Clephas
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Nukige that are also worthwhile romantic-wise: Erect; Sakura Iro Quartet; Prima Stella; Sara Sara Sasara
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32 minutes ago, kotorizawa724 said:
Thanks for the quick (and detailed) response! This is great and I will look into these.
Speaking to your first sentence, why is it that tone work's is kind of in a league of their own? I've heard others express this opinion before, and I find it baffling that no company has attempted to compete with tone work's' style? (I've also heard that tone work's is kind of in bad shape right now and has no prospective games on the horizon . . . is that true?)
It needs to be understood that the mainstream of romance/slice-of-life as a genre (often referred to as moege/charage in the case of JVNs) are games that run around ten to twenty hours for a native reader. To put that into perspective, Tone Works games, to complete all the paths, are expected to hit 40 to 60 hours depending on an individual's reading speed. Because of the size of their games (which meant more cg artwork, more lines written, more development time, etc) it cost them more to make them than the rest of the industry. In addition, mainstream readers were not necessarily interested in extensive heroine routes that run well into adulthood. This meant fewer sales and a longer development cycle.
Making things worse is the collapse of the JVN market that began around 2019 and was massively accelerated by Covid-19 (and the financial impact it had on the people who normally bought those games) and you have a post-Covid JVN market that has MAYBE three non-nukige VN releases per month (there are times when it is only one)... and most of those are not comparable with games before covid in most cases.
To further put that into perspective, at the height of the JVN market, it wasn't uncommon for nine or ten non-nukige VNs to get released in a single month. They wouldn't necessarily be good, but there was usually something worth mentioning coming out.
Tone Works went silent shortly after it made its final release (a repackaging of Hoshi Ori) halfway through the epidemic, and it hasn't done anything since.
A lot of companies suffered a similar fate during the epidemic, making final releases then going quiet, their sites vanishing or lacking any activity whatsoever as their parent companies likely made hard decisions to cut staff and projects to save money.
Edit: There is hope for the company itself, since its parent is still alive. However, I wouldn't hold out much hope for the original staff as a whole, as they were probably let go or redistributed to its other subsidiaries.
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34 minutes ago, kotorizawa724 said:
I want to get into more romance VN/eroge but am very picky about art quality. I really like the art of all the tone work's games (e.g., Hatsukoi, Hoshi Ori Yume Mirai, Gin'iro Haruka, etc.), and I like the scenarios for those games as well. I thought these would be a dime a dozen but I'm shocked I haven't been able to find more games like this to my liking.
I'm currently playing Windmill Cosmos' Ichizuna Kanojo to Koi Shitai (both Kyoka and Runa versions) and I LOVE the art for these games. Exactly what I'm looking for when I say something comparable to tone work's. Unfortunately, this company has only put out these two games so far (and the art of the parent company's games is not nearly as good imo).
I would prefer a modern Japan setting, but really anything realistic is fine. I'm not really into fantasy, action, etc. But may be willing to make an exception if the art/romance is really good.
I also don't need the games to be translated. I read VN for Japanese study and want to play the games in the original.
Any recommendations fitting this criteria would be appreciated!
It needs to be said that Tone Works is pretty much the only company that has ever done romance VNs as extensive and detailed as their games. It is the reason why they have such a solid following.
In terms of artwork, 80% of all slice-of-life commercially-made games have that quality of artwork (it is pretty much standard for the course) post-2012. Except for nitpicking details, there really isn't anything to choose from.
Komorebi no Nostalgica comes to mind, for sheer emotional impact and depth of the romance. However, it also has a philosophical aspect that some people might have trouble with, so I'll leave the choices to you.
Haru to Yuki is also a good choice, if you don't mind it being generally somber in atmosphere. The romance is highly emotional but if you don't want a fantasy element in the story, you should go elsewhere. (more like this is if you don't mind it, otherwise I won't barrage you with suggestions of the same type)
Soshite Hatsukoi ga Imouto ni Naru, Shunki Gentei Poco a Poco, and Love Rec by Alcot are straight-out slice-of-life romances that draw out the emotions.
Natsuiro Recipe is 'comfort food' slice-of-life romance based in a Japanese country setting.
Any game by Clochette will have good romance and humorous character interactions, with various levels of fantasy or sci-fi depending on the game.
