Err … that was supposed to be a joke. I’m pretty sure even the people who like yaoi aren’t THAT into it that they wanna see goatse. The entire point of goatse is it hits almost everybody’s “that’s disgusting” button quite effectively.
Curse you Narg…it’s all your fault that I had to order MDB and GSS. Well, I guess it was bound to happen sooner or later, though I don’t think I’ve been completely claimed by the dark side…yet.
Any word on when the Mindead expansion review will be completed? I can’t wait to read it 
That’s what we all say at first. Then we discover all too late, that evil is so seductive. :twisted:
Since mid-Feb I’ve been swamped with projects at work. However I’m going to have another window of freetime in the last week of March. I intend to complete my next batch of reviews during then. With the site upgrade mostly done (just a few kinks to workout here and there), I can devote 100% to it.
Current timeline appears to be Devils Devel Concept, Aquanauts of a Calm Morning , a revision of the MinDeaD BlooD review (because I can do better; and it was a conversion of the old ELIZAR.COM article), and then the MinDeaD expansion. The way things are looking, both MinDeaD’s will post simultaneously (they kinda go hand-in-hand). In fact I’ve been wrestling with the idea of making it one big combined review, since the expansion is really just “cut material” from the original.
Down the road I’m looking at doing a Cartagra title (as a site regular keeps requesting for it), Family Project, and a massive Ijitte Princess essay (waiting on the release of NEXT 4, so I have all of them). There’s also that half finished Toppara review on my desktop and Amakami Vampire (which even for Grooming is major suckage to the extreme).
But that’s planning waaaaay to far ahead, so don’t hold me to fulfilling that order in a single month (or two). 
I look forward to some in particular , your new MDB review but youve left out one very important one SAIMINJUTSU 2 I know yuo arent welching on your promise …if you are well he
http://tn-skr.smilevideo.jp/smile?i=4158788
would like a word… :twisted: :twisted:
I’ve been meaning to ask you : whats the deal with the two sentai eroge did the developers think it seriously had sense to make an eroge where all the girls get raped repeatedly and then no revenge they just become super toadies ?! 
:? :? was that the end of lemon Ranger? and is a similar fate awaitng the sirengers at the end? why wayte anytime trying to make them appear all elite and stuff :roll: :roll:
I’m not slacking! I swear. I work on the reviews I have when time allows, but the workplace has been surprisingly busier than I expected. I didn’t get to take that second week off like I hoped, and been trying to catch up. Hopefully this month will be more productive than last.
Ah… Tokumei Sentai Sirenger and Tokumei Sentai Yuzuranger, eh? Anim has a history of letting evil win in their dark eroge series. So yea… evil always wins in Tokumei Sentai. :twisted:
I believe a third title is in the works to make it a trilogy, so expect to see the sexually enslaved and perverse Dark Siren Rangers on the side of evil. Mwa, ha, ha, ha! :o
I’m actually kinda hoping for it really… I liked Ai Mashiro, and seeing her being an evil MILF is gonna be fun!
Actually, the Siren Rangers weren’t really an elite unit. While Ai had a lot of experience and Yuuki had a flawless performance record, they weren’t used to working with each other. Nozomi was also very impulsive (their greatest weakness as a result). The Lemon Rangers were “noobs” as afar as the Galaxy Police were concerned (the original assignment they had, was supposed to be a cakewalk). The assumed third title will have the best Ranger unit try to save everyone I suppose. Would make sense.
So I just finished the Vampire Hunter route in MDB and I’ve got to say it’s exceeding my expectations. Your review is spot on as this game is a real gem and one I never would have experienced without your recommendation. So to anyone who has yet to play this masterpiece, get it…NOW. Just pray that you don’t piss off Yuka and end up on the wrong side of “Burst Mode”.
You naughty little narg, putting DDC above YnKZ and BDDD and Saiminjutsu2 
still do try please … 
I think you maybe disappoij nted as the anim links on youer site and everhwhere are dead …so yeah ?have they folded?
