Clephas

If you understand enough Japanese to be confident about JLPT 2... Here are some recommendations: Ruitomo Yurikago Yori Tenshi Made Dies Irae (if you are up for a challenge) Tiny Dungeon (the series) Akatsuki no Goei (the entire series) Comyu (if you don't want to wait for the patch) Devils Devel Concept (same as Dies Irae) Jingai Makyou (same as above, lol) Evolimit Ayakashibito Bullet Butlers Tokyo Babel (not ero, but great anyway) Shinigami no Testament Konata yori Kanata Made (if you don't mind a bit of utsuge, this is literally the best one ever) Eden* Hapymaher Boku ga Tenshi ni Natta Wake (utsuge, protag is very anti-romance, has mostly bad/normal/sad endings, but protag isn't a disgusting sack of crap like in School Days) Natsu no Owari no Nirvana (most of the game is nakige, save for true ending) Phantom of Inferno (downside to Japanese version is that the narration isn't voiced, but it is still a great game) Tenshi no Hane wo Fumanaide Sinclient Vermilion Bind of Blood Kajiri Kamui (if you are a masochist, because it is literally the hardest to read VN I've ever encountered, linguistically... reminded me of a slightly easier version of the Kojiki at some points) Izuna Zanshinken Gekkou no Carnevale Gurenka Hatsuyuki Sakura (gets seriously dark on some of the paths) Midori no Umi (horror, utsuge) Chrono Belt (if you finish Ayakashibito and Bullet Butlers and want to meet certain antagonists again) Draculius Soukou Akki Muramasa Sousei Kitan Aerial (post-apocalyptic survival/sci-fi mecha action... also Muv-luv Alternative imitation in some ways) Tsuisou no Augment (Very good comedy about a guy who kills himself in his old age, then is offered a chance to relive his youth) Abyss Homicide Club (horror/action doujin VN, as Kaguya for the links I gave him if you have trouble finding it) Bloody Rondo (if you play all of the above and still want more) Monobeno Kurenai no Tsuki Harumade Kururu (once you get past the weird, semi-nukige stuff at the beginning, this game is great) Natsukumo Yururu Sakura, Sakimashita (an interesting exploration of the ideas of freedom from aging in the face of imminent death) Re: Birth Colony Fake Azure Arcology Para-sol Shuumatsu Shoujo Gensou Alicematic Soranica Ele Paradise Lost (if you decide to challenge Dies Irae, this is its sort-of prequel, though that doesn't become clear until the end of Kajiri Kamui) Trouble@Vampire If you want gameplay as well: Ikusa Megami Zero Madou Koukaku Ouzoku (reminds me of Rance, except the protag isn't a psychopath, just a genius who likes women) Soukoku no Arterial Meishoku no Reiki (this game is really, really dark and the protag is evil in the grand 'the world is my toy' way) lol... if you make your way through those, everything seems easy.

*chews on a chunk of raw meat, failing to mention what it is* ... welcome... *ignores the wails of agony coming from the pouch at his hip*

lol... for those who want a reference point on how hard this scene is in relation to the rest of Dies Irae... I'd say it is a bit above the middle. The daily-life scenes are the easiest, with the combat scenes, as well as Mercurius' and Reinhardt's conversations, being the hardest. If you have seen Legend of the Galactic Heroes, you will probably recognize Reinhardt's way of speaking (saying 'kei' when he says 'you' for instance), and Mercurius speaks in a slightly melodramatic, slightly archaic dialect. Since Mercurius is the one speaking in most of the scene (save for the last dozen or so lines and the two lines where Marie is speaking) you can get an idea of what it is like. To be honest, I wanted to post a playthrough video of this scene, simply because it is one of those rare scenes that has impact on its own, even without the game's greater context.

*implants the loli with nanomachines that eat everything she touches, turning it into gray mush*

Welcome. *turns the loli into a vampire*

*pulls Enuma Elish out and smashes down Excalibur on a whim before ripping a whole in the stratosphere and ending all life on the planet* Whoops. *reverses time so that the world doesn't die*

Damn, that's slow. Usually when there is more than two seeders, i can usually get an average of about 75-100 kbps... oh well.

*silently sharpens a saw-toothed knife, a bone-saw, and a large iron spike, whistling cheerily all the time* Welcoooommmmeee.....

Welcome. *begins warming up the grill*

And the winner is... Dies Irae. Well, here you go, cry your eyes out. For now, since those who wanted pics with the scenes are leading, I went ahead and posted a pic for it. There are now two free slots for the potential scene for next week. If we don't get anymore votes, it'll be Jingai Makyou, though. Please vote again if you voted for Dies Irae.