If you are in the mood for tragic romance in a unique future setting, Sakura, Sakimashita is an excellent choice. It is based in a future where people discovered how to become ageless using genetic engineering, and where all humans have the right to become so. However, due to the appearance of a planet-destroying asteroid, the previously ageless 'tokoshie' people (including the protagonist and the heroines) are forced to face the reality of their own mortality, while they seek to make the best of the time they have left.
Lovesick Puppies
Izayoi Fortuna
Hana no No ni Saku Utakata no
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明けましておめでとうございます。
Happy new year.
@#!%$&$%^*&(#$$#! *returns to his true form and screeches the new year's greetings while waving his billions of planet-wide tentacles excitedly*
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Hatsuru Koto Naki Mirai Yori
Ayakashibito (fantl)
Nanairo Reincarnation (if you don't mind some bittersweet endings and some guro mixed in here and there)
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3 hours ago, SOLIDSNACK said:
Wow, that sounds awesome! Unfortunately (for me) the art style is a little off (for me). Doesn't hit that barbarian style exactly, like you said. Thanks a bunch for suggesting though! Still on the hunt. I have come across a couple of RPG's but I'll not post them since they are not VN's. Guin Saga is the only adventure game I have come across that's barbarian so far, and the dang game is locked behind a text parser!
To be frank, most of the styles currently used in VNs heavily lean toward either being excessively cartoonish or anime-style. Neither of those is really what you are looking for. I figured you would prefer a hulking protagonist (like Conan) but there honestly aren't many of that type in all of the VN world from what I've seen. The main reason I recced Grasesta was because it was also a situation that would probably hit the spot with Conan fans, since the protagonist gets taken as a slave and forced to fight waves of monsters in a city where the strong rule and the weak are used up.
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It looks like Shizuku and Kizuato are available on DMM, but their DRM and IP restrictions are so finicky I wouldn't bother...
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https://vndb.org/v23199/chars#chars
Pretty sure this protagonist qualifies. He's from a destroyed barbarian tribe, and he is a slave fighter for the first half of the game. Dunno if he'll hit your Conan fetish though.
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1 minute ago, BUGA said:
I’ll look into an emulator to see if I can salvage my loss. I am not to pc savvy, but I will do my due diligence. But yes, I do have my locale and system language to Japanese. I left the display language to English.
I will now take all this into account if I decide to purchase another degenerate game lol. Makes sense for older titles to just be left behind when there are 50 more just like it.
This particular fetish at least on VNBD does not have many new releases, it seems erogamescape at least to me has the better list, I find links to games on dlsite that don’t pop up on google when you enter them manually.
Lastly, if it’s not much trouble I have another issue where I bought a game from “DMM” Fanza Games.
They want me to install this program, which is fine by itself. But it’s on an unsecured website, it’s the official link to the game. I asked someone about this particular problem and they said they ran into no problems despite downloading the same software. I am on the other assuming if download anything from that site I am at risk. Thoughts?
DMM in general is a problematic website. They randomly decide not to sell things to westerners for a time, going so far as to ip-block us, only to suddenly let us back in to buy their stuff, only to not let us use it. I honestly don't recommend buying anything from DMM.
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1 hour ago, BUGA said:
First, thank you for the information and fast response kindly.
This is rather unfortunate I suppose there is no recourse within means to be able to run the game? For future purposes where can I find this information on vndb so that I don’t end up in a similar situation?
Obvious solution is an emulator for an earlier form of Windows. I'd suggest 7 or XP, given when it came out.
As for solutions for game engines, the only real advice I can give you is stick to games made after 2014 or ones made by popular companies. The one you picked was an obscure game by a defunct minor company that seems to have gone out of business before 2016, which means it didn't even make it to the Covid era... To check for engines, you can either check the game's official website (the engine is often listed there) or click the releases for the game and look to see if the game engine is listed.
Thankfully for you, there are plenty of nukige of this type that have come out in recent years (for some reason milfs made a huge comeback in the last three years after years of being ignored) so this particular fetish is covered. I guess the nukige community has regressed to the point where they have an Oedipus Complex...?
The big problem with older nukige is that no one bothers to find solutions for fixing problems with them, since more nukige come out every year than every other genre combined. Even if you ask for help, it is unlikely anyone will have a solution with this type of game if you couldn't find it elsewhere.
