They all look good to me, hope we get some more votes, as we dont need 5 people voting for the other 90% that play the game (wait wait… that would be just like the US elections).
Sekai de Ichiban Dame na Koi was my pick, i really have no specific reason but after reading about all 3, Bullet and Sekai got my attention most, my pick was still Sekai though.
All of them sound good. Bullet Butlers is the most interesting, followed closely by the Pulltop game. Sekai ga … is in third place behind the rest of it; while I do like lots of good story, I also don’t mind sex romps. A good sex romp can be fun, and Sekai seems like it would have more than one girl at a time withOUT going into stale formulaic harem routes like in so many GC games. But as said, the market has a lot of those already.
If I were a decisionmaker – all 3 games have good scores. True, we’ve already got lots of sexfests – but you can’t drop the whole concept of a sexfest entirely, you’ll lose customers that way. In fact, though none were listed, a brutish game wouldn’t necessarily be bad, for the same reason.
And Narg, quitcherbitchin! Those 75+'s are well above your bare minimum to recommend buying as an import, and they’re going to sell for like $40 US! Try to a) judge the game by US standards (I.e. pretend you’d never played a good one before 
and b) quit going ‘Noooo, my $80’ 
The grapes are not sour! XD
Hmmm… I was hoping to save my thoughts on Haruka ni Aogi, Uruwashino for a formal review on my site someday, but I guess it would be for a good cause to just spill them out. I’d like to note that I’m only about 45% complete with this game… but it’s the kind I’ve seen over and over before, so I think I can make a pretty accurate guesstimate. 
No spoilers. I will avoid them totally. :o
Naw… I think you pretty much have that matter covered. The story and characters take serious precedence over the sex. In fact, the game could have been released as a non-sex version without major alterations to any of the routes.
Yes. The game is terribly clichÈ. The sporty girl is sporty and her life problem is related to her being sporty. The motherly maternal girl is motherly maternal and the life crisis is so dire because she’s so motherly maternal. It’s a cookie cutter concept.
However this is what Haruka ni Aogi, Uruwashino is meant to be: clichÈ. The game is 100% traditional true love. It essentially caters to those who want to return to the “roots” of what made ren’ai what they are today (with a few face lifts of course). Therefore Haruka is unoriginal in concept, because it emulates everything that makes true love stories work.
Now does that make it predictable? No. The stories in Haruka borrow a lot of atmosphere from titles and anime which preceded it, however it presents these things with a few changes of its own. Furthermore, Haruka combines everything that it borrows with really good presentation. Sure the motherly maternal girl is motherly maternal: but she’s a DAMN GOOD motherly maternal girl that will REALLY appeal to those who like motherly maternal girls. (And yes I was one of those)
So as far as true love titles go, Haruka is a good true love. Nothing really original: but then nothing is broken. You know what you’re getting, and you won’t be unhappy with it.
Out of the three choices, Haruka is hands down the best in graphical presentation. As I mentioned before: BB has neat special effects, but Haruka just looks so much better. The artwork is first class, and the leading artist is a master at what he does. The designs are attractive and backgrounds are mouthwatering. Event illustrations only multiply that fact. Now on the music… Is it good? Certainly. Could it have been better? Yes… I’m not going to lie about anything. The guitar, piano, and percussion sound GREAT ñ yet the woodwind and string instruments are not so great, because the emulation of these instruments is kinda of the waning side. The melodies are beautiful, so the music does fit the mood, but I wish they spent a little more time or money on the sound suite.
Since I haven’t seen everything yet, I can’t really vouch with 100% certainty on this… I could do a marathon and finish the game by this weekend though. But from what I’ve seen, having completed routes for a girl from each dorm: this seems to be the case.
What I believe, is that the scenario writer did not make the girls in “one united group” because it would have caused a negative in the overall effect. Having seen this tricked used before: Haruka evidently has two main plots ñ the super encompassing background that everyone’s story follows ñ thus you’re technically getting two overall stories. “Dorm A” follows one general path of events, while “Dorm B” follows another. Hopefully that’s making sense for everyone… if not, I could try to break it down in another way. But I’d rather wait until I finish 100% so I can see if this educated guess is totally correct.
