[Mini-Review+Translation]Akazukin to Mayoi no Mori Translation draft+first impressions

So I picked up Akazukin to Mayoi no Mori recently because I've become tired of sparkly "pure love" otome games at this moment and wanted something with a lot of ero. ;) I saw this game get two types of reactions: most people just looking for hot bishounen loved this game to death as it has pretty artwork, but others who want more realistic stories and weirded out by rape got major pissed off. I looked up one of my favorite bloggers, Hinano's review and she went into a rage over this game. XDXD I also am getting rape vibes even though I haven't even met all the characters yet, but still I'm gonna give this a try as I don't mind rape that much if it isn't pulled out of the ass and inserted into a story without any reason. Also I really love the art and the music. And even if they are stupid, voiced protagonist=WIN since I hate that "step into the heroine's shoes" shit.

Anyway, I'll do the review later, this will be just a small rambling along with translation upto the point I've played~~

[Otome Game Review] The Knife of The Traitor (English, Freeware)

Bones and guts, bones and guts. The Kingdom of Ulla was made of the bones and guts of their enemies. The new successor to the throne was the bloodthirstiest of all the heirs. But inside the kingdom was a traitor.
He brought down all. Even the new successor. And all traces of her vanished mysteriously... ...Until today.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Knife of The Traitor

Developer: Clua

Length: Very short
Language: English (♥)
Genre: Comedy,Mystery, Romance, Otome
Endings: 7
Free or Comercial? Free!
Rated: 16+ because of strong language

I'm amazed at the number of awesome freeware visual novels created for NaNoRenO 2012, . I plan to review all the ones I've played, even the non-otome ones. I've downloaded a good number of them, and The knife of the traitor was the one I finished first.

The knife of the traitor is an awesome comedy/mystery/otome game that really is different from normal otome streotypes. There is a huge abundance of tongue-in-cheek humor, and the dialogues are really fun to read. At many points I was shocked enough to stare at my screen in disbelief whether I really read the lines right XD

[NEWS] New game from VenusEclipse+ Some good news for English otome gamers!

First, the most important thing. Those of you who played Frozen Essence and were awed by the AWESOME storyline, Venuseclipse brings us her new game for nanoreno, where the challenge is to create a game in a month.

GO grab it from here! http://unbrokenhours.com/pipergirl.html

Also, these couple of months have been really good for us all....first The Second Reproduction gets an English patch, now even more opportunities for playing English otome games are popping up! And most of them are free! Yay!

1. (P)lanets 2: The mega-super-awesome Teacup confirmed in her latest post that (P)lanets 2, the sequel to the extremely cute and funny otome game (P)lanets from last year will definitely be free! Wooo!

2.Love Revo! for DS: Though I mentioned this in my earlier post, I felt this deserved a separate mention. This group is translating the game and they are almost done (95%+), if you want to apply English patch, you must use the Korean game, "Girlish Love Revolution DS" which is the Korean version of Love Revo. I've heard people complain they couldn't find it anywhere, but I found it pretty easily by googling.

3. duplicity~beyond the lies~ is out! This is the "complete" version of duplicity~An eternal ~ which a freeware, but this one is commercial. I am actually pretty late for this since it came last month but oh well (I only started my blog this month XD).

4. The Knife of the Traitor: A small freeware otome game with rather quirky and awesome humor made for NaNoRenO 2012. I had a lot of fun playing this one! Links

[NEWS] Revolutionary project for easy VN translations

The best news I've heard all year. I meant to post this in the last post then decided to do it in a separate post. :)

Basically some AWESOME people at Fuwanovel thought of an idea to implement a new simple plugin/addon that would be able to display properly translated english text (not a machine translation) in a separate window on the fly, while playing the game, without hackers needing to work out how to do text re-insertion.
As for now, the proposal is such: the translation would be done by the following steps:

• The plugin would capture the text hooked from the game (through "text hooker" programs such as AGTH and ITH), line by line.
• Then search a text doc (either from an offline downloaded file containing the translations or a online server database that would be updated by the translators) for that appropriate line,
• Display the proper translation for that line from the document (not using any translation engines) in a separate window.

This way, no coding or game editing needed to get a proper translation, and people without the knowledge of scripting/editing but fluent in japanese would easily be able to contribute to translation of Visual novels. Translations would become so much easier without having to wrestle with the complex coding and hacking tools, and I bet many novice translators would become inspired to come forward.

(Stokky at animekon explained this in a much clearer way, forgive my ramblings and visit there too~~)

Lots of love to Aaeru for organizing this and brilliant programmers who are giving shape to this project!

Keep yourself updated by visiting the fuwanovel and hongfire forums!
FUWANOVEL
HONGFIRE

So many bishies, so little time.