Oh, just in case... did you make sure your locale is set to Japan and your system language to Japanese? I didn't mention this solution earlier because it is the general assumption that that is the first thing everyone tries...
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First, the reason behind the error is probably simply that the game's engine has some kind of incompatibility with your operating system. The game is originally from 2010, and it looks like they didn't use a familiar engine, which probably means it is one of the random engines from that time or one they coded themselves (if it was a famous one like kirikiri, realive or siglus, it would have been listed on the vndb page).
The error itself is a generic one that pops up sometimes when JVNs fail to activate due to incompatibilities, saying 'An error during initial setup. The script file cannot be found.' It's not a terribly unusual sight of late, since some of the updates a few years ago to Windows 10 rendered some older VNs completely incompatible. Windows 11 is even worse.
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Hello, Lady- Narita Shinri is nothing if not confident, though he is more than a bit of a pervert. His other side is that of a ruthless avenger.
Tokyo Babel- Written by Higashide Yuuichirou, it is one of the few high-quality VNs of the type that have been translated. It is all-ages (no ero content) and heavy on the action. Protagonist is the type that punishes himself constantly for his past. Basic story is that God started squishing all the parallel worlds, closed off Hell and Heaven, and a portion of the angels and demons got together to guide humans through Purgatory (that is combined with a fake version of Tokyo) to Jacob's Ladder.
Hatsuru Koto Naki Mirai Yori- Also from Front Wing, just like Grisaia. Protagonist is a WWII Zero pilot who is doing a kamikaze attack on a US ship when he suddenly finds himself in another world. Generally good story with Grisaia-style comedy, though it is heavier on the violence.
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42 minutes ago, NowItsAngeTime said:
I just realized I have quite a lot of visual novels I've stalled or have been considering dropping and I'd rather finish these before getting more new ones. Just been having trouble getting motivation for any of them. Looking/ hoping for any user to provide me any motivation for any of these VNs to continue because I'd rather not let them go to waste.
Hapymaher - this is the only English purple soft VN I've not even read a single route of. The lucid dream theme seems interesting, but none of the characters have been particularly likeable yet, but I don't think I met them all. Maybe like three of them
Nanairo reincarnation- I heard that there's surprisingly good drama, but I just can't get over the stupid setting of demons living in your house thing
Chrono clock - I only finished DD's route and I was heavily disappointed. I heard that the clock rewinding gimmick is heavily underutilized in other routes and the other non-DD heroines haven't particularly interested me
Hello lady! - please tell me the main character stops the dumb groping shenanigans. When he gropes the black hair girl the way beginning that immediately pissed me off. Which sucks because the story seems interesting enough
That's a lot of complaints... but I'll answer your questions and/or state the attraction or primary audience for each.
Hapymaher- Hapymaher has three things going for it. 1) The soundtrack. There are maybe three VNs I've read in all my years that have a BGM soundtrack that manages to reach the feet of Hapymaher. 2) The atmosphere that mixes sorrow and despair with the surreality of a dream. 3) Catharsis: The primary attraction of all nakige is that you can let stuff out by crying vicariously for the characters. I'll be blunt, if you don't do this, you have no business playing or assessing nakige at all.
Nanairo Reincarnation- Nanairo Reincarnation mixes bloody horror, everyday life, and nakige elements into a single story. If you are getting hung up on the oni (oni are not truly demon analogues despite what some careless translators think), you probably are obsessing over the wrong thing. If you care about the oni issue so much, I'll go ahead and note what they actually are (which you have to finish the old girlfriend's path to find out). Check the spoiler box if you want to:
SpoilerFirst, oni in this setting are the same as ghosts at the core. The fundamental differences are that: 1) They can inflict their physical presence upon the world to some extent, 2) They need sustenance to sustain their self-awareness 3) They are bound to their master through a contractual obligation. That family's oni are essentially shards of the current head's spirit combined with shards of the source oni's spirit to create a new oni, with the blood or semen used to create them serving as a physical catalyst for them to be able to interact with the physical world. The founder of the family was an onmyouji who couldn't bear to let go of his wife's ghost, so he bound her using a technique that turned her into an oni. All oni from then on originate from her as the original oni, passed down through the generations in the same manner as the beginning of this story. Last of all, the reason most oni die with their master is that it is the only way to properly return their souls to the wheel of reincarnation. If they are left free, they are damned to eventually fade away or turn into dark spirits like some ghosts do.
