Visual Novel Cafe

[kzel]

Some online shops do international delivery, Amiami.jp comes to mind but I've never tried buying from them, and their selection is quite limited but you may find what you're looking for. For unboxing videos, you can try searching for the game's name on niconico (Japan's youtube).

Interesting recommended route order for Senren * Banka. I would certainly save Rena's route for last, not only because it spoils most of the curse related backstory, but more importantly because it cheapens Yoshino's and Mako's endings by making them feel incomplete. However, I don't think I would keep Murasame route for last as well. I also found it was by far the best route of the game, and playing it first is probably why I didn't give up on the game during some of the other routes. It's fair to want to keep the best for last to keep a more positive lasting impression, but I more and more need some kind of hook to stay interested in a game, something that I doubt Yoshino/Mako or one of the subs could have provided.

I've written some comments about the game in this thread if you care to look : 1 2 3.

 

[Veshurik]

Guys, I also remember when AkabeiSoft3 said that they uses Denuvo since PURELYxCATION. I don't know... how it was ended? I heard that Mimasu (director) really hates foreigners, piracy and low sales of eroge.
Thanks for explanation! Just interesting

 

[Frankincense]

Welp, you’re absolutely right. When I start a game I also usually go for the second best girl first for that kind of hook, but when I wrote that I didn’t think much about the way I play. At least I should have suggested Mako’s route first, because it’s still quite decent compared to Yoshino’s.

I didn’t know about that denuvo feud until you mentioned it now. Interesting. Not sure if foreigners should be grouped together with pirates because not all foreigners are pirates.
I think every game eventually get a crack, unless the crackers deem it’s not worth their time (the protection is too strong, or the game is too crappy to spend any effort, almost always the latter, or etc.)

 

[pingtoryan]

Way I see it, much of these stuff are not intended to reach foreigners' hands, at all. In other words, foreigners are not even in the scope of view for most eroge makers. I doubt that overseas pirate even have any effect because sales are not supposed to come from them (therefore no loss or inconsequential loss), but rather, it's domestic piracy that is affecting...and the domestic piracy seem to source it from the overseas...

...though this seem to be changing. Foreigners getting legit, physical stuff hassle-free is still a long way away because of how the world works...whoever says that the world is borderless is misunderstanding or outright lying...

 

[kzel]

Same here, I don't think foreigners are really much of a concern for most eroge companies, except those that try to sell to western markets of course (nekopara). Piracy has always been the easy excuse for declining game sales even though it's been proven again and again that it has little impact, and it's something that some (like Akabeisoft) like to blame and fight with a range of new tools.

As for Mimasu, didn't he step down from director after the Niiduma Lovely Cation fiasco? For people who didn't follow, the game was a buggy mess mostly because there was an engine switch a few months before release, for the specific purpose of implementing a new DRM scheme. Said scheme got defeated in a matter of days anyways... Natural x Vacation will use the DMM Player DRM platform, so it seems whether or not they used Denuvo, it's gone now.

 

[Frankincense]

Just started Making＊Lovers. It's fast and funny indeed. Got thrown into a route very early. A little surprised how he entered a relationship so fast considering how he vehemently denied one before.
I'm not really a fan of name-your-protag games though. The fact that you can change the protag's name forces every character to avoid saying it, which makes the conversations feel a little unnatural.

Incidentally, Yuzusoft is going to announce their new title this Friday.

 

[pingtoryan]

The "name-your-protag" thing works great in the no-voice era...

...time sure have gone by...

 

[kzel]

Just started Making＊Lovers. It's fast and funny indeed. Got thrown into a route very early. A little surprised how he entered a relationship so fast considering how he vehemently denied one before.
I'm not really a fan of name-your-protag games though. The fact that you can change the protag's name forces every character to avoid saying it, which makes the conversations feel a little unnatural.

Incidentally, Yuzusoft is going to announce their new title this Friday.

I'm using the default name and I haven't really noticed any issue. Heroines and sub-characters alike refer to the protagonist by name (Kazuma).
I've never been a fan of naming protagonists anyway, which is why I tend to stick to the default name all the time. That the voice-acting is still having trouble dealing with custom names (or even choose-from-a-list like in the xCation games) is just one reason for that.

 

[Frankincense]

I'm using the default name and I haven't really noticed any issue. Heroines and sub-characters alike refer to the protagonist by name (Kazuma).
I've never been a fan of naming protagonists anyway, which is why I tend to stick to the default name all the time. That the voice-acting is still having trouble dealing with custom names (or even choose-from-a-list like in the xCation games) is just one reason for that.

