After many...many...many hours of reading I finally finished one route which I think is enough since one route in this VN feels like finishing a long VN on itself, also picking a different girl feels incorrect at this point, like I'm cheating someone... (forgive me Bethly )
Giniro is a pure love story, slice of life with some very mild drama(almost non existent), most of it consist on developing the bonds between the main character and his group of friends(only females) and later on the girl you chose from that group.
This VN shows you that each one of the girls has a great potential inside of them but they wont be able to use it on their own, they are like rough diamonds, with the help of the main character will "unleash" they full potential(it sounds like an action vn xD), is not like they will turn out to be unhappy or anything like that but each one of them wont fully accomplish their respective dreams or reach their full potential on their own.
This might be a little spoilerish but Yuzuki wont become a great chef, Mizuka wont reach the first place in the figure skating thing she does, Bethly wont become a famous illustrator, Hinata wont even be able to realize what her true dream is in the first place, finally Momiji won't become a great actress.
Another thing to point out is that while all the girls hang around the main character they actually dont love him in secret or anything, in fact it's a long process for each one of them, the only exception to this is your non blood related sister, which is kind of sad since she starts tearing up every time she realizes that she wont be able to be with the person she loves.
The first part, which is the common route is really long and from there you go into the heroine route which is again really long. It's so freaking long that the vn itself thinks that you are an idiot without memory and re-introduces you the characters like 3 times at some different points...
There are 5 heroines to chose from:
*Yuzuki, your non-blood related sister, she is really shy and probably the "loli" of the group but she works very hard and even though I admit I hate the imouto heroine type this one didn't feel that bad.
*Mizuha, your childhood friend, again the VN surprisingly didn't go for the cliche thing of the "childhood promise" or anything like that (well, it did but it was pretty subtle and it was also resolved very early in the game without forcing you to pick her just out of pity) she is some kind of figure skating star, to be fair I found her to be the most boring character, specially because I have 0 interest in what she does, so meh.
*Hinata, the best friend of your sister, she is amazing and really charming, has this quirk way of speaking and expressing herself, most of the users on the internet hate her and her voice acting for some reason, she loves everything about girl stuff (like clothing, hair, how a girl should act etc etc) very sharp and lively, a true energetic type of character.
*Momiji, she goes to the same class as the MC and thus they become friends, she loves acting and has a very normal character overall, still I found her to be one of the most interesting character... I almost do her route but at the last moment I went for...
*Bethly, she is probably the character that most of us will chose because she is the foreign girl, she is from Canada and at first she doesn't speak any Japanese so it's kinda of funny to see how she struggles in every situation (the vn doesn't really do a good job portraying this...just a decent job.) She likes to draw, has a really calm personally and a great sense of morality, she is also very stubborn, finally she is the girl I picked.
*Finally the MC (Yukito or whatever name you used for him, I recommend to leave his default name), he is for my taste.... a bit too perfect, he is a perfect student, friend, son, boyfriend, husband, father..you name something and he is perfect in that, not because he does everything in a perfect way but because he doesn't have a glimpse of malice or egoism in him, which is hard to believe.
He has a very strong sense of duty and morality and wants to help anyone that needs it, very proactive, he is not naive and doesn't behave like a retard in front of the opposite sex... he is... yep perfect, which was a bit of a let down for me.. because him being that way takes away many opportunities from the novel thus the drama in the VN it's almost non existent or very predictable.There is a reason why he is like that but still I didn't like it.
The pace in this vn is slow, really slow, for example you won't kiss the heroine until much much later on into the story(let's not even talk about having sex xD), if you don't enjoy slice of life then you will hate this vn because that's pretty much what it is.
It's hard to compare anything with this or find some equivalents but the closest thing that I can think of is nagisa's route in Clannad (if you take out the funny parts with sunohara and pretty much everything else) and all the heavy drama.
It does have some funny parts here and there (most of them are generated either from Hinata or an school teacher that you find later on and occasionally from the MC's biological mother.)
I chose Bethly and later on I regret it, I really wanted to pick momiji or hinata but at that point it was too late...
Bethly's route was ok, but her inability to speak Japanese was what it kinda ruined it for me, I came to hate the words うれ fucking しい and おいしいい, you will hear those words probably more than 500 times in the novel (or more and no I'm not joking), yes, it's tasty and yes you are happy "I got it" I really do but just stooooooooooooooooooooooooop, this again is something that makes sense in the context of what it's going on but it just pissed me off really bad.
