|
So apparently there's some new VN localization company in town. Link here. Supposedly it's another conglomeration of Japanese companies trying to break into the Western market ala Mangagamer. All the other VN forums I post in are all abuzz about it, surprised no one has mentioned it here yet. Mostly all I've heard so far is lots of crying that they're cutting all the porn content and getting an ESRB rating - to appeal to a wider demographic I guess? Anyway the game they're bringing over - If My Heart Had Wings - looks interesting. The only other title we have in English by that company is Princess Waltz (which is sort of meh in my book) and I really don't know anything about it but I suppose we can at least be sure it will be a story heavy VN (as opposed to nukiage, which is what Mangagamer has been making GBS threads out recently) which is a plus. Lots of people seem to be really upset about them cutting the porn because it's such a huge part of the story  however, there might be some glimmer of a legitiment complaint in there. Apparently the base game has 463 standard CGs 646 porn CGs and 110 chibi CGs. I dunno how that stacks up to a typical VN but it seems like an awful lot of cut content to me. Hopefully nothing too important gets lost in translation, heh.
|
#
?
May 13, 2013 16:13
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 7, 2024 20:59 |
|
|
 I re-read Anzu's route in Da Capo II, to see if it really was as enjoyable as I thought it was when I first read it. It was, at least almost! I really didn't expect that. I would actually go so far as to say it's my favorite route in any light-hearted VN I've read so far. I'm not entirely sure why, but it might have something to do with how drat reasonable the character is. At no point do misundertandings, jealousy or some other silly thing become an issue. The ending was something of a cop-out, though. Still, it was touching, in a way. Also, well, thanks to how the common route constantly has character-specific scene choices, the whole route felt focused from beginning to end. Especially when compared to e.g. Hoshizora no Memoria with its enormously long and linear common route. My definition of light-heartedness would be that the overall focus is on comedy and relationships rather than some great struggle, and tragic endings are rare. There can be supernatural elements or some other small external source of drama. By that definition, the light-hearted VNs I've read are Katawa Shoujo, Hoshizora No Memoria, Da Capo I-II, Katahane, Otoboku, Muv-Luv Extra and arguably Little Busters and Ef.
|
|
#
?
May 13, 2013 16:31
|
|
|
Sinking Ship posted:So apparently there's some new VN localization company in town. Link here. Supposedly it's another conglomeration of Japanese companies trying to break into the Western market ala Mangagamer. All the other VN forums I post in are all abuzz about it, surprised no one has mentioned it here yet. Mostly all I've heard so far is lots of crying that they're cutting all the porn content and getting an ESRB rating - to appeal to a wider demographic I guess? Anyway the game they're bringing over - If My Heart Had Wings - looks interesting. The only other title we have in English by that company is Princess Waltz (which is sort of meh in my book) and I really don't know anything about it but I suppose we can at least be sure it will be a story heavy VN (as opposed to nukiage, which is what Mangagamer has been making GBS threads out recently) which is a plus.
|
|
#
?
May 13, 2013 16:42
|
|
|
Nate RFB posted:That is a loving shitload of porn. Does that count different versions of the same CG? Because, well, there's probably gonna be versions with different facial expressions and... fluids. Ugh.
|
|
#
?
May 13, 2013 16:51
|
|
|
Nate RFB posted:That is a loving shitload of porn. I've never bother to get CG counts on any of the novel length VNs I've read so like I said I don't really know how it compares, but yea - seems like a lot. All being cut out apparently.
|
|
#
?
May 13, 2013 16:51
|
|
|
Wouldn't it be easier to get a VN that didn't focus so much on the porn, anyway?
|
|
#
?
May 13, 2013 16:59
|
|
|
That was my thought, why pick such a porny game if they want to release something clean? Beats me.
|
|
#
?
May 13, 2013 17:05
|
|
|
Whatever happened to Steins;Gate supposedly getting licensed and maaaaaybe getting put up on Steam? 
|
|
#
?
