Chronopolis

This is a visual novel created by a company named Jirai Soft and this is the only decent VN they have, well I never read Hotarubi no Shoujo but Kurui no Tsuki was awful... moving on with the review.
Basic plot.    Augment is a VN that starts in such incredible way, it hooks you immediately, the main character is an 80 years old dude who is in a home for elderly, lamenting on his life, on how plain and dull it was and how he regrets being a good for nothing. Remembering how he depended on his sister all his life and so on... basically he hates himself thinking that he is is a burden and decides to commit suicide, so he grabs a knife and stabs himself on the neck.  While he is dying he starts thinking that he doesn't want to die and wants another chance and at some point a weird voice tells him that his wish is granted and that he has a second chance to find happiness. This scene was amazing and a little bit gory too, in fact the entire prologue is very well done.   After that he find himself in the park which was really close from his house (where he grew up while he was still young), he is actually young again, at least his body is. He goes back to his house and there he meets all his family members again, including his father, mother and sister. This part again has a really good impact and it was really well done, everything mixed with good humor. He basically travels back in time with the help of this shinigami or god of dead, which granted him with a second chance to find happiness in his life.
So the VN is about him reliving his life and trying to find happiness...  by fucking one of the 3 heroines xD (falling in love, creating a new life with them etc, etc)   Up until this point the VN  was fantastic at least it was something new, sadly it just doesn't keep up...   There is a common route and 3 heroines. To unlock the real or true ending you need to read all of them and after reading everything you can re-read it again to unlock at certain points hidden eroge scenes with certain characters and new eroge scenes for all the heroines but without a proper ending or anything, kinda like an omake or fandisk but inside the game itself.   The heroines and plot       Your childhood friend Shiho Umekawa. Her route was kinda meh and it was ruined by the eroge scene, which was placed in a really bad time.
Nothing really interesting to talk about her without spoiling everything.
spoilers of her route ahead
My other huge problem with her are her huge fucking tits, is annoying and looks bad. 
   
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  Satsuki Jin, a tsundere from another class of your same age and also the best friend of your childhood friend.   Her route was the worst one for me, she was a decent character and the tsudere side very mild, she has a pervert good for nothing old brother that is used as a punch bag...   The drama on her route was so bad and convoluted that I won't even bother explaining it because it doesn't make sense and it was overly dramatic to a point that it was almost funny, it is actually almost as bad as the true ending.   ---------------------------------------------------------------------------     And finally Nami Susonobe, a junior or "kouhai" from your school too.   She was probably the best route, she likes to cook and is kinda timid but not clueless of what goes around her. You actually spend time with her, just bonding and developing your relationship, their love is not forced. She doesn't love you from the start and they also share the same type of humor which makes them a really fun and dynamic couple, constantly teasing each other of following the weird pattern they have of speaking mostly with jokes. Or doing the boke and tsukkomi. Also the sex with her didnt feel forced, it felt real and not just an excuse to show them having sex, like the natural progression of their relationship. She has a really overly protective sister (for a good reason) which happens to be your English teacher and she also hates you and doesn't wants you to be with her. This route didn't need any stupid forced drama to be good, it was good on its own. Without the forced drama it would have been a decent  story to read but nope...   Spoilers:   ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
  Finally we have the Main character, Hideya Kawashima, he is actually interesting and not your typical main character, he isn't clueless of everything around him and constantly jokes and teases (sometimes to the point of bullying) with everyone, he is 80 years old lol so he acts accordingly... kinda , he is for the most part pretty funny specially with Nami.
About the humor, I don't really like this type but I found myself laughing with some scenes so for the most part it was good.   ---------------------------------------------------------------------------   There are other characters but those are the main ones, I should also talk about Hideya's sister (she also has huge tits that are annoying) and the shinigami itself but I'm tired already and there is no point in talking about them.      The true ending...   The true ending is the worst part of the whole VN. Have you seen that picture of dustmania where the guy is fucking a brain? is THAT bad xD I wanted to see something about the shinigami, they actually trick you into believe that there is more to that character (at the end of some routes the shinigami says certain things that leads you to think that there is more to the character itself, and he/she also uses the word "boku" but has a girl distorted voice so is hard to tell if it is a she or he, which was probably used on purpose for that reason... but they don't, instead they do what is up until this point a common thing in this VN, threw some sad stuff, make it very convoluted and then resolve it in a few minutes.... everyone is happy YAY.   The main problem with this VN is that it turns itself after the prologue in a pure comedy... which isn't bad per se but the prologue kinda tricks you, making you believe that it will be something else, and you keep expecting that but when it comes is just a forced drama at the end of each route that doesn't fit with the rest or anything ... if it even makes sense at all in the first place, and it last around 1 or 2 hours. If I have to describe this VN I would say that it is 85% comedy and 15% of very bad forced drama.     The music and Art   The music was good with some good solid songs here and there that fit well with the scenes, it's fully voiced (except for the main character which is only voiced in the true ending) and the art was actually pretty good too aside from the huge tits in some characters.   Oh yeah there is something really annoying, every time you start the VN the logo of the company shows up with a fucking loud noise. (careful if you are using headphones) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6c48PRVMV4     Here are some CGs  
Rating +Good humor +Good Art style for the most part +Amazing voice acting +Pretty good music +Nami's route if you leave the ending part.   -Bad drama and nonsensical endings. -Bad true end.   My rating of this VN is a Ryuk out of 10.   For the reading difficulty, is hard to say but I would say medium, not something to start with, The humor and how the main character talks is just not something you will see normally, he talks in a teasing way pretty much 90% of the time, making references or derailing the conversations over and over again, using crude humor, kanji puns and everything you can imagine, for example he can start talking as if he were fighter pilot (using military language) and keeping that going for a while and some characters follow his humor, so yeah not something easy to read probably. Also the drama parts can be quite tricky or they were for me at some points (if you read the spoilers you can understand how convoluted and tricky it gets) 
There are a lot of reference here and there (I still don't know if the "kain" that he refers at one point is the legacy of kain the games or not) It took me around 30 hours to complete it but my reading speed is quite slow, you can't just read one route so that's another bad side of this vn.

This is an update of the play status of June's releases.
Ai yori Aoi Umi no Hate- On hiatus/stalled for the moment due to gaming exhaustion.  Plan to resume by the tenth.
Haruoto Alice ＊ Gram - Planned for play after Aiao. 
Pure Song Garden! - Currently being played by Dergonu.
Tantei Seven- Dropped and labeled a kusoge by fun2novel, our resident mystery VN lover.  No plans to include it in the contest.

I'm currently playing Ai yori Aoi Umi no Hate, AXL's latest game by their 'unusual slice-of-life' team, and the setting is seriously bothering me.  It isn't that the concept is boring... there is nothing wrong with the concept of people living on a massive self-repairing ship hundreds of years after the demise of land-bound culture due to global warming.  No, the problem is the concept of the game and how it interacts with the setting. 
Ok, I can live with the idea that advanced culture was lost - deliberately or otherwise, and I can also live with the characters centering about 80% of their attention on day-to-day affairs.  That is normal in a self-sufficient community.  However, the idea that recreational culture not existing at all - music being lost entirely, for instance - is ridiculous.  Wherever you get a community of humans, you have some kind of recreational culture, whether it is simple sports, drinking contests, tests of strength and stamina, or card games.  To put it simply, people might be willing to let go of high tech, but they'll never give up being able to hum a tune while working.
It is such a huge hole in the concept that I just had to shake my head in exasperation. 
This isn't the first time I've run into this kind of thing...  for some reason, some writers, when they create a fantasy or sci-fi setting that justifies their story, gloss over elements like this that drive me nuts.   Moreover, they ignore human nature and history.  Even in a confined environment like the one in this setting, people still need recreation and will create it, regardless of the intervention of authority.  The first couple of generations might have successfully abandoned culture as they knew it, but the later generations would have inevitably birthed a new recreational culture of some sort.  So, the concept is just too ridiculous, at least in my eyes.
Edit: In other words, 'If you are going to create a new setting with a purely human society, you have to justify every difference in a way that makes sense given human history and nature!'

Otome ga Tsumugu Koi no Canvas is the rarest of the rare... a charage that is also a kamige.  In fact, I've only encountered three charage that I consider to be kamige out of the hundreds I've played.  How did that happen?  Well, a large part of it is the writer.  For all that his first VN was a half-nukige with an absurd setting, his style is poetic, his settings deep, and his timing and pacing of events perfect. 
Another part of it is the structure.  This VN has a very, very short common route... as in the prologue only.  After that, it immediately moves on to one of the five heroine paths based on the choices you made in the prologue.  The paths themselves are about one and a half times as long as the average heroine path in the average charage, with an extremely tight focus on the heroine and the protagonist's romance with her.  They are designed to make you fall in love with that particular heroine, to allow you to empathize with the course their love takes, and to let out the tears when the story demands it.  I cried numerous times the first and second times I played this VN, as the writer's rather poetic descriptions (inside Shin's head) of the heroines only make it easier to care about them and their relationships with Shin.
The third element of this game that makes it great is the protagonist.  I honestly consider this protagonist - Miyami Mizuki (true name: Mizuki Shin) - to be the best trap protagonist in all of VNs.  First of all, he has been dressing up as a girl for so long that he does it quite naturally.  Second, he is fully voiced... every bit of his dialogue is voiced... and voiced in a manner that perfectly matches his character's personality as written.  Second, he is really, really good at whatever he puts his hand to.  He is a gourmet-level cook, a self-taught art-appraiser, a master of domestic chores (even the advanced ones that the head maid isn't familiar with, lol), and... a brilliant artist, though he has a trauma that prevents him from letting it out.  He is actually more girly than most of the girls in the VN, though he doesn't seem to be aware of it, hahaha...
Chiharu
Chiharu is Rena's bodyguard and a member of a family of bodyguards that has protected the Ootori family for centuries (Rena's family).  While she can sometimes take extreme actions, she is at heart a compassionate soul, with an intense desire to protect which led her to become a bodyguard despite certain physical disadvantages she possesses.  When alone with those few she is truly close to, she is rather straightforward in her affections, but she always puts others before her first, leading to trouble at times.  Her path is one of those few charage paths where I honestly felt that the romance was worth experiencing even on its own.  It helps that this writer is really, really good at portraying his characters' inner conflicts and emotions through narrating their thoughts. 
One thing I absolutely love about this VN is Shin's (Mizuki's) poetic turn of phrase with internal narration.  I believe these lines are the best description of how Shin sees Chiharu.

瑞希「……目が、きれいなんです」
Mizuki "... Her eyes... are beautiful."
怜奈「えっ……？」
Rena "Eh...?"
瑞希「お嬢様の隣にいるとき。千晴の目がきれいなんです」
Mizuki "When she is at your side, Chiharu's eyes are beautiful."
あんなにきれいなオレンジ、初めて見たんだ。――千晴の涙。
I've never before seen such a beautiful orange.... Chiharu's tears.
理屈じゃない。
It has nothing do with reason or logic.
仮にお嬢様が大洋だとすれば、千晴はその水底に落ちている、一個の石だと思う。
If milady (Note: trying out a possible translation for ojousama as a title, lol) were to be seen as the ocean, I think Chiharu would be a stone lying at the bottom of it.
でも僕はその石が好きなんだ。
However, I love that stone.
深い深い海の底で、人知れず輝きを放っている。誰に褒められたいわけでもなく、認められたいわけでもなく。
Deep deep beneath that ocean's surface, she shines brilliantly, unknown to men.  She doesn't shine so that she will be praised or acknowledged by others. [note: took some liberties here]
きっと宝石として大衆に愛でられる価値を秘めながら、ショーウィンドウへ並ぶことを拒み続ける。
Though she is probably worth being adored by the public as a gem, she continually rejects being lined up in the store window.
千晴は最後まで、海の底で『無価値』の原石であることを選ぶ。
Chiharu will choose to lie at the bottom of the sea as a 'worthless' raw stone to the very end.
海に寄り添うために。
In order to nestle up to the ocean.
海が広く深いと僕らに分かるのは、あの小さな石が落ちているからだ。
The reason we can tell the ocean is deep and wide is because that small stone is sinking into it.
あの不器用な小石が光っているから海は寂しくないし、もし誰かが溺れて迷いこんでも、その明かりを頼りに浮上できる。
With that clumsy stone shining within it, the ocean will never be lonely, and if someone were to become lost and drowning there, they could rise to the surface, relying on the stone's light.
 
Anastasia
In this game, there are technically three 'sides' to the story as a whole... there are the Ootori-focused paths (Rena and Chiharu), the Karasuma paths (Yuki and Shizuku), and the stand-alone Anastasia path.  Anastasia is... a seemingly soft and kind-hearted woman on the surface.  However, it becomes obvious in her path that she is actually a mischievous, somewhat devilish young woman.  She is the curator of the museum seen in the prologue and the overall curator for the art fair that is held in the city toward the end of each path.  She does have a rather... unexpected secret however...
Anyway, her path greatly differs from the other four paths in focus and rhythm, so I recommend that it be played last, since it partially spoils Rena's path.  While it has a rocky start in comparison to the others, it is nonetheless an excellently-written, high-quality path that is definitely worth reading.  On the popularity rankings, she got the lowest score (probably because her path's tone is so different from the others), and as a result, she doesn't have an after-story in the FD, but don't let that stop you from playing it, lol. 
Rena
Rena is the game's main heroine.  She is Shizuku's rival, Chiharu's master, and the daughter of the man who owns most of the town they live in (a fictional part of Tokyo repurposed into an Art Town).  She is very big-hearted, forgiving, and compassionate.  By choice, she wears her emotions on her sleeve, choosing to show her anger, her sorrow, and her joy on her face, restricting the display of her emotions in no way or manner when she is with those she trusts.  She tends to act on instinct, and she has a highly-developed sense of aesthetics, born out of being raised by and as an art-dealer and due to her own passion for art.  While not an artist herself, she nonetheless has an absolute devotion to the art world, and her evaluations of people tend to be colored by how they act toward art.  As such, she doesn't get along with the auctioneer Shizuku and despises Wolfgang (an annoying side-character and occasional antagonist). 
Her path is perhaps the most complete when it comes to dealing with Shin's issues.  Shin, by nature, shapes himself and his desires to fit his environment, and his primary motivation is always to act for the sake of those he cares about (the heroines, in each path).  This is the one and only path where Shin comes to the fore as himself and the only path that reveals in full certain aspects of his past and current motivations.  At the same time, this path tends to be the most poetic of the paths, as he and Rena's attraction for one another is very... intense. 
Note: The h-scenes in this path are very emotional and vital to the experience... don't skip them.  Normally I advise the reverse, but I make an exception for this game.
Yuki
Yuki is the protagonist's kouhai and a genius of modern art contracted with the Karasuma Corporation.  Shy and more than a little eccentric, Yuki by far has the 'cutest' characterization (right down to the dog-head pajamas she uses for work clothes).  Despite her sweet and innocent appearance, she has long experience with the bitter edge of society's tongue, and she has an intense dislike of the mass media.  She is the only heroine who has almost no relationship with the protagonist outside of her own path (she briefly appears in the common route and as a side-character in the other routes), but, in exchange, in her route, the relationship she develops with Shin is intense and close.
One element of this game I've failed to speak about until now is the reason why I love the paths in this game... for better or worse, most charage paths involve the protagonist one-sidedly 'saving' the heroine from some trouble or helping her out with some issues.  However, perhaps the greatest attraction of this game's paths is that the relationships are so... mutual.  The protagonist doesn't just one-sidedly save the heroines, but rather he is saved by them in turn, rescued from the intense loneliness he feels even in the presence of others, as well as his bad habit of self-sacrifice.  The reciprocity in this game's paths makes for a far more 'equal' relationship than you usually see in a VN romance of any sort.
Yuki's route is no exception... while the protagonist undoubtedly resolves the issues that plague her life, she also returns the favor by salving his spirit, saving him from himself in a way that can't help but bring tears to my eyes, even on a third playthrough.
Shizuku
Karasuma Shizuku is Rena's rival at school and in business.  Shizuku's family company is a second-line dealer, primarily auctioning off art pieces whose value has already been set by the art community, whereas Rena's Ootori family specializes in discovering and raising up new artists whose works have not yet been given a value by the art community.  In addition, the Karasuma corporation specializes in modern art, whereas the Ootori family specializes primarily in classical-style art like paintings, stone sculptures, and other such works.  Shizuku is extremely sharp-tongued and aggressive... with everyone except Shin.  She and Shin go way back... ten years back, to be specific, and when she sees him as a cross-dressing maid, she goes a bit berserk, jumping to all sorts of conclusions that make for some pretty hilarious events in the other paths.  In her own path... well, let's just say her path is a lot more comedic than the others at first. 
By nature, Shizuku's first second and fourth priorities are Shin, even when it isn't her path.  She loves him, is aware of it, and she has little to no hesitation about using her immense fortune and personal influence for his sake.  She is also the only heroine that is willing to accept his decision without questioning when it comes to a certain issue... and probably the most passionately focused on him alone, as opposed to splitting their attention between art and him.   For better or worse, Rena is driven by a hunger for art, Chiharu by a desperate need to protect people and to find someone to accept her, and Yuki has numerous issues that are equal in importance to her when compared to the protagonist.  In that sense, it can be argued Shizuku is the most loving of the heroines, because she always acts for his sake, above all other things.
It does, however, take a bit of effort to see beyond her cold mask in the other paths, lol.
 
