelling to the point where I literally fell asleep sitting up several times while I played this.
My biggest complaints with the political side of it is that this is an obviously pro-change propaganda story (though the outcome differs depending on what heroine you choose). The ones who are against the change are universally presented as silly idealists during the debate scenes and the ones for it have a tendency toward realist arguments, though arguments on both sides were pretty extreme. It wasn't terribly blatant... but it wasn't subtle either, at least from my point of view. I have to wonder if someone paid Ja no Michi to do things this way...
Thanks to Zenophilious for showing me the internet cache so I wouldn't have to revive the posts by rewriting them.
Izumo 4
First, an introduction to Izumo the series. This is just based on various scenario outlines and reviews I read (I haven't actually played any of the Izumo games before this one), but it is basically a simple rpg/VN hybrid series that involves the kami of Shinto myth in an older-style chuuni gakuen fantasy setup. My interest in the series originated with the OVA that came out over a decade ago (based on Izumo 2), and despite it being a hentai, it actually had an excellent story (one of the weirder aspects of some older hentai anime, lol). Anyway, this focus on a 'Japanese' style of fantasy was one of the big draws of this series for me, and the only reason I hadn't played any of them up until now was a simple lack of availability... most of Studio e.go's games have been unavailable, so I hadn't gotten around to playing them (that and they weren't high on my list of priorities due to my low tolerance for the mediocre gameplay written by the programming team they share with Debonosu).
Now... for those still interested in playing this after all that I've already said, here are some serious reasons to want to play this game... First, Light's Zero Infinity Team is completely responsible for all the writing in this game, meaning that it is extremely high quality and the scenario design itself is on a much higher level than the old Studio e.go's works. They are also partially responsible for some of the BGM.
Unfortunately, the Debonosu team is responsible for the artwork and voices, meaning that people who can't stand the older styles of VN artwork are inevitably going to be put off at first glance. First, the voice actors are all people that aren't in extreme demand like some of the more idol-like seiyuu are, and as a result, some of them you will probably either not recognize (newbies) or feel nostalgic about (vets). The parts of the music not done by Light's team make up most of the 'everyday' themes, though the battle themes, the opening and ending, and several of the themes used during major scenes are definitely done by Light (the style is recognizable from Dies Irae and Kajiri Kamui). The artwork... to be honest, I had no problem whatsoever with it. It is a pre-moeblob style, where there was more variance in heroine design. In particular, heroines like Enishi, who looks like an adult human being rather than a pair of boobs with a heroine attached, have gone out of style since, and I hadn't realized how much I missed them. In fact, I picked Enishi as my first heroine solely on the basis of her character design, lol.
Story-wise, matters are fairly simple... except the Zero Infinity team definitely let loose its Masada-worshiping genes on a lot of the major plot elements, and as a result, you end up with a far more interesting story than I've generally experienced in any Debo or e.go game. In particular, Hakuto and Enishi stand out as the best kind of 'mysterious heroines', though Enishi is more of a walking tragedy, versus Hakuto being a walking absurdity.
I picked Enishi as my heroine for my first playthrough (there are no distinct routes, though there are apparently distinct endings and numerous scenes unique to each heroine). Enishi is... a temporary antagonist who exists in the vein of the 'eternal sufferer' heroine archetype. If you like heroines who have been through hell and still managed to maintain a good heart despite their exhaustion with life, she is an excellent choice.
I really liked the way they played with the concept of the kami in this VN... in particular, the relation of faith and belief to a kami's nature and the changeability of the kami. It is a central theme - in fact it becomes more and more central toward the end - and I in particular loved the way Enishi herself deals with it (as well as hearing her relate her personal experiences with how it relates to she herself). You apparently get another perspective from Hakuto, but I'm going to wait a while before I go back and play another heroine of this, despite being able to restart with everything.
In terms of gameplay... as I indicated above, it isn't something to write home about. There really aren't any truly great aspects to the gameplay, though the elemental combo system adds a decent level of strategy to boss battles (since regular battles generally aren't hard enough to justify using elemental combos, lol). The presence of an auto-battle function and the way anybody can learn any magic through the magatamas, as long as they have the corresponding one equipped, means that you can effectively make all your characters all-rounders. This is really useful in the mid to late game, when more and more bosses can really lay down the status effects and render you utterly helpless if you don't watch yourself (not to mention that the game's version of mimics has an instant death spell that effects all of your party members). Nonetheless, having played through the game from the beginning... I really recommend just begging someone for their clear-save and using that to trample everything right until the end. Since the battle system is nothing to write home about, I see no reason whatsoever not to just sit back and enjoy the story if you can get away with it, since the story does stand well on its own.
Overall, I give this game high marks as a chuuni-fantasy story and low marks for gameplay. The art is going to split people's opinions based on taste and tolerance, so I'm not going to dictate to others whether they should play this game, like I might otherwise. If you want something with a lot of Japanese themes with great writing and story, this is a good choice. Just be prepared for some easy grinding and some dungeon-drudging to get you to the end of it.
Miagete Goran, Yozora no Hoshi wo
Yes, I more or less said I was thinking about not playing this... and I wouldn't have, either, if it weren't for the fact that I had three separate people beg me during one of my brief appearances on mirc to play it... and the fact that I had so much trouble getting Izumo4 setup. So, while I probably won't play Korona's route (she annoys me), I plan to play the other three routes for VN of the Month.
First, my worries about the osananajimi issue have been, to some degree, borne out by my experiences in this VN. To an extent, a lot of the character development for Hikari and Saya seems to have been entirely reliant on flashbacks, though they were good flashbacks. To be honest, once I found out why they'd become so distanced from one another before the story began, I was more than a little exasperated/disappointed at how petty it was, but it wasn't as bad as some similar situations I've seen in other VNs in the past.
The music in this VN is generally high in quality, so much so that I felt the need to actually come out and mention it. Some of it is reused from other Pulltop VNs, but there are several high quality themes used that are unique to this game.
Art-wise, a lot of people have been making a lot of noise about this game, and I can see why. It was very hard not to choose Saya's route from the very beginning simply because of the degree to which they made her visual characterization so absolutely perfect in combination with her audio one. Looking at it from a purely writing/story-based perspective, her character is no different from a hundred different 'shy osananajimis' I've encountered in the past, but the characterization in this game manages to bring her to life to a degree that makes her stand out from all the heroines and characters... by leaps and bounds. Of course, I'm a contrary bastard who never chooses such obvious 'main heroines' on my first playthrough, so I chose Orihime first.
The common route is a classic seishun-drama, focused around a combination of flashbacks and a 'personal revival' (the renewal of a character - usually the protagonist - that leads to them regaining something they lost or abandoned) scenario. If I have a complaint to say about the common route it is that there is a severe lack of 'bumps in the road'. Generally speaking, a 'good' seishun drama scenario will have some major bumps in the common route in order to give you a reference point by which you can emotionally grasp how hard it was for the characters to do what they were doing. In that sense, the common route can be considered a failure, as far as seishun drama goes... except that the flashbacks provide that 'bump' for you, the regrets of the past basically acting as a replacement for the lack of such obstacles in the present.
Orihime
Mmm... Orihime is a dreamer. Dreamer heroines are some of the most annoying heroines out there... or some of the most inspiring (or both). Orihime tends toward the former in my eyes, but that is mostly because my view of such heroines/characters is automatically negative, due to my preference for pragmatism and practicality over dreams and ideals. As a heroine, she has some serious oddities, though... and they are amusing enough that I never managed to hate her. However, her route isn't exactly an exciting one, and humor and light romance with no obstacles doesn't really make for a memorable path (I'll probably have forgotten this path existed two months from now). The choice to make her an 'ojousama' heroine was probably a poor one, as an underused ojousama character setting is like having a bottle rocket set up and not lighting it up.