May 13, 2013 17:09
|
|
|
JAST are still 'looking into it', unless things have changed recently. I wouldn't hold my horses because of their history of getting games out in a timely manner. However, the translator's page promises a 'Super Secret, special summer announcement soon'. I doubt it's got anything to do with Steam, though. It's likely they'd have to get through the terrible Greenlight process first.
|
|
#
?
May 13, 2013 17:21
|
|
|
The problem with this whole MoeNovel outfit isn't the exclusion of porn, but the horrid translation quality of the game demo they put out. It's on par or worse than some low quality VN fan translations. They claim the final release will be fixed up, but I find that very hard to believe if they put such low effort into a publicly released demo. It's a major red flag that they said it'll be revised only after the localization quality was complained about. Not that I'm particularly surprised we're getting amateur hour with a new company in this tiny market. Check out some of these, uh, amazing screenshots. It's a really weird, probably unedited localization, likely by a non-native English speaker.     There's other  lines like a character talking about the meaning of a name's "Chinese character" (bizarre localization of kanji) and the protagonist thinking to himself about "the disability in a girl's legs". Plus an incredible translation note inline with the dialog box about "Aniki means an older brother".
Cough Drop The Beat fucked around with this message at 18:25 on May 13, 2013 |
|
#
?
May 13, 2013 17:39
|
|
|
That's some of the most stilted writing I've ever seen.
|
|
#
?
May 13, 2013 18:07
|
|
|
Sinking Ship posted:So apparently there's some new VN localization company in town. Link here. Supposedly it's another conglomeration of Japanese companies trying to break into the Western market ala Mangagamer. All the other VN forums I post in are all abuzz about it, surprised no one has mentioned it here yet. Mostly all I've heard so far is lots of crying that they're cutting all the porn content and getting an ESRB rating - to appeal to a wider demographic I guess? Anyway the game they're bringing over - If My Heart Had Wings - looks interesting. The only other title we have in English by that company is Princess Waltz (which is sort of meh in my book) and I really don't know anything about it but I suppose we can at least be sure it will be a story heavy VN (as opposed to nukiage, which is what Mangagamer has been making GBS threads out recently) which is a plus. The most interesting thing about this is: http://www.play-asia.com/If_My_Heart_Had_Wings_Code_Only-paOS-13-71-1sj-49-en-70-6ijb.html quote:Please note that this code has to be redeemed through STEAM, we'll be sending out the code only & not in a game file!
|
|
#
?
May 13, 2013 18:13
|
|
|
Tamba posted:The most interesting thing about this is: Oh god, how did something so poorly translated and niche survive the Greenlight process?
|
|
#
?
May 13, 2013 19:15
|
|
|
It never went through greenlight.
|
|
#
?
May 13, 2013 19:41
|
|
|
Tamba posted:It never went through greenlight. Yup. MoeNovel is probably a subsidiary of Will, Pulltop's parent company, who are the developers of If My Heart Had Wings. I'm sure they have the support of one or more publishers already on Steam (or they otherwise threw a chunk of cash towards Valve, not being some small indie devs), since that allows them to bypass the Greenlight process. Sadly. Reading a little more about this because it's entertaining, apparently they removed kissing animation, in addition to the sexual content, and claim they "restricted the dialogues to be similar to the Japanese version". Which means they're revising the script because of all the criticism, but it'll still read like stilted weirdness as if a Japanese dude wrote it. Cough Drop The Beat fucked around with this message at 22:27 on May 13, 2013 |
|
#
?
May 13, 2013 21:02
|
|
|
This seems to be an official response from them:http://vndb.org/t4066/6#136 posted:Thank you for your interest in our game. I am sorry to say that the game does not have any sex scenes. Explicit content has been removed, but original content still remain.
|
|
#
?
May 13, 2013 21:16
|
|
|
Nate RFB posted:Whatever happened to Steins;Gate supposedly getting licensed and maaaaaybe getting put up on Steam? Supposedly there is going to be some sort of update regarding that at Anime Expo in early July. Both the JAST twitter account and the fan translator's blog have talked about something happening then.
|
|
#
?
