Shinyun226

Just finished THE LOST ONE Last Chapter of Eve this past week. OMG what a mess that last section was lol. So I went into this game with low expectations, but actually found MOST of it to be pretty decent. It's dumb, but still pretty enjoyable overall; I think it's just the horribly anticlimactic ending that drives it to kusoge status. Overall, a pretty disappointing follow-up to Burst Error, albeit some of the stupid stuff that happened was pretty memorable. Glad I played either way - Gave me a good laugh if nothing else.

Bunch of stuff that came in this past week: PS4/All ages port of Ever Maiden. Bought and played the Windows version last year and absolutely loved it. The console port apparently has some new stuff added, so decided to double-dip and get this version too. Cartagra FHD Recently finished the Flowers series, and have been interested in trying Innocent Grey's other games so... since it just so happened a remaster of their first game, Cartagra, was coming out I decided to pick it up. Flowers related CDs. Vocal Collection Box, OSTs and Drama CDs. For whatever reason the Summer OST specifically was out of stock everywhere (probably out of print) so I'll likely have to track down a used copy later. Separate order of older stuff from Surugaya. Grabbed a few KID games: Erde, Iris and Pocket Love 2 + some KID related CDs and fanbooks. And lastly this month's new Yuri manga

Just finished Flowers -Winter- So it took me about 2 years since I had some pretty big gaps between games, but finally completed the series. Excellent overall but... gotta complain about some elements of the final game... Definitely a little sad that this is the last game, as I'm gonna miss the characters quite a bit. There are a few drama CDs that have come out though (with another one set to release this June) so I've got at least a little bit more Flowers material left to enjoy at least. Also definitely gonna have to buy all the soundtrack CDs - Between these games and AikaiIto, I've discovered I really like MANYO music. Anyways, overall can't recommend the series enough. Definitely a must-play for any HimeDanshi/HimeJoshi out there looking for a good Yurige. As an aside... Playing Flowers has also gotten me interested in trying out other Innocent Grey stuff. I know to expect something quite a bit different (obviously their other games aren't Yuri... among things) but, since there's an HD remaster of Cartagra coming out end of this month, thinking I might go ahead and pick that up. Either way, that's probably something I won't play for a while. It's been a good 5-6 months since I've played a KID game (finished My Merry May back in November I believe), so probably gonna cycle back to my queue of KID games and start Ever17 next.

Combination of a few hauls that came in over the past couple of weeks: Okujo no Yurireisan ~Full Chorus~ Pretty famous Yurige I've been been wanting to get for a while. Liar Soft finally just put out a re-issue of this late last year, so had to pick it up. White Album (Original release) - Will be a little bit until I play this (ToHeart is up next on my Leaf queue) but something I was gonna have to buy eventually either way, so decided to pick it up. Princess Danger 1&2. Two old, fairly obscure ADV games by JANIS. They're apparently Yurige so decided to pick them up. Oudou Yuusha and Diabolique (Alice Soft) These were honestly kind of filler-purchases (basically I wanted some additional cheap/small items to get my money's worth on shipping), but Diabolique I have heard really good things about so was probably something I'd pick up eventually. Oudou Yuusha was a pretty random choice, but I generally like RPGs by AliceSoft so can't hurt. Ao to Ao no Shizuku ~a calling from tears~ First game by Lass. Got interested in the developer after hearing about 3days (their 2nd game), and seems like most of their catalogue is pretty well regarded so decided to pick this up. Triangle Heart 1・2・3 So after watching Lyrical Nanoha for the first time earlier this year, I found out that it was actually a sort of spin-off of Triangle Heart 3 so... being the type that's pretty OCD about experiencing the source material before adaptations (even if Nanoha isn't really a direct adaption), had to pick these up. And, on the topic of Nanoha, got the Blu-ray box for A's + the respective Sound Stage Drama CDs (still have to track down the dramas for the 1st series as well). Finished collecting all the Air Drama CDs (volumes 6-9) Volumes 1 and 3 of the Snow Drama CDs. Unfortunately they stopped after 3 so the Shigure and Ouka routes never got adapted but... liked the game a lot so definitely wanted to pick these up. Will have to track down vol 2 (Asahi) as well eventually. Special Edition of the Blu-ray for the new WataTen movie And lastly a whole bunch of new Yuri manga~

Just finished up Kizuato (specifically the original win 95/98 version) Liked it overall, and thought it was a pretty significant improvement over Shizuku as a whole - Music was really good - I was a bit worried that the soundtrack would be a disappointment compared to Shizuku due to Orito Shinji leaving Leaf, but ended up really liking the music. Also, like with with Shizuku, I really like the aesthetic that the original version of the game has, with the digitized photos as backgrounds etc.. Just looking at screenshots of the remakes, they definitely don't quite have the same charm or atmosphere. Anyways really looking forward to continue playing through the Leaf library. Next up will be To Heart which I'm definitely excited to play, even if just because of how historically important it is for the genre. (well technically Saorin to Issho is up next, but that's a fandisc so I'm sure it won't take me long to knock out).

