Thanks JAST for this amazing game, I hope there will be more Empress's title like Ledwness or Dominance.
@ Tim
"I never thought there was any rule. I’ve always attributed it to the fact that it is not localized while being developed, I guess some developers might care about domestic sales more, but I would think that those are usually the same companies that have no interest in “selling to foreigners”."
I thought that was the case based on comments by JAST and Manga Gamer staff and the fact that it makes sense for Japanese businesses not to risk alientating their domestic core audience by allowing a superior and cheaper foreign version to be released in close proximity to the original Japanese release.
Like I said I’d buy any Empress game you guys release and I’m glad we’re even having this conversation. Based on the games released to this date my top pick is Dominance closely followed by Lewdness. But if Closed Game is on the table and it’s your top pick I say go for it!
Also got my Starless hard copy today and it’s awesome. Thanks to all parties involved for making this a reality.
If I may add my two cents to the discussion I'd say Dominance or any of the newer titles would be preferable over Lewdness. Mostly because I think Lewdness resembles Starless a bit too much in style. The other games seem to shake things up a bit at least.
albatross i thought you might want to know there are no birds in this game if want to play a game that involves birds i would recommend Hatoful Boyfriend.
LOL. Actually Lewdness is very tamed compare to Starless. If you get rid of the scat in Lewdness, it just your typical vanilla game. Few of the expected characters never got any actions in the game (the teacher, for example), which was very disappointing since they had so much potentials. Lewdness is also a very rushed work from Empress. Sei had to put this game out there because of the Empress status on that year (2012). They could not afford to wait another 5 years for a game to be released, so they just rushed that game. The story is incomplete. The fetishes are half-done and expression of each of the sex scenes felt like they are there because…well it is a hentai game and sex are part of it. Everything was lacking in that game. DominancE is far better than Lewdness. Not only because it has a variety of new fetishes that are implimented but it also has one of the “punishment” scenario that should have been in Starless, which is where fans of Sei were very happy to see (won’t spoil it). Also, DominancE is very close to Starless than Lewdness because of the level of fetishes and the male dominatrix features.
"Standard
Vanilla
Game"
Lol this is game where girls are sent into basically sexual slavery under the guise of "rehabilitation and punishment" for a rigged sex law aimed to please the perverted rich.
Where'd you get your definition of vanilla from?
Compare to getting your dick cut off or forced marriage to a horse, who proceeds to fucking you while you are 9 month pregnant and then forces you to go in to labor while everyone watches…yeah, I say it is tamed. Again comparison to Starless, since we are in the Starless thread after all. Lewdness is nothing but your casual rapes, forced prostitutions and just mild tortures here and there. That’s all. Sure the game is hardcore as fuck if you compare it with Steins Gate or Shiny Days, but when it comes to Starless, Lewdness is just walk in the park. And yes, DominacE is more hardcore than Lewdness. The level of fetishes escalate very quickly in that game. There is a birth scene while the character is getting it in the ass…all of them are happening while she is screaming in agony. So yeah…that’s where I got my definition of vanilla from.
Not meaning to troll but those are the weakest alligator clips i've ever seen... (those gyno chairs are also pretty neat, it looks like they were made to mount an HUD or something on it. I'd totally play X-Wing in one of those.)
edit: or her nipples are super ripped...
just saying...
> casual rape
Empress biggest and most ambitious project was obviously Starless, most of the people in this thread probably already know that and none of the Empress titles since then have been anything close to it, that it be in terms of quality or lenght.
Since Starless, Empress just put out yearly releases after that to avoid taking big risks (and as a side effect avoid taking big losses, in case a big ambitious and expensive project fails to sell) so of course compared to their best (Starless) if you would compare, then everything else will seem to be low budget in comparison.
So, is there any more news on when the patch is likely to drop?
Still waiting too...
It's been a busy week here, getting ready for the upcoming conventions among other things.
A quick update:
Nick will be finishing up the patch tonight, I'll test it and if all is well it should be out very soon. Thanks again for everyone's contributions and patience. This means we'll hopefully be starting on the text patch soon (I still need to get the new script file -the sprite placement, bg and event markers are linked to the script file so sorry that it's been taking a while.)
More for you guys soon (hopefully)
Am I right to assume there won't be any conflict between the update and the restoration patch?
Someone... will probably make a separate patch for the restored version. I don't think any of restored scenes needed fixing, but I'm not sure exactly how the patch will work so.
I think its more a matter of if the patch would somehow revert the restoration patch or something of the sort. But since you dont know how itll work.. Well, damn. I really wanna read this. @.@ Ive been sitting on this game forever. I even got 2 wallscrolls to add to my starless wallscroll collection and everything.
Still nothing?
Hmph. While I’m usually loathe to moan about things like this, it’s been a nearly a month since the patch was announced as being tested internally, and nearly two weeks since it was supposed to be out very soon. Were problems found with the patch? Has 1.02 been dropped in favour of 1.03 with the script fixes?
I’m with you guys. I’m using the wait time to clear out some of my VN backlog; already finished three titles while waiting.
Hopefully JAST has learned something from this release and has already adjusted its processes to ensure something like this doesn’t happen again. While I don’t have insight to JAST’s inner workings there are some things I can identify as what should be lessons learned:
- Need to test the Japanese and English version side-by-side to avoid graphical glitches and other discrepancies.
- Improve text proof reading processes. This may involve additional layers of proof reading and/or adding additional testers to the process. Looking at Starless it appears there was only one person who did a quick check of the script after translation.
@Unspun Reality: I think that if the non restored patch is used it just might not work.. won't know till someone tries.
@Silanda: yeah timing has really been sucking recently, because half our people are gone for AX and SDCC (Nick included), its a matter of getting it all organized in the convention storm; I was a little over-optimistic. Hopefully since we'll be done with cons soon we can get back on track asap @_@
@HyugaX: We're working on improving testing and QC (I pretty much spent weeks on checking for stray mosaics and random glitches, and we still had a few left over. We're going to be recruiting more testers soon. Playing the game about 200-300 times over i had the text on skip for the most part, so trusting the translation and also trusting that the script splicer didn't screw anything up wasn't the best choice in retrospect.