Mr Poltroon

@Fred the Barber's request, here are my thoughts on the first chapter of monster quest, all I've played thus far. Short, no spoilers at all version: I really like everything but the H-Scenes. It's a puzzle-like game, and you can just skip the ones you don't like. And if you're good, unlike me, you won't even get to see 80% of them. The story is also my kind of thing: Saving the world, uniting humans and monsters, etc. etc. I talk about rape repeatedly in the spoiler below. Please do not open if you're going to complain to me about it later.

Could be people with a less than stellar grasp on the English language that don't really notice much of anything wrong.

What would say if I told you that my pure self likes a VN about raising a slave? Let me explain my rationale. I have found that, in stories, one of the things I like most is "helping/curing" characters in whatever way possible, and that that help distinctly affects the person in question. This directly translates to my favourite types of heroines: Kuuderes and Tsunderes. Haruka in Never7 is a girl who is not particularly good at communicating, but the entirety of her route is spent on fixing that, with a good dose of love involved. To this day, that route is still one of my favourites. Tsugumi in Ever17 is yet another example of a character who slowly learnt to trust, through the power of hard work, abusing others, and love. That makes for another favourite character. And the pattern repeats for most of these archetypes. It's not a matter of "cool beauties" or some such nonsense, it's a matter of helping them and curing them of their problems. "Curing" isn't the only factor. "Causing change" is a pretty big factor in and of itself, an characters with great character development as a result of love always spark my interest. Most of the time, said 'development' ends up being an increase in happiness, which leads to some pretty dodgy 'development' that can basically be classified as turning the girl into a nymphomaniac. And its when you get to this extreme that some of the 'darker', more problematic sides of my preferences come out. When what I'm looking for is the process of "curing" a character, there's nothing that necessarily forbids breaking said character in the first place. And indeed, in some stories I've read the 'plot' involved getting the characters addicted to sex, and then learning moderation, which is a twisted way of interpreting the whole thing, but very much within my strike zone. First there's a heavy "change", and then some "healing". This leads to my fondness for games like Rance and Bunny Black. For the most part, Rance's objectives lie in increasing women's favour, leading to him helping them, and eventually having them fall in love with him. Otherwise, he can also cause a problem for the girl, and then fix it, or even force himself upon the person until they learn to love him. All means to an end, and a rather pleasing end -- making the woman happy, helping her in the process. Whilst there are many examples to call forth in the Rance series, the first one to come to mind is the sex slave you can get in Kichkuou Rance. There, you get the option to rehabilitate her. And the whole process is a painful/happy experience, with her finally attaining happiness at the end. But Rance can also leave me hanging, such as Elizabeth at the end of Rance VI. Bunny Black works the same way, with a gentlemany-ish protagonist who may force himself upon women, but causes deep change within them. Even if it is turning them into nymphomaniacs... The idea is very clearly depicted in the character events. Initially they show a terrible hatred, which turns into dislike and slowly blossoms into love. Not in a pure way, most of the time (they just want sex), but it's something. Some of them fall in love with the "gentleness", which is a ridiculous notion as we're talking about rape here, but those are also some of the purest feelings. Which is why one of my favourite stories is definitely one about taking care of a slave who was previously badly treated. This gives one the opportunity to "rehabilitate" the person, teaching them that they're allowed to sleep on a bed, to wear good clothing, to eat a decent meal, to express themselves, to love. The character, then, undergoes deep change and growth, and it's all for the 'good'. There's also the option of causing change through sex, if you'd prefer that way. The same developer also made a VN about a bullied girl, who you treat well and 'rehabilitate/fix her life', which basically plays with the same ideas. It certainly is twisted that one would abuse (not in a physical sense) a person with mental scars to manipulate their emotions into liking us, who is helping her, but this fits nicely within my likes, and it's also good for the person, and also causes them to be happier. All's well that ends well, I say. If you want to bring my tastes to a better light, then you have Kamidori. Kamidori is, in many ways, a story about changing for the better. It is the story of a young alchemist who, through his hard work, attempts to make his city a better place and attempts to help all around him, including the 'monsters' and 'unknown beings', changing all of them, both humans and other races, so that they learn to live with one another. By helping these many races he lands, of course, all the cute girls, but that's only a side bonus. So then, do you know of any stories/VNs with these characteristics? I take on everything. For instance, the other day I was considering one of those dungeon games where the protagonist gets raped by monsters, except apparently the monsters really started to like him and end up following him.