Cool! I'll have to check out it eventually (endless backlog, so it'll probably be a while though lol). Browsing through Cotton Soft's other games and at least a few of them look interesting + MANYO music on at least some of them, so I'm interested even if just for that.

Just finished White ~Setsunasa no Kakera~ recently. This was NekoNeko Soft's debut game and, although I did enjoy it overall, most of the routes were definitely a bit underwhelming/unpolished. The biggest problem being that the actual routes are way too short (and some of the characters get introduced pretty late in the common route) That being said, it was a pretty solid effort considering it was their first original/commercial game + 2 of the routes (Hadzuki and Chinami) were actually REALLY good imo. It's very clear the developers were inspired by early Key games (or rather early games by the Key staff, since One was published by Tactics game), particularly One ~Kagayaku Kisetsu he~ and, although not all routes accomplish this, White is clearly meant to be a Nakige in that vein. (+ there's some pretty clear One references sprinkled throughout) "And, that scene where the [main character] just disappears while blind senpai is holding ice cream" Anyways, some brief thoughts on each route. Izumi Mikana Madoka Hadzuki Chinami The other "fun" thing about this game was getting it to work right. Installing it and getting it to run + using DXWnd's Winmm.dll to play the music without the disc wasn't a big deal but... for whatever reason it loading the character sprites REALLY slow, so there was like a 3 second delay every time an expression changed. Did a little research and found out this was a common issue with older nScripter games that use CD-DA audio, so I ended up grabbing a newer version of the nscr.exe and learned how to manually modify/create a new Dat file to go with it so... now I know how to do that if I ever play another nScripter game that uses CD-DA audio. But anyways yeah, good game overall. I'm looking to play more of NekoNeko Soft's library (and by extension Team Nana's games) eventually. Already bought their second title GinIro, which is apparently a pretty legendary Utsuge, so I'll probably get to that some time this year.

Oh wow, is that Parfait from the Little Witch Parfait series in the middle (to the right of Yuna/behind Roll)? Didn't know there were actually any figures for those games. I'm not a big figure collector but I might have to track that down. Also guess I might as well show-off my collection while I'm here: Games: PC games on the top of the left shelf, with portable games in the middle and various game books on the bottom. Right shelf is all of my console games (except for the Megadrive games which got arbitrarily placed on the PC shelf for now because... well I'm out of space) Manga/LNs: Anime: Game and anime related CDs + Seiyuu CDs/DVDs/Blurays (mainly Mizuki Nana) + game adaption LNs and manga

Finally just 100% completed Snow Portable! Just gotta say, overall, I really really liked it. it really blew away my expectations. So, the first thing to address are the Key comparisons. Yes, it absolutely does HEAVILY borrow from Kanon and Air. It uses at least a few Kanon characters tropes (Euuu + Anman instead of Uguu + taiyaki) and straight up rips off Air's overall game structure - that being said, I think it actually handles that formula/structure a lot better than Air does. I think some arguments can be made about whether or not Air's main route is better when analyzed on its own, BUT Air as a whole is undeniably kind of lopsided. It's 1 big route, with 2 minor routes that might as well not be there (Minagi route is actually amazing though, but I digress). Snow does a lot of what Air does ie: , but unlike Air the other routes in SNOW actually contribute to the overall narrative. (Also I could actually understand what was all going on in Snow, unlike Air lol). Anyways, brief/disjointed thoughts on individual routes: Sumino Legend Asahi Shigure Ouka Meiko Nazo no Shouojo So to come back to this question: I'm gonna say yes, I really enjoyed the Nazo no Shoujo route. I'm probably gonna want to replay the game on PS2 someday to get the full voice experience for the rest of the game but... I do think this bonus route makes double-dipping worth it.

My (all yuri) Manga haul for the month of January just arrived today~ Decided I better get around to reading Wataoshi and Sasakoi since both of those have anime adaptations announced so grabbed all the current volumes of those + got all of Futari Escape since that's the one other ongoing YuriHime title that I haven't been following yet. After that got the new volumes of KimiShinu, Citrus+ and Fuzuroi no Reni, and then a few new series.

Oh shoot, you're right, wasn't reading close enough I guess haha. Yeah, unfortunately have no idea about .pack files then, sorry.

