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Visual Novels Community Thread | A Little Something for Everyone
- Thread starter Yuuichi
- Start date
TonkatsuAddict
Member
Just got my shipping confirmation a short bit ago! Looking forward to finally having this in my hands!
calc84maniac
Member
Basileus777
Member
ChuSinGura 46+1 has a Kickstarter up. 210k goal. For Steam, so probably based off of the Vita version.
Apparently the group translating is the people behind the subpar Amnesia translation....
Apparently the group translating is the people behind the subpar Amnesia translation....
No physical and limited Steam keys. Also looks like you have to pay $60 just to have voices.
Wait wut? $100 shipping fee?!?!
210k? That's a lot, I doubt they'll raise that much money.
Basileus777
Member
The tiers are poorly written. I have to imagine that that the game is included in everything starting with the $15 one. The $60 tier is really poorly worded and I'm not sure if it means that the base game won't have voices or not.
This has no chance in hell of getting funded.
Not to mention that ludicrous shipping fee.
Basileus777
Member
Where does it say that?
What's wrong with Amnesia exactly? The game keeps tempting me everytime I start Steam client...
Basileus777
Member
Was it just full of typos? I may have gotten some of it mixed up with Norn9 that had problems.
How the fuck lmaooo
When I went to back on the $60 tier that's what it said was the shipping cost.
Edit:
Even the Root Double kickstarter was better handled than this.
Basileus777
Member
It's not just the translation staff either, it's the same people behind the Beastmaster KS too. People have dug through their websites and b2gstudio is listed as the contact email. And the risk part of the KS is copy/pasted from the Beastmaster project.
Even the web design is the same. Both talk about being a bridge.
Root Double made mistakes, but it's not even in the conversation when it comes to badly run Kickstarters.
The Vita version of Amnesia had quite a lot of typos, I assume the PC version was the same.
To be fair, most of them were pretty standard stuff; duplicate words, missing words, sentences that didn't finish. Small things that added up fast.
The obvious ones were more galling just because they should have been so much easier to catch and fix - things like Mine's name ending up as MIne in one route, or the final route referring to the Manager as she, or the few occasions where the text formatting broke out of alignment.
(I also hold the very minor shop/cafe thing from one of the many minor options in one route against them more than I should just because the chatter that resulted from it sounded particularly dumb coming from characters who worked in a cafe).
In that case shouldn't they at least have learnt something from the last one instead of managing to make one that's even worse?
That's exactly what I thought. It's Gloczus running another Kickstarter through another shell company not to face any criticism since they're currently running another awful campaign.
Wow what is wrong with them? Seriously!!
Basileus777
Member
Two badly failed Kickstarters and then they launch this mess with an even higher goal.
That's the only logical thing to do, right?? Aim for the skies!!
Basileus777
Member
Dovac was tweeting earlier about how ChuSingura was a license he was pursuing, and now lost to these people.
That sucks. ...they aren't IP squatting are they? I feel like something more is going on behind closed doors. No company can be this dumb.
Could Gloczus be the worst thing to happen for the visual novel scene in a long time?
Hyperbole, but still.
Nah. That'd be MoeNovel.
Basileus777
Member
Moenovel has only messed with one title and it was 3 years ago.
Well given they've only released one project (and the translation wasn't actually "bad", just unbearably literal to the point that it took a lot of the text's meaning with it) of a decent game with no idea what they're currently doing, I'd say this company that's showing up and destroying quality licences with incompetent staff, poor planning, and no strategy other than to copy others to be far more of a threat to the rapidly expanding western industry.
I could go in to more detail, and someone behind it certainly isn't an idiot (after a sales guy explained it to me, I'm not sure why more people DON'T copy ML's marketing strategy) but that's no excuse for an error riddled KS and homepage, unclear goals, and a complete lack of transparency.
Did Gloczus translate Amnesia? I thought they only used IFI's translation to publish the mobile version like they used Aksys's translation to publish Hakuoki. I think the only thing they have translated is some short extras from Hakuoki mobile.
Here's an interview with the Amnesia translator.
Here's an interview with the Amnesia translator.
Basileus777
Member
I agree with the sentiment of your post, but the translation of If My Heart Had Wings goes beyond being overly literal. Some of the routes in it are barely comprehensible, it's a really poorly translated game.
