This Year Visual Novel Scene in Review -- talk about things that happened this year!

Upcoming Weekly Discussions

12/08 - LEAF/AQUAPLUS/STING

12/15 - MAGES/MAGES. GAME

12/22 - age

As always, thanks for the feedback and direct any questions or suggestions to the modmail or through a comment in this thread.

Schedule

Welcome to the Monthly "What's Been Going On?" thread!

Every Friday we used to have a "Off-topic" thread, but it's been inconsistently active.

We're going to try a topic where you can say what you've been doing outside of visual novels every month. Feel free to say anything about yourself you feel comfortable sharing like favorite games, movies, your job, how's school going, or any other interests you might have.

You can keep using this thread as the regular Off-Topic Thread if you like.

Welcome to the /r/visualnovels Weekly Questions and Recommendations Megathread!

Any and all questions/recommendations related to visual novels are permitted in this thread. This includes recommendation questions, technical questions, as well as meta questions about the subreddit. No matter if your question is small, big, or seemingly impossible to solve. Anything.

But please don't forget that our rules still apply. Summarized, that means no unmarked spoilers, no piracy in any shape or form, give warnings for 18+ stuff, and be nice!

Useful links to check out before asking questions or for recommendations

General:

• VNDB: The Visual Novel Database - A fantastic resource for anything and everything visual novels. The visual novel equivalent to IMDB or MAL. It's where you'll find the answers to 90% of your questions.
• Guide to Japanese
• This recommendation site may be useful if you're new to reading visual novels!
• Consider this recommendation site if you're interested in reading a visual in Japanese.
• Looking for a relatively easy VN to read in Japanese? Click here!

From our wiki:

• Having trouble with a visual novel? - A page with some possible solutions and links.
• How to Hook and Extract Visual Novel Text - A how-to on dealing with untranslated visual novels.
• Buying visual novels - Where and how to buy visual novels, translated and untranslated.

More awesome and useful links can be found here.

I am right now working an an Google Sheet that has all of the VNs I own in it. Because I wanted to know how big my Backlog is and I'm cooked, how did it get that big!?

But what I noticed is that I bought a few VNs that were cheap and now I look at them and think "why did I do this?", for example Harmonia. I am thinking about Including the playtime I find on VNDB. If you do have a list, what did you include?

I have only finished Sumika route in Muv Luv extra. I'm taking a break now.

Can I play this VN or is it part of the Muv Luv series?

No spoilers for Muv Luv please

Looking for something new so please don't say a character from one of these titles:

FMD Muramasa

Umineko

Subahibi

Sakuuta/toki

Dies Irae

Cross Channel

Anything Typemoon

Fata Morgana

Basically as the title says is it strange to read nukige for the story? Because this might be tmi, but I’ve flicked my bean to a VN… though I have to some videos of animated h scenes from certain VN on xvideo 😜

Hello all I'm having surgery next month & am looking for a good love story dating VN or something more steamy. PC or Switch please.

I'm not sure if this is hot topic but I figured that this sub reddit is more acquainted with methods for learning japanese through text hookers on visual novels. My question pertains to gacha games though, I can't give it a try yet because I don't have any computer but it's in anticipation of getting it. Has anyone tried hooking the visual novel scenes of gacha games when learning japanese or any other language? If this is case by case, the games I precisely want to read are Blue Archive and Reverse 1999 in Chinese.

I have a question about Tsugumi and Takeshi. Why was Takeshi the one who got out of the submarine and used the Archimedes Principle to push the submarine to save Tsugumi? Shouldn't it be Tsugumi doing that instead, since she is immortal and wouldn't die from drowning?

Update: Clear runs fine after I unchecked the Unicode-UTF8 box when changing system locale, that was the root of my text problem. Gift is still experiencing the crash issue, even when I run it as an administrator and my current fear is that it needs to run on an older version of Windows.

