I played 40 visual novels in 2018 — even fewer than 2017. On one hand that means my real life got more fulfilling; on the other, it means the industry really is done for these days. Looking back, most of what I played was in the first half of the year. The second half was thin — barely anything out there, and nothing that made me want to pick it up. Which is fine. Probably even fewer next year. And honestly I hope the industry croaks soon, so more kids can be freed from it and face reality properly. Still, I did play some. So, as usual, here’s what I think is worth recommending.

When you talk about galge, you can’t not bring up eroge, and when you talk about eroge, you can’t not think of the ones that left a real impression, and when you talk about leaving an impression, you can’t not think of Kami no Ue no Mahou Tsukai, and then you can’t not bring up the writer behind it: Rukuru. And when you talk about Rukuru, you have to talk about his new game with Kiriha at the end of 2018, Sora ni Kizanda Parallelogram. Going from literary subject matter to a sports backdrop—truly a double bloom, literature and sport both, worth keeping an eye on. I’ve brought up Rukuru more than once, and I’ve recommended the stuff he wrote more than once too. The biggest factor is just how good his stories are. Rukuru can tell a story, and his prose isn’t childish either—it reads comfortably, and that’s his biggest charm and personality. Sure, some people rag on him for all the typos, but who among us who writes every day doesn’t have a few typos (I’m not talking about myself here). So the release of Sora ni Kizanda Parallelogram put me in a bind. The dilemma is pretty obvious. On one hand I was looking forward to a new Rukuru game and that familiar sour-sweet script of his. On the other hand… this new game… Sora ni Kizanda Parallelogram… doesn’t it feel a little too bootleg? You don’t need me to say it—anyone with eyes can see it. This so-called Sora ni Kizanda Parallelogram, whether you look at the setting or the character designs, looks extremely similar to a certain work from a certain studio that’s already dead. Yeah, that’s right—Sprite’s Aokana: Four Rhythms Across the Blue, aka Aokana. Same airborne sport, same male lead as coach, same four hair colors for the heroines. Opinions on the game were all over the place at the time; most people figured it was Aokana’s “spiritual successor,” since the setup is just too similar. At the same time, people were guessing based on Rukuru’s previous style—would Sora ni Kizanda Parallelogram have people dying left and right, getting crippled, all that mess…? After all, his previous games were all gloom-and-doom. So I was worried. So I was torn. But whatever the game turned out to be, you only know once you’ve cleared it. As 2018 came to a close, before the Sino-American co-produced Journey to the West started filming, I finally finished this one. And I ended up even more confused. “Compared to his previous work, is this game a step forward or a step back?” Maybe going back over the whole game will make the answer easier to reach.

A while back I modded my OnePlus 5 for wireless charging, so this time I went ahead and did the in-car setup to match. Right now the only trustworthy car wireless charger you can actually buy online is Philips. I know Philips is a company that slaps its name on just about anything, but they seem to have done this one properly.

Kokoro ga Tsunagu Koi Shirube (ココロが繋ぐ恋標) came out last month. I wasn’t even planning to play it, but then I saw a Japanese review saying it was worth an “80.” And like an idiot, I believed them. By all appearances this is MORE’s last gasp: a shell company of a shell company of MME, a factory-line product from KATE. Word is MME disbanded right after this shipped. The whole thing reeks of LASS on its deathbed. Nothing about it says “quality.” But I saw Japanese players online saying the game has multiple routes, and that aside from the other routes being dogshit, the main Kokoro route is actually good. And like an idiot, I believed them again.

I bought a Retro Game handheld a while back and it felt pretty good, but something was always missing. Even after updating to the foreign custom firmware, plenty of rough edges remained — short standby time, an ugly look, that sort of thing. The guy behind that firmware has released a new build, possibly the true final version this time. Flashed it and it’s actually decent. Also took the chance to dress the thing up a bit, and I’m liking it more and more.

The Odroid Go is a handheld project built around a dev board that you assemble yourself. In theory it’s open source, and you could put one together entirely by hand. Of course, someone also sells you a finished kit, and I happened to catch it on sale, so I ordered one.

The Pixel Stand was half price on Black Friday. Great news, except for one small problem: the half-price Pixel Stand was at Best Buy. If you’ve ever tried to buy stuff from overseas, you know Best Buy is one of those sites where it’s basically impossible. They ruthlessly cancel anything shipping to a forwarding address, which means you need a real US address to buy. Lucky for me, I had a friend in the States. Thanks to Enneamer, a.k.a. “Dirty Teacher,” I finally got my hands on the one wireless charging dock that can fast-charge a Pixel 3 XL.