Assuming it was all translated by one person, what I've read and compared certainly isn't "wrong", it's just what you get when you translate literally and strip context from a context-centric language. I obviously can't be 100% certain about this because I haven't played it, but everything I've heard from those I know who have seems to lend a lot of credence to this.
Basileus777
Member
It kind of doesn't matter what the process is if the result is bad English that is difficult to read.
Hi VN-GAF! This is the last place I'd expected to be posting any time soon, but I wanted to throw some thoughts down about Saya no Uta. Through a strange chain of events I found myself watching a pretty well done dub/dramatic reading of this over the past several nights (They also conveniently skipped all of the H scenes, which I have little interest in and honestly I think that kind of thing really contributes to the stigma VNs carry, but that's a conversation for another day.)
Pre-emptive apology for the wall of text. There's a lot going on in this story.
Visual Novels are not something I generally read and the closest I've come in the past is Blazblue's story mode. Basically, for this one, I was checking out GBs quicklook of "Nitroplus Blasterz: Heroines Infinite Duel" which is MAYBE the most ridiculous name for a video game ever, but I am always down for another fighting game. It's apparently a cross-over fighter with a bunch of VN characters. They ended up playing as Saya's character in one of their matches and also chose the fucked up blood-and-guts "what Fuminori sees" stage at one point, which had some people in the comments talking about the original visual novel. After reading the synopsis and checking out a Kotaku review on the it, I thought I'd check out the first part on a whim. How the reviewer described what the main character sees was so messed up but at the same time, intriguing ("how are they going to show that?").
Needless to say I'm sitting here a few days later having gone through the whole thing. What a fucking nightmare. And I'm not even typically into horror. I think they did a really great job describing how messed up the main character Fuminori's perception of the world has become, down to smell and touch and taste of regular food. There is no escape from it for him. You can feel his utter hopelessness and desperation to hold on to the first thing he finds that looks NORMAL when the entire rest of the world becomes this distorted and constant torture. When our view moves between the reality everyone else sees, and Fuminori's perception post-accident, it was genuinely disturbing (one time I think it happened mid-conversation, holy shit).
Spoilers below:
The story was as bittersweet as it was terrifying to consider.
Now for some of the bad stuff:
[Possible trigger warning]
If anyone has any comments I'd love to hear them. This is the kind of story that stays with you for a while, so it's interesting (and possibly necessary) for me to talk about it somewhere! What is the GAF consensus on Saya no Uta? I see now that it has a reputation elsewhere on the internet for being one of the "the most fucked up stories ever" but that doesn't necessarily speak to it's quality.
Pre-emptive apology for the wall of text. There's a lot going on in this story.
Visual Novels are not something I generally read and the closest I've come in the past is Blazblue's story mode. Basically, for this one, I was checking out GBs quicklook of "Nitroplus Blasterz: Heroines Infinite Duel" which is MAYBE the most ridiculous name for a video game ever, but I am always down for another fighting game. It's apparently a cross-over fighter with a bunch of VN characters. They ended up playing as Saya's character in one of their matches and also chose the fucked up blood-and-guts "what Fuminori sees" stage at one point, which had some people in the comments talking about the original visual novel. After reading the synopsis and checking out a Kotaku review on the it, I thought I'd check out the first part on a whim. How the reviewer described what the main character sees was so messed up but at the same time, intriguing ("how are they going to show that?").
Needless to say I'm sitting here a few days later having gone through the whole thing. What a fucking nightmare. And I'm not even typically into horror. I think they did a really great job describing how messed up the main character Fuminori's perception of the world has become, down to smell and touch and taste of regular food. There is no escape from it for him. You can feel his utter hopelessness and desperation to hold on to the first thing he finds that looks NORMAL when the entire rest of the world becomes this distorted and constant torture. When our view moves between the reality everyone else sees, and Fuminori's perception post-accident, it was genuinely disturbing (one time I think it happened mid-conversation, holy shit).
Spoilers below:
As far as we know, he's afflicted with this strange "binary" viewpoint where revolting things like entrails and rotting flesh have somehow replaced regular pleasant sensations in everything he sees/hears/smells/etc, and vice-versa. So everything and everyone he sees are these disgusting pulsating blobs of flesh while actual blobs of human flesh look like quality food to eat (right down to texture, taste, and smell - he enjoys it not because he's sick, but because it literally tastes like great food to his senses). I think a pool of blood is described as looking like a pleasing "patch of grass" at one point.
