Mr Poltroon

Argh, dammit. I think I kinda dropped that game in the middle of the second episode, but I know I had a load of notes on it and everything. I don't want to just spoil myself on it all now. Hm............

@Eclipsed And there you have CLANNAD. I've never actually read the After Story to completion. I don't think I have it in me. I'd love to hear your impressions on the anime as well, because I think it takes all that is best in CLANNAD: i.e., they do the Kotomi route thing and join all the school characters together rather than keep them constantly isolated from one another. It neglects CLANNAD's side characters and stories, but as you put it, they're there more for thematic reasons the anime would be unable to replicate regardless.

@Eclipsed I did the anime first. Clannad is, more than most other Key VNs, a "hunting" VN. That is, a VN in which you're supposed to explore and discover the endings yourself, with the bad endings generally giving you a clue as to what you missed. A product of another time when people afforded the game and would have no money for anything else for months so they'd spend all their time playing around with it.

@Eclipsed In a rare turn of events, I'd actually argue the anime adaptation of Clannad is better, with the Visual Novel as an appendix if you want to spend more time in the world. In either case, don't shy away from just doing the heroines you feel like (and then maybe watching the anime, because it does differ).

Well, from what I'm hearing I guess Island should be on my list. I guess I skipped over it in my "I bet the romance sucks, not going to play it" phase.

You can also have a gander at this series of yuri visual novels: https://vndb.org/v16610

Just making this post about the localisation announcement for the newest Ace Attorney game. Whether this is a Visual Novel or Game, eh, this includes a story mode where the game plays itself so let's say it's a Visual Novel then

Which, of course, you tested.

Yesterday NekoNyan went ahead and did a bunch of announcements, as can be found here: https://nekonyansoft.com/blog/time-to-reveal-the-sekrit-projects-and-other-news-part-1 And in a nice bit of a prank, they immediately followed up with an unexpected(?) part two! And indeed, unexpected announcements were found within: https://nekonyansoft.com/blog/time-to-reveal-the-sekrit-projects-and-other-news-part-2 I have to say, NekoNyan has successfully established itself as consistently producing excellent titles. One looks at their translation teams and we get translators like Blick Winkel and ReadingSteiner, and editors like DxS, Decay and FredTheBarber, as well as their own regulars. I'm glad things seem to be going well for them.

Reminds me to replay this. Eventually...............

Okay, I'm not the most knowledgeable but the combat system is all about collecting cards (aka characters) which each have their own abilities/attacks. Each card/character has an associated faction (i.e Helman, Rance Castle, Zeth, JAPAN, etc). For each battle, you choose one card from each faction to act as leader and you are able to use only the leaders' abilities. All the other cards from the same faction contribute bonus stats/attack to their leader. A number of battles are designed specifically so that you choose the characters that have the best abilities to deal with each battle.

That's fine. The game chose to focus on certain things and neglected others, and even the gameplay system is quite interesting, so it's not to everyone's taste. You mentioned patches and there were a couple, actually. One added a non-canon event/card for winning the popularity poll, Suzume (and Sieg lost by just a bit, nooooooooooo). There were, I think, a couple of characters added through updates, and also an event with La Vaswald, adding her to the game, though mostly as a bonus. Finally, I *think* one H-Scene got added? Anyway, others would know better than I, and while the updates did make the game better, they're not super impactful. Especially considering a player was already going to spend a couple hundred hours on the game anyway.

Ah, I think I might remember what you're referring to. Basically what happened was that Rance X is a very very big game. The scores in the first few weeks were mostly from the people who had given up or hadn't finished and weren't impressed by the story. Or those disappointed at the low number of H-Scenes or any other such aspects. From that point on, it simply jumped up. The scores from the people who had actually finished the game started coming in, and the game scored greatly with these people.

Well, since I just happened to have played it recently (and replayed it... twice), I can share my opinion on the matter. Whatever the opposite you said, except when it comes to liking things. Or, in other words, I like it a lot.

I guess there's no real reason not to change the title at this point, so there you go. Apologies for not getting to this earlier, but I was waiting for the forum updates to conclude and was otherwise occupied yesterday. I should have, in theory, fixed the common path.

I don't know about mistranslations, especially so long as the whole is coherent, but changing things or even characters really does not bother me in the slightest and I suspect may even be the cause for my love of it, in the case of Estelle, for instance.

What game are you starting with? Trails in the Sky, I presume? I'd be very interested in your impressions. The first two games really left an impression on me, and I've replayed them way too many times, considering I never went on to finish anything in the rest of the series Have to admit, it was the fantastic localisation+protagonist that really dragged me into these games.

@Eclipsed Under what rock did you pull out that yuri game I knew nothing of!? I mean, not to say I always know about all releases or anything, but I know these developers (Nurse Love Addiction) and find it odd I never registered that this thing released, much less that it had a fandisc/sequel. These guys have been escaping me, so I better register this all down.

What do you mean by "most of this"? I've never read the manga chapters or anything else other than the main Umineko VN itself, but I firmly believe that playing it twice means you can come up with most solutions yourself. It's just that people are unlikely to play it twice for obvious reasons

Okay, so, Umineko is interesting in how it wants the players to solve the things (Not only that, but I'll focus purely on the episode murder mysteries).

Oh, that above me, yes yes.

Happy new year. Yes yes.

I recommend Rimu from Master Magistrate. ...But this isn't really a typical romance VN, so her route only occurs at the very end, and through the middle you only get a vague impression.

Took me a while this year.