Crimson

I don't dislike it, though I like beef way more. So, true in a way I guess. Next person never payed a single dollar for a VN.

Well, I'm not exactly in my final year right now, I finished school a year ago, but not a lot has changed since then. When I still had to go to school, I simply went there in order to be physically present during the lessons, killed some time by day dreaming and when I got home, I instantly started watching anime (Yep, there used to be a time when I watched ~15 episodes a day) until I went to sleep. I repeated this procedure for the entire year, since I wouldn't need to study in order to score decent marks. Well, to be honest, I dont deserve all the credit since after all, the German Abitur is pathetically easy to achieve.

Finally. It was about time you showed up here Trust me, soon enough you'll understand just why VNs are the best games in the world~

Ah I dunno, I simply hate bad ends. Even in games like Grisaia, where there's a bad end for every heroine, I always only picked the choice that led to the good end and moved on the the next route immediately afterwards. I guess it's because I simply cannot handle bad endings. If a movie doesn't have a happy ending, it ruins the entire movie for me, no matter how good the rest of it was. Guess it's the same way when I read VNs. And that's why I used a walkthrough for F/SN... The 1st time I walked into a death flag it pissed me off so hard that I almost stopped playing because of it. ^^ What I'm wondering, is there anyone who hates bad ends just as much as I do? Since I've never met anyone who hates bad ends with such a fiery passion as I do...

That's quite possible, since everytime I discover a new song I love I replay it on youtuberepeat again and again. Next person is into Yuri.

Ah well, yeah. As I said, I was still a little sleepy when I created the poll. すみません でした ~~ E:/ I simply added "Asia" as an answer. Or do you think it should be distinguished further?

Yep. Or, well, depends on how you view it. At least I manage to get my daily input of ~5 hours of VN even from Monday to Friday Next person has an M fetish.

I was just wondering where most of the people on the forums come from, so I thought I might as well just create a poll. I summarized some countries so that there would be less choices and the results could be evaluated more easily. Also, it is very well possible that some region is not even represented in the poll, in that case I apologize, it's still kind of early in the morning and I may very well have forgotten some more or less important countries.

You should just read whatever you're interested in. I finished a shit load of VNs during the last few weeks, and I only played the ones that are said to be the best VNs out there (at least considering their EGS score). However, there's still a ridiculous amount of VNs out there that I'm going to play. I read Rewrite, F/SN, HoshiMemo, Remember11, Grisaia no Kajitsu, Muv-Luv Extra, Chaos;Head and Little Busters already, but still, there are 20 VNs on my harddrive that I haven't even started reading yet, and I'm downloading 1-3 more VNs every day. And while you're at it, you should try to read as few of the dialogues as possible and instead try to understand what they're saying just by listening to the voices. I already understand quite a lot of the simpler dialogues. In the meantime, I'm learning Japanese verbs, grammar, nouns and the corresponding Kanji so that one day, I'll be able to read untranslated VNs, since as soon as one can read the untranslated ones, a whole new world will reveal itself~

Fate/stay night is actually quite tricky without a walkthrough imo. As soon as you get to HF route, it's almost guaranteed you'll experience a few death flags unless you're using a walkthrough. I think there are like, 3 points in the story where you need to have a specific amount of points with Sakura & Ilya in order to survive, and that can be quite tricky if you failed to pick the right choice once or twice.

Worst Sex scene I've ever read? Lol, I don't have to think about an answer for that for even a single second. Fate/stay night... So damn awful. I mean, seriously. Magic Magus semen? Are you frickin kidding me? o.O The second scene with Saber was alright, but the writing is just so damn horrible in most of them... To be more accurate, F/SN actually traumatized me. Everytime I see the word "caress" I'm reminded of F/SN's terrible sex scenes, since they basically only consist of "ahh... ah... nnn... ghu...." and "I slowly carress her [insert random body part]" (rinse and repeat).

