Main post.
A long delayed update to my progress, mainly caused by my Warframe addiction (cured by Nightwave) and VN addiction (still uncured).
March
25. The Labyrinth of Grisaia (17½ hours)
The sequel to The Fruit of Grisia, Labyrinth spends most of its time showing Yuuji's past in the form of extended flash-backs. As I find Yuuji to be a pretty silly character (and find his background to be bordering on misery porn), I found this to be a significant step down from Fruit. However, the game also contains after-stories for each of the heroines in Fruit, all of which were very enjoyable, as well as a large number of disconnected sketches of varying quality.
April
26. Dies irae ~Amantes amentes~ (47 hours; 
)
An utterly over-the-top bombastic visual novel featuring a great soundtrack, magic Nazis, a guillotine waifu, and more dramatic posturing and last-minute feats of strength than you can shake a stick at. It was a very enjoyable read, though it did spent much to long having characters soliloquizing about determinism and what have you. One nice thing about this VN is that the common route is free (with 4 routes split across 2 pieces of DLC), allowing you to experience a fair bit of the story before you have to open up your wallet.
27. Alien Shooter (1¼ hours)
I replayed this very old horde shooter since the developers inexplicably released an update recently. It was still a pretty meh game, with the latter entries being much improved over this title.
28. Dream Daddy (9 hours)
A game about a single dad dating dads. Filled to the brim with wholesomeness and dad-jokes. One route does leave somewhat of a sour note, since it involve dating a married man and since it is handled pretty poorly, but overall this was an extremely enjoyable read.
29. Hate Plus (7 hours)
A sequel to Analogue: A Hate Story, where it is finally revealed what took place on the lost colony ship, the Mugunghwa. Well worth reading if you enjoyed Analogue, but makes little sense if you have not already read that VN. One criticism that I will make, however, is that the villains of this story are far less believable than those of Analogue. However, I also think that Hate Plus does a better job of characterizing its side characters, so it is not all negative.
May
30. Muv-Luv (18 + 10 hours; )
WARNING: The store page contains spoilers for Unlimited that are more enjoyable to learn on your own.
A two part visual novel, consisting of first two parts of the Muv-Luv trilogy, namely Muv-Luv Extra and Muv-Luv Unlimited. The first part is a very generic slice of life romantic comedy, in which the protagonist, Takeru, suddenly finds himself at the center of a love triangle between him, his childhood friend, and a woman who showed up out of nowhere. Extra is generally considered the worst part of the trilogy and while I enjoyed a good chunk of it, reading through every route ended up feeling like a slog.
Unlimited follows up Extra and starts off with Takeru waking up one morning, only to discover that his ██████████████████████████████. After being ███████████ by a local ██████████████, Takeru learns that █████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████, a seemingly unstoppable ████████████. Takeru eventually starts training ██████████████████, in the hope of eventually ███████████████████████████████████ used to ███████████████, meeting up with ███████████████████████ his old friends and acquaintances in the process.
While Takeru is somewhat of a typical, obnoxious VN protagonist in Extra, Unlimited is where he starts to grow beyond that as a character.
31. Muv-Luv Alternative (29 hours; )
WARNING: The store page spoils a lot about this series; don't read until you've played Extra and Unlimited.
The final entry in the trilogy.
Each copy of Muv-Luv Alternative comes with a free serving of PTSD.
32. Sabbat of the Witch (27¼ hours)
A very cute and very lewd visual novel. I started reading this as an attempt at self medicating during/after Muv-Luv Alternative, and while it did deliver on the saccharine in spades, it also had contained some surprisingly dark elements. However, Sabbat of the Witch isn't ready to embrace the consequences its own premise, and so you end up with some rather jarring tonal shifts that are quickly forgotten once the current drama is resolved. One route in particular stands out,
Nene's route, since you cannot help but keep what you learned in mind while reading the other routes.
It would probably have made for a more consistent story if the authors had toned down the
Monkey's Paw'ish elements and other such elements, and instead focused on keeping the story light hearted. The alternative, in which the authors went all in on the
negative consequences of magic and inhumane side of Alps, could also have been interesting to read, but it would have been a very different story.
33. Guacamelee! Super Turbo Championship Edition (6½ hours)
A luchador themed metroidvania. A fun game, but also one that did not handle difficulty particularly well. At some point it felt like the developers were just adding more unblockable attacks or making you do timed platforming, neither of which are forms of difficulty I find particularly enjoyable.
34. Okami HD (29¼ hours)
A Zelda-like using in which "tools" are used via a gesture/drawing system. Okami is a really pretty game, with great art and sound direction, but also a painfully slow one in a lot of aspects. I spent the entire game mashing my way through the painfully slow text dialog, including ones that pop up every time you pick up vendor trash. The game is at the strongest in the beginning, but ends up feeling drawn out towards the end.
if you want to play this though.
