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HoshiMemo review discussion


Fred the Barber

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Are the same people that translated this game translating astral air also? oh dear...:amane:

I figured I'll eventually buy the game after I'm done with my backlog, not anymore. I think i'll be staying away from Sekai for quite awhile, as a consumer I simply don't trust them in the slightest now. Their delays, bad translations, ignoring consumers, shafting older kickstarter projects, their silence for months on particular projects, they do have communication problems. From the research I do before purchasing, people's issues with them seem to be pretty understandable.

Though i will say, i've never hated them, hating is just a waste of time and energy. I just don't buy their releases if they're bad. I just want translations to be done perfectly [when they are official, fan tls are a different matter]. At least with Mangagamer they release their games after a two week announcement with good translations and an option for 18+ or all ages. They're really smooth with their releases, i don't think twice with them. I'm not interested in VN merchandise so I just want timely releases with good tls.

I didn't read Fred's review of the game since i know what its about, but thanks for warning people about the translation quality guys, it saves us money!. I never buy games without checking here first so I've never had that 'cheated' feeling lol.

PS: On another note, excited about sorcery jokers coming out next week! as usually 18+ and all ages release! looking forward to another long game :D.

 

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1 hour ago, Dreamysyu said:

:amane: Well, I guess I'll wait before they release the update, though maybe I should consider a refund.

No more kickstarters, I guess.

You really should request a refund.  I pledged for the box set, and there was no way I was going to accept spending $120 + shipping on a shitty TL.  I'd rather import the JP box set and learn JP than keep my pledge, hope that SP irons out all the issues and delivers the physicals in a reasonable amount of time.

If you want a refund, contact support and tell them that the quality of the script is unacceptable and you want your money back.  I got my pledge refunded to my Paypal account on the same day I submitted the support ticket.

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3 hours ago, Silvz said:

Going to read the review and the discussion soon, but I can sense some rage coming; I have yet to read this, but I wonder how it got such a bad rating when it is so loved everywhere.

As for that, I guess it must be because turned out that Hoshimemo here was not the reviewers taste here and therefore it's just a bad luck. Of course review tends to be subjective though, so it's quite debatable whether you could use the score to decide whether you'll buy it or not. In the end, I'll leave the matter to you though whether you'll find that Hoshimemo was good or not.

PS - If you want more positive review, I think there's a lot out there so maybe you could just Google that.

Edited by littleshogun
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18 hours ago, bakauchuujin said:

Pretty sure Libra is being retranslated so I gues that would be an example. Ofc it is not out yet so don't know about the quality, but seems like they are doing a complete overhaul.

Oh, christ, I forgot about Libra. I only saw like five screenshots of that, and I'm still sure it's vastly worse than HoshiMemo was. So... let's go with calling HoshiMemo the second-worst thing I saw this year.

Regarding this doubt:

On 1/3/2018 at 7:31 PM, NowItsAngeTime said:

I agree that the technical issues was an obvious sign of a rushed possibly lazy release and shoulda been handled before

I disagree with Hoshimemo quality/writing wise but its one of my favorite VNs so

Either the screenshots I posted show obvious problems to you, or they don't, I guess. But to be clear, all screenshots in the review are representative, none more so than "Mare's face is instantly shrouds in a hue of weariness." There are so many problems with that line, but let's try to break them down:

  • "weariness" is a typo, given context: it was supposed to be "wariness"
  • "is shrouds" was obviously supposed to be "is shrouded", so, another typo
  • "is shrouded" is passive voice, which usually you want to avoid. I'm not going to say it's something you should always avoid: that would be a stupid and incorrect thing to say. But I will assert that passive voice is incredibly common in this script and it consistently weakens lines, this one included.
  • "instantly" is a totally unnecessary adverb, which is one of the most reliable ways to weaken prose. There are many rough guidelines in writing, and this is one of the most important: if you're reaching for an adverb, use a better verb instead. Unfortunately, such weakening adverbs are all over this script; they're probably the biggest problem I have with it. Play the game and count the number of occurrences of the words "literally" and "considerably"; I bet there are no fewer than 20 combined. Then read a short novel by your favorite English genre fiction author and count occurrences of those same words. I'll bet you don't find more than one (Jim Butcher seems to always have exactly one "literally" in every Harry Dresden book, presumably just to tweak people's noses...). This is not a coincidence: those words are baggage, weighing down good writing. It also bears mentioning that adjectives can be just as bad as adverbs, and are also overused in this script.
  • "hue" is a blatantly overly literal translation of , and it appears as such many, many times throughout HoshiMemo. What the heck color is a "hue of wariness" supposed to be? I'm sorry, I'm just not synesthetic enough to relate to using color words for emotions like that.

