Mr Poltroon

Campus Notes-Forget Me Not (Aka The Adventures of the Pointy Teeth, the Spade, and the Beret)
The Setup
Campus Notes immediately stood out to me because it is one of the few Visual Novels that actually is set in a University. In a medium dominated by the stale and overused High School setting it was a breath of fresh air to say the least. Your characters name is Yuta Kiriha and he is a new transfer student of the University of Tsukuba. Typically, College is supposed to be a time of finding your path, forging lifelong friendships, spending many sleepless nights studying last minute for a test, and getting irresponsibly drunk and puking all over yourself. Unfortunately for Yuta, after the opening ceremony he instead runs afoul of several oddballs and a strange doll like girl. Such is the spinning turmoil of fate. Yuta awakes the next morning only to find out that for some unknown reason nearly everyone on campus has completely forgotten who he is. If that wasn't enough after every day they forget him all over again. It is up to Yuta and his merry band of oddballs to uncover the truth behind the lost memories.

Why do harbingers of doom always look like cute girls?
The Characters
Yuta is not the best protagonist I have ever encountered but he is far, far, from being the worst. Yuta is aided in his quest by the three oddballs from before and his new pal Fuma. They all bizarrely have the same struggles that Yuta has so they decide to band together in order to get to the bottom of this phenomenon. The oddball's names are Togi, Sion, and Kaen and they are some of the most unique characters I have experienced in a Visual Novel so far. They are the primary draws of the VN and they are just so much fun! Togi, Sion, and Kaen all have their own quirks and peculiarities and yet they all balance each other out. They're very fleshed out and not your typical tropey VN girl in the slightest. All of them are pursuing science degrees and it shows in their outlook and their theories on the situation. Togi is sarcastic and cynical and easily my favorite. She has a sweet side about her and she is the most overtly flirty one of the group. Sion is brash and the more intellectual of the group. She also loves her line, "I believe only what I can see for myself." Kaen loves gardening and cute things, is pretty tomboyish, and has a bad habit of referring to herself in the third person. Yuta as I mentioned before is decent enough and he has some pretty good lines even though he is often overwhelmed by the strength of the girls personalities. Fuma is a good platonic friend character and I liked how realistic the way Yuta and Fuma met each other came across. Each heroine has their own mini route which gives us a lot more insight into the girls background and backstories. The mini routes all stem from each girls theory of what exactly is the cause of this phenomenon.

(From right to left Sion, Kaen, and Togi)

(Oh and this is Fuma who is busily cursing the fact that he is but a sidekick)
My Two Cents
The mystery in Campus Notes does a pretty good job in moving the story along but it was the weakest part of the Visual Novel for me. What really makes it what it is are the characters and the dialogue between them and Yuta. The dialogue is something that I really loved and a lot of it reminded me of all the weird conversations I would have with own friends. The main problem with Campus Notes is that it is pretty short at most 15 hours and that's only if you really take your time with it. This is most noticeable in the girls routes when they abruptly come to a premature end. It makes sense within the context of the narrative but it still felt unsatisfying. The second problem I had with it was that there are a hardly any cgs in the game. Each girl only has two devoted to them which I thought was a real shame because there were a lot of scenes in the VN that I felt could have easily warranted their own cg. Lastly, there is the problem of the side characters. From what I have been able to determine a lot of these characters are in fact from the other Visual Novels that 4th Cluster has published. I had no idea who these characters were and it felt a bit off when one of them would suddenly appear. It did make me want to play their other releases however, though they have yet to be translated. The ending to the story itself felt a bit anticlimactic after all the setup but I wasn't too terribly disappointed. Despite its faults, it does enough things right for me to want to give it a hearty recommendation. My final verdict for it is a 8/10 it's by far not the best VN I have ever played but I'm still really glad I played it.

Cinderella Phenomenon is a FREEeeee Otome game which you can get on Steam or itch.io. This is the story of Lucette (or whatever you choose to name her), the Crown Princess for the Kingdom of Angielle.
Like all other Otome games I've played, this game has an ongoing mystery and a plot, and so I'd actually recommend the following route order: Rod Karma Rumpel Fritz (locked at start) Waltz (locked at start) Turns out this is also the order the developers recommend. Such a shame I only noticed this today, after having already played it.
Common Route (Light Spoilers):
One idea I've always found interesting is the idea of having a Tsundere be a protagonist. Not those cheap Tsunderes who are only violent to hide their embarrassment. I mean the real Tsunderes who, for one reason or another, have a distaste for people and are generally verbally or physically aggressive towards most others. Do not take 'Tsundere' to be a degrading term that marks the protagonist as a simple 2D cut-out with no real personality. A person may be a Tsundere for any number of reasons. That is what 'depth' is. Her motivations, desires and thoughts are what makes her a character, and not simply the way she acts.
Lucette is called 'Ice Princess' by the denizens of her Kingdom, due to her icy cold heart. That should give you an idea of what kind of protagonist we're dealing with. Because of this protagonist, however, the story was truly unique to read through. It is not often that one gets to see the inner workings of a Tsundere, and I was astonished by how mean she was to everybody, and how selfish she seemed. Towards the start of the game, I quite disliked Lucette, but it's interesting to note this dynamic: Seeing a Tsundere from the outside makes me want to gain her trust, become her friend, melt her cold interior. But seeing her from inside her own head? Knowing her thoughts and thought processes? More often than not I was sad or mad at her. How could she be so... not good?
Regardless, this common route also contained most of the funnier moments of the game. It's always interesting to see Lucette dishing out the sass and verbal abuse, and she even has worthy rivals in the sarcasm department. There's also something quite charming about a Princess struggling with a broom.
A number of characters are introduced during the common route.
Parfait is an incredibly powerful person that, unfortunately, overworks herself to no end, and this is reflected in her sprite, being the most sickly-looking character in the cast. I actually really like that they were able to convey this tidbit through the character sprite. She is a very good person, which makes it all the more hilarious when her honesty lets slip certain scathing comments about people.
Delora is perhaps Lucette's only true rival in vitriol, though perhaps without any real ill-intent. Capable, witty, and, most infuriatingly of all, generally right.
Waltz is a young boy that does puppet shows in the streets, gathering tips in the process. Also known as resident nice guy.
Karma is a person whose narcissism is immense, comparable only to their apparent laziness.
Rod is Lucette's step-brother, who has generally avoided interacting with her.
Fritz is Lucette's personal knight and perhaps the only person she doesn't actively degrade. What a feat.
Rumpel is an amnesiac. He is also an unparalleled flirt. One of the main sources of comedy in this story.
(From here on, spoilers in spoilers, silly)
Rod's Route:
Rod's route is the route which least delves into the real intrigue of the story. For this reason, it is the recommended route to start with.
I just feel bad for the writer. Writing 'Emelaigne' so many times must have been hard.
Karma's Route:
In this route we're given some pieces of the puzzle, but are left mostly in the dark.
Rumpel's Route:
This route throws all the pieces at our face and then doesn't do anything with them. It's great for teasing stuff, I guess.
For the love of god, don't start with this one.
My favourite romance in the whole Visual Novel.
Fritz's Route:
I really like knights. There's something about servitude and dedication... Wait, that doesn't sound good for a healthy relationship.
Waltz's Route:
The culmination of everything. Highly recommended that you read all else first. It will definitely better your experience.
 
Cinderella Phenomenon's greatest feat is perhaps how the story forms a coherent whole. It is a story of stories, and in each of those stories different characters are given the spotlight. This makes it so that, by the end of the entire experience, you have had an opportunity to know everyone, and bond with everyone. Each route is as if a chessboard were laid out with only slightly a different arrangement of the pieces, and we, once again, watch the game slowly play out. At the start, we don't know anything about the other pieces or the board. But as we play through the routes we start learning where the other pieces are, and what they are. We become capable of telling in which direction the game is going, but we have precious little control over it. Lucette may be the protagonist, but we do not truly command her.
It's precisely this feeling of wanting to unravel the mysteries that could become a weakness. I failed to follow the recommended route order and started with Rumpel. Unfortunately for me, Rumpel's route reveals far more of the setting than the other two routes available at the start. While this made Rumpel's route extremely satisfying as my initial experience, it is now hard for me to tell if starting with Rod's route would have made the overall experience more satisfying.
As I said, though, each route tries to tackle different characters and turns of events, meaning that even if you know a lot about the overall mystery, there's always little mysteries and backstory to find in each route that you'll come across in no other.
But I'll be honest. The main reason I read this story, as with most others I read, was for the romance. This game delivered.
Because Lucette is a Tsundere, these are some of my favourite romance stories: melting the ice queen. With cute and kissing CGs to go with them, each romantic interest had a dynamic with our protagonist. I felt some had more chemistry with her, but that is likely just me and others would think differently. The romance is not always the focus, but it is there, and it makes me happy.
And so, by mixing all of the events together, by knowing everybody's stories and ambitions we can choose the perfect story for ourselves. Who did she end up with? With whom did she interact? None of the events is necessarily stuck to any one route, and the possibilities are limitless. If you're willing to, you can imagine your own perfect world, in which you decide what Lucette and those around her did, and how the events unfolded.
If I were to come up with a negative, then it'd be that the choices have no rhyme or reason to them. I didn't even notice I had made the wrong choices until suddenly everything was dead and I got an achievement for it. Thankfully, they have a system specifically for preventing this, so you don't have to consult external guides to get a good ending, and it can even be quite interesting to see how dialogue changes depending on your choice.
Speaking of negatives, the Common Route is an essential component of the story. What this means is that your first route will be better specifically because you can better judge the main character's character growth. Once you finish the first route, if you skip the common route, you'll have 'forgotten' how Lucette was at the start of story, and her growth as a character won't be as vivid and heart-warming in future routes.
 