May 13, 2013 23:05
|
|
|
Nate RFB posted:That is a loving shitload of porn. Apparently there are 3-4 scenes per route, each containing a large number of CG variants.
|
|
#
?
May 14, 2013 03:47
|
|
|
quote:the player can make use of their imagination. This is the best selling point. Finished Rewrite Divorcing your final arc from 90% of your characters and their development (including the MC himself) was not a good idea. It eventually felt more like reading a checklist of plot points.
|
|
#
?
May 14, 2013 07:03
|
|
|
.Clash posted:This is the best selling point. Yeah I loving hated Terra. Moon was very good though.
|
|
#
?
May 14, 2013 07:06
|
|
|
.Clash posted:This is the best selling point.  The translation looks horrid but understandable. That's not saying much but the bar is set pretty low in this market. On the topic of CG counts, I've never given it much thought, but apparently 40+ of the CGs are various shots of an airplane on a sky background, sorta makes me wonder if a VN typically has a whole ton more CGs than I give it credit for - just with miniscule differences from image to image. Honestly 1100+ CGs seems like a ton to me, is that average for a 30 hour VN? I mean most VNs I can think of have a dozen or two dozen 'generic background' images sometimes with a little variant to denote how crowded it is or whatever plus ...I dunno 50 CGs on each of the various heroine routes (being generous). Which puts me at like (being generous) 100 background images and 300 heroine route images plus maybe 20 common route CGs (to introduce each character / denote something interesting) which is like 700 short apparently. The only way I could think of getting to that sort of number is in a game like Fate - if you counted all the times they use the Saber with her sword BUT THIS TIME ZOOMED IN 2X - as separate images. Am I just vastly underestimating how many images make a game or does this particular game just have a fuckload of images? Never really given image counts any thought at all to be honest, if someone in the know wants to educate me I'd be interested to learn.
|
|
#
?
May 14, 2013 13:39
|
|
|
The 2x zoomed in stuff is counted as a separate CG for most people.
|
|
#
?
May 14, 2013 16:29
|
|
|
Muv luv alt must have a million billion cgs then
|
|
#
?
May 14, 2013 16:55
|
|
|
Technically it doesn't because most of the 'action' stuff isn't separately drawn CGs, it's moving static sprites on a background.
|
|
#
?
May 14, 2013 17:09
|
|
|
Jokes jokes jokes
|
|
#
?
May 14, 2013 21:06
|
|
|
I hope this isn't  I bought the Mangagamers Higurashi 1-4 and 5-8 bundles. PS2 patches exist for 1-4 (and worked for me) but not for the Kai bundle. The separate 5-8 patches didn't work -- tried to copy the extracted files from the patched .arc files into the Kai folder and to re-build a combined .arc file. Any suggestions?
|
|
#
?
May 15, 2013 05:00
|
|
|
The Kai patches only work on the individual installs of 5-8, sadly. I don't think anyone ever seriously mounted an effort to combine them for the full release.
|
|
#
?
May 15, 2013 12:06
|
|
|
Speaking of Higurashi I just finished the VN and just started to watch the first episode of the anime because well, why not? Barely into the first episode and I'm already freaked out. Rena is being voice by Nagisa's (Clannad) voice actress. This is going to make things awkward down the road.
|
|
#
?
May 16, 2013 12:24
|
|
|
MLA: TE spoilers. "I'll let everyone use my body!"   Jesus Christ Russian BETAs, how horrifying.
|
|
#
?
May 16, 2013 18:43
|
|
|
Finished Chihaya's route in Rewrite. I know that the thread warned about this in advance, but the common route really was tremendously long. I'd say that Chihaya's route ended up redeeming it though, especially since the common route was really goddamn funny sometimes. I still crack up when I think back to the YOSHINO fan song, and the writing in general was just really great. You can definitely tell that the same translation group that did Muv Luv did Rewrite, that's all i'm saying. It was also really fun to see Kotarou grow up a bit throughout the route. Someone earlier compared the route to Unlimited Blade Works, and I can certainly see it! It felt like a more condensed version of UBW in a lot of ways, and I found it to be really fun to read through once it really got going. It was great, i'd say 8/10.
|
|
#
?