So basically, her route was amusing... but there was nothing really emotionally moving about it, from my perspective. For better or worse, it is light fare that doesn't leave much of an impression.
Edit: Hikari
Hikari is one of the two main heroines, the two points of a love triangle between the protagonist and his two osananajimis. Typically for her type - the somewhat tomboyish genki-heroine - she is extremely awkward in how she deals with the protagonist's advances and just doesn't know when to quit when it comes to trying to dump him off on her shyer, much more adorable best friend Saya. This quite a typical scenario in this kind of love triangle, and - to be honest - I found it to be unbelievably irritating. It was made worse by the fact that it was obvious that was the way they would choose to do things almost from the beginning of the path split (Saya and Hikari share a rather large amount of story, as their paths are split off completely from Korona's and Orihime's). That isn't to say it was an awful path... those who have played Kono Oozora will recognize the general 'feeling' of the path... it is by the same team, after all. This is a lot more apparent in this path than it was in Orihime's, though the influence was almost as obvious in the common route. Also, you should probably know that the Soaring Club makes an (text-only) appearance as a part of the path, for those who are interested... please no one ask for this to be tled by Sekai Project, lol. I honestly can't see any way the relationship formation would make sense without the h-scenes.
Edit2: Saya
Saya's route is pretty close to what you would call the 'classic osananajimi route'. Why? Because the first worry that comes up when they get together is 'its no different than it was before!' I had to sigh in exasperation that they actually went through with using that particular trope, because it is one of the primary reasons osanajimi routes tend to be as boring as hell. That said, Saya's character is by far the most well-developed of all in the entire VN, and as a result, her path has the strongest emotional impact. In fact, it has even more drama to it than Hikari's, and it gets pretty emotional at times... but because of the way they drew out the drama, it started to feel monotonous toward the end. I did think that the actual epilogue and ending parts were really good, but I have to conclude that they went a little overboard with Saya. However, Saya's character is... adorable. She's one of those extremely devoted types with infinite patience, and the result is really, really hard to choose anyone else for your first heroine of the VN, lol.
Overall
I have a few comments to make before I conclude this. First, this VN's route balance is horrible. Hikari's and Saya's routes and characters get almost all the emphasis, and as a result, anyone who plays the other routes will be able to tell at a glance that they are sub-heroines. To be honest, this VN would have been much better if there had only been Saya's and Hikari's routes. However, Saya's and Hikari's routes are both quite powerful, leaving you feeling satisfied (with their routes) at least partially because of the same over-used flashbacks that ensured that Orihime and Korona would be relegated to sub (or sub-par) heroine status in comparison. In reality, Saya's and Hikari's routes feel like they are an extension of the flow of the common route, and that is how it should feel in a case like this. For those who are interested in this VN, I suggest you just play Saya and Hikari's routes, as the others can only be disappointing in comparison.
One of the single biggest elements of most VNs in existence is slice-of-life. This entire post is based on this fact, and it isn't one that can seriously be argued against by anyone who has read more than a hundred VNs.
So what is slice-of-life? With VNs, it is a type of scene where bits and pieces of daily life, without any particular conflict, are portrayed. These can be humorous, mildly touching, or informative.
So what is the value of slice-of-life as a tool for storytelling? For one thing, it provides an opportunity to portray and develop the characters in their most 'natural' setting. Do you want to know what a character is like in peaceful times? Slice-of-life scenes are generally the tool used. Do you want to slowly develop a mild romance between two characters? Then slice-of-life is your friend.
In this sense, slice-of-life is a highly valuable tool. While extreme scenes, such as violent scenes or ones with psychological or intellectual conflict, are also valuable for developing characters and their relationships, it is the slice-of-life scenes that form the skeleton to which the conflict and/or drama adds flesh later on.
However, the problem with slice-of-life is that it is basically an exclusion of extremity. It is difficult - virtually impossible - to give flesh to a character with only slice-of-life. For better or worse, people bare their true strength and value (or weakness and uselessness) in situations where they are being tested by circumstance or opposition (whether intense or mild). This applies to VN characters, as well.
Slice-of-life is your friend... unless that's all there is. Sadly, a lot of writers make the mistake of thinking otherwise. I can't count how many VNs I've experienced that make this mistake, to one extent or another. Slice-of-life as a tool is a valuable friend and ally... but as the sole tool for constructing a story, it falls pathetically short all too often.
Edit: Understand, I came to these conclusions as a result of playing numerous VNs that made that particular mistake... and I'm including 'standard Vn romance' as slice-of-life. Romance is something I'll touch on separately in the next entry.
I'm going to be blunt. As soon as Persona 5 comes out, I'll probably drop everything and stop talking for at least two or three days. As such, you can pretty much be sure that the time from now until the fourth is the time for me to play VNs, lol. This month is, however, extremely heavy on the number of releases, if not the level of excitement that follows them (Minori's style is antithetical to me, so I really do want to offload Trinoline on someone else, despite their high quality productions).
As such, I'm making a list of the VNs from this month and my priorities.
Currently playing/finished
Omoi o Sasageru Otome no Melody
Haruru Minamo ni!
Priority to play (in order)
Hataraku Otaku no Ren'ai Jijou (same series as Hataraku Otona, which was awesome)
Suisou Ginka no Istoria
Noroi no Maken ni Yamitsuki Otome
Kamidanomishisugite Ore no Mirai wa Yabai (the newest Oreyaba game)
I badly want to offload onto someone else (low priority)
Trinoline
Amanatsu Adolescence
Full Kiss
Other (not sure if nukige or something else)
Office de Sasou, Ecchi no Kanojo (looked interesting, lol)
First, let me state that 2015 is the flat-out worst year for VNs I've seen out of the last six. There was a lot of upward and downward flow hovering around the line known as 'mediocre' or 'average', but there were - saying it straight out - no kamige and few titles that really stood out from the crowd. It is definitely the worst year since I started VN of the Month, just two years and five months (or so) ago.
Unlike in 2013 or 2014, there are not a lot of titles I really even seriously considered to be in the running for this spot, even in a vague sort of way. While there were a few titles that jumped out at me toward the end of the year, I wouldn't have even seriously considered them in either of the two previous years. Heck, my top three titles this year wouldn't have even made it into the top twelve last year or the year before. That is how bad it was.
In 2013, the winner was Hapymaher by Purple Soft, its unbelievably high-quality soundtrack, art, presentation, and storytelling barely edging past Komorebi no Nostalgica for the win. While both games could pull both my emotions and intellect into play, Hapymaher's musical presentation gave it an overwhelming edge on that front, making it the winner.
2014 was also a hard choice... but in the end, it came down to Nanairo Reincarnation, the only VN that year that I honestly had no reservations about. Semiramis no Tenbin, Hello Lady, and a few others were runners-up that year (in fact, 2014 was an amazingly good year), but in terms of complete overall quality and appeal, they couldn't match Nanairo.