P.S. I've had this post sitting as a blog Draft for over a week. Only know did I get to finish leaving a few spoiler comments (You can probably tell which ones by how much I don't remember any more).

Cinderella Phenomenon is a FREEeeee Otome game which you can get on Steam or itch.io. This is the story of Lucette (or whatever you choose to name her), the Crown Princess for the Kingdom of Angielle.
Like all other Otome games I've played, this game has an ongoing mystery and a plot, and so I'd actually recommend the following route order: Rod Karma Rumpel Fritz (locked at start) Waltz (locked at start) Turns out this is also the order the developers recommend. Such a shame I only noticed this today, after having already played it.
Common Route (Light Spoilers):
One idea I've always found interesting is the idea of having a Tsundere be a protagonist. Not those cheap Tsunderes who are only violent to hide their embarrassment. I mean the real Tsunderes who, for one reason or another, have a distaste for people and are generally verbally or physically aggressive towards most others. Do not take 'Tsundere' to be a degrading term that marks the protagonist as a simple 2D cut-out with no real personality. A person may be a Tsundere for any number of reasons. That is what 'depth' is. Her motivations, desires and thoughts are what makes her a character, and not simply the way she acts.
Lucette is called 'Ice Princess' by the denizens of her Kingdom, due to her icy cold heart. That should give you an idea of what kind of protagonist we're dealing with. Because of this protagonist, however, the story was truly unique to read through. It is not often that one gets to see the inner workings of a Tsundere, and I was astonished by how mean she was to everybody, and how selfish she seemed. Towards the start of the game, I quite disliked Lucette, but it's interesting to note this dynamic: Seeing a Tsundere from the outside makes me want to gain her trust, become her friend, melt her cold interior. But seeing her from inside her own head? Knowing her thoughts and thought processes? More often than not I was sad or mad at her. How could she be so... not good?
Regardless, this common route also contained most of the funnier moments of the game. It's always interesting to see Lucette dishing out the sass and verbal abuse, and she even has worthy rivals in the sarcasm department. There's also something quite charming about a Princess struggling with a broom.
A number of characters are introduced during the common route.
Parfait is an incredibly powerful person that, unfortunately, overworks herself to no end, and this is reflected in her sprite, being the most sickly-looking character in the cast. I actually really like that they were able to convey this tidbit through the character sprite. She is a very good person, which makes it all the more hilarious when her honesty lets slip certain scathing comments about people.
Delora is perhaps Lucette's only true rival in vitriol, though perhaps without any real ill-intent. Capable, witty, and, most infuriatingly of all, generally right.
Waltz is a young boy that does puppet shows in the streets, gathering tips in the process. Also known as resident nice guy.
Karma is a person whose narcissism is immense, comparable only to their apparent laziness.
Rod is Lucette's step-brother, who has generally avoided interacting with her.
Fritz is Lucette's personal knight and perhaps the only person she doesn't actively degrade. What a feat.
Rumpel is an amnesiac. He is also an unparalleled flirt. One of the main sources of comedy in this story.
(From here on, spoilers in spoilers, silly)
Rod's Route:
Rod's route is the route which least delves into the real intrigue of the story. For this reason, it is the recommended route to start with.
I just feel bad for the writer. Writing 'Emelaigne' so many times must have been hard.
Karma's Route:
In this route we're given some pieces of the puzzle, but are left mostly in the dark.
Rumpel's Route:
This route throws all the pieces at our face and then doesn't do anything with them. It's great for teasing stuff, I guess.
For the love of god, don't start with this one.
My favourite romance in the whole Visual Novel.
Fritz's Route:
I really like knights. There's something about servitude and dedication... Wait, that doesn't sound good for a healthy relationship.
Waltz's Route:
The culmination of everything. Highly recommended that you read all else first. It will definitely better your experience.
 
Cinderella Phenomenon's greatest feat is perhaps how the story forms a coherent whole. It is a story of stories, and in each of those stories different characters are given the spotlight. This makes it so that, by the end of the entire experience, you have had an opportunity to know everyone, and bond with everyone. Each route is as if a chessboard were laid out with only slightly a different arrangement of the pieces, and we, once again, watch the game slowly play out. At the start, we don't know anything about the other pieces or the board. But as we play through the routes we start learning where the other pieces are, and what they are. We become capable of telling in which direction the game is going, but we have precious little control over it. Lucette may be the protagonist, but we do not truly command her.
It's precisely this feeling of wanting to unravel the mysteries that could become a weakness. I failed to follow the recommended route order and started with Rumpel. Unfortunately for me, Rumpel's route reveals far more of the setting than the other two routes available at the start. While this made Rumpel's route extremely satisfying as my initial experience, it is now hard for me to tell if starting with Rod's route would have made the overall experience more satisfying.
As I said, though, each route tries to tackle different characters and turns of events, meaning that even if you know a lot about the overall mystery, there's always little mysteries and backstory to find in each route that you'll come across in no other.
But I'll be honest. The main reason I read this story, as with most others I read, was for the romance. This game delivered.
Because Lucette is a Tsundere, these are some of my favourite romance stories: melting the ice queen. With cute and kissing CGs to go with them, each romantic interest had a dynamic with our protagonist. I felt some had more chemistry with her, but that is likely just me and others would think differently. The romance is not always the focus, but it is there, and it makes me happy.
And so, by mixing all of the events together, by knowing everybody's stories and ambitions we can choose the perfect story for ourselves. Who did she end up with? With whom did she interact? None of the events is necessarily stuck to any one route, and the possibilities are limitless. If you're willing to, you can imagine your own perfect world, in which you decide what Lucette and those around her did, and how the events unfolded.
If I were to come up with a negative, then it'd be that the choices have no rhyme or reason to them. I didn't even notice I had made the wrong choices until suddenly everything was dead and I got an achievement for it. Thankfully, they have a system specifically for preventing this, so you don't have to consult external guides to get a good ending, and it can even be quite interesting to see how dialogue changes depending on your choice.
Speaking of negatives, the Common Route is an essential component of the story. What this means is that your first route will be better specifically because you can better judge the main character's character growth. Once you finish the first route, if you skip the common route, you'll have 'forgotten' how Lucette was at the start of story, and her growth as a character won't be as vivid and heart-warming in future routes.
 
P.S. I've had this post sitting as a blog Draft for over a week. Only know did I get to finish leaving a few spoiler comments (You can probably tell which ones by how much I don't remember any more).

Cinderella Phenomenon is a FREEeeee Otome game which you can get on Steam or itch.io. This is the story of Lucette (or whatever you choose to name her), the Crown Princess for the Kingdom of Angielle.
Like all other Otome games I've played, this game has an ongoing mystery and a plot, and so I'd actually recommend the following route order: Rod Karma Rumpel Fritz (locked at start) Waltz (locked at start) Turns out this is also the order the developers recommend. Such a shame I only noticed this today, after having already played it.
Common Route (Light Spoilers):
One idea I've always found interesting is the idea of having a Tsundere be a protagonist. Not those cheap Tsunderes who are only violent to hide their embarrassment. I mean the real Tsunderes who, for one reason or another, have a distaste for people and are generally verbally or physically aggressive towards most others. Do not take 'Tsundere' to be a degrading term that marks the protagonist as a simple 2D cut-out with no real personality. A person may be a Tsundere for any number of reasons. That is what 'depth' is. Her motivations, desires and thoughts are what makes her a character, and not simply the way she acts.
Lucette is called 'Ice Princess' by the denizens of her Kingdom, due to her icy cold heart. That should give you an idea of what kind of protagonist we're dealing with. Because of this protagonist, however, the story was truly unique to read through. It is not often that one gets to see the inner workings of a Tsundere, and I was astonished by how mean she was to everybody, and how selfish she seemed. Towards the start of the game, I quite disliked Lucette, but it's interesting to note this dynamic: Seeing a Tsundere from the outside makes me want to gain her trust, become her friend, melt her cold interior. But seeing her from inside her own head? Knowing her thoughts and thought processes? More often than not I was sad or mad at her. How could she be so... not good?
Regardless, this common route also contained most of the funnier moments of the game. It's always interesting to see Lucette dishing out the sass and verbal abuse, and she even has worthy rivals in the sarcasm department. There's also something quite charming about a Princess struggling with a broom.
A number of characters are introduced during the common route.
Parfait is an incredibly powerful person that, unfortunately, overworks herself to no end, and this is reflected in her sprite, being the most sickly-looking character in the cast. I actually really like that they were able to convey this tidbit through the character sprite. She is a very good person, which makes it all the more hilarious when her honesty lets slip certain scathing comments about people.
Delora is perhaps Lucette's only true rival in vitriol, though perhaps without any real ill-intent. Capable, witty, and, most infuriatingly of all, generally right.
Waltz is a young boy that does puppet shows in the streets, gathering tips in the process. Also known as resident nice guy.
Karma is a person whose narcissism is immense, comparable only to their apparent laziness.
Rod is Lucette's step-brother, who has generally avoided interacting with her.
Fritz is Lucette's personal knight and perhaps the only person she doesn't actively degrade. What a feat.
Rumpel is an amnesiac. He is also an unparalleled flirt. One of the main sources of comedy in this story.
(From here on, spoilers in spoilers, silly)
Rod's Route:
Rod's route is the route which least delves into the real intrigue of the story. For this reason, it is the recommended route to start with.
I just feel bad for the writer. Writing 'Emelaigne' so many times must have been hard.
Karma's Route:
In this route we're given some pieces of the puzzle, but are left mostly in the dark.
Rumpel's Route:
This route throws all the pieces at our face and then doesn't do anything with them. It's great for teasing stuff, I guess.
For the love of god, don't start with this one.
My favourite romance in the whole Visual Novel.
Fritz's Route:
I really like knights. There's something about servitude and dedication... Wait, that doesn't sound good for a healthy relationship.
Waltz's Route:
The culmination of everything. Highly recommended that you read all else first. It will definitely better your experience.
 
