Harlequin

Woot, those are some sweet sprites (chibis too). Well done there man.

Man, I really wanna read I/O now. Hungry for it. Want to see what it's all about!

Ryukishi07... clearly. His characters tend to be very, very memorable and awesome. And overall I simply like his style of writing. I've only read Higurashi and Umineko so I can only really comment on those, but I love the way the story progresses in both and the pacing in them. Also, I like how he tends to include something extra after each chapter/arc/episode, and how he encourages you to THINK about what's going on. It's fun. Both Higurashi and Umineko are such great journeys. More can be said but you get the idea. Second favourite is probably Kotaro Uchikoshi, who worked on Ever17, 999, Virtue's Last Reward, etc.

For Killer Queen, I'm just gonna go ahead and guess that missing out on the H-scenes won't really matter. I wouldn't know for sure since I haven't read it, but that's what I'm guessing. Remember, they're only removing the H-scenes themselves. It won't be like Moenovel's release of Konosora, in which they went out of their way to remove a whole bunch of other things as well... like ecchi comedy bits and references (?), and censoring of ecchi CGs (tits, basically... whoopiedo). And perhaps most importantly, Killer Queen looks like a thriller/mystery story VN. So it's quite possible that those h-scenes are just... well... fan-service, whatever. Useless. Stuff that I personally would just CTRL skip anyway. IF they turn out to be reeeally important somehow (which I doubt), then we'll still get references to them according to Lemnisca, since they're not removing those. I'm not worried at all... You wouldn't read a VN like this for H-scenes in the first place, and references are enough anyway.

Fortune Summoners was a lot of fun. The control scheme in it reminded me of fighting games to be honest (when you play as Arche, strictly speaking), which made the combat both fun and challenging. Plenty of combos to pull off, some of which are not so easy to do when you're busy thinking about other stuff. I really liked that, but I know some others didn't.

JAST's Steins;Gate release will be delayed until March 31 :/ JAST USA Delays Steins;Gate PC Game Until March 31 - News - Anime News Network ... I'll prolly just read I/O then when that comes out. Maybe. I dunno. That could get delayed as well, who knows.

http://myanimelist.net/profile/Harlequina

^ Agreed, it's cute. Oh and honestly, it looks like Violet Hill might be the next and second great OELVN that I get to read (Katawa Shoujo being the first one). Really. You're obviously very enthusiastic and serious about it, and you seem to know exactly what you want to do with the story in it. It's romance - but also sci-fi, which makes it more interesting to me personally. And I'm liking the photorealistic backgrounds... several awesome VNs use that and it definitely works. As for public domain music... you know, the original (masterpiece) Higurashi sound novel series is also using that (only arcs 1-4). And in Higurashi's case, it's pretty damn good for just being free music. As long as each song fits well, it's totally fine. Just sayin'. *shrug* Guess I just wanted to throw that out there!

Yes. But of course there are other things that need to be done before it's ready to go. Merry Christmas | Nanu's TL Dumps

Happy New Year EG!!!

There's a new Higurashi game being worked on!!!!!!!!!! https://twitter.com/Yirba/status/417852461261418496/photo/1 https://twitter.com/Yirba/status/417853231952191488/photo/1 With a new character! Wonder what they're like. - Yirba

This one is always sooooooo good.

...................................... That's pretty big.

Merry Christmas EG! Yes I put a hat on my avatar as well... Santa Rena, why not.

I bought the updated versions of Ys 1 & 2 on Steam. Was cool, but stopped playing fairly early for no particular reason. I can't say I've played any game with a combat system like that before. :S Takes a bit getting used to.

Filled with people, as in, many people suddenly appear that will try one VN? It's tough. I assume their tastes are mixed? Ah well no need to take it so seriously, lol. Well for example, if a massive amount of mystery lovers appeared and would with certainty try one VN, then I'd show them Umineko. No question about that. But as a -general- VN to show to a mix of all kinds of people... ummmmmm... very tough... mmmaybe the Muv-Luv series (let's just count it as one VN for this), since I gather it's pretty easy for a lot of people to enjoy it if they give it a chance. It's an impressive series. Or maybe Ever17, because it has many of the things usually found in VNs and of course a great story that is extremely fitting for this medium (you know what I'm talking about if you've read it).

No idea... ... both are tempting. I know less about I/O than Steins;Gate though, and it might be nice to go into it with zero knowledge and before hearing a bunch of stuff about it from other people who finished it/are reading it. Maximum mystery feels!

