SilverLi

This is just a general list (split into translated and untranslated) of Japanese VNs either recommended by the community at large (the translated) or by me personally (untranslated).  I will take requests/additions, because non-ero is not my specialty (sounds worse than it is).  The reason why?  Because so far, no one has bothered to compile such a list, and as a result we've had about a half dozen request threads to this effect over the past year.  If someone can provide me with a comprehensive list of Western-written non-ero VNs that don't suck, please do so so I can add them in (split into shorts and normal-length stories, preferably)
 
Translated
Tsukihime (can remove H-scenes)
Cross Channel (can remove H-scenes)
Fate/Stay Night Realta Nua
Symphonic Rain
Eien no Aselia
Clannad
Little Busters (most versions)
Rewrite
Phantom of Inferno
Planetarian
Kira Kira (personally don't like this one, but meh)
Ever17
Remember11
Never7
Phenomeno
Higurashi
Umineko
I/O
Princess Nightmare
Chaos;Head
Comyu (Credit Flutterz: built-in option to turn off ero-scenes)
Katawa Shoujo (Credit Zakamutt: Built-in option to turn off h-scenes)
Steins;Gate (Credit Eclipsed)
Narcissu (Credit Down)
Cho Dengeki Stryker All Ages Version (Credit GetterEmperor)
G-Senjou no Maou (Credit Zakamutt: Nudity removal patch exists)
True Remembrance (Credit Zakamutt)
Aoishiro (Credit Decay)
Ef (Credit Snowtsuku can remove h-scenes)
World End Economica (Credit SilverLi)
If My Heart Had Wings (Credit SilverLi:  I hated this game, incidentally)
Mirai no Kimi to, Subete no Uta ni (CCM)
Rin ga Utau, Mirai no Neiro (CCM)
Mirai no Uta to, Tsunagaru Hitomi (CCM)
HIganbana (Cloudy12)
Corpse Party (PSP-only: from TimeWarp)
Danganronpa (PSP-only: from TimeWarp)
Fault Milestone one (CCM)
Nekopara (CCM)
Kyokugen Dasshutsu ADV Zennin Shibou Desu (also known as Virtue's Last Reward from Maefdomn)
Kyokugen Dasshutsu 9-Jikan 9-Nin 9 no Tobira (also known as 999 from Maefdomn)
Phoenix Wright series (Kyrt)
Go go Nippon (Sirius)
DanganRonpa2 (Satoshi Mochida)
Kamaitachi no Yoru also known as Banshee's Last Cry (Satoshi Mochida)
Scar of the Doll (Satoshi Mochida)
Rose Guns Days (Cloudy12)
 
 
Untranslated
Tokyo Babel
Dies Irae Amantes Amentes
Kajiri Kamui Kagura Akebono no Hikari
Soushuu Senshinkan Gakuen Hachimyoujin Ten no Toki
Muv-Luv Alternative All-ages Edition (Credit Down)
Sengoku Koihime
Danzai no Maria (dark Otomege)
Asaki  Yumemishi (Otomege)
Bloody Call (Otomege)
Guilty Crown Lost Christmas (not by me, by my cousin in Sweden, lol)
Mahoutsukai no Yoru
WAS - Lepidoptera (Sirius)
 
OELVNs (courtesy of Rooke)
Scheherazade
Shira Oka
Cinders
The Royal Trap
Magic Diary
Nicole
Roommates
Loren the Amazon Princess
Analogue a hate story
Digital a love story
Don't take it personally babe it just ain't your story
Dysfunctional Systems
Long-live the Queen (SilverLi)
Juniper's Knot (Satoshi Mochida)
 
 
 
In this case, I'm actively requesting that people add their suggestions to this list, translated or untranslated.  I will then add them to the first post using the edit function.  In the case of the translated, I'm not going to judge one way or the other.  However, the simple requirement has to be that you thought it was good.  Please don't repeat suggestions from above posts.
 
Note:  Untranslated console VNs won't be accepted because the unnecessarily high hurdle of not being able to use text hookers on them, which makes them too much for most of our readers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HA1vhF87D7g
 
(Mami's Theme)

Ushinawareta Mirai o Motomete

From VNDB:
Team Members:
                                                                                                                    
Project Lead: Crysis99
Editors: Fred the Barber, Einstein9029
Translator: Crysis99, Sugiken
Technical Lead: Niconiconi
TLC: Dergonu
                                                                                                                 
Progress:
Visit our automatically updated progress tracker over here!
Also, do follow the Luna Translations website for any news and updates.
 