Conclusion
Along with Haruka ni Aogi, Uruwashi no  this VN is one of my top two charage-type VNs (in Uruwashi no's case, a nakige).  After having played this game a third time, my belief that this is a kamige has, if anything, become stronger.   This game is actually far shorter than it seems when you read it, but due to the sheer 'density' of the events in the game, it feels like a far larger story.  Any one of these paths would be worthy of being a true path in another VN, and it is a VN that is very easy to invest emotionally in.  For those interested in the fandisc, it should be noted that it had a different writing and production staff, and as a result, it is little more than an excuse for extra h-scenes. 

http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b264/Rihochan/Ojomasu.png
Now, this was a game I didn't really have high hopes for, but I am glad to say that I was pleasantly surprised.  While this falls short of kamige level (primarily due to the disproportionately short epilogues), it is definitely an interesting take on the trap protagonist ojousama-ge. 
Generally speaking, trap protagonists and ojousama-ge go together like hot fruit pie and ice cream.  While the formula (begun with the original Shugotate by AXL) hasn't changed significantly since it came into existence, it has a lot of minor variants.  However, in this case they took a rather unusual path with the character settings... for one thing, the protagonist is not the timid type in any way, shape or form.  For better or worse, most of the trap protagonists in these games are somewhat timid but talented and deeply kind-hearted or are actually almost afraid of women (for hilarity's sake).  The protagonist in this game, Hajime, is an agent for an organization that primarily involves itself with money and politics, for no apparent goal beyond gathering power to itself.  Is it an evil organization?  The question is hard to answer based on what comes up in the game, but I sort of lean toward yes, considering what gets revealed in Arika's path. 
Hajime is cool-headed, ambitious, and pragmatic on most issues.  He does have a tendency to help people where he can, but he doesn't go out of his way to help people that aren't actually in front of him.  He is also capable of being coldly manipulative when responding to the orders of the organization.  He also has none of the usual hesitations or inhibitions this type of protagonist tends to have about sex (he rather casually mentions he enjoys it but is quite capable of going without... and proves it).  This makes for some... interesting situations.  This definitely isn't a pure love game, but it isn't a nukige by any stretch of the imagination either.   The common route is seriously long...
While there are numerous characters in this game, there are only three heroines.  They are: Arika (the granddaughter of his organization's leader), Benio (a young girl from an influential kenjutsu/kendo dojo), and Peko (the princess of a fictional East European country).   The other girls are basically Hajime's targets... he needs to gain influence over them for the sake of his mission, but they aren't love interests in the context of the game.  In fact, he rather coldly manipulates some of them, albeit not in a way that harms them (he actually helps them, in his own way). 
Arika is... one strange girl.  In some ways, she is reminiscent of Kamio Ami from Semiramis no Tenbin.  However, she is far more open about her nature (she is a mischief-maker who just enjoys making situations more chaotic for her own amusement), and she isn't a near-sociopath.  She simply displays her affections in ways that are extremely troubling to anyone and everyone involved... or even merely in the vicinity.  She is also extremely lazy about anything she doesn't have an interest in.
Benio is Arika's opposite.  She is simple, straightforward, and rather obvious about everything.  She is a lover of the way of the sword and has no real hesitation about living to become the next head of her rather large clan's dojo.  That said, she is rather blind to anything that isn't on the surface, and she frequently gets into fights with Arisa, who seems to take an endless pleasure in setting her off.
Peko is perhaps the most easy to understand heroine in the group.  She is very kind-hearted and sensitive, with a strong sense of compassion and dignity fitting for postmodern royalty.  That said, she also has a surprisingly strong will hidden under that soft surface, and it comes out in full in her path.
Overall, I found this game to be an immensely pleasurable experience, and while I could have used more action scenes and perhaps more cold-blooded manipulation on the part of Arika and the protagonist... this still turned out to be a game worth remembering.  I'm glad that this month already has at least one solid VN of the Month candidate, hahaha...

*This post contains no spoilers!
Before starting this post, I suppose that I should give a brief introduction and summary for Subarashiki Hibi ~Furenzoku Sonzai (Our Wonderful Everyday ~Discontinuous Existence). However, Asceai in his review of the VN probably gave the best and most condensed summary for this fairly complicated story. So I will borrow his words:
“Subarashiki Hibi is a story told in six chapters. The chapters are of varying lengths and structure, but for the most part, they cover the month of July 2012 from a number of different perspectives.
The story begins in chapter #1, 'Down the Rabbit-Hole" on July 12, 2012. The protagonist; Minakami Yuki; lives a peaceful everyday life with Tsukasa and Kagami; her childhood friends; when one day she meets a mysterious girl, Takashima Zakuro (a girl in another class in Yuki's school, who seems to have met Yuki before but Yuki does not remember this).
The next day, she learns that Takashima Zakuro has killed herself. Rumors in school are abuzz about predictions of the end of the world in 2012 - one of which is a Web site called the "Web Bot Project", a network of crawlers designed to harness the 'collective unconsciousness' to make predictions.
A boy in Yuki's class named Mamiya Takuji stands up and makes an apocalyptic prediction, stating that the world will end on the 20th, and that Zakuro's death was the first sign. He speaks of an event he dubs "the Last Sky", where the world will be destroyed and reborn.
The clock is ticking and more people die as the prophesied date draws closer and closer while Yuki attempts to get to the bottom of the identity of Mamiya Takuji, the Web Bot Project and the Last Sky.”
 
Although this is a highly accurate plot summary of Suba Hibi that avoids spoilers, what a prospective reader of Suba Hibi should also know, is that the story is divided into two parts. The two parts are fundamentally interlinked, but are also kept separate. And it is this aspect of the visual novel that really defines it as a masterpiece. There is the part of the work that is a story, and then there is the part that is a philosophical work. Both parts are handled excellently well, and mix together in a fascinating and integral way. Simply, these chapters: Down the Rabbit Hole 2, It's My Own Invention, Looking-Glass Insects, Jabberwocky, Which Dreamed it, Jabberwocky 2, and the first two epilogues are a complete story. The VN very well could have been just these parts, and it would have been a damn good work of art. And yet, the visual novel is not just these parts. Down the Rabbit Hole 1, End Sky 2, and all the scenes with Ayana throughout all the chapters are included as well. And by virtue of just being there, it forces the reader to question why? These parts add nothing to the actual narrative of the story, and yet it is these parts that mark the very start and the very end of the story. With a mysterious girl named Ayana showing up periodically throughout the story to remind us not to get too caught up in the events of the story. That while the narrative part of the story is fascinating, and very easy to get lost in. There is a whole deeper layer to everything going on that we will only get a clue of at the very end.
Down the Rabbit-Hole 1, which I will refer to as Chapter 0, gets a lot of flak for being considered a weak start to an otherwise excellent story. And although Down the Rabbit-Hole 1 does have a fair bit of fluff, it is an absolutely integral part of the story. As an introduction, Chapter 0 has the role of establishing what kind of mind set the reader should approach this story with. And it is for this reason that Chapter 0 is so important. Suba Hibi is a philosophical work above all else. Upon finishing this story, you get the feeling that Sca-ji (the primary creator) wanted to write a philosophical thesis of his own, but then decided to create a whole visual novel instead. And I'm so glad he chose that route. By using fiction to express these concepts, and forcing the reader to see the story not as a story but as a world of its own, it gets us to see the relevance of said philosophies. The whole story is essentially there to create a conversation about various philosophical topics, with solipsism being one of the big ones. This is what Chapter 0 exists for, to get the reader to understand that the events we will see unfold as the actual story progresses is not meant to be just mere entertainment (and oh boy is it a thrill ride), but to keep in mind that there is even deeper subtext to everything going on.
Takashima Zakuro, the girl whose suicide is the triggering point, or perhaps even the direct cause of all the events that follow, plays an entirely different role in Chapter 0. With the exclusion of this chapter, she is a normal character and even the primary protagonist of the Looking Glass-Insect chapter. But in Chapter 0, she has the role of being a character that knows what is going on. A role that she shares only with Otonashi Ayana (except that Ayana retains that role throughout the entire duration of the story, not just in Chapter 0 as is Zakuro's case). When reading Chapter 0, we are told and even see some interesting and cryptic things, but have no way of piecing those things together. Thereby giving you enough information to be curious about the under workings of everything that is going on, but with no means of figuring that out yourself without continuing into the proverbial “Rabbit Hole”.
It is for that reason that Suba Hibi is first and foremost a philosophical work, because above all else our purpose is to try to figure out what is going on. And once the story really gets rolling in Down the Rabbit-Hole 2, we experience the main events from a myriad of unreliable perspectives. Meaning that trying to figure out what is going on is less like a puzzle as would be in a typical mystery, but more about determining what makes the most sense from the scrambled information we get. In fact, without giving any major spoilers, it is made quite clear at the very end of the story that interpreting the story is the only solution we have, meaning that everything isn't laid out clearly by the end. Which once again, adds significance to Chapter 0.
Upon finishing Suba Hibi (meaning reading End Sky 2), you will want to reread Chapter 0 since now we as readers will no longer be in Minakami Yuki's shoes as we were the first time. Throughout the whole first reading of the story, Chapter 0 was nothing but a source of questions. Upon the second time, it is our source for answers. We have the necessary knowledge to be sharing the table with Takashima Zakuro and Ayana, since this time around, like them we will also know what is going on. When Zakuro and Ayana spoke to Yuki in our first reading, it felt like the two characters with any sort knowledge of what was really going on were keeping us in the dark. They would give subtle clues, but those clues were useless at that time. In the second reading of chapter 0, as readers we are equals in knowledge to Ayana and Zakuro and can finally make use of those clues. And the VN understands this. In fact, Ayana first introduces herself in Chapter 0 by saying “It's been a while”, addressing herself not to Yuki, but to the audience. The true meaning of this remark is very apparent to a second time reader, and instantly reminds you of the conversation you had with Ayana in End Sky 2.Although in a first reading, you probably will easily disregarded this, thinking that Ayana and Yuki briefly met before, and that Yuki simply doesn't remember. And it is here where the role that Ayana and Zakuro play differ in Chapter 0.
(Here is an upload of that entire first encounter with Ayana in Down the Rabbit Hole 1, English subtitles are available)
When Zakuro speaks, she is speaking to Yuki the character, not us the audience. Ayana however, really speaks directly to us, the audience (in all the chapters of this story), and that “it's been a while” (久しぶり) is essentially proof of that. As you progress in the story and work through the other chapters, Takashima's role is quite different from Chapter 0's, and she is much more ignorant compared to her chapter 0 self. Ayana however, no matter what chapter you read (and therefore which character's perspective you are seeing), is the exact same. In a story so filled with inconsistency, she is always the one consistent factor. Which goes back to my first point, just as Chapter 0 and End Sky2 are separate from the main story, so is Otonashi Ayana.
Suba Hibi is not a simple story, and it is not meant to be only enjoyed for its emotional highs and lows; it's strange beginning makes that clear. Furthermore, during the process of reading, in case you ever forget that, Ayana is always there to remind you of that fact. Especially with the appearances she makes near the climax of the story in various chapters.
But perhaps what I love most is the use of perspective. Returning to a previous point, in your first reading of Chapter 0 you will naturally orient your own perspective with Yuki's since all the information we receive in that chapter is from her. In fact, the whole story is told from the first person perspective of various unreliable narrators. And in every chapter we will identify our understanding of things from that character's point of view.
But by the second reading of the story, because we have a complete picture of everything, there is a dichotomy between the reader, and the protagonist's narration. An artificial feeling that we are in a third perspective emerges. Because at this point we can balance what the protagonist perceives, with an objective understanding. Which causes us to identify with out own (third person) perspective of the story, rather than submitting to the protagonist's point of view. The more the reader develops their own personal perspective of things, the more they can relate to Ayana. The one character whose role is simply to be an objective observer.
In a first reading, conversations with Ayana seem like she is teasing the reader for how little they actually know of what is going on. But this is because in a first reading, we identify with whichever protagonist's perspective we are seeing. Ayana is teasing us the reader by teasing the character she is talking to. The more we identify with the character's point of view, the more annoying and weird Ayana seems. But the more we identify with our own perspective (meaning by having read everything already), the more Ayana feels like an equal talking to us. Since just like the reader, she is the only other objective perspective on everything.
In fact, this brings us back to the fact that unlike a book, where a first person narrative is without dispute a first person narrative. This is a visual novel, with choices. Even with all the information presented to us is in first person, it is by nature of its medium a third person experience since we dictate the story at certain key points. And Ayana is there to remind us that we like her, are experiencing things from an objective point of view.

My masterpieces list:
1. Can Can Bunny Superior
2. De-Ja
3. Illumina!
4. Misty Blue
5. Sekai de Ichiban Kimi ga Suki!
6. Slope 
7. Suijaku Sakusen 2 Moeyo Dragon
8. The 4th Unit - Merry Go Round
9. Toushin Toshi
10. Yami no Ketsuzoku
11. Urotsukidouji
12. Urusei Yatsura: Stay With You