Cinderella Phenomenon's greatest feat is perhaps how the story forms a coherent whole. It is a story of stories, and in each of those stories different characters are given the spotlight. This makes it so that, by the end of the entire experience, you have had an opportunity to know everyone, and bond with everyone. Each route is as if a chessboard were laid out with only slightly a different arrangement of the pieces, and we, once again, watch the game slowly play out. At the start, we don't know anything about the other pieces or the board. But as we play through the routes we start learning where the other pieces are, and what they are. We become capable of telling in which direction the game is going, but we have precious little control over it. Lucette may be the protagonist, but we do not truly command her.
It's precisely this feeling of wanting to unravel the mysteries that could become a weakness. I failed to follow the recommended route order and started with Rumpel. Unfortunately for me, Rumpel's route reveals far more of the setting than the other two routes available at the start. While this made Rumpel's route extremely satisfying as my initial experience, it is now hard for me to tell if starting with Rod's route would have made the overall experience more satisfying.
As I said, though, each route tries to tackle different characters and turns of events, meaning that even if you know a lot about the overall mystery, there's always little mysteries and backstory to find in each route that you'll come across in no other.
But I'll be honest. The main reason I read this story, as with most others I read, was for the romance. This game delivered.
Because Lucette is a Tsundere, these are some of my favourite romance stories: melting the ice queen. With cute and kissing CGs to go with them, each romantic interest had a dynamic with our protagonist. I felt some had more chemistry with her, but that is likely just me and others would think differently. The romance is not always the focus, but it is there, and it makes me happy.
And so, by mixing all of the events together, by knowing everybody's stories and ambitions we can choose the perfect story for ourselves. Who did she end up with? With whom did she interact? None of the events is necessarily stuck to any one route, and the possibilities are limitless. If you're willing to, you can imagine your own perfect world, in which you decide what Lucette and those around her did, and how the events unfolded.
If I were to come up with a negative, then it'd be that the choices have no rhyme or reason to them. I didn't even notice I had made the wrong choices until suddenly everything was dead and I got an achievement for it. Thankfully, they have a system specifically for preventing this, so you don't have to consult external guides to get a good ending, and it can even be quite interesting to see how dialogue changes depending on your choice.
Speaking of negatives, the Common Route is an essential component of the story. What this means is that your first route will be better specifically because you can better judge the main character's character growth. Once you finish the first route, if you skip the common route, you'll have 'forgotten' how Lucette was at the start of story, and her growth as a character won't be as vivid and heart-warming in future routes.
 
P.S. I've had this post sitting as a blog Draft for over a week. Only know did I get to finish leaving a few spoiler comments (You can probably tell which ones by how much I don't remember any more).

Cinderella Phenomenon is a FREEeeee Otome game which you can get on Steam or itch.io. This is the story of Lucette (or whatever you choose to name her), the Crown Princess for the Kingdom of Angielle.
Like all other Otome games I've played, this game has an ongoing mystery and a plot, and so I'd actually recommend the following route order: Rod Karma Rumpel Fritz (locked at start) Waltz (locked at start) Turns out this is also the order the developers recommend. Such a shame I only noticed this today, after having already played it.
Common Route (Light Spoilers):
One idea I've always found interesting is the idea of having a Tsundere be a protagonist. Not those cheap Tsunderes who are only violent to hide their embarrassment. I mean the real Tsunderes who, for one reason or another, have a distaste for people and are generally verbally or physically aggressive towards most others. Do not take 'Tsundere' to be a degrading term that marks the protagonist as a simple 2D cut-out with no real personality. A person may be a Tsundere for any number of reasons. That is what 'depth' is. Her motivations, desires and thoughts are what makes her a character, and not simply the way she acts.
Lucette is called 'Ice Princess' by the denizens of her Kingdom, due to her icy cold heart. That should give you an idea of what kind of protagonist we're dealing with. Because of this protagonist, however, the story was truly unique to read through. It is not often that one gets to see the inner workings of a Tsundere, and I was astonished by how mean she was to everybody, and how selfish she seemed. Towards the start of the game, I quite disliked Lucette, but it's interesting to note this dynamic: Seeing a Tsundere from the outside makes me want to gain her trust, become her friend, melt her cold interior. But seeing her from inside her own head? Knowing her thoughts and thought processes? More often than not I was sad or mad at her. How could she be so... not good?
Regardless, this common route also contained most of the funnier moments of the game. It's always interesting to see Lucette dishing out the sass and verbal abuse, and she even has worthy rivals in the sarcasm department. There's also something quite charming about a Princess struggling with a broom.
A number of characters are introduced during the common route.
Parfait is an incredibly powerful person that, unfortunately, overworks herself to no end, and this is reflected in her sprite, being the most sickly-looking character in the cast. I actually really like that they were able to convey this tidbit through the character sprite. She is a very good person, which makes it all the more hilarious when her honesty lets slip certain scathing comments about people.
Delora is perhaps Lucette's only true rival in vitriol, though perhaps without any real ill-intent. Capable, witty, and, most infuriatingly of all, generally right.
Waltz is a young boy that does puppet shows in the streets, gathering tips in the process. Also known as resident nice guy.
Karma is a person whose narcissism is immense, comparable only to their apparent laziness.
Rod is Lucette's step-brother, who has generally avoided interacting with her.
Fritz is Lucette's personal knight and perhaps the only person she doesn't actively degrade. What a feat.
Rumpel is an amnesiac. He is also an unparalleled flirt. One of the main sources of comedy in this story.
(From here on, spoilers in spoilers, silly)
Rod's Route:
Rod's route is the route which least delves into the real intrigue of the story. For this reason, it is the recommended route to start with.
I just feel bad for the writer. Writing 'Emelaigne' so many times must have been hard.
Karma's Route:
In this route we're given some pieces of the puzzle, but are left mostly in the dark.
Rumpel's Route:
This route throws all the pieces at our face and then doesn't do anything with them. It's great for teasing stuff, I guess.
For the love of god, don't start with this one.
My favourite romance in the whole Visual Novel.
Fritz's Route:
I really like knights. There's something about servitude and dedication... Wait, that doesn't sound good for a healthy relationship.
Waltz's Route:
The culmination of everything. Highly recommended that you read all else first. It will definitely better your experience.
 
Cinderella Phenomenon's greatest feat is perhaps how the story forms a coherent whole. It is a story of stories, and in each of those stories different characters are given the spotlight. This makes it so that, by the end of the entire experience, you have had an opportunity to know everyone, and bond with everyone. Each route is as if a chessboard were laid out with only slightly a different arrangement of the pieces, and we, once again, watch the game slowly play out. At the start, we don't know anything about the other pieces or the board. But as we play through the routes we start learning where the other pieces are, and what they are. We become capable of telling in which direction the game is going, but we have precious little control over it. Lucette may be the protagonist, but we do not truly command her.
It's precisely this feeling of wanting to unravel the mysteries that could become a weakness. I failed to follow the recommended route order and started with Rumpel. Unfortunately for me, Rumpel's route reveals far more of the setting than the other two routes available at the start. While this made Rumpel's route extremely satisfying as my initial experience, it is now hard for me to tell if starting with Rod's route would have made the overall experience more satisfying.
As I said, though, each route tries to tackle different characters and turns of events, meaning that even if you know a lot about the overall mystery, there's always little mysteries and backstory to find in each route that you'll come across in no other.
But I'll be honest. The main reason I read this story, as with most others I read, was for the romance. This game delivered.
Because Lucette is a Tsundere, these are some of my favourite romance stories: melting the ice queen. With cute and kissing CGs to go with them, each romantic interest had a dynamic with our protagonist. I felt some had more chemistry with her, but that is likely just me and others would think differently. The romance is not always the focus, but it is there, and it makes me happy.
And so, by mixing all of the events together, by knowing everybody's stories and ambitions we can choose the perfect story for ourselves. Who did she end up with? With whom did she interact? None of the events is necessarily stuck to any one route, and the possibilities are limitless. If you're willing to, you can imagine your own perfect world, in which you decide what Lucette and those around her did, and how the events unfolded.
If I were to come up with a negative, then it'd be that the choices have no rhyme or reason to them. I didn't even notice I had made the wrong choices until suddenly everything was dead and I got an achievement for it. Thankfully, they have a system specifically for preventing this, so you don't have to consult external guides to get a good ending, and it can even be quite interesting to see how dialogue changes depending on your choice.
Speaking of negatives, the Common Route is an essential component of the story. What this means is that your first route will be better specifically because you can better judge the main character's character growth. Once you finish the first route, if you skip the common route, you'll have 'forgotten' how Lucette was at the start of story, and her growth as a character won't be as vivid and heart-warming in future routes.
 