I hope if they do they at least manage a bipolar ending
ending 1. alll become evuil and the new unit joins the others you get to see costumes
2. the super commandos save everyone and somehow redeem them …woul dbe better to be bifocal than have only a single path
as to them thios is what I meant
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0AyQhXlchE
they should underrstand trickery and use a false show o0f allegiance then spring the counterattacjk. I guess Id be a bad eroge babe as I follow normal logic and have read Sun Tzu and machiavelli -AoW and the Prince for the win!!
I love your site. You have reviewed two eroge I want to play.
Narg’s review of Virgin Roster has been posted.
I haven’t played this game, but I was curious about two things I’d noticed about it prior to reading the review. The low EGS score it received was one of them, as something down in the 55 range usually implies that it’s a rather bad title (excluding cases where a game was released incomplete/bugged and gets a lot of zeroes because of that). The biggest surprise for me was the small number of ero-scenes (which might be a major contributing factor to the poor EGS scores). For a full-price game that’s focused on sex, 26 scenes is a very small number (even if some are unusually long), and that figure is even more acute when the game’s story is purely about turning girls into sex slaves. I’ve got no idea as to what the average number of scenes is for this genre, but my guess is that there should be a minimum of 50.
The other thing that’s unusual is the quality of the artist’s work. Oddly enough, he seemed to be a better artist in 2002 than he is now. For comparison, the most recent eroge he’s worked on is (??? ??? - more samples here) which was released in October 2008. Same (below par imo) generic character designs as all his previous ZyX eroges, but with this game, there seems to be a lack of detail on many of the character sprites and CGs compared to the Virgin Roster art from 6 years earlier, and overall it doesn’t seem to hold up very well visually for an late 2008 game.
I agree that 26 is a light number, however on the flip side it’s still above the norm for non-sex-centric titles. Typically your “common” true love bgame of the early 2000’s will have around 6 to 8 winnable girls, and maybe two scenes involving her: one at the mid point where you take her virginity and then another at the end. That’s a gross and lose lumping of the numbers… so there’s a lot of exceptions to the rule. In any case, that will get you about 12 to 16 sex scenes… which Virgin Roster goes over. Then of course, there’s the whole animated gimmick. But yea… VR isn’t a sexfest - however I don’t think that was the intention either: Kengo is still human as far as things go; he’s not a superpowered sex machine and whatnot.
It might be a case of you get what you pay for. Maybe the studio’s are giving him less $$$ than he wants, so he draws shittier.
However I think it’s more of a case, that Masahiro now draws like animator, rather than illustrator. Because of costs and the limited time involved, animators simplify things in their artwork: ESPECIALLY in the old days, when everything was drawn via cels. We obviously see this all time, when there’s anime ports of our favorite bgames. Looks at Sister Princess for example. The anime versions are NO WHERE near the art quality that Tenhiro made them on. That’s because producing an anime that looked exactly like the G’s Magazine stories, would have made the entire animation and broadcast studios bankrupt. It seems that Masahiro - for whatever reasons - prefers to incorporate what he learned in the animator business (simplicity of form), and apply it to his static illustrations now.
Maybe it’s laziness. Maybe that’s what the studios want. Maybe Masahiro thinks he draws better like this. However his defense, he can still draw like he used too: in fact he’s gotten better in many areas. However you only see this in the occasional fan guides and art books that are released. 
Yeah, but what IS there to fill the space between H scenes?
It doesn’t seem like there’s enough of a story to really carry it that far.
Even relatively light-on Atelier Kaguya games, like Prima Stella, still has 46 H scenes and manages to fill the considerable amount of space between them with a reasonably well-thought-out plot. It seems, to me, that with 26 H scenes Virgin Roaster can only be a really short game.
No argument from me: Virgin Roster is a short game and lacking story. That’s why I only gave the Scenario two points. I was thinking of giving it only one, but then I had to remind myself that VR is one of the few ENGLISH games of it’s like, without the whole “cop out” factor of the protagonist being possessed or something. As I noted: he’s pure evil filth. That novelty deserved at least two points IMHO.
Prima Stella isn’t available in English though. Westerns who don’t know Japanese, have a rather limited selection. It’s also a 2008 title. Even a title many around here are waiting for, Family Project, suffers like VR in it’s own way. I mean yea… FP used to be a highly rated bgame, but that like saying the Ford Pinto used to be a best selling car. Both are outdated and obsolete as hell, compared to what’s out there today. Many will say FP is all about the character development, but again, the standards of then have changed to those that around now. FP royally sucks to titles I can find made after it.
