Mr Poltroon

Hey, peoples!
This update is, as I teased last time, a mixed bag of stuff. I've poked around at multiple storylines and added bits of new script and outline to each of them as I tried to settle on one or another. All those greyed-out choices are finally starting to get some attention and maybe I'll be in with a chance of actually finishing writing Penlight one of these days xD
Artwise it's been another fantastic month. The Redemption storyline has its first illustrations now, and Sayori's Doll story gets a couple more, but the highlight is the new one for Nozomi's Trance story. It's so much fun, and I know a lot of people will appreciate that scene coming to life with the CG in place~
As before, you can find this month's release in PC, Linux, Mac and Android versions, on my Patreon or itch.io pages. I've also linked the most recent flowchart guide on the public news post on Patreon.
Hope you enjoy this one! Next month will see me trying to focus on one of these new story branches with a view to finishing it, and there'll be some more great illustrations to come so look forward to that~
What's New

Ticklish Hands: Added the option for Kyou to refuse help and then change his mind Ticklish Hands: Added the option for Kyou to refuse help and take advantage of the situation, written up to about halfway through day 5, the "Trickster" path Villainous Robot: Added the "I can't keep doing this" choice The first part of the "Become my girlfriend" choice on Nozomi's Trance path has now been written Two new CGs for Sayori's Doll storyline Two new CGs for the Redemption storyline New CG for Nozomi's Trance Storyline Edited the bedroom scene of Nozomi's Trance storyline, expanding it slightly to make better use of the new CG A couple of new scenes outlined for the Reversal storyline, and some edits made to existing script Wrote a little more for the Villainous Robot storyline, along a previously unavailable path ("No, I need to chill out") Word count is now around 262,000 Spanish localisation: Various edits and corrections to the existing script Minor typo corrections
Known Issues

Changing the language on a line where an animation occurs (like screen shake) will throw up an error.

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

[Majikoi]
Oh! I wasn't expecting to finish Momoyo's route this fast! 
Oh my GODS!! This route was amazing for sure! My pals told me this would be mostly Yamato being Momo's plaything so I didn't have my hopes up but nope, it was much better! I mean, as much as I like seeing Yamato being toyed with, I wouldn't have cared much for this route if that was all it was.
 
I'm reading Moro's route right now and will probably read the other before I write my updates here! Toodles! 

[Majikoi]
Ooookay, I just finished Mayucchi's route! 
 
Oh... WOW. This route was good, very good! I really liked the pacing for this one~
Now, my pals said the downside of this route is the romance - or the lack of thereof. Personally, I felt it was fine. I didn't miss it. Actually, I felt really awkward reading those scenes, like I was a third wheel or something lol Maybe it's because (as I mentioned before in my spoiler-tagged commentary) I'm aroace, but I really could do without Yamato's comments. I don't know, I guess I just feel weird because everyone is so friggin' horny all the damn time, oof-
Wanko and Capt are the only ones I can feel comfy around 
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Awwwwrighty! Next one is Momoyo, and then there's only the sub routes and the true ending left!

Just finished 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim, and, well, I'm kinda underwhelmed.

The overarching plot was pretty decent, but the presentation; not so much. I mean, you're just dropped in the middle of things without any idea what's going on, and then you're expected to keep track of a ton of characters and their relationships while the game jumps back and forth between different timelines in basically every scene. Things obviously got clearer as the story progressed, but the hours leading up to that point weren't very enjoyable and I don't feel like the conclusion to the story was satisfying enough to make up for it.
I found the characters completely uninteresting, in large parts due to the sheer number of them, which effectively counteracted individual character growth. This is a common problem for me in games with a large cast, and this one was no exception. I could barely keep track of their names, much less care about what happened to any of them. Now that I'm done, I can say that not a single one of them left much of a lasting impression on me, save for maybe Miwako, who wasn't even part of the main cast.

In conclusion, I wouldn't say this is a bad game, but I had quite high expectations diving into it and that ultimately ended up making this a lackluster experience for me when it didn't live up to them.