I was fascinated by this "condition" and before the end I was hoping for little more explanation about it, but was ultimately left in the dark. Was there really no connection between what Fuminori was seeing and the "other plane" that Saya is potentially from? Was it just a spectacular coincidence that he would see very particular things in that way after his experimental surgery (eg. Saya as a human, human organs as delicious fruit [just as Saya views them])? The starkness of the "reversal of sensations" was so specific and convincing it felt like it had to be more than just an agnosia quirk. One of the endings has Saya essentially reshaping the world to be as he CURRENTLY sees it as she takes over the planet - and thus, killing/mutating everyone on earth into the flesh monsters that they look like to him now, which would actually be ultimately pleasing to his new senses (as we know from Yoh's fate) - so it seems like there might be a connection there somewhere. (Makes me wonder what it ACTUALLY looked like when Saya was "blooming" like a flower. It probably wasn't very beautiful in reality) However, his perception is never touched or expanded upon again aside from being explained as an unknown cognitive disorder.
At the beginning you can definitely justify some of the things Fuminori does (eg. not really knowing what he was eating that tasted so good, lashing out at his friend because of the stress he had been enduring for months), but by the end you can tell he stops looking at the humans he knows are underneath the monsters he sees and starts relishing in their pain. All of the obstacles getting between him and Saya start to pile up and he eventually has to throw any sense of morality out the window to continue his relationship with her. Saya engaging in various amoral "experiments" and completely fucking with other people and their families while she tries stuff out doesn't help things either.
Overall, and horror aside, the story is very sad for everyone involved. Saya, while an intelligent lifeform, doesn't really know what she is doing here aside from a vague instinct, and due to her human tutelage she is now simply looking for companionship like any other human, and Fuminori is literally just clinging to the last vestige of sanity in his nightmare of a life in Saya, and both of them are isolated and incredibly lonely except for each other. There is no good outcome. For them to both get what they want, humanity must perish.
I was fascinated by this "condition" and before the end I was hoping for little more explanation about it, but was ultimately left in the dark. Was there really no connection between what Fuminori was seeing and the "other plane" that Saya is potentially from? Was it just a spectacular coincidence that he would see very particular things in that way after his experimental surgery (eg. Saya as a human, human organs as delicious fruit [just as Saya views them])? The starkness of the "reversal of sensations" was so specific and convincing it felt like it had to be more than just an agnosia quirk. One of the endings has Saya essentially reshaping the world to be as he CURRENTLY sees it as she takes over the planet - and thus, killing/mutating everyone on earth into the flesh monsters that they look like to him now, which would actually be ultimately pleasing to his new senses (as we know from Yoh's fate) - so it seems like there might be a connection there somewhere. (Makes me wonder what it ACTUALLY looked like when Saya was "blooming" like a flower. It probably wasn't very beautiful in reality) However, his perception is never touched or expanded upon again aside from being explained as an unknown cognitive disorder.
At the beginning you can definitely justify some of the things Fuminori does (eg. not really knowing what he was eating that tasted so good, lashing out at his friend because of the stress he had been enduring for months), but by the end you can tell he stops looking at the humans he knows are underneath the monsters he sees and starts relishing in their pain. All of the obstacles getting between him and Saya start to pile up and he eventually has to throw any sense of morality out the window to continue his relationship with her. Saya engaging in various amoral "experiments" and completely fucking with other people and their families while she tries stuff out doesn't help things either.
Overall, and horror aside, the story is very sad for everyone involved. Saya, while an intelligent lifeform, doesn't really know what she is doing here aside from a vague instinct, and due to her human tutelage she is now simply looking for companionship like any other human, and Fuminori is literally just clinging to the last vestige of sanity in his nightmare of a life in Saya, and both of them are isolated and incredibly lonely except for each other. There is no good outcome. For them to both get what they want, humanity must perish.