Unfortunately, 2015 just doesn't have any candidates that match those. Silverio Vendetta was immensely fun for me, but it has flaws in its structure that disqualify it, in addition to having way too niche an appeal. While I did praise it, Kyuuketsu Hime no Libra (which - as most of us know - has been Kickstarted for translation) just doesn't make it to the level I demand from VN of the Year Candidates. Sakura no Uta, for all that it does have its moments, has a deeply flawed overall flow and a lot of technical issues with the story presentation. Soreyori no Prologue was an interesting experience, despite being typically Minori (meaning sincerely annoying at several major points), but it wasn't a game I could seriously consider for VN of the Year. Natsuiro Recipe is probably the best 'iyashikei' product made in the last three years, but it isn't something I could honestly consider for raw quality. Koko Kara Natsu no Innocence had the typically high levels of overall quality I associate with Clochette (despite the boob fetish), but again, it wasn't quite there. Hatsuru Koto Naki Mirai Yori was an immensely fun ride, but - like Silverio Vendetta - was both deeply flawed and too niche in appeal to seriously be considered.
So what was I left to consider, really?
Basically it came down to Kikan Bakumatsu Ibun Last Cavalier, a surprise entry in the last part of the year that tries to replicate, at least in part, the magic of Chuushingura (the VN, not the movie or the various books), except with a lot more bloodshed and in a steampunk version of the political and military conflict surrounding what led up to the Meiji Restoration. Now, at first I was tempted to think that I was jumping to conclusions, because it was so fresh in my mind... so I let almost two months pass before I made my decision, while I went about the task of reviving my memories of various VNs I played during the year.
It really was odd what came back to me during that time... Sakura Nikagetsu was one of the more memorable ones (definitely not VN of the Year material, but it was immensely amusing), as was Rakuen no Shugosha (a cheap kinetic utsuge in a total anti/non-anime style), and Sorcery Jokers (the most technically sound of the straight-out chuunige that came out during the year). I honestly had to reject the former two outright, simply because their visuals make them a no-go for ninety percent of the people I know, no matter how much fun or how high quality a psychological experience they might be. Sorcery Jokers was actually a lot harder to dismiss, when it came down to it. In terms of scale, I was really tempted to say it could compete with Kikan Bakumatsu... but if asked which left a better impression, I would have instantly said Kikan Bakumatsu.
To be honest, either title would have been a compromise. Neither is as good as any of the best VNs from the last four or five years. They are definitely good, as in being worthy of being listed as VNs to remember. However, I definitely wouldn't have put them up as candidates in another year.
For the idiots who kept asking me if I'd say yes to Bansenjin *spits on the floor* even Masada pisses on his own feet sometimes (too much of an attempt to recreate the success of the Shinza series).
Submitted by Dergonu, edited by Clephas
Pure Song Garden has a similar structure to Pulltop's previous games, Kono Oozora and Miagete Goran: a club at a school doing something together to achieve a common goal (Clephas: Seishun, lol). But this game does put a lot less focus on the club part compared to the previous games, and it actually spends very little time in the school part. During the entire common route + the routes that I played, they only stepped into the club room, and they never actually attended any classes or anything. I liked this, as even I am starting to get a little bit tired of the general school setting at this point.
The game takes place in the future, in the year 2027, where VR has become a huge part of everyone's daily lives. Everything has been made simpler through the use of VR, and people have grown quite reliant on it. One of the most recent trends is VR idols, and a big event called "Pure Song Garden" is approaching where the VR idol Ai will perform "live." A special doll has been prepared for Ai, which will allow her to actually move around, as if she was alive. This was supposed to bring humans and VR even closer. However, things do not exactly go as planned, as a girl from the year 2077, Hoshino Iroha, appears out of nowhere and inhabits Ai's doll body. The time traveling technology used by Iroha cases some major errors with the VR in 2027, thus sending the whole city into chaos.
You get tons of futuristic made up words thrown at your face within the first five minutes in the game, which I have to admit, got a little irritating. I get that we are in the future and all, but shoving all these new terms down my throat so quickly got a little bothersome. The VN has a hint system, which lets you go back and read some info on the fictional terms though. So if you do happen to ignore one of the explanations, you can easily read about it later.
The music in Pure Song Garden is fantastic, just like in Kono Oozora and Miagete Goran. The art is very nice, and this is the first game I have played from Pulltop where they used the E-mote system. There is lip syncing and constant character animations. At first, the lip syncing was not to my liking. It looked odd and unnatural. However, after about an hour or so in game, I started getting used to it. Now, I'm honestly a big fan of it. It gave much more life to the characters, and helped underline the fact that this game was supposedly taking place in the future. The music felt reminiscent of Kono Oozora's music, which made me feel a little nostalgic, and the art was pretty detailed and well done. Overall, great music and art.
The story in PSG was pretty good. It has less drama than the previous games I mentioned, though there was still a decent chunk of it. It did make me cry a few times, and some of the moments definitely had some impact. Overall, although it doesn't compare to something like Kono Oozora, it felt like more than just a standard moege blob. That being said, I wish they would have pursued a few plot points a little more than they did. For instance, the main character has some trauma linked to music that made him a little opposed to the idea of composing songs. In the beginning, he was afraid of even just touching a piano. However, this conflict just kind of worked itself out randomly, which felt a little boring to me. Sure, they had a few reasons in there that made some sense, but I still wish they would have pursued this particular point a little more. Then again, Kanata's own inner conflict wasn't all that important, as the story was more centered around Iroha.
(I did skip a few routes that weren't linked to the true ending, so perhaps they pursued Kanata's trauma a little closer there, who knows. I did not skip those routes because the game bored me or anything, but I was honestly mostly interested in the true ending for the story. Also, Iroha was my favorite girl from the start. I'll go back to the game and play the other routes eventually.)
The main character was good. He was not a full on hetare , and he actually did something other than sit around and be a heroine magnet (Clephas: lol). I also liked the way they used him in CGs. You get the feeling that he is actually there, and that he isn't just some faceless shadow lurking in the background.
The romance in the true ending was good, though a little simple. It was rather straightforward, though I think that was the intention in the true route. Kanata and Iroha were meant to be together, and their relationship was important to the flow of the story in general.
Overall I liked the game a lot. It feels like Pulltop is really adamant on sticking with the old formula that they used in Kono Oozora, as PSG was quite similar in many aspects. The story is entirely different, and the setting is pretty far away from Kono Oozora's. However, the similarities are still pretty obvious. Whether this is a good thing or not depends on the reader. I personally loved the similarities, as I am a huge fan of Pulltop's older games. Still, I can see how some people would want something entirely unique in a new game.
This is a simple post putting forth my views on what the largest pitfalls are for a fantranslator, both in the immediate sense and the long-term.
Immediate
1. Making promises: Anyone who starts a translation is bound to do something stupid... such as setting a deadline or predicting how long it will take them to do something. Even experienced translation groups trip and fall into this particular trap. Nothing good comes of making promises, primarily because rl exists.
2. Agreeing to translate/edit/proofread something you aren't interested in: This links to motivation. To be blunt, no fantl will be able to finish work on a VN if they don't enjoy the original or at least prefer the genre it is in. Fantls are a labor of love not a workplace with a set salary and a boss telling you to get back to work or he'll dock your pay. Passion about the subject matter is necessary to get anywhere on a fantl project.
3. Taking on a job you aren't qualified for: This mostly applies to beginner fantls... to be blunt, don't take on something you can't read easily. If you can't read and fully comprehend the text of the VN you've agreed to translate, don't even make the attempt.
4. Machine translations: Don't work.
5. Looking up your name/reputation/etc: Some people get addicted to looking for positive reactions to their work. Unfortunately, this also means that they stumble across the negative responses and can damage their confidence in ways that can destroy a project.