Really? I use the default name but everyone still addresses me as お前, あなた, こいつ, etc.

 

[pingtoryan]

Really? I use the default name but everyone still addresses me as お前, あなた, こいつ, etc.

Such moments are brief, you need to be on the lookout for them.

 

[kzel]

Maybe it depends on the route? I distinctly remember Karen calling the protagonist by name on multiple occasions. Obviously Ako calls him oniichan, but his mom calls him by his name as well. I'm just a little bit in Mashiro's route but I think she called him Kazuma once.

EDIT : Speak of the devil, two minutes into the game :

Spoiler: Mashiro route light spoiler

 

[Frankincense]

Oh nvm lol. I just encountered one. There are really not many of these moments.

I tried restarting with some random name and skipping to that part out of curiosity. What the game does is simply cut the name out.

Spoiler

 

[Mahou]

I have been only skimming through a few VNs of the last couple eroge months:
ゆらめく心に満ちた世界で、君の夢と欲望は叶うか: Average. A rather whimsical MC, strange-ish story, "only" fine-ish characters. Despite Konoha's inital hostility towards the MC, I quite liked their interaction once she (finally) had warmed up to him.
まほ×ろば -Witches spiritual home- : Female cast is great. Shizuru's tsundere and occational self-defeating monologues always made me laugh. Kuon, or rather her archetype, was rather annoying mostly, though. Been never a fan of those kind of tropes. MC's quite dense.
Making x Lovers: Dunno why, but I couldn't really get into it. I admit that I didn't expect the scenario to pan out as it did. When I read the summary, it felt like that the MC's background would be adopted accordingly to each female heroine's scenario; similar to 運命線上のφ. Even though that approach is, of course, not flaweless either.
金色ラブリッチェ: The MC was okay-ish, but I'm - as mentioned at some random points already - not a fan of the useless-at-academics trait. Heroines are okay, common route was rather long (which I think is quite normal for Sagaplanet games). I wish the whole hostility in the beginning towards him (as a male commoner) was solved a bit earlier, though. Maybe not the most interesting title of Sagaplanet, but I always welcome their VNs that aren't a huge drama edgy fest like two of their other VNs.

On the other hand, I've been replaying a a few parts of Haruoto Alice * Gram: I really love the ending of chapter 6. The music + the voice acting of the "culprit" made it quite good for me.
I also finished Urara's route in 神頼みしすぎて俺の未来がヤバい。The short-ish drama was kinda expected as the pattern is quite common for these character types. Nontheless I'm quite fond of the title, even though some of Hulotte's summaries feel rather similarly sometimes when you read them *lol*.

 

[Frankincense]

For me, Making * Lovers feels like 5 single-heroine games in a bundle rather than a game. There's almost no interaction between heroines; other girls than my heroine of choice will not appear for the rest of the game, except for maybe Ako because she's the imouto so she's supposed to be around, but even she has minimal screen time in other routes. If you don't find a heroine's traits to your liking, then her route is unsalvageable. Well, despite all that, that doesn't put me off and I've been enjoying the game so far.
(Just found out that the game has special title messages for holidays too. So far I found the ones for Xmas Eve, Xmas, and New Year's Day.)

All the gold hair in Kinkoi is so confusing. =\ I don't actually play any of Saga Planets games in the first place so I think I'll skip that.

Hulotte needs to find a new motif already. =\ There are already Moteyaba, Ichayaba, Yomeyaba and Kamiyaba. Damn that's confusing. Well, guess that doesn't matter much cuz I still love these diabetic and heartwarming stories. I think Yomeyaba is the best of the series. Kamiyaba is nice too but a little shallower. While I simply hate the idea of love spell, which is Moteyaba's main plot device. (Kanae is still among the most adorable heroines I've ever met though.)

And Nanawind announces Haruoto Alice * Gram's sequel, which is to be released this spring. That's exactly as I predicted. =\ Can't help but think why they didn't bring the closure to the story in one installment, but guess I'll still be playing it after all.

 

[Mahou]

Oh, the heroines in MakingxLovers are adorable. It's probably simply that I went with the wrong idea into the VN.
When Kamiyaba had been first announced, I was actually rather unsure whether to play it or not, but I really enjoy Hulotte's general light-hearted tone and characters. I'm not really a fan of Moteyaba's route structure of rejecting one heroine to move to the next one until to reach the route you want. I'm probably too much of a softie for that *lol*. But I give them credits that they (tried to) make the MC grow through that literally heart-breaking procedure, and that especially in Kanae's route the friendship of the group remained strong as ever to even help him overcome the supernatural backlash at the end.