Chrono Clock- Purple Soft has two types of stories, one where you are primarily supposed to cry over the characters' plights and be freed by them overcoming them or solving the problem, and the other where there is some kind of central story that doesn't focus on emotional catharsis. Chrono Clock is solidly in the latter area. TBH, to this day I don't understand why Chrono Clock got priority for localization when Purple Soft had so many better games, but as weaker plotge go it is one of the better ones.
Hello Lady- To answer your question, he does the groping thing to every girl once. He also obsesses over oppai no matter what, but no matter the path he becomes more serious and focused once you get to the first turning point (after the party, when you end up rapidly making choices to direct to a heroine path).
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16 hours ago, Erogamer said:
I get it, I am against crappy translations, but the sad thing is that I have seen some MTL's that were better than "official" translations. ChatGPT I am not familiar with, but it looks better than standard MTL. I just think Zaka came off a little harsh.
Most of the early Mangagamer translations were MTL... until they redid most of them (Edelweiss's original localization was an abomination). The biggest improvement in MTL is in the English grammar, not the actual translation, from what I can see. Before, the mtls would try so hard to translate stuff directly that the results were garbled word spaghetti.
MTL is completely useless for turns of phrase, proverbs, idioms, and the like, and it still screws up the subject of sentences roughly 60% of the time from what I can see. On the other hand, most localizers and fantls are just as bad on the former. The latter is mostly because Japanese prose and dialogue heavily overuse implied subjects and pronouns. Essentially, a decent translation of a scene requires the translator to comprehend the entirety of the context of the scene up until the line in question, which is where MTL seems to fail the most drastically. At the same time, most English-speakers share a similar problem, as English grammar doesn't use implied subjects, though the use of pronouns in place of names and the like is normal. From what I can tell, this is why decent manual translations consistently beat out even the most advanced MTL.
The best option would to be to make a specialized MTL setup for translating prose, but that isn't likely to happen anytime soon.
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I don't know about short ones, but Baldr Sky's steam version is all-ages and Tokyo Babel is as well. The downside is that they are both fairly long VNs.
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8 hours ago, Epschy said:
Writers, how can I avoid being a sponge?
I've noticed that my writing style is highly influenced by whatever work I most recently read. This is true, for example, in my most recent novel, which has a lot of slapstick comedy even though I hate novels or animes that uses this element. The VN I've read before writing this work was SMEE's Fureraba - a moe, kusoge, with the same kind of comedy I used in my work.
I would definitely like to avoid having my writing style being affected this way, but to have a solid writing, or to be adaptable.
Am I the only who suffers from this? Is there anything I can do to avoid this? (Note: I've read 60 light novel volumes and 6 regular novels in my life. Maybe my problem is having read few books?)
It is perfectly normal to channel other people's styles or try to absorb the best parts of them. To be blunt, completely unique styles aren't that common anymore, so it isn't really being a sponge. It's learning from your predecessors. If you feel bad about it, just acknowledge them when you self-publish.
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*Clephas causes an army of nekololi ninjas to manifest atop a gigantic altar surrounded by green flames and commit seppuku to call forth their abyssal master, however only silence is returned.*
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One place where AI tools will probably shine is in artwork. To be blunt, the only thing that stands out in AI-made games so far is the visual shine. If you just want visual perfection, nothing does it like an AI. On the other hand, if you want visual brilliance, it will probably be reliant on actual artists until the first AIs gain self-awareness and human independence vanishes forever, lol.
Oh and AI-made games' writing is...terrifyingly bland and informative without showing any signs of creative flair whatsoever. You'd think that with all the examples of top-quality writing out there, the base quality would be at least slightly better, but it hovers around just below mediocre.
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1 hour ago, Novel21 said:
What really, so it's not much different from anime. I'm going to give it a try anyway.
Never said it was bad, it is actually a gem. I just thought the H was - typical of a lot of that era's VNs - intrusive and excessive at times. I also tend to prefer VNs where the protagonist is the central role or at the very least equal with the heroine on all levels. While there are a few paths (in the fandisc and in the main game) where he is central, the one that is considered canon has him being basically a side-character.
If I had to compare this game to another one, it would be Aokana, because Aokana was modeled after it in concept. This game is executed better though.
Edit: I used to make wall of text posts about stuff like this, but I just don't have that kind of energy in me anymore.