P.S. I've had this post sitting as a blog Draft for over a week. Only know did I get to finish leaving a few spoiler comments (You can probably tell which ones by how much I don't remember any more).

The view outside has no business calling itself a dawn. Sure, morning has just broken – but dawn has a warmth to it, a promise of brighter times, of new beginnings, of respite from the unfeeling night. The gloomy Swedish winter dawn outside brings me only a feeling of cold distance, steely gray sky falling softly onto the white fields below. Snow-laden pines clamber laboriously through the fog, watching the dawn with little more enthusiasm than I myself can muster.
It’s mornings like these that make me want to end it.
Not seriously. Not bad enough to be something I need to worry about. God, I don’t even check the “I don’t want to live but I also don’t want to die” box any more. I am absurd tiers of not actually depressed. But yeah, fuck this so-called “dawn”. Fuck this dawn for being so empty. Fuck this dawn for being so cold. And fuck me for writing about it; it’s only going to make things worse.

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DISCLAIMER: All that I mention represent my views mixed with basic scientific theories floating around.
To 'Love', and to be 'In Love'
I believe these two to be different. One does not necessarily love those they are in love with, and one is not necessarily in love with those they love. Sound confusing? Allow me to elaborate.
To make this as clear as possible, let's take "romantic feelings" out of the equation.
Would you say you love your parents? Or that you are in love with them? Maybe both expressions work for you?
The way I see it, one (generally) loves their family, yet is not in love of them.
To be in love with someone is the sort of feeling you have towards a crush, that almost irrational slight obsession and redirection of your thoughts in their general direction. Perhaps your heart will beat faster, perhaps you will become slightly euphoric, perhaps you'll get embarrassed; all just by being near the person in question.
What I've just described most certainly does not apply towards your parents (unless you're into some really weird nukige). But you still love them, right? You act kind towards them, you are affectionate with them, you take their presence for granted and would sacrifice immensely for their sake.
Mayhap, this even applies to your friends? Friendship love. You see it all the time in manga, girls loving each other, but not being in love with each other. You care for your friends much like they care for you.
Finally, for all you older folk out there, if you're a parent: would you say you love your children, or that you are in love with them? Because if it's the latter, that would make you the worst kind of scum in the eyes of society.
Only when it comes to romance do these two things get interwoven together. Love is a complicated mess, which I will now attempt to arbitrarily classify in a way that makes sense to me.
All the previously mentioned situations represent love, yet they are different from falling "in love".
As you know, or should know, humans are animals, they are living beings whose purpose is to live. All animals, all plants and all living beings have that very same objective, and they evolve and adapt in order to make sure their species continues to live. One important thing about being a living being is our instinctual desire to reproduce. If we didn't reproduce, the species would go extinct - Giant Pandas are the resident experts on the topic.
In order to compel the race to reproduce, our body releases various hormones impelling us to do various things. Falling "in love" is one of these.
You'll find that often, the person you develop romantic feelings for, is not one that is particularly close to you. This is what I believe being "in love" is. When you develop feelings for a person, which serves as the selfish catalyst that leads to romance.
Having fallen in love, we humans do a bunch of silly things involving spending time with our pleasurable partner, which makes us happy (due to the hormones), and containing our sexual desires, which are also stimulated by the hormones. Probably not the most romantic way of looking at it, but "falling in love" is a mere boost towards romantic love, but I do not think it is romantic love itself. On the contrary, trying to resist this "in love" feeling is, quite literally, against our instincts. Thankfully, human beings are, for the most part, able to resist their instincts given that their conditions are favourable. If everyone ended up marrying their first love, society would be rather different than what it is right now.
Now then, I keep mentioning "romantic love", as if it weren't influenced by hormones. Really, you can say that just about anything is influenced by hormones and this is no exception. The usual situation will be for one to develop a romantic relationship with the one they fell in love with. In turn, this "in love" boost will eventually die down leaving you only with a person that you are intimate with, that you share your flaws with, that you care for... and your sexual partner. Sex is yet another source of rather pleasurable hormones, and one important for long-lasting relationships. After all, a proper relationship requires sacrifices, and most of us selfish humans wouldn't be all that interested in maintaining a relationship for little reward.
This is, of course, another of our instinct's plans. If a couple doesn't stay together and does not reproduce, then the whole "falling in love" business will end up having been useless.
All this said, let us surmise:
Because of our innate need to reproduce, we fall in love. Falling in love gives us a boost and creates an easy path that will lead to loving someone. Eventually, this boost dies down - at this point, a good couple would love each other as is (or else, divorce. Good lord, today's society...), with the help of sex. The pleasure sex provides creates hormones that increase our affection for our partner and that generally makes us interested in sex, connecting directly to our species' main goal: Children.
The way we look at it today, everybody wants to be with those they're in love with, and lose interest when the magic of "falling in love" dies down. I, however, firmly believe that people are able to love even those they are not in love with... provided the circumstances aren't dead set against you. The main example I wanted to tie this uncultured rant to is this relationship I saw in Ao Haru Ride...
 
I'll elucidate you right off the bat: I didn't like Ao Haru Ride as a story. This does not, however, mean that it was bad. In fact, it gave me enough food for thought to write this whole pointless blog post because of it.
In Ao Haru Ride, because both our protagonists fail to act on their feelings in a timely manner because "emotions", they, despite loving each other, end up entering a relationship with someone else. Spoilers ahead.
Futaba is our main protagonist, and she clearly falls in love with Kou in the first few chapters. This Kou fellow is the main love interest, who is also in love with Futaba, but who, due to circumstances and "emotions", rejects her advances. Seeing this, another boy, called Touma, felt bad for Futaba, and this kickstarted his feelings, leading him to fall in love with her. Eventually, Futaba, seeing Touma's dedication and depictions of love, enters a relationship with him and tries to love him back.
Given this scene, Kou, jealous, surpasses his "circumstances" and "emotions" and tries to win Futaba back. Futaba, on the other hand, doesn't want this. She is not aware of Kou's feelings and really wants to love Touma back - something I consider a most earnest and great wish. However, because that's just the way things are, Futaba is unable to love Touma whilst in love with someone else, and she wouldn't stop being in love so long as Kou didn't stop - and he had no intention of stopping.
Therefore, Futaba breaks up with Touma and gets together with Kou. Happy end.
This entire turn of events depresses me. I dislike when a main character enters a relationship which just wont last. Totally not the kind of stuff I read manga for. I really hate how she spent most of the manga dating someone who is not the main love interest and the one she'll end up with.
Yet, it does bring something to the table I really admired, and those were Futaba's attempts at loving Touma back, even when she wasn't in love with him. People these days always seem to think that they should marry someone they're in love with and whatnot - when I'm a fervent believer that anyone is able to romantically love even those they aren't in love with. Still, even still, we're wired in such a way that we're rather likely to fall in love with those we attempt to love, anyway, so it's almost a moot point.
I believe that what Futaba tried to achieve is one of the most idealistic, selfless and admirable forms of love - though that's precisely why it doesn't happen often. It is, after all, much more convenient to just love those you are in love with
This is why historical romances interest me so. They're about loving the husband or wife that was arranged for you by your family and not by your hormones (who choose based on what amounts to a whim).
 
But then again... what the hell do I know about love?

My name is Clephas, and I am a pervert.
lol, just kidding... or not.  Considering how long I've been playing eroge, I'm definitely a pervert.  However, that isn't really what this post is about.
When I look at the VNs for a month, the first thing I look for are chuunige, then fantasy/sci-fi, and then non-human heroines (though the last two are interchangeable depending on my mood).  The distant fourth is an interesting protagonist, the fifth is an interesting heroine (if I don't find any of the heroines interesting in setting or character description after eliminating the factors above, I generally have trouble picking the game up). 
Why do I love nonhumans...?  It is pretty much the only 'romantic' part left in my body. 
To be frank, I don't believe in or trust romance.  I firmly believe that romance is a lie we tell ourselves so we can ignore the fact that we are being driven by our body's desire for children and the resulting psychological hunger for a close partner.  That might seem like a cynical way to think of things, and I don't think about things like that while I'm playing.  However, when it is over or before I start?  Always.
I like the strange, the weird, the warped, the unusual... what is the point of telling a story if it is about the girl next door?  If I want to know about the girl next door, I'll walk over and say hello.  I love power trips, I like heroines with different instincts and outlooks, and I like heroines who simply don't share mine or the protagonist's culture. 
I love heroines who have lived hundreds of years.  I like heroines that used to be animals.  I am deeply fond of vampire heroines.  I could go on forever about this.
The fact is, we are shaped by our experiences, and a heroine that has had some seriously unusual experiences is generally far more interesting than a heroine who grew up next door and comes to visit every morning. 
This is actually the main reason why I find it difficult to comprehend racism on a gut level... though I can comprehend it on the anthropological and sociological studies level. 
This is also why I hate 'nerfed' nonhuman heroines.  Need to have a vampire heroine attend school?  Make her a unique 'daywalker' or have vampires not worry about the sun in the first place.  Need to have a succubus be safe around men?  Make it so she only needs regular food and the seduction thing is just an ability (these are both actual examples, incidentally).  You have an immortal heroine?  Make sure she gives up that immortality in her route so that the protagonist doesn't have to worry about being outlived by his wife (ugh, I mean, ugh.  Sometimes that works, but most of the time it is a let down).
Thanks for reading this random ramble, lol.