I just finished my first playthrough (prologue) of World End Syndrome
My impressions so far - I like the setting, the characters, and little animations sprinkled here and there - blinking, lip-sync and various animated elements in the backgrounds. I'm not the fan of nameable protagonist, and scenes felt a bit disconnected sometimes. Perhaps some more narration would be in order? But then, perhaps it has something to do with protagonists' condition?
Also, translation has been a bit of hit and miss so far. Dialogues are done pretty decently most of the time, but some lines in narration feel rather awkward. Like the use of present tense while obviously reporting past events that happened before.
Nevertheless it got me interested, and I'm looking forward to subsequent runs, romancing those cute girls and discovering town's mystery
 

You're right. Less than two years is beyond record time!
Interested to see if something's going on here or if we're just lucky.
Actually, I believe the translator was the very same Bango that did Newton and the Apple Tree, so perhaps his work was swift, along with the rest of the process. And I vouch for Newton's quality being perfectly fine for its purposes.
And so, this will take as long (or less?) than an instalment of Flowers. Gosh, I hope each instalment of that is sizeable on its own, or I'd feel terrible for the people waiting two years for each crumb.

Just a tiny bit of post mortem for this topic. I'm curious about the quality, but it seems like one time in history Jast decided not to grab a license and sit on it for a decade, but to actually get stuff done.
 

Unacceptable indeed 

Still figuring out how to get https://moon.fuwanovel.net back up - it ran on PHP5.6 before, and I'm unwilling to compromise. PHP7.4 or bust.
Dammit Moon Moon, why PHP4?
Hacked it.

Well, one more route completed! This time, Wanko's   
BOY, compared to Chris', this route was so much better! Although the beginning was a little boring and dragged, I had a lot of fun (and tears)! Maybe I felt it dragged because I was rushing and I had a huge headache on those two days of reading lol
Overall, I liked this route. It wasn't heavy on the romance, which is something I LOVE and find rare in eroge.
Well, her h-scene... wasn't bad. I mean, I only read the first 40 lines or so and skipped the rest but it didn't look too forced. I'd still rather have a friendship route with her, tho. Like, every little thing but they remained friends. That'd be perfect ❤️
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Next is Miyako, which I'm already focusing on;   
Let's see, Miyako isn't much of a favorite of mine... I hope this changes that!

So, I'm done with VA-11 Hall-A, outside of the prologue chapters. I think it only lacks a more powerful ending and a bit more fleshing out of some secondary characters – with that it would be a 10/10 contender, but I still give it a strong 9/10. Even the gameplay showed a little bit more depth than I initially though – you not only get awarded for learning your clients' tastes, but also should actually care about making them leave as much money as possible, pushing bigger and more expensive drinks. It's a very low-key, but fun kind of puzzle, rewarding you with the ability to buy all kinds of thematic junk for Jill's apartment. And while I might complain about episodic characters being... too episodic, the game also surprised me with some stuff. Particularly with how deep the subplot of the ghost girl from the demo went. It was weirdly satisfying. ^^
To be fair, I don't hate them, I just never felt they had the same amount of substance as AA trials. Those were also over-the-top and silly, but felt more like an actual battle of wits, while the wit of anyone in that Danganronpa trial room was highly questionable. xD Also, some parts of the gameplay, like rhythm-game sections, are something I'm criminally bad at, so I think I'd end up playing on casual and still feeling they were pointless. Plus, while I generally like the cast, the whole thing lacks a proper focus on main characters. Kyoko is cool, but she's an enigma for most of the game and Makoto... Uh, he's hardly anything. I mean, he's somewhat believable as random dumb kid being used as a tool by Kyoko, so she can keep a low profile, but that's hardly a satisfying role to play.

And continuing with unfair comparisons, I've started going through Coffee Talk, the VA-11 Hall-A rip-off... And I'm starting to think it was a bad idea to give it a try straight after finishing the latter. It's quite stylish and interesting with the modern-fantasy approach to the mundane theme of being a barista, but it's just really hard to compete with VA-11 Hall-A's writing and atmosphere. The biggest issue is probably the protagonist being a complete blank slate, at least as far as I've seen. While Jill is reserved in her interaction with her clients most of the time, the personality and backstory she brings into the game make everything that happens in it more meaningful. Her backroom interactions with Dana and Gil were always funny and build up to interesting side stories. Here, you have just this self-insert owner and clients who are quite often talking with each other rather than with the protagonist. It's a lot of subtle differences that result in the whole formula feeling tepid, rather than captivating, despite visuals and music that could possibly carry it. But maybe it will get better further down the line...

