My first vote goes to Haruka ni Aogi, Uruwashi no because we need more ren’ai games here. My second vote goes to Bullet Butlers. It looks like an interesting game and I’d buy it, but I’d prefer another ren’ai game first.
I’d do a negative vote of Sekai if I could. We don’t need another sex-romp game. We have enough of those here. This would be the only game out of the 3 that I wouldn’t buy.
Keep in mind that some people may want sex romps. A good story can be good but some people buy Bishojo games for the sex romps. Personally, i buy them for humorous situations.
Thats probably why my top 5 list consist of these babies.
1- Sagara Family
2- Yume Miru Kusuri
3- X-change alternative
4- Snow Sakura
5- Crescendo (okay, so I am a Kyoko and Ayame fan. This game is not very funny but those two storylines are addictive)
I don’t know the other two, but Haruka ni Aogi is a lot better than it sounds. It’s essentially one of the most finely presented ‘pure love’ AVGs that I’ve seen. Yes, it’s been done before about a million times, but rarely quite this well.
And it looks gorgeous, too.
Bullet Butlers looks interesting enough, and by the same people that were responsible for this, so I voted for those two.
What makes you think SEKAI is a sex-romp?
As far i can tell, the story revolves about an unlucky guy living in a pension with many interesting people - not only women, but men too.
I played the trial version, and after 1 hour or so of gameplay there was not a single eroscene… what’s more i can tell about true sexromps like DYLHB 1 & 2.
The story involves a kind of forbidden love (older man / younger girl), that’s true, but i don’t think that makes the game automaticaly a sexromp.
You and me too! They’re my favorite CRESCENDO girls!! 
Besides, what we need more are life-sims like True Love and Princess Maker…preferably twin (loli) maker
For me, Bullet Butler just carries too much Fate Stay Night flavor and it kinda rubs off as not right.Especially with the theme involved, I think i may likely pass up on it. Besides, i like the slow mellow stuff. (exotic and extreme is good once in a while but slow and steady is good for cutting tension)
That can be true, but the eroge FATE-STAY NIGHT was never released outside Japan. Now we’re talking about release commercially a great action-themed/story-focused erogame with mistery and fantasy - fully translated and uncensored. Something we don’t have since HIMEYA-SOFT days! :lol:
There’s the fantrans patch for F/SN, that’s true, but that’s for those who bought the original japanese game. For some guys, $90 is too much for pay, even for a great game. And besides, there’s the still censored CGs on the ero-scenes. Some guys here are just crazy for uncensored eroscenes! :roll:
Bit late in reply, but saw this when searching for something else…specifically a twin raising game I think Narg mentioned about (although that could be me fantiscising…)
Anyway ADV games are not popular because they are, but because they are what the companies translate. If I have a monopoly on oranges and never sell any apples, the oranges will definatly be the most popular because no one can get apples, unless they special import them.
I don’t entirely agree. Typically, the games that sell in utterly insane numbers are usually the ones that sell entirely on their ability to deliver a story, and pure ADV/AVG/NVL seems to be the best medium for delivering a story (since there’s utterly zero gameplay to distract from it). It is, in general, much harder to deliver a strong story in a raising game (although there have been some admirable attempts!). I think that, before we get into the slightly more niche parts of the eroge market, a lot of eroge companies attempt to reach a similar level of popularity to the heavy players in the industry (Key, Type-Moon, age) by focusing on story.
So yes, while your argument (that AVGs are popular because they are what the market pumps out) holds true, I think that the converse (that the market pumps out AVGs because those are what sell well) is also true. If a raising game comes out and sells better than Fate/stay Night, I bet you’ll start to see more raising games. A lot more =p
But, well, until some company decides to take a risk by putting an insanely talented, high-profile scenario worker to work on a high-budget raising game (which then leads to the possibility of a touka gettan-scale trainwreck), they’ll probably remain a niche market.
Well Bishoujo games aren’t like regular anime. They are classified under the hentai category so strictly speaking, not many people know about them. But the major standout games, they are the ones that really get the fan basis. They are the ones that sell well. In bishoujo games, the more obscure ones are not even known by the general public, no matter how good they are.
Well I can site some problems with your assumption. First, Brave Soul. Brave Soul, as you should know, is not an ADV, but an RPG. However at the time of it’s release it broke (according to posts and some of the descriptions I saw on PP homepage) every sales record they had. Just 1 RPG which didn’t have a prequal or was an offshoot to have fanboys help spur sales.
Second, it has been stated here (i can dig out the post if you really want) that ADV games are much easier to produce than other games. Thus, even though they might not sell as many copies as Brave Soul, the amount of patches and whatnot is far less to get it to work. This seems to imply that ADV games are not translated because they are popular, but because they can get the highest profit margin in the aggregate, which nothing wrong with that. PP is a business after all, and they are doing what any other business would do.