Honestly I think Sekai de Ichiban Dame na Koi is a sexfest wrapped in a pretty package. Now the game has some merits, as you pointed out, but these are just superficial in my opinion. Haruka might be a run of the mill true love, but it’s a very well done true love that can stand on its own two feet when compared against other true loves. Sekai on the other hand, would falter against its competition. The stories are VERY predictable, and the character development “stays on rails” because your choices don’t seem to make a huge impact on the heroines’ lives. I’m not saying that making incorrect answers won’t give you bad end ñ they most certainly will ñ but any tomfool could have taken the protagonist’s place and done the same… or at least that’s the feeling I get. In Haruka and especially Bullet Butlers, you feel as if your actions mean something and made a difference.
On the matter of sex: Sekai has much more of it than the other two selections, but none of it is creative. Neither is the sex in Haruka or BB ñ but a sexfest draws a lot of its appeal from the quality of its adult scenes. Sekai left me pretty high and dry.
I truly have no love for Sekai ñ so if anyone wants to support its good points, I won’t argue back or anything. I just hate it.
Now on Bullet Butlers, I’ll just skip all the pleasantries about it, since Shingo does a bang up job on pointing out all the positives. I’ll keep my Devil’s Advocate role and point out what I didn’t like about it.
Bullet Butlers has a rather abundant saturation of SD artwork, which is really due to the fact that BB has humor in it. Now I’m not against humor ñ case in point: Draculius uses a lot of humor and I’m really fond of that title ñ but the comedy in BB breaks the pace of the main story. It isn’t subtle ñ it’s the slapstick in your face stuff. The music also changes for many of these moments, and I personally think these are the worst songs in the entire soundtrack. Not a good combination. When I want serious: I want serious. You don’t watch a Rambo movie and expect someone to throw a cream pie in his face while honking a bike horn. BB basically does this kind of thing (of course in its own way… there are no thrown cream pies).
Gamers who don’t speak Japanese probably wouldn’t notice too much, but BB has too many characters using -ne at the end of their sentences. It is the most annoying thing ever. Now I understand the reason why: it’s supposed to be a “cool foreign accent thing” - sorta like a southern drawl or Scottish accent. But my God… the game could have done without it. Some of the voice actors don’t seem to give a damn about it, and it shows. To quote Shingo from his review: There are only so many ways the voice actors can deliver that syllable before it loses all meaning and sounds out of place, ne? Trust me when I say it isn’t cute like Suiseiseki’s desu from Rozen Maiden. Irritated the hell out of me. Ne this. Ne that. Ne here. Ne there. Sheesh. ENOUGH WITH THE DAMN NE!!!
Last but not least: the pacing in BB is kinda funky due to how the plots is handled. It races forward, makes a small bang (in a good sense of the word), then races forward again, makes another small bang, then races forward again. Interesting, but that kinda threw me off. Its sorta like listening to those Classical music songs, where they have a ton of “false brass endings” where you think the song is coming to an end, but then it keeps going. Now you know BB isn’t gonna just end there, but the stop and go effect makes the final “boom” for the ending sequence… well… underwhelming and anti-climatic.
As for BB being visually superior to Haruka: I’m inclined to disagree. BB has better special effects, but think the designs are more appealing in Haruka. Had the artist for Haruka been switched with the artist in BB, I think the difference would have HEAVILY been shifted in favor to BB. Maybe its just a biased opinion that I prefer the artwork in Haruka… but I seriously feel that one artist is superior over the other.
So there. That finishes my role as a Devil’s Advocate. 
I have to bitch my friend. That’s my way of showing I care.
Of course this is all my opinion and I won’t refute anything anyone says against my comments: but I wanna just point out the things I find lacking… or just plain not there. If PP can only release one or two of these titles (else why would they hold a poll), then I’d like to point out how I feel. Probably going about it the wrong way, but the main issue is that there’s an in-depth review for Bullet Butlers already out there, but nothing for the other two. :?
So yea… after this I’ll just shut the hell up and keep quiet. Besides… none of them have twincest or ultra violent sex.
Oh… and I voted for Bullet Butlers.
I’m with you on everything in this post other than this point. I think the presentation is largely consistent across all three titles, and which one you prefer boils down to a matter of taste; fans of the traditional “moe” aesthetic will no doubt appreciate Haruka, but I don’t see it as obviously superior to the other two. Speaking personally none of them are my absolute favorite, though I do like Chuuou Higashiguchi’s work.
This is true, and I kind of regret it. It’s not fair to the other games. I’m glad you’re playing devil’s advocate and I hope anyone else will too who has more knowledge of the other titles than I do.
