I counted it up: I played 64 galge this year. For comparison, 2016 was 77 and 2015 was 80, so it’s trending exactly the way I figured it would. Fewer games every year, which is solid proof my life is getting fuller. Not many, sure, but I did get through most of the big releases, and honestly the year as a whole left me disappointed. For one thing, a bunch of the big studios put out nothing. Even the old moege factories were quiet. Yuzusoft had no new game, SAGA PLANETS is releasing at the end of the month—I’m enjoying what I’ve played of it so far, but I haven’t finished, so it misses the cut. Most of what I did play was fan discs. Fan discs, more fan discs, and “fake fan discs” wearing a “second installment” label. Strip out those sequel cash-grabs and what’s left is moege and landmines. I thought about it for a whole day and barely scraped together a list. It’s a pretty personal one. Use it as a reference if you want. (Ranked in order)

Play enough galgames, step in enough pitfalls, eat enough shit, and looking back you start to notice a lot of interesting things. Most galgame fans got their start with fan-translated versions. First it’s anime and manga, then they hear some games have lewd stuff in them, so they go try those out. A few end up stumbling into plot-heavy galgames that way, but the majority just permanently equate galgame with porn. Even today, if you ask someone what a galgame is, probably 80% will say “Nekopara”… another 18% might say Steins;Gate, and only that remaining 2% might actually bring up Memories Off. Yes, I’m saying right here that Nekopara is trash. It’s a pure porn game with zero substance and nothing worth discussing, and personally I don’t even like the art style—can’t even jerk off to it, which is why I’ve played maybe 2 minutes total. What’s more depressing is how many newbies get drawn in by Nekopara and straight-up equate it with galgame as a whole. Makes me sigh just thinking about it. Sure, plenty of galgames have porn elements, but a galgame with nothing but H has no legs to stand on. If you want to understand galgames, you need some more interesting works to break you in. The Memories Off series is a solid entry point. It’s also the most honest, unpretentious example of what makes galgame its own genre—the music is fine, the story’s actually decent, not exactly massive waves but plenty of ups and downs, and it genuinely suits most people’s first exposure. If someone gets interested in galgames because of it and goes looking for “more games like that,” that’s when the problems start piling up.

Nekoneko Soft games always leave me not knowing what to say. First off, they usually have a solid scenario, most of the time by Kataoka Tomo. I won’t deny he can tell a story, and most of it is told in an approachable, faintly sorrowful way that slowly gets you tearing up. It’s mostly positive stuff — cherish the people around you, love life and its little beauties, that kind of thing. But the other annoying thing about Nekoneko Soft is the art. They always go to this guy Akino Takehiko, and the characters he draws… sometimes they clear the bar, and sometimes they’re genuinely ugly. I looked at his doujinshi and honestly they weren’t bad, so why does it come out so rough once it’s in a game? Some of the heroines end up with those pork-kidney faces, looking like Zhao Benshan. Painfully awkward. So I kept going back and forth, and I did play some Nekoneko Soft games plus stuff from their sub-brands. The story side is generally fine; the art style is just a bit rough. Probably the coloring’s fault. Anyway, Nekoneko Soft has a new game out. They actually put out a new title this year called Ramune 2, but I didn’t play it. I mean Ruri no Kasane: Imouto Monogatari, which came out last month. Honestly I don’t get the title, especially the “kasane” part. No idea if it means “overlapping” like I think it does. Not that it matters, since the subtitle already tells you everything: imouto monogatari. A story about a little sister.

Lao Wu, 30 years old, is a total loser. Lao Wu is a high school classmate of mine. His defining trait: horny as hell, but too chicken to do anything about it. In my limited memory of him, what stands out most is him in class flipping through a porn magazine so worn out it was falling apart, gleefully reminiscing about his sexual exploits. Bragging about having a sex life in high school—that’s a hell of a flex. Absolutely goated. High school in China and high school in a Japanese Galgame are two different worlds. Most people don’t even have a girlfriend. Sex? Out of reach. Back then I looked up to Lao Wu, but thinking about it now, I was just too naive. Because the way Lao Wu acted in high school was nothing like someone who was getting laid. How should I put it—aside from flipping through his dirty books, one of his favorite hobbies was lying on the balcony railing checking out girls. A girl transferred into the class next door. Long black hair, liked to dress up, a bit aloof and cold. And this was high school—daring to wear that plaid skirt uniform style, showing off pale thighs and zettai ryouiki. She was ahead of her time. Anyone who saw her couldn’t help but get a little hard just to show their appreciation, right? Ever since Lao Wu spotted that girl from the next class, he thought about her every day, muttered about her constantly, like she was already his girl.

AMUSE CRAFT seems like a pretty based company — at least they’ve got several pretty goated game brands under their belt, and a few pretty goated artists willing to work with them, plus they can pull in a lot of famous industry names, Shinjima Yū included. Oh right, this company also loves to open new brand aliases for no reason. Weren’t both of Shinjima Yū’s works released under new aliases that got thrown away after one use? So this time they’ve opened another new alias called CRYSTALiA, and very pretentiously announced that the codename for this new game is: Katana, which means “sword” in Japanese. So the full name of this game codenamed “Katana” is this painfully cringe “Kizuna Kirameku Koi Iroha.” I don’t even know how to translate it into Chinese properly — something like “shining bonds sprouting love,” I guess.

