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I've just finished Charles' route in Da Capo 3 and to be honest, it was a rather underwhelming experience so far. I think it would have been a great thing if DC3's six (!!!) different writers would have maybe just once sit together and agree on what they actually want to write. Because, the writer of the prologue seems to have thought that they are going to make another remake of Da Capo 1 centered around a big magical tree. The writer of the common route however, seems to have thought that they are going to write the Japanese VN interpretation of Harry Potter, centered around pseudo Hogwarts. And the writer of Charles' route seems to have thought that they are making a fluffy Christmas story for little kids.

The whole thing would be still okay if the individual parts would be decently written at least. However, the prologue was mostly a cheap ripoff of Da Capo 2, that presented the heroines as so devoted and obedient to the protagonist that they almost appeared like brainwashed. The common route did at least improve on the latter part and presented the heroines with more personality. However, it didn't even try to make anything of the huge potential of a magical school. The short missions could have been interesting but there was no effort invested in them whatsover, neither on the writing nor the artistic part. Nothing was drawn and the missions lacked even the most basic signs of common sense. Example?!

Spoiler

Imagine an IS terrorist (IS = Ill-disposed Sorcerer) layed a magical bomb, so what to do now? You might think they evacuate the area and then put together a small special unit of selected adult mages who then try to disarm the whole thing.

But no, let's present you Da Capo 3's way of anti terror fighting: Let's treat the whole thing as an excercise and send the students of all classes into the house where the bomb is located and let them 'try their best' with the elders watching from the side lines for 'maximum impact' so to say. The concept has an almost brilliant simplicity. There are only two grades, either passed the test or passed away - you can't have a better motivation than that. :maple:

And then you have Charles' route which was immensly childish even for eroge standards. The whole writing also lacked a certain maturity Da Capo 2 still had and a central theme. And what's the point with those pointless radio broadcastings? Production values also seemed pretty low considering only the main heroines and a few of the more prominent side characters got sprites and there were almost no event CG's. Overall it's certainly at least a class below Da Capo 2 so far and even Da Capo 1 had a more consistent plot line.

Anyway, I guess I still give Sara's route a try since I kind of liked her, and then call it a day.

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15 hours ago, ChaosRaven said:

I've just finished Charles' route in Da Capo 3

I read your whole post, and I expect the points you make are valid (though I've yet to play a Da Capo game of any sort), but can we pause a moment over the fact that one of the heroines is named Charles? And, moreoever, that the explanation for her name is that she's half-English?

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6 hours ago, Fred the Barber said:

but can we pause a moment over the fact that one of the heroines is named Charles? And, moreoever, that the explanation for her name is that she's half-English?

I don't understand what's your point? Nothing wrong with the name and I didn't complain about it either.

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22 minutes ago, ChaosRaven said:

I don't understand what's your point? Nothing wrong with the name and I didn't complain about it either.

Only a selfish and horrid parent would name their daughter “Charles”. “Charlie” is a boy’s name that’s more acceptable for a girl to use (because it could be short for Charlotte or Charlene,) same with Sam, but a girl named “Charles” will probably be teased, picked on, and/or laughed at for her entire childhood.

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Interesting discussion about Charles name I guess. Although if I may say something about that, the staff probably want to make someone who is half English and also want MC called one of heroines 'Lulu'. So we had Charles here as heroine's name, and keep in mind that Circus made Da Capo 3 with Japanese player as the main costumer (I'd already saw some anime characters with Charles name, so it's not that surprising to me).

Edited by littleshogun
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2 hours ago, littleshogun said:

(I'd already saw some anime character with Charles name, so it's not that surprising to me).

 

Well, sure, but were they girls? Charles is pretty strictly a boy's name. It's almost as bad a choice as the name Asino for that guy in Symphonic Rain. Names are important; if they're going to use foreign names, they should at least research whether their naming choice is batshit insane.

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On 4/14/2017 at 10:18 PM, Fred the Barber said:

Well, sure, but were they girls?

Of course they were, although I must admit it was very rare choice for a woman's name (Less than 10 characters). As for the characters there's one from Fairy Tail, also in one of PreCure series (Doki Doki), and another from Freezing (I knew the former two weren't human, although one of them (PreCure one) was able to transform into human).

As for the naming, according to another thread at Gamefaqs, it was said that for Charles name they use the French one (It's 'sharla' instead of usual 'charles', and the reason for that was quite complicated to say the least).

Edited by littleshogun
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4 hours ago, Fred the Barber said:

if they're going to use foreign names, they should at least research whether their naming choice is batshit insane.

It probably should be changed during localisation. If few people in Japan would know that Charles is a boy's name that a girl shouldn't have, the name wouldn't sound weird to them. If that's the case then to keep the spirit of the original during translation and allow audiences in English the same experience as the Japanese audience (aka to not feel weirded the hell out,) there's an argument (that I'd be making) that it should be changed in the English localisation whether Charles is the "correct romanisation" or not.

