Clephas

... grinding is nonexistent, in any real sense, in Suikoden as a series... five battles and you can level up your characters to about where they need to be to clear an area. The real trick is picking runes that fit the characters and (in the case of 3 and above) picking the skills to increase. The bosses aren't easy, but there are only a few in each game that seriously give you a run for your money if you haven't prepared.

*Clephas watches over the discussion with a benevolent smile on his face and a human foot sticking out of the corner of his mouth*

lol... I can generally remember the entire scenario, if I see the first few scenes. That makes replaying them pure hell though. Very few VNs are interesting enough to play all the way through twice for me...

Before I passed the hundred mark, I still remembered practically everything about the ones I loved, but once I got past there... I got to the point where I mostly recalled impressions and basic plot flow, except for the best ones in the group.

To be blunt, one of the functions of VNs as a medium is that in most cases, the reader is intended to get behind the eyes of the protagonist, to one extent or another. With this protagonist, that is an incredibly unpleasant experience. It really is as simple as that.

I know they were disbanded... but we can hope, can't we?

More games that aren't nukige that is...

lol, one thing that never stops being funny: New people asking if a random game they took a random interest in will get a translation. But to answer your question... pre-2006 games rarely even get a project started, much less a complete translation. Part of this is because most new VN-readers are less interested in the earlier eras, when stories were mostly weaker (with huge exceptions like Tsukihime and YU-NO) and nukige/rapege/tentaclerapege composed better than 99% of all VNs (whereas they only consist of 70% or so now, haha)

He's only really interesting in the ending parts of some of the heroine paths and in the Terra path... in the rest he is just another second-rate chuuni student protagonist.

Yeah... we really need Suikoden VI... and not that pansy-ass shit they pulled with the DS knock-offs. Suikoden games should be full of brutal empires, genocide, political struggles, and war... they shouldn't be 'save the world' stories.

http://www.rpgamer.com/news/Q2-2014/042214e.html I don't know if any of you are fans of the series, but this is one of my favorite jrpgs of all time. I'd pretty much given up on it ever appearing in digital form, but...

I got my younger brother to play and love Cross Channel, but nothing else, lol.

He's annoying and the common route is very, very weak.

School Days has a number of problems... but the fact that the bad route is the only one that is in the least bit interesting and the protag is a worthless dirtbag kind of made it inevitable that it would gather hate.

I could start spouting here about how rights come with obligations... but this isn't a class on philosophy.

My collection is at 153 as of the fifteenth. I keep the packages unopened though... I've got so many imported jrpgs in my backlog as well... I'll be straight with yall. When it comes to VNs, I believe in paying if you can. If you can't... I won't presume to judge, unless it is with officially localized games. Also, resurrecting the piracy convo on this forum... I honestly don't think it is in good taste. I love Aaeru, but she and I have greatly differing ideas when it comes to economics. Edit: My feelings on the localized games come from all the years before I got a job, when I shaved every cent I could off my allowance (I wasn't allowed to work part-time by my parents) to save up for games I wanted. I valued those games greatly, and I enjoyed the good ones all the more for the lunches I didn't eat and the books I avoided buying in order to save up for them. I know that people habitually upload the localized games on torrents, but if you have the money or can save up the money for them, you should pay.

Trinity edition includes all three Akagoei games. I played it originally as separate discs/games. The Trinity version includes all three games in a single install, with a single startup application.

Suzu has to be done last. Other than that, do as you wish.

Just finished Hapymaher Fragmentation Dream (the fandisc/sequel). First, this is something of a true sequel, based off of the canon ending to the story. It wraps up all the loose ends, provides after-stories for the other endings (seen as 'parallel worlds'), and

A few issues... 1. There is no such thing as a VN with gameplay that is short 2. Games with lots of choices disrupt the story in a lot of cases, weakening it or making it less interesting. 3. Short VNs tend to suck outright

To be honest, other than the initial genre-direction I did in my other lists, I don't really feel a need to direct people to translated VNs... Kaguya lists most of the good ones, so it is something of a waste of time for me to sort them further.