1990 is the year of RPG. Their number and diversity put interactive adventures VNs to shame. 1990 is a revolutionary year in many aspects. First doujin works, first nsfw covers, first explicit sex scenes, first lgbt game, first strategy and SIM VN mixes.
The big three candidates for the VN of the year are De-Ja, Toushin Toshi and Misty Blue, but De-Ja exploration and humorous nature is much to my liking and thus De-Ja is the VN of the year 1990.
1. Body Inspection in Belloncho ~Girl's High-School Version~ ベロンチョ身体検査 ～女子高校編～ [900117] Hard 1 2 You are Nanako Hongou, a new transfer student to the all-girls school, St. Belloncho Academy. Hearing rumors of a sketchy body inspection taking place at the school infirmary, you decide to take it upon yourself to unearth the culprit, and expose the secrets of St. Belloncho Academy. Fight an eclectic cast of delinquents while going about your school life and solving mysteries. Simple turn-based RPG. There are also items to use in combat, including different types of panties. There is a limit on items held and that adds a serious difficulty layer. Graphics are fancy and characters are impressive. Graphics are done by Sapporo Momoko who is still in the industry and who is the author of the most erotic visual novel of the 1980s - Ayayo's After Five.  
2. Slope スロープ [900119] Queen Soft Mai transfers into all girl high school to break ordinary school life and experience everything that a girl school can give, including lesbian relationships. It's totally eroticism oriented yuri work, but it's one of the most beautiful and well-done works of 1990 (being a January release makes it even more astonishing). The number of commands and locations is small, so it's not really painful. There are two types of endings. Even without music (not detected by emulator) this work has just too much charm to be neglected.  
3. Ligarued リガルード [900125] Game Technopolis Hero is a student who frequents the coffee shop to look at part-time sweet worker Kawano Mai. At one such day some girl sits next to him. She introduces herself as Laseska and claims that she came from the world Ligarued and that the protagonist is a very important person who she needed to protect. A very short and not really interesting story. Basically soon another traveler from Ligarued arrives and the game ends after two battles and some celebration. I'll forever remember this game for the very unproportional big ugly head of Laseska. During the CG it's usually ok, but at gameplay scenes it sometimes looks horrifying.  
4. Misty Vol.3 Misty Vol.3 [900125] DataWest 1 Misty Vol.3 is a detective mystery adventure game set in modern-day Japan and starring the young private investigator Ryū Kamishiro. The game consists of five unrelated cases that can be accessed in any order from the main menu. These cases range from seemingly mundane matters to thefts, mysterious disappearances and murder investigations. This volume contains the following cases: Backdrop for Murderous Intent, Campus Disappearance, Memory of a Bloodstain, The Wine Glass Smells like Death and Legend of a Scratched Neck. A serious detective game which is a genre that I don't feel confidence to discuss.  
5. Sailor Fuku Senshi Felis セーラー服戦士フェリス [900128] Cocktail Soft A UFO came and abducted three girls. Their classmate rode her grandfather fighter spaceship and hurried to rescue! Ugh, a scroller shooter. Game has three areas each divided into four stages. And as you progress girl of the area strips. A very borderline material, indeed. You can visit shop and spend acquired money on lots of upgrades and options.  
6. Foxy [900206] Elf 1 The story of Foxy is rather basic: a hostile army from a country known simply as "Red" attacks the capital city of the "Blue" nation. Not only the enemy tries to invade the most important strategic points of the city - enemy generals also try to capture and enslave the "Blue" girls! Naturally, they must be stopped! As the commander of the Blue army, it's the player's task to face enemy forces in battles, rescue the girls, and drive the Reds out of the city. Strategy game with a basic country Red attacking country Blue. Between the battles there are cut-scenes involving girls rescue. The first elf strategy game with quite few units and simple rules, so not need to like strategy games to clear. With such a basic plot little can be done to make game worthwhile, but drawing is really good and at least it's not I-ADV but pure turn-based strategy + relaxation pure kinetic novel parts.  
7. Alice no Yakata ALICEの館 [900215] Alice Soft 1 A collection of additional materials including a new adventure story "Sentimental season". The heroine dates a boy, but the relationship in the pair of her school friend Mami develops much more intensively and the heroine does not want to lag behind. A short kinetic ADV designed just to relax and watch HCG.  
8. Nishimura Kyoutarou Mystery: Hokutosei no Onna 西村京太郎ミステリー 北斗星の女 [900223] TOSE Software 1 2 Hokutosei no Onna (the title refers to the express train connecting Tokyo and Hokkaido in Japan rather than the Ursa Major constellation) is based on the works of the Japanese detective story writer Kyōtarō Nishimura, starring Inspector Totsugawa and his assistant Kamei, who is the protagonist of the game. A man was found stabbed to death in his apartment in Tokyo; shortly after the investigation begins, another man is killed in a hotel room in Hokkaido. Kamei must question witnesses and suspects and examine evidence in order to solve the mystery. Game is reviewed in English.  
9. Fundation Shinjuku Story ファンデーション 新宿ストーリー [9002] Dott Kikaku Hero has some money and a lot of time to enjoy night Shinjuku life. Just trash about HCG which is surprising since Dott Kikaku has been one of the most interesting developers so far.  
10. Rakuen no Shoutaijou 楽園の招待状 [9002] Striker Hero is chosen by the gods as a humanity representative and thrown to another world with the only farewell words of "Have fun!". Since there's no purpose given all we can do is meet girls, accept their requests, fulfill them and get CG reward. There's the need to move a lot through the maze-like locations. In the prologue it's mentioned that we also get a map, but actually there is none! Game is mostly about finding items and applying them at the right spots to progress.  
11. Nishimura Kyoutarou Mystery: Super Express Satsujin Jiken 西村京太郎ミステリー スーパーエクスプレス殺人事件 [900302] Irem 1 At 23:49 at Osaka station a woman was found strangled to death in a private room of the super express train. The victim Nogami Kimiko was a president of fashion Tokyo company "Silano". Detective Kamei happened to be in Osaka at that time and he volunteered to proceed with the investigation. The testimonies of the passengers and staff showed that Nogami Kimiko was killed between Nagoya and Osaka, supposedly by her husband who went missing. But on the next morning the husband showed up at Osaka police station denying the crime and presenting an alibi. Another Tokyo fashion company "Knight" wanted to absorb "Silano" and thus its president had a motive to kill Nogami Kimiko, but happened in reality? A serious detective game which is a genre that I don't feel confidence to discuss.  
12. Kaettekita Tanteidan X 帰ってきた探偵団Ｘ [900309] Heart Soft A parody game to Tanteidan X and many other games. There are three stories: "Legend of Bravery", "Ganbare Earth Self-Defense Forces" and "Otome tears at the bottom of deep ocean". There's no real info on the game and my gameplay attempt was miserable - no matter what keys I pushed the submarine was getting swallowed by the shark. But there is a video with much longer playthrough on nico.  
13. Crystal Dream II ~Maou no Genei~ クリスタルドリーム Ⅱ ～魔王の幻影～ [900324] Striker 1 2 Hero is a brave person who is worried that the town stays under tyrannical rule. He sets to talk to magistrate, but on the way there hears a story that demon was revived and town magistrate being manipulated. So he forwards to Crystal castle to defeat demon king. Game is an RPG. But while it's relatively simple on the way to castle, inside the walls are mirrored so orientation is vastly confusing especially when you lose direction after battle. Just as the part 1 there is a command "make H" available to press on will and there seems to be HCG for every girl provided that the conditions for it are fulfilled.  
14. Cybernetic Hi-School Part 3 ~Top o Nerae!~ 電脳学園３ ～トップをねらえ！～ [900324] Gainax 1 Just like the two previous Cybernetic Hi-School games, the third part is a strip quiz game. This time, it is centred upon Gainax's famous Gunbuster animation videos. You, as an alpha-class Top, are supposed to win three keys to pilot the Great Gunbuster robot against the cosmic threat to humanity. The keys are held by Jung-Freud, Kazumi (oneesama) and Noriko, and you must retrieve the keys by defeating each character in a quiz game, which has the side-effect of stripping them of all their clothes. Quite a gorgeous work with the best Gainax staff members participating. Compared to previous parts there are less HCG here and much higher level of craziness.  
15. Destruction Gekan デストラクション下巻 [9003] Soft Studio Wing The time of battle between darkness and superpower mankind representatives has come. Final part of Destruction dilogy. Unfortunately second part of the story was unsatisfactory. The battle is transferred to another dimension so it looses all the realism of mystics atmosphere that Studio Wing works are famous for.  
16. Ikase Otoko Nyuumon ~Ai o Arigatou~ イカセ男入門 ～愛をありがとう～ [9003] Family Soft 1 Choosing the right answer out of the list gradually gets the leaf red resulting in CG. Choosing the wrong answer makes the player drink milk which eventually results in game over. I was pretty sure it would be 4th part of Ikase Otoko, but this time it's just a word game, more like a special edition to the series. Compared to the previous games this one feels story-less and ordinary, without personality.  
17. Misty Blue ミスティブルー [900402] Enix 1 2 Kazuya Mizukami is a young musician who returns to Japan after having spent four years studying abroad. However, things don't go very smoothly, and Kazuya even quarrels with a music producer who doesn't appreciate his talent. Everything becomes much worse when the producer is found dead shortly after their quarrel, and Kazuya becomes a murder suspect. He must clear his name, but for that he will need the help of his friends. Game is reviewed in English.  
18. Narutomaki Hichou ~Tsuukai Gag Aventure~ 鳴門巻秘帖　～痛快ぎゃぐあばんちゅーる～ [900410] Zenryuutsuu Akatsunenosuke is a master swordsman girl in Edo period. She works for detective agency. Once she got a request to deliver a small box with documents to Futura clan castle. A trivial request turns into a big adventure. All the main heroes are girls and while there are truly dangers on the road, there are much more lesbian H events. Since it's a gag (it's even in the title) comedy, there's plenty of fooling around. Command selection type would harm tempo greatly, so game uses plain adventure format with occasional choices. There are lots of bad ends but good ending is just one. Good light ecchi work, but certainly not a masterpiece.  
19. Sadistic Gamers Part 2 Otanjoubi Play サディスティックゲーマーズ PART-2 お誕生日プレイ [900410] Sixteens

Birthday issue of sadistic gamers doujin quiz game.  This time both main heroine and her tutor are girls, same as in further games of the series. Same doujin quiz as ever. You know the drill.  
20. Can Can Bunny Superior きゃんきゃんバニー スペリオール [900416] Cocktail Soft 1 The second game in the Can Can Bunny series follows the story of a young Japanese boy named Takeshi. One fine night he looks out of the window and notices a sexy girl undressing in the opposite building. "Oh, if only I could get her", sighs Takeshi. Immediately, the kind bunny-eared fairy Ariko from the Magic Land appears and... grants Takeshi's wish! He now possesses a Magic Book that will teach him ho to conquer the hearts of pretty girls... and not just the hearts! Simulation element here is simplified greatly and some mode in it that got on the video is just pressing space key to continue thus kinetic novel. Overall there are three scenarios with specific themes.  
21. The 4th Unit 5 D-Again 第４のユニット５ Ｄ－Ａｇａｉｎ [900420] DataWest 1 The criminal trade organization WWWF was finally defeated. The bionic soldier Blon-Win is appointed a high-ranked inspector and sent on a mission to protect the secret service agent Remi Binderk on the way to the United Nations conference in Geneva. On board the TGV train in France Blon-Win encounters her old acquaintance Dalzy, who tells her that former WWWF members have united to form the Einheit group, and are working on a new dangerous weapon known as G-R. From this work DAPS animation system is implemented for this series as well (pioneered in psychic detective series). Still the use of DAPS here is limited due to the need to publish the work on less efficient platforms like PC-98. The standing sprites of girls become somewhat not cute and the talking system is simplified here in that there's no need to choose the topic of conversation. But instead there's a need to constantly choose the same talk command over and over with different emotions to progress. This work has the climax of the series and it's the last multi-platform game of the series with the rest being FM Towns exclusives.  
22. Urotsukidouji うろつき童子 [900421] Fairytale 1 The game is based on the famous adult manga/anime series with the same name. It generally follows the main plot: the demon Amano Jaaku is banished from Makai (the demon world) to the Earth by the Elder, doomed to be trapped in a human body; he is given the mission of finding Choujin, the most powerful god, who is hiding in the body of a high-school student. Games goes pretty ordinarily as we check out three girls that may be the most powerful God. But at the second half the Makai demons show up for a big battle. The game inherits a great story from the original, has good gameplay with few commands and is hookable - that all makes it a masterpiece.  
23. Hacchake Ayayo-san 2 - Ikenai Holiday - Ayayo's Love Affair はっちゃけあやよさん２ いけないホリデイ ＡＹＡＹＯ＇Ｓ ＬＯＶＥ ＡＦＦＡＩＲ [900426] Hard 1 Ikenai Holiday is a follow-up to Hacchake Ayayo-san. It is a short visual novel focusing on the erotic adventures of two young Japanese girls, Ayayo and Tomoko. The game begins with the girls deciding how to spend the holiday. From that point on, depending on the player's choices, the story splits into three vignettes: going to see an erotic movie, buying shoes, or reading erotic books. Each story invariably concludes with a sex scene. A short and simple nukige, but with a bright atmosphere.  
24. Waterfront Adventure ウォーターフロント・アドベンチャー [900426] Hard The hero lost to a mysterious Mr.H. The winner's request is to bring him 10 used panties. Hero takes a sub to Yokohama Expo to try skillfully get panties from the local companies booths. Money is used to get to different EXPO parts. In contrast to the synopsis there aren't that many HCG here since many girls give away their garments willingly.  
25. Haja Taisei Dangaiou 破邪大星ダンガイオー [9004] Game Technopolis The four psychic teenagers find girl Ranpa in cryogenic chamber. Ranpa is who Dr. Tarsan is after, so a new wave of confrontation with his robot army ensues. The work has nice character designs and great sound for a pc-88 exclusive. There aren't HCG here - just some fan-service of after-bath towels and heroines being harassed by the drunkards.  
26. Twilight Zone Vol. 4 Tokubetsu Hen トワイライトゾーン VOL. 4 特別編 [9004] Great 1 2 Aliens have invaded Earth. Seemingly impervious to damage, they took control of the planet. Only a few partisan organizations dared to oppose their rule. All the aliens look like young and attractive human women, and soon it was found out that they have a weakness to sperm. Thus, a young Japanese man and his few male allies embark on a quest to defeat the aliens by having sex with them. This time it's top down view and we finally get outside the dungeons. "Great" needed a well-selling bright game so Chaos Angles was taken as a model and lots of parody elements were winded up on top of it. There are 108 enemy girls overall and difficulty is unbalances turning into very harsh at times.  
27. Rance II - Hangyaku no Shoujo-tachi - ランスII　－反逆の少女たち－ [900515] Alice Soft 1 2 3 4 Four magical rings were stolen from Custom Town. A bunch of sexy, but dangerous sorceresses terrorizes the land. The town mayor has no choice but to invite Rance, a freelance private investigator whose mind is mostly occupied with pretty girls and promises to pay him quite a large sum of money if he stops the evil. Naturally, Rance agrees. It's time for him and his trusty cute purple-haired sidekick Shiiru to fight evil once again! Game is reviewed in English.  
28. RAY-GUN [900515] Elf 1 2 3 4 5 Georgie is a young man who lives with his fiancee Miria in the quiet town of Lakeside, repairing large combat robots which are strangely called "steroids". One day he discovers several such steroids in the forest, and as he decides to inspect them, unknown flying steroids kidnap Miria. Now Georgie has to pilot a steroid himself and to rescue his beloved one. Game is reviewed in English.  
29. Kaerimichi wa Kiken ga Ippai 帰り道は危険がいっぱい [900516] D.O. Hero fell in love with the daughter school president who is also a student council president. And her father will not tolerate that. RPG where instead of monsters you fight with girls (33 overall) who stay on your way to Saori. School RPG setting was very new so it could be enjoyed at that time. And it was certainly better than Exterlien issued by D.O. the same year.  
30. Psychic Detective Series Vol. 3: Aya サイキック・ディテクティブ・シリーズ Vol.3 アヤ [900526] DataWest 1 2 3 Only a few people possess the unique ability to read people's hearts; those people are called psychic analysts, and Katsuya Furuyagi is one of them. One day, a fellow analyst pays him an unexpected visit and directs him towards a mysterious old man named Kamiya. Reading the old man's mind, Furuyagi ventures into the realm of memories, where a woman's ghost is attempting to avenge her own murder. This work is notable for full synchronization of audio and video, but the story is incoherent and lacks interest especially in comparison to the heights the Vol.2 reached.  
31. Misty Vol.4 Misty Vol.4 [9005] DataWest 1 Misty Vol.4 is a detective mystery adventure game set in modern-day Japan and starring the young private investigator Ryū Kamishiro. The game consists of five unrelated cases that can be accessed in any order from the main menu. These cases range from seemingly mundane matters to thefts, mysterious disappearances and murder investigations. This volume contains the following cases: Returning to the Sky, Time of Atonement, Moon Walk, Alibi in the Clock and Photo in the Nothingness. A serious detective game which is a genre that I don't feel confidence to discuss.  
32. Rouge ~Manatsu no Kuchibeni~ ルージュ ～真夏の口紅～ [900613] Birdy Soft Protagonist's father dies and leaves the will for his son to take care of his secret daughter Eriko in Yokohama or get stripped from inheritance. The hero sets off to Yokohama while having only the picture of the girl. This is one of the most beautiful games of Bridy Soft - and heroines here are very lovely. The bigger part of the game we just search for Eriko while getting information from neighbors and friends. And here comes a big "but" - but the hero actually lays down with each such friend or neighbor to know a piece of information. Add to that a very tragic story of Eriko revealed later and we get a really dark-themed game - which is not necessarily bad, but in my case spoilt the impression from the beginning of the work.  
33. De-Ja DE・JA [900615] Elf 1 2 3 4 You are Ryuusuke, archaeologist in pursuit of adventures and legendary treasure. One day you dream of finding a secret compartment in a pyramid filled with piles of treasures. That's going to be the discovery of the century! A naked woman appears and tells you not to take out the treasures. When you try to touch breasts, she turns into a monster. You wake up by the telephone ringing. A client brings you an antique cane with engravings on it. Those who possess this cane see the same dream every night with a golden hair girl. You take the cane to try to translate the symbols carved on it and end up in a real adventure yourself. Game is reviewed in English.  
34. PAL ~Wonder Trip! Chizuru~ ＰＡＬ ～ワンダートリップ！ちづる～ [900622] Birdy Soft A parody to CAL game. Once upon a time in one dark place there was hero Fuji... how will he escape? There are 10 consequential encounters with different goddesses and Miki comes as 11th and main heroine. There is nothing but funny dialogues and answer options here. I even failed to trigger a single H event and reached happy ending too fast.  
35. Urusei Yatsura: Stay With You うる星やつら STAY WITH YOU [900629] Hudson Soft 1 2 3 4 5 6 Urusei Yatsura: Stay with You is based on the manga series by Rumiko Takahashi. The protagonist is Ataru Moroboshi, a high school student who accidentally evokes love in the heart of Lum, the princess of an alien demon-like race. The game does not recount the initial events of the manga and instead is built like an episode, assuming the player's familiarity with the general story and characters. Ataru's ex-girlfriend Shinobu disappears under mysterious circumstances. Ataru and Lum must explore the high school building and find out what happened to Shinobu. Game is reviewed in English.  
36. Lupin Sansei - Hong Kong no Mashu - Fukushuu wa Meikyuu no Hate ni ルパン三世 香港の魔手 復讐は迷宮の果てに [900630] CSK Research Institute 1 Hong Kong no Mashu is based on the manga Lupin the 3rd and is built like an episode in the series, assuming the player's familiarity with the characters. The central character is the grandson of the fictional "gentleman thief" Arsène Lupin, who follows the same profession, traveling in search of riches and adventure with his companion Daisuke Jigen, an expert marksman. Joining them in this episode is Goemon Ishikawa XIII, a descendant of the legendary Japanese swordsman. Finding themselves in Hong Kong for different reasons, the heroes encounter an evasive and mysterious character with a dark past who crosses their paths and forces them to take action. It's an FM Towns exclusive and quite an obscure game, so there's nothing to add to Mobygames article.  
37. Youjuu Club 妖獣クラブ [900702] D.O. 1 2 Assuming the role of a lecherous lesser demon you must uncover the background image with your marker until 80% of the image is revealed in a Xonix-like game. Game is reviewed in English.  
38. Wedding Rhapsody ウエディングラプソディー [900720] Queen Soft Makoto Okawa has turned 17 years old and he is ordered by his father to find three ideal marriage partners selected by a supercomputer. All of the girls study at the same school, so Makoto starts attending the same school from now on. He's ordered not to reveal and fight for girls attention like a commoner. Okawa family legend says that marriage in 17 brings luck, so there's no time to waste! One road scenario. There are several commands, but they usually go with many subcommands which makes it rather painful. In order to get along with the girls it's needed to solve their troubles. The H scenes in the game are animated.  
39. Yami no Ketsuzoku 闇の血族 [900721] System Sacom 1 Miyu is a known designer. Since childhood she has had a red vision that showed up when in danger. Her friend model Marie gets brutally killed and Miyu decides to put her perception skills to good use. System Sacom novelware. It has a lot of interactivity compared to early Sacom games. First part is rather short and leaves a mystery hanging. Flags are somewhat difficult to catch. Game was innovative that it had female as protagonist with her thoughts and fears. It was advanced systems oriented game so graphics and especially sound were excellent for 1990.  
40. Exterlien エクスタリアン [900726] D.O. 1 2 3 4 5 The plot of Exterlien is very simple: a beauty contest is held in an amusement park. Suddenly, monsters invade the park in an attempt to kidnap the girls. The protagonist, a young man named Masato, decides to venture into the dangerous zone and rescue the beauties. Game is reviewed in English.  
41. Sora Kakeru Businessman 宇宙翔けるビジネスマン [900727] Zenryuutsuu Hero is a businessman in space trading company. He was able to get mining rights for resources in Norma planet. But ruling family was overthrown by the Queen of Darkness and his rights are in danger now. He undergoes a quest to rescue princess. For corporate justice! Command selection. Graphics are allright. Text field is huge. Why am I writing that? Because game's hardly noticeable. Setting is fantasy kingdom. Light and somewhat stupid adventure filled with lots of girls that you rescue. Not enough of comedy or plot to matter. And amount of naked scenes makes it borderline work.  
42. Sekai de Ichiban Kimi ga Suki! 世界でいちばん君がすき！ [900728] Cocktail Soft You are a show-business reporter who helps idols. One day you're tasked to make photos of rival idol night date. Horny pictures were made without problem, but you start to question such immoral approach and get closer to truth... Quite a typical Cocktail Soft work. Light bakage with cute heroines and occasional flashes of seriousness. Idols are always bright. CG are beautiful, text sets a good tempo despite command selection. Heroines show up one by one so flags are quite difficult in the first half of the game. Nowadays there are quite many cheerful charage, but at that time they were still rare and thus were valued a lot.  
43. School Wars スクール☆ウォーズ [900801] CreamSoft 1 Main character is a student who is entrusted by the teacher a mission to pacify the violent school girls. Unfortunately PC-98 version is unhookable and there aren't reviews of this game. There are turn based battles with the girls in the game. There are only 4 basic stats - HP, STR, DEF, EXP.  
44. Mainichi ga H 毎日がえっち [900810] Mini House Main character is only 14 girls away from his goal of having sex with 1000 different women. The first usage of concept of time in visual novels. Actions waste time by increments of 15 minutes. Unlike future time concept games here it's needed to clear all the girls so only one girl shows on the map somewhere at one time. Apart of that a nanpage to the bones.  
45. PIAS ピアス [900810] Birdy Soft 1 Hiroshi and Mayumi grew up together. They went to the same kindergarten, the same school, always spent time together, and naturally thought that they will never separate. Then the time has come when they both had to go to different colleges. They promised each other than they will still be together. But they both broke the promise... If jealousy and the knowledge of one's own betrayal were not enough to endanger their relationship, something far worse happened... the man with whom Mayumi spent the night was found murdered, and Hiroshi must forget his personal pain in order to solve the mystery... The man that Mayumi spent the night was found murdered and Hiroshi has to overcome betrayal and find the murderer. Wow, this game might be the first Nakige VN. Temptations, hardships, dangers, murder involvement, distance love... Surprisingly, work has many dark themes and even ending slides lack happiness. The seed of betrayal planted its roots in hearts forever.  
46. Silent Mobius サイレントメビウス [900810] Gainax 1 2 In 1999 portal was opened to Nemesis by mage guild in order to exchange Tokyo polluted air, but it was sabotaged by one mage and massive invasion followed through portal. Mage guild fought it relentlessly but most of it was destroyed over the next few years. In 2023 an AMP 5-female police unit was formed to protect civilians from attacks. Case: Titanic starts when real Titanic ship from 1912 is seen flying in the sky and AMP unit sets on its investigation. Manga is well known and cool but isn't Gainax just feeding on its popularity? It did not even do a single anime work on this setting! Let's figure out. Game's beautiful, all right. Command selection is simplified as much as possible. There are battle sequences and each AMP member has unique battle style. But most of the time you just walk over luxurious ship and gather flags to move the story. There's no mystery around and no real plot. And such work cost 14800 yen - that's the price of 5 full price games! That's an engrossing price for such an average game under a famous franchise.  
47. Nenriki Momoiro Yuugi 念力桃色遊戯 [900810] Ankoku Baitai Softwares