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I've seen the AI-generated games that are popping up on DLsite, and I even played a few. My first thought after doing so was... boredom. They look beautiful and technically hit the fetish points of those trying to play them, but they somehow manage to be completely bland and soulless nonetheless.
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4 hours ago, LAsuka said:
Games are excessively long and padded out because writers are paid based on the number of lines they write.
Even if you feel "every scene is necessary" or if you feel the VN is too short, that's because the writer did a very good job masking the fluff, and making the fluff seem "integral" to the story, when in actual fact, it adds absolutely no value, and is the writer just pulling ideas from (for lack of a better term) his ass. But hey, if you thought the fluff was good, more power to you. The work exists for the reader, after all.
Translators are the ones paid by the word, symbols or lines. While there might be VN writers out there paid by the line, most of the time when someone hires a writer it is either based on time or by the project. The company either pays a by the hour salary for time spent in office on the project or a single lump sum to contract for the project. I have only been hired with a by word count on three occasions in the last twenty years, since it is usually a recipe for contract disputes on both sides.
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23 hours ago, Zalor said:
Interesting that you say that most VNs are too short. I feel like VNs are awfully padded out a lot of the time. Instead of showing us what's necessary, they'll beat us with the same SOL dynamics for ages and consider that "character development." That said, I completely agree with you on Dies Irae. I feel like Ange doesn't like the work (which in and of itself is fine), but used the video as an excuse to bash on it without sticking to the topic at hand.
I should also add that the writing in Dies Irae's fight scenes is superb and I couldn't disagree more with this take from the video. It's about one of the few VNs where I actually go back time to time and reread the fights.
His comment about plotge being too padded/long is the one I was referring to. Mindless SOL and repeated dating scenes are unnecessary fluff even in SOL games, because they often don't do anything for the character dynamics or character development, which is supposed to be the point. I tend to subconsciously ignore that type of VN now that I don't feel like I have to play them all the time.
Generally speaking, even in a romance SOL VN, you only need one or at the most two dating scenes that don't lead into drama or the conflict of the path. However, some companies (Yuzusoft comes to mind) include way too many date scenes (not to mention interminably long h-scenes), resulting in a lot of unnecessary padding. To be blunt, it might sound counter-intuitive, but I often thought of dating as non-SOL content, because (unless the characters are married or the characters have had numerous lovers) dating is a deliberate departure from daily life, a low-level stress-test for romantic relationships because 'dating' has been so beautified in anime culture.
Despite jokes about cutting Kasumi's path (a lot of fans make that joke), there is very little you could cut from Dies Irae without weakening it. Dies Irae is a detail-oriented VN in the sense that every detail has its place in the story, right down to the deliberately exaggerated personalities of the main characters on both sides of the conflict.
Similarly, I can't see a reason to cut anything out of Muv-Luv Alternative (though Muv-luv itself could have done with a major trim).
Hoshi Ori Yume Mirai and the other games by that company actually base their appeal an their extremely detailed romance from high school to full adulthood, developing the relationship and having numerous tribulations. In that sense, I give that company kudos, because it got them a solid fanbase. However, it doesn't appeal to the people who want 'quick in, quick out' SOL romances like Wagamama High Spec.
Another thing that needs to be accounted for is reading speed. Even in English, there are people who simply don't read that quickly and those who read excessively fast. For me, completing an 800 page paperback novel in six hours is normal, but for most people that is the work of weeks of scattered reading or several days of concentrated reading. The disparity is inevitably going to lead to differing opinions and preferences for VN length and narration styles.
Someone who takes ten minutes to read a page in a novel probably isn't going to like a narrated battle scene that goes on for the equivalent of forty pages. Whereas for me it is simply entertaining.
Not to mention those VN fans who work full time aren't going to have enough free time to really enjoy a VN like Dies Irae even if they have an average or slightly above average reading speed. For someone like that, the wordiness of a game like Dies Irae isn't something to relish but something that eats into their free time more than they think is necessary.
... why am I defending my opponents? Stupid fairness brain...
Romance VN/eroge with art/writing quality comparable to tone work's (+ modern Japan setting preferable)
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Posted
No, it is more that nukige that actually have something approaching a romance story stopped existing shortly afterward. The two 'umbrella genres' only became more and more strictly split as time passed. There weren't that many hybrids in the first place, but at some point they just started specializing.