Zalor

I think we have different definitions of Utsuge. Just because a VN has dark themes and a serious tone doesn't necessarily make it an Utsuge in my perspective. Of the ones I mentioned I would only consider Saya no Uta, Narcissu and Swan Song to be Utsuge. But even Swan Song has an unlockable good ending, which imo makes its classification as Utsuge debatable. But again, I think we might be working on different interpretations of what defines Utsuge, so I'm not sure if we will come to any agreement lol.

Not all the VNs I recommended are Utsuge, so I'm not sure what your point is. But yes, Narcissu isn't an uplifting VN. But like I said, if you want something that will really make you feel it's a very solid choice. Which is why I recommended it to OP. But if a more uplifting VN is desired, then I would recommend Katawa Shoujo.

While I do agree with the previous posters that Umineko is quite great, there are other great VNs to recommend as well. Personally I would advise you to check out Swan Song, Symphonic Rain, and Yume Miru Kusuri. Saya no Uta and Narcissu are great as well. In fact, Narcissu is probably my personal favorite VN that is translated. It's free, its short, and it will make you feel.

Burn which capitol, the capitol of Fuwanation? As a die hard patriot of these forums, I have remained loyal to Fuwastan from the beginning. Even now I refuse to step foot on enemy territory, notably r/vns. Even our colonies, the Fuwa discord, I can count on one hand all the times I've ventured over there. And while I'm on the topic, it should be said that the Fuwa discord is a renegade state. They have no true reverence for our homeland, I heard they even have their own memes! It won't be too long before the secede from us like the traitorous Americans did to Britain. Fuwanese may be my 2nd language, but it's the one I choose to use on a daily basis. Burning down the capitol would be to burn down our history. To dishonor Aaeru who first built this place up, and then Tay who has maintained it since her untimely disappearance. If you want to burn down the capitol of Fuwaland, you will have to go through me first!

I was in honest to God disbelief when I first heard about this. I thought a Tsukihime remake was just a meme at this point. I hope they are actually serious this time

Happy New Year years Fuwanovel!

It's more on the utsuge side, but Narcissu should fit. It's also one of the best VNs I read.

Instead of a blogpost I did this one as an amateur documentary. I'm 100% serious about my claim. It might sound crazy, but if you watch the video I'm sure you'll at least see that my claim has a logical foundation to it. You don't need to have watched Lain to follow the video either. So if the topic interests you by all means check it out.

Deus Ex knew how to drop those redpills

I feel you about wanting to join a community to grow with other VN developers. I'm in a somewhat similar boat, however part of my problem is that my vision for visual novels is quite different from the standard established genres. So finding people that share my vision is exceptionally hard. If you're working on an Otome VN, I think there are a fair amount of other Otome VN developers you should be able to find and hopefully befriend. @Plk_Lesiak gave great suggestions. Lemmasoft in particular is THE place where you will find other EVN devs.

Interesting to see Reinhardt from LOGH on the list. What I liked about LOGH is that it followed both sides, the Free Planets Alliance and the Galactic Empire pretty neutrally. Leaving it mostly to viewer to decided which side they preferred. As somebody who prefers the Galactic Empire, I always saw Reinhardt as a flawed good guy. A sort of Alexander the Great or Napoleon, who some would decry as a villain, and others a hero. If you ever watched or read Naoki Urasawa's Monster, I'm curious to know how you regard Johan as a villain.

I think the Switch is a great platform for VNs for 2 reasons. You can read on the big screen, and you can read in a more portable manner (like lying in bed with the switch in your hands). In a sense, it kind of baffles me that in the west at least, VNs have pretty much been exclusively a computer thing. Whereas in Japan, the PSP and Vita were a major platform that a lot of VNs got released on. But the Switch is the perfect in between by being both portable and a console. Idk where this will take us in terms of future releases, but I am quite hyped for the Umineko port for the Switch.

That's funny, my first response to seeing this thread was "Definitely not Dies Irae". Different strokes for different folks I guess lol

Lol, yeah I disagree about the bit about the original sprites too. Although they are great for memes

Unironically this is why I've often described Suba Hibi and after reading Umineko, Umineko as well as the VN equivalent of literary works like Infinite Jest and Ulysses. Not because the themes or writing styles have anything in common with those books, but because all of them are works that are long and demand you think about them after you finish reading them. They play around with your expectations, but reward you for patience (as well as severely test your patience). I saw it said best on a thread on 4chan a while back, and I'll attach my screenshot of what that Anon said:

A while back there was a serious effort to get more VNs to work on Android. Way back in 2013 actually, I would recommend reading this thread: Android Visual Novel [Let's play visual novel on the go!]. However a more up to date thread from 2018 goes over it a bit, and most people in that thread don't seem to recommend it. If on the off chance you can read Japanese, there are some high profile VNs you can get on the Play Store. I'm pretty sure KEY has some of its VNs on it. They may be in English, but I'm pretty sure they are Japanese only for now, might be worth at least checking to confirm for sure. I think Katawa Shoujo might also have a port for Android. Which is a VN I would highly recommend.