Now for some of the bad stuff:
[Possible trigger warning]
Honestly I could have done without Saya's rape scene, not only because it was disturbing but also because it seemed incredibly stupid and internally inconsistent from the fiction presented so far. Saya has been shown previously disabling and overpowering several different individuals, and actually does so AGAIN later on in the story AFTER this event (restraining and snapping Kouji's neck by herself), but for this one instant she is incapacitated for... some reason? Like I said, I skipped the scene itself so maybe there's a good explanation hiding in there that I will never see, but it seemed like a really bullshit way to fit in another fucked up and depraved scenario that had no business being there, and it's not like the story is lacking in those without it.
In contrast to that, the body-horror transformation and enslavement of Yoh is similarly completely fucked up and also extremely disturbing (The fact that Fuminori is fairly easily convinced to go along with this is absolutely monstrous of him and one of the key telling moments showing his casting off of any shreds of humanity he had left), BUT there was at least a twisted logic to Saya's experimental thinking when she did that and it fit the fiction. We are shown later that transformation of other creatures at a fundamental level (see: rat experiments) is core to her "species'" inner workings and ultimate goal, whether she consciously knew it yet or not.
Also (minor point here), I know that the "it's so terrible it makes you go craaazy" thing is an H.P. Lovecraft and eldritch horror staple, but for some reason I had a difficult time buying that here. Maybe it's because Fuminori is looking at things that resemble Saya's true maddening form every single day when he goes about his life (the horrible monsters he sees when he looks at other humans), not instantly losing his mind but maintaining some level of composure. I suppose there's an argument to be made that he went mad long before the events of the story while trying to avoid being institutionalized, but while the descriptions were disturbing and disgusting they didn't seem like the type of thing that would instill instant insanity. Maybe I need to read some H.P. Lovecraft to understand.
Also (minor point here), I know that the "it's so terrible it makes you go craaazy" thing is an H.P. Lovecraft and eldritch horror staple, but for some reason I had a difficult time buying that here. Maybe it's because Fuminori is looking at things that resemble Saya's true maddening form every single day when he goes about his life (the horrible monsters he sees when he looks at other humans), not instantly losing his mind but maintaining some level of composure. I suppose there's an argument to be made that he went mad long before the events of the story while trying to avoid being institutionalized, but while the descriptions were disturbing and disgusting they didn't seem like the type of thing that would instill instant insanity. Maybe I need to read some H.P. Lovecraft to understand.
If anyone has any comments I'd love to hear them. This is the kind of story that stays with you for a while, so it's interesting (and possibly necessary) for me to talk about it somewhere! What is the GAF consensus on Saya no Uta? I see now that it has a reputation elsewhere on the internet for being one of the "the most fucked up stories ever" but that doesn't necessarily speak to it's quality.
Hi there.
Saya no Uta was my first "reading a VN for the sake of the plot" experience too back in 2010, and my reaction was quite similar to yours (it also made me a Gen Urobuchi fan for life). A few things in response to your big post.
I totally agree about the porn scenes you mentioned. Saya no Uta is a weird case where about half the porn scenes feel vital to the story to the point where it wouldn't work without them, and the other half feel like they were shoehorned in to meet a quota. As for the "seeing Saya drives you mad" thing, people only snap after seeing Saya when they're already in a really stressful situation. Kouji is aware of himself enough after killing Yoh to defend himself against Fuminori. The text actually does make several references to Lovecraft works, but most of them are things that actually exist that Lovecraft references in his works, outside of one reference to the Silver Key.
It's not bad at all. It's got an amazing atmosphere and explains a satisfying amount of the setting and story. It's just missing that final final push that Ever17 had, aside from that it's one of my favorite VNs.
Basileus777
Member
A lot of people think Remember 11 is the best of the Infinity Series despite the lack of closure.
Mangagamer has two announcements for this month, but they're dropping them at Anime Boston.Personally I think it's better than Ever17.
Anyways, you think any announcements will come out of Sakuracon?
TonkatsuAddict
Member
Is there a preferred order for playing the E17, R11, and whatever the third one is? They're on my list for once I finish what I'm currently working on (though Clannad coming in in the next few days may throw a wrench in that).
Basileus777
Member
It doesn't really matter in terms of continuity. The connections between them are light and work just as well no matter what order you play through them.
Bandersnatch1
Member
Real happy with the Clannad physical edition, it came out great. Got #108.
Pretty low, mine was like 3,000something
calc84maniac
Member
I wonder what mine will be, since I was in the Early Bird tier