Main character is an aspiring photograph. But for some reason he is only interested in nude girls photo sessions. Genre is pure ADV that is basically a HCG collection with some text.  
48. D.P.S. SG D.P.S. SG [900815] Alice Soft 1 2 D.P.S. SG is the second entry in the D.P.S./Dream Program System series. Like the other D.P.S. games, it is a collection of three short scenarios, which are unrelated to each other story-wise and can be played separately. Those scenarios are presented as cartridges played on a fictional console named Dream Program System. Each scenario allows the player to choose between two different protagonists, or two different personalities for the protagonist. All of the scenarios feature nudity and/or sexual situations. The scenarios in this game include: A traditional account of a private lesson given by an experienced male tutor to a cute teenage girl. It can be played as either the teacher or the student, the latter involving deliberately giving wrong answers to English questions in order to gain time to seduce the teacher. An episode entitled Fahnen Fliegen (German for "flags flying"), depicting capture and torture of a female war prisoner by an SS officer. The player can choose to control the officer, effectively torturing the victim himself, or take the role of a soldier who tries to ease her pain, hoping to gain her sexual favors. A scenario set in the Sengoku period of the Japanese history, in the house of the famous warlord Oda Nobunaga. It is possible to play this scenario as Nobunaga himself, or as his daughter, the spoiled princess. In either case, the goal is to seduce the cute maid who works in the house. Game is reviewed in English.  
49. Kujaku Ou II 孔雀王 II [900821] Pony Canyon, Inc. 1 2 3 The adventure continues as Peacock faces the incarnation of general Nobunaga Oda. Team up with Asura, a fiery spirit, Jukindo master Onimaru, and Zen master Kou Kaifou to fight Nobunaga's missionary minions with a vast array of Shingon spells! Travel to the mystic world of the Lotus mandala and defeat Hindu demons, dark boddhisattvas, and the shadowiest villain yet, the Phoenix! Exciting story line where Peacock King discovers his dark origins and his evil twin sister! Game has enough information in English.  
50. Misty Vol.5 Misty Vol.5 [900902] DataWest 1 Misty Vol.5 is a detective mystery adventure game set in modern-day Japan and starring the young private investigator Ryū Kamishiro. The game consists of five unrelated cases that can be accessed in any order from the main menu. These cases range from seemingly mundane matters to thefts, mysterious disappearances and murder investigations. This volume contains the following cases: Pretty Devil, Witness (Ryū Kamishiro), Stolen Gem, The End of Love and Hate and Mystery of the Snow Manor. A serious detective game which is a genre that I don't feel confidence to discuss.  
51. Bishoujo Shashinkan Bangai Hen Outside Story 美少女写真館 番外編 ＯＵＴＳＩＤＥ ＳＴＯＲＹ [900907] Hard This is a story of everyday life in female-dominant police department. Yuko conducts investigations, arrests and enjoys her work as police officer. PhotoClub Outside story is a very misleading title. The truth is that first two parts of the series were just shooting of girls and stripping them, the third part was actually an adventure story that concluded taking pictures of girls and stripping them. And this is the forth installment of series which has nothing to do with taking pictures at all. Women just pick up on each other and solve cases by stripping. What was very weird for that time - that the game was adventure novel without usual command selections. It's quite a short work and its purpose is just to entertain.  
52. Mitsubachi Gakuen みつばち学園 [900914] Hudson Soft

Main character is a newly appointed teacher at the only idol training girls' school in Japan - Mitsubachi high school. For a year he looks after twenty students and solves a number of difficult cases targeting the girls. Game is unique for live action still images and aggressive animation style. Idol wave was only starting, so some things are still crude, but at least one girl became a real life idol after the game.  
53. Yesterday イエスタディ [900918] System House Oh! 1 2 In the far future, human beings learned to travel to faraway solar systems; as a result, human civilization has spread across the entire galaxy. However, as they tried to explore the outer space beyond it, they encountered a huge black hole. It was said that a strange light emanated from it. A brave scientist and pilot named Sonya traveled to the black hole, and discovered a medieval-like world, whose inhabitants consider her a divine savior... I can't really add anything that's not in Mobygames article already.  
54. Marchen Paradise メルヘン・パラダイス [900920] Great Main character is a high school student who peeked inside a suspiciously looking pipe and got warped into a fairy-tale world. This work can be considered of the same series as Girls Paradise Rakuen no Tenshi-tachi released a year earlier. The are a lot of fairy-tale heroines featured like Little Red Riding Hood or Snow white. They are all nymphomaniacs, so H scenes are rather bright. It's very easy to get a game over, but frequently saving helps to progress steadily.  
55. Pure My Dool ピュアマイドール [900925] Agumix The big box arrived from a friend as a birthday present and a girl who does not know anything about this world jumped out of it. There are six endings depending on whether the girl develops into a long-life partner or stays just for fun. Game is short and is just for CG.  
56. Tantei Jinguuji Saburou: Toki no Sugiyuku Mama ni 探偵 神宮寺三郎 時の過ぎゆくままに [900928] Data East Corporation 1 2 The fourth game in the Jake Hunter/Tantei Jingūji Saburō series, the second on a regular Famicom cartridge, and the last for the Famicom. There is a burglary at a mansion, which Jake goes to investigate. He sends his assistant Yulia Marks to search for the home of a young boy. While both cases seem simple on their own, they get more complicated when they become one. There is enough information in English.  
57. X-na X・na [9009] Fairytale 1 2 3 Tetsu is a young warrior who has left his home country in order to serve human rulers in their battle against the dark elves. But one day the valiant knight was heavily wounded in battle. Unconscious, he was found by a female fighter named Mei, who brought him to her house and cured him. Grateful, Tetsu promises Mei to help her venture into the huge tower standing nearby, which was built by the princess of the country and is now overrun by monsters... Game is reviewed in English.  
58. Ougon no Rashinban 黄金の羅針盤 [901005] Riverhill Soft inc. 1 2 3 Ōgon no Rashinban ("Golden Compass") is the second case starring the private detective Ryūnosuke Tōdō, following Kohakuiro no Yuigon. Like the first case, the adventure takes place in the 1920's. This time the investigator finds himself on a ship sailing from San Francisco to Yokohama. A mysterious murder occurs, and it is up to Tōdō to gather evidence and find the culprit. A serious detective game, but with a lot of point-and-click interactivity. The story is interesting, but there's a lot of effort needed to get through all the evidence gathering and interrogations. On the good part - mouse is used and clickable objects are actually highlighted. It's the detective game with the best system so far and it's an easy start for genre beginners.  
59. Yami no Ketsuzoku: Kanketsu-hen 闇の血族 完結編 [901005] System Sacom 1 Yami no Ketsuzoku: Kanketsu-hen is a direct sequel to Yami no Ketsuzoku. After a series of murders has occurred in Tokyo, Miyu Izawa, the heroine of the game and amateur detective endowed with supernatural senses, travels to Mexico with her friend Risa. There she has to learn about the history of the country's indigenous peoples, and venture into mysterious temples in order to finally discover the whole truth about recent horrifying events. 2nd part of the game. It infodums on the Maya civilization, gets much more realistic and more and more complex as narration goes. So it kind of stops to be entertainment matter and gets difficult to read. 2nd part has almost no flags surprisingly. Still, the ending looks hasty and leaves a shallow impression.  
60. Phantasy Star II Text Adventure: Amia no Bouken ファンタシースターII テキスト アドベンチャー アーミアの冒険 [901103] Sega 1 2 3 4 5 This game is one of the eight text adventures that chronicles the lives of characters before their story continues in Phantasy Star II. This particular game covers Anna Zirski, a counter-hunter. A counter-hunter hunts down and arrests hunters who have become criminals. Anna is tasked with capturing criminals holed up in a Motavian town. These criminals are accused of illegally accessing Mother Brain in order to disrupt the food production of that region. Anna must put a stop to these hackers. Game is reviewed in English.  
61. Yamamura Misa Suspense: Kyoto Zaitech Satsujin Jiken 山村美紗サスペンス 京都財テク殺人事件 [901122] TOSE Co., Ltd.