On the other side, it's really interesting to see how the characters grow(mentally and physically too) and how your relation with the main heroine gets stronger by the passage of time, it reminded me a lot of my own experience with my ex lol so in that sense it's pretty realistic and also maybe boring for some readers.
Now I will force myself to finish momiji's route even though I'm not very sure if I will be able to do so
What I liked it:
The music.
Very rich characters development.
Amazing art.
Some really good and interesting characters that I won't be able to enjoy xD at least not right now.
Amazing voice acting.
What I didn't like:
A bit slow.
Too long for its own good.
The main character.
What I hated:
Repetition, specially of some words.
Not enough strong drama.
One awkward and very unfitting scene in the story.
How difficult is it to read?
Really easy, you can read this as as your first vn without any doubt, I wouldn't recommend Hinata's route for someone new because of the way she talks (not hard at all but still be careful)
I rate this vn: Snowman out of 納得.
EDIT: a little spoiler part to actually point out what was really boring, unfitting and what was actually pretty good.
Hinata
Since I don't want to create another topic about hinata's route I will keep adding info here,
So Hinata's route has a really different dynamic and it has a lot more of comedy than bethly's, the combination between hina and yuzuki is amazing. I won't say that bethly's route was bad but so far hinata's is overall way more enjoyable.
Source: https://j-addicts.de/kokuhaku/ (shameless self-promotion xD )
Source: https://j-addicts.de/kokuhaku/ (shameless self-promotion xD )
Kokuhaku or “confession” is a short VN developed by a company called Song Wing which mainly work in sound design, casting actors etc basically all related to sound and music and this is their only work as game developers.
The plot, uuggghh.
The plot in this VN is nonexistent and plain bland.
The main character is your typical super popular guy and all the girls are in love with him. Why? Who cares, they just are! The game is more like a kinetic VN but lets you choose which girl you want to pick at the end. Throughout the painfully 1-2 hours of reading, each one of the bland and boring heroines will confess their love to the main character without much explanation and out of the blue. These girls are the cliché of the cliché,
Childhood friend? ☑.
Sister? ☑.
Shy girl? ☑.
Tsundere? ☑.
Interesting and well-developed heroine?☒.
Once all the girls confessed their love you will reach the end, there you recall all the confession at once and that’s when you get to pick which of those confessions you take, thus picking a certain girl and confess your love back to her. Then a crappy CG shows up and it’s the end. Luckily there is no harem ending.
And no I didn't omit anything, you read 10 min and a girl confess her love without warning then the other and so on and that's it...
(She confessed her love out of the blue in the middle of a class O.o)
If you want to put it bluntly, there are 4 cockroaches and you are a stinky piece of meat and for no reason at all the cockroaches want that putrid meat no matter what. If you think this analogy is in bad taste, GOOD! Then you understand how playing this VN feels.
It’s also an all ages so you won't see any type of eroge or sexual innuendo at all.
(Pick your ending)
Music and Art.
The music while not outstanding it does the job same as the art, it’s a bit on the unique side but nothing that will make it stand out.
The redeeming factor.
So you are probably wondering why the hell is this review for then? Well, as I said earlier the company that made this VN works in the sound industry and here is the catch and what makes this VN partially redeemable. You can choose the voice acting of each heroine from 4 voice actresses when you start the game, which are (IMO) some of the best in the industry itself.
(The screen to select the voice acting Noto Mamiko https://vndb.org/s468 , Tsuji Ayumi https://vndb.org/s271 , Horie Yui https://vndb.org/s46 , Hirano Aya https://vndb.org/s1500 )
But that’s not the most impressive thing, the best part is that you can choose only 1 heroine to do the voice acting of the 4 heroines.
Basically this game was more like a technical concept to show how an actress can interpret several roles at the same time, it’s more like a demonstration project rather than a game but it was sold as a proper game... the question is why they didn't bother to write a decent plot rather than this bland abomination if they were doing it anyway... Also, the writer is not a nobody without recognition in the industry so it’s really mind boggling why they approached this project in this particular way...
Regarding the voice acting itself it’s actually pretty good and the concept itself works amazingly well. Playing the game with the same actress doing all the voices is interesting, to say the least.
So as a concept this is really interesting at least on a technical level. Having 4 heroines and 4 actresses letting you mixing up whatever you want, theoretically there are countless and countless of hours for you to enjoy by playing with all the variations (You do the math)... but in reality after 1 time you will want to throw this game in the garbage bin and let it rot forever there where it belongs.
Final score.
Now, saying how much of a technical accomplishment something is where you can only tell by listening it would be unfair so I recorded a demonstration so everyone can judge for themselves.
