Community The Visual Novel Council | All Choices Lead To Here

[skLaFarebear]

I read they also moved the setting from high school to university, which honestly makes me more interested in the game.
Li Kao Muramasa (and many other Nitro+ games) is apparently borked under linux

From the very little I've seen it has to do with (minor premise spoilers) the power imbalance of a student/teacher relationship which is something that makes much more sense in a university setting where that's "technically" legal but extremely frowned upon vs HS where that's not really a relationship and is just flat out child molestation. Can't say for sure though since I haven't read it, but at least they rewrote part of the scenario to fit the changes instead of just doing the wack thing and just ripping out the porn and calling it a day.

Probably not gonna read it right away since I wanna go through Mirai Radio first when that drops but assuming the release is fine, I'll pick it up on day one to support the devs.

 

[Exzyleph]

Edit: Reason #1 why you don't use MTL for your EN Social Media Account: Sarcasm

Looking through the replies, it seems to me that the author is trolling the shit out of everyone:



The Laplacian EN account is also following just one other account: @McDonaldsJapan

 

[Li Kao]

I read they also moved the setting from high school to university, which honestly makes me more interested in the game.
Li Kao Muramasa (and many other Nitro+ games) is apparently borked under linux

Horrible horrible horrible news.
I guess when all is said and done, even taking Steam cold feet toward the genre into account, I have far more VN on Steam than outside it. But shit, no Muramasa.
And that’s without talking about the fact that a persistant issue with VN on linux is no movie playback.

 

[skLaFarebear]

Looking through the replies, it seems to me that the author is trolling the shit out of everyone:



The Laplacian EN account is also following just one other account: @McDonaldsJapan

i take it back. This is pretty raw.

2022 off to a wild start.

Horrible horrible horrible news.
I guess when all is said and done, even taking Steam cold feet toward the genre into account, I have far more VN on Steam than outside it. But shit, no Muramasa.
And that’s without talking about the fact that a persistant issue with VN on linux is no movie playback.

Worst comes to worst you can always load Windows on it, or just RDP for the VNs you don't own on Steam and aren't proton compatible.

 

[「Echo」]

Jan. 21 confirmed.

 

[「Echo」]

Mahou Shoujo Shoumou Sensen - DeadΩAegis

――Magical girls are weapons―― ――Magical girls do not create hopes or dreams―― ――Magical girls drown in pleasure and bodily fluids―― In the not-too-distant future―― Mankind has been waging war with a mysterious race of aliens. A group of young girls is sent to the front lines, where they take...

vndb.org

Some of these tags are kinda spooky. Seems like an edgy Madoka kinda thing, Mahou Shoujo but depressing?

 

[Snakethesniper]

Finished the first chapter of muramasa...wow...

Question: where can I find more information of the politics around the story? I know very little of feudal japan and provinces and stuff

 

[skLaFarebear]

Finished the first chapter of muramasa...wow...

Question: where can I find more information of the politics around the story? I know very little of feudal japan and provinces and stuff

The game does a good job of establishing it on it's own as you continue on, all you really need to know initially is that politically, Rokuhara is essentially a fascist dictatorship that isn't one to shy away from taking/selling it's own people as slaves and burning it's own to the ground to enforce their supremacy. Where others like GHQ, American, Britain, Russia, etc. all fit into this is all elaborated on in the scenario. Muramasa I'd say is actually more of a "modern" take on feudal Japan, incorporating older aspects like swordfighting, the shogunate, etc. into a more modern post WW2 setting. So I'd say it's not that big a deal if you're not too knowledgeable on how feudal japan's politics works.

Iirc if you wanted some more outside info, the game does come with an install for a manual that might provide more information, at least about some of the terminology.

 

[Kvik]

Muramasa needs its appendix integrated into the main game instead of a separate PDF, if you ask me.

 

[ZKenir]

Some of these tags are kinda spooky. Seems like an edgy Madoka kinda thing, Mahou Shoujo but depressing?

there's a free version on steam which lacks all the sex iirc, no patch offered because JAST explicitly says they do that to get you to buy the 18+ version on their platform

 

[Knurek]

The free version is just a 2 hourish demo and doesn't have any pr0n on the JAST version AFAIK.
Or does it?

 

[skLaFarebear]

Pretty smart move by JAST, they're fairly anti-Steam, but aren't stupid enough to not realize how big the Steam audience is. And despite my grievances with their store (especially during that whole Muramasa launch fiasco) and where it still lacks compared to the bigger game sellers, at least it looks more modern and now supports regional pricing.

The free version is just a 2 hourish demo and doesn't have any pr0n on the JAST version AFAIK.
Or does it?

It does.

 

[ZKenir]

i'm not touching their store with a ten foot pole after their shitty support during the fiasco

 

[Knurek]

It does.

The Gaiden thingy?
Huh...