Long-term
1. The choice to announce a project or not: Many who translate VNs use community comments to help them build motivation. However, choosing to involve the community in your project is a two-sided sword... it cuts both ways. Negative comments, people asking you when it will come out, and complaints about the translation of any partial you put out can obliterate your motivation and cripple the project.
2. Internal group chemistry and mechanics: No matter how you look at it, the translator is the origin and star of any given project. Without the translator it goes nowhere... but translators can't be the ones going around motivating the group to keep working. It's inefficient and emotionally draining for the person in question, and it is the number one cause of project failure I've seen related to group chemistry, when the translator finally falls apart. An editor's role only seems minor to a translator. It is actually a job that can be equally frustrating to that of the raw translation, and a decent translator's secondary job often becomes tlcing and explaining his own work to the editor. Thus, my advice to any fantranslator is find an editor you can talk to and get along with, or you'll regret it later. My advice to editors is: Be patient. Many translators really don't like going back over their own work, so just keep an eye out for potential signs that they are at their limit.
3. Burn-out: This can potentially happen to any fantl position. It is also related to all the things above, since it is a state where all motivation is lost and the individual in question basically just drops out of the project. Apathy toward the project and ignoring group members are fairly common signs of this. Whether it is permanent or not depends on the individual, but it can take years to recover mentally and emotionally once you've reached this stage *speaking from personal experience*
Why I made this post.
Devils Devel Concept is one of my favorite VNs and has one of my top 3 VN settings. The setting is so ridiculously complex and explained only in fragments along the way, so it is difficult to gain any real grasp on what is going on just reading any one path... Not to mention that there are a ridiculous number of details that can be lost along the way as you read. Sora is fundamentally an indifferent narrator when it comes to such details, because he doesn't have any interest in them, and the heroines aren't much better that way, only dropping tidbits along the way that can be easily misinterpreted without being able to see the whole picture. There are unavoidable spoilers in this post, but they aren't so much for the story as for the infrequent explanations of the setting the writer inserts along the way. In particular, I recommend skipping the part of the post covering the Genryuu, Old Ones, and Others and their servants until you've at least read both Kanata's and Mutsuki's paths. Mutsuki's path, in particular, takes on a lot of new meaning if you know the stuff about the contracts. This is mostly a glossary, drawing some base info from the in-game glossary but also adding parts drawn from the explanations within the story itself.
Possible Spoilers if you go any further
Demons- Powerful beings capable of rewriting reality at will. They are fundamentally inhuman in both appearance and motivation. They are the descendants of the creations of the Old Ones, possessing Devils Organs passed down directly from that source.
Enja- The descendants of humans implanted with Devils Organs and an instinctive need to kill Demons by the Old Ones upon their defeat. They breed slowly amongst themselves and are extremely short-lived (with rare exceptions for those who rarely use their abilities, most don't live beyond the age of forty, with the most powerful tending to die or Fall in their twenties). The imperatives in their DNA have a lot of subtle psychological effects on them, ranging from mild social disorders to outright sociopath behavior. Their desires and hungers tend to be several degrees stronger than the average human, as well as being somewhat more... earthy. Out of self-protection, they tend to gather in clan groups based on bloodline or association.
Hunters/Karyuudo- Enja who have chosen to pursue a life hunting and killing Demons.
Henshitsu- As an Enja wields their Organs and live their lives, gradually they begin to alter, in fashions both subtle and not so much so. This can be displayed in strengthened instincts, vulnerabilities to certain types of food or light, the need to drink blood, or even the ability to live on sunlight and water. Once this change surpasses a certain point, an Enja falls and becomes a Stray Sheep, a monster without rationality or conscience that is driven by the most powerful impulses of the Enja from which they were born.
Stray Sheep/Predator/Hosokusha/Itsudatsusha- Individuals whose Henshitsu has gone beyond the critical stage. Such individuals lack rationality or conscience and are often cannibalistic. They are also often driven by strong suppressed desires or obsessions from their life as a human. Sometimes they are born when an Enja dies in a conventional manner (of age, starvation, etc), but most of the time it tends to occur during battle or another extreme situation.
Ro- Unique Devils Organs, usually based off a concept or element, that consume the concept or element they were named for and grant power to their possessors.
Genryuu- A type of Enja, created by the Others rather than the Old Ones.
Furuki Mono- The Old Ones, otherworldly beings who survived the void to arrive on Earth long ago.
The Others- Otherworldly beings who preceded the arrival of the Old Ones.
Spirits-
Solid pot- A discriminatory term used by Enja to refer to themselves.
Hollow Pot- A discriminatory term used by some Enja to refer to normal humans.
Soujou-Soukoku- A reference to the natural magnetism/compatibility between individual Enja and Demons. This is the first and most powerful determiner of how a relationship between them will form, and it isn't uncommon for those with a high compatibility to fall into bed on first meeting or those with a low or negative compatibility to try to kill one another at first sight. Individuals with high compatibility enhance one another's abilities, whereas those with low or negative compatibility make one another weaker over time.
Masou- Weapons created by the Enja to allow them to more effectively fight the Demons. These enhance their users' abilities (though usually at a cost in lifespan or psychological damage) and can provide new methods to corrode reality. Many have fallen into the hands of the Demons or have been partially broken over the millennia, though.
Shinshoku- A term referring to the ability to corrode reality that defines both the Demons and Enja. The only limits to this ability are the individual's Organs, the amount of power they can produce at a given time, and the size of the area they can comprehend with their spatial awareness.
Battle Flow- Battles between possessors of Devils Organs are a competition to see who can overwhelm the other's ability to corrode and alter reality. It isn't uncommon for Enja and Demons to die multiple times during a battle, resurrecting themselves as they go, and fatal blows generally are merely minor turning points in the battles of the most powerful. To achieve victory, it is necessary that one 'rewrite' the opponent into a 'deceased' state at a point where the balance of power in the battle has tipped irrevocably against the opponent. At lower levels, one or two deaths is often sufficient to end the battle, as resurrection and bodily repair require an iron will and a decent grasp of one's own physiology before it was rewritten or destroyed. More intelligent opponents prefer to create a situation where their enemy has no possibility to turn the tables in advance by choosing the field and 'corroding' its reality in advance (creating a branch world for that purpose). Kanata, Misora, and Mei are all three of this type, whereas Sora, Mutsuki, and Akane tend to be straightforward 'smash the wall down' types.
Relationship between Demons and Enja- Demons and Enja instinctively hate one another on sight. This instinct is literally beyond their ability to control or suppress, and it is only through the mediation of a third party that the few 'rules' of the conflict between them were put together. The reasons for this instinctive hatred are generally considered to lie in the nature of the Enja's creation.
Blood (Demon and Enja)- The blood of Demons is the most poisonous substance in the world. A human touched by a drop will die instantly, and even Enja often become ill from excessive exposure. To a lesser extent, the blood of Enja is toxic to Demons, but it takes many hundreds of exposures for this to actually become a problem for the Demon in question.
Devils Organs- 'Organs' that grant Enja and Demons the ability to rewrite reality, adhering to rules determined by the individual Organ. Most Enja only possess one or two, with a few rare exceptions being born with three (generally destined to have a very short lifespan). While all Enja and demons can corrode reality, in what manner they do so is determined by these organs.
Cabals- Organizations devoted to the protection, training, and organizing of activities by the Hunters. The ones most intimately involved in this story are the Isaribi and the Houjou. Both have a very pre-movie MIB feeling to both their activities and their attitude, as their agents tend to spend as much time disposing of evidence and witnesses as they do actually fighting Demons or hunting Stray Sheep.
