I personally recommend Kage no Umi no Apeiria because it’s full of surprises and genuinely novel. Unfortunately, despite all my hype, it seems the game didn’t sell well last year — apparently it couldn’t even beat some other game’s FD. Still, Kage no Umi no Apeiria announced a sequel. Except it’s really just an FD, as you can tell from the title and cover art: Kage no Umi no Apeiria Casablanca no Kishi — the suffix is “Casablanca no Kishi” (The Knight of Casablanca). Normally, a fan disc gives you after-stories for the original cast plus new routes for characters who didn’t have one. That’s what I assumed Casablanca no Kishi would be, especially since the cover features those two side characters. Calling them side characters isn’t entirely fair — they did interact a lot with the protagonist in the main game, and one of them is the nurse connected to another main heroine, Mashiro. But in the virtual world, they’re two female knights. After playing it, though, I’d say this is less a fan disc and more an append disc.

Last October in Beijing, when Fengniu Jushi Zhu Niubi treated me to guanchang at the Dongsi Minfang restaurant, he asked me a question: “Your blog’s pretty badass these days, huh?” “Badass my ass. There’s exactly one badass thing about my blog.” “Where?” “Open Google, search for the keyword ‘妹ぱらだいす2’, and see who’s first.” “Search for what? Ichimoto… what?” “It’s Japanese!” So I guided Zhu Niubi through searching “妹ぱらだいす2”, and after seeing the first result, even Zhu Niubi couldn’t help but marvel: “Badass, badass, badass. Truly badass.” “Right? That’s the one badass thing about my blog, though I don’t know how to explain it.”

Clockup is a company that often puts out “very serious” games, even though most of the time that’s not the impression it gives. Because Clockup’s breakout work was euphoria, and I think you can figure out what kind of thing that game is if you look it up yourself. Ever since then, most of the games Clockup has released give off an impression of being “unvarnished.” By “unvarnished” I don’t just mean the “directness” and “brutality” of the game content, but more the way they embody the characteristics of “18+” games. What is “18+” anyway? It’s adult content, right? And what is adult content? It’s not just pornography, it’s also violence. So these two elements get splashed around to the fullest in a lot of Clockup’s games. Clockup has made a lot of nukige that express a lot of “erotic” intent, and at the same time it’s also made a lot of “story-driven” games that tell some very interesting stories. Of course, these stories don’t just have “eroticism”—they also have explicit “violence.” Even more absurdly, Clockup has also put out some baffling comedy nukige with a style completely different from its usual dark style. But all these wildly different games come from the same company brand, rather than doing what other companies do and spinning off a sub-brand to keep things categorized. It always feels so haphazard, which is exactly why I said at the start that Clockup always leaves you with some weird impression. That said, you can’t deny that Clockup still puts out a good game with real depth every now and then. Not just the early Natsu no Kusari, which had a bit of an art-film vibe—Maggot baits from a few years ago was also memorable. It depicts a story of hope being born once again in an utterly hopeless world, yet the game is still packed with very hardcore erotic and violent elements. Those elements aren’t gratuitous; they highlight the game’s themes very well. The game never seems to compromise for the sake of avoiding “extreme” elements—whatever CG is needed, it shows. No beautification at all. Sometimes I feel there’s even a touch of “aesthetics of violence” in there. Another game that reminds me of this style is DOOM. A lot of people have opposed violence. They’re all dead. So the original team behind Maggot Baits got back together at Clockup and brought us Nenurenu Hitsuji to Kodoku na Ookami, still with a slightly dark style, which naturally made me look forward to it.

Every SAGA PLANETS game follows the same formula: individual routes scatter the pieces of the main story, then a GRAND END ties all the threads together and walks you to the true ending. They’ve done this in several of their titles, from Hatsuyuki Sakura to Kisaragi GOLD STAR to Hanasaki Work Spring! and Floral Flowlove. Roughly: the character routes screw around, maybe drop a hint about the main plot at the very end, and only after you’ve cleared every route does the game unlock the entrance to the real story, the TRUE END. Honestly the structure isn’t bad. It’s kind of interesting, it builds suspense. But it doesn’t fit every kind of story, and SAGA PLANETS has tripped over this formula more than once, or at least failed to deliver the payoff it deserves. Those games tend to be slice-of-life stuff with a weak main plot, where it feels like “we made a main plot because we need a main plot.” In other words, the route lock is completely unnecessary. It’s a moe game. You don’t need to force-hide a main story and a so-called “truth” behind it. When you finally see it you don’t go “oh, mind blown” — you go “that’s it?” Reverse effect. In recent years SAGA PLANETS’ choice of premises has gotten less and less interesting. Last year’s Floral Flowlove was themed around “ojousama,” young ladies, which made it look like ENSEMBLE had possessed the company (and of course, in the end the story had nothing to do with ojousama). And when this year’s game was announced I felt the same way: it’s called Kin’iro Loveriche, and the theme is “blonde hair.” Every heroine is blonde. At first glance it looks like it exists to satisfy some specific fetish. I personally don’t like blondes, and I haven’t noticed many people who do (silver hair, I’ve seen people into that). Blond-haired men are never any good either. The whole thing felt kind of nonsensical to me — but based on my prior experience with SAGA PLANETS, this “blonde” had to be a decoy, and there’d be a GRAND END at the end, 99% unrelated to gold hair. After finishing the game, I figure I was half right and half wrong.

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 visual novels, step in enough pitfalls, eat enough shit, and looking back you start to notice a lot of interesting things. Most fans of visual novels 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 visual novels that way, but the majority just permanently equate visual novels with porn. Even today, if you ask someone what a visual novel 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 visual novels as a whole. Makes me sigh just thinking about it. Sure, plenty of visual novels have porn elements, but a visual novel with nothing but H has no legs to stand on. If you want to understand visual novels, 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 visual novels their 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 visual novels 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 visual novel 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.