Here it is, rejoice (I recommend watching it in full-screen):
If you want to read more reviews like this one check out: https://j-addicts.de/
So this time I will review this doujin freeware kinetic visual novel created by Keinart Lobre which I enjoyed it a lot and I thought it needed a review for how good it was. I'm kinda lazy so this will be a pure text review and nothing more (sorry maybe I'll add some pics in the future xD )
The story follows the life of Ciarán Endyein and his friends, Ciarán is in last year of high school, a few month from graduation. He spend his time doing jokes and pranks with his friends Ziva Shani a wanna be psychologist transfer student girl that constantly tries to psychoanalyze Ciarán and his long time friend Ausse Ealdwine a pervert guy who only thinks about women all the time.
Ciarán is what you can call a pragmatic person, one that is constantly saying witty comments or full of irony, teasing his friends, doing crazy stuffs, starting speeches for no reason which always end in a comical way, he calls himself the Joker or clown of the class along with his friends. He reminded me a lot to Morita Kenichi from Sharin no Kuni and that's always a good thing because there is a serious lack of those types of characters in visual novels.
He is also a writer, he usually writes things in his little notebook that is always carrying around with him and because of this Ziva is always trying to analyze the reason behind that.
Little spoilers ahead:
The story really begins when he tells his friends some story about certain figure that he bought and got lost in the middle of the delivery and someone sent him an email about it, a really weird blackmail email which is not clear if it is actually a threat , some kind of joke or actually someone crazy writing nonsense.
End of spoilers
In the process of finding the real culprit behind that email Ciarán meets two new characters, a little girl (the loli) called Claire Argyris which is an airhead, a bit shy, constantly lost in her own world, saying things out of place but that from time to time will leave Ciarán speechless because she is not what it seems and last Luce Aurea, she is a kinda a tomboy but not to an extreme, I don't want to reveal too much about this character or Claire either. (There is another character but I can't say anything about him xD )
So far you might think that this is your typical visual novel, some slice of life with comedy but there is more than meets the eye, aside from the excellent comedy (yes it is actually really funny, most of the time with good humor) and the good pace that this novel has because it doesn't get boring through out the 10 or more hours that the novel last, there are times when the characters have this conversations about life, happiness, things they want to be, expectation from others, a bit of philosophy in the middle that reminded me a lot to subarashiki hibi WARNING: RANTS ABOUT SUBAHIBI AHEAD (if you don't like to read bad things about it don't read it.) XD this time it made sense and it wasn't forced than your throat in the most boring and weird way with scenes that went on and on and on just to get to the freaking point >_> END OF THE RANTS. The characters are well developed and all of them are very interesting, all of them with their own motivation and purposes, they are not there just to fill the gap, for example Claire is not the "loli" type just because the writer wanted a loli type between the girls.
The music was good I think there are like 33 tracks and some of them are really good and stuck with me even after I finished reading the novel.
About the art it was good too, maybe it lacked on the GCs a little bit but it is understandable, still the few once that you will encounter are really well done and they are in my opinion perfectly placed for moments that really deserve it. The sprites of the characters are good too, the artist is Bonkiru he is really talented ( image not from the vn xD ), so you can expect to see some good art.
After reading the novel I had to re-read it again, yes it is that type of novel where you need to read it a second time because you discover new things that you missed the first time(specially to make sense some parts of the plot) and since I read it in Spanish the first time I did it in English the second, which brings me to the language topic, the translation was done pretty smooth, there were some jokes here and there that they didn't translate 100% but they were still funny.
Overall I think this is one of those few exception to the OELVNs, it doesn't try to copy or mimic the Japanese visual novels, it's not about a Japanese boy (thanks good!) and even if the main character is in high school you wont find the cliche plot from the jap vns, it's also not a harem, yes even if it looks like one it is not.
Right now is on BETA but the developer is asking for some help (he needs proofreaders) so maybe you want to wait until it's release or read it right now, either way I'm sure it wont disappoint you.
Link to the thread of the novel
This is a visual novel created by a company named Jirai Soft and this is the only decent VN they have, well I never read Hotarubi no Shoujo but Kurui no Tsuki was awful... moving on with the review.
Basic plot.
Augment is a VN that starts in such incredible way, it hooks you immediately, the main character is an 80 years old dude who is in a home for elderly, lamenting on his life, on how plain and dull it was and how he regrets being a good for nothing. Remembering how he depended on his sister all his life and so on... basically he hates himself thinking that he is is a burden and decides to commit suicide, so he grabs a knife and stabs himself on the neck.