Main heroines goes to a meeting with best friends. But one friend goes missing. Soon friend's body is found. Protagonist starts an investigation to discover the circumstances of sudden death. Third work of the series, this time with the sudden shift from Taisho era to more modern one. As usual, I could not care less.  
62. Misty Vol.6 Misty Vol.6 [901122] DataWest 1 Misty Vol.6 is a detective mystery adventure game set in modern-day Japan and starring the young private investigator Ryū Kamishiro. The game consists of five unrelated cases that can be accessed in any order from the main menu. These cases range from seemingly mundane matters to thefts, mysterious disappearances and murder investigations. This volume contains the following cases: Second Music Box, Requested Directions, Foggy Apparition, Devil's Stronghold and Shadow Testament. A serious detective game which is a genre that I don't feel confidence to discuss.  
63. Akazukin-chan あかずきんちゃん [9011] System Delta A parody work to the Little Red Riding Hood. You are given a task by mother to visit grandmother. There are multiple traps awaiting on this way... Game uses items. So each time there is obstacle you need to check your backpack for a suitable item or keep searching. Game is not particularly interesting. But art is good and comedy-styled with two separate windows for sub-images. That's the feature of the game.  
64. Review -Jashin Fukkatsu- ＲＥＶＩＥＷ －邪神復活－ [9011] Orange House Ryoko Kawashima suddenly lost consciousness on the way home from school when she met a mysterious boy. When she regained consciousness she was in a different world and the priest passed her the sword with words that she was summoned to save the queen of that land. Story is quite short and all the commands have to be depleted to progress. Ryoko gathers friends to rescue the queen together so it inevitably falls into yuri action. The world is actually going to be destroyed unless the queen is saved, but Ryoko is not given any money so she has to exterminate rats in the cellar of the armor shop. Girls CG are quite cute, but the unproportionally big heads make shiver at times.  
65. Illumina! イルミナ！ [901205] Cocktail Soft 1 2 3 4 A young man wakes up, only to find himself in a bed, in an unknown house, in an unknown place. A lovely girl enters. She says that her name is Ryuuna and that she is practicing the art of White Magic as a priest. However, the young man cannot remember anything. He cannot even remember his own name. Ryuuna says that he was found unconscious outside of the village, with a pendant lying nearby. There is just one name written there, his name: Seraphis. Also, there is a strange engraving on his hand. Who is he really? Game is reviewed in English.  
66. MIRRORS ミラーズ [901210] Soft Studio Wing 1 2 3 The plot puts the player in the role of a musician, the lead singer for the band "Elleno Vision", haunted by terrible nightmares and stalked by a mysterious murderer during the band's world tour. Game is reviewed in English.  
67. Sadistic Gamers Part 4 Rumi no Climb Play サディスティック・ゲーマーズ PART-4 ～留美のクライムプレイ [901210] Sixteens

Rumi issue of sadistic gamers doujin game. This time genre is pure ADV, without quiz. It's probably the last game of the series. Finally all quiz traces are eliminated in favor of action.  
68. The 4th Unit - Merry Go Round 第４のユニット ＭＥＲＲＹ ＧＯ ＲＯＵＮＤ [901214] DataWest 1 2 Merrygoround is the sixth installment of The 4th Unit series and a sequel to D-Again, being the second chapter of the Einheit story arc introduced in the previous game. Koshinaka's research of the data bank on board the Diabolique, a stealth aircraft carrier of the United Nations, is aimed at increasing the life adjustment factor of bionic soldiers. However, members of the Einheit assault the laboratory, and the bionic soldier Blon-Win must decipher the clues left in order to proceed with the research and confront a mysterious person named Rua Rip Salisbury in the Original Matrix. FM Towns exclusive with full DAPS support. From this game it's not longer a command selection adventure, but rather an adventure with the limited error choice allowance. There is life bar and "wrong" command selection eats up a huge chunk of it. There's also timer for each selection so no relaxing available. But watching it in record is as satisfying as never before.  
69. Battle Skin Panic バトルスキンパニック [901215] Gainax 1 2 3 4 Arigawa walks Mimi from scool when they get attacked by female martial artist hooligans. Mimi admits that she studied fighting from the "Teacher" but many people use that to attack people. And Arigawa now gets involved into that face-off. Game is reviewed in English.  
70. Toushin Toshi 闘神都市 [901215] Alice Soft 1 2 3 4 Custom, a swordsman from a small village, is on a journey when he comes across a carriage being attacked. He defeats the attackers, rescuing the lovely maiden Kumiko. Kumiko was on her way to Toushin Toshi (Combat God City) to search for her father. She suspects her father is in the Combat God Mansion, residence of the annual combat tournament's champion. In order to get in, she needs to partner up with someone who can win the tournament that year, and Custom agrees that she can be his partner. They head to Combat God City to enter the tournament. Although victory in each round of the tournament earns one gold, special medicine, and other wonderful prizes, perhaps the most interesting prize is the opponent's partner. Each participant is required to have a beautiful female partner, and if the participant loses in combat, the victor gets his or her partner to do with as he/she pleases for one night. Female warriors in the tournament can choose to act as their own partner, as do the ninja Yayoi and swordswoman Morris. This monster-filled underground maze is located on the outskirts of Combat God City. One of the requirements to participate in the tournament is the retrieval of a Hero Crest from here. While the Hero Crests are on the first level of the labyrinth, there are several more floors and surprises waiting deeper inside. Game is reviewed in English.  
71. Dragon Knight II ドラゴンナイトII [901220] Elf 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Strawberry Fields - a magic country populated almost exclusively by beautiful young girls (that is, if we don't count the Wise Old Man and a couple of other male exceptions). All went well in this peaceful place, until the evil witch Mesaana abducted some of the country's lovely inhabitants and placed a curse upon them, turning them into hideous monsters. Enter Takeru Yamato (whom you might know as Desmond, the hero of Knights of Xentar), a young adventurer who happens to be in Strawberry Fields at that time. Takeru is told that in order to remove the curse one has to find three sacred writings, buried deep within three dangerous dungeons. Looks like a job for our adventurer - especially because the rescued girls will probably be very grateful! Game is reviewed in English.  
72. Pure 2 ピュア２ [901220] Queen Soft 1 The situation at the high-school soccer club is not good, and the coach is even afraid of getting fired... that's where the hero of the game, a student named Kitayama, steps into the picture. The coach asks him to become a "beauty manager", to search out pretty girls and to convince them participate in club activities. Kitayama is aided by two other schoolmates, but the player has to do the job all by himself... When title says Pure, it usually means the opposite. Pretty much the same happened with this game prequel "Pure". But game is very beautiful and girls drawing is cute so why not give it a try. Well, don't. Game has ridiculously difficult flags, morally old command selection formula and literally zero reward. But the main point of such games are characters, right? Supposed to be so, but here characters are so bland that no affection is possible. So game has great looks, but offers absolutely nothing, just torture, torture, more torture and then credits. It's a fraudware, not a real VN.  
73. Phantasy Star II Text Adventure: Kainz no Bouken ファンタシースターII テキストアドベンチャー カインズの冒険 [901226] Sega 1 2 3 4 Josh Kain (or Kain Ji An, Japanese: カインズ・ジ・アン Kainzu) is an 18 year old aspiring engineer who always loved machines, and had become quite knowledgeable in how electrical devices and robots function. He built many small devices, fixed appliances, and even learned to hack computers. However, due to being scatterbrained and clumsy, he would sometimes destroy the things he tried to fix. Eventually, after one particularly disastrous repair job, he gave up trying to be an engineer, deciding instead to put his "talent" for destroying things to good use. Thus did he become a "wrecker", his job being to trash anything electronic. He starts off joining a gang of rebels out to destroy Mother Brain, and eventually ends up teaming up with Rolf in Phantasy Star II towards that very end. Game is localized and has enough information in English.  
74. Beast ~Injuu no Yakata~ BEAST ～淫獣の館～ [9012] Birdy Soft 1 Muneto and his 4 friends seek shelter from the rain in a forest mansion. Servant does not allow to take them in but mistress Kiriko welcomes them inside. Next morning only Sandaihu is in his room. You must hurry and find your friends. There is an English review of the game.  
75. CAL キャル [9012] Birdy Soft 1 You are mostly interested in spending time with cute girls at school. One day a goddess of love Venus shows up and tells you that you'll soon be needed in the world of Cal which is populated only by cute girls. That was a dream, right? Time to figure out. Game emphasis lies in graphics. As in every game of Birdie Soft. Depending on the branch you're sent to eight worlds each with different atmosphere, so satisfaction level is high. Game follows the usual command selection formula pattern and presents ok'ish stories in a marvelous atmosphere. The atmosphere is nourished by introducing a lot of fairy-tale characters like Peter Pan, Rapunzel, Mermaid princess, Alice in Wonderland, Little Red Riding Hood and Cinderella. It's difficult, but possible to get a bad ending, so frequent saving is recommended.  
76. Yaritai Houdai 3 - As You Like - Europe Tour やりたい放題３ アズユーライク ヨーロッパツアー [9012] Lucifer Soft The third part of the series follows the same nanpa flow, but this time with international girls at exotic world locations. Finally the last game in the series or the next one would be multi-universe one. At least there is some sightseeing involved and girls personalities are very different.  
77. Yuuko Monogatari 優子物語 [9012] Heart Soft Hero is a famous novelist. One day woman Yuuko bursts into his mansion with demands to make a child with her. Heavy strategy mix about breeding. Strategy elements are different for each of four chapters. Breeding has never been so difficult! It's probably a grandfather of Princess Maker series.  
78. Circuit's Edge [9012] Westwood Studios 1 2 3 4 5 6 The player assumes the role of Marîd Audran, a private detective. The game is set in "The Budayeen", an entertainment/criminal quarter in an unnamed city somewhere in the Mideast that is a seedy reflection of modern-day New Orleans. While running a series of errands/"business deals" for "Saied the Half-Hajj", a friend of Marîd's, Marîd is framed for the murder of a man named Kenji Carter. Although Marîd's influential patron Friedlander Bey clears him with the local police, Bey asks him to look into Carter's death. Doing so leads Marîd deep into the criminal underworld of the Budayeen. Game is reviewed in English.  
79. J-Thunder J・サンダー [9012] 1 In order to save his sister and his girlfriend's father the hero rides a huge robot called J Thunder and confronts the kidnappers robotic squad. There is an English review of this game.  
80. Lime Light Lime Light [9012] Hypa Soft Lia's mother who was aiming for prima donna suddenly collapsed from illness and now Lia has to substitute for her. By a twist of fortune Lia's doll Tia arises to help Lia with this goal. An adventure game for hypocrites with a heartwarming story - that is self-description of this doujin work. The content looks all-age to me, but I never got out of the maze of the forest to know for sure.  
81. Madoushi Lulba 魔導師ラルバ [9012] Compile Co., Ltd. World is getting drown in hatred. Resurrected Lulba has tremendous power and army of 240 million monsters. Only a warrior Cybercat who can handle the sword of light can oppose him. Game is a predecessor of Madou Monogatari rpg series. Game has 4 chapters that were serialized separately. A simplified rpg with command selection and no real 2d gui, so it's like text rpg with small images. You travel and fight monsters and bosses most of the time, so it looks like a normal shounen adventure.  
82. Réserve [9012] MIN 1 2 3 4 5 You play the pink-haired heroine Mio, who just wants to go on a date with her boyfriend. However, she slips through a crack in timespace and finds herself in a realm of monsters that all want to do lewd things to her. Make it to the end and go on a nice date with your boyfriend! Game is reviewed in English.  
83. Sweet Girl [9012] Burning☆Apple The purpose of the way is to get into intimate relations with the main featured heroine "Milady", but there are a lot of encounters on this way. Another doujin game. Game's here for spontaneous H encounters. There are also items to use, like chloroform.  
84. Sweet Girl 2 Sweet Girl 2 [9012] Burning☆Apple The ghosts have haunted the girls and the aim of the main character is to exorcise them. The game system is also very funny because elements like ACT ADV are incorporated. The content got even nastier. The system is now action mostly as we run through locations looking for items or people in action mode - and the events are usual ADV.  
85. Yuugekitai 遊撃隊 [9012] TKO Soft The story of adventures of a school boys band. Just saying that game is a parody is not really enough - it just can't run a single CG in a normal way. Distorted face features, funny emotions and extravagant behavior of those guys can't leave anyone indifferent unless there's strong aversion with those faces. The flow is several short stories driven in a kitetic novel form.  
86. Yuugekitai Bangai Hen 遊撃隊・番外編 [9012] TKO Soft A submarine suddenly appeared on the coast and the fighting squad is back to uncover its mysteries. The main difference about the second part is inclusion of action scenes when we control a boy and whirling blades wrecking the enemies. As for the rest it's new short stories and new portion of absurdism.  
87. Angel Commander 2 Gaiden Angel Commander 2 外伝 [90] Fairy Craft

Game features a story with Angel Commander 2 scroller game characters living a normal school life after the adventure. Another obscure doujin game of the early era.  
88. Sadistic Gamers Part 1 Shinjinkyouikuteki Play サディスティック・ゲーマーズ PART-1 新人教育的プレイ [90] Sixteens

Rookie issue of sadistic gamers doujin quiz game with chibi characters.  This doujin series has poor information coverage. But it's still a quiz game.  
89. Sadistic Gamers Part 3 Telephone Play サディスティックゲーマーズ PART-3 テレフォンプレイ [90] Sixteens

Telephone issue of sadistic gamers doujin quiz game. Genre is ADV+quiz again, not really sure what this game has to do with telephone.  
90. Suijaku Sakusen 2 Moeyo Dragon 衰弱作戦2　もえよどらごん [90] H.E.O.software

Main character Rie-chan is a master of karate. This summer an evil shadow surrounds a quiet town. Rie finds herself in the middle a mysterious incident. It's a very fascinating Sci-Fi romance comedy. For example,  first time Rie-chan introduces herself as a she-male, and we never get to know if it's a joke or not as only bust is shown in the lewd scenes. Game develops as a bakage with  lovely character until Dr. Himalaya who aims for a transfer device shows up at which point there are even battles (only command selection is used everywhere). Game has 80 CG strips, but no character sprites are used, so it's still only a moderate volume. It's the best doujin pc-88 visual novel that I know.  

Now, I'm well aware that most people don't play VNs twice.  Visual novels are a static media, similar to one of the old 'choose your own adventure' novels in interactive terms, so this is only natural.  To be blunt, the main reason I go back and play old VNs is because nothing is satisfying one of my itches amongst the more recent releases.  That said, there are some pieces of advice I can give for those who habitually re-read their favorite books and rewatch their favorite anime.
1- Wait long enough for your memories to fade: The human brain has a tendency to 'compress' old memories, and it is rare person who, through training or at birth, possesses an eidetic memory.  As a result, details do fade over a period of time that tends to vary greatly with the individual.  In my case, the base runs from a year to a year and a half for VNs that made a good impression and four months for ones that didn't. 
2-  Pick your paths: When it comes down to it, most of us are going back for a particular heroine or path.  We aren't that interested in rehashing the heroine paths that we didn't find that interesting, and this is only natural.  Sagaoz and other sites with complete saves can let you go to the true ending without bothering with the heroine endings, if that is what you want. 
3- With gameplay hybrids, make full use of your save data: Most VN hybrids have NG+ built in, and as a result, you can breeze through the game portions of most of them rather easily by simply using your own save data.  This is immensely helpful in games with a particularly tedious bent (like srpgs), where re-leveling would take forever.
4-  Limit replays to your favorites: While I occasionally get a junk-food-like craving for something crappy that nonetheless remained in memory, in most cases I only really enjoy replaying my favorite VNs (in my case, a list of about fifty). 
5- Nakige and utsuge work, but pure charage don't: I'm not kidding.  Pure charage are agonizing to replay, no matter how long after you go back.  I can still cry for the sad scenes in a Key game, but if you asked me to replay anything by Feng or most games by Navel, I'd rather cut off my balls and hang them out to dry on my windowsill.
6- If you fall asleep, just stop- In my experience, nothing is worse than getting bored of your favorites and then forcing yourself to continue.  If you can't pay attention or if you suddenly lose interest, it is time to stop.  If you force yourself to continue, there is a distinct possibility you will ruin your own impressions of the game in question for future playthroughs.
7- Stay away from pure mindfucks- I shouldn't have to explain this, but I will... the value of a mindfuck is in its surprise.  Games centered on a mindfuck, with the sole purpose of trying to fool you into thinking one thing while something else is going on, are terrible for VN replays.  This is because they are probably the  most spoiler-vulnerable genre out there.
8- Highly emotional or intellectually stimulating works will often gain more depth: This isn't a fanciful statement.  In my experience, a VN that is trying to get across something else besides pure story or something that is trying to make you cry will inevitably make for a better replay than something that is just shoving sex, romance, and comedy in your face.  I could probably replay Houkago no Futekikakusha, for instance, three or four times in a year without the emotional aspects fading significantly, and I find new things out about Dies Irae, Vermilion, and Devils Devel Concept with each playthrough. 
9- Infodumpers take longer to recover from: Bradyon Veda, I/O, Muramasa, etc... VNs that infodump seriously as part of the storytelling tend to leave a lot of info inside your brain.  As a result, it takes significantly longer for your memories of them to fully 'compress'.  Don't expect to be able to enjoy anything with frequent infodumps at less than one and a half times that of any of your other favorites. 
10- A good night's sleep is your friend: Why am I emphasizing this?  Because to get the best out of a truly great VN, a well-rested body and brain is necessary.  Nothing kills enjoyment of a good story like being unable to grasp it due to brain-numbness from sleep deprivation.
Hope yall enjoyed my little lecture, lol.