Dolls- Humans rewritten into 'modoki/automata', flesh machines that have been granted immense physical strength, agility, and speed to serve as the hands and feet of a Demon, Stray Sheep, or Enja. These individuals rarely retain much of their original personality or memories, and most are cannibalistic, needing to regularly eat large amounts of human flesh to maintain themselves. Ironically, even the least of the Enja can dismember them with hardly any effort, making them no better than a distraction in the battle between the two.
Fear in Enja vs Fear in Normal Humans- Both humans and Enja are capable of feeling fear towards Demons. However, when a human encounters a Demon, they are incapable of even conceiving of resistance or putting up a struggle. When an Enja encounters a Demon, their fear is a simple product of a mixture of threat assessment and jealousy of their power. Fear of Demons freezes a human, whereas an Enja is still capable of acting. This peculiar type of half-rational emotion is one of the things that set Enja apart.
For better or worse, the VN localization industry in America and other Western nations is expanding rapidly, primarily due to the efforts of aggressive localization companies such as Mangagamer and Sekai Project, but also due to the increased interest on the part of at least some Japanese VN companies in making a few extra bucks through localization.
I say 'for better or worse' because the increase in localizations has actually begun to outline what some of the biggest problems with VNs are, for those living in the West. What I've put down below is basic guidance... not all of which I follow myself, but which is mostly common sense (which a surprising number of new Fuwans seem to be ignorant of).
Ethical/Legal problems
1. Piracy- To be blunt, prosecuting consumers of pirated games is a waste of time, and most companies are quite well aware of this. So, most of the fallout for this kind of thing is going to keep hitting the websites and individuals who promote the distribution end of things. A few examples will most likely be made of outspoken pirate consumers (the idiots, in other words), but the problem here is almost entirely ethical for most. Tell me, do you think it is right not to pay for content if you happen to have the money needed to pay for it?
2. Lolicon content- Seriously guys? When I saw that Maitetsu was getting a localization, even though it was an all-ages one, alarm bells went off in my head. Someone is inevitably going to put up an h-patch for the game, and that is going to cause a huge amount of controversy later on that could be a huge blow to the industry, in the short run. Loli content is one of the two nuclear bombs of Japanese eroge, and it is the one that honestly bothers me the most personally (not so much morally, as in a pragmatic sense).
3. Rapegames- I'm going to be blunt... considering the degree to which Western culture has come to consider rape a mortal sin, do you really think games focused around rape and extreme sexual situations (ie the entire Maggot Baits game) are safe for the industry to localize, if you consider their potential to backfire? There is no conceivable way that these games could be considered anything other than obscene by any reasonable critic (not a community one, in other words), and in the long run, games like these have an enormous potential to castrate the localization industry.
4. School-based games- Sadly, the excuse that 'all the heroines are over eighteen' is only going to take you so far in some countries... to be blunt, a judge is unlikely to listen to that kind of protestation if, for whatever insane reason, you end up dragged into court.
Common sense issues
1. I don't think anyone has any business telling us we can't import Japanese games, including VNs. However, as a matter of common sense, you should probably avoid importing anything with a lot of content linked to the numbers 2 and 3 in the section above. I don't mean to piss on your bonfire, but if you are going to buy something with that kind of material, at least have the sense to use digital download purchases and/or don't display the packages for that type of eroge where casual visitors can see them.
2. Figurines and other side-junk- Within reason, there is no reason why a fan of a particular bit of otaku media shouldn't order figurines, statuettes, oppai mousepads, etc to decorate their room or gaming space. However, keep it within reason... I've seen otaku friends of mine go insane and overpurchase, even going into debt, over buying swag. If you aren't rich, have the sense to focus on the main material first, then expand at a reasonable pace into the swag. To an extent, the same can be said of the games themselves, considering the costs of the actual purchases plus import costs.
3. Anonymity is your best friend. Don't pull stupid crap like linking your Facebook profile to your dlsite or getchu account... for that matter, don't link them to your Fuwanovel account, if you are a fan of 'deep' eroge content. Leaving that kind of data around for casual skimmers to find is just plain stupid.
4. If you are a fantranslator, number 3 applies emphatically unless you are about to go 'legit' by handing your translation to a localization company.
5. During scandal times (like when the media is making a big deal over an eroge-related issue such as during the infamous Rapelay incident) have the sense to take cover and avoid conversing on rapegames and lolige publicly.
6. Know the difference between being open about your libido and being excessive *remembers Steve*
A final comment
Needless to say, almost all the issues above revolve around controversial sexual content. Part of that is that many people, both inside and outside the VN fanbase, have trouble marking the difference between fiction and reality when it comes to otaku media (an insanity that I can understand but am long past). As a legal argument, it (as in the argument that figments of an artist's or writer's imagination, as opposed to real women, cannot be considered underaged and cannot be considered victims in any way, form, or fashion) actually has a lot of merit... but that doesn't mean that they'll rule in your favor, in the end, lol. The West is prudish, to the extreme. There is no telling when religious interests will slip a noose around our necks, and general moralists are just as bad. I'm not perfect about taking my own advice. I'm a VN junkie, and I really don't have any morals when it comes to my search for good VN stories. I might be disgusted by some content, but that won't prevent me from experiencing the story, lol. However, a lot of the people around me seem to be utterly unaware of the risks of being an eroge reader... and I felt I had to put this out there, for the 'public' good, even though I'm certain I've already pissed off the anti-censorship and pro-piracy parts of the community, lol.
First, I should mention that this VN, despite having a different writer, is in a style that is very similar to that of Oni Uta, a VN made by 130cm using the same artist back in 2009. I say 'the same style', because the character dynamics are eerily similar. First, there is the ponkotsu oneechan who is open about her desire to reverse-rape the protagonist (though she prefers it the other way around). Second, there is the stalker osananajimi, who casually steals his underwear, toothbrushes, and chopsticks. Third, there is the little oni-goddess who appears and serves as the game's true heroine.
Now, first I should say that this artist has a style that is greatly differentiated from the current industry standard... mainly because he has nothing against chubby faces, heroines who make unattractive expressions, and old art cliches like heart-mark eyes, lol.
Story-wise, this game moves back and forth between emotional scenes and old-fashioned cat-fight filled slice-of-life (the osananajimi and the oneechan are constantly at each other's throats), and the protagonist is about as dense as they get (though part of that is that he is simply numb to anything more subtle than Haruko's blatant attempts to get him into bed with her). Though the game's title proclaims that this game is about his sister's disease, the reality is that, once it goes onto the heroine paths, it generally ends up being about his personal hangups when it comes to matters of affection and family. This isn't necessarily a bad thing. His parents rank up with the ten worst monster parents I've encountered in a VN (currently the twin tops are the father of Kaito from Akatsuki no Goei and the father of Suu Sasamaru from Kitto, Sumiwataru Asairo Yori mo ), and his past experiences definitely explain why he and Haruko are so interdependent (it is actually as bad as the twins from Yosuga no Sora that way... almost worse, really).
Kohime's path is the exception to the rule... by her very nature, Kohime is a free spirit, and she easily overcomes his relationship limitations... but in exchange, the conflict in her path is definitely a tear-jerker. Of course, it is also a familiar one to those who have played numerous VNs with Shinto kami heroines. Koihime's path falls into one of the classic tropes of such heroines, but it is executed pretty much perfectly. I honestly spent the last hour crying almost constantly... which is a good thing, because that is what I wanted.