While he is dying he starts thinking that he doesn't want to die and wants another chance and at some point a weird voice tells him that his wish is granted and that he has a second chance to find happiness.
This scene was amazing and a little bit gory too, in fact the entire prologue is very well done.
After that he find himself in the park which was really close from his house (where he grew up while he was still young), he is actually young again, at least his body is. He goes back to his house and there he meets all his family members again, including his father, mother and sister. This part again has a really good impact and it was really well done, everything mixed with good humor.
He basically travels back in time with the help of this shinigami or god of dead, which granted him with a second chance to find happiness in his life.
So the VN is about him reliving his life and trying to find happiness... by fucking one of the 3 heroines xD (falling in love, creating a new life with them etc, etc)
Up until this point the VN was fantastic at least it was something new, sadly it just doesn't keep up...
There is a common route and 3 heroines. To unlock the real or true ending you need to read all of them and after reading everything you can re-read it again to unlock at certain points hidden eroge scenes with certain characters and new eroge scenes for all the heroines but without a proper ending or anything, kinda like an omake or fandisk but inside the game itself.
The heroines and plot
Your childhood friend Shiho Umekawa. Her route was kinda meh and it was ruined by the eroge scene, which was placed in a really bad time.
Nothing really interesting to talk about her without spoiling everything.
spoilers of her route ahead
My other huge problem with her are her huge fucking tits, is annoying and looks bad.
Satsuki Jin, a tsundere from another class of your same age and also the best friend of your childhood friend.
Her route was the worst one for me, she was a decent character and the tsudere side very mild, she has a pervert good for nothing old brother that is used as a punch bag...
The drama on her route was so bad and convoluted that I won't even bother explaining it because it doesn't make sense and it was overly dramatic to a point that it was almost funny, it is actually almost as bad as the true ending.
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And finally Nami Susonobe, a junior or "kouhai" from your school too.
She was probably the best route, she likes to cook and is kinda timid but not clueless of what goes around her. You actually spend time with her, just bonding and developing your relationship, their love is not forced. She doesn't love you from the start and they also share the same type of humor which makes them a really fun and dynamic couple, constantly teasing each other of following the weird pattern they have of speaking mostly with jokes. Or doing the boke and tsukkomi.
Also the sex with her didnt feel forced, it felt real and not just an excuse to show them having sex, like the natural progression of their relationship.
She has a really overly protective sister (for a good reason) which happens to be your English teacher and she also hates you and doesn't wants you to be with her. This route didn't need any stupid forced drama to be good, it was good on its own. Without the forced drama it would have been a decent story to read but nope...
Spoilers:
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Finally we have the Main character, Hideya Kawashima, he is actually interesting and not your typical main character, he isn't clueless of everything around him and constantly jokes and teases (sometimes to the point of bullying) with everyone, he is 80 years old lol so he acts accordingly... kinda , he is for the most part pretty funny specially with Nami.
About the humor, I don't really like this type but I found myself laughing with some scenes so for the most part it was good.
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There are other characters but those are the main ones, I should also talk about Hideya's sister (she also has huge tits that are annoying) and the shinigami itself but I'm tired already and there is no point in talking about them.
The true ending...
The true ending is the worst part of the whole VN. Have you seen that picture of dustmania where the guy is fucking a brain? is THAT bad xD I wanted to see something about the shinigami, they actually trick you into believe that there is more to that character (at the end of some routes the shinigami says certain things that leads you to think that there is more to the character itself, and he/she also uses the word "boku" but has a girl distorted voice so is hard to tell if it is a she or he, which was probably used on purpose for that reason... but they don't, instead they do what is up until this point a common thing in this VN, threw some sad stuff, make it very convoluted and then resolve it in a few minutes.... everyone is happy YAY.
The main problem with this VN is that it turns itself after the prologue in a pure comedy... which isn't bad per se but the prologue kinda tricks you, making you believe that it will be something else, and you keep expecting that but when it comes is just a forced drama at the end of each route that doesn't fit with the rest or anything ... if it even makes sense at all in the first place, and it last around 1 or 2 hours.
If I have to describe this VN I would say that it is 85% comedy and 15% of very bad forced drama.
The music and Art
The music was good with some good solid songs here and there that fit well with the scenes, it's fully voiced (except for the main character which is only voiced in the true ending) and the art was actually pretty good too aside from the huge tits in some characters.
Oh yeah there is something really annoying, every time you start the VN the logo of the company shows up with a fucking loud noise.