Since a bug in Muv-Luv is currently preventing me from finishing Meiya's route and thus unlocking Unlimited, I decided to start playing a different game until I can somehow resolve the issue. So I thought about which game to try out next and I decided that Sekien no Inganock sounded quite interesting. And so far I'm not disappointed. You know, at first I didn't like it when the MC was voiced, but Gii being voiced adds a lot to the atmosphere. He's a very likeable character, and the art style is amazing in my opinion. I've never seen such an unusual art style before, and it really fits the mood. So far, I'm in the 4th chapter... Guess I'll finish the game during the weekend and then move on to Sharnoth. Or maybe Forest, I might even be able to finish that on the very same day since I heard it only takes ~5-6 hours to finish. By the way, is it just me, or is Gii's Voice actor the very same guy who also voiced Shiro in Log Horizon? At least they sound very similiar in my opinion.

I had a look at the link and it seems my probably is exactly the same as yours. My PC is running on Windows 8 too, so I guess that is the issue here... So you're saying, if I rinse and repeat this enough times then at some point the game won't crash during the ending theme?

I just finished Meiya's route in Muv-Luv Extra a few minutes ago, but when the ending theme started playing, the game suddenly crashed. I tried reloading the scene a few times, but it always crashes at the very same point, 3-5 seconds after the Ending theme starts playing. I get the same error message when I try to skip the ending. The error I get is always this: The text in the window is in German and it says: Do you have any idea on how to fix this? Since I cannot finish Meiya's route like this, I won't be able to unlock Unlimited if things stay like this :/

Well, I actually think the -chan Suffix suits her quite well. She's simply in a different way kawaii from most other characters, but I still consider her a very interesting and cute character. So, for the record, I won't stop adding the -chan

Yeah I know about Akihabara (by the way, is it just me, or do they always pronounce it "Akiba" in Anime?) being the origin of Moe and stuff (yeah, I learned that one from Steins;Gate ), but still, that's just a single district in Japan's capital... What I mean is, if somebody openly confessed that he loves reading VNs and Anime and stuff, would the Japanese mainstream still consider him a weirdo, or is it perfectly normal?

While I was browsing for some VNs I could read when I'm finished with the ones I already installed (which is still like, 10 VNs that I haven't even played yet), a thought came to my mind. So in Europe, basically noone knows about the whole VN market. If I told someone "I love reading visual novels", they would probably just be like "what the hell is a visual novel?". So I wondered, how large is the market for VNs in Japan? I guess one wouldn't have to explain what a VN is to Japanese people, but still, how successful are they in Japan? Are they only played by an Otaku minority even over there, or is it like, perfectly normal for young adults to read eroge and nukige? I do know about the whole Otaku culture, but do the average, mainstream guys play VNs too?

Nukes? Zombies? The moon crashing into earth? Well, considering that would most likely be a death flag anyways, if I had to pick three characters to defend me... I guess it would be... 1. Lucia (Rewrite) 2. Kazami Yuuji (Grisaia) 3. Takamine Yuuto (Eien no Aselia) I guess those three would be pretty capable. If they can't protect you, I guess noone can

Now that everyone has been talking about S&M fetishes, I'm actually quite interested in whether I possess a latency for either of those. Haven't read a VN though that... "Features" those... preferences (well, except for that one nearly-rape Scene in Chaos;Head). Anything there you can recommend on the Topic?

