Uzuki Sepia

Haven't tried it, but that guy originally put the translated chapters as videos on YouTube. Some people on reddit said it's some kind of edited machine translation or whatever... I dunno. It didn't look that bad from what I saw on YouTube. This patch release is probably improved also.

 

But anyway, those chapters will be translated by MG eventually.

The fact that Hou was going to be translated by MG got under my radar too, good to know.

ef didn't have any animation at all other than lip synching.

It had, that I can remember, simple animations for lips, eyelids, walking movements during close ups, the two openings made by Shinkai Makoto and an animated ending.

---

I noticed on db that a patch for Higurashi Hou was released in january... has anyone tried it?

^ Getting the 5 main endings is enough to play Agave, there's no need to play the sub-routes to unlock it.

About that, I'm done with the 5 girls too and was surprised by Wanko's route, I liked it. I'm reading the sub-routes first to keep stuff like Momoyo vs Shakadou for last. I'm pissed off for Kuki Ageha though... why does this thing have a sequel and 354 FD and not a route for her? Isn't her HAHAHA! good enough?

Uh... Fate didn't have the whole "Straight Guy" routine. And Muv Luv, sure, the first part was kinda meh, but once it kicks in, it was the best VN I've read.

Fate arc is 25-30 hours of repeated kitchen sketches and Holy Grail war rules, if you were able to go through that or the first part of Muv Luv to get to the interesting parts you can probably do the same with Rewrite or Clannad until the comedic parts are over imo. It will take a while, but it should be feasible.

I wonder if mr. "since pokemon games are in kana if you know the language well you can read whatever in kana" and other such bullshit is getting the implications now. I'd guess he doesen't, but I'll lurk the chat to find out.

Majikoi

I didn't expect this to live up to its reputation and in fact it's not really surprising me, but still I'm enjoying it to some degree. The Kazama Family bunch is nothing I would spend time talking about, but this game has a lot of side characters that probably won't appear on screen long enough to get boring. I've played Yukie and Chris and now I'm starting Momoyo's route.

The prologue part was about fine and I have at least mixed feeling toward Yukie since in her route there's that Wakamoto's voiced badass of the prime minister (and, well, I'll admit that I found the Matsukaze thing to be quite funny), but Chris had no such saving grace. I noticed that I basically like people from 2-S more, Jun is fav chara alongside the prime minister and Kokoro is my fav girl despite not usually being into that kind of character, which is quite strange considered that in this medium I have a bit of a soft spot for genki heroines. Also, I won't name them all but there are a lot of side characters, like Azumi, that strike me the right way.

Also, thumb up for the OST since while I don't really care about voice acting in this medium as long it's somehow proper, in genres like comedy it makes the difference and bgm isn't bad either.

Art looks good, especially the sprites but it has a somewhat low number of CGs that to be fair -when taking into account how expensive this thing got because of voice acting- it's easily forgivable.

I wonder if this game is really 50+ hours long, doesen't look like that for now.

If you managed to read Fate and Muv Luv you can go through both Rewrite and Clannad all right.

For Utawarerumono I'd like for someone else to confirm if

, since it has been a few years for me and I don't really remember but I can tell you that

About Romanesque, you can see the gameplay for example at 18:00, point being getting the best combination of spells in order to make more points... to get more spells required for the quests you have to go through to reach all the endings

A lighthearted one, it's mainly a comedy/slice of life and imo is very nice. I'm sorry to hear that about MGQ and Kikokugai, but if it's any consolation I can tell you I found the second game of MGQ to be a lot better than the first (that truthfully wasn't as bad as I expected).

Ah, if you liked Demonbane there are two short games from the same author that have a translation, Guilty Crown Lost Christmas and Dra-Koi. Lost Christmas is a youtube translation though, here's the first

I, for one, liked enough Demonbane, liked Lost Christmas even more (I really disliked the anime, but the vn does what the anime tried and failed to do) and disliked Dra-Koi despite it having a nice idea behind it.