A while back I was mulling something over: Which visual novel actually delivers a romance experience closest to the real thing? If I’m forced to answer, the first thing that pops into my head is a game from a company called SMEE. Yeah, SMEE and HOOKSOFT are basically the same outfit. They bill themselves as focusing on “romance by stages” — the whole hero-meets-heroine, gets to know her, falls for her, and then, uh, conspires with her… wait, no, marries her kind of flow. That’s what they say on the tin, but the games themselves don’t always look that way. How to put it — a lot of SMEE games feel like gag routines strung together through everyday life. Early on, Fureraba Friend to Lover wasn’t that blatant about it. But later stuff like Pure×Connect and Step Kanojo started leaning harder into comedy, using exaggerated presentation to sell the heroines’ quirks and the protagonist’s snark. Sometimes the protagonist himself turns into a total creep just so you have something to roast. SMEE’s comedy path keeps veering further off course, though. Last game, that “country love” one, was basically a joke collection — the heroines had no personality, the art was unsettling, and I had a genuinely painful time playing it. Listening to Honda-san’s country ojou-sama rattle off scatological jokes one after another, plus bits about a bunch of people observing sperm… I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. The confession at the end was cookie-cutter and half-hearted, and it wrapped up out of nowhere. Personally, I prefer the style of early SMEE like Fureraba. There the conversations center on “getting to know the girl,” most choices are about communicating with her, and many of the women feel close to real romance — especially Mochizuki Rina and the vegetable-selling senpai Sawatari Misaki. That’s why I say SMEE’s games are closer to real love. And now SMEE is back with a new title: Making＊Lovers. Still about the player searching for a partner, still that witty, chatty style. They even put out a super simple preview version first — a few minutes of dialogue per heroine, nothing you could really judge. A trial version came later, but I couldn’t be bothered since the game was about to launch. After finishing the retail version, I have to say this is probably SMEE’s second-best game in recent years, after Fureraba.

I’ve written before that for the OnePlus 5, the official protector is what I recommend. And for the Sony XZP, Banana’s soft film. Problem with soft film is it deforms easily and gets dirty fast — you’re basically replacing it every month. Which is when you start missing glass film. Shame that glass film on this thing always leaves a white edge. Sure, there’s white-edge oil, but it doesn’t last — two weeks tops and it’s gone, time to re-oil. And the stuff in those bottles really does seem to be just plain oil. Completely unreliable. Then I saw someone on XDA post a video of a fully transparent, fully laminated glass protector for the Sony XZP. And that’s when I noticed: the lamination process uses “optical adhesive” as the filler. It’s liquid going on, and sets into a semi-solid — way more trustworthy than oil. So I went looking for someone on eBay selling it, and what do you know, I found a seller offering liquid optical gel for white-edge repair. Tried it right away. Works well. Thicker than your average white-edge oil, but it still seeps into the edge just fine — a little pressure with your finger is enough.

Qie Ting Qin Yu (且听琴语), also known as Pure Hearts in the Catfight Music Scene (juan), tells the story of an artsy but uncultured vagrant of unclear sexuality who successfully infiltrates a music school in a seaside city — a city that has Chinese chengguan and American gay bars, yet everyone speaks Japanese, so who the hell knows which country it’s in; probably some no-name island in the middle of the East China Sea. There he proceeds to chase girls and act unhinged.

Parasol has put out another new game. Honestly I don’t expect much from Parasol anymore — their games have lost any real identity or selling point. The last one with actual buzz was Hare nochi Kitto Nanohana Biyori, a.k.a. “Haru na Hana.” That game had serious problems with its narrative logic; calling it a landmine isn’t unfair. After that Parasol felt like it never recovered. Everything since has been a minor throwaway title, made half-heartedly, with painfully generic premises and nothing that stands out. Take last time’s “swimming club” thing, or that one from the start of the year, “My Everyday Romance With My Girlfriend” or whatever — they just slap together a school setting, add a harem with every girl type imaginable, you pick whoever you want, fuck her once, and it’s over. How do I put this… it doesn’t feel like romance. It feels like hiring a prostitute. So this time Parasol is back with Sakura Hitohira Koi Moyou (桜ひとひら恋もよう). No idea how to translate the title well. A single cherry petal has the shape of love? Sakura Hitohira Koi Moyou? Whatever, you get the idea. But the premise of this new one didn’t interest me at first glance either… except I noticed there’s a nine-year-old loli elementary schooler in the game, and you can’t even get on her route. The setup is that the protagonist is going to school as usual when suddenly the school is going to be merged into another one, due to enrollment rates or bad management or whatever. He refuses to accept it and leads a bunch of classmates in protest. That’s the story. Japan’s declining birthrate is getting worse, so school mergers are a dime a dozen. This premise is just taking the old “a girls’ school gets merged in” setup and flipping it to “we refuse the merger, and it’s not a girls’ school.” What’s the difference? Same soup, different bowl… That’s what I thought at first. Then I found out the game has a lot more going on inside.

I rate Nora to Oujo to Noraneko Heart very highly. Even the anime adaptation. I’ve never doubted scenario writer Hato’s sense of pacing, and I’ve always thought Hato was pretty smart—especially what they pulled off with the anime, getting maximum effect out of a minimal budget. So before long, Nora to Oujo to Noraneko Heart 2 arrived. Same team, same flavor, and by all appearances it could stand on the shoulders of the first game and recapture its glory. No need for any wild new developments—just replicate the formula of the first one and it should be a safe bet! But was it a safe bet? I don’t think so.