Since everybody put so much effort into their comments, I felt kinda pathetic for writing only ~5 lines, so here it is in as much detail as I possible can. 許して ください~~~ Fraternal twin brother: Rintarou Okabe Okabe is simply such a likeable character. Having him as my brother would be so amazing, since I am what most people would consider a "weirdo" I guess we could also get along quiet well. Being fraternal twins, we would spend all our time together and do all sorts of silly stuff like talking to our turned-off cellphones and fleeing from the agents of the "organization". Of course, this made most people avoid us, but I didn't mind that, knowing that I'd never truely be alone as long as I was with Okabe and Kyousuke. Best friend: Daisuke Misumi Misumi is a person who is a lot deeper than what he seems like. Even though he appears to be just some superficial playboy, he is actually a caring friend who does not judge people for what they're interested in or for what other people think of them. Meeting Misumi in middle-school, Misumi approached me and Okabe out of curiousity. I quickly noticed that I could always speak my mind around him without him judging me. I realized that I could always be honest around him and that he was an honest and loyal person himself and thus, we became friends. Ever since then, nothing was able to tear our friendship apart and whenever there was an obstacle, we would overcome it together. Group Leader: Natsumi Kyousuke Kyousuke is a leader with a natural talent in uniting people and encouraging them to have fun together. He came to our school in the second year of middle-school as a transfer student and Misumi, open-mindedly as he always was, approached him on the very first day that he came to our class. Everybody was friendly to Kyousuke and we quickly discovered that he was a person that one could have loads of fun with. He quickly integrated into the group, and within a few months, he graduated to the leader of our group, always making sure that everybody came together and had fun doing all sorts of stuff together as a group. Girlfriend: Nakatsu Shizuru In second year of high school, I met Shizuru, who had just graduated to my school, thus meaning she was my kouhai. On the first day I met her wandering around the area in front of my classroom. When I approached her and asked her whether she had gotten lost, she denied it. Yet, I could see in her expression that she had no idea where to go. I decided to help her out with finding her classroom, and after she had safely arrived in her classroom, I wondered whether I would see her again. And on the very same day, I discovered that the way to her home was almost exactly the same as mine, so me, Okabe and Tenri started accompanying her on our way home. Even though she was very shy at the beginning since she didn't know any of us, after a while she started noticing that we had no bad intentions in spending time with here. When she realized that, her behaviour quickly changed and she became much more affectionate. Soon, I discovered that I had developed romantic feelings for Shizuru, but since I didn't know how to make her fall in love with me, I told Kyousuke about it. Which was an amazing plan, as it turns out. Kyousuke gathered every one of us, and together, Misumi, Tenri, Okabe, Kyousuke and I created a plan for me to gain Shizuru's affection. Of course, none of Kyousuke's plans ever go wrong, so we carried the plan out with great effectivity and Shizuru and I became a couple. Everybody was happy for me, even though Tenri looked a little sad when I told them that our plan had been successful, but she quickly regained her composure and congratulated me for having found someone to be happy with. Childhood Friend: Ayukawa Tenri Tenri was the girl from next door, which Okabe and I occasionally played with when we were kids. Both of us being weirdos, the encounters with Tenri were always quiet weird since she was such a shy girl, but even though she was quite, she didn't seem to mind our eccentric personalities. However, when we got to middle-school, we were placed in different classes and as I spent more and more time with Misumi and Okabe, we started seeing each other less frequently, even though we were living right next to each other. Occasionally, when I met Tenri in front of our houses, I would greet her, but she would just always look to the ground and rush past me without so much more as a "Konnichiwa". However, when Kyousuke joined our group, that changed. As soon as he found out that Tenri and I used to be childhood friends, he started making the utmost effort to get her to rejoin our group. At first, Tenri reacted really reluctantly when she was engaged by so "many" people. Except for me and Okabe, Tenri had never had a lot of friends, so being engaged by 5 people seemed to be putting a lot of stress on her, and thus she reacted kind of reluctantly at the beginning. But just like Shizuru, she soon found out that none of us had any malicious intentions, and so we got her to rejoin our group. Loli: Ephemeria S. Mare One day, when our group of friends was walking through town after spending the entire day together having fun, Kyousuke suddenly asked "Hey, why don't we end this day by going to the lookout? It's already pretty late, but I don't think there are any dangerous people there, so let's enjoy the view." Nobody had any real objections and so, we went to the lookout. But what we saw there was unexpected for every single one of us - a girl was sitting on a bench under the moonlit, starry sky, watching the stars and raising her hand as if she was trying to touch them. When I suddenly raised my voice to ask who she was, she let out a high-pitched little shriek and vanished from our field of vision. We were all dumbfounded, but decided that thinking about this strange encounter wouldn't do much good, and so, after enjoying the view for some time, we started heading home. I, however, was not satisfied by that. I decided to look for the girl at the lookout again. Something about her had seemed intriguing - I didn't know if it was because she was so small and I wanted to protect her, or whether it was mere curiousity driving me to find out who she was. But it didn't matter anyways, I thought to myself. When I got there, it didn't take me long to realize why I had never seen her before - apparently she only appeared there at night, when one could watch the starry sky from the lookout. Of course, I had never been to the lookout at night since my parents would not approve with that, and so there had been no chance for me to ever meet this girl. And so I started secretly heading to the lookout more often, talking to the girl whose name apparently was "Mare" even though she constantly insulted me. Even though I started to become more and more sleep deprived, I was also more and more successful at getting Mare to socialize some more - she had already told me her name, and she was much less hostile when I came to see her than on our first meeting. Finally, I decided to integrate her into our group - I just didn't know how, since it had taken her such a long time to become accustomed to me. But I thought to myself that if a weirdo like me had gotten her to like me, then that shouldn't be so hard for the others. And so I asked Mare whether I could bring the others to the lookout, and after some consideration, she agreed. Even though she was quite irritated by Okabe's behaviour, she didn't show any malice compared to how she had acted towards me at the beginning, which kinda hurt me. But I was also glad that she got along with the others better than what I had expected. And so, Mare became a member of our group, even though she did not lose any of her stubbornness - only showing up when she wanted to, and instantly vanishing into thin air when she felt like it - but of course, none of us really minded that. After all, our group's friendship was about accepting other people's personalities and not trying to change them. Tsundere: Sasasegawa Sasami The last one to join our group was Sasasegawa Sasami, even though at first, noone would have thought that we would become friends. Because she was very good at sports and classes, many people adored her, especially the guys with a heavy M fetish since Sasami tended to place herself above other people, and she always enjoyed watching her kouhais worship her beauty and her skills at sports. However, Okabe and I tended to do the exact opposite, teasing her a lot, which made her so irritated that she said that we were her "sworn enemies" at the end of the first day we met. However, in the course of time, she started to understand that maybe we were more interesting than the other students. She had slowly but steadily gotten sick of being worshipped by others. The boys were only interested in her due to her beauty and their fetishes, and the girls admired her because of her sports skills. But she didn't want people to like her because of such superficial attributes. And thus, she started acting less tense when we were around, and from that point, due to Kyousuke's efforts, it only took us a few weeks until we hang out with her every day, and so our "little" group of friends had been completed, and together, we would spend the rest of our lives in the town I had been born in, doing lots of new and interesting stuff every day, and having more fun together than one could have possibly imagined. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Wow, getting all these characters into one coherent story was a hell of a lot of work. I know I copied a lot of ideas of the games these characters are featured in, but my fantasy wasn't good enough for something more elaborate, so I'm afraid this will have to be good enough. Still, considering my own lack of creativity, I'm actually quite impressed that I managed to get this far... I kinda feel like the ending is lacking, but it took me several hours to write this down so... forgive me please, but I'm done now.