Oh, and I haven’t voted in the poll and I don’t plan to. I have to try to maintain some kind of objectivity here. ^^;;
Glad to see the poll was revised. Voted for the Haruka ni Aogi, Uruwashino and Bullet Butlers option this time.(Though that was probably obvious from my previous post.)
You know, if I wasn’t already sold of voting for BB, this line would have done it for me. Considering that I personally think of Fate/Stay Night as one of the best games I’ve ever played (and also keep in mind that I’ve only played the 1/3 rd translated by Mirror Moon, arguably the least liked of the three paths by fans and still thought it was fantastic/worth every penny), if BB can in any way match up to it then I consider it a worthwhile purchase. Particularly if it’s such a success that it shows Plot Heavy titles can make it in the west, thus encouraging more of the same.
PS: Just think Narg, Bullet Butlers today, maybe MinDead Blood sometime in the future… 8)
While I understand that the murderous bitch is your taste, I still can’t figure out why BSS is so set on her too. Must have been his secret masochistic side that he always denies to exist…
You underestimate me!
If I am really fed up because I realize a game is bad, I uninstall it, put the game into the last layer of my game-cabinet and forget about having ever bough it.
Thus, neither MinDead Blood, nor Zan’koku Yatouhime ( ) qualify here, because none of them is uninstalled - yet!
Actually, if I use a kouryaku it is a double-edge compliment to the game: It made me interested enough for accepting that help instead of simply resigning on it. The other edge is of course the slight criticism that the game-makers made it a bit too difficult for me to play it on my own. And yes, I am definitely looking at you here, MinDead Blood !!! :evil:
Zan’koku Yatouhime is another matter though - and can’t be really compared with MinDead Blood here: I made plenty of playthroughs in MinDead Blood, just reached the point that I couldn’t trigger more variations (=> difficulty level)!
In Zan’koku Yatouhime, the prologue simly went on and on and on and on and… … and I couldn’t even make any decision for weeks of playing! Now, that was quite frustrating. Even more learning that all I have seen of the game at all I could have had for free if I’d just downloaded and played the demo… :shock:
I voted for Haruku and BB now
Well I was going to say “Haruka ni Aogi, Uruwashino” as my first pick, but after watching the
three intro movies for them I’m pretty undecided. I think they all look awesome. I’ll have to
say that “Bullet Butlers” definitely had the best intro movie, it just made me want to buy the
game. But “Sekai de Ichiban NG (dame) na Koi” has a familiar feeling to it and that definitely
draws people.
After reading other people’s opinions and some of the summaries in the thread, I would have to
stick with “Haruka ni Aogi, Uruwashino” as my first pick, with Bullet Butlers coming in second.
Even though I have no doubt my two favorite characters would be the ones with only 1-2 scenes
and the ones I like the least would be the 8 each ones…I like games with a high emotional attachment
and good character interaction to go along with a high art/production value. I really really enjoyed
Snow Sakura, and games like Crescendo are always welcome. But “Sekai de Ichiban NG (dame) na Koi”
reminds me of a Come See Me Tonight, or a Sagara Family type game which is fun a couple times
but isn’t something you play 6 months or several years later because it was amazing…
So yeah, I guess that’s my two cents, I’m just glad you guys are looking to the future because it
means I will have new games to play even if they come out slowly. Thanks for asking for our
opinions
I was looking at 2007 scores on EGS http://erogamescape.ddo.jp/~ap2/ero/tou … ?year=2007 ; both TT and BB are at 80 points, except TT has 4 full-mark 100 scores while BB has only 2 ;)…but seriously Tsukutori as a suspense/mystery/detective kind of game fits much more with western audiences than slice-of-lifeish Harukani or play-as-pathetic-salaryman Sekai Ichi so I don’t understand why bosses don’t think of that.
Shingo, did you purposely coincide the poll to go up on Super Tuesday? :lol:
Vote updated, and I’ve chosen “Interested in two (Haruka, Bullet)”, of course.
Sorry, Shingo, but my part is already done. It’s Narg’s turn, now…
I DO NOT believe in coincidences. Narg, last week you got Harukani for free (and I’m pretty sure it wasn’t the “Preferred Prize” you chose), and yesterday this poll appears…
The GODS have SPOKEN! :shock: :o :shock:
And you know what this means, don’t you ?
