Decay

999 is a visual novel through-and-through. It uses NVL and ADV style storytelling and has a heavy focus on narration. It's as much of a VN as any other you've read. The gameplay segments are limited and not all that long, and there's even a gameplay-less version on IOS that's pure VN. This all goes for Virtue's Last Reward, as well. I'll say that all of the games you posted are quite good. TWD is probably the best adventure game released in the last 15 years and as emotional as the most emotional Nakiges. If you like Valkyria Chronicles, maybe look at the Sakura Wars series. Sakura Wars 5 was released in english for the PS2 and it's alright, albeit nothing too special. It's made by the same developers as VC and it really tells, the combat system is very similar. It's also actually half-VN, unlike VC, which makes it on-topic!

The otome genre is a huge market in Japan on PSP. There are ports of eroge and some other PC bishoujo VNs for handhelds but the vast majority of all original handheld content is otome. I can only guess why. Perhaps men far less likely to read a romance story if it doesn't feature pornography so the market for all-ages titles skew towards women and creators of those want to focus on that demographic exclusively. The most popular non-otome handheld/console titles have only a light to no focus on romance, after all. If you want to get people to care about an all-ages bishoujo romance VN, it better be something really special. Most companies besides Key don't have the balls to do it.

It's theoretically possible but not very likely. From the rumors it sounds like two different companies have licensed the two different versions. What the company who licensed the PC version would have to do is basically pay Fruitbat to license their translation of the PS3 version and adapt that to the PC version. They would still need to translate the bits that are different (like h-scenes). I don't think it's very likely because 1) it would be kind of unprecedented, I don't remember that ever happening before, 2) it can be surprisingly hard to get two completely different companies working together like that, 3) it would almost certainly be cheaper to do the translation yourself or contract some random TLer from the community to do it for you, and 4) the rumor has it that the PC version was actually licensed first so they may have already started on their own translation. That's if it's happening at all. Even if the rumor is true, the likely candidate for the PC version is JAST. JAST is slow as molasses.

I doubt that's actually why people fansub, though, which is what the conversation is about. I mean, a LOT of people living in regions supported by streaming sites download fansubs just because they're free.

If you enjoy Yumina the Ethereal, then maybe you'd like Aselia the Eternal, a game by the same team. People consider it to have worse gameplay but a better story, and I'm inclined to agree (although I don't think the gameplay is too bad). It's not a dungeon crawler, but plays kind of like an Ogre Battle game if you ever played one of those. Also, I liked Deardrops. It's not necessarily a remarkable or emotional experience but it's a fun ride.

There actually aren't all that many people translating anime these days. Most major groups like Commie and Horriblesubs steal subs from sites like Crunchyroll and simply edit them. Also, no, you're not the only one who has thought of that. It's just that such thoughts are kind of worthless, you know? It's not as if fansubbers have never heard of VNs or have never considered the possibility of translating something other than anime. It's just that they don't want to. There are a number of reasons for why not. Maybe they just don't like VNs. Also, VN translation is a LOT of work. Like, a massive time investment that is worlds beyond that of anime fansubbing. You have to put in huge amounts of effort before you see any sort of payoff. This is a daunting aspect. And some anime fansubbers are also doing VNs. Commie is translating Mahoyo right now, for example. There is many times more text to translate in your average VN than your average season of a show. Also, the text in a VN is often a bit trickier to translate than the spoken language of an anime. There are aspects like prose to consider.

A company (Fruitbat Factory) is officially localizing the PS3 version for NA. There's a rumor that another unidentified company has licensed the PC version but nothing has come of that so far.

They're on floors 1-10. They're in some other dungeons too. It's just really random.

My understanding is that in order to get the true ending you need to complete the three main routes, including one of them on the hardest difficulty, you have to finish a "graduation route" (I don't know what that is), and you have to complete the entire fantasy world quest line. There are a lot of requirements, I wonder if I'll bother.

Well, judge by quality and not quantity. The Dysfunctional Systems series is legit but everything else I've seen is pretty underwhelming.

Can anyone explain how the total audience rating is calculated? I just replaced a bunch of skills with higher level versions and all of a sudden I dropped from 140 total audience to 120. Which obvious makes using those more expensive skills trickier.

I really don't know more about LoS than any other developer and I don't understand what puts them above everyone else. I think you're really exaggerating their popularity and perhaps greatness. You shouldn't project your own opinions onto the entire community's. The basic point made still stands. There are a crapload of really solid VNs that aren't translated yet and so if you want some of LoS's works translated, you'll have to wait for a like-minded fanboy who's willing to start a project.