(careful if you are using headphones)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6c48PRVMV4
Here are some CGs
Rating
+Good humor
+Good Art style for the most part
+Amazing voice acting
+Pretty good music
+Nami's route if you leave the ending part.
-Bad drama and nonsensical endings.
-Bad true end.
My rating of this VN is a Ryuk out of 10.
For the reading difficulty, is hard to say but I would say medium, not something to start with, The humor and how the main character talks is just not something you will see normally, he talks in a teasing way pretty much 90% of the time, making references or derailing the conversations over and over again, using crude humor, kanji puns and everything you can imagine, for example he can start talking as if he were fighter pilot (using military language) and keeping that going for a while and some characters follow his humor, so yeah not something easy to read probably. Also the drama parts can be quite tricky or they were for me at some points (if you read the spoilers you can understand how convoluted and tricky it gets)
There are a lot of reference here and there (I still don't know if the "kain" that he refers at one point is the legacy of kain the games or not)
It took me around 30 hours to complete it but my reading speed is quite slow, you can't just read one route so that's another bad side of this vn.
Boring introduction to understand why I'm making this tutorial. (You can skip this if you want)
So this tutorial is to create that so called "mechanical immersion" when you play a VN, kinda (?)
Personally I read old VNs with the help of chiitrans for parsing the text, to being able to immerse myself into the story I need to read it in full-screen mode (I just can't read it otherwise) and this is not a problem when I read new novels that allow me to kinda cheat and use chiitrans even in full-screen mode but what about old VNs? With VNs that have resolutions of 640x480 or 800x600 you can't go full-screen and use chiitrans at the same time, the parser will either look really bad or it simply won't show.
Now, to fix this issue I used to use a virtual machine called Oracle VM VirtualBox, that program allowed me to scale the screen at any size I wanted so I could play the VNs in "full-screen" mode and it kinda worked... but the problem is... using a virtual machine was a pain in the ass in general so I searched for an easier solution and here it is:
(End of the boring introduction)
What you will need:
http://www.mediafire.com/file/ss3izesipa8ecca/res.rar
(OnTopReplica, ResizeEnableRunner and maybe Windows on top) All the softwares are free and ad-free too but you can scan them if you want.
Tutorial:
1) Download, unpack and install everything (some of them don't require any installation).
2) See if you can take a shortcut by using ResizeEnableRunner, this wont work most of the time and it will make some VNs look bad, but you can try if you want.
Just resize the screen of the VN by clicking on the borders of the VN itself and while holding the left click drag it and expand it, just like you do with any other program.
3) If that method doesn't work (80% of the time) or you just don't like how it looks, then use OnTopReplica.
a) Open the program and you will see this:
Left click on it...trust me on this one.
b) Select your VN and click in "-whole-"
c) Once your VN is selected you will know because the program will duplicate the screen, now you can resize it but that's not what we want to do, we want to go full-screen mode.
So go to: Resize > Full-screen. (you can also double click on the duplicated screen and it will do the same thing)
d) Now this is the important part, you will need to advance the text of the VN with your keyboard but you can also use your mouse.
Position the VN behind the duplicated window, then right click on the duplicated screen and click on "enable click-through", the duplicated screen will now be "transparent" so you can click through it.
Here is how it looks and a comparison using the stretching mode (with ResizeEnableRunner) and using the duplicated screen.
NOTE: The "resize enable runner" program uses the same method that Visual Novel Reader to stretch the visual novels.
Problems you may encounter while using the software:
*Some VNs will love to stay on top of the screen or they won't let you use, in my case chiitrans or the parser you normally use, for those cases use WindowsOnTop.
Open it > assign a hotkey to it > and when have that issue just force the program to stay on top, this is how I solved it with some VNs, for example setsunai, or just old VNs.
*Why I'm seeing black borders? It's annoying!
Easy peasy Japanesey, now you can read your VNs full of runes and 象形文字 in full-screen mode for a perfect immersion.
Btw, if you are wondering about the delay between the duplicated screen and the original, well there isn't any. (I'm sure there is probably some but it's imperceptible)
So, this time I'm going to ramble about something that really bothers me in VNs, this also applies to any genre not just VNs.
While I was doing a review about ashita no yukinojou and another VN.. I kept thinking about this on and on and then I remembered yet other VNs that did the same thing (Tyr talked about one of them)
So, I scraped everything out just to write this.