You serious? Now that's annoying. ^^ Well, I guess it can't be helped. If alternative is as amazing as everybody says, I most likely won't regret having read all those routes anyways. Then I'll just do Sumika immediately after Meiya.

Yeah I will but due to you I just lost 3 of my vacation days. Gotta take some free time in order to marathon the three games. This is why I hate it when people foreshadow something because then I simply get so impatient... So yeah, I probably will contact you in a few days and be like "So THAT'S what you meant"... I think I'll do something like this then, Extra (Meiya) --> Unlimited (Meiya) --> Extra (Sumika) --> Extra (Kei) --> Extra (Miki) --> Alternative. I don't really like Sumika (seriously, how can a person be that jealous and distrustful toward their best friend...), but still, I guess I should do her route as she's one of the two main heroines...

Wut? Dude, you can't make suggestions like that and then just stay quiet... Why do you hope I'll have nice dreams... what does this have to do with the plot... AAARGH I hate not knowing what's going to happen after someone has been foreshadowing something...

All the routes? Crap, how were you able to do that? Everywhere I looked so far, everyone said that Muv-Luv extra and unlimited are simply sooo much weaker than Alternative and should solely be read due to story purposes. Some even described the first 2 games as "horrible". Well, so far I cannot really complain, I'm still on the common route, nothing really has happened so far, I'm still waiting for some sort of twist and it's starting to get boring, the only thing enabling me to marathon muv-luv so far is the humour. How did you find Muv-Luv extra and unlimited? Do you agree with the public opinion on extra / unlimited? If not, why not? Since you played all the routes in both games, I suppose you really liked them so I would be quiet interested in your opinion on them.

Also, the vibe I got from Kotarou was that he was an irresponsible idiot until it mattered. True that, Kotarou was kind of funny, but damn, he was a true idiot until shit finally got serious.