That’s why I’ve tried to take into consideration, rating titles predominantly only against those made in the same year or early. It would be grossly unfair to rate a 1990 ero against 2009 ero, don’t you think? Now even back in 2002, VR wasn’t all that great a game, but it doesn’t comparatively suck to everything like it does now - just like back in it’s time, Family Project didn’t looks so awful or considered so cliche and predictable by today’s standards. Have to maintain some degree of objectivity.
But yea… I pointed out it’s not recommended, except for the novelty of what VR is. In most cases, people will have made their decision if VR is for them or not, based on the rape theme anyways - so that’s why I felt it was more important to focus on that.
Oops. Double post.
EDIT
Meh… I’ll use this mistake for something useful.
To answer the original inquiry Ignosco posted - yes, Virgin Roster is inferior to the sexfests of it’s time in Japan. For example Black Cyc had two Yami no Koe titles released by the end of the year. For the “the protagonist is an evil asshole” rape genre, Touchy produced the more superior Mayonaka wa Ware no Mono. Virgin Roster was nothing special for it’s day, except the animated sex and talents of Masahiro Yamane: which is why it makes a 50-ish rating on sites like Erogamescape (and myself), rather than 30-ish, because there were games worst than VR.
But again… we didn’t get Yami no Koe or Mayonaka in English during 2003 either.
EDIT 2
In any event, if you disagree with my review and rating, feel free to mention that in the article’s comments: that way people who visit there, can get another point of view. 8)
No no no, you misunderstand; I can’t really speak for Ignosco, but I don’t think either of us disagree with anything in your review. We were just commenting that a lot of the information about the game, like the relative lack of H scenes, was surprising.
Prima Stella I just gave as an example of an eroero title with a decent plot, and how even then it manages to fit in 46 H scenes. Something like Virgin Roster just seems strange if it has so few H scenes.
Ah… gottcha… I was sorta hoping you disagreed though: it’s no secret that I’m a dark eroge fan, and I’m always worried if I’m being too biased in a case like this (more so for twincest).
Now that you mention… it is rather strange…
Tsuki Possession was the earlier “dark rape” for Zyx, and it had a lot more sex. Ironically though, Japanese erogers rated Tsuki Possession about the same as Virgin Roster, even when the whole “possession” seems to give off more story. Confounding further: Tsuki Possession must have been a best seller for Zyx, because they went and made that DVD remake with the blind miko the next year.
Apologies if the tone of my post came across in the wrong way. I pretty much agree with your review as well (well, to the length that I can make that statement, having not even played the game at all :P), and if I had to review it from a completely objective standpoint, my score would be reasonably close to yours. The low number of scenes was particularly odd, since The Sagara Family, released a bit over a year after Virgin Roster, had (iirc) around triple the number of ero-scenes, as well as slightly more plot. And about the artist, that’s a good point about his static art style moving closer to that of his animated works. Definitely a step backwards from my perspective, but as you mentioned, either the artist himself or someone high in the chain of command must prefer his newer art style.
The thing about erogamescape is that it generally seems to be biased towards the story-heavy pure-love market - specifically, it represents a slice of the Japanese erogamers, but no more than a slice. As an example, try searching for any eroges that are specifically targeted at girls - if they have an entry in EGS at all (and only the most insanely popular ones do) it probably won’t have more than 5 or so votes! These games do not do badly; on the contrary, in fact; but they are poorly represented on EGS.
As such, typically an eroero game won’t do very well on EGS unless it’s name is ‘Serina’. =P As such, just because Tsuki got a fairly low score on EGS, that doesn’t mean it necessarily sold any worse than e.g. Yumemishi did.
Naw. Not at all. In fact I’m all for it. I was thinking that you noticed a flaw in my review process, so I wanted to point out how I came to the conclusions I did. I sorta hoped you’d show me where I had a big flaw. In fact, I failed to really notice that VR is rather light on the eroge, even compared to other Zyx titles.
I wanted to see if you were still stalking me.
More reason to hate EGS! :twisted: