Decay

Alright nosebleed, you, me, sunday, hell in the cell. Let's do this.

You're much better off just getting someone who knows what they're doing translating it in the first place. Translation checking is a luxury some localization projects have, but at least in fan translations, it's largely there to compensate for the fact that most of the people working in fan translations just aren't very good translators. 99% of the time, if they were passable at translating, they'd get out of fan translation and translate for a living.
If the translation is best described as garble, no editor can save it short of going to check every translated line and effectively redoing the work. I think what you're saying here is predicated on a mistaken assumption people often make when talking about localization: that there's some sort pidgin language between Japanese and English (let's call it Fantranslationese). Bizarrely, some people not only believe in the existence of Fantranslationese, but they have even convinced themselves that they prefer to read Fantranslationese over English. But make no mistake: Fantranslationese is not a language, and it does not communicate anything like what the original Japanese did and what a decent English translation would. Fantranslationese is a pale shadow of a language, and an editor can only do so much to fix a "translation" attempting to use it short of retranslating the work because the editor otherwise doesn't actually get an experience like reading the original. Relying on editors to inject flair into a Fantranslationese script means you lost all the flair that was in the original. You're certainly not there yet, but you're well on your way to writing fanfiction instead of a translation, if you go this route.
Editors should be polishing a translation, smoothing out rough edges and ensuring consistency. They absolutely should be fixing the translator's mistakes, always with the aid of the translator, because the editor sees the work differently and therefore is going to rarely find translation mistakes due to their different view. This is a given especially because of how ambiguous and context-dependent Japanese is.
I never want to work on any project with a translator who believes this.

I never concern myself about which routes are canon, which are impossible, etc. I treat all routes exactly the same, whether they're in a typical multi-route moege or if it's g-senjou no maou. It's all fiction, it's all fake, none of it ever feels "real" to me in the context you describe. So I don't get bothered by some routes obviously taking a backseat to others in a game's canon. The only time that bothers me is when it's clear those routes had very little effort put into them and they feel like stub routes.
G-Senjou no Maou's routes were pretty much fine in this regard, they all told somewhat involved and interesting stories, even if the most complicated story was obviously the true route. In Eustia, I've only played the partial patch so I've only read the Fiona route, which was really disappointingly short and uneventful. It's not the fact that the game will move on and progress the story past those points which bothers me, it's the fact that Eustia's routes are just bad which bothers me. 

I heard that the game was way too somber for its own good. I'm not sure I want a deathly serious take on Chrono Trigger.

steverowland    10    2016-05-30
The signs were already there.

Ellipses overuse has been a pet peeve of mine for years and years now. I actually find myself using them more in internet conversations after editing a super ellipsis-heavy work and I hate myself for it.
Speaking of, expect a shitload of them in Dracu Riot. At this point I think it would be more effort than it's worth to right that wrong.

I don't see any use in stretching the definition of visual novel. What good does that do anyone? It's okay for these games to be something other than VNs. It's okay to like things that aren't VNs, you don't have to transform everything you like into a VN. I just don't get why people want to do that so badly. 

I don't see any use in stretching the definition of visual novel. What good does that do anyone? It's okay for these games to be something other than VNs. It's okay to like things that aren't VNs, you don't have to transform everything you like into a VN. I just don't get why people want to do that so badly. 

I don't see any use in stretching the definition of visual novel. What good does that do anyone? It's okay for these games to be something other than VNs. It's okay to like things that aren't VNs, you don't have to transform everything you like into a VN. I just don't get why people want to do that so badly. 

Meh. I'll stick with not learning Japanese.

Meh. I'll stick with not learning Japanese.

Meh. I'll stick with not learning Japanese.

Meh. I'll stick with not learning Japanese.

Meh. I'll stick with not learning Japanese.

I'm used to reading about the american upper class, where arranged marriages are very uncommon/practically non-existent these days. And I have to imagine it's a lot less common in Japan than these VNs would lead us to believe.
 
But the realism isn't the issue. I just get really mad when a heroine is having their lives dictated by others down to something as huge as marriage and they just accept it. I suppose I should then like these stories because they obviously always end with the heroines going with the protagonist instead of their pre-arranged partner, but there's invariably major plot points along the way that piss me off. 

I would avoid jumping to conclusions like this. All sorts of random unforeseen issues like this can crop up in software development, and I doubt most companies do this intentionally. In this case, it seems less like they are intentionally locking out westerners, and more like they simply never tested it with a non-japanese OS because why would they? 

I AM a native english speaker and you can probably use wake in that way. I guess most people would say "wake up" instead of "wake", but simply using "wake" sounds like a pointlessly archaic yet still correct way of saying it. Something someone pompous would say. That's probably not how that character is supposed to come across, so it's still shit writing. More likely, it's the writer who is pompous and not the character. Unintentionally injecting your own personality and speech patterns into characters they don't belong in is a sure sign of bad writing.
 
A kinetic novel is a VN without any choices whatsoever. There are plenty of linear VNs that are not kinetic novels.