The heroines with only golden hair was - at least according to wikipedia - done intentionally in order to go with the theme of the "Golden Time"
Hm, I only finished Yaya's route in Hauruoto so I can't say too much of a sequel being needed. I would guess it may be related to Zero/Under One, even though the VN seemed to be hinting enough that it would be that certain character who gave the MC his real Arcana Card.

 

[kzel]

I've been reading VNs sporadically, still no completed titles but if someone cares for partial opinions, here goes:

Making*Lovers : I finished Mashiro and Reina routes, currently pondering whether to go for Saki's in the future or not. The thing is, each route structure is extremely similar and it's pretty easy to predict when the dates or ecchi scenes will happen just based on the chapter number. While I found Mashiro's route enjoyable thanks to her odd and funny character, I was less of a fan of Reina as the writer tried too hard to create gap moe (this is something that is true for the whole game, but especially Reina) by having her radically switch behavior and sometimes make completely dumb action (like the trigger for her confession, what the heck...).

アマカノ～Second Season～＋: I was not very fond of the first Amakano+ fandisk for the first game, and this one just accentuates what was wrong with it. Maybe replaying Yuzuka's route first was a bad idea (and even then, I skipped the appends and shouldn't have since an important promise is made in the last one). Now, I haven't played very far yet, but the main problem is that the characters have stopped growing and it's all about the couples enjoying their lives together as everything moves smoothly and perfectly around them. I really enjoyed seeing Yuzuka grow from a shut-in bookworm to a more assertive person in the base game, but I just can't bring myself to play this sequel more than a few scenes at a time.

なちゅらるばけーしょん: What happens when you take away Hibiki-Works particular gameplay and turn the game into a low-price quick money grab? A boring moege that recycles tropes about the countryside that were outdated 10 years ago (because you know : they have smartphones but never use internet or instant messaging, field work and professional fishing is done "the old way" and not using complicated weather forecast systems and GPS, nobody locks their doors, etc...). As someone who lives in the countryside (admittedly not Japan's), I can say it's all bullshit. The heroines are all over the protagonist from the start since he's the only teenage male around, and said protagonist is so amazed at life in the countryside that he forgot how he spent his time before. It's hard to believe a current-age teen doesn't spend hours a day on his phone or play any mobile game. Add in a good old festival to trigger some feeling for one heroine or the other in the heart of our young boy, and you've just created one the blandest game I've played in quite a while. Maybe it'll get better in the later parts, maybe...

 

[Frankincense]

Wow. I roughly think the same. I'm not really a fan of oddball characters but Mashiro's route is surprising enjoyable while Reina's is a bit of a letdown.

BTW, had anyone played wagahigh? I'm not interested at first but it has been somewhat popular here.

 

[kzel]

BTW, had anyone played wagahigh? I'm not interested at first but it has been somewhat popular here.

I played it and its fandisk, and written a few comments on this thread : WagaHigh / Fandisk

If you have any questions do ask and I'll try to jog my memory about the game.

 

[Mahou]

Wagahigh is not too bad. I'm personally a fan of Ashe's route as her tsundere act in combination with slowly falling for the MC always made me grin or smile and I liked their interaction pre-confession too. The MC isn't too bad but the comedy trope with his imouto and her best friend verbally "owning" him is something I wouldn't consider a preference. It's not completely negative, but he seems to be portrayed as somewhat of a push-over at times.

 

[qing]

When it comes to Guilty games, is it no longer possible to find codes/links for their DLC patches? If I could get some pointers on how/where to look, I'd even be willing to try finding them myself, but I'm bothered by the fact that they just seem completely unavailable now when I found the ones for the first couple Yobai games without a real problem.

 

[Aquahorse]

I am sorry, can upload visual novels to MEGA? It's very fast to download. Also on torrents sometimes there are no seeds.

 

[Veshurik]

I am sorry, can upload visual novels to MEGA? It's very fast to download. Also on torrents sometimes there are no seeds.

It's a nice idea, but MEGA is limited to 50Gb... What visual novels do you want?

 

[Aquahorse]

It's a nice idea, but MEGA is limited to 50Gb... What visual novels do you want?

Different, simply there is low speed on other filehosts... And on many torrents here there are no seeds...

 

[Veshurik]

I just remember how I uploaded on MEGA DLC for Noratoto (from artbook), and file was banned later. So, I really don't know why it can happens...

 

[Aquahorse]

Yeah, it can happen occasionally, but anyway MEGA can be a choice too.