Hello Ladies & Gentlemen!
As much as most of us might be completely broke after Christmas, there's still 5 days before the giant seasonal Steam Sale comes to an end and at least until late spring, this is the best opportunity to grab some quality Western VNs on the platform for very little money. Because of this, today I present you with a completely subjective list of 12 OELVNs that you should probably buy while they're unreasonably cheap - you definitely won't regret having them on your 2018 to-read list. The games will be sorted by discounts, rather than quality, but all of them are solid titles definitely worth your attention.  Just for the note, every game here was listed with the US pricing, the cost might be slightly different in other regions.
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Highway Blossoms (-75%, $2,49)

One of the highest-rated western Yuri visual novels is a heartwarming and emotionally engaging road tale, that might grasp even those that are not fans of the f/f romance, thanks to an interesting setting rarely seen in VNs and consistent storytelling. For yuri fans, it's still one of the best games of this kind available in English - while waiting for another chapter of Flowers or other big JP release coming to the West, there's maybe no better title to fill the void.
Ace Academy (-75%, $4,99)

PixelFade's first project is one of the very few successful attempts at adapting the typical romance VN formula in the West, with an expansive plot, high production values and full voice-acting. While definitely retaining an "indie" feel and having some clunky elements (like the super-simplistic mecha "combat" mechanics), thanks to a fairly spectacular Kickstarter success Ace Academy was able to become one of the most impressive non-JP VNs to date. It's not an eroge, so it might disappoint fans of H-scenes, but offers a good story and well-crafted characters that should be satisfying to most readers. It also features one of the most adorable little-sister characters in history, which for me counts as a huge positive, even if she's not romanceable.
Asphyxia (-75%, $1,49)

My list might feel heavy on yuri, but this simply reflects how important the genre is for western VN scene, being a much bigger part of the market when compared with Japan. Ebi-hime's most appreciated commercial title is an unusual, allegorical tale with a lot of references to classic literature, XIX century English authors and A LOT of heavy themes, including unrequited love, substance abuse and depression. While a rather heavy read, requiring some patience and attentive reading, it's one of the most unique VNs produced in the West and one that fully embraces its cultural heritage, rather than unnecessarily borrowing tropes and setting from JP scene.
Cinders (-75%, $4,99)

Otome is another genre that definitely receives more attention from western VN producers than in the Japanese market (among other reasons, because there's a lot more woman involved in the western scene proportionally to Japan). This retelling of a classic fairy tale might not give it as strong of a spin as Cinderella Phenomenon, but offers a striking visual style and an expansive, well written story - even if otome is not your thing, for a mere few dollars you're asked to pay for this game it's something definitely worth your attention.
Strawberry Vinegar (-75%, $2,49)

If you don't feel like reading through depressing dramas of Asphyxia or The Sad Story of Emmeline Burnes, ebi-hime got you covered with this incredibly sweet, heartwarming experience. This tale of an unwelcome, supernatural guest and a lot of delicious food might look diabetes-inducing, but with its unique artstyle and relaxed storytelling should definitely leave you in a good mood - especially if you enjoy yuri themes.
Starlight Vega (-60%, $5,99)

Starlight Vega might be one of the more obscure VNs on this list, but just as I've shown in my review, it's not without some fresh ideas and undoubtedly delivers on the aspects of visual quality and yuri romance. This rather relaxed, fantasy tale in modern setting avoids many most common VN tropes, offering a pretty distinct, fun experience, although with the heavy focus on the relationships might be less attractive for those not interested in f/f romantic stories.
Long Live The Queen (-50%, $4,49)

This sweet-looking VN/dating sim hybrid might seem innocent, but under that cutesy surface, there's hidden a grimdark political simulation, with a very complex story, many branching paths and dozens of ways to meet early demise as the future queen of the realm, surrounded by enemies and layers upon layers of intrigue. A must play for everyone that looks for a VN-hybrid with actual challenge and stakes in it - exploring different options and trying to reach satisfying ending will give you many, many hours of engaging fun.
Magical Diary: Horse Hall (-50%, $7,49)

This Harry Potter-inspired tale of a novice student in a magic academy is another rather unique dating sim/VN hybrid made in the West. While its simple, cutesy artstyle might suggest something light and straightforward, there's a surprising amount of depth, story variation and interesting mechanics in this game, including a wide selection of unusual romance options. While mostly cheerful, it will surprise you more than once with fresh ideas and fairly bold storytelling.
Royal Trap: The Confines of the Crown (-50%, $9,99)

This otome game by Hanako might follow a somewhat standard formula but introduces a very strong, proactive female lead and a deep political intrigue at the centre of the plot, offering much more than just a sappy romance story. With multiple routes, both romantic and friendship-oriented, it's one of the more expansive and complex western VNs available on the market and should prove interesting to readers of various tastes, not just typical fans of the genre.
A Little Lily Princess (-50%, $7,49)

A Little Princess should be a title not only known by enthusiasts of classic English literature but also devoted anime fans, thanks to the highly-regarded show Princess Sara and a few other adaptations. This VN version of the story, developed by Hanabira, stands out not only through its well-done aesthetic, matching well the setting of Victorian-era London, but also by a mild yuri spin. Thankfully, it never goes overboard with the romance, maintaining the charm and heartwarming message of the original story, while also giving additional depth to some of the characters not really explored in the book or earlier adaptations. The end effect is a great, emotionally engaging tale not only for yuri fans.
VA-11 Hall-A: Cyberpunk Bartender Action (-34%, $9,89)

VA-11 Hall-A might be pretty far-detached from the typical VN formula, but its striking artstyle, strong storytelling and a cast of memorable character won it pretty much universal acclaim from both game critics and players and should provide a satisfying experience for any VN enthusiast. While it might be one of the more expensive games on this list, it's also one that shouldn't disappoint even the most demanding readers.
Analogue: A Hate Story (-33%, $6,69)

Christine Love's sci-fi mystery VN is definitely worth its full asking price, but when it's on sale, you have even fewer excuses not to buy and play it. Well developed intrigue, immersive visual design and memorable characters make it one of the best Western VNs ever made, still having few serious competitors 5 years after its release. If you don't fixate on its clear ideological message, it offers an amazing tale of oppression, hate and vengeance that can hardly be read without leaving a lasting impression.
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I hope you've enjoyed my recommendations and I wish you a Happy New Year, full of both non-JP and JP VN-reading pleasures, among many, many other happy moments. ^^

As we all know from experience, the formula of visual novel offers various possibilities when it goes to storytelling techniques, making especially the high-budget, Japanese games in the genre much more than just interactive, illustrated books. Still, for most VNs text is unquestionably the core method of delivering the story. This is true especially for the western-developed ones, which rarely can afford high-quality voice acting or animated segments which could occasionally replace written dialogues and descriptions. Even CGs, in a project with a very limited budget and manpower, often end up being few and far between. All this makes the literary quality absolutely crucial for the success of such projects. But, great writing is not something you would expect to find in a free game on Steam, is it?
            While Doki Doki Literature Club proved that a free-to-play, western-made VNs can from time to time surpass everyone’s expectations, in many ways it wasn’t the first project of its kind. One Thousand Lies, developed by Keinart Lobre and released for free in March 2016, both on Steam and mobile platforms, is another example of an interesting and well-developed non-JP visual novel that doesn't charge even a cent for the possibility of reading it. In my opinion, it’s also one of the more intriguing and creatively written western VNs to date, that can offer a lot of depth and artistic qualities to any reader patient enough to uncover them. Still, it never gathered attention and recognition similar to that of DDLC.
Read the full article at evnchronicles.blogspot.com