FAQ:
Are you still going to release a partial patch?
Will you guys be doing the H-scenes?
What's this about a re-translation?
What's the ETA for release?
 
If you have any queries, clarifications, or any words of encouragement feel free to leave a post or contact us.

Translation progress has reached 50%.
 
On another note, we've decided to forgo translating anymore of Hinata's route purely in the interest of watching Ren suffer.

I played the japanese version and loved it. It's definately the best visual novel out from all the LittleWitch works and propably one of the most complex games out on the market. You could say it's a raising simulator of sorts, but it's far off from games like PM series or even Musumaker. That said, your choices and the way you will raise and teach Aria and Kaya will affect the story and possible endings. Aside from that, it's a really rich game with beautiful art and designs from Oyari and has it's own, small cult following in Japan. It's hard to not enjoy it, even if you're not a huge fan of Oyari's artstyle; the game's incredibly enjoyable and fun, you'll propably spend a lot of time playing with magic.

Ufotable keeps up the awesome work.
FS/N is just amazing. It might as well be the best vn adaptation ever.

You can increase the level of your generals through affection points, happy pokkuru (from freed prisoners), or from dungeons. These increase the general's level by either 1 or 2.
 
Sure, it's to experience the story. I think it's a better experience overall when playing the game normally though. You do forget that it's classified as SRPG. It's supposed to be something like that. Also, the enemy territories scale their troops according to your troops. They're supposed to get troops from the air. That's what balances the game's difficulty. You're supposed to adapt strategy, after all. Though I admit that there's not much strategy. Just plan out what you'll do in a turn.
I guess you'll have a heart attack when you see 5-star difficulty's troop scaling.

Thank you for your long review with positive and negative sides of the game. I am going to pick it up sometime but now I feel I don't need to rush it. Let the community and patches push the game through alpha/beta state.

I've started the Index series today. This is going to be my longest series, I think.

I've put about 40 hours into the game and was addicted to it for several days. Here's my thoughts.
 
Warning - They're mixed
 
The game is open world, lots of places to roam and things to come across. This is pretty neat but presents some problems. The introductory area is massive, you can sink a good 15 hours into it but it doesn’t have much story to it. Because of this some find this map to be a bit dull. You can leave the introductory area about of a third of the way through, but a lot of people don’t and they get bogged down.
 
The other problem with the game being open-world is there isn't much depth to a lot of the sidequests. It’s one of the trade-offs which should be obvious, but some people weren’t expecting.
 
The searching system is balls. They incorporated the ME2 planetary scanner into the search mechanism, you click a button and it tells you if something retrievable is nearby by making a "ping" sound. It sounds neat but results in a frustrating time trying to hone in on an object when it pings on your RADAR. Frustration is multiplied when you discover you found a shrubbery and not the hidden Sword of Excalibur +15. They fixed this in the patch though, so now items appear on your minimap and this makes locating objects much easier. This is good. However if you install the patch other problems could arise, like the game freezing every few minutes. This prevents a lot of people from being able to use it. This is what's called being a tease!
 
Writing – Story is short, plot is straightforward and nothing to write home about. The writing is good though, the characters are brought to life, they're funny or annoying and they'll all have their points of view. I tend to view them as the best set of characters in the Dragon Age series. There are a couple of moments where you can shed a tear but this is interspersed between hours of … walking. A lot of people don’t like the characters – let me warn you now. There’s a certain little bratty elven… lass who if you get on the bad side she can possibly shit you up the wall. Oh, and she doesn’t care about your opinions either, nor anybody elses, so that can possibly shit you up the wall. And she makes fart noises, which apparently shits people up the wall. Overall I liked her :3.
 
The fact that a couple of the characters produces such feelings in the fans, whether positive or negative, is probably a good demonstration of how well they’re written. Much better than DA:O where Leliana was *yawn* and Wynne was *yawn*… possibly Sten too.
 
500K words of dialogue (not counting lore and stuff) in an open-world game is pretty ambitious stuff. And it’s constantly funny.
 
Mounts – useless. I want to eat mine. Good for climbing I suppose.
 