Utawarerumono and Girlish Grimoire Littlewitch Romanesque have both gameplay, great art and nice characters. They are both medieval/past-tinged fantasy (japanese the former and european the latter) and both have sexual contents, without rape and such. Another fitting game would be Monster Girl Quest, with a few drawbacks -bad art and the reverse-rape/torture when you lose- but looks a lot like a game you might like.

If you can bear comedy rape and a rapist MC that isn't kind, funny -though a lot of people find him funny- or interesting then there's also Sengoku Rance that has both great art and gameplay and a fantasy medieval Japan -warring state period- setting.

Changing completely genre, there's Kikokugai that features great characters, fights, a very cool cyberpunk setting and great atmospheres. It's very dark. There are two version avaiable: the original one has graphic sexual contents while the newer is almost ten years younger and features completely redone graphics, voices and doesen't graphically show sexual contents. For the first experience I'd suggest the original.

Furthermore, if Cartagra is one of your favourites you should really get your hands on Kara no Shoujo since Cartagra has ties with it. Kara no Shoujo has pretty much all of Cartagra qualities -but better- and shares none of the defects. That said, Cartagra is easy-going to some extent while Kara no Shoujo is not and that might not be a positive thing for some people.

Also, long story short, Muv-Luv Alternative, Steins;Gate and Kono Yo no Hate de Koi wo Utau Shoujo YU-NO.

There are also things I won't say about one or more of these titles because of spoilers, but yeah, there's more.

Last time I forgot to drop a comment about Romanesque, I'll do that now

It was slightly different from what I expected but nonetheless it was a cute one. Ooyari managed to stand out even more than usual imo, I ended up rating the artwork a full 10/10. I feel like Quartett! charades at times was able to reach slightly higher peaks but this one has so many styles mixed in and all are so beautiful that in the end it probably edges over a little, and the backgrounds were awesome to say the least, they managed to drive my attention away from the characters amazing me each time a new one showed up.

They are the very best I got to see in this medium up to now. This game also features a good OST, more than proper.

The game itself is actually pretty short, I think I got to reach all the endings reading about 15 hours worth of text, might have been more but not by much, planning about how to go about them efficently probably took me more than reading half of them all.

All in all it was a fantasy themed comedy/sol, with short stories for each heroine that were a bit longer for Kaya and Aria. It's a game that really doesen't ask for anything other than being cute and gets the job done, as it is something that gets to make the player smile here and there. I appreciated the approach, because it's actually really hard to make something genuinely funny and is still something really personal, but felt that Romanesque wasn't so "mild" as to be boring, though it wouldn't surprise me to hear about people that might have gotten a bit bored with it along the way. The only little letdown was that most epilogues were too short, but I didn't particularly care for most of the stories anyway. Won't even count the fact that Domino was a pretty presenceless mc (I prefer that to reading wot about what's going on inside the head of the usual moron) and overall I enjoyed the cast, Aria probably a bit more of the others.

The minigame grew a bit monotonous but as I often say I'm really easy to please when it comes to gameplay, I still had fun for most of the game.

Eden

Cheesy, uninspired, boring and whatnot but with good backgrounds and Tenmon, who even alone could make trash* look good.

The man who wrote this knows better than that, ef proves it.

*note that I'm not really talking about Eden when I say trash

I'm on the verge of dropping a vn for the first time, Comyu. I don't like chuuni and started this one ready to close an eye about that in deference to its other qualities, but at this point chuuni doesn't even register as a problem anymore in my book.

I'm pretty much at the start of the last third of Benio's route but I don't think I can win this battle.