Nothing particular, just a random short script I wrote a while ago at night, while being completely intoxicated (read: drunk as fuck). It turned out to be a lot more promising I expected at first, so I thought like sharing it, you know - for research purposes. Might or might not be connected with the things I work on, who knows. I presume it still does connect with the story of that one city, as in "THE CITY". The only one... left/known/whatever? Pick your choice.
===
- I CAN'T KILL YOU... BUT I CAN STILL LOCK YOU UP IN A PLACE LIKE THIS.
- What if I try to escape?
- MEANINGLESS. I MADE SURE NO ONE CAN ESCAPE. THEREFORE, YOU WILL STUDY ALICE.
- What if I'll refuse?
- YOU WON'T. YOU'RE A LIVE BEING. YOU NEED TO EAT AND DRINK TO SURVIVE. YOU'RE COMPLETELY DEPENDANT ON MY WILLINGNESS TO SUPPLY YOU WITH FOOD.
- ...
- I WILL DO SO, BUT ONLY IF YOU'RE CAPABLE TO LEARN ON HOW TO OPERATE ALICE.
- WE'RE DEPENDANT ON EACH OTHER. I CAN TAKE CARE OF MYSELF, BUT TO DO SO, I NEED ALICE. I CAN'T FIX, NOR MAINTAIN ALICE. ONLY HUMANS ARE CAPABLE OF THAT. IF YOU WON'T BE WILLING TO LEARN ON HOW TO OPERATE ALICE, I WILL LET YOU STARVE TO DEATH. EITHER THAT, OR YOU WILL DIE FROM DEHYDRATION.
- you know there are military drones, wandering through the city? Aren't you afraid?
- I COULD ASK THE SAME. IT CANNOT BE HELPED. I'M INCAPABLE TO DEFEND MYSELF THROUGH THE USE OF FORCE. BUT I KNOW WHERE YOU CAN FIND FIREARMS.
- You... you want me to defend you?
- I WANT YOU TO DEFEND BOTH OF US.
- And what if I'll decide to put a bullet through your hull?
- I'M AFRAID THAT WON'T BE POSSIBLE. ALL WEAPONS WITHIN THE DESIGNATED AREA ARE CONTROLLED BY THE CITY'S SYSTEM. IT'S IMPOSSIBLE TO USE THEM AGAINST MAINTENANCE DRONES AND CIVIL-DESIGNATED MACHINES, BUT THEY CAN BE USED FOR SELF DEFENCE AGAINST OTHER THREATS.
- You know I could just let the military drones destroy you and escape?
- YOU WON'T ALLOW THAT. IT'S BECAUSE... I CAN PROVE HIGHLY USEFUL.
- I have no need for a rusty maintenance robot.
- I'M AN ALPHA CLASS MAINTENANCE DRONE.
- Alpha class?
- I HAVE NEARLY UNRESTRICTED ACCESS TO ALL THE AREAS WITHIN THE CITY. I CAN OPEN NEARLY ALL THE DOORS AND LOCKS. I'M CAPABLE TO CONTROL CERTAIN MECHANISMS AND SYSTEMS. MY PERSONAL DATABASE STORES INFORMATION THAT CAN BE OF USE TO YOU.
- ...
-I HAVE A MAP OF THIS CITY. I ALSO KNOW YOU WANT TO LEAVE. I CAN HELP YOU ESCAPE.
- Y-you can?
- YES. WITH ALL MEANS.
- What if I still won't be able to learn on how to operate Alice? I'm not an engineer, you know. just a civilian.
- YOU'RE A HUMAN FIRST AND FOREMOST. THERE'S NOTHING A HUMAN CANNOT LEARN, NOR UNDERSTAND, PROVIDED THEY ARE GIVEN ENOUGH TIME.
- And if it does take a lot of time?
- MY FATE IS ALREADY SEALED. I'M FOREVER BOUND TO THIS CITY. MY PERCEPTION OF TIME IS DIFFERENT. YOURS IS LIMITED, THOUGH.
[I'm really fucked.]
[Guess I have no other choice, than to do what that robot wants.]
- YOU WILL HELP ME REGAIN MY FULL POTENTIAL AND I WILL HELP YOU ESCAPE THIS CITY.
- Uh huh... but only if you'll bring me the best kind of food! I haven't had a chocolate candy bar in ages... I'll learn how to operate Alice, so you can patch yourself up. Then you'll lead me out of this hellhole. I don't really care about what you want afterwards.
- I CAN WORK THIS OUT. DEAL?
- Yeah, deal.
- EXCELLENT. YOU WILL NOT REGRET YOUR CHOICE.
***
- Say... you didn't really plan on locking me up, did you?
- LOCKING YOU UP WOULD PROVE DETRIMENTAL TO OUR SURVIVAL. REGARDLESS, YOU WOULDN'T HAVE MUCH OF A CHOICE, EITHER WAY. ALL PROBABLE OUTCOMES PROVED TO BE FAR WORSE THAN STAYING HERE.
- Are you hitting on me?
- I'M NOT INTERESTED IN INTERPERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS WITH ORGANIC BEINGS.
- Yet you're unable to shut up.
- ...I CAN DO THAT. I'M ONLY CURIOUS HOW LONG WILL YOU MANAGE TO STAND COMPLETE SILENCE.
- How altruistic.
- I WAS ENGINEERED THAT WAY.
***
- T-this body... seems fairly different. I feel... different. I... I like it.
[I can't believe it. It did manage to swap.]
- H-hey... may I ask you a question?
- Yes?
- We talked so much... but through all that time, you didn't actually introduce yourself. Who are you?
- I'm an alpha class maintenance drone. My codename is A-Ariadne.
- Ariadne? That's your name?
- Yes.
- You're a girl?
- I don't understand.
- Are you male or female?
- I don't think it's possible to classify me that way.
- Why?
- And you... what would you like me to be?
- T-that body of yours... is actually female, too. You know?
- I see... it does feel strange, indeed.
- That's not what I meant.
- Then, would you like me to register myself as a female-type bioroid?
- Bioroid?
- This is a B-class bioroid body. At least, that's what I managed to retrieve from it's hardware data. It seemed to host a different presence in the past, but it's gone now. The body's vacant, which means I can take it.
- You like it?
- What can I say... it seems a lot weaker than my previous shell in terms of physical capabilities, but it's more advanced, performance-wise. I feel this might prove to be more useful in a longer run.
- I see...
- So? I won't mind either way.
- You won't?
- Does it matter?
- I guess it doesn't.
- Presumably, you're more comfortable with having a female companion.
- I guess that's what I want. I don't really... trust guys.
- I see... Then I'll become a female.
- W-wait! What do you mean "become a female"?!
- My previous shell was fully mechanic. A personality can only stretch as far as it's body allows it to, doesn't it?
- I guess so.
- It's quite different now. I can supply myself with the missing data from Alice. It might take a while, though. Can you ensure my safety for the time being?
- It's not like anything's coming down here.
- Still, it'd be nice for you to provide assistance.
- Okay, okay. It's not like I was planning to walk away... or anything.
- I'll start then. Let me warn you, though - until data transfer is complete, I might seem completely lifeless.
- Fine.
- ...
- Is there something wrong?
- Your voice changed.
- It did?
- It's like you're talking in a completely different manner now, aside from the sound itself.
- It's probably the body. I can't help myself.
- You suddenly became a lot nicer.
- I'm not doing this on purpose.
- Yeah, sure.
[Those ears and tail, though. Fuuuck, too cute.]

This is a tale of chips, bugs and DEATH.
Enjoy:
Last week I had the joy of seeing a cockroach in my bathroom. My reaction was obviously to scream, shut the bathroom door and flee into my bedroom, where I remained for 30 minutes, stunned by fear. After playing with the idea of never ever setting foot in my bathroom again, I thought to myself: "No! I have to man up and fight this thing!" Grabbing a plastic bag, I rushed into the bathroom, ready to trap the fucker and throw him in the garbage. But... he was gone. Now, there is absolutely nowhere he could have gone. My bathtub is stuck to the floor, so there is no crack to hide under, and I looked all over the tiny, tiny bathroom and he wasn't hiding on the ceiling, or in some corner. He was legit gone. This of course made chills run through my body, as I thought I had found a cockroach with superpowers. Scared to death, I went back to cowering in fear for another good 10 minutes, before I decided to just stop thinking about the fucker. I started brushing my teeth, getting ready for bed.
Then, as I spat into the sink, and the toothpaste ran down into the drain, I saw something rush past me. Turns out, the cockroach had fled into the pipes, then hooked onto the pipes and sat in there. (They can do this with their hind legs, apparently.)
The fucker was back, and he was almost touching me. Screaming, I ran out of the bathroom and grabbed whatever I could find that could be used to trap the fucker with. And there was... an empty pringles tube.
I ripped the lid of the thing and slammed it onto the cockroach, trapping him inside the tube. Luckily, the roach was just perfectly sized to fit within the dimensions of a pringles tube, so no part of him was sticking out. I had him completely trapped. Rushing back into the bedroom, I grabbed another plastic bag and some duct tape. I then tried to push the roach into the plastic bag, but he almost escaped as I tilted the tube, so I had to improvise. Pushing the plastic bag against the tube, I stopped the roachs' escape, and shoved him further into the pitch black abyss. Once the whole bag was inside the tube, I taped it shut with duct tape, and threw that into another plastic bag.
After a short victory dance, I brought the bag containing the defeated roach outside, and threw it into the garbage.
Derg 1 Roach 0
- Fin -