Get to work, NOW! :mrgreen:
The only reason why I picked Haruka ni Aogi, Uruwashino, was because you didn’t specify what prize you wanted and I figured that it was the type of game you’d like given the choices… plus fit your agenda for Will titles. Lo and behold you win it. Then you do something insane like not giving me your address, so I can’t mail it to ya. Seriously. I think that’s really suspicious. Its strange for you to turn down a free true love AVG from Will. Do you have twincest there? Hot Italian twincest!? I think you do. You can’t hide it. NARG IS COMING FOR THEM!! :twisted:
Errr… ahem… where was I?
I wouldn’t have played it were it not for that, because sugary sweet titles aren’t Narg’s cup of tea unless they come from ORBIT or CLOVER (or has twincest).
You should be doing this instead of me Baldo.
This is probably a topic for somewhere else, because I don’t wanna derail the poll into another topic… but I’ve come to NOT trust Erogamescape for rating titles. Reason being: its waaaaay off at times. There’s gaming politics, false negative flooding from 2chan nuts, and general incomprehensible logic all around. I seriously think their methodology is broken… but… meh…
Well that’s what happens when gamers complain they want a challenging game… then when they get one, they complain its too challenging.
Well the expansion isn’t as challenging as the core game. You’ve got no excuse for that one.
Then, I hope I won’t need one for taking a one-year-break from it - because the break won’t happen…
So? Thanks then :mrgreen: , but it was really a gift for you (besides, it was also a nice way to turn something unpractical -for me, a resident of a nation half a Earth away from Japan- into something useful -for you, a real globetrotter with a Japanese address available-) .
And I was right, after all 8) .
However…
…Sorry, but my pathetical skills in English (not counting my chronical slow pace in playing (ero-)games) make me the most unlikely candidate 
.
Besides (coincidences DO NOT exist, I tell you 8) !) a few days ago I’ve started to write a review for a different game…
Picked Haruka and BB in the updated poll. Picked Haruka cause I want to be the Sensei, and BB cause of the interesting premise.
Bullet Butlers and Haruka for me 8D
I still have my Japanese copies of both games at home…but an English version would be so much better for me to understand.
I also have Sekai but I’m not that interested in that game actually…Like the art style though. Shiny hair…
heh. I just need epic titles like Bullet Butlers. I love them and after playing the awesome game Dies Irae I need them more then ever. I’m all over epic games!
[size=85]still waiting for a possible otome game to get translated though…[/size]
Shingo i understand what ur trying to do, as i voted as if i only had once choice in total… whice id want to buy should i only have $45 to spend for 2-3 months and the choice of all 3.
Least i think thats what you were trying to do, at the same time see if had $80, what 2 id get, but i decided to go with the 1 choice since i know thats what your going for here.
What i want to see translated:
1o.) Bullet Butlers
Everything we need to know about this one was already said. There’s even a very good review about it.
It seems all the characters are voiced. The protagonists look very cool and the graphics are excellent. The story looks to be excellent, too.
Unfortunately, it seems to have some rape scenes, but at least they will be story focused, so that’s okay.
Greatly looking forward this one.
2o.) Sekai de Ichiban Dame na Koi
Even thought a lot of guys here dislike this erogame, i’m very interested in it.
Some time ago, i played the trial version and i thought it was good, funny and refreshing. The graphics are awesome, the characters full of color. If was not BB, this one would be my 1st choice.
As far i remember, the protagonist is an older guy very out of lucky who lost everything - his job, his girlfriend, his home, his youth. Feeling completely depressed (who wouldn’t? ) he was drunk and feeling lost, when a beautiful woman gave him a friendly shoulder.
Feeling he found a reason to live, he tried to see her again at her apartment complex, but she already left, running away with another man, leaving her daughter all alone as the new kanrinin. He decided to help the daughter of the only person to care about him even if a little, at the same getting a new home for himself.
I don’t think this game is a porno fest like DYLHB or something like that. The protagonist is not trying to get some action… He’s trying to get a life, but he found many interesting people along the way. He will interact with them, not only females but males too. Somehow, it remembers me MAISON IKOKKU, with the difference the kanrinin is a lot younger than the protagonist, not older. So there’s a little more taboos to break.
A funny Slice-of-Life ADV game i’m greatly looking forward, too.
3o.)Haruka ni Aogi, Uruwashi no
It looks to be interesting and sweet, but the graphic look somewhat childish, almost loli. Need to check more details, but looks okay. Still not my top priority… BB and SdI come first.