I've been friendly with the Shin Megami Tensei series for over twenty years now, since the release of the incredibly crappy localization of the original Persona on the ps1 (believe me, it is one of the worst localizations of all time).  That said, I saw the series as just a darker than normal jrpg series... until I played SMT: Nocturne for the PS2.
Nocturne is frequently referred to, both seriously and derisively, as 'Pokemon with demons and a cohesive story'.  Seriously.  While the Persona series has some of the same atmosphere (collect all the Personas! lol), it is Nocturne that introduced me to the extreme difference between the series and the common ruck of jrpgs out there (which were almost universally swords and sorcery at the time).  I was blown away when, in the first half hour of the game, the world is destroyed, turned inside-out, and the protagonist gets a centipede-like bug planted in his eye, giving him demonic powers.  To say the least, this was an... unusual turn of events in my experience.  The game wasn't about saving the world... it was about determining what came afterward... and everyone in that world wanted you to jump on their bandwagon.  The game also introduced me to the staple scenario of the series...
****WARNING, the following is offensive to some of the more sensitive religious types out there****
To say the least, I was shocked.  I mean, as I dug deeper into the optional dungeon (which is how you access the true ending), I was forced to a realization of just where things were going... and it was more than a bit of a shock to the system.  The game itself was enjoyable, and it was the very first game I literally leveled up to the max... and still had trouble with the final boss (lol).  It also introduced me to the harsher battle mechanics of the main series, which was the main reason why the 'in-crowd' tended to refer to the Persona series as 'Kiddy-Tensei', both for the less mature themes and the more brutal difficulty levels.
The next two shocks to my system were Persona 3 and Digital Devil Saga... Persona 3 hit me just as I began to take an interest in VNs on the periphery of my vision, so it is no surprise, in retrospect, that I enjoyed it so much.  However, it is Digital Devil Saga which, in my eyes, still represents the best qualities of both sides of the SMT series.  It had the high difficulty levels of the main-series games, along with a story that still, even after I just finished P5, leaves every other game in the series in the dust.  It was dark, interesting, and brutal in the extreme. 
Persona 4 was kind of a letdown after that high... though it was still good.  To be blunt, when the original version of P4 came out, my basic standard for SMT was DDS, period.  P3 was, to my mind, an interesting game in its own right but inferior in comparison, despite its social links.  The somewhat goofy nature of some of the characters (the party members) only emphasized that attitude on my part.  Persona is the only SMT sub-series that tends to make me feel like I'm playing a 'normal' jrpg, albeit one on a tight schedule.  Understand, it is all relative, in the end.
Last but not least, we come to my most recent experience (SMT IV was something of a dud in comparison to Nocturne, so I'm ignoring it), Persona 5.  Persona 5 embodies both the best and the worst of the last three Persona games.  It allows you to form deep personal bonds with various interesting characters (ironically, the non-party ones are much more interesting than the ones you fight with, for the most part), and it also manages to combine imagery of rebellion and imprisonment with deep themes of self-determination and personal justice.  In addition... it shows rather blatantly the worst aspects of the Japanese legal system (for those who played the game... yes, Japan's police and judicial system really can be that messed up, if you get on its bad side).  Japan is a country where almost all convictions come from confessions and plea deals... that should tell you a lot about what it is like behind the scenes.  Not to mention that it is a country where it is extremely hard to argue self-defense (if you give someone a defensive wound, you can be sued), insanity defenses earn you permanent social stigmatization, and even a single smear on one's record can lead to a permanent inability to get any job that pays above minimum wage outside of day labor. 
As a game, it makes some improvements on the Persona formula as defined by Persona 3... in particular, the benefits of a social link are more clearly defined and useful in the game.  The Tower Confidant, especially, has an ability you'll be extremely happy to have when hunting rare personas. 
Story-wise, it is at its strongest near the end.  It is sadly predictable throughout much of its length, in comparison to 3 and 4, and the last boss was not that hard to predict given the tendencies of the series.  That said, I honestly felt a much larger emotional connection to even the most annoying characters (all of whom were party members, incidentally... which is probably the worst aspect of the Persona series) than I did in 3 and 4.  I played the game without using walkthroughs, and as a result it consumed ninety hours of my time to finish and I missed finishing three of the Confidants.  However, I find myself feeling rather satisfied, over all.  The way the last part is done, however, gives me definite feelings they'll probably do an FES-style sequel.  They simply left too many openings for it, and, while the big bad dude is no longer around, it isn't like the SMT universe is the kind of place for pure happily-ever-afters...lol
 

Written by Kiririri and edited by fun2novel  and Me
Trinoline
If there ever was a time when the quality of a story was judged purely on its aesthetics then minori’s games would be tough opponents to defeat. Trinoline continues in the same tradition as many other minori games. High-budget top-quality visuals with a ridiculous level of attention to details. This includes blinking eyes and well done lip syncing, top-notch high quality CGs, and unusual camera angles, where you walk and look to the side at a character walking next to you while a long non repeating background scrolls by.  All that and more put this at the top of one of the most visually polished games around. Fortunately, visual novels aren’t judged purely on how good they look. Not usually at least.
Trinoline asks valuable questions and explores some very interesting themes and ideas. It is set in a world where the science has advanced far enough to manufacture real, lifelike androids. Events become more complicated when our protagonist’s little sister dies only to later come back as an android. She is just an android and not his real sister of course, only an illusion of the real thing. However, the twist is that she has all of the little sister’s memories inside her, and the question is, 'does it matter if she is real or not?' Do memories make her his sister or is she just a replacement for what was lost to tragic events? What happens if your loved one comes back in android form? Are they the still the same person? Are androids even capable of love, even if they don’t have a heart? Do they dream of electric ships?
Trinoline features three heroines. Yuuri, the childhood friend, skips school often.  However, nothing is what it seems on the surface. What does she hide behind that cheerful upbeat smile of hers? Her route was the least interesting, and it is a bit of a downer for much of it.
Shirone, plays the role our protagonist’s “little sister”. She is the Trino (android) with the protagonist’s little sister’s memories inside her. It explores how and if love can bloom between a human and an android.
Sara is the other childhood friend. She had a leading role in developing the Trino, a new kind of android. Because of her work, she and the protagonist haven’t seen each other in a long time. Her route is considered the true route and it explores the difficulties of developing an android and the problems in their thinking.
The game is pretty equally divided between the common and all the other three routes, and it touches on very interesting issues.  However, at the end of the day I don’t know how I really feel about it.  I can't help but wonder if I actually enjoyed the game or not.  It doesn’t help how stupid the protagonist acts in some scenes and changes his opinions about androids from one route to the next with no consistency, with no regard for his personality. I wanted to like the game because I thought the heroines are really great. In addition, if it wasn’t iterated enough previously, the game is really beautiful. Unfortunately, the constant depressing atmosphere kept up throughout the game pretty much crushed me and every false hope I had for it. I don’t want to further elaborate on that to avoid spoilers.
The game has a lot of great moments, but it also has many points that will split opinions. If you’re looking for a deep and exhilarating science fiction story, you won’t find it here. The narrative is slow-paced and takes its sweet time to build up. This is a game for those looking for a character driven nakige with some light sci-fi elements. However, it might keep you depressed most of the time, so take care if you don't like that sort of thing.

I recently came to the sobering realization that I've been editing translations of visual novels for about a year now. I've edited some 40,000 translated lines across large chunks of four works, and in the process I've learned a whole lot. Mostly what I've learned is about the mechanics of how to write well, and correspondingly that's mostly what I've written about on this blog, but today I'm tackling a slightly different subject: how to arrange the time you spend editing.
This advice is principally targeted to people working on longer projects. If you're working on something shorter than say 4,000 lines, things change a little bit because it's much more feasible to easily keep the whole thing in your head with just a couple of readings, whereas with longer works, you're going to have to plan for it to be a marathon. Even so, most of this advice still applies to shorter works, but the key difference is that it's much more feasible to knock out an entire short work in a month or so, then let the script rest for a month or so, and then go back and give it all another fairly quick once-over in a week or two, and then call it done. With a longer work, you'll end up working on sections at a time and need to go back and work on random sections periodically over a period of many months.
So, that explanation done, here are the various techniques which work for me. It's worth mentioning that most of these are applicable not just to editing, but also to translation:
Read It First
If at all possible, you should read the whole piece once before you start working on it. If you can't read the original language and you're following closely behind the translator, then you don't have much of an option here of course, but if it's possible for you to read it, do it. Reading first will both save you time and result in a higher-quality product. The benefit of reading first is more easily recognizing broad themes and motifs as soon as you first work on them, and similarly, recognizing smaller-scale things like running gags which need to be set up correctly early on. The earlier you can start handling these things correctly, the less work will be required to go back and fix them up afterwards, and the less likely you are to simply miss something while going back to fix them up.
Push Your Changes Frequently
Every day's chunk of work should be pushed to a central server for your team (Google Sheets, Git, SVN, whatever). Your team members need to be able to see what you're doing, and hopefully will be reading what you check in and offering critique; no one person has all the answers. Don't sit on local changes and fuss at them until they're perfect. Do a day's work and push it.
Always Check Your Whole Set Of Changes Over Before Pushing
This is the most important piece of advice I have here, so pay attention.
Every time when I sit down to edit new lines, I generally work through about 100-200 lines of translated text, almost always with the game playing so that I can get all the added context (including voice over, but also scripting: scene changes aren't always obvious from your script editor, and sometimes they completely change the interpretation of a line). Once I'm done with that first editing pass with the game, I save my changes locally, and then I go read through all of my edited lines again in order (no game this time, and usually not even looking at the translation). During this second pass, I'm mostly looking for copy editing issues, like typos and grammar errors. I find a lot of them. Like, a whole lot. I'm a very good copy editor, but I've come to grips with the fact that when I'm line editing, I make a ton of mistakes. I rarely do any line editing again during this second pass (hopefully there's not much need to... although I usually do often find one or two lines I want to tweak), but I usually fix a solid 3-4 typos during this second pass, among the 100-200 lines I edited. Given that this second pass is pretty quick to do when the scene is still fresh in your mind, I consider this time very well-spent. My edited scripts still need QC (editing your own work is hard), but a great deal less than they would otherwise.
Keep Tweaking
After I've gone through that two-pass edit step, I usually won't look at a scene again for at least a month, often longer. However, I'll frequently hit natural stopping points when working through fresh sections of a script (e.g., maybe I finish a whole route, or I simply catch up with the translator on the route I'm working on). When that happens, I will go back and re-edit something I've already done. When I re-edit, usually I find things are fine, but I always find at least a few lines per scene I want to change. This second line edit takes much less time than the initial line edit, but still usually ends up with a fair number of changes. The rule for checking over these changes before pushing applies here, too: whenever you line edit, after you're done, save it all locally and read through the whole diff of changes for the day, mostly looking for copy editing mistakes: you'll find some, nearly every time.
The reason to do this is mostly that your perspective on the game will be evolving as you build more of a rapport with it: characters will become better established in your mind, and you'll want to make them consistent. Maybe your preferences around phrasing certain things will change. Because larger VN translation projects typically span a year (or multiple...), there's a lot of time for you to change your mind about things. You don't want the work to end up inconsistent, so the best remedy for this is to be constantly rereading chunks of it and tweaking them, massaging them until they're more internally consistent. These re-edits are always much faster than the initial edit, and doing them bears a lot of fruit in terms of quality.
In short:
10 Line edit
20 Copy edit
30 SLEEP 1 MONTH
40 GOTO 10
Work Slowly But Steadily: Avoid Burnout
VNs are long, and the time you can commit on any given day is always going to be a tiny fraction of what it will take to finish the work. If you tell yourself, "This weekend I'm going to sit down and work on this for six hours," you're only going to grow to dislike it before too long (it will feel like too much of a burden) and you're going to start slipping on those promises to yourself very quickly. The only way large projects get done on anything approaching a reasonable timeline is through a constant accumulation of bite-sized pieces of work. Plan to work on the project for 45 minutes a day, six or seven days a week, and you will be much less likely to get burned out and walk away from the project. Maybe every now and then you'll get motivated and work longer, getting more than the usual done on a given day, and that is all well and good, but such exceptional days will turn out to be a drop in the bucket compared to the constant steady progress from doing a regular, fixed amount of work every day.
In Summary
Working on a VN translation is a lot of difficult work, so treat it with respect. The above is what's worked for me to keep me going at this steadily for a year, constantly getting work done and constantly improving. What works for you? Got any tips to share?

Ok... this is by a new company by the name of Laplacian, and as a result, I didn't really have much in the way of expectations for it.  As a result, I wasn't disappointed... but they didn't manage to surprise me either, sadly.  This VN's protagonist has the ability to enter people's dreams when they dream about him and uses a perfume he designed himself to make people remember and dream about him when they go to sleep.
This VN, when it comes down to it, is a straight-out moege.  The low-level character development, the obvious targeting of moe-points, and the general shallowness of the conflicts, drama, etc. are all fairly standard for the ancient 'pure' moege genre.   The common route of this VN is basically sort-of ecchi dream scenes with slice-of-life inserted between.  I'll be straight with you when I say that there really isn't much content at all to this game, at least in part because the makers apparently couldn't decide if they wanted this to be a straight-out moege or a nukige.
There isn't enough H in this game to call it a nukige, but the level of characterization is about the same as your average nukige, sadly.  What reinforces this is that the visuals are about at the same level as a mid-high level doujin circle's work (in other words, it lacks the polish of commercial moege but looks too good for most doujin games), and the rather sloppy nature of some of the technical aspects.  In particular, the scene transitioning is done poorly, with the music switching off abruptly between scenes rather than merely shifting to a new track...  In addition, the system sound is ear-piercing and omnipresent if you highlight anything with your mouse... and you can't turn it off without eliminating all sound effects (even if you turn it down to the lowest level, it is still painful to the ears). 
It is rare for me to rate a VN on technical and visual aspects, but the fact is that the game's other content just isn't good enough to cover for the problems with the technical and visual aspects.  The story could have been touching, save that the routes are generally bare-bones affairs and character development is minimal. 
In conclusion, this VN is an abortion... don't bother playing it.

Recently, I've had reason to consider precisely what it is that makes the difference between a strong charage and a kusoge charage.  There are a lot of important elements involved, from levels of character development to the overuse of the non-person protagonist.  However, there was one element - or rather a tool - that seems to get overlooked a lot, despite its ubiquitous presence in almost every first-class charage.  That tool is the heroine perspective.
The heroine perspective is where the narrative switches from following the protagonist to following one or more of the heroines.  To be blunt, this is probably the single most powerful tool a charage writer has to make you fall in love with the heroine as a person, rather than as a one-dimensional talking doll.  If a charage writer is failing to drop you into heroines' perspectives on a regular basis in the common route, it isn't a good sign.  A single twenty-line peek into a heroine's head can often mean the difference between a wonderful, round heroine and a flat, boring heroine.  Few heroines have the personal charisma necessary to leave memories inside your heart without at least one scene like this one, whether it is in a charage or otherwise.  Whereas the everyday interactions between them and the protagonist provide you a broad outline of their character, it is the heroine perspective that is often needed to provide a drop of paint to the canvas, aiding in the process of filling in the lines.
I mean, cute only goes so far. 

Recent events have compelled me to contemplate the Oxford comma to an even greater extent than usual, so let me share a story to convince you that, in addition to using the Oxford comma in writing, you should enunciate it in your speech.
I was getting pizza some time ago. But I must note that it was one of those pizza places where they make little quadrilateral pizzas for a single person ("single" having two meanings, probably). I normally wouldn't concede to the expenses associated with such a bourgeois establishment, but the meal is quite cheap when one orders a full-sized square pizza―probably because they aren't meant to be eaten in one sitting―and, most notably, the meal comes with a free side order.
As such, the cashier asked which side I would like, and I will transcribe this in such a manner as to accurately represent her enunciation: "You want bread chips or carrots?"
I cannot think of how to tell this anecdote without now giving away the catch, which the keenest among you may have already ascertained: The sentence was actually, "You want bread, chips, or carrots?"
But I am not the keenest among us, and the fact that there was no pause between the "chips" and "or" suggested, in my mind rightfully accustomed to the Oxford comma, that there were only two items: bread chips and carrots. I sought to confirm this, asking, "Bread chips?"
And she, wielding the apathy of an employee who unwittingly tempts the manager into automating all the cashiers, recited the items with the selfsame cadence or lack thereof―"Bread chips or carrots?"
This corroborated my confusion, and I thought to myself, I have no idea what bread chips are, but I know I don't want carrots. So I said, "BREAD CHIPS."
She replied, "Chips?" And then I might have said "BREAD CHIPS" again―I forget―but apparently I conceded to chips eventually, and went to await the production of my comestibles thereafter. Not even at this point had I come to realize the situation, as my friend labored for some time to explain it to me.
The Oxford comma was not the instigator in this story; it was a reluctant spectator, a single tear running down its cheek. I implore you to take this experience to heart.