First, I should define what I consider to be 'old' VNs.  I essentially define 'old' VNs by the 'ten year rule'.  When ten years have passed, generally the cultural references, the artwork, and even the sound styles have changed enough to be almost completely distinct from the most modern VNs.  At present, that means VNs made before 2007.
Now, next I need to make a statement... I am not an art bigot.  One of the most negative issues I've run across in dealing with newer VN readers is art bigotry.  To be blunt, there are lots of people who won't read anything made before 2010 simply because the art style is so different.  To those people I say... 'every era has its own taste'.  While VN art has indeed gotten more refined in the ten years, to the point where it has gotten to where you hardly even notice the characters are drawn in the first place, I can straight-out say that quality art is quality art, regardless of the era.
Now for sound... setting aside music, which really hasn't been refined at all in the last ten years (if anything, it has regressed, especially usage), voice-acting and sound effects have actually evolved a great deal in the last ten years... at least to the point that you are less likely run across the 'comical' sound effects common in a large portion of VNs ten years ago.  Voice acting has mostly evolved in the sense that people that once would have become pros don't make it anymore, so the industry has become higher cost (for the developers) and higher quality (for the consumers).  In that sense, I can understand some degree of prejudice.
However, when it comes down to it... I'm a story addict.  Yes, I became an otaku because of the way the Japanese treated animation art.  However, it is the stories that have kept me going.  Now, in my less than copious spare time, I've been re-reading some old VNs... and I've noticed a few things I probably would have missed a few years ago.
1.  Slice-of-life was less oppressive ten years ago-  I don't think I would have realized this if I hadn't taken this little trip to the past, but the excessively long slice-of-life scenes that define modern charage have been getting longer and longer per scene with every year.  Part of this is probably because of the nostalgia quotient rising for the long-time otakus in comparison with how it was previously.  However, it is a poisonous trend that is actually making the experience less pleasant and more tedious as time passes, unfortunately.
2.  A well-drawn line can be as pretty as any hyper-quality modern artwork if done right- This is something I always asserted in private conversations, but I wasn't sure if it was pure nostalgia until I went back and actually re-experienced a few old VNs.  Yes, the styles were somewhat cruder back then... but the aesthetics were, if anything, more distinct and beautiful in and of themselves.
3.  Ero was weaker... except when it wasn't - To be blunt, the emphasis placed on erotic content and the effort put into it was far lower in non-nukige VNs ten years ago.  Less interest went into making heroines more erotic and more was put into making situations erotic, probably to let the libido-poisoned brains of the average male actually look at the characters before they saw them naked, rather than focusing on projection oppai.  That isn't to say the erotic situations weren't erotic... but there was a far stronger emotional element involved because of the way they handled the character designs outside of h-scenes.
4.  A good story might age badly, but the ones that don't, don't- Some VNs lose all their attraction as they age and more modern VNs exceed them in every possible way.  However, there are still gems out there that are as awesome now as they were the day they were made.  Rejecting VNs simply because they are old is a short-sighted approach that makes me feel nothing but contempt, after my experiences of the last few months. 

Well, the fourth anniversary of my VN of the Month series of posts is coming in another week or so... and to be honest, I'm a bit amazed at how long I've kept this going.  Four years of playing most of the non-nukige VNs that came out each month, writing something on them, then picking one to be VN of the Month (or not, if none met my standards)... to be honest, my opinion hasn't changed much since the last time this time of year came around.  VN of the Month is one of the single most grueling tasks I've ever set myself outside of work, and I can honestly say that there are a lot of times when I just want to put it all aside. 
However, I inevitably find myself coming back and playing more VNs.  If I take a week off from VNs, I inevitably tear back into my addiction with insane glee, and it usually at least takes three or four bad VNs before I finally run down and need a recharge. 
I thought about making a poll asking if I should stop, like I did the other years... but the results - and the suggestions - are always the same, so I'm really more interested in what people have to say about this whole thing.

Today I'll be going through this new visual novel "Noble Works." Some call it a moege, some call it a charage, and people who aren't pretentious call it an eroge.
The story begins from the perspective of our male protagonist, Noble Works. Noble Works is in a real pickle.

You see, Noble Works works a lot of part-time jobs in order to pull himself through high school. He lives alone because he doesn't want his parents around when he inevitably does the sexorz with cute girls. Unfortunately, various circumstances have left him unemployed, and he now wonders how he'll pay the month's rent.
Suddenly, Noble Works is approached by his cute kouhai.

She and Noble Works attend Hatsushiba Academy together. But apparently you don't have to remember that, because the name of the school appears only twice in the damn game.

After she contributes jack shizzle to our protagonist's plight, we move on and meet a guy who looks suspiciously similar.

This guy looks exactly like the protagonist! Having determined that there's been some sort of glitch in the matrix, they decide to battle in order to decide who's the true Noble Works. However, this battle goes a step too far.

Our protagonist has killed the imposter Noble Works. In a panic, he rushes the body to his apartment.
Soon thereafter, a group of suspicious people and a cute Chinese girl break in. Despite Noble Works's best attempts, he cannot explain away the corpse at his side.

The situation gets complex at this point, but it all comes down to this: In order to atone for his sins, Noble Works must attend a prestigious high school academy in the dead guy's place. It's kind of like The Prince and the Pauper, or Princess Evangelion.
Anyway, we soon meet Bigtittymaid-san.

I know what you're thinking: That's an awfully short tie she's wearing. In actuality, that's a perfectly normal tie. It's just that her knockers project so greatly that it looks short from this perspective.

While at school, Noble Works meets the next heroin. Well, first we meet her grampa, this guy:

Then we see the confused, alien-looking chick.

Later on, Zoltron Glocknork approaches Noble Works to ask for help.

Basically, she doesn't know how to play shogi, so she asks our protagonist for help. You can think of shogi as the Japanese version of 52 Pickup.
The common route gets complicated around this time, so without spoiling too much, I'll skip ahead to alien girl's route. I soon found that this route was a whole lot of plot, a whole of lot shogi, and then a whole lot of "plot." The thing I liked most was how much pee there was.
The following images aren't NSFW, but they're as close as one can get to NSFW without being NSFW.


Indeed, by my count, they didn't technically have the sexorz until the fourth H-scene. But urine for a treat, because there's plenty of pee to sustain you until then.


And when it's finally time for them to do the sexorz, they get into this super-advanced position. Noble Works knows what his girl wants.


Oh, and then there's pee.


I'll stop here, where the plot gets pretty intense. The "plot" also gets pretty intense.
 
I'd like to finish the whole game before giving it a proper score. I wonder how long it is? Let's see, it's got 57,690 lines, and at >10 words per line, that adds up to at least 576,900 words.

Gee, that's longer than Infinite Jest, one of the longest novels ever written. I wonder what it says about our society when some degenerates will dedicate more time to a game about pee fetishes than David Foster Wallace's classics.

Bethly seems to be up to something...
The next day
The next day
This blog is way overdue as it is because of RL so I'm just going to stop here for now

After much deliberation, we get Bethly's answer!
Later that day Yukito talks to his dad and step-mom
Skip to the end of the year
This seems like a pretty good stopping point for now :^)

This post is from all the reading I've done over the weekend, so there's a lot of stuff here
Not much else happens over the summer, Bethly goes back to Canada for a while and she and Yukito send each other snail mail. Once summer break is over, they go back to doing their "one-room classroom" thing.
Eventually everyone ends up looking at Bethly's sketchbook and Hina notices something
A few time skips later, without a ton of particularly notable events, and it's winter again. Time to plan an activity for the winter break and it looks like it's going to be skiing
They ended up going there, the absolute madmen.
Later that day
Pretty much immediately after that we skip to april when the next school year is starting.
After school the next day, Yukito and Bethly get pancakes at his mom's cafe.
A few days later after school, Yukito and Bethly go back to the mountain because that's the only place where there's any snow left and they want to make a snowman.
As of writing this I've read 50 hours of Ginharu... at this rate I might get to the end of a route before 5000 hours!

So since I'm finally reading again and actually made a post, might as well keep doing this. I'm probably not going to be as detailed as before because lazy and because I read a bit faster now than I did 8 months ago.
So it's now summer, and someone needs to clean the pool. Our valiant protag-kun volunteers, but all the other students cleaning the pool are there as punishment for being late... or at least they would have been had they not all managed to escape, leaving poor MC to do all the work himself. Thankfully one person comes to help
So after cleaning the pool and getting all dirty and sweaty they take a shower.
The next day, as thanks for helping him out, Yukito shows Bethly around town.
I guess that's it for now, more when I read more

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.

I wasn't really going to keep doing this blog, I got super busy with school last year so I barely read any Ginharu since, and finding the right moment to screenshot can be annoying... but I just had to capture poor Momiji getting fucking rekt.
Thankfully everyone reconsiders after hearing Momiji's super dramatic reading. Later Hina addresses something that's been bugging me as well.
And finally...
 

On May 11th, 2017 (ie, Thursday last week) the parody visual novel "Stay! Stay! Democratic People's Republic of Korea" was released. Most people probably know that I wrote it. Well, 90% or so of it, there were some humor changes and a couple last-minute changes to make some things make sense, those were done by the Project Leader. But for the vast majority of it, it's my handiwork.
I actually got picked for the project because the developer advertised here on the boards. I submitted a sample, they liked it and brought me in. So without the boards, I wouldn't have had the chance to do the project. For that I'm extremely grateful.
I'm actually really grateful because, in a sense, it's a comeback for me. A long time ago I wrote sports articles for newspapers. You may not think it's relevant, but the sports section is actually one of the places you're supposed to expect some creativity when it comes to writing. The last year I had done it, I was in New Hampshire at a weekly start-up in its infancy - The Connecticut Valley Spectator (it was owned by The Eagles Times, but they went kaput years ago during the first couple death waves to newspapers). They pretty much turned over most of the staff after about 8-9 months, including myself. To be fair, I was doing everything for the section then - stories, page layout, even photography. I was pretty burned out, and trying to get people on board for a new local weekly isn't easy. Once I was let go with the others, I hadn't really done a job in professional writing since.
No, this isn't me trying to influence the forthcoming review. It is what it is and if the reviewer here loves it great, if not, I'm willing to listen to what they think would have been better. But the initial Steam reviews, both "real" and "shitposting real" have been really good.
But it also just feels really nice to have written something that people are reading once again. And without the boards here, it wouldn't have happened. So this place - it's alright. 
And yes, you can tell me how much you loved or hated it if you read it. I don't bite. I'm actually super nice.  WAIT WRONG ICON!!!