I want to stress: this line is representative. I have hundreds of screenshots I took from the game, the vast majority of which bother me in the writing department almost as much as this line does, often for the same reasons cited up above, often for different ones (notably including redundancy, awkwardness, and unreadability). It took me a solid half hour to pare my HoshiMemo screenshot folder to a shortlist of 46 bad screenshots, and then another half hour to trim that down to the five I finally ended up using in the review (the hard cap I set for myself so the review wasn't just a pile of screenshots). It frustrated me that I had to sacrifice a screenshot that could have gone to bad prose on showing an untranslated line, but I needed one untranslated line screenshot to drive that point home, unfortunately.

So, instead, here are a few choice lines from my screenshot folder (typos theirs, not mine):

 

  • "It is literally just like a flood."
  • "Maybe it is the atmosphere surrounding Asuho that's sealing my mouth."
  • "Just like yesterday, the night sky is flocked with twinkling stars."
  • A pair of lines which have to be taken together to see the nonsense:
    • "Sure gets your heart racing, huh?"
    • "True, anxiety's making mine shoot up like crazy."
  • "It is quite literally just like a flood."
  • "I directed my field of vision, which, unlike as it is with the naked eye, is quite narrow, over towards there."
  • "I don't let even the faintest, most slightest of sounds slip by my ear."
  • "A opportune chance to ensure the survival of Astro Circle that I mustn't let slip out of my grasp."
  • "We are essentially tossing in all of our cards towards this massive, risky gamble."
  • "Will You-san start up one of those trifling chats with me that almost personify peace in itself while wearing a wry smile on his face all the while in response to his sister?"
  • "Wait, is this all because I said you wouldn't be? Would you have turned Chinami down "defiance-causally" if I'd instead said you'd be all for it?"
  • "Belatedly so, I learned that while one grain of light may be small, if they amount to near the number of stars in the sky, it reflects like a big light."
  • "The overwhelming amount of red everywhere renders her unable to grasp where she's falling to and from where."
  • "Even if our surroundings were to be painted in the black night, so that neither the sky nor the sea remained, the horizon line alone would still retain its faint glow."
  • "It was undoubted that Isuzu was unaware of what exactly had happened."
  • "The wind, pregnant with moisture, that blows over it is really refreshing and softly makes Asuho's bangs wave."

If you can't see the problems in these, then HoshiMemo will probably be fine for you, honestly. But if you can't see substantial problems in every one of these lines, and you're unwilling to try to learn why all of them are problematic, you shouldn't be involved in a creative writing endeavor.

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3 hours ago, Fred the Barber said:

Oh, christ, I forgot about Libra. I only saw like five screenshots of that, and I'm still sure it's vastly worse than HoshiMemo was. So... let's go with calling HoshiMemo the second-worst thing I saw this year.

Regarding this doubt:

Either the screenshots I posted show obvious problems to you, or they don't, I guess. But to be clear, all screenshots in the review are representative, none more so than "Mare's face is instantly shrouds in a hue of weariness." There are so many problems with that line, but let's try to break them down:

  • "weariness" is a typo, given context: it was supposed to be "wariness"
  • "is shrouds" was obviously supposed to be "is shrouded", so, another typo
  • "is shrouded" is passive voice, which usually you want to avoid. I'm not going to say it's something you should always avoid: that would be a stupid and incorrect thing to say. But I will assert that passive voice is incredibly common in this script and it consistently weakens lines, this one included.
  • "instantly" is a totally unnecessary adverb, which is one of the most reliable ways to weaken prose. There are many rough guidelines in writing, and this is one of the most important: if you're reaching for an adverb, use a better verb instead. Unfortunately, such weakening adverbs are all over this script; they're probably the biggest problem I have with it. Play the game and count the number of occurrences of the words "literally" and "considerably"; I bet there are no fewer than 20 combined. Then read a short novel by your favorite English genre fiction author and count occurrences of those same words. I'll bet you don't find more than one (Jim Butcher seems to always have exactly one "literally" in every Harry Dresden book, presumably just to tweak people's noses...). This is not a coincidence: those words are baggage, weighing down good writing. It also bears mentioning that adjectives can be just as bad as adverbs, and are also overused in this script.
  • "hue" is a blatantly overly literal translation of , and it appears as such many, many times throughout HoshiMemo. What the heck color is a "hue of wariness" supposed to be? I'm sorry, I'm just not synesthetic enough to relate to using color words for emotions like that.