Honestly, I’ve been using the Google Pixel 3 XL for almost a month now, and I’m really happy with this phone. Except that not long after I bought it, Google started dropping the price all over the place… Anyway, this phone is actually pretty expensive, so of course you still want a screen protector and a case after buying it. Since it’s the flagship this time, the accessory ecosystem is pretty complete, and I found suitable products quickly. Way better than stupid Sony. So let me keep it brief, hopefully it helps anyone thinking of buying one.

As someone who’s been out of the audiophile game for ages, I find the current enthusiast market kind of funny and kind of sad at the same time. Ever since I redirected the money I used to spend on headphones into buying music albums, I feel like my horizons have widened. “A ten-thousand-yuan IEM isn’t worth hearing ten thousand albums,” or something like that. At least I’m not like some grade-schooler on Reddit, buying insanely expensive IEMs just to listen to a music library that hasn’t been updated in years, flipping back and forth through the same dumb test tracks. Or running high-end gear to listen to doujin music produced in some low-end studio. That’s just unscientific. High-end audio gear really does work, sure. But for most people it’s useless, and for most audiophiles it’s also not much use — unless you’re a die-hard classical fan and love other large-ensemble music so much you refuse to listen to anything that isn’t a SACD from a famous studio. Then yes, high-end gear does work. But for most people like me, who listen to pop, occasionally some small-ensemble stuff, and just want to feel the charm of a melody — as long as the headphones don’t have that “boom-tss boom-tss” low-brow tuning and aren’t distorting or off-balance, that’s about enough. Yes, about enough. How do you know that the ten-thousand-yuan suit-and-tie stack you bought wasn’t used to listen to songs made by someone using a garbage 5-yuan USB cable? With that money you’re better off just listening to more music. So I’ve been increasingly abandoning wired gear and trying Bluetooth. The biggest advantage of Bluetooth is convenience. The biggest disadvantage is, naturally, sound quality. But with APTX and LDAC gradually opening up, Bluetooth has more or less reached the “listenable” stage. So I bought the FiiO BTR3 Bluetooth DAC/amp, two and a half months ago… Why did it take me this long to write up my impressions? That’s a long story.

There’s a fairly famous song called “Amazing Grace.” The Chinese translation usually goes with something like “divine grace,” though the official rendering in a lot of places is “wondrous grace.” It’s actually a religious song with deep roots in Christianity, but it got so famous that it spread around the world and stopped being confined to religious use. The gist of “Amazing Grace” is right there in the name—praising the grace God has given you, basically a hymn. But what people actually like about it is being moved by that sense of the “sacred” in the song. Maybe that’s the unique appeal of religious music in general. So at the end of this year, a game showed up carrying the “Amazing Grace” title—an 18X eroge, no less, with Korie Riko as the artist and Tsukiyashiro Tomu on scenario. A stacked lineup. The last time Tsukiyashiro Tomu and Korie Riko worked together was Magical Charming, and I called that one “the most insane galgame ever”. The slice-of-life content, the way the foreshadowing unfolded, even the system itself—all of it was full of highlights. After that, Tsukiyashiro Tomu planned a few more games, but they felt a bit middling. Last year’s Mono no Aware wa Iro no Koro. had plenty of highlights in its story too, but something still felt like it was missing a step. So this year Tsukiyashiro Tomu came back, and not only did he drag in his old partner Korie Riko, he also brought out Sakura Saori, who sang the OP for Magical Charming back in the day, and put together this new work: Amazing Grace -What color is your attribute?-. The title means exactly what it says—“Amazing Grace, what color is your attribute?” But look at the staff and it screams Lump of Sugar from every angle. If that bright “Cabbage Soft” logo weren’t sitting right there on top, I think 99% of people would assume this was Lump of Sugar. Same scenario writer, same artist, same OP singer—it’s the exact same formula. Of course, the reason I played this game wasn’t because I had any expectations for a Cabbage Soft title, and it wasn’t some particular fetish for the writer. It’s just that this is a game about “winter.” Yeah, anyone who knows me probably gets it. I like the atmosphere of winter, the way everything looks when it’s snowing, so naturally I like games set in winter. So I looked at the release list, saw Amazing Grace, saw the winter setting, saw that the writer probably wasn’t going to screw it up, and decided to give it a shot.