Along these lines, I thought it was because people are lonely and they want to pretend they live an ideal everyday life with cute waifus. In other words I thought the only appeal was pure escapism. EDIT: Just finished the video. It's pretty good and I'm pretty much in agreement with the guy. My understanding of his point is that a talented writer can take a cliched premise and make it work. Yes, that could apply to moege but that applies to every genre imo. It is no way the defining aspect of moege as you seem to be suggesting though. The defining aspect of moege is to sell a fantasy of cute girls to Otaku. A good writer could take that goal and spin it into a great story, but as I think Clephas has pointed out with his blog, relatively few manage to do that.

Yours was the most comprehensive and well cataloged EVN blog. You did really good work. And regardless of whether you just take a much needed and well deserved break, or end up retiring from this kind of thing. You have a strong library of reviews as a legacy! Slightly disappointed I didn't manage to release my VN in time to request a review from you. I hope I can at least convince you to read it once your burn out cools down. I'm not presumptuous enough to say you'll like it, but I can confidently assure you it's quite different from most VNs you've read.

As others have said, if you start a thread asking for recommendations I'm sure you'll be recommended VNs that you never heard of and might end up loving. It will also be helpful if you are specific about VNs you have played and enjoyed and which you didn't enjoy. Regardless, if you are looking for some great but sadly underrated translated VNs, I would recommend checking out Swan Song, Yume Miru Kusuri, and I'll also have to agree with @Mr Poltroon and recommend Symphonic Rain.

At best I could only describe myself as a casual gamer, but I do enjoy jrpgs on occasion. Your criticism of Octopath Traveler mirrors my own in a lot of ways. I think the aesthetic of the game is nice, and I quite like the gameplay, but the story and characters were disappointing. Nier Automata I enjoyed a lot, and its probably the most memorable game I played in the past 2 years. I am curious what your thoughts on the original Nier are, particularly the one with papa Nier (who I find conceptually more interesting than his bishounen predecessor). I never got a chance to play it, and it seems like we are never going to get a port of Nier with papa Nier as the main character. But if you have played it, where does it stand in your list of Jrpgs that have come out in the past ~10 years?

Glad to see that the Umineko discussion thread inspired relooking at the VN. @Mr Poltroon's post in the thread was great to read through, and likewise its interesting to relook at the opening scene. Personally when I first read the opening scene, I remember wondering why it started this way. Looking back at it in retrospect it makes more sense though. Especially once you have a greater understanding and context of who Kinzo really is, and his role in the rest of the story. I'm interested in the observation in whether alcohol holds any consistent motif or not. Off the top of my head I know that Bernkastel is quite fond of good alcohol and so is Beatrice. In fact there are some pretty great scenes of Beatrice getting drunk. But I don't know if that's relevant to your curiosity around the use of alcohol.

Tay returned and we partied like 1999.

That's my favorite part about Umineko. Unlike Suba Hibi in comparison, which by it's end points you right back to the beginning to pick up the clues and figure stuff out for yourself (which is an aspect I love about Suba Hibi). Umineko goes for a different approach by providing you with a completely coherent ending. The perfect puzzle piece that answers all the questions. But it doesn't spoon feed you all the answers either. It basically just gives you the key, and lets you do with it as you will. Also, Erika up with Bernkastel were my favorite characters. Combined with Lambdadelta they made for an excellent trio of antagonists in EP 6. That duct tape scene...

The funny thing for me is that my impression of Japanese creatives (writers, mangaka, game devs, etc) is very positive and I think they have a lot of brilliant minds working in those fields. But my impression of the Japanese consumer base lowers with every year. I think the oppressive education system makes a minority of people snap and a subset of that minority express it through art, which is why their fiction can be so good. But the majority of Japanese manage to conform to the system, and for those who conform I think it permanently damages their creative thinking abilities. It's interesting how Higurashi is the favorite Ryukishi07 work in Japan, and Umineko (which is comparatively a more experimental and imo overall a deeper work) is somewhat scorned in Japan but highly praised in the west. Maybe at my core I'm fundamentally westerncentric, but I think the west is right on this one. Umi > Higurashi. Although without a doubt both are very good. I think Ryukishi07 was tongue and cheekly referring to his Japanese audience in these quotes: pic1, pic2

You put things really well. Umineko's vast scale and how everything gets tied up is my favorite part. As you said, the core story is arguable extremely simple, but its how the real story is everything in between and how vast in scale that is which I love. In a real way, it gets you to question what is the value of reading a story? Enjoying the fun of it and accepting all the fantastical absurdities (magic), or understanding and intellectually dissecting it in search for the "truth", like some kind of detective? Being somebody who for a long time subscribed to the latter style of thinking, I've since adopted the former perspective. In large part, though not entirely because of Umineko. Furthermore concluding a work so long and complicated is no easy feat, and the ending has been having me reread scenes from the VN obsessively. Which hasn't happened to me since I read Suba Hibi. I completely understand your struggle with organizing an analysis of the gold and the golden land. But if you ever were to write it, I would definitely read it.