Yep, this one. I'm not really sure if I'm going to finish the whole series since it seems to be pretty massive, but if I do I'll probably follow the first suggested order in this tweet.
I haven't played it for that much time yet, but I'm really enjoying it so far! Though I'm not really sure how interesting my impressions are going to be, considering that my experience with JRPGs is pretty close to zero, so I don't really have anything to compare it to, lol.

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

I guess, it's finally time to see what Trails series is about.

I actually enjoyed Danganronpa solely because of the loud, obnoxious, over the top characters and bombastic class trials , but can totally see how it can be off putting to some. Definitely think just watching the Class Trials is a bit of a disservice though, that stuff should be played!
Aaaand there's another person who vouches pretty heavily for VA-11 HALL-A, I'm definitely gonna bump it up priority wise on my to read list, it's been on my backlog for years now.
 
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So I was supposed to read Flowers, but work started picking up again for me yay 2021 so I did jack all in terms of reading this month. Also realized that Flowers is not a trilogy, but instead a quadrilogy or w.e you wanna call four entries, so I've decided to hold off on it since the last entry le volume sur Hiver apparently isn't EN yet.
I did pick up some really random short VN called Prison Princess. It was aight. Just like Neko Para you expected a short VN about cute cat grills and !animated! pr0n, Prison Princess is a short VN about helping two princesses escape a dungeon. Some of the puzzles can put the heroines in some pretty... provocative situations, and there's standard live2D animations going on and !touch support! so if you get tempted enough you can totally just say fk the puzzle and tap away on the heroines to hear all of their moaning goodness. Which, not surprisingly, will lower your compatibility with said heroine(s) and lock you into the bad endings. Escape first, play later!

 







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I also picked up Yumeutsutsu Remaster. I think this will be my first Yuri / girl's love VN? The protagonist is (first) Ai Ohtori, a 21 year old naive cutie country girl who moves to the city to work at a small game development company. You'd think this VN would thus be heavy game design jargon infodumpy and maybe Ai would be this genius programmer with mad skillz or perhaps SOMETHING technical, but unfortunately Ai's position is circumstantial: she has never worked a job in her life prior, has absolutely 0 game design knowledge, and she was mainly approached by the company's President, Honoka, to work as an Assistant Director under her younger sister, 19 y.o Director Kokoro Yanagiya who I guess has been in some sort of slump and so the President went out of her way to set this up to rectify things power-of-sisterly love-style.

 
Unfortunately, Ai and Kokoro are not on the greatest of terms, and that seems to be the core conflict of this VN:


Ai's a really nice girl, it's great to have a female protagonist with moege-tier / casual / first world problems inner monologues for once. Most of the otomes I've read were mature story based so the protagonists and their inner monologues often reflected that. 

So, as actually reading stuff is apparently beyond my mental capacities lately, I'm slowly watching through two long playthroughs.
The first one is Danganronpa and while there are things I definitely like about it, I kind of find most of its interactivity a bit obnoxious. While the limited game mechanics of Ace Attorney were more like tools to get you involved in the story, setting it much closer to visual novel territories, the Danganronpa trials, repetition involved and puzzles... I never felt they added to the experience. Also, the levels of dumb in characters' behaviour somehow got on my nerves a bit. I heard that the translation of the first game is generally considered poor, but I'm not how much that could break outside of some cultural appropriation that I was able to decipher and which didn't really change that much. It's stylish, well-produced and occasionally quite funny, but rarely genuinely smart or surprising. Shaping into something like a 7/10 rather than a real classic. And I'm kind of surprised by this impression, because I hold Ace Attorney in much higher regard and through it would be able to capture that charm in slightly more-mature format. Maybe the sequel will grip me a bit more? Now part of me just wants to replay euphoria for some genuine death game action. 😆
VA-11 HALL-A on the other hand do not disappoint me in the slightest. Non-intrusive game mechanics, massive focus on dialogue and atmosphere... It's gloomy with its cyberpunk setting, but at the same time massively a feel-good game that let's you immerse yourself in its world and slowly get to know its characters, building towards more meaningful developments with subtle hints and seemingly trivial conversations. I don't think there's a single character introduced so far that I didn't enjoy on some level and it's interesting to see the deeper stories developing from this mostly-detached perspective of a bartender. It's hard for me to find anything to complain about here – not sure whether the concept itself was done before by any notable game, but its execution is just so good here... I'll be surprised if I don't feel like giving it at least 9/10 by the end.
Oh, and by the way, VA-11 HALL-A in now available on game pass for PC. If you want to cheese it, the first month of subscription literally costs $1, so you can read VA-11 HALL-A and probably finish a few other games virtually for free if you cancel before 30 days.