Here is my issue: If the core part of the plot is badly written and doesn't make sense or has serious flaws then even if the overall VN is good it cannot be saved and it will be bad no matter what, that's why I'm going to use the fruit of the poisonous tree analogy xD "The logic of the terminology is that if the source (the "tree") of the evidence or evidence itself is tainted, then anything gained (the "fruit") from it is tainted as well." from wikipedia lol
Spoilers of ashita no yuki ahead (sorry but you will need to spoil yourself with the plot or you wont be able to understand my point, I tried to simplify it as much as possible)
Now, bare with me a little, I know this is a VN so it doesn't have to be 100% realistic buuuuuuuut if you are going with the "realistic plot" then you cannot write this kind of crap and then expect the reader to ignore it when it happens.
Does it always have to be like this? No, it's all about the context itself, but there is one thing you cannot ignore, if you are working with humans as characters (and not with orcs, neko girls, or some random alien civilization) then you cannot ignore some basic stuff. Humans use reasoning or so I want to believe, so if you are trying to tell me that you raised a person, lived with her just to use it as a sacrifice or you give me a moral speech about how I didn't rescue someone but at the same time you didn't call the police then go fuck yourself.
It doesn't matter if the plot has some fantasy settings, sci-fi, etc if you are dealing with humans you need to apply the basic reasoning that a human would apply to that situation itself or else I cannot take it seriously.
But wait there is more! Using the "human" as the only characteristic is a bit too broad and wide and not always can be applied... the second thing and the most important one is:
Is the plot trying to take itself seriously, does it really want you to believe what it's going on or is just an excuse to keep the story flowing?
If it's actually taking itself in a serious way, then it is without a doubt a garbage crap, written by a moron.
Now, opinions and interpretations are a very subjective thing so probably we won't agree in many VNs regarding if you can or cannot apply this (specially some of the vns I've read and voted with a high score that might fall into this category) and I know that some readers don't want realism in VNs to begin with, so this is something they will never understand or even want in the first place and I can understand that but then again these are just some random thoughts and complains that I have and I wanted to share them, nothing more. If you don't agree with them I'm ok with that.
Sorry if this is just poorly written and seems a little rushed (it is xd) I was going to write a more extensive text but I'm too lazy and tired for that.
Have a nice day.
I know nobody cares about this type of translation in this forum (for obvious reasons, for once the novel is already translated and second nobody really speak spanish in this forum xD)
I'm doing a translation of himeko's epilogue and posting it here mostly to keep track of my own translation and have a place to share it.
At first it was going to be an eng>spa translation but there are some huge mistakes on the translation itself (specially on the atogaki 1980 story) and also many sentences that don't make much sense or silly grammar errors that shouldn't be there even if they are silly (tons of these)... I don't know the guy who did the translation but it seems that he just rushed it and cut corners in some places because of time restriction, with more time and someone checking the script it could have been a good work.
I don't like to complain or shit on others work but come on they are charging for it...it's not a free fan-translation project.
Second by looking at the files itself (again with the huge help of Schwarzstorch who is editing the images, creating the patch etc) we found:
*Inside the files of himeko is almost the whole ame no marginal script (untranslated)
*The game "hides" the UI in some lazy way but you can still active it, just turn the windows transparency up or down and it will appear.
*They used the same engine from sorairo (probably in this whole 10th anniversary narcissu project and ame no marginal) they just changed the script and CGs (with same engine I don't mean majiro but they actually grabbed it as it was in sorairo and didn't change anything besides the script and CGs), this isn't so hard to spot, I mean check this image and if you check the menu you can still see options that don't make much sense in this game, like changing the color of previous choices (in a kinetic vn ) and so on.
*There are some files from the Mahjong minigame and many more things but you get the idea.
In conclusion, it's going to take more time to check line by line to see if there are errors than translating everything from 0 so in the end it's going to take more time than I thought, but it won't take more than a month, on a side note my original idea was to add 1993 short story into this patch but I don't know if that's legal or not (probably it's not) so I dropped it.
それだけだ
EN ESPAÑOL:
Para hacerlo breve ya que no tengo muchas ganas de escribir xD voy a realizar la traducción del epilogo de Himeko, mi idea era utilizar la traducción en ingles y pasarla al español pero debido a los muchos errores que tiene, gramaticales y también simplemente de mala traducción - el traductor utilizó atajos en oraciones complejas y se nota! - también hay cosas mal traducidas, ejemplo de algo muy tonto "１９８０ 中坊の日のこと。" como "The mid-1980s... those days..." en español es "En los mediados de los 80'... aquellos días" cuando debería decir algo como "Aquellas cosas que sucedieron en esos días de cuando era un alumno de secundaria en los 80'" xD queda medio feo así tan largo pero ya se dan un idea de lo que hablo. Ese kanji raro (difícilmente aparezca seguido en algún lugar viene de acá 中坊) es decir un estudiante de secundaria de ese periodo especifico, no de cualquier momento. (si no entendieron nada de lo que expliqué no importa!)