Yep, seems like it, thanks! edit: One more bug. Spoilered tags that are in the leftmost column have the red spoiler mark appear in the wrong place, in the row above it all the way to the right.

That actually looks pretty good! My only complaint is that the bottom row of tags should align properly even if there aren't 4. edit: Also the content and technical tag colors are a little hard to tell apart at a glance. But still, good work! another edit: Also, very minor bug, but the tags load in slightly misaligned for me until I hover over one, then they all align properly. I'm on 1680x1050 in case that might have something to do with it. Here's a screenshot: You can see the color bars not being aligned properly. Once I hover over any tag, they all form a straight line. I think I'll use this from now on. Thanks for making it!

Aaargh, I'm raging at the next set of battles though. they're way too hard if you didn't train during chapter 4, but if you do train during chapter 4 then you're locked out of a LOT of stuff, which is really stupid design. edit: So basically those fights are just a roll of the dice to determine whether or not the AI is going to be a dick and constantly heal or if they'll forget about healing long enough for you to kill them.

Okay, so here's a question. How the heck are you supposed to win the Nayuta fight? Well, I can defeat her, but I can't get the crazy 81% approval rating necessary for the actual victory. Her attacks just swing the rating in her favor so much and I can't get above 55% no matter what I do. I have a feeling this isn't something that grinding will resolve. edit: Aaand after multiple tries of course the first try after I make this post I get it. The trick was basically to spam Yumina's shining smile skill which drained green and caused Nayuta to fumble a lot and built up the approval rating. I honestly forgot that skill even existed!

You're forgetting about the side routes. There are a LOT of side routes. And they aren't super short either. They're what makes Majikoi one of the longest VNs ever.

Amane's epilogue was way too much. I don't want to see a character we just spent so much time with have the entire rest of their life summed up in 10 minutes. It feels wrong somehow. And also it leaves nothing to the imagination. It was easily my least favorite epilogue.

The Danganronpa translation team started work on that before there was any decently playable PSP emulator. By the time the patch came out, DR only barely worked on one emulator, PPSSPP, and it required some awkward hacks to make it work. It's a rare case, but I do think some TL teams are fine with releasing patches for games that cannot be played on the PC at all. It just depends on the demand. There were a LOT of people with hacked PSPs wanting a translation of DR, there are way fewer people with hacked PS3s. Also, there are barely any PS3/360 exclusive VNs worth caring about.

Well, you say that, but it doesn't take much effort to start it either. Yurirei's translation was started a year ago, about one or two dozen lines were translated, and then all activity stopped almost as soon as it began. Of course, the TL quality was abysmal so most likely someone thought that it would be easy with a machine translation, saw how much effort it would actually take to edit even a machine TL, and bailed after a single day.

Anyone that attacks the character using that defense skill will will have their logic and spirit attack stats lowered by 12 points for 3 turns, and the user of that skill will have their logic defense lowered by 2 points for 3 turns (that one is because it's a yellow skill, skills with yellow names have different properties randomly assigned to them, and can sometimes be negative). It took me a while to learn how to decipher the skill and item screens. The game's interface is really unintuitive sometimes.

Well, that page was put up around 6 weeks ago and only 4 lines have been translated. Also, Yuri Project's translations are really mixed. Some of the SonoHana games are alright but you see edited machine translations crop up quite often. And nobody commits to anything that isn't SonoHana. Such is the nature of wiki TLs.

There are also other duties to make sure the game works properly with English text. Some VN engines were never designed to properly handle English text. There is also a lot of miscellaneous duties, like making sure word wrapping works correctly, sometimes modifying it so you can extend one line into multiple lines without a problem (English takes up more physical space than Japanese), writing simple scripts to ease translation, etc. Official VN "hackers" who work for Mangagamer or JAST have it harder. They have to make sure that the games run in English applocale, which most fan TLs don't worry about (they just tell you to set your system locale to Japanese). Mangagamer's latest release Really Really ended up with a brand new engine written from scratch in Unity just so they could get around that issue, because Navel didn't have the original game's source code. Japanese companies tend to just delete the source code for their old games, for whatever reason. At this point they're no different from any other employed programmer, but it's still basically an extension of a fan patch hacker's duties taken to an extreme.

I've read Chinami's route and she's still The Worst. Intentionally annoying characters are still annoying, not cute.

Is it? I liked it quite a bit, but I probably liked Makina's and Sachi's more, and I've seen more praise here and elsewhere for those two routes than Amane's.