I'm just going to jump right in and give you the answer: imagine you're telling someone a story about something that happened to you a month ago. It's that easy. Ingrain that mindset into your brain, and you, too, can write in past tense without sounding like a madman.
Before I launch into an example, I do want to point out that there's nothing inherently wrong or right with writing in either the present tense or the past tense. Some things come off better in one or the other, and both are common choices in VN localizations. I have a personal slight preference for past tense, even though it's a little harder to write in, even once you know the trick, but either is fine.
That said, I firmly believe that a localization should make a conscious choice for the tense in which the flow of narration proceeds and should then stick to it. All too often, even in professional localizations, there will clearly be an intended tense for the events in the flow of narration, but then the tense will slip back and forth between that choice and the alternative. This reads really unnaturally, and it frankly bugs the crap out of me, keeping me from being able to fully enjoy what I'm reading. It's one thing to intentionally switch, for instance by consciously employing the historic present (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_present), but it's another thing entirely to just be sloppily jumping back and forth because you don't know what you're doing.
So, here, let me make up a story and write it the way I would tell it to you out loud if you were sitting next to me, and then let me write it the way it would hypothetically have been written in some of the localizations I've read recently. After that, I'll break down the pieces and explain why and how I'm doing things differently, and even a little bit of why things that may look questionable are okay, in this example.
Now, here's the way you'd see this sort of thing written in a couple of the localizations I've read recently:
"The night before" vs. "Last night" and "By that night" vs. "Tonight."
This is, honestly, the big one, and the way I snuck in a present tense verb into the very last sentence after "tonight" is a clear sign of the problem (and is exactly how it would have been written in some of the things I've looked at recently, mixed-tense sentence and all). You cannot say "last night" to describe something that happened a month and one day ago; people don't do that. When you write "last night," that "last night" is relative to the person narrating the story, and you're narrating something that happened in the past, so that means "last night" should be, in all likelihood, in the future, relative to the story you're telling. The result is nonsense. The same thing happens with "tonight." The word is relative to the present you, not relative to the past you, and no gymnastics with the verb are going to prevent that interpretation. Trying to write these words into the flow of events in the past tense makes you sound like a madman.
There are a lot of other words with the same behavior, to some degree or other: "now," (probably the very worst), "here," "this," "these," and so on. Picture yourself sitting across from someone, telling a story, and try to use those words in the story, and you'll realize they simply don't work correctly. Take "here" for example: "here" is where you are. If you're sitting in the office, telling your coworker about your amusement park trip a month ago, and you drop the word "here", they're going to naturally expect you mean the office, and when you're trying to use that word to refer to the amusement park, they're going to get horribly confused. Those words all have to refer to something around you at present, not something that was around you a month ago at the time of the story. You have to swap them out for words like "then," "there," "that," and "those." Basically, you need words with an appropriate sense of distance to them. I see this kind of line all the time in VN translations:
Every time I see it, it makes me want to cry. I suspect there are a couple reasons why so many VN localizations fall into the trap of using words like this as part of past tense narration:
They write individual isolated narration lines, often surrounded by long stretches of dialogue. Of course, dialogue isn't rewritten into the past tense, like the narration, but delivered naturally as the character delivered them, so you simply end up seeing lots of dialogue for a while, and you start to get some cognitive dissonance pushing you towards present tense. VN narration is always surrounded by images and voice acting, which lends everything a sense of immediacy. This gives an even stronger push towards the feel that everything is happening "now," unconsciously biasing the writer towards present tense. However, you'll never find this kind of word usage in the past tense in a professionally-published novel, where those two conditions don't apply. You could use those two reasons as an argument for why VNs should be written in present: maybe, arguably, it's just easier on the brain. I personally don't really think so, but ultimately, you can choose what tense you want. If you want to write present tense, go for it. If you want to write past tense, though, you need to overcome all of that and start using the right words.
"Hadn't been able to sleep" vs. "couldn't sleep."
This one kind of sucks because it's more verbose in the past perfect, but this is a necessary consequence you have to accept when the flow of events narrated is in the past tense. How should you describe events which happened prior to the flow of narration? Grammatically speaking, what happened before the past? That's the past perfect tense. "I went to the store, but before that I had gone to the bank to make a withdrawal so I could buy groceries." If you don't put the past perfect tense on events which already happened relative to the past, the order isn't as obvious. Yes, you absolutely can say "I went to the store, but before that I went to the back to make a withdrawal," but when you do this it's more like a mental rewind. You start playing the narration forward with the first clause, but then you say, but wait, before we can do that, I need to actually rewind the narration and tell you about this bank trip. In this example it's fine, but imagine you're telling a long complicated story (like, say, narrating a VN), and at some point you need to refer back to an event that was already narrated, maybe something days in the past relative to the flow of narration. You can't do a mental rewind in that circumstance. You can do a flashback, but usually such thoughts aren't a full-on flashback, which itself is basically that mental rewind that resets the flow of events; these are much more often simply the narrator reflecting on something happening in the past relative to the current flow of events. You need to put that recollected past event relative to your past narration into the past perfect tense.
What's that present-tense clause doing there?
"They've got great thrill rides there" is a particularly interesting clause, being in the present tense, so I want to talk about it for a moment. This is basically an aside (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aside), and as such it's bound by different rules. It's a statement directly addressed at you, the reader, rather than a part of the narration of the story. In the case of an aside, it's perfectly reasonable to make an observation about the present state of things. That said, in VN writing, I try to avoid this entirely. Of necessity, an aside is breaking the fourth wall. This is fine if you're doing it for a good reason (maybe you're Deadpool and you just love breaking the fourth wall), but not so fine when it's not stylistically important, and it's just making a simple observation. In this circumstance, it would be a needless disruption, in a VN. That said, it does feel perfectly natural when I'm just informally telling a story. IMO, this is one point where the process of telling a story and the process of writing VN narration diverge. The trick isn't completely foolproof; it's just a hell of a lot better than writing without any guidance at all, wandering aimlessly between tenses.

Suisei Ginka is the latest VN made by Akatsuki Works, the makers of such classic VNs as Ruitomo, Comyu, and Devils Devel Concept.  This was written by Morisaki Ryoto, the writer of multiple kamige including Hapymaher, Komorebi no Nostalgica (as an assistant writer), and Re:Birth Colony.  He is one of the most flexible and skilled writers out there, and I've yet to fail to enjoy a VN he's had a hand in.
This VN is based in a port city half-owned by a company that caused a disastrous chemical spill there ten years ago.  It begins with the reunion of Izana, a young woman with a rather unusual attitude toward life, and Tetsuo, a straightforward young man with an utter disregard for his own safety and survival.  Naturally, this being an Akatsuki Works game, this is the beginning of numerous troubles and tribulations.
Structurally, this VN is pretty 'to the point', in that the story uses the bare minimum of slice-of-life to give life to the characters and setting, while constantly keeping a laser focus on what is moving in the shadows... and the disastrous potential it holds. 

Maria
Looking at it in retrospect, I probably should have done this path second or third.  However, I followed my instincts on the game's first major story choice, and as a result I got into this path.  Maria's path is focused on the company that caused everything to go so horribly wrong, so it reveals details of some factors that spoil the other paths a little bit.
Maria herself is a classic 'expressionless loli' of the type that is common to a lot of chuunige that have loli heroines.  Normally expressionless and nearly emotionless, she is very much like a cat, acting sweet to those few people she cares about and disregarding just about everyone else based on their use or lack of to her.  Edit: That isn't to say she's completely devoid of emotion... but with the guy who acts as her guardian being the kind of guy he is... she's naturally a little warped.
This path has a lot of violence to it, primarily because of what the characters face in it.  It is a solid path though... it is just one that I really should have waited on.

Seika
Seika is Izana's best female friend and more than a little bit prickly toward anyone who approaches her with ulterior motives (and because of Izana's easy manner and physical beauty, that is pretty common).  She was raised by a strict asshole father who sees her only as a convenient object to augment his own ambitions for the family line, which is a lot of the reason why she is so prickly in general.  Her sole point of softness is Izana, whom she would probably do anything for. 
Seika's path is wrapped up in dealing with the plot element that drives most of the protagonist-side characters, in a very intimate manner.  It's a fairly standard path for a game like this, serving as a fitting intro to the ins and outs of the story while setting the stage for elaborations in future paths.  I liked how it turned out, though a lot of people might find it an odd ending.  It is more solid than say... Benio's path in Comyu, which was fundamentally unsatisfying (for some reason, Hino Wataru sometimes chooses to drop a single weak heroine path in some of his games). 

Momo
Momo is Tetsuo's guardian/oneesan/coworker.  She is a heavy-drinker and a heavy-smoker and she is actually thirty, though she looks twenty.  She is also a brilliant (genius-level) individual as well as being highly perceptive when it comes to people in general.  She and Tetsuo have lived most of the last ten years around one another, and they know each other about as well as it is possible to know another person without being them. 
After playing this path, I definitely realized there was a play order... Seika>Momo>Maria>Izana.  The reason is fairly simple... Maria's path reveals too much about the 'causes' of all this, removing a great deal of the mystery about what the protagonist is trying to do at the end of Momo's path and the 'why' of certain elements of Seika's path.  Seika's path, on the other hand, paves the way for things that are elaborated on in Momo's path.  Izana's path is, of course, the true one.
Momo's path focuses on one of the more obvious, if mid-boss type antagonists.  This antagonist is a 'rationally insane' type who has no morals whatsoever outside of their personal ruleset.  In addition, this path has more death than the other two paths combined, lol.  I will say I liked the ending of this one, as well.

Izana
 
Izana is the true heroine of this VN.  She is also one of those 'always involved with the protagonist's life' heroines in the style of Kagome from Comyu or Suzu from Ayakashibito (meaning that even if they aren't lovers, they never really separate).  Izana is a very odd young girl... she seems at first to be something of a tomboy, but when you get to know her, she also shows a kind of quiet wisdom that the average tomboy heroine just doesn't possess.  Rather than being intelligent, she really is just 'wise'.
Her relationship with Tetsuo is so strong that it is unchanged by the ten years of parting between them.  They both care deeply about one another and trust each other absolutely, without reservations. 
Her path, true to the form of true paths in chuunige, is the most exciting of the paths, bringing together all the elements of the other paths with a focus on the central conflict that isn't resolved in the others.  Tetsuo shows off his manliness quite nicely in this path, as well as his own bit of wisdom (If he was a D&D character, he'd be a true neutral barbarian with an intelligence stat of 9 and a wisdom stat of 16), though it is born of him having such a solid sense of who he is, where he stands, and how he intends to live and die. 
Neither Tetsuo nor Izana is the type to hesitate or stand around worrying about consequences, as they both have very distinct senses of priorities. 
I honestly wept at the climax of this VN.  I couldn't help but cry for a certain character who got the sharp end of the stick from beginning to end throughout this story (even mentioning her name is a spoiler).  A toast to those who suffer so that others can be saved! *Clephas smiles sadly and clings his glass of rum against an empty one*
 
A few extra comments
One thing you should keep in mind when reading this VN is that neither this writer nor Hino Wataru produces 'standard' romances.  Their romantic elements are generally good, but they are almost universally 'romance born out of a stressful situation', so don't expect a charage-style romantic element in here.  What romance is in there is good, at least from my point of view, and Tetsuo is straight-out one of the manliest protagonists I've seen in a chuunige (since most chuunige protagonists tend to have issues that make them fall a bit short of that standard). 
I'm glad that this VN kept up the four year tradition of good VNs coming out on or near my birthday, hahaha...

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.

Nutaku has been caught censoring dialogues implying non-consensual sex in free-to-play ero-RPG Kamihime Project R, reneging on earlier promises.
Rape scenes censored in Nutaku's Kamihime Project R

Essentially, a video of me fanboying over a game I found the other day and that I really wanted to fanboy over.
 

Boring introduction to understand why I'm making this tutorial. (You can skip this if you want)
So this tutorial is to create that so called "mechanical immersion" when you play a VN, kinda (?)
Personally I read old VNs with the help of chiitrans for parsing the text, to being able to immerse myself into the story I need to read it in full-screen mode (I just can't read it otherwise) and this is not a problem when I read new novels that allow me to kinda cheat and use chiitrans even in full-screen mode but what about old VNs? With VNs that have resolutions of 640x480 or 800x600 you can't go full-screen and use chiitrans at the same time, the parser will either look really bad or it simply won't show.
Now, to fix this issue I used to use a virtual machine called Oracle VM VirtualBox, that program allowed me to scale the screen at any size I wanted so I could play the VNs in "full-screen" mode and it kinda worked... but the problem is... using a virtual machine was a pain in the ass in general  so I searched for an easier solution and here it is:
(End of the boring introduction)
 
What you will need:

http://www.mediafire.com/file/ss3izesipa8ecca/res.rar
(OnTopReplica, ResizeEnableRunner and maybe Windows on top)
All the softwares are free and ad-free too but you can scan them if you want.
Tutorial:
1) Download, unpack and install everything (some of them don't require any installation).
2) See if you can take a shortcut by using ResizeEnableRunner, this wont work most of the time and it will make some VNs look bad, but you can try if you want.
Just resize the screen of the VN by clicking on the borders of the VN itself and while holding the left click drag it and expand it, just like you do with any other program.
 
 3) If that method doesn't work (80% of the time) or you just don't like how it looks, then use OnTopReplica.
a) Open the program and you will see this:
Left click on it...trust me on this one.

b) Select your VN and click in "-whole-"
c) Once your VN is selected you will know because the program will duplicate the screen, now you can resize it but that's not what we want to do, we want to go full-screen mode.
So go to: Resize > Full-screen. (you can also double click on the duplicated screen and it will do the same thing)
d) Now this is the important part, you will need to advance the text of the VN with your keyboard but you can also use your mouse.
Position the VN behind the duplicated window, then right click on the duplicated screen and click on "enable click-through", the duplicated screen will now be "transparent" so you can click through it.

Here is how it looks and a comparison using the stretching mode (with ResizeEnableRunner) and using the duplicated screen.
NOTE: The "resize enable runner" program uses the same method that Visual Novel Reader to stretch the visual novels.
Problems you may encounter while using the software:

*Some VNs will love to stay on top of the screen or they won't let you use, in my case chiitrans or the parser you normally use, for those cases use WindowsOnTop. 
Open it > assign a hotkey to it > and when have that issue just force the program to stay on top, this is how I solved it with some VNs, for example setsunai, or just old VNs.
 
*Why I'm seeing black borders? It's annoying!

 
Easy peasy Japanesey, now you can read your VNs full of runes and 象形文字 in full-screen mode for a perfect immersion.
Btw, if you are wondering about the delay between the duplicated screen and the original, well there isn't any. (I'm sure there is probably some but it's imperceptible)

Akiyume Kukuru is the third (and possibly final) game in Sumikko's 'Seasons' meta-sci-fi series.  It centers around a group of five 'Holders', people genetically altered at the embryo stage to possess possibilities that don't otherwise exist in Earth's evolution using artificial DNA and RNA known as XNA. 
These five people are individuals whose actions or abilities have made them a threat to society/the government/etc., and they have been exiled to Ruruan, a closed city in Hokkaido where a quantum bomb was detonated, obliterating the possibilities of the area it covered.  In this area, objects and time move on a one-day time loop, causing objects and the shattered remnants of the people (blobs known as WASPs) to return to the state they were the previous day.  The only way for an object to cease looping is for an individual to purchase it, thus 'observing' it as being their own ('observation' in the Schrodinger's Cat meaning of the word). 
Anyway, despite what sounds like a bunch of spoilers above, this is all basic everyday knowledge for these five people (six if you include their human loli-teacher).  These five were placed there both as an exile/punishment and in order to see what effect their presence would have on the damaged region. 
This VN is classic Sumikko in one sense... in that it is full of meta-ideas and insane over the top happenings, as well as an immense amount of sexual and violence-related humor (which is also a signature of this series).  To let those interested know, this one is as distinct from Natsukumo as Natsukumo was from Harumade.  What that means is that the ideas it explores are fundamentally different while still being involved in concepts drawn from quantum physics and ideas (ideas versus the scientific meaning of theory).  To be blunt, most of the scientific terms involved are ones that are beyond the understanding of someone who doesn't major in physics (well, beyond a surface understanding anyway), so I advise anyone reading this to focus on the protagonist's interpretations, since those the ones most likely to be relevant (obviously).
I honestly loved the characters - both the heroines and the protagonist - and I thought the game as a whole was a really enjoyable read.  I laughed a lot at this one, and other parts made me think.  I came to the conclusion that Sumikko is the only company I've ever encountered that can manage this meta-crap without making it sound like a pretentious teenager quoting Nietzsche.  That's mostly because the writer is rather open about the fact that he/she doesn't care if we understand every detail of what is going on, as well as noting (in a really subtle way) that all of this is a bunch of convenient interpretations of various thought experiments.
Anyway... this is a fun VN if you can stand a few infodump-related headaches and like Sumikko's peculiar brand of violence and sex humor (think heroines that casually make serious death threats out of love/friendship and others that get hooked on not wearing panties...).   The characters are all nicely twisted, whether it is the ex-male (had his/her balls shot off during the conflict) Noa who used to be a bomber or Saori's belief that making her breasts sway is an art form... so that in itself would have made for a fun game.
Don't expect any really huge mindfucks in this one, in comparison with the previous two.  For whatever reason, they didn't really focus on fooling you on the big points, preferring to catch you on the details (there is a mindfuck hidden in the story, but it is relatively mild compared to Harumade or Natsukumo). 