Hardcore stuff – There are no stat/attribute manipulations, only 8 useable skills at a time, combat is as actiony and twitchy as number two. When Bioware says “tactical combat” they mean “combat which is anything but”. Oh yeah, tactical cam is useless. You will have to use it but it’s useless. I use it under protest but would really rather be chewing off my right testical with some leper’s wooden dentures.  The A.I behaviours are a joke which mean you have to micromanage everything on harder difficulties … BY TACTICAL CAM (which is called the developers having a fucked up sense of humour.) Let’s see, what else.
 
Choice and Consequence. There are traditionally 2 ways this can go, you can either have your choices affect the story (ala VNs) or you can have your choices affect the environment (ala The Walking Dead.) This game is the latter. Your choices won’t have much impact on the overall story, but it will have an impact on your environment and world. I hope that makes sense.
 
Other hardcore stuff… HA! Bioware still thinks longswords are 1 handed weapons. I think they do anyway.
 
Romances – Not like DA2, characters can only be romanced by certain protagonists. Which seems to annoy people. Bioware changed it from DA2 because when every protagonist could romance anybody it annoyed people. Apparently the internet is filled with annoyed people.
 
Bugs – Plenty. They give the game “character.”
 
Overall – Inquisition is one hell of an ambitious game. Buggy, yes. Flawed, hell yes. But it’s a romp which is constantly fun because of the writing. Old-school RPG fans won’t like it because it doesn’t rely on your character’s abilities, nor do they get to choose how to approach certain challenges. New gamers won’t care as much. Trolls will point to the game’s “SJW” tendencies *rolls eyes* 
 
I’d give it a month before picking it up though to sort out the bugs. 
 
Anything in particular you wanted to know?
 
EDIT: Oh, right. Multiplayer's focus is on the loot, but there's loot in the SP also. It's just not the objective of the entire experience like it is in the Multiplayer. 

http://youtu.be/MaXAhhn37No

While I started out as a Nintendo Fanboy, I've since then moved to PC (Which in my opinion is quite frankly a lot better than the other choices due to various circumstances), but have as of late begun to play on a PS3 due to it's exclusives. But... PC is still my favorite.

*ahem*

Do you like to write?
Do you want to contribute to the VN community?

If so, being a writer for Fuwanovel's blog might be right up your alley.

The blog has been in a sad state of neglect for quite a while; I am currently the only author writing articles with any regularity. With your help, we can change that. I am looking to take on new writers, and I'll be damned if we can't make this baby grow into something beautiful.

First of all, I want to make our news coverage much better. I'm just one (moderately lazy) man, and catching everything just hasn't worked out. With that said, I'm also very interested in interviews, opinion pieces, analysis and anything else VN-related that would interest our readers. I'm all for inclusivity (blame me being Swedish), so I'm looking for pieces touching on not just the more mainstream titles, but also for otome, girl's love, boy's love, and original English language visual novels of all kinds.

I make two exceptions: one, reviews - that department's headed by solidbatman. You're more than welcome to send him a PM if you're interested. Two, VNs that are pure porn (nukige). I don't have anything against them personally, but they're really not helping the current Western stigma of "dating sims" all being straight-up porn games. With that said, this mostly applies to news coverage; analysis/opinion on the subject could still go through depending on the concept.


If you're interesting in joining my team, send me a PM with an example of your writing and what you'd like to write about for the blog. I'll accept articles you've previously written, but the ideal would be something that could go up on the blog straightaway. If your writing checks out, you'll be put through a probationary period where you have to write one article every two weeks; if you keep it up, you will become fully part of the writing team. As editor-in-chief, I'll be working with you on what pieces to write. I'll also be editing your articles for flow, grammar and so on.

I hope to hear from you soon.

Absolutely agree with Mon here. That opening was so catchy. But not the best of 2014. But that's another question.

I have a feeling Akatsuki no Yona will probably take catchiest tune since the song was composed just for this anime so
 
http://youtu.be/j5dwaIJIS58

Ratataratarata~~~~

Tea is life. I like black, earl and lemon flavored tea. Coffee is a drug.

Hey there, I definitely recognized your username. You have been following the Supreme Candy project for longer than most. Thank you for the continuing support!
 
 
 
A little update:
We have begun to slowly move forward in translating. The common route *should* be done by the end of the year but we do still need a few extra TL/TLC. Also we have a website coming soon, a link to that will be added within the next few days.
 