In this case, I'm responding to a direct request from a few members of Fuwanovel, who asked me in pms in the irc for a list of VNs that are very ecchi, without being nukige. The level of decent story in these games tends to vary greatly, but the common factor is a desire for ecchi without the game being entirely about sex. Such games will tend to have a lot of ecchi content, in addition to outright h-scenes (lukky sukebe, swimsuits, etc). Again, I don't remember enough about translated games to give a good list for those (as I recall, most translated VNs tended to be either nukige or non-nukige, with none of the borderline stuff you run into occasionally when you play anything that interests you) Untranslated: Anything by Clochette (a producer you can look up on vndb) Noble Works (this game has an excellent story, but it is also very ecchi, lol) Akabanzu Alia's Carnival Baka Moe Heart Erect Ichiban Janakya Dame Desu Ka Mahou Shoujo no Taisetsu na Koto Sakura Iro Quartet Otomimi Naka no Hito nado Inai Ryuusei Kiseki Sara Sara Sasara Prima Stella Acchi Muite Koi Grand Libra Academy (stops just short of nukige, like Erect) Guardian Place Imouto Spiral Imouto no Okage de Motesugite Yabai 08/15/2015 Monster girl series by Vanadis (just go through the company name on vndb) Neko Masshigura Ore to 5-nin no Yome-san ga Raburabu nano wa, Mirai kara Kita Aka-chan no Okage ni Chigainai!?

Kanji is just a lower priority... if you don't mind restricting yourself to PC VNs, there are any number of ways to get around a lack of kanji knowledge.

Yes, I do understand everything they say. As for how old I am... I'm the third oldest person in this forum at 32. I first began learning Japanese seriously at the age of seventeen. I'd stopped using textbooks by the time I hit nineteen years of age, and I was watching at least some anime without subs by the age of twenty. However, I still preferred to watch already-aired anime with subs, when possible, as it took effort back then to keep up, thus tiring me out. I only watched raw video for anime that I was seriously obsessed with, and I still archive subbed versions, though I stopped paying attention to the subs long ago (the subs are for the benefit of the rare individuals who want to watch them with me). If you just want to get to the point where you can understand most of what is being said without the subs, it won't take that long... but there is a point where you will have to start thinking in Japanese. Otherwise, you won't get any better at it. The best translators think in both Japanese and English, and the worst ones are the ones who have to actually pull out a dictionary or a textbook to remind themselves. I don't say this to be mean... but most official subs are horrible because most of those translators are people who came out of a college with textbook understanding and not much else, lol. Internalization is the key... and it is also the biggest barrier. I usually suggest long period of immersion, once you get to the point where you can do without subs to a certain extent. Say... a month without speaking or listening to anything spoken in English while watching TV dramas or anime constantly in Japanese? That's usually enough to tip reasonably intelligent people over the brink, if they are almost there. For the average person, who still has a minimal talent for linguistics, it might take two or three months... Edit: I did it unintentionally, during a long period where I did nothing but watch anime series after anime series for weeks on end. By the end of that long marathon, I was muttering Japanese in my sleep, lol.

Mmm... once I had the grammar and particles, I pretty much just ran with my hobbies (subbed anime and rpgs with Japanese voices), and I eventually absorbed enough vocab that I didn't need any aids to understand the spoken language. Literary Japanese (which differs significantly from spoken Japanese, as everyone knows I harp on at every opportunity) took about another three months to master completely once I started playing VNs in Japanese, but after that, I had no problems, except for the occasional typo or conceptual/technical phrases that popped up. Understand, I don't translate to English in my head... I just understand it 'as' Japanese. I think in Japanese while playing VNs, even to the point of muttering in the language under my breath at times. For me, it is now as natural as breathing to understand Japanese... it stopped being something special years ago. I'm also aware that my experience is exceptional, mostly due to the unfair advantages I had (Japanese class at the high school level, a teacher who rearranged the class so everyone learned ALL the grammar in the first two semesters, with minimal focus on vocab and none on kanji, and I also happened to already have the skills necessary to comprehend language precisely, built up through over a decade as a bibliophile) . Edit: Just to let you know... YES, I do have better than average intelligence, at least enough that I had something of a problem with megalomania when I was younger. So, as arrogant as that sounds, I'm well-aware this approach will not work for others, will require more time for them, or would have to include rote memorization for them to reach the level I'm at. It isn't like most non-native speakers can reason out the meaning of an unknown word in Japanese just by how it sounds and is used... like I said, most people won't be able to do things like I did, and even fewer will be able to skip through most of the 'translating it to English in my head' stage like I did. If I had a piece of advice for supplementary learning... train yourself to reason logically until it is completely subliminal for you to do so. Once that happens, you'll find it a lot easier to pick up language, because all languages have their rules (which don't necessarily translate or show up in the textbooks), and those rules all have a logic behind them, even if that logic might seem odd at first glance. Edit2: The downside of subliminal logic is that you stop being able to enjoy inconsistent stories as easily and you have to make an active effort to distance the more mechanical side of your thinking when dealing with entertainment. This is the biggest reason, incidentally, why I dislike pure moege and moeblob anime, haha