I’d like to see some numbers for Brave Soul, considering it’d be up against things like Kanon, ToHeart, AIR etc. around the time of release. However I will definitely agree that AVGs would be cheaper to make (since you don’t need to draw thousands of sprites as well as designing levels and programming the gameplay in addition to hundreds of CG and normal character sprites). As such, I would assume that the genre has basically come up against the same thing as the modern adventure game (read: the genre was doing pretty damn well, but things like FPSs were much cheaper to make, so…)
However, I wasn’t really comparing RPGs and SLGs to AVGs. Utawarerumono was a very successful SLG/AVG hybrid. I was more comparing AVGs to raising games. Once again, from a plot point of view, I think it’s a lot easier to tell a good story in an AVG, RPG or SLG than in a raising game.
Sorry sales figures are kept secret at PP, exact numbers.
However I found 2 posts related to BS.
First, this one, dealing with patch downloads to BS. The fact BS was the one commented on clearly signifies it’s had quite an impact compared to the others.
Second though, and more important, is this newsletter. While exact figures are not mentioned, it clearly states that BS was breaking records that appear to not have been matched until X-Change 3, 3 years later and had the backing of being a double sequel (which for games generally gets more sales if the series is popular).
Well it’s easier to tell a story in an AVG, I’ll admit that. As to an RPG…well…depends on the story. A story around a particular girl and guy, yes, but one with more characters involved, no. An SLG…is about on par with a stat raising sim, mostly because of the problem with rpgs & multiple partners. An AVG has a minimal interface and thus can spend more money on writers and artists, but at the cost of gameplay. And let’s face it, how many good AVG games out there vs. non-good ones?
Actually, this is talking about breaking records within the context of English-language bishoujo games. And that I’ll definitely believe. However, it’s not what I’m talking about. The English-language market is totally different because so few titles are available, and that was especially true at the time it was released.
With reguard to the Japanese market, again, I’m going to say how many quality ADV games are there, percentage-wise? I’d be very surprised if it was outside the single digits…in fact I’d wager comparatively stat-raising games, rpgs, etc. probably have a higher percentage.
Thus, the fact they cost less to produce doesn’t mean ADVs necessarily will become better platforms for good eroge stories.
I would have to vote for Bullet Butlers first, and Haruka ni Aogi, Uruwashi no second.
Bullet Butlers seems refreshingly new and interesting - with an intrigueing setting and a serious story to be told.
Haruka sounds very sweet and touching, but there are pleanty of touching games available on the market right now. I would certainly purchase this game at some point, but I would run to purchase Bullet Butlers.
I read Jinnai and Lancer-X’s comments on RPGs, dating simulations, and raising sims, and thought “hmm… except for the ‘weird’ people like me who have experienced Private Nurse or Midsummer Day’s Resonance, there are not a whole lot of English-speaking fans who like ADV games.” Yes, I honestly believe that there are quite a few fans out there who lean toward one of the following styles:
-a story with full video (such as 0verflow’s games)…
-a complex game requiring strategy or skill…
-…but nothing in between.
I suspect that outside this message board, only a few other English-speaking fans know that visual novels can be anything more than mindless junk. I’ve read various blogs/sites which seem to suggest that any property which began life as a bishoujo game has no merit. I disagree with them. But there’s only a few games which I can use as examples to tell people, “Hey, this doesn’t have to be dumb.”
…So yeah, that’s part of the reason why I selected “Not interested in any” a while ago. I’d like to see a few more boys love games, since I suspect that a few of the people who dislike moe-moe games/stories are BL fans. I’d like to see some more shoujo – as a self-confessed shoujo fanboy, I’m not content with just one officially translated otome game. And a few “console-esque” games with more gaming elements would be nice.
While I disagree, I can understand the criticism from those who have actually given visual novels a fair chance. In truth, there’s little well written content available. Specific titles might stack up well against other entries in the genre, but skeptical readers also compare them to other genres and media. Few talented, highly trained writers would pursue a field like eroge, so there’s a big limiting factor from the start (and we’re talking about games that are all about text).
If one must initially be attracted to the subject matter (limited appeal) rather than the quality of prose, a novel is unlikely to gain much respect from non-fans.
Heh, I know what you mean. Sometimes it feels like I’m the only English-speaking person that’s played Moonlight Blue, for example (although that’s almost definitely not the case, since I’ve suggested it to a number of people, and even ported the thing to another platform for the sheer purpose of tricking people into playing it).
I think Narcissu and True Remembrance are good introductions to the genre, as they are both freeware and authorised translations. The only real downer is that they aren’t multipath and don’t necessarily prepare people for multipath games, but they’re still a pretty good introduction to the style of game that has you clicking the mouse or pressing a key approximately half a million times to ‘win’.
Also, to be fair, if my first eroge was a BL game, I probably would have quit the genre forever. (as in, if I went and played it, and didn’t know…) But I know there’s probably lots of people that doesn’t apply to, and variety in the market is always a good thing.
Please note, a larger number of players who play eroge are men. So technically boy love games are not as prominent as the normal sex or the girlxgirl sex. Just so you know, I’m one of them. And my sister hates looking at penises so score another point for her.
But heck, there are a lot of games that really are just mindless sex romps. Those are generally made to appeal to those who are looking for “better” H-mangas. The really good ones though are the ones that stand out because people talk about them more openly. Fate/Stay Night for one could have done without the H-scenes and in the remakes, they remove them for the sake of the story. The response made the game a worldwide success. (hell, I see plenty of Fate fans in the US)