Because some people want a dark title, of course. Good is nice. Good AND what you want is better.
When I made that post, I was referring to dark eroges. Most of ruf’s lineup (and certain Nitro+ titles) fall into that category, and would be a lot less problematic than Black Cyc titles. For example (as Lancer-X has also mentioned), Rasen Kairou is a better eroge (in pure horror terms) than anything Black Cyc have released. I’d be willing to rank it above all of Black Cyc’s titles bar Mugen Kairou 1+2, (and possibly EXTRAVAGANZA), due to the strong scenario + text, the plot structure’s extremely effective use of multiple points of view combined with the navigation of EDEN, the power of the horror depictions (both indirect and direct), the endings, and perhaps above all, being ‘thematically’ ahead of its time (a 2000 eroge that deals with online crimes/pornography in a very serious manner). That said, YMMV, particularly if you dislike utsuges.
sighs
As long as they don’t censor the in-game text, I’ll be fine with some censorship. After all, someone would get to developing a patch to decensor soon enough. And if someone doesn’t want to use it but instead, insists on kicking up a fuss to hell and beyond, it’s their problem. Just got to make sure it doesn’t screw up the game, though. Someone did do it for Animamundi: where any of the “gore/guro” stuff was censored out.
Here’s the thing, though, basically what I think Ignosco was getting at anyway.
The detail that makes Black Cyc titles (aside from the Mugen Kairous, which are special in a very different way and not guro at all) a bit special in the world of eroge is NOT how ‘dark’ they are, the quality of the stories, the quality of the writing, any particularly unique interface/system components or anything like that. It’s the over-the-top gore. That’s why you want Black Cyc, right, and not those other titles from the vast range of dark eroge made by JAST licensers. The one unique quality Black Cyc has is the thing you’d be getting rid of if you cut content from them to appease the moral puritans. Because nobody that approaches, say, EXTRAVAGANZA with a mind to censor it will look through all the scenes, see that most of them are fine but that a tiny bit needs to be cut from one of them.
So, why bother licensing an eroge if you’re going to mangle it and deliver something that doesn’t look like the original product anyway? There’s much better things to license.
Yeah, that’s essentially what I was trying to say (in much clearer terms). If you tried to cut the over the top gore out of a Black Cyc eroge, you wouldn’t just be losing a CG or two here and there - it’d be a reasonable percentage of the CGs, and as a result you’d have to trim or eliminate a lot of the endings too (usually the bad ones). With EXTRAVAGANZA, I think you’d probably have to cut or alter around half of the endings, and at least 20-30% of the base CGs would need some variants removed too. While most, if not all Black Cyc games are perhaps a bit over the top in general ero terms too, the content can’t just be trimmed out for that reason either, as the surrounding scenario would also have to be rewritten.
It’s also worth mentioning that although there’s a lot more discussion of Black Cyc eroges on these forums compared to other dark labels (or indeed compared to any other company), there are a lot of other highly regarded dark eroges/brands out there, and many of their titles have outsold anything Black Cyc’s released and as a result, could well be more popular on the English side as well. Obviously personal taste is a huge factor and some people would probably want to see JAST license Black Cyc titles regardless of potential censorship issues, but I guess for me, there are more than enough good potential options on the table to make the censorship factor a bit of a non-issue.
If any company would license a Black Cyc game I would be super happy
And who’s fault is that? :x At least we know of Black Cyc because of Narg’s reviews. You evil japanese-speaking players keep all the good stuff to yourselves.
One day I will learn japanese and end your tyranny! I will make a review of each and every game I play and share the knowledge with everyone! :evil:
Until that time comes though… Please give us some more elaborate information for those awesome games we haven’t had a chance to try out. Please? grovels and begs :oops:
Considering I have a very weak tolerance for dark sex, I would have a hard time buying and playing Black Cyc titles, just because I’m squeamish. So from that perspective, censorship would actually make the title more palatable to me.
On the other hand, I take a very dim view of censorship in general, so news that the game had been watered down would probably not sit well with me.
In all honesty, I might buy GSS or Min-Dead Blood, because of the very good story that these games have, but I doubt I would buy any other game from them.
The Mugen Kairou games have better stories and no gore. That doesn’t mean they won’t make you squeamish-- heck, they make me squeamish. But they’re worth it.
Fixed. 
Personally, I prefered MinDeaD and Gun-Katana over the Mugen Kairou. More action. More twincest. MK is good… but doesn’t top my charts.
Really comes down to taste. But I’m in agreement with what Lancer-X is pointing out: the crazy content, is what makes certain BCyc titles, what they are. Hard to say I’d rate it has highly, if some of the… err… good stuff… was taken out.
Have you read some of the other English eroge review blogs? Accany’s VN Dump is by far the best of the really active ones, and most importantly his reviews (like Narg’s) don’t contain any significant spoilers in either the text or the sample images.
(True, I guess I should stop being lazy and write some reviews too though, or at least slightly longer comments. I’d particular like to review both Mugen Kairous, but as the stories in both cases are even more loop-based than Cross Channel, it’d be very hard to describe what makes the game successful without revealing the overall plot + themes.)
I could give you access to write reviews on ??? if you’d like. It’s hosted through Blogger, so you’d just need to have a Blogger account.
Ah, thanks - once I get something together that’s worth posting, then I think I’ll take you up on that offer.
Not really. :oops: The only ones I knew of were narg’s site and mouyamete, both of which have stopped posting anything for a while. Such review sites have been my only motivation for studying japanese, so if you know of more of these, please let me know. 