I use utorrent myself. Welcome to the forums.

Black and White, Dragon, Birth, Slave. That's the literal order, though you can switch Dragon and Birth without causing problems. However, Black and White has to be first and Slave last. Slave is the series' conclusion and Black and White is the intro and Demon side.

Anything by Akatsuki Works is going to be in the 6-8 range, so yeah, it is hard. Also, Comyu is being translated by one of the more consistent fantranslation groups out there, so you will be able to play it in English soon enough anyway. Draculius has two routes, one is a joke route and the other is the true route. The true route is a semi-harem route that focuses on plot. My recommendation amongst those is the Tiny Dungeon series. It is hilarious and has a great story.

Dracu and Hatsuyuki are both a 5-7 depending on whether you are talking about the 'everyday' stuff or the drama.

Welcome, Alphy. Great to have you.

http://vndb.org/v453 http://clephasstomach.blogspot.com/2011/02/review-draculius.html Relatively easy language for a story-focused VN. http://vndb.org/v5909 http://vndb.org/v551 http://vndb.org/v4868 http://vndb.org/v4806 http://vndb.org/v100 http://vndb.org/v1335 http://vndb.org/v3767 (this entire series in order of release) http://vndb.org/v9890 http://vndb.org/v10803 http://vndb.org/v11863 http://vndb.org/v10026 http://vndb.org/v8213 http://vndb.org/v7302 http://vndb.org/v7772 http://vndb.org/v828 http://vndb.org/v4942 I hope that was enough for a start. Edit: All of these have 4-6 difficulty as their average and 7 as the highest. Honestly, there is nothing but crap amongst those easier than these. Thankfully, 6 and 7 almost never pop up in any of them, so you'll be on easy street for much of it.

*infects the loli with the Sadololi Virus, a terrible disease that makes lolis sadistic and horny before locking her in a room full of do-M shotas* Welcome

Please pm me when you do learn enough Japanese to start reading them in their native language. I'll give you a list of games ideal for your tastes.

Is your locale, computer clock, and everything else in Japanese format? It isn't necessary to do it for the keyboard, but it is necessary with a lot of games to set both locale and the clock to Japanese config.

Mmm... the h-scenes in those games show off the desperation of the characters and are part of the story integrally... To be honest, I have negative feelings about this. I'd prefer if they did it like Amaterasu did it with Cross Channel, where they gave you a choice.

I'm glad we've got more people on board. I already did tlcs for the first three... just one more. I will make one general comment: the greatest weakness I'm seeing so far is not a lack of Japanese comprehension for the most part (despite some iffy moments with verb tenses and forms) but rather a difficulty with English. This is fairly common, especially with non-native speakers of English. It is also nothing to be ashamed about. It is quite possible to become a great translator, even if your English is a little hazy. Xess, my own mentor, was a native Malaysian... and he managed quite well by being meticulous in his research and improving his comprehension through hard work and experience. Also, don't feel down if you have trouble with scenes like this one... if you don't have any trouble at all with this scene, you should probably be doing pro work by now. I have the advantages of an obsessive passion for Japanese as a language in and of itself, a solid initial education in the language, and of writing in English for a living. Not to mention years of experience more in playing Japanese-only games, reading Japanese-only books, and watching raw anime. In another two or three years, I suspect at least some of you will be at my level or better, if you don't get bored with being an otaku or a translator. Edit: Incidentally, scenes like this one are very unforgiving of the kind of paraphrasing and simplification that is common in localizations and fantranslations. A single misplaced word can and will entirely change the meaning of the sentence and seeming redundancies have more meaning than it might seem on the surface. In other words, scenes like this are a translator's worst nightmare, while only being difficult for the non-Japanese reader. I chose to be evil in my choice of a first scene for the simple reason that I don't want people to accuse me of setting the hurdle higher later. To put it simply, if you can handle scenes like this, with their twisty and often surprisingly subtle word choices, you can probably handle anything a lesser VN can throw at you.

I'm surprised anyone backed this. If someone had started a Kickstarter to fund the purchase of licensing rights to a Key game in the US, it might have been worth it... but a documentary?

For gore - since you seem not to mind playing VNs in Japanese - I'd suggest the Secret Game series. The newest version of Revise came out recently and does a great job. Other than that... Izuna Zanshinken and Vermillion Bind of Blood are good choices (though the latter doesn't show its gore on screen for the most part but just describes it in detail).

What do you think about violence in VNs? Personally, I like well-written violent scenes (as if any of you had any doubt in this matter). However, I'm quite well-aware that not everybody feels that way. I'm curious as to how my fellow Fuwadrones think on this matter.

I was worried because I didn't see anything on their twitter or Facebook pages...