La traducción va a tomar 1 mes, ma o meno - cachito más cachito menos xD , dependiendo de las ganas que tenga de traducir , calculo que voy a traducir unas 30 lineas al día y son casi 1000, y eso es todo por ahora.
So... I can't sleep and since I was really bored I decided to write this tips about doing a translation in general (or ramblings whatever you want to call them xD ) this is aimed for those who are starting a project or want to start a new one.
*I'll start by saying that If you really want to translate something just do it, don't pay attention to anyone just do it, nobody can stop you from doing it aside from yourself! (and maybe a C&D letter but that's a whole different topic that I wont address right now xD).
*Before starting a project be sure that you LOVE the vn you want to translate or you are getting paid for the job in that case what you want it doesn't really matter xD , you are going to work hours with the same text, fixing errors, reading over and over the same lines so if you don't actually love the vn you are working with sooner or later you are going to give up and drop it.
*This point might sound silly having the previous one but read the vn at least 2 times before starting the translation, you really need to know the plot and every little aspect of it, if you don't understand the plot or some parts of it, how a character thinks or why he/she acts the way it does etc you wont be able to do a good job, this is essential!
*Internet is you friend, if you don't understand something google it, you will find the answer sooner or later, if you search in Japanese is better, most of the time someone in yahoo or some similar website already asked that question (yes I've seen japanese people asking for some really basic stuff there!) there are tons of webs where you can find examples of a word if you don't understand how it works in some specific context (weblio for example) and last you have fuwa and some great users who are always willing to help you out. I hate asking for help so I try to avoid it as much as, also the satisfaction for achieving something for yourself is much more rewarding than just asking and having the answer served for you.
*Work a little bit every day, eat the whale one bait at a time.
* And last but not less important, have fun while you are doing it, if it's not fun then it's not worth it! Most importantly translate for yourself! Don't translate something because someone else might like it or because is really popular (I'm looking at you moe vns), you are wasting your time, this might sound selfish but if you don't enjoy what you are doing, eventually you are going to drop it.
Now this is something I asked myself a lot of times and I was sure I had the answer but I didn't...
Did I improve my Japanese because of the translation aka "Do you learn Japanese by translating something"? It's hard to say, I did learn several sexual terms, if that counts for something... even some really obscure ones that I want to forget Overall I don't think so (yes Decay was right on this one) if you get stuck too often then it's probably a good idea to postpone the translation for a few months, learn more and get back to it later on. (This is what I did the first time I started translating this vn 4 or 5 months ago)
And that's pretty much it
I want to thank everyone that helped me throughout this project, Schwarzstorch who hacked the game, edited most of the images and helped me out with pretty much everything (he worked for more than 2 hours with a picture of a dick lol sorry dude!!) Outofthebox for helping me out with the editing (oh boy did I bother him xD) to Arcadeotic for editing the text too, XReaper for all the amazing advice, MikeY91 for being the first beta tester and Tyrosyn for testing the patch and giving such an amazing feedback, finally to all the guys who helped me in the Japanese help thread.
So this time I'm going to review this awesome novel, some users even consider it the best vn out there by far, a true kamige through and through ....
...sadly this is not that Dies Irae neither is Masada involved in this title in any way
This DIES IRAE (all in caps, because why not?) is the work of a company called Family Soft. They mostly made games for PC-98, 88 and MSX on the 90', later on they released some for the ps1.
This visual novel is your typical interactive adventure game, that hybrid between a visual novel and adventure game, just like Snatcher, YU-NO or Desire, among others.
You can choose between 2 heroines from the get go and their stories, while not the same, they are in fact related and they go in parallel through out the whole game even interacting and working together at some points.
(the main characters of the novel)
The protagonists are Kimu/Kinbari (Kim/Kimberley) and his side partner Rii (Lee) and Kurisu (Kris) i'm not very good with translating katakana names so forgive me if they are wrong , both of them are professional detectives and they have very opposite personalities.