Shinsou Noise is the first game by a new collaboration company called Azurite, which was founded as a joint effort by Silky's Plus and Liar Soft.  In this case, Liar Soft provided the writing staff and Silky's provided the art and programming staff.  It is also fairly obvious that the planning wasn't done by the Liar Soft team, given the general style of the story, which is more in line with my experiences with Silky's Plus (and thus lacks the annoying conventions Liar Soft usually indulges in).
Anyway, this VN is a mystery VN, with the added element of a 'deduction game' that is part of the story.  The deduction game fits into the story, where the protagonist, a reception-only telepath who can't control his abilities to any significant extent, figures out who committed a crime at a specific time and place.  This game mechanic is... to be honest... not something I really enjoyed.  I mean, it was fairly easy to figure out all but the sixth-chapter stuff without the walkthrough (I had to resort to the walkthrough for the sixth chapter, where things aren't multiple-choice and you actually have to type in the answer).  However, to me the deduction game mechanic felt like it broke up the pacing of the game... perhaps it is because I prefer being a watcher over an active participant in mysteries, lol.
There was one other element, which people will inevitably remark upon, that annoyed me.... it was yet another release that utilized the ladder-style story structure.  What made it worse in this case was that you could feel the writers trying to make you hate that you picked anything other than the main path, and at the same time, they created a requirement for you to see the other endings before you could view the true one.  I'm not going to rave this time, because I'm pretty emotionally exhausted right now.
The story of this game is full of tragedies... including the big one that forms the basis for all the protagonist's actions in the main story.  What's more, regardless which of the two final endings you choose on the main path, it still feels like you betrayed someone.  There is no real sense of satisfaction that comes from completing this VN, at least for me...  perhaps it is because I so quickly became fond of Sakura.  Momo, the true heroine, is a true innocent... an absolutely-trusting mind who I found pretty much impossible to see as a heroine. 
Overall, this game will probably split people who read it wildly between those left feeling like I am right now and those who love it for the Japanese-style mystery...
EDIT: As an addendum, I'm going to put in my two cents about this game's theme...
... to be honest, both teams were obviously taking waaaaay too much pleasure in hurting the characters from start to finish, without the salvation of this being an utsuge or a nakige.  The actual heroine endings were all short and pathetic (literally pathetic) both in scope and in design.  I felt actively insulted with the final two endings, which felt like an anticlimax after all that had come before.  I don't know why they chose to finish things that way, but it left me feeling like I'd gone through all that vicarious suffering and striving for nothing.

Ambiguity is a fascinating element of language, one an editor both struggles with and celebrates regularly. On the celebration side of things, ambiguity is an essential tool in the setup of a lot of short jokes, for one. As an example, an ambiguous statement leads to a misunderstanding, and in a VN said misunderstanding usually leads to an accidental love confession, resulting in the unfortunate victim stammering outrageously while blushing like a sunset. How cute. Ambiguity can also be a powerful tool in foreshadowing, since it allows a single statement to be interpreted in two ways, of which one can be applicable to the immediate present, thus making it a perfectly reasonable line to have in the present, and the other only meaningful when considering future events, usually causing the reader to look back and say, "Ahh-hah, now I see what it really meant." Ambiguity is also absolutely essential in writing clever blog post titles. But on the struggling side, ambiguity is often an enemy getting in the way of your reader enjoying your text.
As you read, your brain furiously analyzes words as they come in, building up and tearing down many possible syntactical structures for the sentence and many possible semantic interpretations of the various words and phrases, before eventually trimming this all down to a single interpretation of the sentence, typically over the course of a tiny fraction of a second. However, there are many stumbling blocks which can lengthen this process or thwart it entirely, notably including actual errors (misspellings, dropped words, incorrect grammar, etc.,), which is probably the chief reason why such errors are so frowned-upon in typical writing. Slowing down the reader's understanding, or preventing it entirely, is generally not the author's goal, assuming said author is not James Joyce.
Setting aside actual errors, ambiguity is one of the main impediments to a reader's understanding. Since one of a VN editor's chief goals is to ensure a script flows well for a reader, eliminating unintentional ambiguity is an important sub-goal. Even outside of intentional usage like in the cases mentioned in the first paragraph, ambiguity in English is still incredibly common, with small ambiguities cropping up constantly while reading essentially any text. Let's take a look at an example of a super-small ambiguity which slows down the reader just a tiny bit, a sentence containing my least favorite word:
Looks fine, right? As a whole the sentence is totally unambiguous. But while you're reading it, you're going to run into "that", and "that"'s a problem. "That" is an incredibly flexible word in the English language: it's a pronoun, a determiner, an adverb, and a relative pronoun. It's actually even more flexible in British English, where it can act as a subordinating conjunction, and even though most VN translations are written in American English, the lines there are pretty fuzzy, and it wouldn't be surprising or confusing to see a sentence like "He asked that she go" in a VN.
Now, in the sentence above, "that" is being used as a relative pronoun, but the prefix of this sentence, "I told you that" is also a perfectly well-formed English sentence in which it's instead being used as a pronoun, and if your brain follows such an interpretation immediately as you read the sentence, it'll take it a few extra milliseconds for your brain to unwedge itself, reorganize into treating "that" as a relative pronoun, and continue on forming the correct interpretation.
All right, doesn't sound like a big deal, does it? You're right. This particular, single instance isn't. But they add up, and you can do better, so you might as well. To put it in super technical jargon I didn't know until I was writing up this post, English has a so-called "zero relative pronoun" which can be used in place of relative pronouns like "that" which are introducing restrictive relative clauses. To give an example, since the previous jargon is so technical as to be basically useless, instead of the above sentence, you can just drop "that" and write:
Now, look, I'm not saying this makes a huge difference, but doesn't this version feel a tiny bit better when you read it? Eliminating usage of overly-flexible words like "that" is a good way to reduce some ambiguity, but keep in mind this is a single example of a specific case. It just happened to be the one which prompted this blog post. However, I assure you, if you start reading your work with a careful eye out for the clarity of each line, you'll find tons of small, unintentional ambiguities popping out at you which you want to correct. Training yourself to look for them and to clean them up is one part of helping your text flow better.
I guess that's that. I hope you got something out of that, and I ask that, if you have questions, comments, or problems regarding this or "that", you leave a note below to that effect.

I wanted to wait until the year is over before I write my list for this year, but of course I haven't had the time to actually look at the December releases and now the year is over. Luckily, there isn't much interesting for me anyway.
Before we start, just let me mention some noteworthy December titles:
Venus Blood Ragnarok could be a nice game, but I don't really like the Venus Blood series, and as some kind of sequel it probably won't win me over anyway. I have played the trial of Meguru Sekai de Towanaru Chikai wo and it really didn't impress me. Looked like an even cheaper version of Izumo 4. And Izumo 4 was already a letdown last year. The RPG mechanics of Izumo 4 are very simple and Meguru Sekai de seems even simpler. But that is not all, contrary to Izumo 4, this time the game also looks pretty ugly! It that the reason why Yamamoto Kazue changed her name to  Yamamoto ☆ Kazue for this? Well, I probably will play it nonetheless because I don't like to judge something I haven't really played, but eh, not in the near future. That's it for December. The rest doesn't interest me or I already know it will be bad (You can't fool me Moonstone!). Did I just say I don't judge something I haven't played? Eh, whatever...
But now some honorable mentions of games that actually looked interesting but I haven't had the time to read them, so they won't be in my 2016 list:
Dungeons & Daimeiwaku: I've read the trial, but haven't found the time to read the actual game. I'm sure it's good but it's kind of demotivating for me to read an RPG without any gameplay, heh. Iwaihime: Ryukishi07 and horror should be exactly what I'm looking for but for some reason I have this untouched on my hdd for a year now. Maybe I miss the Ryukishi07-art, since it doesn't look as good with generic moeblobs. Trianthology: Now I have the art, but not a full Ryukishi07 game, haha. Still, I have to read this sometime soon. Kanojo ＊ Step: This could probably be the "Best Charage" of 2016 as far as I have seen it. The humor is great, something that's really missing in pretty much every other modern charage. It's a shame that the genre charage has such a low priority for me, so I haven't really read much of this VN so far. Now I mention some games people might expect in my list of 2016's best eroge, but I actually found them to be only mediocre:
Shi ni Iku Kimi, Yakata ni Mebuku Zouo: Yeah, I wasn't as excited about this as everyone else. I do not fetishize gore. I like death as an element of a thrilling story, but death in Nikuniku has no impact. There is no meaning in killing someone when they can't die. Baka Dakedo Chinchin Shaburu no Dake wa Jouzu na Chii-chan: This game has a Genre-Shift tag of 3.0 on vndb and some people claim it would be different than what you expect it to be.
Spoiler: It's exactly what it looks like! WTF are the people talking about? lol Maitetsu: Borefest and not even usable as a lolige. Really only interesting for train otakus.  
Now let's start with the list of maybe not necessarily the best but the most impressive eroge of 2016, for me at least:
Eroge of the Year: Natsu no Kusari
Best game without a doubt, there is no other contender here. If I would make a Top 5 of 2017, the second place would already be many, many levels under this one. It's so good (or all the other recent games are just so bad, lol).
I have already written walls of text in other threads about this game so I won't repeat myself here. I will just say that this game is exactly what I'm looking for when I read an eroge, the reason why I even started with this medium.
Great characterization and the perfect use of narration, music, visuals and voices makes this one of the most compelling short stories I have read in years.
 
Best NTR Eroge: Dearest Blue
The lack of elf is really showing and I certainly can't say that any LiLiM game is really good, but at least with Dearest Blue LiLiM improved on their formula and made it its best game so far.
We still have some obvious "Do you want to get NTR'd"-choices, but they are not as in-your-face as in previous titles. Some choices make you wonder what will actually happen if you go this route and that at least is an improvement. In some instances there is some believable drama and especially one route is good where you can cheer for both, the protagonist and the rival because both characters are likable. The main heroine is also well-characterized, being an independent and strong woman without going too bitchy or slutty.
Still, not everything is good. Pretty much every male character except the aforementioned one is a one-dimensional evil villain. The biggest problem however is that the story is build around some kind of NTR/death-game where all the players need to outwit each other ... but in the end there are no mind games or twists happening! Heck, even I could probably win this game because every other character is so bad at this, not having a plan or making retarded moves. What a disappointment! Read this for the relationship drama, not for the death game.
 
Best Modern Oldschool Eroge: Ryuudouji Shimon no Inbou
This might be an unpopular opinion, but I really think that the writing in many of the latest Mink-games is topnotch. Really, if Mink-games weren't conceptually so limited (being only nukige), they could be really great.
Why is that? Is it because Mink is such an old company that they still carry on old writing traditions which were established in the Golden Age of eroge? That at least would explain why Ryuudouji Shimon no Inbou is so good when it conceptually shouldn't be!
Don't misunderstand me, Ryuudouji Shimon no Inbou is not a good slave-training eroge. There is no real SLG gameplay here, instead the only choice the player has is to visit 1 of 20 locations every day hoping that some kind of event happens there. There is no indication which area you have to visit, neither in script nor in the interface, it's completely by chance. Save-scumming and blindly gathering events at its finest, huh.
But if you can look behind this (preferably with a walkthrough), you will find a game that feels like the late 90s. Mainly because this is a blatant clone of 99's Yakin Byoutou. It's pretty much "Night Shift School Girls". Aside from the setting that is now a school, we have the same kind of characters, the same storyline and the same development Yakin Byoutou had. And it's great, because that formula still works 17 years later! The ugly main character, who has just enough understanding of the human psyche to get what he wants, the pure maidens who fall into his traps, not because they are sluts but because they are believable corrupted, and the evil female mastermind who is probably even worse than the main character. It's beautiful. The nostalgia is strong with this one.
 
Best Dark and Edgy Eroge: Tokage no Shippo Kiri
I'm cheating here a bit because the game was released in November 2015. But since the fandisc was released in January last year which means the full experience was only available to us in 2016, I see it as 2016 game.
There is not much to say here, what Derg not already said. Games like this prove that even low-budget publisher can make good games, if they just try. CYCLET is not Black Cyc, but it tries nonetheless to be something special and succeeds in setting itself apart from all the other low budget publisher. Maybe that is the reason we only had one CYCLET game in 2016; they emphasize on quality, not quantity.
 
Best RPG: Dungeon of Regalias
Let's not talk about the story and the characters. They are terrible, like in every Astronauts Sirius game. But damn is the gameplay addicting and actually good. Like in, really, really good.
This is probably one of the best ero-dungeon crawler existing. They did everything right with this one. Hard difficulty available from start. Skills as "items" which can be equipped so you can change your build without any resetting of skill points like in other games. Monsters who all act differently thus forcing you to change your strategy and character builds and party constantly. Great game.
 
 
Best SRPG: Sankai Ou no Yubiwa
I'm probably the only one, but ... I actually liked 2016's Eushully game. Yeah, really. Ok, it wasn't really a good SRPG; it actually had many flaws, like being far too easy and exploitable and the routes being too similar to each other... but... I liked the concept. Having six main characters who all represent a different kind of approach to the Ero-RPG genre is really something I wish more games would do. I hate the good guy, the antihero and the maou archetype, and sadly most Eushully games have one of these three as their main character. But Sankai Ou has also three other, more interesting protagonists to choose from. For example, I always wanted the angels to win in an Eushully game, and finally I have the opportunity to do this because the obligatory fallen-angel storyline is already covered in the other routes. Nice.
 
Biggest disappointment: Extravaganza ~Mushigurui Hen~
I was so hyped for this one. The first true Black Cyc game after 5 years of absence. Written by Banya Izumi who we could trust with the task of continuing a beloved series, right? Right?
No, it's awful. This game turned out to be an abomination which is quite remarkable because Black Cyc already milked the Extravaganza series with bad sidestories back when Black Cyc was still good for the most part. And Mushigurui Hen is even worse than these cheap nukige spinoffs. At least with cheap nukige fandisc, we know we get something bad. Mushigurui Hen on the other hand could have been good. It could have been awesome. But it wasn't.
So what went wrong? You have these great characters with their epic background stories, but what do they do with them? Putting them in school, because school life is, as we all now, the most important thing ever. And if a character is too old for school, just make them into rich snobs whose only problem in life is being too old (meaning being 23 years old) and lamenting about not having the time to go to the cinema with friends because work (meaning being CEO and chilling all the day in the office).
And if that wasn't bad enough, they also retcon a character death because this character was very popular back then and we need him for funny slice of life scenes now, yay.
The most offending thing however is how this "sequel" actually takes place after the second arc of the original Extravaganza, which means before the last third of the original game. And all the important character events in the third arc which really were the heart of the Extravaganza story apparently don't take place in this timeline. Instead, we get inferior and meaningless drama with derailed characters in Mushigurui Hen which is apparently now the canon timeline. Hurray.
 
Biggest insult: Everything released by Akabei Soft 3
I'm not going into this now, but literally every AKB3 game this year greatly offended me, just as Silky's Plus' games did last year. Let's just say that AKB3 makes games which represent everything that's wrong with modern eroge and have nothing left of what made eroge once great. (I might write a post explaining this statement in the near future.)
It saddens me how popular these games are. A dark prospect for 2017.
 

This is an introductory post and since I probably don't have to introduce myself anymore (you already know me ), I guess I advertise my future blog texts instead.
Tyrviews are not reviews. Instead of writing reviews, I'm more interested in discussing and exploring the themes of an eroge and talking about all the related topics like the writing, the tropes or the history of eroge or the Japanese entertainment industry in general. I might also talk about anime, j-dorama, games, movies, books or JAVs.
I'm sure you will find something new or interesting when you read my articles. You may not necessarily agree with what I have to say (and if you find the strong urge to comment, please do so, and you can be sure I will respond), but I'm certain you will find at least some new ideas worth thinking about.
When I write about a certain topic I’m interested in, I'm often using specific products (which inspired me to think and write about this subject in the first place) and these will serve as an example to verify the points I make.
With that said, unless I explicitly state that a Tyrview contains spoilers, it won’t. However, I might give away some directions a certain game will take. Nothing, you wouldn’t also find on the official website, but if you are like me and you would rather read an eroge without any a priori knowledge, it might be better if you come back later after you have finished the game in question.
The first blog text will be about my favorite games of 2016. I also have an article about Black Cyc in the pipeline since I have recently finished most of their games and am now looking forward to their newest release this month. I will probably also write my impressions about some anime I recently watched which are worth talking about.
If there is anything you would like me to write about or you want to read my opinion on something, I will be open to suggestions.
I will end my introduction by showing you a picture of my bathroom, so you get some value out of this pointless blog post.
Please rate it, I think it's pretty kuso which I've chosen as the theme for my toilet room. Do you get it?
Thanks for tolerating me and happy new year~~