I want to stress: this line is representative. I have hundreds of screenshots I took from the game, the vast majority of which bother me in the writing department almost as much as this line does, often for the same reasons cited up above, often for different ones (notably including redundancy, awkwardness, and unreadability). It took me a solid half hour to pare my HoshiMemo screenshot folder to a shortlist of 46 bad screenshots, and then another half hour to trim that down to the five I finally ended up using in the review (the hard cap I set for myself so the review wasn't just a pile of screenshots). It frustrated me that I had to sacrifice a screenshot that could have gone to bad prose on showing an untranslated line, but I needed one untranslated line screenshot to drive that point home, unfortunately.

So, instead, here are a few choice lines from my screenshot folder (typos theirs, not mine):

 

  • "It is literally just like a flood."
  • "Maybe it is the atmosphere surrounding Asuho that's sealing my mouth."
  • "Just like yesterday, the night sky is flocked with twinkling stars."
  • A pair of lines which have to be taken together to see the nonsense:
    • "Sure gets your heart racing, huh?"
    • "True, anxiety's making mine shoot up like crazy."
  • "It is quite literally just like a flood."
  • "I directed my field of vision, which, unlike as it is with the naked eye, is quite narrow, over towards there."
  • "I don't let even the faintest, most slightest of sounds slip by my ear."
  • "A opportune chance to ensure the survival of Astro Circle that I mustn't let slip out of my grasp."
  • "We are essentially tossing in all of our cards towards this massive, risky gamble."
  • "Will You-san start up one of those trifling chats with me that almost personify peace in itself while wearing a wry smile on his face all the while in response to his sister?"
  • "Wait, is this all because I said you wouldn't be? Would you have turned Chinami down "defiance-causally" if I'd instead said you'd be all for it?"
  • "Belatedly so, I learned that while one grain of light may be small, if they amount to near the number of stars in the sky, it reflects like a big light."
  • "The overwhelming amount of red everywhere renders her unable to grasp where she's falling to and from where."
  • "Even if our surroundings were to be painted in the black night, so that neither the sky nor the sea remained, the horizon line alone would still retain its faint glow."
  • "It was undoubted that Isuzu was unaware of what exactly had happened."
  • "The wind, pregnant with moisture, that blows over it is really refreshing and softly makes Asuho's bangs wave."

If you can't see the problems in these, then HoshiMemo will probably be fine for you, honestly. But if you can't see substantial problems in every one of these lines, and you're unwilling to try to learn why all of them are problematic, you shouldn't be involved in a creative writing endeavor.

 

When I meant the writing I meant the original story writing, not the translation writing lol.

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5 hours ago, NowItsAngeTime said:

 

When I meant the writing I meant the original story writing, not the translation writing lol.

Oh. Well, yeah, my feelings are a bit less strong on that. I do think it's pretty bad there as well, though, especially when it comes to poorly-timed infodumping and manufactured drama (my god, Aoi's route and Asuho's route...).

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9 hours ago, bakauchuujin said:

Wonder how the child of the wind turns out :)

The child's name is rain. And his autistic brother is named hurricane

 

@Silvz

There are more balanced reviews out there. It's a generally good VN though be wary of those claiming its 10/10 it's not at that level yet. It needs to be coupled with Eternal Heart since it's more of a continuation than a fan-disk.

Edited by iamnoob
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On 1/4/2018 at 8:54 PM, littleshogun said:

As for that, I guess it must be because turned out that Hoshimemo here was not the reviewers taste here and therefore it's just a bad luck. Of course review tends to be subjective though, so it's quite debatable whether you could use the score to decide whether you'll buy it or not. In the end, I'll leave the matter to you though whether you'll find that Hoshimemo was good or not.

PS - If you want more positive review, I think there's a lot out there so maybe you could just Google that.

Regardless of bias, it deserved a 1 due to the lack of QC. I hope Irotoridori doesn't turn out as bad, I'd hate if English-only readers were stuck with a subpar version of one of my favorite VNs ever.

13 hours ago, iamnoob said:

 It needs to be coupled with Eternal Heart since it's more of a continuation than a fan-disk.

Seconding this, the two true routes feel incomplete without EH.

Edited by Sion
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2 hours ago, Sion said:

Regardless of bias, it deserved a 1 due to the lack of QC. I hope Irotoridori doesn't turn out as bad, I'd hate if English-only readers were stuck with a subpar version of one of my favorite VNs ever.

Seconding this, the two true routes feel incomplete without EH.

I think you mean. "What QC?"

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