Kimu on one hand is very cheerful and lively all the time, joking around with every single character (even with her boss), specially with his partner Rii and the receptionist Maria of the police station that she works for. On the other hand we have Kurisu, she is very serious and doesn't joke at all, very quiet too, sadly the game doesn't develop the characters practically in any way, we are just tossed into the game and in the next second we are already investigating some murder case or killing a guy, yes if you play with Kurisu you literally kill a guy 10 seconds after starting the novel xD but like I said there is no backstory whatsoever, later on we do find a bit of pieces of the relation that Kimu and his side partner and best friend Rii have but just a little.. the novel only focus on resolving the murders and nothing else.
Plot
In terms of plot, there isn't much to talk about, is just a regular murder investigation that ends up being a much bigger issue, revolving gang members, the mafia and later on some sci-fi elements, to be honest it wasn't anything I haven't seen so far in this types of vns or this genre in general, although it does throws you some plot twist that you wont see them coming which will leave you a bit shocked, but overall nothing really stands out.
Graphics
In the graphic part, you have a pretty decent art style and sometimes with some really good "drawings" and CGs, It has some pretty gruesome scenes, sadly (or lucky for you depending on your tastes) there is no eroge. The characters are portrayed inside a side box and will change depending on what the characters are saying or felling just like your typical vn, they use this instead of the whole body characters sprites, although there are a few "whole body sprites" in the game too. As the sucker I am for old school pixel art style I just love it.
(the character portrait in the left side and some random violent scene at the right)
Sound
There isn't much to talk about here, the music is really nothing special, not bad but you won't remember the tracks after playing the novel, nothing to highlight, so yeah it does it jobs and that's what matter I guess.
Gameplay
Now the most important part... the gameplay, this is the biggest flaw of the visual novel. The gameplay is divided in two parts, the fighting and the way you progress in the novel using four types of commands, those are Move, Talk, Look and finally Act.
Move: will make you move through out the level, which is often divided into big section, for example the police station, the city, the slums etc.
Talk: will make you talk to yourself, other characters in the place you are or your partner if she is with you at that time.
Look: is pretty much explanatory, you will look into the scenery and search for clues.
Lastly you have Act, which will give you the option to interact with the scenery or things that are inside the scene itself, sometimes to progress by interacting with the scene and others is just for fun like harassing your partner or Maria if you are playing with Kimu.
(all the location you can move in the "city" map)
Now to progress you need to do every single option, exhaust all the dialogs, check every single little thing etc etc. This is a big problem because most of the time you need to do them in certain order and if you don't you won't progress. For example in one part you will have to check the same fence several times but in some specific order and then talk to a character just to gain a new action to progress, this is just a pain in the ass and holds back the story and the game.
There is also an specific part of the game where you find yourself trapped in a maze inside a mine, it took me literally 1 hour to beat that part because of the combat and this is the other huge problem of the game ... the combat...it is terrible in any way you can think of, some parts or certain events have fighting scenes which are mandatory and they are hard as hell...
(The mines, you will be here for a while...trust me)
The fighting is turn based, but is so random and so fast that without using save states is pretty much impossible to beat, even using save states and lowering the speed of the fights(I used an emulator and cheat engine) I had so many troubles beating some fights, one fight took me 30 minutes.
You have your a health bar, four commands (forward, backward, offense and defense) and some kind of stamina bar to use which is constantly moving at light speed and doesn't follow any kind of rule. The game compares how much stamina you have against your opponent and depending on that you will hit, get hit or do nothing.
Now you think, offense will do some kind of attack and defense will well defense yourself but nope, sometimes defense attacks and offense does nothing and everything drains your stamina, losing your stamina means that you will get hit in that turn and probably the next 4 turns too. The enemy have almost unlimited stamina while you do 2 hits in a raw and you are done for.
The only good thing about the combat is that from time to time you can do an special attack which triggers a short full animation showing your character using a gun or doing some kind of fighting pose, nothing fancy but is nice to see.
(The combat)
Verdict
Overall I enjoyed this novel because it was dark and it wasn't afraid to do and show you what most of novels this days are and Kimu was a funny character to play with. The gameplay system is what made this novel really flawed but even with those drawbacks and flaws I still enjoyed although I can understand if someone doesn't want to play it or drop it after a few hours in because of that.
Difficulty to read:
In terms of how difficult it was to read, it wasn't the hardest novel I read but it wasn't 120 yen stories or sanarara either, it's full of katakana terms and names (you will read more than 20-30 names in katakana I'm not joking..) Kimu is overall fairly easy to read, because she is a bit juvenile so her speech and thoughts are fairly easy to understand while Kurisu is more depressing and mature so her thoughts and dialogues are a bit more difficult, also later on the game gets a bit hard when the sci-fi elements kick in, by no means an impossible novel to read or understand.
