Finally got around to writing up everything I played last year. Turns out I went through 31 games, same as 2021. That said, I can already feel 2023’s number dropping off a cliff — not because I don’t have time, but because the industry is just cooked. Look at May: barely a handful of titles worth mentioning. By year’s end I’ll be lucky to count ten on my fingers. Looks like my dream of “watching the galgame sunset industry finally die” is about to come true. Last year’s quality was honestly nothing to write home about. If you asked me to list my “personal best,” I doubt I could even fill ten slots. So let’s do it differently this year — alongside the usual recommendations, I’ll throw in some roast-flavored awards. “Worst,” “dumbest,” that sort of thing… just for fun. Helps people dodge landmines.

Early 2022 was a mess, so I never found the time to write anything. The biggest problem I have now is that there’s a ton of stuff in my head but no time to get it out — and we’re already almost a third of the way through 2022 and I still haven’t written up last year’s games. I originally felt kind of guilty about it, but then I realized it doesn’t really matter whether I write it or not. Most people don’t play these games anyway; they just like watching the drama. Still, I figure I owe myself some kind of accounting, so here it is. If it turns out useful to anyone, even better. I played 31 games in 2021, a full 10 fewer than in 2020. Honestly, I don’t think it’s because I had less time — it’s that 2021’s games were just that bad, and quite a few were bad in a “very unique” way. With that in mind, after I cover the ones worth recommending, I’ll also roast some of the year’s hotter titles, so people stop asking me “why isn’t XXX on the list?”

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.

So I played a shitload of Japanese adult games again this year, but compared to last year there’s actually some progress. Last year I think I played 80. This year I counted… 77. See, fewer than last year. That proves I’m one step closer to becoming a normie, right??

前一阵玩nukige太多了，然后nukige玩多了又玩了一票废萌キャラゲー，觉得自己还是应该回到“故事导向”的基本路线上来，搜了下看到了我个人非常喜欢的《紙の上の魔法使い》的脚本师的一个早期作品，叫做《運命予報をお知らせします》,简单看了下日本人在中二空间对它的评价，觉得应该没问题，也就开始玩了。 The game is supposed to be only a dozen hours or so, but it felt longer than I expected. I came away pleasantly surprised, maybe because it’d been a while since I’d played something with writing this good. It got to the point that after finishing it, I booted up the newly released Floral Flowlove (フローラル・フローラブ) and just couldn’t take the gap in prose quality between the two. The former reads like something a college student would write; next to it, the latter is straight-up middle-schooler level…… Anyway, probably because my Japanese has gotten better, I’ve started finding a lot of really dumb phrasing genuinely stupid — it’s not just about clawing my way to understanding the meaning anymore.

Never thought I’d ever have bragging rights, though honestly it just makes me look like a hopeless case. So at the end of the year I thought I’d check how many galge I played this year. Big mistake… 80. Yeah. Bundling the split-up releases together would lower that number a bit. Honestly, I don’t even like galge. I’ve said this more than once: I play them because I hate half-finished anime productions, hate the dumbass plots of light novels, hate the endless circular storytelling of light novel and manga serializations. The only place I can get my Japanese-style fix and a clean, fast story conclusion is a galge—rarely do you see a galge end with “wait for the next volume,” and, bluntly, in a game the protagonist always ends up banging a girl instead of waffling between an ever-growing harem. I hate being called a “landmine checker” and I hate it when people read my impressions and go “I like big dicks and big tits, if you’re playing adult games don’t act all high and mighty”—but somehow I ended up playing this many anyway. So people say: you’ve played so many, you should recommend a few. Thinking back over the year, there really aren’t many that deserve the word “面白い.” Most have janky art and nonsensical stories. Recommending the better ones spreads the gospel and saves people some detours—that’s worthwhile. I’ve already eaten shit; sure, part of me enjoys watching others fall into the same pit, but I’d rather watch the ugly bastards who read my warning and dive in anyway. So let’s go. No particular order, just as they come to mind.

できない私が、くり返す。 left a decent impression on me, and not because of the art or anything like that — mostly it was a bunch of people saying it’s a “tearjerker” and “the best.” Generally a game that most people approve of can’t be that bad, so I played it during June when there was nothing else out. The title is weird. Going by my Japanese level of a one-year-old infant, I think it’s trying to say that no matter how many times I go back, I can’t change a damn thing. Early on, the protagonist gets a pocket watch from a big-sister type named Ren, who tells him it can travel through time and return to the past. “But there’s no point in going back, because the future can’t be changed.” A time leap that can’t change the future is basically useless, and Ren hammers it in every time she talks about the watch: 未来は変えられない So the story begins five years after big sis Ren dies, at the moment the watch-holding protagonist meets a girl named Shino.