I am feeling pretty depressed at the sheer number of otome games sitting in my hard disk that I am not playing because my vacation was ruined by some extra projects I had to do. *big sigh* Back in the days when I had a lot of free time I didn't manage to get any games at all, and now they are piling up like leftover chips. Just started playing Akazukin to Mayoi no Mori, let's see how far I can go~~

[Visual Novel Review] Remember11 -the age of infinity-

Though I wanted to do an otome game review, I did say that I'd be reviewing visual novels and not only otome games (never mind 90% of my list are otome XD ). So this time I'll be reviewing Remember11, the third game in KID's Infinity series of visual novels. I had not played Remember11's famous predecessor Ever17 (I've just started playing it yesterday), and as a result unlike many other fans of infinity series who bashed Remember11 by comparing its various features with Ever17, I played it with zero expectations and found it a very enjoyable and engaging mystery visual novel that makes your head work to get the story.

WARNING: LONG REVIEW IS LONG!

In contrast to the other two Infinity games and most visual novels, Remember11 does not have a focus on romance or plot routes that are based on specific heroes or heroines. There are 2 routes, but they basically describe the same story from the 2 protagonists' perspectives, each route answering questions that could not be answered in the other. The game makes it clear though that you are supposed to play Kokoro's route first, there is NO WAY to get Satoru's good end (all bad ends are either death or another big disaster, this is no galge)if you already haven't gotten Kokoro's good end beforehand, and Satoru's good end is the one that explains everything (Well, almost everything XD This game has a sick sense of humor).

The stage of the game is divided between 2 locations: Mountain Shelter Cabin at Mt. Akakura, and SPHIA facility at Aosagi Island. There are only 4 people at both locations, in total 7 people (nope, 4+4=7 is not a typo here :P ). Each of the characters represent some archetype, and from what I hear this is a recurring theme in the Infinity series. However, in Remember11′s case, the archetypes are Jungian. Instead of these being surface traits, they represent subconscious personalities. All throughout the game there are an assload of references to these archetypes, but don't expect their behavior to be thoroughly controlled by that alone, you'll be surprised.

[Otome Game Review] Otometeki Koi Kakumei Love Revo!!!!!

Love Revo is the last JAPANESE Otome game I actually managed to finish....so I'll be starting my reviews from this game. Although it wasn't the first otome game I ever played, it was the first game that I saw fanart of in deviantart and got interested in otome gaming in general. Also the fanartist mentioned here was the CG artist for Doujin freeware Re:Alistair++, which WAS my first otome game, so you could say Love Revo! is the main culprit behind my otome game obesession, haha.



Game Title: Otometeki Koi Kakumei Love Revo!!
Original title: 乙女的恋革命★ラブレボ!!
Company: Asgard & Interchannel
Release Date: 2008-03-28
Genre: All Ages, Otome Game
Voice: Full Voiced (PC version only)
Platform: PC, PS2, Nintendo DS, PSP

First of all if anyone is interested in reading about this game in detail there is an awesome review (albeit with spoilers, so beware!) She has already completed all the possible endings for all the bishies, whereas I am only finished with 4 conquests so far. *sigh*

Basically, IMO the most interesting about this game is its heroine. Unlike most otome games where the main character is either unseen or the usual "looks-totally-hot-but-claims-to-be-not" type of Mary sue-ish character(I'm looking at YOU, Starry sky), the heroine in this game is a HUGE 100 kg fatty chick with an attitude and utter disregard about her weight. Here's an exchange with the school doctor Ryoutaro about her weight:

My Visual novel list (mainly otome)

So far the Visual novels I've played(In order of playing):

Green: Freeware, English
Red: In Japanese, no patch available
Blue: In Japanese, English patch available
No color: Not freeware, English

Sources and Instructions for otome gaming

Since the opportunities to get otome games are almost zero in my country, I mainly live off downloading freeware or rely on friends getting them for me. Due to piracy rules and such I won't be sharing any links in my blog other than the ones that are freeware, but feel free to message me if you have any questions, and I'll try my best to answer. No promises about troubleshooting though :P

Now, let's start~~

Oh, before that. As many people would ask about this, I ONLY play visual novels on PC, I can provide no help or guidance on PS2,PSP,nintendo DS,iphone or android games.

The start of a revolution! (or not)

So! This is my first attempt at writing a blog at an official "blogging site", so I felt it would be too cheap if I didn't at least try to write something before copy pasting from my diary elsewhere.

I am Aurora (not real name., inspired by the Disney princess by the same name, so lame~~) currently an university student who spends too much time playing Visual novels. My interests also include manga, anime, "normal" video games and books. Once upon a time I was a total bookworm, but now internet rules my life :P

Since among the visual novels I've played about 70% are otome, this blog will mainly be a place for ranting about otome games, bishies and fangirling, but I also play eroges targeted towards boys if the story and setting interests me. There will also be occasional real life rants and musings, but feel free to ignore them. XD

Now that introductions are over with, I'll start posting my silly rants. Yoroshiku onegaishimasu~