Overall, this VN was highly emotionally satisfying, even if some aspects (such as Haruko's apathy toward anyone and everyone outside her small circle of people she met through Haruto and her insane jealousy... not to mention Haruto's denseness) were annoying as hell. At times, this game feels really 'old' to someone who has played most of the good VNs made in the last ten years (because it uses tropes like the constant catfights), but it was generally an enjoyable read.
This is a mini-VN planned by and written by Hino Wataru of Akatsuki Works, the company responsible for Ruitomo; Comyu; and Hello, Lady. It was released for free at the beginning of the month, and it is done in a style that feels a lot like one of those close-ended hour-long 'preview' OVAs that sometimes come out a few years in advance of a potential TV anime release (Noblesse, Beelzebub, Phantom, etc). In other words, it is done in the form of a single 'episode' in the life of the characters, serving as a prologue, and introducing characters and setting the stage for a future release or releases.
Something that should be noted in advance is that this VN mentions the characters from Ruitomo (without using their names) in the context of their relationship to the protagonist's 'grandmother' (Izuru). This is backed up by the fact that the protagonist, Akeno Yuuri, follows the same 'profession' that Izuru does... as a 'katariya' (the meaning doesn't really translate that well). Basically, those who master this profession have the ability to create intentional changes in others through words they speak (in most cases, these changes are dependent on the others' expectations or desires, from what Yuuri says). I won't go into any other details on this, because it is a spoiler. The protagonist gets mixed up with the Kouga family, which runs the area through his client.
Another aspect that should be noted in advance is that this VN reuses a lot of resources from previous games by Akatsuki Works... in particular the city backgrounds from Hello, Lady and various songs and sound effects from other games. For those that are bothered by this kind of thing... give up. The game is free, so AW recycling backgrounds, BGMs, and sound effects really isn't a big deal.
For those looking for a translation... don't bother. This VN utilizes so many subtle plays on kanji in its mere four hours in length that it even makes Ruitomo's text seem easy. If I were to try tling it without ruining it, I'd be pulling out my last few hairs inside a minute.
This VN is standard Hino Wataru in style... which means a lot of quirky characters, a protagonist who has a bad case of ennui and a tendency toward hedge philosophy, and a general sense that whatever is happening at the moment is the most important thing in the world while saying the opposite openly in the text, lol. I enjoy Hino Wataru, but for every person who likes him, there are two that hate him, so this VN will definitely pick its readers.
Action-wise, there are some nice scenes, which mostly seem to be designed to whet your appetite for more (again, I got this sense throughout the VN that they were advertising as much as trying to make a game).
The narrative is, of course, high quality... Hino Wataru was quite obviously enjoying himself when he wrote this (believe me, I can tell when a writer is just writing what he wants to write, versus what he has been paid oodles to write, haha), since Yuuri is the type of guy who will drive a lot of people crazy. He's a natural con artist with a heart of gold, a persona that changes from moment to moment, and a virulent hatred of soba noodles. He also spends a ridiculous amount of time being insulted by the girls who will probably end up being the heroines of whatever future game or games he stars in, lol.
While this isn't a VN of the Month candidate (as it is obviously intended to be a prelude or prologue to something else) it is nonetheless an enjoyable side-trip for me as I continue on my journey to avoid playing Sen no Hatou as long as possible *snickers*
Kokone is the strict but gentle 'older sister' of the group. She is very devoted to her duty, as well as to the safety and happiness of the 'family'. Her character archetype is really easily recognizable from the beginning, so I'm sure most will find it easy to understand her.
Her path, much like the two before it, starts from a split at the end of the next chapter. The events leading up to the split are - again - saddening and painful for the protagonist, and again he has to give up on his objective. The big difference is that the previous chapters have altered his way of thinking enough that he is able to give up more easily...
Again, her path is a straight charage path, utilizing the information built up in the main story as a background for a budding romantic relationship. I will say that I thought her path was more humorous than the other two (or rather, contained more humor).
Love, Vampire Flowers was one of the VNs I have been looking forward to, if only because Lovesick Puppies (by the same company) was such a hidden gem at the time. I won't say this approaches Lovesick Puppies for impact, because it doesn't. In comparison, it begins much more slowly and the problems tend to be more of the 'classic charage' type (well, the heroines' ones anyway). The big draw of this is that the protagonist is about as psychologically mature as you could hope for from a 'good guy' vampire, lol. Unfortunately, that very maturity is the cause of most of the boring parts of the early part of this VN. Not only that, but the makers of this VN indulged in a rather heroic effort to avoid getting to the point when it came to the common route, lol.
So far, I've played two heroine paths, Chris's and Rie's. About two thirds of the VN is repeated text (since the actual choice to cause a split-off is in the prologue, I'm unsure if it would be called a common route, lol). This is the main reason why I felt like they took forever getting to the point. To be honest, in the two paths I've played so far, the biggest disappointment has been the somewhat hurried nature of the heroine paths in comparison to the overly drawn out common route. There was room in this for a story with a lot more depth and impact, and the protagonist himself would have provided more than enough ingredients for this, even without the heroines' own personal issues.
That said, by charage standards, the heroine paths are quite good... it is just that there is so much potential in the setting that it can't help but be wasted on a 'normal charage'. This VN's setting would have made for a first-class nakige, if they'd gone for a heavier emphasis on emotional drama in general. I also felt that they misused the protagonist's flashbacks to his distant past, as the one in Chris's route would have fit a lot more in with Rie, considering her background. There were points where a clash of wills and ways of thinking should have occurred, logically speaking, but didn't, even though Haruto himself isn't exactly a weak-willed person.
Basically, it was my impression that they started out trying to create a truly dynamic protagonist to drive a more in-depth plot... but probably had to downsize everything except the common route, most likely due to budget constraints. There are hints all over the place that they meant to create a much deeper plot but for some reason didn't do so, and that is immensely frustrating for me, given my fondness for a good story.
I left these two to last for the simple reason that they were obviously intended to be the main heroines. As usual, my instincts for the intentions of a writer were correct. There is a significant difference, both in depth and in detail, between these two paths and those of the other two heroines. First, in both cases, the protagonist's past (though different parts of it) is revealed, and there is something approaching drama involved in the story. Second, the heroines themselves are much deeper when you get into the story.
That said, in terms of raw quality, this VN is nowhere near what I would have expected of this company after Reminiscence. While that VN had its problems, it also had an excellent degree of character development, with a depth to the scenario and setting that was very impressive, by any standard. If there had at least been something on the level of Aki's path in this VN, I would have been willing to forgive the abomination of Ruriko's and Kaede's paths... but both the other two paths were average-quality 'ojousama and lowborn' paths, with a few unusual twists due to the 'dark past' that made them slightly more interesting than usual.
I don't really have much left to say about this VN... it definitely isn't VN of the Month level quality. It too obviously is aiming for a sequel/story fandisc, and the protagonist is immensely disappointing (in the end, he turns out to be a 'normal guy' with a dark past and an insanely arrogant personality, rather than someone capable). I can honestly say it will be hard to look forward to anything else by this company if they continue to use the new artist and writer.
Naitou Tohru is the protagonist of Hapymaher and the character whose viewpoint you share for about 85% of the VN. He is a character whose personality and situation are defined by a sense of loss and guilt so painful, it has literally driven him to the brink of insanity. Oddly enough, the thing I find most admirable about him is the fact that is self-aware enough to actually rely on someone (most of the time) when he is at his limits and outside his specialty (which is altering/controlling his own dreams).