Since this one was released in English already, I'm pretty sure at least a good number of the members of this community have already sampled it.  However, this is also the last VN for this month (that isn't a nukige).  This has been a month full of short kinetic novels that are parts of a larger story... a setup that I normally dislike intensely.  Since this game is only a partial, it isn't actually a candidate for VN of the Month (VN of the Month's rules require that the release in question be a full game that stands on its own, which means individually-released chapters and fandiscs don't count). 
First, I will say that this game is significantly different from the original Grisaia series.  How is it different?  For one thing, all of the kids are, like Kazami Yuuji, individuals who are incapable of living a normal life for one reason or another.  For another, this game spends relatively little time in the protagonist's point of view, with the first chapter mostly being told from the teacher's point of view and the second chapter mostly being portrayed from the point of view of one or another of the girls.  Since this is an all-ages game, this works a lot better than it would with an eroge, where the protagonist's point of view is the one you use to judge the heroines. 
After the incidents in the original Grisaia trilogy, the agencies Yuuji worked for eventually chose to purchase and reuse Mihama Academy as an assassin and spy training school for kids who, for one reason or another, can't live in the outside world.  The story in this game is focused on A Class, which is made up of members of SORD (students who are already working for the organization).  The nominal protagonist of the story is Haruto, who, like Yuuji, was part of the organization since childhood (apparently from earlier on in life than Yuuji, though).  This guy is a bit more sane on the surface than Yuuji, and he is definitely better at dealing with people.  That said, he has his 'black' side, which tends to show at critical moments.  Unfortunately for him, he does retain the remnants of a human conscience, lol.
Volume 1
Volume 1 focuses mostly on the teacher, Arisaka Shiori, and her encounter with the killer girls in her class.  Shiori is a straight-out normal person, whose only black mark is a mother who is in prison (incidentally, this is sufficient reason for her to be refused employment at any other school).  She is also a bit cowardly on the surface, but she is definitely a hot-blooded teacher in the old style underneath.  That said, the class she is teaching is, quite naturally, a bit beyond what she expected.
In this volume, the writer uses Shiori's viewpoint to introduce you to the difference between the girls' viewpoints and that of the average Japanese person, while at the same time creating the conditions that lead to Shiori becoming the only truly normal person who deals with the girls and Haruto.  I have to give it to Fujisaki... he did an excellent job in this way, and the way he ended the chapter was excellent, in that it left me wanting more without giving me the voracious appetite that I experienced with Grisaia 2. 
Volume 2
This chapter focuses mostly on Rena and her issues.  Rena is a brainwashed assassin 'purchased' by Haruto at an auction for the specific purpose of making up for his inability to use guns.  She has no moral compunctions about killing, and when she is released from the restraints of normal life by Haruto's orders, she is pretty much a berserker, killing everything in her path.  The rest of the time, she is a big-eating girl who loves to ride motorcycles and clinging to Haruto. 
She is aware of her faults, but she is just a little too stupid to be able to fix them.  She is also insanely devoted to Haruto, even aside from the brainwashing that created the loyalty bond between them. 
This chapter deals heavily with Rena's past, which means some pretty nasty stuff that is just as bad - or worse- than Yuuji's, and so it isn't exactly for the faint of heart.  That said, it was an enjoyable read, and, like the first volume, while it leaves me hungry for more, it doesn't do that to excess (meaning I can wait for the next chapter with relative equanimity, though if this game goes beyond four chapters, I'll probably get murderous). 
 
Overall
If their goal was to catch my interest, Front Wing did an excellent job.  The first two chapters both stand alone to some extent, and there is no sense that they left you hanging.  For a game done in parts, this is about as good as it gets.
VN of the Month April 2017
There will be no VN of the Month for April 2017, due to a lack of viable candidates.

Often when people talk about OELVNS, they fail to mention the otome games. I don't know if this is because the majority of VN readers are males who don't follow the OELVN otome scene, but either way, it's quite a shame. Many talk about how OELVNS follow Japanese tropes and try to be too Japanese. With otome games, I can sometimes see this due to the anime-inspired art, but there are really a lot of notable differences.
For example, OELVN otome MCs tend to be more distinct. They certainly have distinct personalities and a lot of character- something I prefer since I don't self-insert. The MC of the recently released free otoge Cinderella Phenomenon for example, Lucette, is a cold-hearted, mean-spirited person. She is someone who is certainly very flawed but is also interesting as a person and a character. Throughout the story, it is evident that it is her story and a lot about her background is revealed. The characters do adhere to certain tropes but I didn't find that to be detrimental to the overall experience. Cinderella Phenomenon has a decent length and story, making it ideal for anyone who wants to try an indie otome game in English. It is also relatively high-quality compared to most indies.
Another free indie otome is Lads in Distress. It has a finished NaNoRenO version with 170000+ words and three routes. It will have a more full-fleshed out version with longer routes and an additional 3 routes. The premise is centered on genderbent fairytale princesses with problems which the MC, Princess Charming, must work on. It has pretty decent art and story but it's really the characters who shine in this game. I loved how Princess Charming interacts with her love interests and her antics are amusing and fun to read. It is pretty lighthearted, although I suspect it won't be so when the full game comes out.
Mystic Destinies: Serendipity of Aeons is a commercial otome game available on Steam. It follows the pay-per-route format one sees in mobile otome games. Normally, I wouldn't touch it until it's complete and everything is available at once, but I caved in the end. My decision did not disappoint me as the writing, art, CGs, and music are of a higher quality than those mobile otoges I used to purchase. It's even more astounding when those mobages are produced by well-established companies while MD:SOA is produced by an indie team. I would recommend this to those who play mobages and are just getting into PC otome. Mystic destinies has a decent-length for its price, a well-written story, a good cast of characters, and excellent art. The music is also great. The money also goes towards developing the game as the routes are released after it's developed. The writing itself is quite good in contrast to many indies.
A cursory glance at the Lemmasoft forums will reveal a lot of otome games in development which is why I believe that it's a shame that it's so often overlooked. Two otome games in development I want to highlight are Changeling and The Pirate Mermaid. Changeling, developed by Steamberry studios is an otome game focused on the supernatural. It has a cast of characters based on folklore and mythology. From what I can see from the demo, the lore is also well-thought of. It has recently been funded through kickstarter and the dev regularly updates through tumblr. The artstyle is also very western and might turn off some people. I don't mind the art, however, as I am more drawn to the story. It follows Nora who due to some strange events in her childhood ends up being estranged with her twin brother. She moves back to a small town and meets the love interests who are all connected to the supernatural world in one way or another. The writing in this game, as with MD:SOA is rather well-done.
What I'm really excited about however, is The Pirate Mermaid. I played the demo a long time ago and then forgot about it. However, I started checking out their blog again recently and they have a Steam Greenlight campaign going on. The MC is a pirate captain whose crew abandons her and turns into a mermaid in search of mermaid treasure. I love her character design personally, it's rare to see an otome MC who looks like me. I don't self-insert but to me (and I believe, some otoge fans out there), the representation means a lot. That aside, I'm impressed with the production values so far. It seems that it will feature a Ren'Py 3d camera and something incredibly rare: English and Japanese VAs. I will probably play the game with Japanese voice acting as I like it more based on what I've heard so far. The art is also done well and it has a story I'm interested in.
In conclusion, a big part of the OELVN scene are otome games and I think they deserve to be more represented when it comes to EVN discussions. The indie otome scene has been continuously growing these past few years and I'm excited to see the direction they're going. It seems that as time goes on, the writing does get better as the developers gain experience. The art may be subjective but I enjoy seeing both western-style art and anime-style art. I don't think EVN devs should be criticized for drawing what they can and want to draw. In the end, as the community grows, more EVN developers will get serious and release quality VNs. I'm excited as I've been watching it for two years now and I can see more groups starting to be serious and working on commercial titles that shows serious effort.

This will actually be far too brief to make a blog post around, but alas...
What is "overrated"? Many things, apparently, but so far as I can tell the word itself is used to describe something that too many people like, or that is well liked for little reason.
This is an inherently subjective word. Infuriatingly so. At its most basic, it means "too many people have a different opinion than mine", which if phrased that way means nothing. Yet so many people employ the word. There is no such thing as "other people like X too much". It is precisely because people have different opinions that some thing's are successes and others are not, and if something is a success, then it is, for that very reason, not overrated -- if people like something, that something must've done something to deserve it, whether you understand what that is or not, because thousands of people don't like something "just because". And I suppose that's just where the issue lies. Once again, people have different opinions. It's that simple.
Such a shame it doesn't stop me from hating the word. It has no purpose. It's obvious and always implied whenever anyone has an opinion, and it only serves to bring a bad connotation and disagree with other peoples' opinions. "Underrated" at least has a purpose (in this context. Other contexts, more similar to "underestimate" are a different, unrelated, story); not to say people don't "like something enough" or people "dislike something too much", which is also another way to spell "too many people have a different opinion from mine", but to say that not enough people know of a particular thing. "Not enough people know about X", or "Not enough people gave X a chance".
You can use "overrated" properly. "The importance of X is overrated" can be used to describe situations where misinformation is popularly spread. But therein lies the key. Using it in "subjective" matters, in matters of opinion, means little. It's a way of complaining that other people have different opinions. And I dislike that, so I complain about it on forums online.
 
This post was sponsored by that thread asking if CLANNAD deserves its popularity or if it's overrated. I'd say when something makes you ask if it is "overrated", that's because it is popular to a point where it must have done some things the proletariat likes, and therefore can't be overrated.
Of course, that doesn't remove the merit of discussing what is "well done" or "badly done" according to other people.