Not sure if this'll work for other games or not, but the all of one time I've messed with pack files, I used CreateSRPak. Given the name of the utility I'm pretty sure it was specifically designed for Symphonic Rain, and the game I used it on was another Kogado Studio game (Ohanabatake no Flore), so can't guarantee that it will work on games by other developers but might be worth a try. You can download it from here: http://juicy.s53.xrea.com/program/archive/createSRPak_20080330.rar Basically you just open the application, drag the files into the window, then go to ファイル(F) > 圧縮開始 (R) and choose where you want to save your .pak file.

Whole bunch of stuff I just got and added to my ever-growing backlist. Combination of two orders actually: Pretty much all the all-ages stuff is from Surugaya.com (Surugaya's overseas website), and then all the eroge were from Surugaya's japanese store (+ forwarding service). Leaf stuff. Got both the 18+ and All-Ages/Playstation versions of ToHeart, 2 Leaf Fandiscs + the ToHeart (PSX) Famitsu guide. Normally I just go for the all-ages versions of games if available, but apparently the versions ToHeart are pretty different so, due to that + since it's a pretty historically relevant game, decided to get both. I was thinking about getting the ToHeart PSE (The PC port of the PSX version) to keep everything on the same platform, but I guess PSE uses the original PC version's OST instead of the PSX versions so... went with the PSX version. I'm going through Leaf's stuff in release order, so plan to play Kizuato before I touch any of this, but definitely looking forward to playing ToHeart. Tactics/Key stuff: Dousei and Moon (renewal ver.) + volumes 1-5 of the Air Drama CD. D.O. Games: Kazoku Keikaku and Kana Imouto PSP special editions + full voice version of Crescendo. Kana is a game I've been interested in getting for the better part of a decade, Kazoku Keikaku got my attention since Wakamoto Norio is in it, and then Crescendo was sort of spur-of-the-moment. C's Ware: The Lost One, EVE ZERO and EVE TFA. Played Eve Burst error last year and absolutely loved it, so definitely wanted to continue the series. Also got 2 of the Burst Error Drama CDs (I believe there's 3 total/one more I'll have to track down) NekoNeko Soft: White and Gin'Iro. I found out about Gin'Iro when searching for Utsuge, read good things about it + saw that it had music by MANYO so decided to get it. Figured since it was the 2nd game by NekoNeko Soft, it didn't feel right not also to get the first so I grabbed White as well. AliceSoft: Ikusa Miko. This one was just kind of a random pick-up. I generally like raising sims and it was cheap + was a little surprised to find that AliceSoft actually made an all-ages game, so figured I'd grab it (You gotta buy in bulk from Surugaya's international shop if you want to make the shipping worth it so I always end up grabbing at least a few filler items lol) KID: Filling in the gaps in my collection of MemoOff 1st and 2nd CharaSong Cds, a Tentama bonus disc of some sort (not 100% sure what it is yet edit: it's just a bunch of wallpapers and screensavers), Ever17 Drama CD + Soundtrack + CharacterSong singles (Haven't played Ever17 yet but it's next up on my KID game queue). Then the two remaining MemoOff 2nd heroine fanbooks I'm missing (Tsubame Sensei and Shizuru) + Tentama and Close to Fanbooks. Aoishiro Drama CD. Haven't actually played Aoishiro yet (in fact I haven't even bought a copy of the game itself yet...) but I REALLY REALLY loved AkaiIto (and it's a Yurige either way) so it's something I absolutely plan to buy eventually. Drama CD is ready on standby for whenever I eventually get and play through the game lol Misc CD's/goods: Tsundere Karuta and Tsundere Hyakunin Isshu, featuring Kugimiya Rie. Can't believe these exist, but I had to buy them the moment I spotted them. Don't think I'll ever actually find myself getting friends together to play Karuta, but definitely worth it for what amounts to a Kugyu Voice CD lol Also got Kogado Studio's "Kiwami Karuta", the voice CD on this one featuring Takahashi Chiaki (presumably in character as Sukunesama from Solfege?) Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha Blu-ray box: An Anime I've been planning to watch for the longest time. Honestly as a big Mizuki Nana fan, and a Yuri fan, this is something that I probably should have watched a long time ago Various trash V-Cinema/Original Videos: Hiroshima Yakuza Sensou 1-4 (starring Ozawa Hitoshi), Hiroshima Yakuza Sensou Gaiden 1-2 (starring Endo Kenichi) and Hakuryu 1-2 (starring the actor Hakuryu as the titular character Hakuryu). Box set for Morning Musume。's 72nd single. This was the reason I needed to use a forwarding service in the first place, and gave me an excuse to do some additional shopping at Surugaya's Japanese shop.