May 17, 2013 00:04
|
|
|
I finished Rewrite. This will be a long post. Terra route final thoughts: When Kotarou killed Kagari, I realized that if Chihaya is Unlimited Blade Works and Akane is Heaven’s Feel, Terra is Mind of Steel. Ironically, it has a happy ending. The Engrish poem (“Once upon a time, there lived a sapling”) made me laugh. The proper translation is actually pretty good, though. It's sort of strange that the eventual message of the story is, in a way, anti-environmentalist. It's probably best not to take it too literally, I guess. I kind of liked the ending. It was interesting to see the five heroines being the-same-but-different. I’m not sure if Kotarou turning into a living spaceship was awesome or just dumb. I can see why a lot of people don’t like Terra. It did shove most of the main characters (including anything resembling the Kotarou from the common route) to the side, although Kotori still got a decent amount of focus (albeit in a way that undermined the Kotori route). It was cool to see more of characters like Nishikujou, but none of people Kotarou could interact honestly with for much of it were human adults, so we get a lot of internal monologue from someone who’s pretty close to being a new character. Also, Shizuru being 7 or so means still no Shizuru vs. Krivoy Rog. The Moon OP lied to me! Other stuff I liked: Kotarou using his rewriting power for Shirou-style power copying instead of generically making himself stronger, playing with the idea of choices in VNs, actual reasons for Kotarou to disagree with Guardian, the Kotarou vs. Esaka fight. Other stuff I didn’t like: The importance of Guardian’s technology is neither really foreshadowed in previous routes nor really elaborated on here (it’s basically a handwave to allow Kotarou to accomplish things that Suzaki wasn’t trying to do anyway), Earth!Kagari is never as interesting as the human heroines were, Kagari repeating the same exposition over and over. Overall, I found it OK. It was never quite as emotionally effective as some other parts of Rewrite, but not much of it was truly bad either. Oppai ending thoughts: I laughed at “Stop chanting things that might get cut from the console ports!” and “Don’t I have to become a tree or something?” It’s nice to know that the game doesn’t take itself too seriously. General final thoughts: There’s a lot to like in this VN, but it’s bloated and uneven nevertheless. The common route in particular probably should have been cut down considerably, but I think the story as a whole suffers not just from length but also from its sheer epic scope, which doesn’t always mesh that well with the characters or the primary setting. The characters were generally not bad but not as good as they could have been. Kotarou was really multiple characters, some of which were more interesting than others. Yoshino was funny in moderation but got overused. Sakuya was cool in the Chihaya route, but as Tonokawa admits, this only works because he’s insufferable when he’s first introduced. Also, it’s hard to avoid comparing him to Archer, who has a lot more depth. Lucia was excellent on her own route, but generic on the common route. Shizuru was cool when she was killing things or being Lucia’s BFF, but not compelling at all the rest of the time; in other words, Ryukishi’s version of Shizuru is fairly different from (and much better than) Tonokawa’s. Perhaps Ryukishi should have written more than one route. Akane is the only character I’d consider as good as their F/SN “counterpart,” in this case Sakura (although seeing Rewrite as primarily a “rewrite” of F/SN is misguided). The major Guardian members tended to be pretty consistent across all the routes, although the Chihaya route made Nishikujou inexplicably bigoted to generate conflict. This game obviously had a huge budget, but the way it was spent seems weird at times. There’s several Event CGs of nothing in particular happening, but none of Shizuru shooting the Key, and just a black screen for some scenes. The routes were simultaneously separate and connected in ways that arguably led to plotholes, or at least handwavey writing (“Shizuru can’t kill the Key this time! It’s, uh, stabilized!”) or inconsistencies in tone (the constant “This isn’t a shonen manga!” stuff in Kotori and Terra clashing with Chihaya). Part of this can be attributed to Tonokawa not being that good a writer. I’d rank the routes in terms of overall quality as follows: Akane>Lucia>Moon>Kotori>Terra>Chihaya>Shizuru. The author interview shows that a lot of my reactions the game were intended by the writers, and others were similar to those of some of the Japanese players. For example, Tonokawa seems fairly aware of how generic the Shizuru route is.
|
|
#
?