 

[beep boop]

God, Muv-Luv Extra is so immature and corny, but the production values are pretty amazing compared to other VNs I've read recently, and for some reason I can't help but be entertained...

 

[skLaFarebear]

The Gaiden thingy?
Huh...

i haven't played it myself, but the VNDB tags/images reveal nsfw content on the gaiden's page. I think it may only be 1 scene though.

 

[Exzyleph]

It looks like the Steam version of Cyanotype Daydream adds a lot of new content:

 

[skLaFarebear]

It looks like the Steam version of Cyanotype Daydream adds a lot of new content:

Hopefully this ends up being like the Amantes version of Dies Irae where the new side content/epilogue/etc. add a ton to the experience and essentially make the r18 version irrelevant outside of historical purposes.

I'm still of the perspective that we should have had both versions available in english for said reasons above, but looking at all this new content and changes, it'd be very hard to recommend anything but the AA version, similarly where I absolutely cannot recommend anyone to read the r18 version of Dies Irae over the AA version.

 

[Exzyleph]

Hopefully this ends up being like the Amantes version of Dies Irae where the new side content/epilogue/etc. add a ton to the experience and essentially make the r18 version irrelevant outside of historical purposes.

I'm still of the perspective that we should have had both versions available in english for said reasons above, but looking at all this new content and changes, it'd be very hard to recommend anything but the AA version, similarly where I absolutely cannot recommend anyone to read the r18 version of Dies Irae over the AA version.

Supposedly the H-scenes weren't even written by Ono Wasabi (creator of controversy), which personally makes me care even less about their removal.

 

[skLaFarebear]

Supposedly the H-scenes weren't even written by Ono Wasabi (creator of controversy), which personally makes me care even less about their removal.

Idk why people think it has to be one or the other when it comes to revising your title to be AA to appease larger storefronts/console makers and because the company/devs just want to move in that direction. These things don't have to be mutually exclusive, they can both be true. Just as well as making the case that the porn was only in there in the first place to appease certain fanbases/company board members/etc. and maybe wasn't initially part of the "devs vision".

"Self-censorship" was always such a shaky concept in the first place and if the author comes out and says "hey guys I'm ok with taking the porn out i didn't care about it in the first place and I added a bunch of shit to replace it and make it a much better package" why the fans can't just take the author's point at face value and respect his wishes.

Again, I still think the ideal solution would be to offer both as this is a different product and a restoration patch just straight up couldn't apply to this version, but also as a dev you got tough choices to make.

The author even says "hey if this bothers you too much there's lots of other games you can play." They should just leave it at that, no one's putting a gun to your head and saying you gotta buy this. But ofc, people in this medium are always looking for an excuse to pirate games then wonder why devs are exiting this medium or throwing (badly implemented) DRM into their products.

 

[Knurek]

Pretty much every pervy PC VN got AAfied when it was being ported to PS2/PSP/Vita, so I don't really see what's to be butthurt about it.
Especially since the changes seem to be for the best. Enough with the bloody high school already.

 

[skLaFarebear]

One additional point that people are ignoring is that the anti-censorship crowd definitely overestimates how much influence they actually have on a product's sales, especially when there's more significant overlap with that crowd and the "pirate everything" crowd than you'd think. Just because they're the loudest and can make the most posts on a single reddit/twitter post, it doesn't mean they're a large group that needs to be appeased, especially when compared to the visibility your product receives on Steam vs MG/Denpa/etc. (and there's data that proves this). JAST seems to be the lone outlier, but even they're not stupid enough to ignore Steam visibility where they can, even with products that sold extremely well on their store like Muramasa where they're going out of their way to slowly build an AA version so they can get it on Steam too.

But really, most people just simply don't care to have porn/sex in their stories and games. It doesn't mean they're some "prude christian 4kids worshipping puritans."

If/When Cyanotype flops, it'll be because they as JP devs decided to self publish in the west and don't understand the importance of what a Western Publisher does on getting your game out there (Steiner goes into this a lot better than I do here - SteinerTL answered: Do you think self-publishing is the future for the visual novel localization industry? Do you think this will lead to the decline of many of the existing companies?)

 

[beep boop]

I would think that when VNs were even more niche, adult content was a selling point. Nowadays, I don’t think that’d work in a game’s advantage for visibility and audience reach reasons. I don’t have adult content on Steam visible, so my likelihood of discovering VNs tagged as such is close to nil.

Fan service already often inserts itself awkwardly in places it shouldn’t. There are several novels I felt got really dragged down by it. I imagine it’s not suddenly qualitatively better or more tasteful for adult scenes.

(Also continuing to really gel with MLE. Total groanfest but I’m into it, which is uncharacteristic for me. I'm not sure what sets it apart because on paper I should have uninstalled by now.)