My last VN search was indeed a VN title. I was looking for the manner through which to attain its endings. I don't have the courage to share its title, however, because I happened to be looking up some really uncharacteristic things, which I'd rather were not associated with me.

Notably, I have read Aoi's is, in fact, a bonus route, which is why it's locked. I have not, however, gotten to confirm if this is true.

Penelope's Web. You fear the judgement day that'll come upon release, so you postpone it forevermore. Edit: I mean, it could also be that there's some shenanigans going on behind the scenes. Somebody counted things wrong, that automatic script had a bug, the translator wanted to double check some things... But that explanation's booooring.

None. I was merely translating for the unaware and the ignorant, lest they be duped by the misleading wording of

In other words, you will be banned on Kaguya's whims.

You can just see the love this team has for their project! It's like every week they undo their progress just so they can keep working on it more. Reminds me of Penelope's Web.

I have only just started Makabe-san's route. Let's put down some thoughts: Common Route Thoughts (Spoiler) Slight Makabe Route Spoilers I am a bit... afraid by what I'm hearing. Apparently this VN has some drama, such as breakups, which is totally not my thing. I am seriously hoping the cute, happy moments make up for it, then. (This write-up feels dry as all hell, but alas, I am both tired and there's not nearly as much to say as I tried to write.)

Allow me to write down a short complaint. Why is it that, so often in manga, I find myself unable to even understand what is drawn? Never mind ugly drawings, when the reader can't understand what's represented on the panel, something is seriously wrong. I can forgive H-Scenes for this. Shot angles in those are traditionally bonkers and I've given up understanding what kind of anatomy those characters have, as its certainly not human (how'd you even get your leg over there?). Now, when I'm trying to follow my action story, or even just a simple romance, and I can't tell what's happening, something is seriously off. Most recently, I'm accusing Sankarea of this, but it's definitely not the only one, or a particularly bad offender. Were I to try and find a pattern, I'd say that older works tend to be harder to follow, but it's definitely no hard rule. There's nothing like a good camera shot that seems to be focusing on... a wall??? Or is that the ground? A step in a staircase? A corner? A windowsill?? This leads right into the next issue, and that's crappy speech balloons. In Japanese, it's rather possible that characters speak very distinctly from each other, and that makes it so its not often necessary to clearly indicate who's saying what. However, in English it's not only harder to differentiate what's being said/speech patterns, the translations themselves are not good enough to do it (incidentally, anecdotally I've found that Yuri works have the best translations). Bad translations are by themselves a big problem, and they are likely to be even worse a problem than not being translated at all. Wedding 2 (the sequel) is likely the worst translation I have ever read in my life, making the whole sequel unintelligible -- you basically had to to go by the drawings. A translation existing severely decreases the chances that someone will pick it up again, but it's still possible. Case in point, I have reason to believe that more than one translation of this sequel exist, and that's something I'll have to investigate. Going back to the balloons, the first thing they should do is ban balloons without a 'tail'. Those (ironically) devilish things, when coupled with the ridiculous, stupid habit of focusing the camera on a character that is not currently speaking, make for some needlessly painful reading experiences. Then there's the conversations between characters, which are so tight and packed in like sardines, sometimes the tail is actually pointing to the wrong character. Or maybe, since the bubble are on top of one another, the author erases the borders, making for a multi-level bubble with speech from more than one person and only one tail. There are nice, generous authors that doodle the characters in the bubble to make it clear who's saying what, but I'm not sure whether to blame generic designs or lack of doodling skills, but those don't always help like they should. But alas, I still love manga. I just wish more of them were within my sphere of comprehension. And easier to buy.

Thanks. If the gameplay is of the same kind to begin with, I'd probably like it regardless, but I can see it's not some serious doom and gloom game either, so that's good too.