A few words about his situation without giving away anything that would ruin the story. If you know the concept of a 'lucid dream', you also know that it is a dream where you are aware you are dreaming (this often leads to you remembering more of it). In Tohru's case, he sees nothing but lucid dreams... which means that the barriers between reality and dreams in his consciousness are extremely blurry and he is incapable of 'resting' psychologically when he sleeps. He rarely, if ever receives what we would call 'restful sleep' without the aid of drugs that send him into utter insensibility, and in his dreams, he is capable of doing practically whatever he wants, in many cases.
Tohru's character can sometimes be seen as a symbol of self-control - as I said in my post on Maia - because he really does have a ridiculous level of self-control for someone still in his teens. He is not really that dense, though he often pretends to be out of self-defense. However, he has a lot of psychological hangups even in real life that have reinforced his somewhat blurry view of reality... ones he actually needs to maintain his mental and emotional balance, even if he realizes they are ridiculous.
Tohru's clear-eyed view of dreams can be seen as a contrast to his somewhat blurry view of reality, as he is almost always the first to realize when he and the other characters are dreaming and when they aren't... and what the nature of the dream is. To him, nightmares are everyday stuff, and he is so inured to the pain that accompanies them by experience that it would be tempting to see him as nerve-dead from the outside.
He does have his weaknesses, even in dreams, though... and their names are Saki and Maia. He is heavily dependent on Saki (self-evident within seconds of encountering her) and... holds other emotions towards Maia.
So what can I say? In another VN, I might seriously dislike him, because he is too aware of those around him to be your standard harem protagonist, but he does have some seriously admirable elements... such as a sense of compassion and good Samaritan-ism (limited to women most of the time) or his willingness to endure pain for the sake of others. However, he is also more than a little clumsy when it comes to handling those close to him and he frequently makes a wild boar look mild and easily moved.
Mmm... this month had a lot of fantasy, so it is probably normal I played more VNs this month than the last few... oh well.
Anyway, Renran Spirichu is the latest release from Parasol, a charage-specialist company. Umm... to be honest, I couldn't bring myself to do more than one path of this game, and the one path I did was Botan's (the catgirl). This game's premise is fairly terrible, with girl exorcists possessing breasts in direct proportion to their spiritual power. Not only that, but the protagonist screws three of the heroines in the common route out of necessity (the reason is pretty par for the course).
I'm going to be straight with you... this game makes a number of pathetic attempts to be funny, all of which fall flat. The best part of this game is the ichaicha, and, considering I'm not an ichaicha fan, that tells you just how bad it is. Oh, there is a story... but you have to dig through so much filler material to get to it that it is exhausting to read. The heroines are all deredere by the end of the common route, and the only real difference the path seems to make is which one he focuses on *sighs*
Anyway, this isn't something I can seriously recommend, even to charage-lovers...
I'll start out saying this. The primary reason I hadn't played this up until now was because the concept just sounded so silly on paper, no matter how many times I read it. I mean, making sex toys as a gameplay element? Seriously? However, I don't regret playing this game in any sense of the word, and it escapes being a nukige despite the concept.
First, the gameplay... There are two major aspects to the gameplay, a phase where you research and make sex toys as well as other daily activities (such as expanding facilities or conducting general research with a heroine) and a battle phase that pops up at irregular times. The battle phase is a card-based system (with random draws) based off of rock-paper-scissors where you deal damage to an enemy based on your character's stats plus the number on the cards. You can combine the three types of cards in a combo that both increases hits and damage, and the first card in the combo decides whether it is rock, paper, or scissors. To an extent, the battles are based on luck, so you shouldn't expect to be able to win at all times. The 'daily life' gameplay focuses on the creation of sex toys and the handing over of lost technology to your company's partner/parent company in order to increase their share of the market. The basic objective is to put together 500,000,000 yen in earnings (put together from bonuses for handing over tech and the sales of sex toys you researched and put into production) and gain a total of a 70% share of the market so you can do a hostile takeover of the SHE corporation.
The story is so intimately connected to the gameplay that I couldn't help but be impressed at how they supplemented one another. I had to rofl at the sex toy H-scenes (they range from the bizarre to the psychotic), and there was just enough slice-of-life to give you a strong impression of all the characters (and heroines) without becoming tedious. The story itself was fairly awesome, with the nature and future of artificial intelligence and scientific ethics as major themes. I honestly enjoyed both the main story and the ideas behind it, and I didn't manage to get bored at any time during the course of the game (I pulled an all-nighter to finish it and I just woke up after two hours of sleep). To be honest, I don't have anything significant to complain about, storywise, with this game, though I could have wished for a non-bad Kuon ending (I got all the Teria and Fam endings - non-human heroines banzai!!!).
This is a good VN for someone who wants a good balance between the comedic and the serious in a gameplay-based VN that is relatively easy to master. There are a few too many H-scenes, but considering the concept, there were actually a lot fewer than I expected.
Why did I pick this game to play? Because, when I went into Shugaten, I was actually wanting a bit of charage goodness. So, it seriously pissed me off when I got a mindless loli moege. As a result, I decided to pull out one of my favorite fetish games, Otomimi Infinity.
Otomimi Infinity is based on island in a world where beast-people and humans live side by side (it isn't mentioned often enough to reinforce this, but the beast-people were originally artificial creations). On the island, prejudice against the beast-people has gotten so bad that a right-wing politician has managed to get a segregation law passed. The protagonist, Segawa Yamato, is a beast-girl loving guy (in the sexual sense, and not limited to their humanoid forms, lol) who gets seriously pissed off at the new law. After a series of events, he ends up working for Otomimi Transport, a company that basically takes care of shipping packages all over the island and from the mainland. This company is all beast-girls, except for him... (so naturally, he is in heaven)
There are a lot of laughs in this game... in particular the pirate group led by Sango (a side-character shark-girl) and Dr. Forest (real name: Hakumi), a mad scientist who keeps trying to use her high-tech AI android to steal bbq meat from Otomimi Transport's trucks (and failing miserably) stand out as absolutely hilarious. Not to mention the company's 'mascot', Akuta (which uses the kanji for 'garbage'), a do-M AI implanted in a fat squirrel stuffed animal who can't resist making perverted statements.
I was also surprised in retrospect at how seriously the game handles the elements of prejudice... and the negative elements of Japan's society that show through. The position of the beast-people is pretty weak, mostly because the average beast-person isn't that good at thinking before acting (those that are are the exception, rather than the rule). Humans call them 'worthless burdens on society' (it bears an eerie resemblance to the attitude of the US right-wingers to immigrants) and it was apparently really easy to get the segregation law passed. Also, falling in love with a beast-person and vise-versa is considered perverted, lol.
Anyway, as well as jokes there are some good feels in here... as well as some really good endings (considering that this was written by the same guy who wrote Shikigami, Shiden, and Pretty X Cation 2, that is actually pretty surprising). For some reason, fetish games sometimes have stories a lot more interesting than the average VN, lol.
The game's heroines are:
Chachako- A clumsy and airheaded dog-girl who somehow always manages to land on her feet, anyway.
Tetora- A tiger-girl who is a scientific genius but categorically incapable of admitting when she doesn't know something or is wrong... or when she is lost (she has no sense of direction).
Kon- A fox-girl whose first love in life is teasing others and getting her way through fast talk. She is highly intelligent and has a solid grasp of people in general.