May 17, 2013 00:25
|
|
|
Well Nasu, that's the first time I saw the antlers of a stag being likened to that, thanks guy.
|
|
#
?
May 17, 2013 00:31
|
|
|
(Rewrite spoilers for entire game) I think that some of the routes, especially Shizuru's, make a lot more sense when you view them not as "routes" proper but as failure conditions. Moon Kagari is in the Theory of Life experimenting with ways that Kotarou, who has ties to the Key, can influence the situation, and the routes show all of the different ways things go wrong. 1) Kotori's route: The Druids are useless -- however, superhumans are useful for eliminating the Key in the worst-case scenario, should the planet try to initiate Salvation. 2) Lucia route: Guardian's internal politics and fixation on Gaia make them useless to her plans. They are, however, useful for opposing Gaia. 3) Shizuru route: Kotarou's previous ties to Guardian cause them to coddle him -- he won't have any influence there, and his presence will render them useless as an opposing force to Gaia. 4) Akane route: Gaia is an enemy, and that runs too deep for them to be used for the plan. 5) Chihaya's route: Even in the best-case scenario, they simply don't have enough time to save the world after Kotarou wakes up from his coma. After Moon, you can see routes function kind of like a train of thought. "Okay, that won't work, so how about you..."
|
|
#
?
May 17, 2013 00:44
|
|
|
Saya no Uta is way more hosed up than I remember. Somehow I never made the connection that Saya is abducting kids from parks and eating them, even though she more or less states it outright.. Did I just block that out of my brain? Also the music is really really good.
|
|
#
?
May 17, 2013 04:05
|
|
|
kirbysuperstar posted:Saya no Uta is way more hosed up than I remember. Somehow I never made the connection that Saya is abducting kids from parks and eating them, even though she more or less states it outright.. Did I just block that out of my brain? Also the music is really really good. Eh, she goes for small critters too sometimes. She's fierce and hunts you know! Schizophrenia is great.
|
|
#
?
May 17, 2013 04:09
|
|
|
kirbysuperstar posted:Saya no Uta is way more hosed up than I remember. Somehow I never made the connection that Saya is abducting kids from parks and eating them, even though she more or less states it outright.. Did I just block that out of my brain? Also the music is really really good. Comparing the new official translation to the old fan one maybe? I haven't played the new one but I vaguely recall that she stated she hunted in parks, but didn't really specify what she hunted. The friend character didn't notice any obviously human bones in that tub full of them, so most people probably concluded she hunted animals. Though it was mentioned that a baby disappeared from OB when she was living in the hospital.
|
|
#
?
May 17, 2013 04:16
|
|
|
Blhue posted:Comparing the new official translation to the old fan one maybe? Yeah, that could have helped also. Hell, I played it at least five years ago, on my DS. The uh, creature voices are really unsettling. I usually turn off voices in a VN immediately because holy poo poo do I not want 40 hours of some harpy screeching "ONII-SAN HAUUU" in my ears, but I've left them on for this because they totally set the mood.
|
|
#
?
May 17, 2013 04:33
|
|
|
kirbysuperstar posted:I usually turn off voices in a VN immediately because holy poo poo do I not want 40 hours of some harpy screeching "ONII-SAN HAUUU" in my ears Eh you develop a tolerance for it, high-frequency hearing loss etc
|
|
#
?
May 17, 2013 04:38
|
|
|
Can we stop using F/SN as a way to describe unrelated things? "Shirou" isn't an adjective.
|
|
#
?
May 17, 2013 07:27
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 7, 2024 20:59 |
|
.Clash posted:Can we stop using F/SN as a way to describe unrelated things? "Shirou" isn't an adjective. drat nigga you Berserker right now
|
|
|
#
?
May 17, 2013 08:01
|
|