Well, it was partially because it was recommended to me by a certain someone (can you guess who? ), but I had also wanted to compare it to the previous VN that I read, Hoshizora... and as I said in my post, it took less than a year to read, so I think DCII won that little competition. I was planning on reading Kara Shoujo either next or soon, which is especially topical because the second game should hopefully be TL'd soon-ish (citation needed). I was also contemplating reading some like Yu-No, which is supposed to be really amazing and a classic. That said, I legitimately got lost the previous time I attempted to play Yu-No (well done me) because there were too many branches and then my guide ceased to make sense -.- . Still, I definitely want to go back to it, I just have to be more careful when playing it since it is pretty complex. But those are the VNs I was sort of thinking about reading next.

 

And, of course, whenever the hell Little Busters EX is bloody well finished I'll drop everything and read that, but who knows when that'll be.

About YU-NO, the walkthrough on vndb isn't bad at all. I came across a couple of problems using that, the first time in the shed (you mustn't click on the door in the back while it says something like "click on everything") and then, probably in Kanna's route, when a certain someone wasn't showing up in front of her apartment (moving around aimlessy solved that for me), but is otherwise fairly reliable.

Back to DC, I've been conflicted about moving to DC 2 for a long time now, it looks fairly appealing but I found the first one to be an excruciating experience... still haven't decided what to do.

A couple of days ago I read on db that Mahoyo tl project was most probably dead

edit: found it https://vndb.org/r23839.8

I did not want to include it because its a Youtube based translation, but since you are still willing to vote for it i will add it.

Ty.

I hope for a patch to come out eventually, iirc someone was interested in making one.

Atm I'd vote Guilty Crown: Lost Christmas (that isn't listed).

Cartagra and Guilty Crown Lost Christmas

I've been eager to read Cartagra for a while but buts. It has visuals, good BGM and whatever it talks about it usually does in a fairly distinguished manner but true end aside* kind of manages to border on mediocrity with unyelding perseverance. Felt like the popularized version of a good vn.

I might fathom the reasons (could have been a user-friendly start to draw people in) and looking at the results I could just drop the subject but any way you look at it I was expecting a little more. If anything the writer, Iida Kazuhiko, is the guy who wrote Quartett!, which I liked until the story of the chinese girl. To be fair he was also one of Period's writers, and that thing as a story is a mess but I never bothered to find out who wrote what.

* might have been a little harsh here, Hatsune's end and Kazuna normal end were at least fine. Actually I'm not even sure how to feel about the true end since it's interesting but with Nana über alles goes overboard.

That aside Shugo is my new hero

And now to Guilty Crown Lost Christmas

I had the misfortune of laying these eyes of mine on the anime series and I still consider it to be one of the worst anime to date, despite being great production-wise. I watched Lost Christmas OVA too but it was very short and just a big commercial for the vn anyway.

The anime tried to squeeze in heavy themes and I really wish it didn't; until I read the youtube-based translation of the vn I also wished I could forget about the brand altogether.

But Lost Christmas, despite being a short reading (about 3 hours listening voiced lines to the end) managed to do what the main series didn't. It isn't only heavier, the way it treats the subject is pretty good, though I guess I should say it "uses" it well and not only because of the catchphrase ("use me").

It is mostly fights paired with top notch art but

Keeping the most popular romance-oriented titles out, if you're searching for something orthodox then you probably want to check out Sharnoth, while if you don't mind something "different" -by the standards of this medium at least- then Forest, Kara no Shoujo and YU-NO have nice stuff there for you. Have to say that the latters aren't too focused on romance, but YU-NO even has more than a relationship worth talking about, for example (I'm putting it under spoiler to be safe but it's just the nature of one of those relationships I'm talking about, not something that really needs to be kept secret anyway if you ask me)

.

Also, while Forest is very peculiar, the main love story is more prosaic than what you would think and you could intepret it as being all about that. At least I did.

Can't talk about KnS without spoiling so I won't, but it's basically something in which the really good things are pretty subtle.

There's also Umineko that scores pretty well in the romance department.

^

Check what?

Check what kanji was used in the japanese text when the context doesen't make obvious what kanji/compound was intended.