Hanemi- A bunny-girl who gets lonely ridiculously easy... and is a speed-demon whenever she gets behind the wheel or control stick of any vehicle whatsoever (thankfully, she is also a genius at using them).
Chizuru- The protagonist's older sister... who has an insane, obsessive brother complex that extends to waiting half-naked in his bed and stalking him whenever she isn't running the family corporation.
Mayoi- A cat-girl and the game's 'true' heroine. She is a lazy gamer who hates working, has a foul mouth, and who only really cares about the people working at Otomimi Transport.
Overall, this is a VN for people who love their mimikko. My first fetish was neko-girls and my second was kitsune, so naturally this game fits me well. It also has a good, well-told story with a fun set of characters even if you ignore the heroines.
*pukes a river of sugar*
*wipes his mouth clean*
Ok, I'm better. This game is very much what you would expect if you came in knowing nothing of Lump of Sugar's past works and only knew the name of the company itself. It is sugary sweet, adorable, and generally interminable to someone who likes a nice balance between the cuteness and ichaicha and other aspects of a VN.
That's not to say it doesn't have good points... the common route is pretty funny, if you are a cat lover, and I can honestly say the heroines are attractive, though not all are my type. I will also be frank that I only played one path (and it was long), Tsuki's path. I only played one because, by the time the path was over, I was dealing with ichaicha overdose symptoms (including a headache and a desperate urge to go to sleep).
Understand, I could see from the beginning what type of game this would be, but mimikko girls are my primary fetish, so there was no way I wouldn't at least try to play it. If it had merely been a standard charage with a standard-length route and a standard level of ichaicha, I probably would have had a better end impression. Instead I got a game that had me plowing through literally hours worth of ichaicha in the heroine path before the atmosphere changed and there was some nakige drama that I couldn't fully enjoy because of how tired I was.
If you want a game with an excessively fluffy atmosphere and a large amount of ichaicha scenes, this is a good choice. Otherwise, there are better games out there, lol.
I'm not going to go into detail like I did with Sumi's path, if only because my love for youkai isn't fulfilled to the same degree in Alice's or Natsuha's paths as it was in that one. Also, another reason is that the progression for both is far less dramatic than it is with Sumi's path.
In Alice's case, the actual events leading up to the end of the main story are really dark and sad, and the path itself tends to be quite a bit more gloomy than the other two. In exchange, there is a lot more focus on the romantic aspects and the 'living together' parts. This is, in many ways, inevitable due to the fact that the bond between Sumi and Tohru was so strong from the beginning that the romance was pretty much predetermined in vector once they got over a few small issues. This is opposed to Alice's path, where both sides have a lot off growing to do... which is done mostly in the after story, rather than the main path. Similar to Sumi's path, this one had a few extra characters added in (whom I will not name in order to avoid spoilers), and as a result, the after story felt a lot like its own VN.
In Natsuha's case... you can probably predict the main path from the original game based entirely off what you experienced in the others (the different regrets the protag has in both cases), as in many ways it is like a bringing together of the ideal elements from the other two in order to create a more complete whole. It does have the predictable incest issue, but once you are past that, you are into the after story. Natsuha's after story has the least number of ups and downs of the three, at least in part because there is none of the tension about 'what needs to be done' leftover from the main path, save for the obvious. I did find Natsuha's dreams for the future interesting, and I would have liked to see them achieved as part of the after story... but that is because the after story pretty much felt like a VN in and of itself, lol.
Overall, my thoughts on this VN are positive, save for the fact that there are a huge number of H-scenes (something like seventy) - though most are optional ones that can only be seen through scene jumps - and the fact that the makers were so obviously indulging their disease. I also was a bit exasperated that all three heroines are such... perverts once the protag gets them behind closed doors (just how weird do these guys want their lolis to be?). The VN itself is huge... about the same or maybe a bit longer than Grisaia no Kajitsu. Also, I wish the protagonist had Emi with Sumi regardless of the path (lol)... a little girl that adorable deserves to be born.
WARNING: This VN is unapologetically a lolige, as I said above. I am not a loli fan, so I found that to be one of the biggest barriers to enjoying this VN. I would have been a lot happier with no h-scenes being present in this particular VN.
My name is Clephas, and I am a pervert.
lol, just kidding... or not. Considering how long I've been playing eroge, I'm definitely a pervert. However, that isn't really what this post is about.
When I look at the VNs for a month, the first thing I look for are chuunige, then fantasy/sci-fi, and then non-human heroines (though the last two are interchangeable depending on my mood). The distant fourth is an interesting protagonist, the fifth is an interesting heroine (if I don't find any of the heroines interesting in setting or character description after eliminating the factors above, I generally have trouble picking the game up).
Why do I love nonhumans...? It is pretty much the only 'romantic' part left in my body.
To be frank, I don't believe in or trust romance. I firmly believe that romance is a lie we tell ourselves so we can ignore the fact that we are being driven by our body's desire for children and the resulting psychological hunger for a close partner. That might seem like a cynical way to think of things, and I don't think about things like that while I'm playing. However, when it is over or before I start? Always.
I like the strange, the weird, the warped, the unusual... what is the point of telling a story if it is about the girl next door? If I want to know about the girl next door, I'll walk over and say hello. I love power trips, I like heroines with different instincts and outlooks, and I like heroines who simply don't share mine or the protagonist's culture.
I love heroines who have lived hundreds of years. I like heroines that used to be animals. I am deeply fond of vampire heroines. I could go on forever about this.
The fact is, we are shaped by our experiences, and a heroine that has had some seriously unusual experiences is generally far more interesting than a heroine who grew up next door and comes to visit every morning.
This is actually the main reason why I find it difficult to comprehend racism on a gut level... though I can comprehend it on the anthropological and sociological studies level.
This is also why I hate 'nerfed' nonhuman heroines. Need to have a vampire heroine attend school? Make her a unique 'daywalker' or have vampires not worry about the sun in the first place. Need to have a succubus be safe around men? Make it so she only needs regular food and the seduction thing is just an ability (these are both actual examples, incidentally). You have an immortal heroine? Make sure she gives up that immortality in her route so that the protagonist doesn't have to worry about being outlived by his wife (ugh, I mean, ugh. Sometimes that works, but most of the time it is a let down).
Thanks for reading this random ramble, lol.
A simple question, with the poll closing at the stroke of midnight Monday morning US Central time. Which VN do you want me to play first? Honestly, there is no chance whatsoever of me playing anything else before at least one of these two, so feel free to make your decision based on which you are most interested in.
For those who aren't aware of the games:
Tayutama 2 is the direct sequel to the original game, based off of Mashiro's ending as canon. The main heroine is one of Mashiro's Tayutai followers and it is based fifty years after the original. Those who have read the original will have certain knowledge about the future past this point, but I don't think it is directly relevant in this case.
Sen no Hatou is August's latest game. I don't know if anybody here ever pays attention to my comments on this company... but in my mind this company represents both some of the best and worst aspects of high-budget VN makers... their VNs tend to start well, be interesting in the middle, and flop flat on their faces at the end. This applies to all of the VNs I've played by this company, and it is the reason why I don't list any of their VNs amongst my top fifty, despite their visual and narrative quality. To be blunt, the ending portions of their VNs are almost inevitably... weak even if you include the climax. So, left to my own devices I probably would have put this VN off until I could read a few reviews and see whether I should go in with high expectations or not. However, this VN is the most hyped one for the last third of the year, so I can't really justify not playing it right away. So, it goes in as one of the two first candidates for the month.