I have tried everything and I have no idea what to do at this point. I bought Gift and Clear from DLsite recently since I'm a fan of Circus's work, I wanted to check out Moonstone. Unfortunately after getting everything set up, Gift simply will not run. I have reconfigured my IME to Japanese, fully updated my computer, and even reconfigured permissions in the root files to try and sort out the CLSID and APPID errors. Nothing works. I run the game as administrator, the text on top does not display properly, and after the voice says "Moonstone" the game automatically shuts down and closes the window. I even tried to uninstall and reinstall it, but it won't uninstall - it just gives me garbled text in two windows. I am at my wits' end, I have no idea what else to do besides ask here.

Edit: Yes I have changed the system locale and display language to Japanese, unfortunately neither of these things have helped. Text is still garbled characters and window still immediately shuts down.

Edited edit: Can't be the Windows 11 update either because I don't run Windows 11.

View Poll

I made a post some time ago about Kakenuke crashing on startup. Apparently it’s all NekoNyan games I try to play. On start, a white screen will appear and disappear shortly after.

Other VNs or Games work fine… Anyone else have this issue or know one or two tricks on how to get those programs up and running again?

Appreciate every comment!

So im reading chaos;head noah and im a chunk into chapter 3, however im curious as to when the story really starts as it's moving pretty slowly

What I loved about Kara no Shoujo was the mystery and characters (Toko... Tojiko...). I also very much enjoyed the psychological horror elements of the first one. Now, are there any parallels with Flowers? I know it is a yuri series, but what is it driven by? Mystery, drama, CGDCT, or perhaps some shitty romance with misunderstandings?

With the current autumn sale beginning on Steam and there also being a winter sale at the end of December, are there any visual novels or JRPGs worth potentially picking up for people such as myself that are using them to learn Japanese? Unfortunately, I know that in most cases for visual novels they usually have censored versions that end up on Steam, and for those games it would be ideal to find their uncensored versions elsewhere. However, that isn't true for all of them on Steam. Are there any that didn't get censored or can easily have censored content restored that are on Steam and may be worth purchasing to read in Japanese?

I already own and plan on reading these in Japanese: 9nine, science adventure, muv-luv, zero escape, danganronpa, higurashi, umineko, zero escape

I'm open to any suggestions as I'm not a picky reader. Thanks!

I am currently playing the VN. I'm on Misuzu's route which I started first.

The things I like:

1. The banter and humor

2. The music (perfection)

3. The atmosphere and aesthetic

4. The plot points (girl in the sky etc..)

The things I don't like:

1. The characters' dynamics and relationship feel very forced and cringe

2. Characters' actions are unrealistic

3. The story feels rushed (This is one of the first VNs I played. So maybe the initial routes are supposed to feel rushed? Because we don't have enough context? IDK. Let me know)

Edit: I just finished the Misuzu route and it felt very rushed. I am following one of the guides online which gave the order as: Misuzu, Kano, Minagi, Summer, Air

-----Can you rate each of these 5 routes so that I have an idea of what to expect?

Misuzu

Kano

Minagi

Summer

Air

-----Will I like the other routes or will I have the same issues?

Always loved the unique 2000s feeling that visual novels have and after the OP I was just loitering around for the first minutes on the interface and I’m amazed by how well it looks!

Just wanted to share my excitement over here

Steam autumn sale and I plan to enjoy the games but I have a few questions regarding the patches:

1 - Is there no version without the licensing issues with the voices?

2 - Does Umineko also needs an uncensor patch?

3 - Are the fanmade voice/graphics patches safe? I saw that a lot of people recommend them but Im very skeptical so I thought asking would be the better choice (07th mod on github for Umineko and the voice restoration patch for Majikoi that I found a link on vndb thats on MEGA)

4 - Since Umineko has both the Question and Answer arcs do I need to patch it 2 times? Or just once if I have both already?

6 - Does Majikoi only has 1 translated entry atm?

This is a bit of a long post but I really appreciate anyone who can help me.

Does anyone knows any eroge that contains headshave kink? Specially on NC/ryona contexts.

It's really hard to find this kind of content so I accept any other form of media tbh, but I do prefer visual novels.

Thank you! <3