Now I'm curious just how close I/O's release will be to the Steins;Gate one... man, that's gonna be a hard choice if they're really close, 'cause I'm almost definitely gonna read one of them at that point.

Danganronpa. Grisaia had some very high points for me (you know what I'm talking about if you've read it), but they weren't exactly all over the place... more like rare cases if you consider the entire VN, so yea. Had more fun with Danganronpa overall. And I haven't read Rewrite... maybe I would've picked that one, but who can say now.

[spoiler=Danganronpa][ Mmmmyup I remember that. Honestly, Hagakure should've just had his title changed to Super Duper High School Idiot in the second half of the game, lol. Wouldn't even have been a surprise! I mean, at that point, you only really had two other competent characters (Togami & Kirigiri) left for the trials. Even so, that thing you mentioned is silly either way of course. But it is what it is. You just solve it and move on with the rest of the trial, and accept that Hagakure is simply an idiot. That's what I did anyway. Think they even joked around about him not having his character defined at the start of the game... which is true, 'cause back then he was a nobody pretty much. Seriously thought he would be one of the first to die. As for the choice, well I figured that trusting her about the Puppetmaster and the trap would be the 'right' choice (Don't reveal her lie)... maybe a bit naive, but it was more or less a hunch that that would be the 'good' choice in the end. I remember the characters mentioning that there was something fishy going on with the trial, so yea. Well I saved the game (which turned out to be unnecessary) and went with the other choice instead to get a bad ending first, if there was one. Which there was! Kind of. Fucking hell, the implications in that CG, lol.

Danganronpa. Had a looooooot of fun with it... was much better than I thought it would be actually. Pleasantly surprised! I mean, I had as much fun with this as 999 basically, all thanks to the story and the characters themselves. Seriously, I freakin' love most (NOT all) of these characters. They're simply fun and, well, 'exciting' to see I guess you could say. BUT! Sometimes they can be overly stupid... if you've played the game then you know what I mean. There's some great music in there that gets you PUMPED. In fact the story itself gets you pumped numerous times... those last chapters man, wwwwow. It's a bit reminiscent of Phoenix Wright and certain other VNs that way. One thing that definitely surprised me about it though is just how emotional it got at times. Some tears were shed, that's for sure. Danganronpa is a murder mystery, but truthfully, it was obvious what was going on at several points in the story. Or at the very least it was easy to make reasonable guesses that usually turned out to be correct. But you know what? Even when it sometimes did feel too obvious, it was still fun to actually go through. To discover and reveal things. To see the characters discuss about the mysteries (some hiccups along the way though...). In other words, it was just straight up entertaining... for me. And no it's not like EVERYTHING was obvious in it, nooo no no no. I certainly were surprised by plenty of events, but perhaps not as much as in some other mystery stories. Oh and Phoenix Wright isn't any more difficult to figure out than Danganronpa, yet it's still awesome. Why? Because there's much more to it than just figuring out culprits and other mysteries. It's the exact same thing with Danganronpa. It's the epicness, the feeling, the character interactions, the music, the atmosphere, the intense drama, the comedy (yes), etc. etc. So there you go. Thought I might as well throw that in there. I wouldn't say the gameplay itself was great, but it was still interesting. I haven't played anything similar before... well, you do present evidence like in Phoenix Wright, but you do it in several different and fairly unique ways. Hmm, what more... I'm looking forward to the sequel a lot. If you've played the first one then you know exactly why. Can't friggin' wait! Almost willing to get a Vita for it if it ends up being an official release on that instead of the fan translation on PSP. Rating? Something like 8.8-9.0/10 I think. Feeling a bit hyped up about it right after finishing it, so we'll see. [spoiler=All of Danganronpa 1] Favourite character? EASY CHOICE. She's literally the first character I've seen in a VN that actually kinda resembles "an evil, crazy, female jester-like character". In other words, Harley Quinn from Batman. Look, she even got the colours right for that! Her clothes are awesome, her looks in general are awesome, her personality personalities are awesome, she's utterly mad and her voice acting is GREAT. http://i.imgur.com/9OYrIT0.jpg

Gonna read (or play, whatever) Danganronpa, whyyy not! Been a while now since last I read a VN to be honest.

Katawa Shoujo. Technically 999, but didn't know what visual novels were back then and didn't realize that 999 was one. I just thought; "Oh, this is a text-heavy mystery game with puzzles in it." Of course it was really great, loved it, but I didn't learn about visual novels through it... So yea, thank you Katawa Shoujo for ultimately letting me have sooooooo much fun with amazing titles like Umineko, Higurashi, Ever17, MLA, etc.