 

[skLaFarebear]

I would think that when VNs were even more niche, adult content was a selling point. Nowadays, I don’t think that’d work in a game’s advantage for visibility and audience reach reasons. I don’t have adult content on Steam visible, so my likelihood of discovering VNs tagged as such is close to nil.

The opposite actually applies to this day for VN releases, at least for JP sales. There's a lot more merit in having adult content in your title since it lets you sell your title on popular JP digital stores like DMM, DLSite, Fanza, etc. which have a lot of visibility for adult titles, especially higher quality ones. You can also get away with selling them for higher prices too, just looking at the price of what some of the higher quality adult VNs go for. That's why you see a quite a few companies generally go with selling both an adult and AA version of the game, regardless of what the "original vision" was (the original vision is what puts the most money in their pockets).

 

[beep boop]

The opposite actually applies to this day for VN releases, at least for JP sales. There's a lot more merit in having adult content in your title since it lets you sell your title on popular JP digital stores like DMM, DLSite, Fanza, etc. which have a lot of visibility for adult titles, especially higher quality ones. You can also get away with selling them for higher prices too, just looking at the price of what some of the higher quality adult VNs go for. That's why you see a quite a few companies generally go with selling both an adult and AA version of the game, regardless of what the "original vision" was (the original vision is what puts the most money in their pockets).

Interesting. I guess it makes sense that there'd be a different paradigm and dynamic in the Japanese market and audience. I'm not especially familiar with those distribution platforms. I ventured onto the Mangagamer site a couple of times but never bought any VNs outside of either Steam or what made it onto PS Vita. I think being burned by sites like Direct2Drive going under and losing access to my purchase FF7 on even Square Enix's old digital platform has made forever wary of direct download shops.

 

[GhostTrick]

Interesting. I guess it makes sense that there'd be a different paradigm and dynamic in the Japanese market and audience. I'm not especially familiar with those distribution platforms. I ventured onto the Mangagamer site a couple of times but never bought any VNs outside of either Steam or what made it onto PS Vita. I think being burned by sites like Direct2Drive going under and losing access to my purchase FF7 on even Square Enix's old digital platform has made forever wary of direct download shops.

I'm in the same boat. Which is annoying because Steam is partially responsible of that wirh their lack of transparency when it comes to rules. But I'm not ready to invest money into storefronts I'm not sure will be around in 5 years.

I'm still burned out by some games I lost access to, on Desura or GFWL.

 

[Knurek]

I'm okayish with Jast store, since it's DRM free and I can just source the installers someplace if they shut the store down again.
But I'd never buy from Johren or the like. Fuck that noise.

 

[Kvik]

Buying stuff from DMM/Fanza or DLSite is actually more convenient compared to Johren. And that's factoring the language barrier.

 

[skLaFarebear]

Buying stuff from DMM/Fanza or DLSite is actually more convenient compared to Johren. And that's factoring the language barrier.

WAY easier lmao, that's what's extra baffling about it. Like if Johren just let you buy coins on their site like DMM does it wouldn't be remotely as annoying. Well that and the whole badly implemented DRM thing.

 

[「Echo」]

I started Closed Game last night. The art is good but that's a given, Sei Shoujo is an Art god.

The story so far is... well it's moving really fast surprisingly. It seems a bit like Battle Royale, but in the sky, Also there are elements of 999, but my expectations remain severely tempered. After all, it's an Empress title lol.

 

[beep boop]

I’m almost through all the routes in Muv Luv Extra. Fun for the most part, even though I feel like a few of them drag on too long and go down the trope well too many times. I’ll have to take a short break before diving into Unlimited, but the characters and stories have been surprisingly solid so far. I expected worse based on what I heard about Extra beforehand, so maybe having expectations set low helped.

 

[skLaFarebear]

Also for anyone into femdom with mean nurses Nope Nope Nurses is out on Johren and, in a week, Steam for $20 (not sure if there's a 18+ patch or not). I definitely recommend it at that price

 

[Knurek]

I’m almost through all the routes in Muv Luv Extra. Fun for the most part, even though I feel like a few of them drag on too long and go down the trope well too many times. I’ll have to take a short break before diving into Unlimited, but the characters and stories have been surprisingly solid so far. I expected worse based on what I heard about Extra beforehand, so maybe having expectations set low helped.

Why would you take a break when you're getting to the good parts?

 

[beep boop]

Why would you take a break when you're getting to the good parts?

Good point! Mostly because I often get VN fatigued after a while, so I will need to rebuild my patience for how slow they can be, and I don’t want to reach that point halfway in. I’ve also got a bunch of end of year purchases I’ve yet to get to.

Edit: Okay, after the Tamase route I really need a break from Muv-Luv

 

[tetel]

The State of Full Metal Daemon Muramasa

jastusa.com

Full Metal Daemon Muramasa

This is not a story of heroes. Since time immemorial, warriors called musha have ruled t

www.gog.com

It's like twice as expensive here as the version on JAST store.