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13 minutes ago, Darklord Rooke said:

It probably should be changed during localisation. If few people in Japan would know that Charles is a boy's name that a girl shouldn't have, the name wouldn't sound weird to them. If that's the case then to keep the spirit of the original during translation and allow audiences in English the same experience as the Japanese audience (aka to not feel weirded the hell out,) there's an argument (that I'd be making) that it should be changed in the English localisation whether Charles is the "correct romanisation" or not.

You know, at some point I convinced myself that it was in fact her second given name. That's a thing in a lot of European countries, to the point where I know a few male Mary's myself. Not that they go out of their way to be called by that name, but a few people do, such as my mother, except her second given name happens to actually be female.

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6 hours ago, littleshogun said:

As for the naming, according to another thread at Gamefaqs, it was said that for Charles name they use the French one (It's 'sharla' instead of usual 'charles', and the reason for that was quite complicated to say the least).

Found the thread you were looking at, it's not complicated. Charles pronounced Sharla because Japanese use the French pronunciation (I don't believe it is, in fact I'm looking at a French pronunciation guide as we speak, but let's run with it) -> Sharla is pronounced Sharuru in Japanese -> nickname is Ruru.

An easy way to fix that is to localise her name as Carla. Not Charles.

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Finished Rance 6.  Man, that one took a while.  Wish it tracked game time so I could see how much time I spent overall.

I enjoyed it quite a bit, even though it was a bit of a grindfest.  The story had a lot more depth than I was expecting going in, and even though it's a 13 year old game, it's aged pretty well, IMO.  Post-game was my favorite, I have to say, but late game was pretty fun as well.  The art looked a bit dated, although that's to be expected.  The only time it ever seriously bothered me was one of Caloria's h-CGs where her head looked really friggin' weird.

Looking forward to the next one MG translates  ^_^  I'm now a Rance fan.

Moving on to Utawarerumono.

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18 hours ago, Darklord Rooke said:

Found the thread you were looking at, it's not complicated. Charles pronounced Sharla because Japanese use the French pronunciation (I don't believe it is, in fact I'm looking at a French pronunciation guide as we speak, but let's run with it) -> Sharla is pronounced Sharuru in Japanese -> nickname is Ruru.

An easy way to fix that is to localise her name as Carla. Not Charles.

By the way, what I meant complicated is that the history between Japanese and French people that cause Japan to pronounce 'charles' in French way instead of English way. Other than that, perhaps you right about Charles and Carla there (Fairy Tail use that method actually).

Back to topic, to tell the truth my Deardrops playthrough was delayed because of some circumstances. I'll try to resume my playthrough in this month.

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Holy Jesus, Utawarerumono's resolution is 640x480.  It's soooo tiny  :michiru:  I got through 5D by slightly stretching out the screen, but it looks like I can't do that with Utawarerumono, unfortunately.

Did it use to be the standard resolution for VNs, or something?  Rances 5 & 6 were both in 640x480, and they came out relatively close to Utawarerumono.

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I'm really enjoying Doki Doki Oyako Lesson, it tickles allot of my fetishes. I just wish that the people who worked on the partial patch knew BOTH english and japanese and not one or the other. Seriously even though I know zilch about Japanese I can tell  つきあって means dating or going out, simply by the context and how it sounds (it's quite the common phrase in anime and visual novels), so why the fuck do you use "associated with"? Seriously, why did Tinker Bell take the time to target this joke of a translation project? 

Edited by Soulless Watcher
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17 minutes ago, Nandemonai said:

Well, from a certain point of view, the very fact that the TL is a joke actually is a good reason for a C&C by itself.  I wouldn't want something I'd worked on treated so shabbily.

That only applies if the company gives a shit about western audiences in the first place. The company has shown no interest in officially localizing any of their titles and none of their other titles have had an attempted fanpatch. So at worst the legal action was taken due to the company believing that pirates = fantranslations or an over-protectiveness of their intellectual property. At best it was due to fear of international law or the group was actively distributing pirated copies of the game on their website.  

Either way the only thing they accomplished was crushing any hope of a potential market for their games outside of Japan, which admittedly they probably would have nothing to gain from. 

Yeah, I know I'm just bitter. :amane:

Edited by Soulless Watcher
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So I have finished the 2048 arc in Himawari and started Aqua's route. Well, that arc turned out to be pretty good, especially compared to the common route. On the other hand, there were a few parts which almost broke it for me.

Spoiler

First, the characters. Should I mention that Aqua is a much better protagonist than Yoichi? (I hope I spelled his name correctly.) I don't know, Yoichi at this point seems like the most boring VN protag. He is bratty, childish and just plain stupid: the moment when Aries regained her memories was so obvious that it's not fun, but he hasn't realised it. Aqua on the other hand... Well, I guess, I just like her general attitude, and some of her inner worries click with me pretty well. On the other hand, her relationship with Daigo feels a bit cringy, for the lack of a better word, but, I don't know, knowing that she had Akari's memories, I can see how it could happen.

