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.




Where to buy:

Japanese/English games:

As I said before, I am kinda incompetent when it comes to getting games by myself, but this wonderful blog Yumi's Game Factory has some good directions :)

Only English games:

This site has a beautiful list of almost all English otome games that have come out so far. They even cover a good number of iphone/android games, so feel free to check them out.Here in my blog I'll only cover the ones in PC platform, and provide links to freewares. Among the companies that make English otome games, the ones I like most are:
Sakevisual
Ren’py
Roseverte
Hanako Games
Winter Wolves


English freeware downloads:

1) Re:Alistair++ , Ripples , [text]:A summer story and My Magical Cosplay Cafe are freeware from sakevisual. I loved Re:Alistair++ most because of 's gorgeous art and super awesome story in such a small span. Sakevisual does good work in general, but Re:Alistair++ is too good!
2) duplicity~An eternal Lie~ is a freeware from roseverte, it's a kinda "test" version, I don't want to call it a demo since there is enough content and the routes can be played up to the endings. Though story gives a "unfinished" feel, it was a lot of fun!
3) Frozen Essence by VenusEclipse (who is made of awesome for doing such a great job by herself). At first glance it might not seem much, but trust me it has the most complex and thoughtful plot I've ever encountered in an otome game. Most otome games are either fluff heaven or rape story with stereotypical plot, this game was like a breath of fresh air ^^ People often are put off by the art at first, but for a single person project it is more than adequate.
4) (P)lanets -the life of normalcy has ended! from Teacup productions is a really cute game, it was a really refreshing and cute read, and teacup definitely worked hard on her own! Like Venuseclipse, she is an awesome person who tried her best by herself for us fellow otome lovers ^o^ The story is a sweet high school plot with a little sci-fi mixed (is telepathy sci-fi? I dunno), and the humor is really good.
5) RistoRante Amore is a free game by Cyanide Tea. It was worked on as part of NaNoRenO, I am still playing this so no comments atm.
6) Boku No Shokora, literally "My chocolate" is a free doujin game that has been translated. It was a very short yet fun read (I was literally falling off my chair at some points, haha)
7)The Knife of The Traitor is a small freeware otome game with rather quirky and awesome humor made for NaNoRenO 2012. I had a lot of fun playing this one! If you can't access the forum, try the download links in my review post.

Other otome blogger recommendations
This part of the post will keep growing as I find more people to stalk :P :P

Rivi's adventures in otome gaming: Wow~ This amazing person has a really big collection of otome VNs, of all types and qualities, both free and commercial mixed together. Really impressive collection, unlike me who only lists the games she likes. XD If you're willing to spend some money on otome gaming, this site would be extremely helpful since she even lists the prices of all the commercial VNs. She even lists the otome games for PS2,PSP,nintendo DS,iphone or android.

How to play NON-ENGLISH GAMES (without English patches):

I mainly play the VNs that either have been translated by company themselves or have an English patch, but since most of the BEST otome games tend to be in japanese and are rarely translated, so I had to learn the tricks to use translator programs to translate in game text.

Mistress Alita from has beautifully collected all the necessary info here , I found her instructions useful, but since the forum format looks scary, I read FHC's guide first. I mainly followed

FHC's AGTH and ATLAS Guide
The Complete Idiot's Guide to Japanese Gaming

And trust me these 2 alone will keep your hands full. Basically, FHC's guide is about how to set up AGTH and ATLAS. AGTH is Anime Games Text Hooker, which will extract the text from the game as you play, and ATLAS is an excellent translator which instantly translates the text extracted by AGTH. You'll also find a lot of talk about Translator Aggragator, which is an awesome program that runs Atlas alongside a couple of online translator interfaces, so you can get multiple translations in case of confusing lines (that happens a lot). BTW, in FHC's multi part guide, I didn't care to look up about TAHelper and TAHplugin, just learning to use AGTH, Atlas and Translator Aggragator is enough, IMO.

The Complete Idiot's Guide contains the instrcutions of FHC's guide in slightly lesser detail, as well as a lot more basic ideas that you should be aware of (I already knew so I didn't care, but a new player should).

Note: Once you read about the pesky /h parameters, don't forget to visit here to check if your otome game needs any from this page at Mistress Alita's.


ADVICE:

Since I mainly play Otome games, I need to warn any fellow Otome game lover about this: ALWAYS HAVE A GUIDE AT HAND! 90% of otome games (a lot of VNs in general) have such impossible-to-guess choices that you can never predict! Google is your friend! I mainly use
La primavera, but sometimes looking around for other guides is wise.