 

[skLaFarebear]

The State of Full Metal Daemon Muramasa

jastusa.com

Full Metal Daemon Muramasa

This is not a story of heroes. Since time immemorial, warriors called musha have ruled t

www.gog.com

It's like twice as expensive here as the version on JAST store.

A couple other VNs like Saya no Uta and DEA also dropped on GOG as well.

And yeah, not sure how well GOG plays with regional pricing, but the JAST store has become significantly more accommodating with that since shifting to their new storefront. At least multiple options are good, but Steam rejecting the AA version of Muramasa is super fucking wack and honestly makes no sense.

 

[ZKenir]

DEA is also on steam for some reasons? seems to be unlocking in 2h?


edit: wooops, sorry for the NSFW stuff wrong ctrl+c + ctrl + v

--------------------------------------------

The State of Full Metal Daemon Muramasa

jastusa.com

Full Metal Daemon Muramasa

This is not a story of heroes. Since time immemorial, warriors called musha have ruled t

www.gog.com

It's like twice as expensive here as the version on JAST store.

Thanks for this I wasn't aware they also were publishing on GOG, looks like they just put out that stuff

 

[tetel]

A couple other VNs like Saya no Uta and DEA also dropped on GOG as well.

And yeah, not sure how well GOG plays with regional pricing, but the JAST store has become significantly more accommodating with that since shifting to their new storefront. At least multiple options are good, but Steam rejecting the AA version of Muramasa is super fucking wack and honestly makes no sense.

I actually didn't know JAST had regional pricing since it was always showing the price in USD but well, it's 20$ on JAST and 40$ on GOG for me so I guess I'll get it on JAST at some point now that the Steam version is dead.

Also (I know Chiyomaru says a lot of things but shh):

 

[skLaFarebear]

Steam really continues to throw me for a loop each day. How did DEA make it onto Steam and Muramasa didn't lmao

 

[ZKenir]

i'm confused too tbh, I might buy it just in case it get nuked later

 

[beep boop]

Some more thoughts about Muv Luv Extra and the genre it slots into.

I find the idea of a protagonist being capable of falling head over heels for any potential romantic partner that they spend time having a conversation with beyond basic pleasantries pretty lame, and I feel like this game/narrative device kind of erodes the sincerity of each of the potential romantic paths. I'm not a believer in the concept of soul mates, but that's a bit suspect. Aside from that, in the context of heterosexual relationships in particular and with an eye on how many people tend to gravitate towards same-sex friend groups, I feel like this inadvertently sends a poor message about platonic friendships (and their feasibility). Like, I get it. It's also not that serious. But also I feel like there should be more compelling approaches to explore for this type of branching path story.

More specially about MLE, having seen all the major routes, I feel like Takeru and Sakaki's relationship was much better grounded than the protagonist's two 'lead' romantic interests. Very odd. There's barely any basis for his relationship with Meiya, and Takeru expresses reservations about Sumika and the nature of his feelings towards her even when he commits to her. In summary, Sakaki = objectively best

 

[AHA-Lambda]

Looks like I'll give up holding out on Muramasa coming to Steam then.
But yeah those GOG prices hurt, it's £10 more expensive there

 

[ZKenir]

i'm waiting a little bit longer anyway since I'd play it only on switch anyway

 

[ExistentialThought]

Sakaki = objectively best

Spoiler

 

[Knurek]

Sakaki = objectively best

But that's not how you spell Meiya.

 

[ZKenir]

well DEA is up bopth on Steam and GOG and it's the full version, so.... guess I'll buy it tomorrow also yeah dunno how that's ok and not Muramasa lol

 

[DeejayDoom]

They ban Muramasa and then allow Nope Nope Nurses, which is about some nurses bullying and raping a kid. Just wtf.

 

[Knurek]

Pity the gaming press doesn't seem to give AF.
Last time something as absurd has happened (Steam refusing to allow an all-ages title, The Expression Amrilato) there were at least a bunch of articles.
Now, just crickets

 

[skLaFarebear]

Pity the gaming press doesn't seem to give AF.
Last time something as absurd has happened (Steam refusing to allow an all-ages title, The Expression Amrilato) there were at least a bunch of articles.
Now, just crickets

Doesn't generate the clicks like it used to unless you're a youtube channel centered around buzzwords like censorship.

 

[「Echo」]

i'm confused too tbh, I might buy it just in case it get nuked later

Ugh.... I REALLY wanted to save up for MH Rise, but I did this cuz yeah, I'm afraid it will get nuked too and I super prefer to have my VN's on Steam when possible... I hate when fear drives me into corners, but alas.

========

This is the current selection of JAST titles on GOG, so I have some questions if you guys know more about it than me... Are these DRM free and are they censored versions? Will we have to buy seperate patches like the Steam versions?