That sure took a while. I think we can rule out the porn having been written in from the start in this one, lmao.

Lots done, working with Nay and Emi for the next steps.

Forums will go offline 01/20/2021 starting between 18:00 and 19:00 EST for an unknown amount of time while I update software, purge the party, and bring peace to our new Empire.
- Tay

Well, R.I.P VN fan translations. It was fun while it lasted. 

Good morning everybody,
Tonight I'm planning on finishing the update process for the forums (including all themes) as well as finalizing some back-end sharing necessary for Emi to take over my admin duties. I'm still alive and around, paying for the site (etc.), but enough is enough and this is what needs to happen. 
I'll post later today with more definite hours/timezones for the update, and will hop on Discord closer to the appointed FuwApocalypse hour.
Much < 3,
Tay

Hiya, you guys! Guess who's back~ 
I spent last week reading through the entire common route of Majikoi and boy, did I enjoy it haha
First impressions
Positives
strong and dominant female cast unique and diverse characters good comedy fast-paced without much info drop the end skit hehe Negatives
the art and BGM are very average imo I'm still not sure what to say here abt the vn itself; I had some issues with some characters, but I will dwell on that later Characters
Miyako: She was fun at first, but the jokes got tiring and repetitive with time...
Wanko: I L O V E H E R ! ! ! I don't want to have to lewd her in her route uuuuugh... Ravioli, ravioli, don't lewd the doggo loli. A pal of mine described her as the mix of Kud and Masato (from Little Busters!) and it couldn't be any less true.
Chris: Hmm... I don't think she's a bad character, per se... but she is indeed the least interesting one, I'd say. She's kinda preachy and annoying - kind of a jerk, a lot of times lol
Mayu: Not gonna lie, I disliked her at fitst (I only liked "Matsukaze"), but she did grow on me, especially after both fights with Chris haha
Momoyo: Even though her actions are questionable - with the harassement and rape jokes and all, I am still a sucker for strong girls  sigh...
Shouichi (Capt.): I want to see my little boy...! Here he comes! I want to see my little boy...! Personally, I see him the same way as Wanko: just an innocent child running around hehe
Gakutou: I was expecting that first bad end to be with Gakutou ngl; it was disturbing, oof... Well, I love muscle idiots, he very much reminds me of Masato, except Masato doesn't think with his dick lol
Moro: I like him, he's the sane member of the group lmao He doesn't stand out though, not that I mind it.
Minamoto Tadakatsu (Gen-san):  Man, I just love this guy! He's the first tsundere I actually stand and like, woah 💕 He's such a sweetheart hehe
I couldn't bear Ikurou... He was too much; Oogushi was alright, I guess; Man, I loved Azumi, even though she barely showed up lol Aoi Touma... what a bi icon, I love him, heh; he wasn't a trash character and was clearly bi, so that's nice (yes, the bar is low) Love for children aside, Jun is cool! That cool and smooth voice totally suits him lmao Finally, for Yamato: he's a good balance between generic and OP (to the point of it being too much). I have to admit that amongst such a diverse and powerful cast, he is a bit underwhelming, but I like it. He doesn't need to be too excentring, since he is usually "watching" the story unroll (as the protagonist). ----------------
Well, then. I will read Chris' route tomorrow. I'm a little uncertain on how to feel about her, but at least now I know better than to actually read h-scenes lmao well, except this one is apparently needed for the plot

It was certainly good, but there is exactly -zero- chance i'm going through all that again xD