Aries changed since the common route: she stopped being annoying and became outright unlikable by the end of the arc. Though, at least it seems to be intentional. I don't really have any strong feelings about Aoi. Akira and Soichirou are pretty interesting characters, and I would like to learn more about them. Daigo... Well, I see what archetype they try to utilize with him. And, though somewhat unrealistic, it is not exactly an unlikable archetype. On the other hand, it definitely makes me wonder how he even managed to survive 43 years of his life. Mistook Earth's and Moon's coordinates, crashed into the Moon and died there. Just... what?

Still, the flashbacks are my favorite part of the game so far. I'm sure, just by themselves they could probably be a part of a 10/10 VN. Sadly, they aren't.

Now, on to sci-fi elements. To be honest, I didn't like them. In general, when I read a sci-fi novel or a VN, I don't like having thoughts like "This could never happen in real life", that's why I often prefer fantasy, which by definition has nothing to do with the real life. In Himawari, sadly, this thought never left me. I wrote down below a few things I noticed, fell free to object me if you think I'm not right.:)

Spoiler

- The airliner, the Aries' escape pod, also, two Himawari rockets: all the crashes in the VN happen in the same spot, and the probability of such event is extremely low. You could say that the program written by Aries made all of them crash in the same spot for some reason, but it's very stretchy.

- - Daigo and Aqua in the end of the 2048 arc crashed almost exactly in the same spot as Daigo's Kaguya two decades earlier.

- The code written by Aries was used in the airliner without excessive testings. Does a person who did it know how codding works?

- - For some reason, nobody saved the code in some place where Aries had no access to. And nobody was able to write a new code. Just... what was there?

- Gravity on spaceships. How did they managed to make it? The only feasible method I know about is to make a ship rotate at large angular velocity and to use a centrifugal force. The shape of the station and the corridors in it implies that it was not what was done.

- The Lunar Theory. To be honest, I almost dropped the game at this point. Yeah right, all the cells in the body simultaneously change their DNA after new memories are acquired. Even if we assume that mechanism like that exists, what are the chances that something goes wrong in one of millions of cells? The patient would probably quickly acquire some form of cancer. Though, I'm not a biologist, maybe I'm wrong.

- The escape pod had enough fuel to reach the Moon. Though, I'm not sure about this one. Actually, to reach the Earth, you would need to stop the orbital motion of the pod, and it would require some fuel too, especially if you want to chose the point of the Earth you want to reach, and not just reach the Earth in general. On the other hand, my intuition says that it wouldn't be enough, but you need to make some calculations to say for sure.

I don't know, maybe some of those things are actually explained further in the VN, so don't take them too seriously.

Anyway, I'm more or less enjoying this VN so far, though it's deffinitely not a 10/10 VN, and most likely not even a 9/10. I'd say, it goes for a good 7 at this point, but there are still several arcs that have (Tadam!) Youichi as a protagonist, so it's too early to say anything.

PS. Why my reactions always look so negative even when I like the VN in question?:leecher:

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Finished Edelweiss last week and was really surprised by it. I was expecting those whole thing to be comedy, but some of the routes got really depressing like Haruka's route... :'( She was my favourite character, so going through that one was a bit hard. I think the best routes were Haruka's route and Natsume's route. Mizuki's route was decent, although I think the drama felt a bit forced. Ran's route wasn't bad, but definitely felt like it was the weakest out of all of them. Mei's route was also quite good, but was also pretty sad. Overall, I really loved the game, and I will definitely read the fan disc soon! :) 

 

I am now working on Deardrops for the VN Reading Club, which is a very enjoyable read so far! :D 

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Curently reading Tokyo Babel. I finished Raziel's route and while it's good, I personally couldn't feel the 'romance'. It feels forced to be honest, like they shoehorned it at the last minute. I couldn't see any reason they would fall in love- it just happened. I do like the story even though I find myself rolling my eyes at parts. 

Spoiler

I cannot see how Setsuna became so powerful. His raison d'etre reeks of Gary Stu. But since it's pretty much escapist fiction, I guess it works. It just really bothers me how Setsuna's raison d'etre is literally overcoming the impossible. My eyes rolled so hard at that part.

I'm personally impressed by the amount of research that went in the lore and worldbuilding. I like the references made to Judeo-Christian mythology and even apocryphal books. I have an interest in apocrypha so I really liked those elements in this VN. I loved how they incorporated all those elements in this VN and it ended up that I'm more excited about exposition than the action scenes. I'm a practicing Catholic so some parts did make me uncomfortable. I just reminded myself that it's all fictional but it's definitely not something I'd recommend to my more conservative religious friends haha.

I have high hopes for this VN. I hope Sorami's and Lilith's routes are better because as good as Raziel's route is, it's lacking. Sorami and Setsuna so far seems to have more chemistry than Raziel and Setsuna so I'm definitely getting my hopes up.

Edit: Just to add, Adam and Setsuna's interactions feel more romantic than his and Raziel's. I was halfway inclined to ship them instead.

Edited by Daydreamer97
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