Thanks! I'll have to look into Hourglass of Summer. Thanks for the recommendation. And yeah, I heard about the new Tristia remake. I plan to buy and play it eventually but... it'll probably be a while lol. I've got a crazy backlog of Kogado games (well of games in general really) and I'm pretty OCD about going through series' in release order so... at a bare minimum I want to play through the original 4 Deep-Blue games before I play this new one. I actually played through the original many years back, but I only got one of the bad endings so plan to come back to it and do a proper playthrough of it someday.

No prob! Can't personally answer if the new route is worth or not as I haven't read it yet but having browsed at least a couple of reviews that mentions it, the consensus on it seems to be kind of mixed (noticed at least a few people mentioning it being somewhat redundant). Also worth mentioning that you unfortunately can't just jump in and play it by itself as unlocking it does require beating a minimum of 4 other routes so... if you do decide to start with PS2 and then switch to the PSP version with the intention of just playing that route, you'll be stuck either re-reading or sitting there holding the R button to for a while to skip the pre-requisite routes and unlock it (though I suppose just tracking down and using a 100% save would be an option as well). Either way, I'll try to make a follow-up post with my thoughts about everything once I eventually finish the game.

Haven't personally played any Yuzusoft games but from what I do know about them/just looking at their catalog, their games are still a lot closer to Snow than the other stuff Studio Mebius typically would put out ironically enough lol. The fact that Studio Mebius went from making Kichikuge, to a "pure love" type nakige with Snow is quite a contrast.

Currently making my way through Snow Portable (the PSP port of Snow) Before saying anything about the game itself, I've gotta complaint about the issues with this particular port. It's my own fault for not properly researching this ahead of time but... I kind of wish I had just gone with the PS2 version instead as the PSP version is really kind of a mess. This version is only partially voiced (DC and PS2 both were full voice) due to what later turned out to be some misguided assumptions about how much they could fit on the UMD + load time concerns. Prototypes PSP port of Kanon apparently had the same issue but somehow all the PSP ports they did after that were magically full voice.... Save labels are bare-bones (they only list the in-game date and nothing else) No proper backlog (you have to manually cycle back one textbox at a time) And worst of all, the skip feature can't distinguish between read and unread text. Not the first time I've had to play a game like this (the PSX version of ONE Kagayaku Kisetstu he was like that too) but.... it makes going through all the routes a huge pain. The trade off though is this is (presently) the only all-ages version of Snow with the Nazo no Shoujo route so... I guess I would have had to play this version in the long-run anyways if I wanted to play every route. These annoyance aside, I just finished my first route (Sumino's) and am enjoying the game overall. It definitely has elements that are very derivative of both Kanon and Air (The very inconclusive ending to Sumino's route, and the fact that you unlock something called the "Legend" route right after feels very Air-esque), so I can see where a lot of people consider it a rip-off, but so far I think it still manages to differentiate itself enough. Either way I'm apparently only 22% through the CGs (may not be the best metric for progress but... it's something) so... still got a lot more game left before I can pass any real judgement.

Thanks! And oh cool! No idea what that would all entail but... Yeah I'd potentially be open it, just let me know I guess

Hey everyone, been looking for a good place to talk about VNs and such so thought I'd try this site out. Anyways, I first got introduced to galge a good 10~15 years ago when I played the first Tokimeki Memorial and ended up liking a it a lot, but didn't really explore the genre further until years later. Long story short, me really getting into whole the galge/VN genre was primarily the result of being a bit of a seiyuu otaku. Basically I was looking for games that Mizuki Nana starred in > this led me to Memories Off 2nd so I played through the 1st and 2nd MemoOffs > found out one of the endings in 2nd doesn't really make sense if you haven't played infinity/Never 7 so had to play this as well > One thing led to another and now I'm just slowly playing through the whole KID catalog (and eventually the 5PB/MAGES game catalog by extension) in release order. I also really like games by Kogado Studios (my profile picture is from one of their games, Little Witch Parfait, which I also discovered due to Mizuki Nana being in it) and have been collecting and slowly progressing through their stuff as well. Aside from that, I've been branching into a lot of different companies' games, with a particular focus on tracking down and playing some of the more famous/historically relevant titles by Leaf, Key etc... (Just played through the original Shizuku last year for example). I'm sure I'll be a bit of an outlier here since I mainly play older games, almost exclusively buy physical copies and have a strong preference for console versions where possible (No joke, the Dreamcast might be my favorite platform to play galge on) but nonetheless looking forward to talking about VNs with you all as I slowly progress through my never-ending backlog of games. よろしくお願いします～ (OH! And one other very important detail: If my profile picture doesn't give it away, I REALLY like Yuri. I'm a admittedly a huge himedanshi and buy a pretty ungodly amount of Yuri Manga, LNs & Yurige)