 
Edit: Oh and we have scripts successfully re inserted as of yesterday, that might be important news . This is one of the very first lines in the game

So, I say it's about time we gave those coffee-drinking wankers a what for.  Who else prefers tea to coffee?  What type of tea do you like.  I prefer black tea but I'm also quite fond of green tea.   
 

As long as it's still Kiritsugu, we can still accept it. Anything else is like asking us to accept that the earth is round. 
 

1 - If they have sex, they are hentai games, I mean, simple logic here. It's not any less good or any less bad, you can advertise a visual novel as just a visual novel if it doesn't have h-scenes and be successful with it too, why are visual novels with h-scenes making you look bad?
But you can advertise it as an eroge/hentai game if it does as well.
Just because more VNs have h-scenes doesn't mean they're harming the industry, it just means that more companies prefer to feed off sexually frustrated otakus which is a much safer choice for a business. #Marketing101
 
2 - I don't care, I'll still fap to 2D girls.
 
3 - I don't know, it's not my job to defend the path companies are taking, I like visual novels, I also like hentai, why do I have to feel ashamed of it? It's whoever made the visual novel's job to advertise it the way they see more fit and if they want to go for the porn industry, that's their choice, it's more profitable at least 
 
I feel like people are quick to jump to conclusions on this. Visual Novels started as porn games. I'm not saying they should all be porn games, but I don't think the fact a big portion of them are to be a big deal, it's just the way it is, you can still tell people there's good visual novels that are not porn. 
 
Is it because there's a stigma surrounding them that puts some people off? Well Japan already has plenty of stigmas surrounding their 2D mediums, I think the best you can do about it is explain how it's not all porn. Is it so hard to do this?
 
Also there's been many more VNs  lately that are making new ports without H-scenes, so isn't this good news for you? Why are you suddenly alienating the porn aspect of VNs when it was here in the first place
 
Anyway.
 
In the end, h-scenes are not ruining Visual Novels, they always existed, porn has always existed since the dawn of time (look at all those naked men and women in ancient caves, those perverts!), there's Visual Novels with and without h-scenes, if you don't like them you can just go for the ones without them. And if you think this is ruining the industry as a whole well I think the industry doesn't really care much since it's their decision on how to make their games and they're chosing to go with porn most of the time. There are however companies that try to bet on good writing more than on h-scenes, but they are scarce, but it's not like they don't exist and I think more than ever there's been an increase in visual novels without h-scenes, so what's the big deal here, really?

I think the reorganization of Fuwa was really good. Otherwise this kind of threads would've never came through the moderators.
 
Also don't forget to praise the table flipping thread. Such quality and good content. I have never been more proud of Fuwa.

Week 31
 

Weekly Line Count: 796

I'll play through the game, but I'll usually make liberal use of the skip function.

I'm sorry, haven't been updating.  However, I did manage to beat 5 gyms (the last one was tricky but I managed to pull through unscathed even with those Slaking with some careful planning and luck). 
 
As you can see, I've had quite a few evolutions.  Also, I went from using Booms (Voltorb) to Randy Savage (Machop) who was felled by Team Aqua (I seem to have bad luck with fighting types) and now replaced with Simon (Sandslah) whose sole purpose in life is cutting, rock smashing, and using his strength.  
 
Route 110: Booms (Voltorb) Adamant nature.
Route 111: Hawkins (Cacnea) Timid nature.
Route 112: Randy Savage (Machop) Bashful nature (I miss you Randy Savage).  
Route 113: Simon (Sandshrew) Docile nature.
Route 117: Skidd (Surskit) Timid nature.
Firey Path: Pompeii (Numel) Careful nature.
Route 114: Quackita (Lombre) Relaxed nature.
Jagged Pass: Messed up (Team OP)
Lavaridge City: Egg
 
Current team:
[swampert] Bruiser (♂) Lv. 36
[Mightyena] Black Fang (♂) Lv. 34
[swellow] Orviller (♂) Lv. 36
[beautifly] Shimmer (♂) Lv. 35
[Loudred] Rave (♀) Lv. 35
[sandslash] Simon  (♂) Lv. 22 
 
 
Deceased: 
[Makuhita] Boulder (♂) Lv. 14
[Machop] Randy Savage (♂) Lv. 26 http://youtu.be/FviYzMZaBj4?t=2m54s