It wouldn't make much difference and maybe make it even worse in some cases. I can't say for certain, but I would guess that there are a lot more homonyms in Japanese then English, so sometimes the kanji actually helps you figure out the correct meaning. If you know how to read Japanese really good it wouldn't make any difference (Pokemon games are written fully in hiragana/katakana), but if you're "not there yet" it helps to have the kanji sometimes. That's my experience at least. Also, please don't write romanji, it's rōmaji/romaji.

Sadly (?), the amount of effort needed to check every time context doesen't suffice would be way greater than the one needed to translate from the mix kanji/kana.

And nevermind pokemon games (I'd guess that they are written in a certain way because the main target are small children that don't know a lot of kanji anyway), to read only in romaji or kana would be undoable even for japanese people.

Also, I'm really happy about MG licensing Ourai no Gahkthun, though I don't know if I'm more interested in the game itself or in seeing how does a WAB sound when translated by a good translator.

They were recruiting a new editor for it on commiesubs not too long ago. Safe to say we'll still be waiting for this one for a while.

Ty.

At least the long-awaited ImoparaComyu is getting near, things still look good.

edit: didn't see the last post and well shit, maybe not too good. I was thinking in terms of months but I was probably wrong. As scarcely informed as I am, it kinda looked strange since the tl was completed before last year ended -as scheduled, if I'm not mistaking it with something else.-

What's the situation with Mahoyo?

And how many times have I said I'm no master of the language? I know enough to not be completely useless, and that's all I need for my position.

 

*Looks at Gerard*

"Why do we let him breathe?"

Can you tell me where did you read "Omogokotsumamugi" (or everything else you wrote)? I've put down the thingh for myself and... well, it came out something totally different.

I'm not asking to make fun of you, just out of curiosity (for real, lol).

My objection was not about your method for searching Kanjis. It was about you implying that any person, even a beginner, can just translate all the Japanese they want if the only thing they know is how to search for the Kanjis. Which, being a Japanese language student myself, I strongly disagree.

 

Maybe I understood wrong, but I guess the whole point of Gerard posting that piece of Japanese text was to try to gauge the level of fluency of that other guy. If so, then I can safely say that it will take a translator with at least a good amount of skills to be able to handle the job. Just searching for Kanjis all the time, without no background on grammar, particles and other stuff, not only it's awfully ineffective it's also virtually impossible.

 

But I don't know. Maybe I understood everything wrong. If I did. I apologize.

Well, by "if your level isn't really 0" I was implying a little knowledge that's surely needed, if one knows nothing at all, this person isn't even going to know where to look at. Btw "friends like before", I too apologize for the answer.

LOL You can't even read a road sign and you're talking shit to me.

 

Come back when your skills in Japanese get a little better than just thinking the language is all about searching for Kanjis like a retarded moron.

 

Which is never gonna happen anyway. We can all see you learned about 10 Kanjis and like to brag as if you're some kinda of expert.

 

Stop embarrassing yourself, kiddo.

 

(FYI: I'm not Killer)

Killer posted in shout, I answered here.

And just in case (since you clearly don't know) that's the way you are told to search for kanji on paper dictionaries (if you can't draw them on a denshi jisho like japanese in school do, I had to grab one too). You go by number of strokes and radicals, it's common sense, so I don't really see why you had to say it was a load of crap.

Also, I study japanese and... know so little that I could say I know jack shit about it atm, so I have really no need/possibility to brag about anything (just finished first year in university, no prior study on internet by myself).

LOL what a load of crap.

You are a load of crap. Take for example the third kanji, since the kanji for hachigatsu are two radicals. You take the radical, that if you aren't an animal like yourself you know; you go on denshi jisho and the like and find in ten seconds that the third kanji is yoru, night. Moron.

And excuse me Killer, I'm obviously not up to you, so awesome that can read a fucking nukige at snail pace (and probably getting shit anyway).

Lol I was writing gomben (instead of hito).

It's just a slow process if you have to search for every kanji, but plenty doable.